Little Susie Homemaker

Tag: beets

  • Garden – August 2026

    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.

    Sweet Pea Blooming
    Zinnias
    Zucchini

    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?

    Hydrangea
    Side Garden w/beets
    Dying spaghetti squash

    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.

    Peppers
    Tomatoes
    Ripening tomatoes

    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!

    Apples
    Grapes
    Quince

    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)

    Boysenberries
    Goji Berries
    Mountain Huckleberries
    Lingonberry
    Logan Berries
    Raspberries

    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!

  • Garden – July 2026

    July has been quite abundant in the backyard! The vegetable part hasn’t been much, but the berries ripened early this year and have been producing like gangbusters!

    In the main garden, we have had enough asparagus that we’ve been able to have it added to a bunch purchased from the store. This year has been the most we’ve harvested, so hoping it continued to grow even more in coming years.

    The summer squash have come up and are just now producing blossoms. I’m hoping we get some zucchini and yellow squash here soon.

    The spinach all started really well but then bolted. 🙁 Oh well. I didn’t get it planted early enough and we had some hot days.

    I had left a kale plant from last year that grew about 4 ft tall and went to seed and at the base, it started growing again this year. So we have had kale once and I can go pick more!

    The right side is all flowers planted for my step-daughter’s upcoming wedding. I’m not sure we’ll have blooms in time, but I’m seeing 1 zinnia bloom beginning and 1 sweet pea bloom coming along. Hopefully we’ll have at least a few blooms ready at the right time.

    The 3 berry bushes at the back of the garden have done really well this year. The Logan berry still has a few blooms, so more are coming. The Tayberry has finished up. And the Boysonberry is just starting to ripen.

    The blueberries have done great this year! I’ve picked almost 12 lbs so far and we still have a couple of plants still ripening. For the most part, they’re wrapping up. The blueberries usually ripen STARTING in July, but this year, we were half done with them by July 1st. It was an early year for the berries!

    Mystery Bush
    Boysonberry
    Tayberry

    In the side berry patch, we have blackberries, boysonberries and a mystery bush that are all producing well! The blackberries have now finished up.

    The mystery bush is producing more this year than I’ve seen in past year. But that bush is covered in thorns. I wear a leather glove to hold up the vines so I can find the berries. I have some bamboo cut that I’m going to use to make a trellis for this one. Hopefully next year, I’ll be able to get into that bush a bit better.

    The two other tayberries have produced alright, but they’re not as prolific as the one at the garden.

    The tomato garden is going gangbusters too! This picture was taken in early July and now those tomatoes are several feet taller! We have a lot of blossoms and a couple of green tomatoes so far.

    In front of the tomatoes are 4 pepper plants. They are producing blossoms, so hopefully the peppers will have time to ripen before fall.

    There’s basil planted in there too, but it is coming along slowly.

    The parsley I planted last year is continuing and now has started to produce seed. The thyme next to it is great and has pretty little blossoms that the bees love. And finally, in that area are chives. There’s a whole boatload there, they’ve blossomed and died off and then a few new blossoms are growing.

    Apple
    Apple
    Quince

    The fruit trees look good! The columnar apple trees are pretty loaded. We probably should have thinned them a bit as I think we’ll have some drop as they grow. We’ll see what happens.

    The quince tree is also fairly loaded. Last year, we had 13 quince. This year, I think there about 50. We probably should have thinned the fruit. This tree is still young, and I think we may need to prop up branches as the fruit ripens.

    Not pictured, we added an espaliered pear tree which has 3 different types of pears on it.

    The stuff in the side garden that actually grew is doing well. I harvested 5 whole pea pods from the ONE pea plant that grew.

    I thinned out some beets and transplanted what I took out. So far, most of what I thinned is growing where I replanted it. They’re behind the rest so I may be able to still have some beets last into the fall. I was able to harvest two of the golden beets yesterday.

    Of the two melons I got from a friend, one died and the other is growing slowly but is growing.

    The spaghetti squash that grew is finally getting bigger and has found the trellis and working its way upward. Hopefully I’ll start to see some blossoms on that soon.

    (Ignore all the weeds – we tend to pull them and then throw them in a pile in this area.)

    Again, if we had to rely on what I am able to grow in the garden, we’d starve. But, we’re learning and will keep trying and keep adjusting what we use and add in the soil to help things grow better.

    Total harvest from the backyard so far this year – ~31 pounds

  • Garden Update – December 2024

    Not much to add here but wanted to wrap up the year with the final post about the garden.

    The Oca and Mashua tubers were harvested in early December. We had a light frost earlier, but it didn’t kill off the leaves above ground until about three frosts in.

    My husband took care of it as he’s the one who planted them. He really likes having unique things growing in the backyard. Hence the variety of berries we have! I did help him a bit, but the digging was all him!

    He had ordered 3 different colors of the Oca tubers. We assumed the white with red creases is a mix of the other two.

    These little guys can be eaten raw and are supposed to taste like water chestnuts. My husband said that’s true (I didn’t try it!).

    We got a bit over 3/4 of a pound of the Ocas. There are several that he’s keeping in the fridge to use as seed for next year.

    The Mashua tubers did really well. We ended up with a bit over 3 1/4 lbs of these. (The above picture was obviously taken prior to washing. The weight was taken AFTER the dirt was removed)

    He cooked a few of these up like potatoes and they turned out pretty well. We have enough left for a couple more meals to have a side of tubers.

    The rest of the garden is a sleep for the winter aside from 4 beets that I haven’t pulled yet. Now that it’s too cold for snails and slugs, they’re doing great! LOL

    I put 6+ inches of compost over all the growing areas and then covered with a few inches of leaves. I’m also throwing our used coffee grounds into the growing areas to help add more to the soil over winter.

    The one crop I haven’t addressed in a post, but did harvest was the sweet potato. I’ll just say it was beyond disappointing. Not one was bigger than my thumb and all total the harvest was less than 1/2 lb.

    All total; the backyard produced 133.87 lbs of food. Not too shabby but thank goodness for perennials!

  • Garden Update – November 2024

    Alas, the garden has been put to bed for the winter. The time had come.

    As you know, I had planted some things for fall, but those things were not thriving if they were even growing at all. The slugs around here were feasting, so it was more frustration than anything.

    There are still a few things waiting for the first frost which should be any day now. The two types of tubers are dug up after the frost. And the sweet potato will get harvested this weekend frost or not. The leaves on that are starting to die off, so time to dig those up. (or since they’re in a pot, turn the pot over and sort through the dirt)

    Sweet Potatoes
    Tubers
    Tubers (other kind)

    Surprisingly, I’m still getting some raspberries. About every 2-3 days, I can go pick a small handful and get about a half an ounce.

    1/2 oz of berries
    still growing berries

    There are still some peas, beets and kale growing in the main garden. I’ll keep an eye on those and see what they do.

    Beets
    Kale
    Sleeping garden bed

    But for the rest of the growing areas, I have added about 6+ inches of garden mix soil (mix of compost, fertilizer [horse apples] and fertile mulch) and covered everything with leaves.

    My suspicion has been that the soil is not nutrient dense enough for growing vegetables. My hope is that with a good amount of amendments this fall and another good amount in the spring, next year’s garden might do better.

    I have also put some leaves around the base of the strawberries (which are also still growing berries, just not ripening) to put those to sleep for the winter. I’ll get a bit more of the Japanese maple leaves and bulk that up this weekend as well.

    Alpine Strawberries
    Leaf Mulch strawberry bed

    It amazes me what is still growing in spite of little sunlight, tons of rain and colder temperatures.

    This year’s harvest from the backyard has come to 129.2 lbs. Tubers and sweet potatoes still to come!

    Winter is coming!! Time to start planning next year’s garden.