Vegetable Gardening

[badger]

I'd love to live in a place like that, plenty of trees and a big yard. *sigh* Very nice place you have there!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

So nice to see everyone's gardens- they all look great.

I am continually ripping out old weary lettuce and bolted cilantro and rusty leaved things, throwing it in the compost bins, and planting new seed so we can have fresh things this Fall.
I actually have not stopped sowing seed all year. Good thing I ordered lots of seed for this year! As a result, we've been eating LOTS of good stuff for months now.
Many beautiful lettuces, also tomatoes, cucumbers, scallions, radishes, spinach, green beans, beets, swiss chard, kale, kohlrabi, carrots....all at various times and in various combinations. I have not had such a harvest that I canned or frozen anything though. Except bags of wild blackberries I picked last month. I gave away many armloads of beautiful lettuce all summer. A packet of lettuce seed is such a bargain!
I've made a few miscalculations, but mostly it's been good.

If i can manage to keep the cold loving greens like kale and chard and cabbage coming til December, then we'll be eating from the garden all the way from April to December- 8 or 9 months' worth.
Through mid winter I grow a constant small supply of fresh sprouts in the kitchen and living room in jars...I think of the windowsills full of glass jars as my 'cold frame'.
Here is a photo from a couple weeks ago- mounds of string beans in the middle, kale on the right, and anise hyssop (for the bees) blooming in front. Chard and carrots behind the kale. The garden is naturally a bit overgrown and jumbled at this point, though I've been merciless at hacking out the old tough stuff.
It's been quite a gardening year!

[spokewench]

Lisa, it is lovely!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Just picked these beautiful French Breakfast radishes, and i cooked the green tops and had them for breakfast, broth and all...YUM!
I love Fall.

[spokewench]

We are going to freeze any night now; so I got my tomatoes and last harvest into the house. Wow, what a year! I've never seen this many tomatoes in Flagstaff ever! One bowl is full of little pear (yellow) tomatoes, a bunch of celebrity tomatoes, some yellow tomatoes (don't remember what kind).

[badger]

aaah!! so jealous!!

my growing season this year was a total bust. None of the tomatoes ripened on the vine, no zucchini, just little nubs that fell off, and carrots never got any bigger than a baby size. I had great luck with beans and snow peas, but they kind of had a boom then busted really quickly. All in all it was quite disappointing this year.

[Owlie]

I'm so jealous. I have nothing put potted herbs on the windowsill--save the mint, not quite enough to do anything with.

My parents' potted garden (herbs and a pepper plant, mostly) hasn't done well this year at all, as they haven't gotten much in the way of rain this summer.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

my growing season this year was a total bust. None of the tomatoes ripened on the vine, no zucchini, just little nubs that fell off, and carrots never got any bigger than a baby size. I had great luck with beans and snow peas, but they kind of had a boom then busted really quickly. All in all it was quite disappointing this year.

Hmm...sounds like maybe a pollination issue. Poor pollination will produce stunted fruit or small fruit that doesn't grow beyond baby stage, then shrivels.
Are there many bees where you are?