Garden Stories

This is a story of the little garden in my backyard. It produces tons of veggies and fruits. My husband was in charge of planting it this year so we ended up with an interesting mix that wasn't what I had planned but it's okay. My husband is a casual gardener. He weeds maybe once a month when the weeds get higher than the veggies or he convinces me to go out with him.

My husband also believes in letting volunteer squash and tomatoes grow. Many of the varieties you plant are hybrids, so when they cross-pollinate, you get some very weird varieties. We got red pear tomatoes one year and teeny tiny red cherry tomatoes another. This year, we have some weird squash. Tasty, but weird. They look like zucchini, sort of. We just picked one that looks like a zucchini shaped acorn squash. Can't wait to cut into it to see what it tastes like. Others are a cross between delicata and zucchini. Mild tasting and less wet than zucchini, they worked great in zucchini bread and stir fry.

We also have these - tigger melons. They're about baseball size and taste a lot like a honeydew except not quite as sweet. They're an heirloom variety of muskmelon.

Maybe next year I'll plant my flowerbed of okra that I wanted to do this year.

What weird fruits or veggies have you tried that are not the normal stuff? Did it grow well for you? What did you do with it? I'd love recipes or other fun stuff.

Now to get back to making tigger melon jam. New experiment for me. I'll do a recipe post on it if it turns out.

Melon Report

We planted Tigger Melons last year and got nothing. We planted them again this year and have a bumper crop. They grow on medium vines, kind of like cantaloupe. The melons are about the size of a softball.

The unripe ones look like little round watermelons—dark green with lighter green stripes. When they turn a pale orange, they're ripe. The darker orange ones are overripe and not as tasty, but still quite good. Unripe, they taste like cucumbers. You can peel them and use them like cucumbers, too. The ripe ones taste like honeydew. Very delicious.

So if you're looking for a different melon to try, Tigger melons are fun and as easy to grow as cucumbers.

Berry Picking Report

Fresh gooseberries!

Last summer, I planted a whole row of berry bushes, partly to see what grew well, and mostly because I have a thing for berries. We already had a few raspberries in the yard, so I didn't need to add those. I put in red currants, black currants, elderberries, gooseberries, sand cherries, and blueberries. We got a few currants and raspberries last summer, but not much else. These bushes take some time to get established and start producing.

So far this summer, I noticed I planted most of them too close together. These bushes can get huge. I shall have to keep pruning them into small trees and short, wide bushes so they all fit in the space. The elderberry is supposed to become a small tree and so is the sand cherry, so they're okay. The others will need regular pruning to keep them smaller.

We have already harvested loads of raspberries. They are spreading like crazy. Some of the canes are eight feet tall. I have no idea what variety of raspberries these are, but they are mostly thornless with huge red berries that are delicious. It looks like they're producing all summer, too, so they're everbearing. They are also spreading under the fence into the neighbor's yard and he's not to happy about it, so we'll have to keep an eye on that situation. But I have seven pints of raspberry jam already tucked away in the pantry. RazBarb is one of my favorites - half raspberry and half rhubarb (which is gigantic!).

I picked the red currants last week. They made some tasty jelly. Only three pints, but the bush is small still. It was loaded.

The blueberry bushes are still really small. One of them has a few berries on it. I ate the two ripe ones last night. Absolutely delicious. I can't wait for more to get ripe. I'm not telling my kids or hubby about that bush. Those are MY berries.

I picked gooseberries this morning. They are so good. Not very many, so I think we're just going to eat these. Not quite enough for one small batch of jelly.

The black currants will be ripe in a week or two. I can't wait. They were my favorite last year. The bush isn't too loaded but I should have enough for some jelly.

The elderberries won't be ripe for a couple of months still. We have some nice clusters, hopefully enough to make more jelly. But we can always head to the mountains to pick wild elderberries to go with them.

This weekend we're hoping to get out to the mountains to pick huckleberries. I can't wait!

What's your favorite berry?

The Up Side of Moving

Roses and a peony from our yard

I posted a while back about how moving across several states still felt like same-old same-old. I was still doing the same things, just in a different house. The neighborhood still felt the same in most ways. We're mostly unpacked now, I did find the box of Tupperware that was missing (mislabeled as someone's clothes) and my measuring cups (inside the rice cooker) and the last few plastic cups and dishes (inside my canning steamer). The house is feeling like home. The animals and kids have adjusted. We did lose one cat, Chunkalicious passed away from kidney failure, but he was sick when we moved and we knew it was just a matter of time. Poor kitty. We did our best to make him happy while he was with us.

Now for the positive side of moving. We got rid of a lot of junk, but we've replaced it with new junk better suited to our new house. I'm loving the house and the neighborhood and, especially, the weather. It's warmer here. We've already uncovered the pool in the back yard, cleaned it, figured out how to treat it with the proper chemicals, and found plenty of floaty toys. We started swimming in late April. Back in Utah, our yard would still have had snow on it! We'll see if the warmer weather remains a good thing through the summer. It's supposed to get really hot here. So far we haven't resorted to our AC though it's been up into the 90s a few times already. Our house stays fairly cool.

The biggest thing I'm loving here though is the yard. I'm gardening again. Having sandy soil helps. It's much easier to dig up than the clay hardpan of our last house. We're in a different gardening zone so some of the plants I've wanted to grow for years are finally possible. I found out yesterday that there's even a palm tree that's hardy enough for our area. I'm thinking tropical oasis in our back yard. I've already put in rhubarb, raspberries, currant bushes, elderberry bushes, other berry bushes, roses, irises, a bunch of other flowers and herbs, and even a reblooming lilac bush. I'm excited to see how they grow.

My hubby put in raised gardening beds for me, too. I've got them full of tomatoes, squash, melons, peppers, okra, and popcorn. I still need to get Marigolds growing in them to help ward off the bugs. We also started worm buckets. The idea is that you have a bucket for kitchen scraps, lawn clippings, dog poop, cardboard, and a few other things that the worms can crawl in and out of, eat the stuff in the bucket, and turn it into compost that they spread into your garden. I got the idea here. We have plenty of kitchen scraps and other stuff and we have plenty of sandy soil that needs compost added. Why not get worms to do the work for us? I'll keep you posted on how that's working.