We've been spending a lot of time this summer in our garden. This is our 4th year to garden but only our 2nd year for what I would call serious gardening. Were experimenting. Were learning.
One of the things we have learned is that certain types of lettuce re-grow after being harvested. This year I have built up our lettuce supply and I finally have it to the point that we can have salad as a side dish several times a week and still have lettuce for sandwiches, taco salad, and other dishes. I have three types growing.
This was my first harvest this spring. It was from the below stump.
I didn't do anything to this stump over the winter. I was honestly surprised when I saw it growing again at the start of March. Every time I cut to harvest a batch I see new growth within a day or two. This is re-growth after only a few days. I have this in a small tub on our back patio. This past week right after I harvested some more our dog Bear knocked over the tub and the entire contents came out. I thought it was probably the end of that lettuce but I picked it up and put the soil and lettuce roots back in the tub and to my surprise a few days later, more growth was showing despite the disturbance. I have concluded that lettuce is very forgiving. At least some types of it. I have noticed that with watering it too.
Here is another pot of lettuce on our back patio. It is a different type than the first photos.
And I have some more planted in one corner of one of our raised beds. Again, different type than above. This type re-grows when harvested too. You just cut it right at the base.
I took this picture right before I harvested this batch. This is what lettuce does when you don't harvest it right away. It's begins to grow in a tower and it's still good when it is like this. Eventually if left unharvested it will stop growing and grow a vine of little flowers on top. It has been my experience that lettuce can sit for a bit once it is ready to be harvested and it has also been my experience that once I cut it it will keep in a sealed container for a couple of weeks in the fridge, unlike store bought lettuce. I much prefer to grow my own. I love walking out to my back patio and cutting lettuce leaves to make a salad to go with dinner. I also love that I can harvest just what I know we need for one meal rather than buying an entire batch. I can't tell you how many times I have bought a bag of lettuce from the store and it has gone bad before we could use it all.
Lettuce and tomato from our garden for a dinner salad one night.
Speaking of tomatoes. I planted 2 regular tomato plants this year and one cherry tomato plant. For a while I didn't think the cherry tomato plant was going to make it. It didn't look good and I couldn't figure out why. I almost pulled and tossed it but around 4 weeks ago it started perking up and it suddenly has 4 cherry tomatoes growing on it. I'm glad I didn't pull it.
Both of my regular tomato bushes are loaded right now. We have harvested 5 tomatoes so far and their are several more that should be ready in the next few days.
One of our first tomatoes.
We like to slice tomatoes and put them with pesto in grilled cheese sandwiches. I use them in our salads and sub sandwiches and I like to make tomato sauce for pizza sauce with them. Those are the main ways I use our tomatoes. Of course they are also good just sliced with a little salt. *grin* Bryan and Annie are the only two in our home that don't care for tomatoes and what I find funny about that is that they are both big ketchup lovers. I on the other hand can't stand ketchup but like tomatoes. LOL!
I heart basil! I really really heart basil! It has become my favorite herb because our family has fallen in love with pesto these past couple of years. Pesto is made with olive oil, garlic, parmesan cheese, walnuts, and basil leaves. It is sooo yummy and I have discovered quite a few ways to use it that our family really enjoys. I had to replant some basil plants at the start of spring because I messed mine from last year up by trimming them back too much but basil plants are annual anyway.
I have learned that you have to be careful when harvesting basil- the harvesting part is actually the most critical. It is best to cut just above the second set of leaves from the ground. I have also learned that I need to harvest and water my basil on a regular and consistent basis. Basil grows fast. My plant seem to stay healthy if I cut on it about once a week. That is fine with me because we use pesto about once a week in our dishes. My pesto takes around 2-3 cups of basil leaves. I started out at the start of March by planting these 3 small basil plants.
By the start of April they looked like this.
By the start of May I had this. Continuing to harvest weekly keeps my basil full and bushy like this. I love the smell of basil on the patio. In my reading I learned that the night before you plan on harvesting basil, give the plant a good soak. The following day, do your cutting in the morning before the day gets too hot and dry. The essential oils are at their strongest then.
If you don't harvest your basil enough it will start to grow small flowers on top and you don't want those flowers. They might be pretty and the bees do like them but if left long enough you will loose your basil plant.
One other thing I have learned is that if I have more basil than I can use in one week/harvest, and I don't want to dry the leaves, I can take the leaves off of the stem and place in a ziplock zipper top baggie and freeze them for future use. They will keep in my freezer for up to a year. I love this because it gives us basil leaves throughout the winter to continue to make pesto with.
We use the pesto I make with our basil as a sauce on homemade pizzas. We also like to spread it on grilled cheese sandwiches and I have several noodle and chicken dishes that I use it in too. The kids prefer pesto on their pizza over pizza sauce. I tried out a new dish this past week which was stuffed chicken breasts with pesto and cheese and it was sooo yummy!
I planted two squash plants at the start of spring but sadly we ended up having to pull them both out. Remember the squash bugs we had issues with last year. They returned really fast once the squash started growing and this beautiful squash became history before it was finished growing. They were killing both of my squash plants and starting to go after my tomato plants and I knew from last year that they would go after our cantloupe and watermelon too so I just pulled both squash plants. We were trying hard keep on top of the bugs but I decided it wasn't worth the fight. I also wanted to see what would happen with the bugs if the squash plants were not around since that seemed to be the main plant they liked. Since removing both squash plants the bugs seemed to have disappeared for the most part. We still occasionally see one but they are no longer taking over my garden like they were starting too.
You might recall that I planted a bunch of zucchini last year and we got an on-going good harvest from it. I started the spring out by planting some zucchini seeds in a container on our back patio. I wanted to see how zucchini would do in a large pot. It doesn't work. My plants grew but didn't look good and never produced. Just not enough room for the roots even in a large pot.
Remember my first garden post this year about our bounty of strawberries. If you missed it you can read it,
HERE. We continued to get a large amount of strawberries each day from the start of March until the start of June. 3 months straight! It was soooooo nice! What you see above is from 2 days and was normal for those 3 months. I froze a
bunch of strawberries (around 2 galloons) and I made a couple of things in spring with some.
We enjoyed a strawberry pie one evening.
And strawberry donuts was a biggie throughout spring.
We also used some of our strawberries in smoothies and of course we just ate them as a snack or for breakfast on some days. It was at the start of June that we noticed that the harvest was slowing down. We still have some flowers on our plants and are now getting 3-5 strawberries a day, now that summer has hit.
Some I picked this past week.
I shared some pictures of our strawberry bed in that
last post and now that our plants have stopped producing strawberries they are spreading once again. I have noticed a ton of runners these past 2 weeks. We predict that by the end of this year that raised bed will be full of strawberry plants.
We planted cantaloupe and watermelon again this year and of course Camden is just as excited about "his" cantaloupe as he was last year.
My cantaloupe and watermelon bed. I also have the 2 zucchini plants and my tomatoes in this bed.
Our 1st watermelon this year.
1st cantaloupe. We have 2 growing so far with lots of flowers along our vines.
This past fall Bryan planted 6 blueberry bushes. One was run over by a little boy that sometimes visits his grandmother next door. It was destroyed and Bryan had to pull it up. The other 5 are growing and all but one seem to be doing well. We think ants might be getting to the one that is not doing well. Blueberry bushes are supposed to take a couple of years to produce after being planted so we were surprised when we noticed some berries on one of our plants a few weeks ago.
It was only a handful and only one of our plants but it was fun to see! The blueberries are very sweet which makes us look forward to next year!
We are hoping our plants continue to do well in the years ahead.
At the start of fall we also purchased 5 fruit trees. They were on clearance at Lowe's- you know the trees they need to mark way down to get rid of before they die. I think Bryan only paid 10$ for each. For that reason we really didn't know if they would survive the winter but decided we would try it out. To our surprise all of the trees except one have done wonderfully! They have grown much more in just under one year than we would have ever thought they would. We bought 2 apple and 4 plum and we lost one plum within those first couple of months due to what we think might have been a fungus. Bryan noticed it right away and pulled it out so it wouldn't infect the others. Just like the blueberry bushes, the fruit trees are not supposed to produce the first few years. 2 of our plum are not producing but growing like crazy. One of our plum trees has 4 plums on it and it too is growing like crazy. Both apple trees have a couple of apples and are doing well.
Plum on plum tree.
Apples
More plums.
My neighbor Maria gave me a pot with an oregano plant. I have loved having oregano alongside by basil, rosemary, and mint plants. I've been clipping, chopping, and using fresh oregano in our spaghetti sauce and some other Italian dishes including my Sicilian Meat Loaf.
I love gardening! I love learning as we go along. I love it when the kids ask for a snack and I can tell them to go outside and pick some blackberries or strawberries to eat. Fresh food makes me smile.
In simple humility, let our gardener God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life. ~ James 1:21
