Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Beans, corn, & squash Summer gardens 2 + 3 & what I'm harvesting from Spring garden


Our first garden is the Hugelkultur mounds which are growing kale, Brussels, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, and more. The crops growing on the right side are these cold tolerant crops. These crops were doing great until two weeks ago when the flea beetles started devouring the young plants, then last week the garden suffered from a two week long drought. To take care of the beetles, we used a natural remedy to repel them and while the mixture remained on the plants throughout the night and day, the sun scorched the leaves. Needless to say, we cut back a lot of the damage on the plants made by the bugs and sun.
Of course we planted in between the suffering plants with more tender greens that are less vulnerable to bugs-- like spinach and lettuce.

The left side of the Hugelkultur garden is growing rows of Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplant. In front of this is an herb bed of chocolate mint, pineapple sage, basil, swiss chard, parsley, etc (see below in pictures).
 
Parsley, mint, sage, swiss chard, basil in herb garden

The other two gardens are located at my grandparents' property. One of the gardens here is growing Tomatoes, Beans, and squash. We are currently growing Pinto and northern beans along the outside of teepee structures, with butternut squash and acorn squash in the middle of the teepees. Tomatoes are growing in front and to the left of the beans.  

Tomatoes & beans
pinto beans growing around tepp




Zucchini and yellow squash are growing in the 9 rows to the right of the beans. After these rows of Squash, there are a couple of rows of squash and beans (which you can see in the pictures below).

9 rows of Zucchini & yellow squash
beans sprouting




The third garden is predominantly growing corn (three different varieties), with beans and butternut squash growing interplanted with the corn.


I have been eating young leaves off of spinach, arugula, lettuce, and collards for several weeks. Now, I have been able to pick leaves to make a full salad. In the pictures below, I made a salad of cherry belle radish, bloomsdale spinach, buttercrunch lettuce, slow bolt arugula, and Georgia collards from the garden.

May 11th spinach mixed greens & radish harvest
I harvested a couple of Icicle radish, which was almost unbearable to eat. It was too spicy for my taste-and I started to salivate so much it was like soap was in my mouth.

May 12th radish harvest

With another radish I harvested, I added it to a blended dressing I made with tomatoes, green onions, and avocado.

May 14th radish harvest

May 15th lettuce harvest


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