A Tour of This Year's Garden

I have been working hard on my garden this year, and it has responded by growing quite well. So, I thought I would show you some of what I am growing this year.

We are completely out of tomato sauce, so here are most of my tomatoes. Some are in the ground and some are in pots. You can also see one of my rain barrels on the right. This fall, this area is going to get re-landscaped.

I am growing these sunflowers to produce my own cooking oil. This is a Russian variety that is specifically for making oil.  It is the first time I have grown them. I think the heads look a bit small. (Don't you?) Not sure how much oil I am going to get.

In this picture you can see one of the green bean beds (I have two). The fern looking things behind them are asparagus. You can also see the blueberry bushes in the back with three more tomato plants in front of them - in the blue pots. The blueberries are still producing and covered with nets. The rocks are holding the nets to the ground so birds won't get under them.

Here is the squash. I have both winter (bush acorn squash) and summer (vine type tromboncino). The vines don't want to stay in the mulch. I must move them every other day or so to keep them out of the grass. The 'dirt' you see on the leaves is food grade diatomaceous earth. It is doing an excellent job of keeping the squash vine borer and squash bugs off the vines and the fruit. The netting on the left is a shade net for the winter squash. They don't like the summer sun this year. In the lower right hand corner is my second green bean bed.

The grapes have been my biggest success this year. I have so many I can't count them all!
I have two lattice screens around my hot tub. Each has a grape vine - one purple grape vine and one white grape vine. Here are the white grapes.

The white grapes were not happy just playing on their own trellis and decided they also wanted to go over and play with the purple grapes. This is an overhead shot of the vines in between the two trellises. I didn't need to cover the overhead part with netting, the birds didn't bother these. The white grapes are just about ready to pick. I see canning grape juice in my future next week!

As you can see, the purple ones are not ready yet.

The last picture is of the popcorn. To the right of the popcorn you can see a vine growing over my fence in a gray pot. I have three. They are loofah gourds. I had them in the ground but I don't think they like my clay soil. They kept dying. I had to put them in a pot to get them to grow. You can also see another of my rain barrels at the edge of the picture. 

I have not sprayed any chemicals on these plants this year. In fact I have used very little chemicals at all in the garden. The exception being the cotton and some orchard spray on the apple trees.

I will show you pictures of the apple trees, peanuts and cotton next time!