Category: Gardening

In less than a month, our garden has flourished.

In particular this year, the bok choy is a clear winner. The kale is also doing well again, and the chard and herbs are starting to grow in.

The hamlet has been tending to our seedlings for the past month and a half, and they are now ready to plant outdoors.

First, the gang went out to the bog to get more soil for the garden.

Then we planted our little baby plants!

Compare with last year’s start-of-garden-season.

The nights are starting to drop below freezing now, so we have harvested the remainder of our garden and lain it to rest for the season.

Some vegetables grew better than others, and so it is time for the end-of-season report card.

• Tomatoes – Flourished when grown indoors, then struggled with the cold nights outdoors. Eventually bounced back as the nights got warmer, but not enough to produce more than a few small tomatoes. They would have done much better in a greenhouse. Also, tomatoes are readily available for purchase at the local store, so probably not worth the effort if they’re going to be temperamental. <C->

• Zucchini – Flourished when grown indoors, then struggled with the cold nights outdoors. It may have been making a resurrection, but I cut it down thinking it was a weed. It wouldn’t have had a chance to grow very big anyways. <D->
• Peppers -Another cold-sensitive plant that showed some initial promise but didn’t amount to anything. Ain’t nobody got time for that up here. <D->
• Spinach – Bolted right away. Never got to eat any spinach. <F>
• Rapini – Bolted. <F>

• Kohlrabi – Did we even have these? I could have sworn we planted some, but clearly they didn’t work out if we did. <data deficient>
• Cauliflower – Our little cauliflower showed some promise in July, but it never got any bigger and the little cauliflower bit just grew out in all directions. Also that plant takes up a lot of space in the garden. <F>
• Peas – We got a few of these throughout the season, but they were all gone by this final harvest. <C+>
• Onions – We planted some onion bulbs, and were excited to see how big they had grown by the end of the season. Turns out only marginally bigger than when they were planted. <D+>

• Beets – Much like onions, these were planted at the beginning of the season and we could see the leaves growing in, so we were excited to see how big the beets had grown. Turns out not at all – we just have beet leaves, but no beets. <C->

• Kale – Did great all summer. <A+>

• Swiss Chard – Did great right from the beginning and continued to produce all summer.  <A+>

• Lettuce – We planted some mixed lettuces a bit later in the season hoping  that we’d get a second round of leafy greens. We also planted a number of herbs at the same time. They did start growing in, but not as quickly as hoped, and so they were still quite small by the final harvest (refer to the picture for beets). They did show good potential however, and likely would have worked well if they had been planted earlier. <B+>
• Cilantro – Delicious and abundant, but kept insistently trying to flower. Much effort was spent trying to keep it small, leafy, and delicious. <A->

• Dill – We didn’t get much dill, but what we did get was delicious. <B>

• Sage – We got a few sprigs of this guy. <C+>

• Other herbs -We may have planted other herbs too (I’m pretty sure we did…), but clearly they didn’t grow. <F>