Garden 2

[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]Our Garden[/FONT]
September 15:
Our harvest is nearly finished for this year, and despite some gopher problems, disease on the tomatoes, and bug issues with the squash and corn, we still have a free-standing freezer packed with veggies! Not bad for my first garden, and I have learned a lot this year which will help increase our yields next year.

[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva][FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]June 16:[/FONT]
This is here mostly as a convenient place for us to put photos our friends and family can access without using something annoying like Facebook or Myspace ( I don't know why but I don't care for either!).
Our garden is sitting in our back yard and is something like 16'x27'. Our back yard was a mess when we first bought the house, and it is slowly being cleaned up and brought into a condition that is letting us enjoy it. After all, when living in the city and having a yard this large, it is a waste to just let it sit there all junked up and useless. The garden is bordered by the large aluminum frame that was used as the bottom support of the pool. We (mostly the husband) pulled down the pool and a lot of junk, tilled the soil/sand, and we planted grass seed everywhere except where we dragged the frame for my garden. Then, since May, I (with some help from my sister) planted all the rows for our veggies, protected them from frost and woodchuck, and most survived.
I have had to replant a few areas, the carrots, peppers and cucumbers didn't like the frost. Even with some rather large damage from the woodchucks that have riddled the yard with dangerous holes the garden is producing a lot. We will eventually get a fence attached to the frame around the garden, but for now I am the main line of defense from the dumb gophers...
An image from a month and a half or so ago since typing this update (yeah, that bare spot is... you guessed it, a plugged up gopher hole...):

And... an image from yesterday! The plants sure do love all of the rain we have gotten.

By row back to front: Corn (some about 7'), Tomatoes (2 kinds), Peppers (Jalapenos, Banana and Bell), Cucumbers and Zucchini, Onions (Red and Green) and Brusselsprouts, Lettuce (Romaine and Iceberg), Spinach and Radishes, String Beans and Herbs (Basil and Parsley), Broccoli Cauliflower Eggplants and Reg Cabbage, Squash Pumpkins. We also have some Tomatilos scattered around in random rows, you can just barely see one of the green lanterns forming next to the squash leaves in the lower right corner of the picture.

And some pictures of the veggies!
First some older ones of crops already since harvested and replanted... Spinach and Radishes:

MONSTER HAND AHHHH, sorry these first photos of the garden were all dingy and dark, my hand is there as a size reference, though I need to position better so I don't distort things by putting them so close to the camera...

I used my shoe as a size reference, the Spinach grew to about 4x the size in the picture before we harvested and froze it, crop 2 is now busy growing at about the size of the lettuce in this picture:

Red Onions...
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]Our first pumpkin growing. (Not sure why the glare is so bad, it's quite a cute little green ball right now)
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva] One of our squashes growing, it's about the size of a kid's basketball right now.
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]Some of our tomatoes, we have about 6 plants covered with tomatoes this size and another 7 or so that are just starting to form little green cherries.[/FONT]

[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]A poor photo of a zucchini, they are all pretty well hidden in the leaves. This one is about 6" in the pic and was picked 2 days later at 8".
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]Our first Cucumber, nothing from the store tastes quite like a fresh cucumber before it has touched a refrigerator!
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva] Our monster corn. Most corn I have seen in fields is 1/2 as tall as ours has gotten. The central plants are 7' tall. Most of it is flowering now.
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva] Some baby bell peppers, the weather has been terrible for peppers but we still have some growing in the garden.
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]Just a small sample of the crazy amount of beans our 1 1/2' and smaller plants are producing already.[/FONT]

[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]Some left overs from our garden after a visit to a small garden place in Binghamton, they are very pretty and the Jalapenos are quite prolific.
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva]Resting on our air conditioner, a Jalapenos plant and some pretty Impatiens.
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[FONT=trebuchet ms,geneva] Excuse the messy cut up porch area here, it's our next project. Just showing off my new favorite type of flower... which I don't know any name for. But they are so cute and colorful!
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