Gardening in 2011

I had an experimental garden this year. 

I planted my squash and green peppers from nursery starts on
July 9th. 

The strawberry starts, onions, radishes, spinach, carrots and lettuce went in on the 19th of July. (The 19th is my very special friends birthday! Happy Birthday WLS!!)

The following photos were taken on 7-25-11:

Baby strawberry plant taking root.

A squash in an old ice cream maker bucket.
This guy didn't do too well, he didn't get sufficient water.

Here is our new front yard Cranapple Tree.  

Ryan pretty well picked out all these flowers and we planted them together.
It was fun and I believe they are really pretty.

Here is our new east side forest. Ryan's Long Needle Pine.
A plumb, a peach, a 2nd cran-apple and a golden willow.
Will they get in the ground? not sure....

Here is squash buckets on my new rain gutter system.
In the front is the strawberry starts and onions,
both bulb and starts from mom & dad's green onions.

Green pepper buckets. Behind you see the black planter that was
from our new cran-apple tree. I planted potatoes in there and
we need to see if any grew- soon, I need to check this out soon!

Here are more squash buckets. In the front planter- top left is spinach,
barely growing here. Then are the radishes. Then the sparse place
in the middle has mini carrots, just starting out. The next green patch is leaf
lettuce and the dirt at the bottom right has more onion bulbs.

The 'rain-gutter' garden was planted on July 9th. 

The tomatoes went in well before May- in wall-of-waters.

8-28-11

The tomatoes (in front below the porch), the toms have done great this year, only they don't have any special taste to them. Not that wonderful home grown taste that we all love. But Ryan who doesn't like store bought tomatoes has really enjoyed these. He really loves tomato sandwiches. Go figure..........

The cherry tomatoes are sweet and delish. The more Roma style are not
flavorful. But have been great to cook with and make sandwiches out of.

Green tomatoes are great for dicing and adding to scrambled eggs, stewed vegies, soups, stews, casseroles, well just anywhere you can use veggies. I use green ones all the time- I love them!

These guys are just happy on the vine.

Can't wait for tacos, sandwiches or just slice and eat!

Carrots picked 9-24-11 - two month worth of growing.
Right during the hottest days of the summer!

Yep. That's a penny and those carrots are tiny, but cute and they taste fine!

The following photos were taken on 8-28-11:

The full view of my 4 - 5foot gutter planters/systems.

This photo loaded upside down. Don't know why, I've tried everything
I can think of without doing research. So we'll just look at it as it for now.
Just showing squash blossoms and the carrot tops on the top left, radish tops on the top right.

How about these nice green peppers?!! They have sure tasted great.

Onions planted from bulblets and the shorter ones in
the middle are bushing/wild onions from my mom & dad. They might have been
brought from the Holladay property.

A yellow summer squash. He was yummy.

The one strawberry transplant is doing well.

I'm leaving this guy for seed? Well it is my excuse. I wanted to see him get
really big and see how the plant would handle him hanging. But maybe this variety doesn't grow big?

I am sure this photo has my potato plant in it's pot amongst the tomatoes.
But I'm not going to search it out tonight.
(spell check says that amongst is not a word, but I'm using it anyway!)

It is October 8th today and the plants are going strong.  I hope we have several more weeks, but we will just wait and see. The carrots still need some grow time. The kids keep pulling them and eating them, but all they are getting is a tiny pea size bulb! it is so funny. But they do taste like carrots!! There are a couple that are getting to be the size of a small radish now. I hope they stay there and keep growing.

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