Post by moharefarms on Jul 7, 2014 15:20:21 GMT -5
Gosh this year the garden is doing great.. last year I had surgery in April, but with the meds the doctors had me on I couldn't be in the sun. I really missed the tomatoes and other fresh veggies. This year we were hit with a major drought and very limited water, but I was determined to have a garden. I planted tomatoes, chilies, bell peppers, zucchini, crocked neck squash, cucumbers and eggplant. I have a permanent bed of asparagus, but I didn't take very good care of it last year and it ended up with a lot of weeds and grass and all those seeds came up like crazy, so I had to work extra hard getting it and the strawberry beds cleaned up. I planted mostly "solar flare" tomatoes, a few early girls and other odd ones, but the Solar Flare are loving this hot hot weather we are having. Here are a few pics of the garden.
Early in the season, I'm guessing about February.. the pistachio trees still don't have their leaves. The berry vines are just starting to come alive. I generally don't plant any veggies until April because we have had some late frosts, but this is the start of the cleanup and getting the garden ready. This is the first year I put up a sturdy trellis for the berries, in the past they just grew everywhere. There are boysenberry, marion berry, black berry and raspberries.
Here are the raised beds about a month after the beds were planted.
Things are growing.. and even though the berries didn't grow to the top they were loaded with super sweet and tangy berries.
I normally only plant one zucchini, but since I have pigs now I figured a few extra plants would grow happy pig food.
The tomatoes are just fabulous this year.. I need to get busy canning. I always make a sauce base of tomatoes, garlic, onions and bell pepper. It is great to have for making swiss steak or spaghetti or whatever tomato base you need for cooking. This time of year I am always making salsa, but I just cannot keep up with the tomatoes.
More mater's
Bell Peppers
Serrano chilies are wonderful in salsa and I didn't take pictures but last week I harvested a bunch of hatch chilies for several Mexican dishes.
In other years when we have not had such a bad drought I have planted all the boxes, but this year I decided to limit and there are several fallow raised beds. The sun is cooking the tomatoes on the vine. The area is 60x20 and amazing such a small space can make so much food. Due to the limited water and hail when the fruit trees were budding we didn't have a lot of fruit. No cherries, only one apricot tree of three had apricots, no nectarines, but had small plums and it looks like there will be small peaches. The citrus was pretty much killed with a couple weeks of a hard frost, but it looks like we only lost one small tree. The grapefruit was saved and there is a nice bunch of pink grapefruit ready to harvest.
This year I used a lot of rock dust aka azomite when I planted the veggies and I also added more topical every month, sure seems to have helped. I also have been exploring bio-char which is used to help with keeping moisture in the soil. So far I think both have helped with the garden. Probably most of you don't have to worry about that.. all the pictures I see are of luscious pastures, tall grass, etc. Not here, dry as a bone.
Thanks for looking
Early in the season, I'm guessing about February.. the pistachio trees still don't have their leaves. The berry vines are just starting to come alive. I generally don't plant any veggies until April because we have had some late frosts, but this is the start of the cleanup and getting the garden ready. This is the first year I put up a sturdy trellis for the berries, in the past they just grew everywhere. There are boysenberry, marion berry, black berry and raspberries.
Here are the raised beds about a month after the beds were planted.
Things are growing.. and even though the berries didn't grow to the top they were loaded with super sweet and tangy berries.
I normally only plant one zucchini, but since I have pigs now I figured a few extra plants would grow happy pig food.
The tomatoes are just fabulous this year.. I need to get busy canning. I always make a sauce base of tomatoes, garlic, onions and bell pepper. It is great to have for making swiss steak or spaghetti or whatever tomato base you need for cooking. This time of year I am always making salsa, but I just cannot keep up with the tomatoes.
More mater's
Bell Peppers
Serrano chilies are wonderful in salsa and I didn't take pictures but last week I harvested a bunch of hatch chilies for several Mexican dishes.
In other years when we have not had such a bad drought I have planted all the boxes, but this year I decided to limit and there are several fallow raised beds. The sun is cooking the tomatoes on the vine. The area is 60x20 and amazing such a small space can make so much food. Due to the limited water and hail when the fruit trees were budding we didn't have a lot of fruit. No cherries, only one apricot tree of three had apricots, no nectarines, but had small plums and it looks like there will be small peaches. The citrus was pretty much killed with a couple weeks of a hard frost, but it looks like we only lost one small tree. The grapefruit was saved and there is a nice bunch of pink grapefruit ready to harvest.
This year I used a lot of rock dust aka azomite when I planted the veggies and I also added more topical every month, sure seems to have helped. I also have been exploring bio-char which is used to help with keeping moisture in the soil. So far I think both have helped with the garden. Probably most of you don't have to worry about that.. all the pictures I see are of luscious pastures, tall grass, etc. Not here, dry as a bone.
Thanks for looking
They are just sooooo handy. 
