Straw Bale Garden Update June 8th, 2024

Our garden this year is being grown up the sides of an arch tunnel extending from my back patio out toward the treeline. We have five bales each along the inside of the arch, four on the outer left side, and two on the outer right. There is also a garden container against the house full of wee Little Birdy Yellow Canary tomato plants and some fennel, a hill where Little Pie is growing pumpkins (Jack-O'-Lanters), and  small buckets that are growing Yukon Gold (new) potatoes. I say 'new' because we tend to harvest them little and use them in soups. We have the usual chives and strawberries, as well. 

 

Little Giraffe's Jack O' Lanterns

Hubs went through the garden today with me and we adjusted the names of tomato plants so I can *finally* make my list for the year. We have been updating it all along since it was planted last month. Unfortunately, critters (I believe raccoons that my neighbor is currently FEEDING, of all things) have been decimating plant after plant. We have already replaced something like ten plants and I still have some more naked spots of which I was unaware. :( I should have checked them personally this morning.

So, instead of being the conclusive list for the season, I present to you what we are growing right this minute: 

Outside Left Bales 

1) White Wonder, Jasper, Tatume Squash 

2) Mint Julep, Dr. Carolyn, Weaver's Black Brandywine 

3) Queen of the Night, Pink Brandywine, Sun Gold 

4) Amethyst, Golden Fang, Royal Golden Watermelon, My's Mystery (so named any time we've lost a label or it has faded in the sun) 

Inside Left Bales 

1) Wapsipinicon Peach, Royal Golden Melon, Jasper 

2)Fuzzy Blue Balls, Wild Boar Pork Chop, My's Mystery 

3) Sun Peach, Moonbeam, Chocolate Cherry 

4)Sun Dipper, Pink Girl, White Beauty 

5)My's Mystery, Pink Siberian Tiger, *empty*

Inside Right Bales

1) Lemon Squash, Phil's Two, Yellow Brandywine

2) Goat's Bag, Golden Fang, Banana Leg

3) Beefmaster, Beefsteak *or* Mark Twain (lol), Striped German 

4) Dino Eggs (entire bale)

5) Brandywine Pink, Hillbilly Potato Leaf, Brandywine Cherry

Outside Right Bales

1) Freckled Child, Dino Egg, Watermelon

2) Alice's Dream, Dirty Little Chicken, Chocolate Cherry

If you're counting, that is thirty-six distinct varieties of tomatoes. That is down by fourteen from our record-breaking year of fifty varieties last year, but it *is* past the thirty mark I kept trying to hit since 2017. I had fallen short of that by two or three for several years in a row, so I'm chuffed to have hit thirty for the second time. 

That is if the little rat-coons don't keep decimating my plants one by one...

End of Season Summary =)

Here is the post-season wrap-up of the assorted tomatoes that graced our garden this year. I have separated out the mid-to-large-sized tomatoes from the cherry and pear varieties. We enjoyed twenty-four varieties in total.  

Not quite ripe Pork Chop Tomato

My personal favorites were the Pork Chop tomatoes with their sweet-but-tangy flavor and dazzling yellow-on-yellow striped skin. Those beauties made my heart flip every time I got to inspect them. <3 They are part of the 'wild barred boar' family and are not to be missed!

Over-ripe Pork Chop Tomato

When we stripped out the garden over a two-week period, we brought in a lot of green tomatoes. We've been able to identify and enjoy them as they ripen. Indeed, tearing out the garden was also an education on what was hiding in big clusters of overgrown plants. My own lack of actively tending the garden this year worked against me all summer. In the end, tearing out plants and harvesting what was left was rather like a gardener's Christmas. ;) 

Overall I am pretty pleased with the range of sizes we had. Even so, I am almost desperate for my ground cherries and spoon tomato plants to cooperate with me next year and broaden our experience even further. :)  

Red/orange/yellow slices ready for BLT's

TOMATOES

Kellogg's Breakfast 
Striped German
Pink Brandywine
Yellow Brandywine 
Dr. Wyche's Yellow
Climbing Trip-L Crop
Hillbilly Potato Leaf
Porkchop
Stump of the World
Chef's Choice Pink
Solar Flare
Nebraska Wedding
Golden Fang
Banana Legs
Dino Eggs

Cherry/Pear Varieties
Midnight Snack
Garnet
Gardner's Sweetheart
Flamingo Burst
Sunrise Bumblebee 
Little Birdy Rosey Finch
Little Birdy Yellow Canary
Siam
Indigo Pear

Seven of the nine types of these are pictured on a plate here. I did not have a LB Yellow Canary to show off, nor a Siam at the moment. We managed to save both Little Birdy plants, which are now growing indoors in one-gallon pots.

Seeds 2022

I am at it again, pouring through my seeds for the year. I am going to start a list here on the blog so I can come back and look at it when I lose the paper copy. =)

Not all of my seeds have arrived yet. The minute after the second order of seeds shipped in MA, the East Coast was hit upside the head with winter storms. I know it is going to be a minute before those seeds find their way here to the Middle. Even so, I am going to include them in the list anyway. :) 

TOMATOES

Dr. Wyche's Yellow
Litchi Tomatoes
Watermelon Beefsteak
Spoon Tomato
Black Strawberry
Orange Accordian
Cherry
Pink Siberian Tiger
My's Mystery
Pink Brandywine
Yellow Brandywine
Wapsipinicon Peach
Sunrise Bumblebee
Pink Bumblebee
Purple Bumblebee
Hillbilly Potato Leaf
Beefsteak
Indigo Pear
Golden Fang
Nebraska Wedding
Yellow-Orange Mystery
Rio Grande
Roma
Chef's Choice Pink
Kellogg's Breakfast
Pink Princess
Little Birdy Rosey Finch
Little Birdy Yellow Canary
German Stripe
Large Barred Boar
Pork Chop 
Blueberries Tomato
Solar Flare

BEANS

Northeaster Pole Beans
Cascadia Snap Peas

HERBS

Parsley (curly)
Dill*
Catnip
Strawberry Spinach
Astro Arugula

SQUASH

Spaghetti
Golden Crookneck 
Delicata
Black Beauty Zucchini
Butternut
Butterscotch

VEGGIES

Watermelon Raddish
Allure Corn
Green Bell Pepper
California Wonder Bell Pepper
Tendersweet Carrots
Tendergreen Cucumbers
Marketmore Cucumbers
Golden Acre Cabbage (Heirloom)
Buttercrunch Lettuce
Wild Garden Lettuce Mix
Sparkling White-Tipped Raddish
Purple Dragon Carrots*
Detroit Dark Red Beets
Culinary Blend Carrots
Tango Celery
Touchstone Gold Beet
Purple Peacock Broccoli
Aunt Molly's Ground Cherries

FRUIT/MELONS

Tigger Melon
Yamato Cream Watermelon
Cantaloupe
Ice Box Watermelon*
Crimson Sweet Watermelon

FLOWERS

Lilacs
Roses (3 kinds)
Butterfly Bush (hybrid mix)
Poppy Rainbow Mix (CA)
Butterfly Mix
American Giant Hybrid Sunflower

I also really hope to grow some potatoes again this year. I grew five small buckets of them last year, and hubs smacked them all right up in soups every time they came up. It is an absolute delight to feed my husband and children. I also really enjoy sharing the fruits of my labor with friends and family. :) I can't wait! :) 

Straw Bale Garden June 2020 Update

                               

My lovey new arches!

I suppose you can already tell that I could not decide which picture to use, hm? lol The garden is off and growing well for the 2020 season. As you can see, we have made some changes. :) In previous years, we have trellised just the back strip of bales. I have long wished to add a panel up the right side. We finally did! Also, Hubs and Shelly installed two lovely arches! Those, like the trellis sets, are simply made using 't' posts and 16' cattle panels. 

Tomato Update

I finally have some pictures of tomatoes! These photos are a combination of freshly harvested tomatoes and greenies we brought into the house to ripen, in hopes of saving them from critters. 

I'll start with the greenies pictured above. These were all solid green when Booh Bear picked them. We had lost too many huge, luscious tomatoes to invisible deer *eye roll*, squirrels, and rabbits. I should have taken the photo after they all turned, but I found the mid-ripening-process colors fascinating to look at. At full ripe we had a range of reds, yellows, red/purple, and yellow/red. They looked beautiful and tasted delicious!   

This next picture was a fresh batch that was brought in one evening. Most prominent in this photo are my Sunrise Bumblebee cherry tomatoes. Aren't they lovely? Not only are they photogenic, but the flavor is tomato perfection! I would describe them as relatively mild, with a seemingly low acid content and good mouth feel. I have already harvested some seeds to dry for next spring. <3 

The other small tomatoes pictured above are your standard orange plum tomatoes, along with some yellow pear tomatoes not quite in view. Also pictured is a smaller yellow mortgage lifter. 

The larger tomatoes, like this steakhouse, have been ripening mostly indoors. This is one of the smaller ones, but it gives you an idea of the size we are going for. I am serving these up in meals as quickly as I can get them ripe, along with the equally-large hillbilly potato leaf tomatoes. (Those are large red/yellow streaked heirlooms.) The flavor is bold, and everything you would expect from a hybrid tomato. They are delicious in fat, meaty slabs on a sandwich or in wedges served raw. <3 

This is part of our most recent haul. I say part, because I literally just tried to get a good mix of what we were harvesting into the photo. The basket in the background is the standard shopping size hand-held basket like you might find at a grocery store. (It was given to us by an elderly friend who had had it for decades.) The take I have partially pictured here was fully half a basket, both green and ripe. 

We took in sixteen different varieties of tomato that day alone, I believe. In fact, out of the twenty-three varieties of tomato I have planted, we have confirmed harvest of twenty-one of those (as of yesterday) in total. There are two that I have not seen come through yet, although I swear that a couple of the ones we had to throw out (half-eaten on the vine) fall into those categories. 

One tomato missing from my harvest so far is the black early, which plant got accidentally snapped in half early in the season. The other is, I am guessing, a plumito. Those look like the shape of bell peppers, even though they are tomatoes. I have yet to see any, although I did see plenty of them green on the vine. It may not be their time yet. 

This is a picture of different kinds of 'cherry' tomatoes. There are nine distinct varieties pictured, although I forgot to add the tenth. I placed a chocolate cherry in the picture, but not the black cherry. I have both. :) Not pictured are the yellow pear and the red cherry tomatoes we harvested earlier in the season. 

Again, you see most of these varieties because I took seeds from two variety packs I had purchased at WalMart and Sam's Club, dried them for a week, and then germinated them here at home. I do not even know what the long red paste tomato is called. It tastes a bit like a roma. They hang on the vine looking like jalapeno peppers. haha I am getting quite the return on those two purchases! ;)

One last picture before we go... 

We are done with zucchini, cucumber, and broccoli for the year. I have some baby romaine lettuce growing. We are just now beginning to take in orange bell pepper. My peppers in general (green, orange, and mixed) are still growing very slowly. Our potatoes were gorgeous, and tasted *so* good! I will definitely be growing these again in the future! Spaghetti squash has tasted delicious, as well. Butternut (only a few of each of these things pictured) squash has been prolific. I keep spotting another and another hiding out there in my jungle. In fact, we have shared more spaghetti and butternut squash with our neighbors than zucchini. That is crazy! The picture only shows a couple, but you get the idea.

Something killed my cantaloupe vine. That was heartbreaking for my daughter, who so dearly loves them. The watermelon vine put out two small melons, but those also fizzled out before we could really enjoy them in fullness. Most of our fruits and veggies have produced, but you can see that some had an off-year. Next year, I am going to consider working harder on a smaller garden.  

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So there you have it. If you were curious about the myriad of tomato varieties we have growing, this is your answer. They are definitely coming up! It took ages for them to ripen, we have dealt with critters eating them, the weather has been hot and brutal at times, but we have persevered. The 2018 garden season had a late start and has had a difficult summer, but it *is* producing goodies. We are very blessed. <3

Don't forget to tend those spiritual gardens! Feeding the soul is as necessary as feeding the body.

Hallelujah, She's Planted!!

Has this been a year, or has this been a year? For one, we are nearly in June. Crazy! Five months never went by so quickly! For another, taking on the task of prepping for and filling twenty-two bales of straw was almost daunting! It would have been, had I not been so stinking excited! haha I sincerely intended to plant a mere 14 bales this year, down from last year's 18. Some of those bales were wasted last year, as seeds didn't take. (It was hard for me to stay motivated so close to my dad's death.) It is purely repetition for me say at this point that we ended up with *so* many seedlings that we simply *had* to have the additional eight bales! lol Suffice it to say that this mama loooooves getting straw bales!

This morning we were out in the garden around six thirty (almost on the dot). Giraffe helped out with three bales worth of plants. I tried not to ask for too much help, since it was so early. Koala was a willing worker... almost too willing. That is how it is when they are tiny though, isn't it? haha She wanted to put plants into bales for me, so I had to pull out straw and then very carefully tip the plant out of the plastic cup into her hand. It is a beautiful thing to teach the little ones how to garden! <3 <3 <3 

Above is the somewhat skewed panoramic picture of the yard/garden. Excuse the pool. ;) One does not get through a summer without a pool of some sort, am I right? Call it spring if you want. The temps in the 90's say otherwise! You can see the lettuce camped out to the left of it. haha They are coming along nicely. 

Here is a picture of our pot of potatoes. This is our second attempt. It seems to be successful so far! These are mostly russet, if I remember correctly. We also threw in a red potato I couldn't bear to trash. Truth be told, I don't even know if it is advisable to mix potatoes. It probably isn't! I suppose you can call this an experimental year for us, potato-wise. ;)

Our beets are still tiny, but I have to mention them. They are my absolute favorite seedling at the moment! Why? I am glad you asked! haha These little babies germinate out of their seed looking like wee little flamingos! haha They are tiny, stringy, and a very bright shade of pink! Pictured is one of five little fellas that has leaves. The rest are all naked and hiding in the dirt where I placed them. I'm in love!

These are some of the plants I put in this morning. There were still cabbages, cantaloupe, cucumbers, tomatoes (plenty!), peppers, beets, carrots, parsley, and more squash. :) Let me tell you, we worked fast and hard pulling out straw to make holes, plopping plants into them, and filling them with dirt. When we began it was already 69/70 degrees out and almost 80 degrees when we came back in.

Here are some of my lovely peppers. I initially planned on having two varieties, but thanks to a wonderful weekend trip to the farmer's market I have four! Mine were not growing quickly enough. I now have Big Bertha and Emerald for my greens, Sweet California Wonder (red, yellow, green) and Orange Bell for my colors.

I don't know if you can tell or not, but Koala placed all of our 'fancy' Dollar Tree lawn ornaments into the fronts of the bales this morning. There are now random butterflies, frogs, and birds at odd intervals beautifying our space. It is quite lovely in person, regardless of how how it looks in the pictures. :)

You can probably see one better in this picture of my too-tiny green pepper plants. :) How cute is that little frog? He really adds something to the garden. :) Anyway, I don't suppose I should continue adding pictures. I just wanted to share how sincerely delighted I am in having finished planting my garden for the year! 

To that end, here is a(nother) list of everything that made it into our backyard. I have updated it to reflect the new plants we've added. All told, we planted twenty-two different kinds of tomatoes. Can I say just how *eager* I am to see them thrive and produce fruit!?!?

VEGETABLES

Zucchini 

Romaine Lettuce (green)
Romaine Lettuce (red)

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
New Zealand Spinach

Red Acre Cabbage

California Sweet Wonder Pepper (multi-colored bell peppers)

Emerald Green Bell Pepper
Big Bertha (a 7" huge green pepper)
Orange Bell Pepper

Spaghetti Squash

Butternut Squash

Bush Beans

Muncher Cucumber
Tendergreen Cucumber
Waltham Broccoli

Radishes

Detroit Dark Red Beets

Scarlet Nantes Carrots
Danvers Half Long Carrots
Russet Potatoes
Red Potatoes

FRUITS

Hale's Best Jumbo Cantaloupe

Congo Watermelon

Strawberries

FLOWERS

Morning Glories
Lilacs
Red Roses
White Roses

TOMATOES

Sunrise Bumblebee (a red/yellow striped cherry tomato of moderate size)

Sun Sugar (best guess... small yellow/orange cherry)

Small Yellow Pear
Orange plum 

Honey Delight Hybrid (large 2" light yellow globes)

Chocolate Cherry (an acidic cherry almost brown with green)

Red Cherry 

Brandywine Cherry (same flavor, smaller tomato)

Unknown Small Red Paste (best guess... shaped like small jalapeno peppers)

Gold Nugget (best guess... small, orange cherry)

Plumito (Best guess... dark red, shaped like bell pepper)

Black Cherry

Blue Beauty 

Hillbilly Potato Leaf (large red/yellow fruit)

Beefsteak 

Brandywine (pinkish fruit the size of a slice of bread... my favorite flavor)

Big Rainbow (another large red/yellow fruit)

Steakhouse (the largest tomato ever bred... fruit up to 3lbs! We shall see!)

Abe Lincoln (a regular red heirloom)

Yellow Mortgage Lifter 

Serendipity (another yellow/red mix)

Black Early 

Plan Nine from Outer Space (a yellow/red)

So far, we have harvested bush beans, radishes, and lettuce. The rest is still growing. Also, you can add peas to the list of things I still want to plant as soon as I find an available spot for them to grow! haha I am also eyeballing a bunch of dry beans from my collection, and wondering if they would bother to germinate. haha I cannot help it! I have gardening deep in my blood! <3 <3 <3 I look forward to sharing pictures of produce as the year continues to progress. 

Live happily, everyone. We only get one go at this! :) <3 :)

Straw Bale Garden Update :)

After what felt like an eternity of winter, no spring at all, and what has amounted to being flung face-first into summer... it is safe to say that we are hitting our stride in the garden. That feels incredible! :D I thought I would show you where we are with our garden this past and present week. <3 

This is a view of my messy but happy backyard. :D If my bales look as though they are casually laid around without thought, you are wrong. I wanted them to extend further out this side, closer to the picture. However, we live in a neighborhood that has a governing HOA. They graciously allow me to put up my garden year after year, with two stipulations: 1. It must not be visible from the road. 2. It must be temporary... no permanent structure. 

The bale closest to us was just a wee bit visible from the road when it was aligned with the rest. (Poo!) We had no choice but to point him inward. As you can see, the swingset is in this portion of yard. I did not want the kids' play to be impeded and I did not want my bales to be in harm's way, so we stopped at the one bale. In the far side of the yard, the bales came up to and then skirt around our small patio. The layout doesn't "appear" to make sense, but it does. Bales closest to the house will receive the most shade. They will host the plants which require it. 

This is some of what it looks like from my door. You get a better idea of the layout. Most of the bales are doubled, so we have two full rows. There are 22 bales in all. You can also see what most excites me in this picture!!! Eeeekkk!!! Hubs brought me a cattle panel! Measuring 50" by 16', this beauty supports 10 bales, front and back!

I have planted an assortment of tomatoes (18 varieties) along those back rows. Interspersed in between the tomatoes are cucumbers on the front and cantaloupe on the back. The cucumbers will vine upward through the summer, helping to hold up the tomato plants when they get really tall! The cantaloupe will be directed down the back, out of sight. I simply *cannot wait* to see these bales fully loaded and growing!

Here is a little peek at the bales. We are not done yet, of course. I ran out of dirt, so I need to get more to put around the base of these plants and the plants in the back row. We are still not done inserting plants, either. I have around 30 plants in the house yet, and more on the back porch. I am also germinating beets and carrots. I have peas, more bush beans, some flowers, and a few other seeds I still need to get started, as well. 

This is the view from the side of the patio. Please excuse the red flag in the background. We call 811 before we place stakes, even though we know by now that our garden is not in the way of anything. It is the responsible thing to do. ;)

As previously stated, these will hold plants that need a little bit more shade. We don't get much as it is. Any bit helps.

These are some of the lettuce plants I have growing. This pot contains mostly red romaine lettuce. There are two regular romaine plants growing in there, as well. The other varieties of lettuce are in other containers. They seem to like it in there, so far!

I know that this update doesn't cover 'everything' today. It is going to be harder to cover everything with every post or they would be unending! haha

Anyway, I hope that this at least lets you know what our progression is like. We continue to place plants into bales and containers as we have time - and weather permitting. The rain is free water, so I am not complaining! haha We also continue to germinate new plants so that we are staggering our grow cycles through the summer. We have begun to harvest bush (green) beans and radishes. We could harvest the lettuce while it is small, but I intend to get it grow a bit yet. 

The last thing I haven't mentioned here is the conditioning process of my Mother's Day bales. All eight bales are a solid seven days into the process. They will be ready to plant into by this weekend. Yay!  In all, I would have to say that we are having a successful garden season so far. Surely, a ton of life has burst forth from my dad's heaven-date anniversary this year. We will be continue to nurture, protect, and eventually enjoy consuming the fruits (and vegetables) of that labor of love for months to come. <3 <3 <3 

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Are you tending your spiritual garden? Fill your heart and life with fruits of the spirit. These may be found by time spent daily in His Word. <3 

Tomatoes :)

Here are some pictures of tomatoes. :) We've been harvesting primarily cherry tomatoes so far this season. We've brought in a handful of large tomatoes. Two red, two yellow, and one big rainbow (red/yellow blend). My tablet broke a while back so I've only had the (old) digital camera for taking snapshots. That is why I have only a few photos and not every kind of tomato documented. <3 

This small handful was from July 7th, when only a few tomatoes were ripening at a time. Pictured here are chocolate cherry tomatoes and morning sunrise tomatoes (yellow). Both are quite sweet in flavor. In the case of the sunrise, the deeper the yellow, the sweeter the tomato. In my opinion, these taste like they've already been made into a sauce.



 Due to camera shortages (I was still looking around for the digital at the time), we missed nearly the entire month of July. This picture was the first we'd taken in quite a while and it was somewhere around the 28th/29th. 

You can see that by this point, we were bringing in several types of red cherries, yellow and white cherries, and our resident chocolate cherry tomatoes. Each one is delicious!

 This tomato has me stumped. I did not plant any varieties that are supposed to be solid yellow and yet, this is our second or third. This one is smaller than the other two. Each of those would make great slices on bread. This would take two slices instead of one. These taste exactly as you expect a tomato to taste. If you close your eyes, you'd swear it was a run-of-the-mill vine-ripened red tomato.

Since I was running short on pictures, I took a snap of the inside of the yellow tomato. Excuse the disposable plate. It is not pretty, I know. As you can see, the yellow tomatoes are plump and juicy. :) The flavor is almost sweet but still retains enough of that earthy vine-ripened taste one expects to find. As an aside, I can never eat enough tomatoes while they are still warm from the sunshine! :) 

This is another batch of (mostly) cherries that we've brought in. Again, you have a mix of white, yellow, red, and chocolate cherries in an assorted variety. We are bringing in something between a handful to a bowlful at a time. Generally, we eat a handful or two in the morning and bring in a full bowl at the end of the day.The larger tomato was picked too soon. It ripened to a bright orange/near red.