How Does Your Garden Grow?

There has been a whole lot of things going on at the inbetween homestead. I have been doing a lot of little projects in preserving and making my own condiments and such. With all of this going on as well as the garden really needing to be tended, I am also having a spinal fusion operation pretty soon, so I feel as though I have so many things to do before I can no longer do them for a while. 

So, I will be trying to post some of the things I have been doing this summer while I recuperate, and give updates on the vegetable garden. First, here is a couple pictures of my Three Sisters garden, which is looking lovely:

I am quite happy for the most part. There are things that I should have done and did not. The first thing I am doing next time is to add something to lighten the soil. There was plenty of compost and such, but the soil still hardened up quite a bit after watering. I also need to rethink the edges. Maybe if I plant the squash before everything else? At the very least, I am starting the squash inside next year, so that the plant will keep the soil on the edges from eroding. I lost an entire squash type and I have only two of one of the squashes (I don't know which kind), but the spaghetti squash (Tivoli) is producing like a pro! 

The beans are also doing well, but I don't know which ones. Let this be a lesson, label everything when you plant them! Still, they are vining great, but since I planted so many, I have placed some straight limbs from the brush pile for them to grow on. They do vine up the corn, and the corn seems to be okay with this, I just had a lot of bean plants and am afraid of strangling the corn.

Here is a shot of my lovely spaghetti squash:

Isn't she beautiful?

And this is how my garden grows right now. The season has been fickle to say the least. Our last frost was into May this year, which stunted the plants I put out early. Also, we started the season with great weather conditions rain wise, but then we had a very hard dry spell followed by extremely wet conditions. That is making it a bit difficult for my tomatoes, but I have dried a batch of the Red Lightnings already.

Here is a peek a boo shot of my pickling cucumbers

Bowl of Red Lightning Tomatoes

Next up will be a couple of canning sessions which includes Victorian BBQ and Fig Preserves as well as some dehydration projects that I am doing to limit the food waste that tends to happen in the glut of summer produce.

Also, there will be an update on my pallet garden. Things did not turn out as expected, although I did get a few greens out of it. What happened is I learned some stuff, and hopefully will be able to put that to use in making the pallet garden work much better next time.