Sunday, July 01, 2018

This year's vegetable garden

The vegetable garden is doing well, so far. I planted fewer tomatoes than I have in past years. Still, there are twenty-five of them. Also three zucchinis, and three potimarrons (red kuri squash). I started them all from seeds in the greenhouse.

Zucchini on the left, potimarrons in the middle, and kale starting out on the right.

I've got two rows of green beans going, too. And a row of kale that's just starting out. I've had bad luck with snow peas. The peas I planted don't seem to be snow peas, as the box says, but some other variety. Very disappointing.

Green beans on the lower left. The bright green plants on the lower right are two of six Swiss chard plants.

I also planted some climbing flat beans, but most of the seeds didn't germinate. I planted some more, and less than half of them came up. There are some beans now, but it's a very disappointing crop. However, the tomatoes look like they're doing great, and the Swiss chard is doing very well.

Tomatoes.

Yesterday I went to the market for a few things. At one stand, I bought some radishes and a couple of red bell peppers. When I got home there were no red bell peppers in my bag! I had obviously forgotten to put them in. So I got back into the car and went back into town. The woman at the produce stand saw me approach, smiled, and held up my two bell peppers. We had a good laugh. So nice!

11 comments:

  1. Looking great. Zucchini flowers are so dramatic.

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  2. We've already eaten zucchini and chard out of this year's garden. I guess we should make stuffed zucchini flowers.

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  3. Surely in your coolish climate you could try another crop of snow peas. Maybe your seeds were snap peas which develop very small peas in the pod but which are entirely edible. Great in stir-fries and very popular in the States.

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  4. Sorry about those snow peas. I'm amazed at how fast your garden grows, I think you planted everything about six weeks ago... You forgot to plant limas lol. I love them, but lots of people don't.

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    1. I love lima beans too, E., but I tried growing them once or twice to no avail. Maybe limas, like okra and eggplant, need hotter weather than we normally get. Or they don't like our soil.

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  5. What a pretty garden, as usual!
    My luck improved with beans when I started planting them late (late May) and directly in the soil. They don't do well chez moi unless the soil is pretty warm.

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  6. I was thinking, "Now that the Paris photos are finished, we'll probably start seeing the garden." Et, voilà!

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  7. I forget the answer to this question: Do you grow things you can't get and/or things that taste better from the garden (like tomatoes)?
    What goes into the decision what to grow?

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  8. mitch, I'm not sure we have enough blossoms in the garden at any one time to make it worth doing.

    sheila, last year we had a great crop. This year, the seeds are different, and the peas that grew look nothing like what's on the box. And the pods are inedible.

    evelyn, I like them, too. We did grow some one year.

    chris, I do plant beans and peas directly in the garden. I usually have great green bean crops.

    judy, hehe! Stay tuned for Versailles!

    michael, these days I'm growing things that normally grow well. It's too painful to spend time and energy to grow certain things only to end up with a lousy crop. Now it's mostly tomatoes, greens, and beans, summer and winter squashes. And some herbs!

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    1. I see. I used to grow things I couldn't get at market (like purple green peppers) or things more tasty homegrown (melons and tomatoes). I recall in the end I ended up growing mostly what worked in my microclimate.

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