It's A Jungle Out There

The garden is in its full glory and it's all I can do to keep up. The kitchen looks absurd. Tomatoes everywhere, onions, garlic, today's green beans, cucumbers soaking in ice water, beet juice and salsa lacto-fermenting in their jars, sourdough starter sitting out, and dill and coriander seeds drying. The living room has a braid of garlic, more dill and coriander hanging to dry and some oregano drying.

Today I have to finish the pickles, blanch and freeze the green beans, bake bread and make pasta. Tomorrow morning I'll need to bake zucchini bread and can a batch of tomatoes, probably as spaghetti sauce. The sweet corn may be ripe by this weekend and the potatoes will need to be dug before too long. And I keep forgetting to blanch and freeze the swiss chard so we can have it for winter soups. Gotta add that to the list. I also need to make more pesto this weekend. Whew!

My Beautiful (Grasshopper-Munched) Garden

The garden has bounced back from the hailstorm so I went out and tried to get some pictures. It was not the best time to shoot pictures, but these at least give a broad impression of the garden.

I've got 448 square feet of biointensive beds--the rough equivalent of a 20 x 90 foot conventionally-spaced garden. I love gardening intensively and I can't imagine ever going back to the old way. This year I've got over thirty types of things growing--fruits, veggies and herbs combined: potatoes, red onions, white onions, garlic, radishes, carrots, zucchini, lima beans, cantaloupe, watermelon, spinach, swiss chard, various lettuces, green beans, beets, roma, beefsteak and several heirloom tomatoes, Collin's gourds (several varieties), pie pumpkins, butternut squash, pickling cucumbers, several varieties of both hot peppers and bell peppers, an early sweet corn and a late sweet corn, basil, cilantro, catnip, rosemary, chamomile, dill, parsley, chives and oregano.

I'm also getting ready to plant the fall peas--two varieties. They'll be joined shortly by other plantings for fall--more carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach and radishes. Plus I've got eight little cabbages started in the house and they'll be ready to go out in a few weeks.