We have had a bumper crop year in the berry department! I added up everything I’ve weighed that had “berr” in the word and we’re at almost 43 lbs!!! The one boysenberry plant is still ripening and the huckleberries and raspberries are still growing. We might end up with 50 lbs of berries this year.
Now, if only I could get vegetables to be that prolific.
We had a few blooms in time for the wedding, but not enough to make a bouquet. My stepdaughter ended up buying buckets of flowers and then she and her bridesmaids made their bouquets the night before. They turned out beautiful!
Now I get to enjoy what few blooms have come up. I don’t usually plant flowers so it’s fun to enjoy them. I might have to plant a few in amongst vegetables next year.
The zinnias have done the best and they are in and around the asparagus.
The summer squash has started to produce, but certainly not what I was looking forward to. I’ve harvested 3 small zucchinis. And right now, I have 3 more miniscule zucchini and 3 very small yellow squash. I’m finding that my squashes start, then the blossom dies on the end and the squash stops growing.
Even my spaghetti squash in the side yard is doing that. I’ve had 3 spaghetti squash start, but before they are even 2 inches long, the blossom dies and then the squash dies. Any ideas from other gardeners out there?
The side yard garden looks good, but seems to have the same issues as the main garden. Things will start, and then seem to just stop growing.
The beets in the side yard still look good – as in the tops are still looking good, strong and upright. But the actual beets under ground seem to not be doing much of anything. The golden beets are better than the bulls blood beets this year. Since the tops are still going strong, I’ll leave them in the ground until later in the fall and hope that cooler weather will help them grow.
I harvested a couple of peppers. We have several more out there.
And the tomatoes went gangbusters. That is the only part of the garden that we start the year with adding chicken manure. And then my husband said he’s been using Miracle Grow on them all year. (Maybe all the garden areas need all of that in order to be successful) We’re starting to get a few tomatoes that have ripened. We have a lot more to come!
The apples are doing well. Per usual, as they get closer to ripe and get bigger, we lose quite a few as they fall off the trees. We should probably thin them just after they blossom.
The grapes were transplanted earlier this year, but we have 1 small bunch of grapes. I’m glad they didn’t die with the transplant. I expect future years will have quite a few more grapes.
Quince are still doing well, but we don’t have nearly as many as we did earlier this year. My husband said he took a few off the tree to lighten up the branches. But there are quite a few more missing than what he took off. And oddly, there aren’t any quince laying on the ground. It’s the mystery of the disappearing quince. With what is still on the tree, if they all ripen, we’ll have a few more than we had last year.
And the berries….(so many berries)
We have a single Lingonberry this year. I noticed quite a few blossoms earlier, so it’s very possible the bunnies like the lingonberries and we just haven’t caught them in the act.
I’m noticing that the Logan berries seem to produce well every other year and this is the producing year!
Our raspberries are everbearing which means the second-year canes give us berries in the spring and then die. And the first-year canes give us berries in the fall. The fall berries coming in so far have been almost double the size of the spring berries.
I definitely continue to learn lessons in gardening and am VERY thankful we don’t have to rely on me growing food for us to eat. Maybe one of these days something will start working better and things will grow for me!
Total harvested so far – 50.8 lbs. We still have tomatoes, potatoes, apples, quince, more berries and hopefully squash to harvest so it’s possible that we could double that number and end up with 100 lbs from the back yard. We’ll see!
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