I sneak lettuce into all my flowerbeds. They're nice and close to the house so it's super handy for my boyfriend and I to grab a handful for a wrap, a salad, a garnish or a serving medium. 

Love Morning Glories!!

Same flowerbed, I also plant lots of herbs with my flowers close to the house. Here's dill, petunias, pansies, lettuce and lemon balm. 

With my main patch of chives in the background and one of the dill plants going to flower. 

I also keep a spot cleared for this guy, mostly because I'm a huge sucker and also because it's one of the only spots in the yard he can get away from the sun and lay his belly somewhere cool. 

Cuke

Beyond impressed with this variety of cucumber, Organic Straight Eight. We grew Marketmore 76 last year, another really popular variety, and were very impressed with that variety also. I wanted to change things up this year and am really glad I did, cause these guys are grocery store material. I picked this one before it got too big for fresh eating and will let some of the others get a little longer for making relish and preserves. I have been saving a lot of seeds this year and will try saving some seeds from these cucumbers to plant next year. My pumpkins i grew this year were all from saved seeds and their performance is vigorous to say the very least. 

Link to Mother Earth News tips for saving cuke seeds.  

Garlic Harvest.

This year's garlic harvest, featuring the smallest bulbs we have ever had! I was anticipating our largest bulbs ever for this years harvest, then the greens never reached the heights of last years and I knew what that was going to mean. I'm really not sure what happened, everything was basically the same. One difference was I used dried eel grass instead of straw for a mulch,  although I doubt that would negatively affect the harvest. The bed I planted it in had been amended in the spring with a lot of manure, so I didn't add much organic matter to the bed, although I did add a sufficient amount. I'm going to file this in the better luck next year category and be thankful that the garlic that we got, although smaller than expected is plentiful! It may not last us as long as last year, but we'll enjoy it when we have it anyway. 

You'll notice that I left the dirt on my drying garlic when usually you clean the dirt off before drying, this is for a reason. We have a heavy clay soil here and even after adding large amounts of compost and manure, it still behaves as a clay soil for now.  If I tried to clean the heavy clay off the bulbs prior to drying I would risk removing the delicate, papery outer layer. Much easier to allow the bulbs to dry and then brush the soil off after the papery layer has cured, you just need to make sure you dry the bulbs quickly or the remaining dirt can cause mold and rotten spots. 

Harvesting parsnip seeds. Since parsnip seed doesn't keep well from one year to the next, fresh seed is usually used each year to ensure germination. I let four or so parsnips we had left in the ground over the winter go to flower and then seed for planting next year, we eat the rest. The bees were nuts over the flowers when they were in bloom as they were bright yellow and besides my annuals, and other crops I let flower and go to seed, there was not much else in bloom at that time.  I do not plant a whole row of parsnips usually, we dig a couple up over the winter months and leave most of them in the ground until the spring when they are at their very sweetest.  We cook several chicken dinners on beds of parsnips and then I like to make a big pot of parsnip soup. I probably plant about twenty parsnips in all. They are surprisingly tasty and taste nothing like any parsnip I've ever bought in the grocery store.  Although I don't plant many, they are definitely a must-have in the winter/spring garden.   

First Garden Dinner.

This was last week, our first all garden dinner with the exception of the locally bought haddock. Haddock en papillote with zucchini and carrot matchsticks and garden dill, beet greens with baby beet on the end and red garden potatoes. The beet greens and potatoes are simply boiled until tender. The best part for me about garden fresh fare is it needs so little  fuss to taste amazing. The fresh flavors are enough to stand on their own, with a little butter and sea salt.  

Some flowers, without them my garden would never get polinated. 

I love my daylilies! 

This flower bed is hilarious, and yes that is red lettuce scattered throughout. I call this the 'big mess' flowerbed. I'm waiting for a lot of my flowers to reach a size where they can be divided so I have all the same flowers bordering my house.  Every year I fill it with random annuals, herbs and lettuces. 

Dio has a special spot he can cool his belly in the flower bed, behind a bunch of dill petunias and lettuce. 

Garden Update!

Baby zucchini, I'll probably eat this soon enough though, overgrown zukes are the worst. 

The whole garden, going to dig some early potatoes to eat with dinner, we've managed to resist so far.  The plants are just starting to fizzle out now. 

The garden from a different angle, corn was planted in stages since the birds kept stealing the seeds. 

Corn with cabbage, broccoli, brussel sprouts and kale planted under the row cover to the left, beets under the row cover to the right. 

Carrots and onions to the left 

Tomatoes, carrots and onions needing a going over with the hoe between their rows. 

Ground cherry plants to the right just starting to take off, even though they're already producing tons of ground cherries. 

The squash corner. We grow lots of pumpkins and squash since they store really well into the winter months. 

Baby cukes. 

Bush beans, celeriac, celery and corn again, potatoes to the right. 

The squash corner again with sunflowers planted in behind for them to crawl up. 

Our second garden bed with pole beans and potatoes. We're trying this method of growing potatoes this year where instead of hilling dirt up over the base of the plants you cover them with straw. Supposed to work really well and deliver nice and clean potatoes. 

Squash corner again. You can see the zukes were the only plants infected with that bacterial wilt. I kept it in check very easily with a spray solution of baking soda, water and dish soap. Never got any worse than this or spread to the melons, squashes or cukes which it will also infect. 

Again the corn, I find it hilarious how not one seems to be the same height. I re-planted it so many times due to the thieves stealing the seeds. 

Big, bad artichoke plant. You can grow artichokes in NS that will produce in the same season, they just need to be tricked into thinking they went through a winter season by putting them out for a spell of cool, spring night weather. 

Melons, pokey in comparison to the cukes, zukes and squashes. Hoping for at least as good production as last year!