Go BIG or Go HOME!

Thought it was probably time for a Garden Update! And what would an update be without some "in-progress" pictures. In case you've forgotten what everything looked like before, check it out here.

Well, we've had the addition of 3 blueberry plants - yummy! Ken (Popa) also planted/started a muscadine grape vine (sorry - no pics of the vine yet).

The Square Foot garden has been busy producing lots of lettuce (Romaine & Iceberg), as well as spinach, broccoli, radishes, and carrots. Here is some of the iceberg lettuce.

And here are some of the carrots. Although we don't think they're quite ready, so we haven't been able to taste these (yet).

Here is a broccoli plant in the Square Foot garden. Note for next year - these should only go in the big garden because the get HUGE! We were able to eat some fresh broccoli this week and it was absolutely delicious!

Here's a picture of our big garden. Looking good! We now have a fence to keep out the critters and I hear there's a drip system coming very soon.

Here's the Romaine Lettuce.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE Romaine Lettuce! We've had lots of yummy salads recently.

Here's one of our huge tomato plants. Unfortunately there are no tomatoes on this yet, but we're hoping soon. We do already have tomatoes on the upside-down tomato plant & at least one of the MANY tomato plants in the garden (but more on that in a minute).

And in case the fence doesn't work, I'm putting my faith in Orson Owl to scare off all those country critters that think it's OK to have a midnight snack in our garden!! Note to critters - stay OUT!

Speaking of the big garden. I have dubbed the title of this post, "Go BIG or Go HOME" our Garden Motto...let me explain why. So the garden is looking great, but I was starting to get a bit concerned about the number of plants in the garden (but I'm a gardening novice, so what would I know & I don't mean this flippantly...seriously I know NOTHING about gardens, plant production, or anything else except what I'm learning as we go along). Anyway - we decided to take an inventory of what we have planted, mainly so we can make notes about what we should do next year (plant more, less, when, etc.). Boy were we SURPRISED to find out how much we had actually planted. Here's a sample from the inventory:

Watermelon - 10 vines

Sweet Bell Pepper - 13 plants

Cucumber - 13 plants

Squash - 26 plants

Tomatoes - 60+ plants (I stopped counting)

Green Beans - about 200 plants (I lost count)

And don't forget we also have lettuce, carrots, onions, leeks, hot peppers, okra, cabbage, broccoli, hot peppers, cantaloupes, & pumpkins (did I forget something??).  Of course Ken also planted 5 fruit trees, as well as the the blueberry bushes & muscadine vines. But probably those won't have too much for us this year. 

I must say that I was pretty stunned, overwhelmed, and a bit scared thinking of all that upcoming produce yesterday. However, after some searching I have found a bunch of recipes (and organized them in an Excel Spreadsheet) so we can put a lot of the food aside to use for the rest of the year. I see a LOT of canning & freezing in our future. But, I'm excited! I think it's pretty cool to know that some (or a lot) of what we'll be eating throughout the year is food that we grew on our own (well, my in-laws) land. 

But don't be surprised if you see me at some road-side cart selling produce this summer :)