Tie ’em Up

rototilling Boaz 001 Tie ’em Up! Once the plant starts are established and begin to crawl on the ground we tie them up on fencing, to protect them from wind and it makes it easier to pick later on. Then, Mr. Wind won’t be able to lay them all down if he decides to visit.

We have been blessed this year to have a wonderful young man join us in the garden. He is interested in learning how to garden and you can see his spirit as he works with Mr. Pete on rototilling.

This season Boaz has learned how to plant his own seeds and care for them. Pete and he are planting tomatoes here. Boaz has his crops with ours all over the garden and he is doing quite well. In fact, he sold 10 heads of lettuce at the Deer Park Market on July 1st! Way to go! He is a fun guy to work with.

Tomatoes

tomatoes 075 This is a 60-foot row of tomatoes with lots of varieties, and sizes but only two cherry tomato plants closest to the gate. Where I stood to take the picture. Why, are there only two cherry tomatoes? We don’t have enough time to harvest those teeny tiny cherry tomatoes.

tomatoes 077 A larger volume of tomato products is what is important to us. Tied-up tomato plants look like this when done. We grow as many tomatoes as possible. This year we are delighted with how early our tomatoes began to make fruit. We changed the way we start our plants inside in early spring, and are seeing great results this year. It really helps to have sturdy and mature starts for that transplant into the garden. We love to have a pantry full of tomato stuff all year long. Spaghetti, juice, sauce, paste, salsa.. salsa.. salsa… Yum!

Garden Fest

There are many Garden Fest Preparations. Each year we save seeds, then plant the garden starts in order to be ready for the growing season. We plant 1/3 acre, help with The Pantry Garden, and also Garden Fest. The North County Food Pantry in Elk WA is a wonderful place to volunteer. Our growing season is short so starting plants ahead of the last frost lets us be able to transplant directly in the garden when the weather warms up enough. There have been many generous volunteers doing this for lots of years before Pete and I started. Pumpkin & Blue Hubbard Squash 01

Here are two of the biggest squash from last year. The one on the left is a blue Hubbard squash and the one on the right is a monster-sized pumpkin from The Pantry Garden. We won this pumpkin because Peter guessed the weight the closest, a whopping 119 pounds. A lot of seeds from both of these were shared to plant this spring.

Set up

We plant a large abundance of seeds in the first step. Then, transplant them into smaller single containers for the people that come to Garden Fest to pick up starts. At the same time plant in a larger tray (rows) so we can easily transplant directly into the Pantry Garden. We have a community of happy farmers. In the picture below you can see broccoli starts growing and getting ready for the Garden Fest giveaways. Plant Starts 02

We planted seeds in trays placed on radiant-heated floors, purchasing grow lights to turn on as they started to peek out of the ground. It has been successful! There are starts for the hot peppers, spices, tomatoes, broccoli, squash, Wallawalla onion, and much more. Below is a tray of broccoli getting ready for planting directly into the Pantry garden soon. Broccoli Calabrese Start 01

Pete and I spend time almost every day doing this kind of transplanting and watering stuff before the garden even goes in. Blue Hubbard Squash 01

These Blue Hubbard squash sprang up and grew like the dickens, Wow. We are hoping to get good peppers this year too. Blue Hubbard Squash 02

You Say Tomatoes, We Say

Big

You say tomatoes, we say tomatoes. Our largest tomatoes are bigger than two hands held up to them.

Tomatoes ripen quickly laid out on three tables downstairs. Every 2-3 days I am sorting through them all, looking for the ripe ones and canning them.

Looks like only 1-2 more batches and I will be done with making tomato sauce for this year. This is what a typical batch looks like this year.

Some people think we are kind of crazy to go to all this work when we can just buy tomato sauce, salsa, and tomato paste at the store.

But…. what can I say.

Our garden produce tastes so much better than store-bought. Hmm. It is worth the work. Besides, what would we do all summer long if we didn’t have a massive garden to tend? Absolute chaos would ensue across the entire planet I am sure. We would have to figure out a way to spend hours and hours each day exercising. But the trick would be in finding something to do that does not cost much but is fun and it is outside.

Maybe we could take the dogs on long, very long, walks each day. That could get old real fast for the humans involved. I’m sure the dogs would vote yes on that long walk idea though.

Maybe we would have to start hiking every day, you know 5-10 mile distances so that we are thoroughly exhausted by the time we got home. All-day bike rides could be the ticket. We could explore every hiking trail and mountain biking trail in the state and when that was done, we could just move on over to Idaho and do the same thing. Or, we could just enjoy having a world-class garden out our backdoor. Yep!

Our days are getting chilly outside now and there is even a hint of white powder falling from the sky. The ski season is on its way.

Giants in Our Garden

We have virtual giants in our garden in the pumpkin and tomato categories. With this spring being cold and wet, a lot of our seed failed and a lot of things were drastically delayed but, what did grow has grown very well. We are anxiously awaiting full ripe “ness” on these guys. In this first image, the tomatoes don’t look so big so we had Peter hold his hand next to them to give a good idea of their size.

Praying for a Late Frost

The tomato in the back seems big enough to fill a quart jar with tomato sauce and the two in front would fill the next quart. Now we are just waiting for some ripening and praying on a late frost so we can bring these tomatoes into the pantry.

We normally have an abundance of pumpkins but this year we only have two. A very large one and a medium one. The 5-gallon bucket was sat next to this green pumpkin to let you know how big it is. We can’t wait for pumpkin pie from him.

We also harvested a couple of buckets from the macintosh apple tree yesterday.

Evidently, we are not the only ones who like these apples, as you can see that some other critters have munched on a few. These apples are not giants but they are a really good size, which is fortunate as this tree is regrouping after a couple of rough years and is just now producing again. Can’t wait for the pie from these also. These last two items have me thinking about Pete’s pies again. Sometimes I kind of wish he wasn’t so good a baking pies cause it sure is hard to say no to one cooling on the kitchen counter.