The Garden in the Side Yard

Years ago after running out of room in the garden, I incorporated part of the lawn into what I call "the garden in the side yard."  I've been amending lots and lots of composted leaves and wood chip mulch and have improved the soil immensely.  We have 112 potato plants growing in this patch along with watermelons, cantaloupes and butternut squash on the very end where they can vine out.  You can't see them yet as they are just germinating, but I planted some Lemon Queen sunflowers in a long row alongside the potatoes.  The flowers are for the bees.  To the left, we have our muscadines and our thornless blackberries.

Just to the south is a small raised bed we call our herb garden.  It did not fare so well in our big freeze.  Our rosemary was probably at least 5 years old.  It is dead.  I've already planted another in its place since this photo was taken.

We thought the oregano was finished as well, but we were surprised and happy to see it coming back!

One thing that's not coming back is our Lemongrass.  The freeze finished it off, for sure.  It had made it for years and years, coming back in the spring, but not this spring.  I replanted some from some seed I had saved but none germinated.  I'm trying again with some purchased seed.  We'll see if we can get it growing.  We made a lot of lemongrass tea from this plant.  Hoping we can get another growing to take its place.

The two plants in the background are parsley that came up from seed.  It's very healthy and we use it often in cooking.  When it bolts, we'll let it go to seed again.  Then maybe it will come up again next year from seed.  

The two plants in the foreground are celery that Tricia started from the base of a store bought celery.

Finally, this plant.  This is an herb that is new to us.  We planted it from seed last year and it came up on its own again this spring.  It's French Sorrel.  I had never eaten it.  We really are enjoying it and eat some almost every day.

We'll pick about 10 leaves off of it and put on a slice of toasted homemade sour dough bread.  We then put a fried egg on top with a slice of provolone cheese topped with sliced avocado and another slice of sour dough bread.  It makes a great sandwich!

Spring Garden in Late April (Part III)

Okay, I promise this is the last update on the garden in entirety.  I had forgotten to add a couple items.  First, let's look at some things I missed.  To the right, you'll see some birdhouse gourd vines that came up volunteer from last year's seeds.  Immediately to the left are a couple of butternut squash.  We LOVE to roast these bad boys and make a delicious soup.  So good!  To the far left (and all these vines mix together), are several spaghetti squash.  They'll vine all over the compost pile.  It will be a real hunt to find the ripened squash as those big leaves and vines will be all over the place.

I planted more melons at the north end of the potato patch.  Below, I have more butternut squash, some Hale's Best Cantaloupes, some Mini Cantaloupes, some Tahitian Melon Squash and Charleston Grey Watermelons.  These, if we're fortunate, will vine out into the yard.  (Less grass to mow.)

Here is the potato patch.  It is about 40 feet of Lasoda potatoes planted three across.  I planted about 8 pounds of potatoes.  They were looking beautiful a couple weeks ago, but they have an unhealthy yellowish color right now.  I'll get back to the potatoes in the minute.

Right in the middle of the potato patch, there is another (non-edible) crop that comes up year after year as they seed themselves.  I just let them grow.  They are zinnias.  They are multicolors.   Some pink:

Some orange, yellow and white.  I leave them growing as they add some beauty to the landscape of the garden.  You'll notice the potato patch is mulched deeply with oak leaves.  I'll turn these under to enrich the soil after the potato harvest.

Back to the potatoes.  This year I planted potatoes several weeks earlier than I normally do.  So I found the reason why the potato plants look like they are dying.  It is because the potatoes are almost ripe and the plants are about done!  I pulled back the mulch and exposed a mature red potato.  We'll be harvesting these in a couple of weeks.  Looking forward to it!

And one last thing.  I have one more late thing I'll be planting in the garden.  These are some tomatillos I planted very late.  It is my first time planting these so we'll see how it goes.  I like trying new things.  Some things we try we find we experience success.  Others, quite often, we fall on our face.  But that's okay.  We learn and we try again.

May your thumbs be green!

Picked a few Watermelons

In the very back of the garden I planted most of the vining plants: louffa gourds, bird house gourds, cantaloupe, and watermelon.  The vines covered everything, threatening to take over the tomatoes on trellis' and even encroached on the walkway.  Now that we're in August, the vines are scaling back and the melons are ready to pick.

I planted Charleston Greys this year.  I thumped them and they sound solid.  They are heavy.  I'm wondering if all the rain we had this year (almost 48 inches so far!) will make the melons more or less flavorful and sweet?

I picked them and carried them inside and will chill them and cut them up.

I still haven't completely regained my smell or taste yet, so I'm not sure that I could truly enjoy eating the watermelon, but I tried.  On Sunday afternoon, we watched "True Grit" with John Wayne (and Glenn Campbell).  I snacked on some watermelon while watching, but sadly couldn't really taste anything.  I'll save the biggest, fattest melon to cut and eat once I get my taste back.

Harvested a Moon & Stars Yellow Flesh Watermelon

This year when I planted the spring garden, I made a point of going through my saved seeds stash.  These are seeds that I've saved over the years and stored for safe-keeping in vitamin bottles.  Each year I try to plant as much as I can, but inevitably, I have more seeds saved than I have time or land to plant them on.

As the seeds get older, the germination drops.  At some point only a few (or none) of the seeds sprout.  This spring I pulled out an old ibuprofen bottle labeled "Moon & Stars Yellow Flesh Watermelon" that contained seeds I saved back in 2012.  No chance they would be any good, right?  Well, they sprouted!  The plants were real weak.  It took from early spring until late summer, but the plants finally yielded a melon we could eat.

The melon is called Moon and Stars because it is supposed to have a big yellow moon and many yellow stars on its dark green color.  Except on this melon, the moon wasn't a defined circle and the dark green color was actually a medium-light green color.  I don't know if perhaps it didn't cross with another watermelon I had growing in the garden.  Oh well...

One of the ways to tell when a melon is ripe is to look at the tendrils closest to the melon.  When it has turned brown, the melon is telling you that it is finished growing.  It can be picked, put in the fridge, chilled, cut up and eaten on a hot day.  It is perfectly fine to let the stickiness run down your forearms and drip from your elbows as you enjoy the sweet taste of summer.

Brown tendril says, "Pick me, I'm ripe!"

The next afternoon, we pulled the watermelon out and sliced it in two.  Just as I had remembered from 2012, the flesh in this watermelon is yellow-light orange color and the seeds are white.  My son Russ cubed it up.  We began to eat some and it was nice and sweet.

After we enjoyed eating, Russ brought some home for him to eat later and I packed some to bring to work as a mid-day snack.  I finished it off today.  We have at least one more that is ripening in the garden that we will eat, thankful that even old seeds can germinate and produce.