Our new garden plot

This year I purchased a number of heirloom tomato seeds and slowly the realization came that my yard just wasn't big enough. ;)



Sooooooo it was off to hunt down a community garden patch......and we think we found just the right one. The owner tills the soil, has a HUGE manure pile (going to be making lots of tea this summer;) and with a river nearby the water is unlimited.



Our plot.......taters, corn, peas, beans, and a few tomatoes have now been planted. We have the bottom corner starting at the stick with white paint, near the cars tires, and then along the curved side up to the next stick with white paint and across to the white painted stick in the middle of the plot.

This message was edited May 18, 2006 11:59 PM

The view (and our water source)....

At first it seemed larger than we needed......now, after purchasing many seeds we wouldn't normally grow, we're positive it shrunk. ;S

I'm looking at our watermelon, cantelope, cucumber, pumpkin, squash and zucchini seeds and am now trying to remember which will cross with which. I am sure that the squash/zucchini/and Pumpkin will but am not so sure about the others......

I won't be saving seeds from the tomatoes tho......we just don't have the room to keep them apart.

Lilypon, good for you! Where there is a will to garden, a way must be found! looks like a good spot, so good luck. It is true, that the more room you have, the more seeds you will stuff in there! They always shrink. Must be the rain that does it! LOL! BAM

Well that should keep you busy this summer. Looks like a nice place to spend time, getting dirty.

LOLOL how true that is BAM (and we haven't gotten a good rain yet). ;S

Thanks ladies! I know we will really enjoy it (and wonder about our sanity of taking it on when the weeds start showing up). ;) Prior to that happening however I think we will head there in the early morn, with Timmy's coffee in hand, and open up our lawn chairs and turn the water on. Ü

Oh, I have a drea......m..........

I take then, you will be sitting watching DH hoe the rows? while you're eating the fresh peas.

LOLOL now Brenda I think you missed one important word:

"and wonder about our sanity of taking it on when the weeds start showing up). ;) Prior to that happening however I think we will head there in the early morn, with Timmy's coffee in hand, and open up our lawn chairs and turn the water on. Ü

DH is the son of a farming family.......he was soooooooooo happy to get away from their huge garden. Do you really think he'll let me sit back and not weed????? ;)

Well that should keep you out of trouble for the summer!

Yup and it should keep our kids in line as well. ;) DS promised he would help too (he wants a tan for grad)......DD doesn't know about it yet but I do believe a hoe will be in her future too (I'll just remind her that her dorm freezer will be needing filling this fall :).

Pam, you had better start mulching. That looks like one MEGA garden. How many people did you say you were going to feed here? The entire town/city of Moose Jaw? What a wonderful find. Of course you need lilies - did you hear me say LILIES>

What about deer BTW. Do you have any out there? Lots of water.... Perfect. Fab view.

G

LOL Ginny we certainly will be supplying my parents with veggies too. ;)

Getting busy mulching is foremost on my mind this year. We will all be working full time this summer at our regular jobs so anything that can be done that will make that chore easier is being thought about. I'll probably be asking all the neighbors for their grass clippings (making sure that they didn't use a weed killer first of course).

We also have a 12' x 30' sheet of black pastic (plus sections from previous years) that a neighbor used to cover his swimming pool (donated to us after he purchased a new roll). I'll be using it to mulch the ground around the tomatoes and peppers.....we will also be checking out the farmer's rock piles (I'm pretty sure the wind out there will be much stronger than in town ;).

I never thought about lilies but of course they would do extremely well there. Many of mine are in pots so I should get busy and transport a few......thanks for reminding me of that Ginny! Ü

I see I missed your ? about the deer Ginny....... a few have been sighted but with a wire fence around the garden and a number of larger dogs they've not had problems (yet). A rabbit or two has made off with a bit of lettuce, etc., but losses there have been minimal.

Happy Birthday yesterday Pam! I have not crossed paths with you much the last month. Hope you had a day of enjoying who you are. I always on my birthday (since 40) do no work and go to a baseball game. On my 40th birth day I went to a Mariners game with my hat glove, and shirt. A man walked up to me and said you look like you love baseball and gave me 2 tickets. They were right next to the mariners batter box and I got to talk to my favorite Players. One of the best days. Now I repeat that and buy the best ticket available or just go to a local game today in Montana. You would probably have to go to a Calgary game. LOL

Wowzers, Pam! That is definitely one huge project! Like Ginny said you're going to feeding the entire population of Moose Jaw!
:) Donna

Nah Sofer we will head down a couple of blocks and watch the Moose Jaw Millers (hoping they have a good a year as the Moose Jaw Warriors did (our hockey team got all the way to playing Vancouver in the WHL finals before we lost :( ). Sooooooooo close (but no cigar) to playing in the Memorial finals.

LOLOLOL Okay guys we aren't the size of Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, or even :b Regina q: (not gonna even talk about the huge Eastern cities here) BUT we do have a population of 35,000 so we AREN'T that small either!!! ;) & yep it is gunna keep us busy. :S but we should have our own pumpkins this Hallowe'en. :^)))

This message was edited May 21, 2006 1:33 PM

That's great Pam, and a good thing when you can distribute the resulting crops to various peoples. Do you also can and /or freeze food products?

I've taken your picture and outlined what I think is the area that you're speaking of. Am I correct? If so, that's a fair sized chunck of land.

Joan

Way to go girl!! You can never have tooo much garden space..I have an acre and I swear it shrinks after I start planting..Put all those viney plants next to the outside and then let them go..We use tohave community gardens around here but they went by the wayside when only a few people were looking after them and the others weren't. Well have a good day I am out to plant the rest of my garden unless it is too hot out.

It would certainly help if I actually posted the picture. lol

Joan

I must have missed something here.

Joan you've got the outline of it exact. :) It's 75' long in the middle (not sure how many feet along the curve) and at the widest point 35' feet deep. Yep we both can and freeze (tho I might give more away depending on when my parents' house is ready for them to move back in (hopefully it will be done in early July at the rate the men are working at it now :).

Kinnika the majority of our viney plants are along the curved part of the plot.....figured we could train them to go between the potato hills and out onto the grass (glad to see you would have done the same :). We do have a few pumpkins also planted near the corn and will enourage their vines to grow amongst them and over the pea rows (once they are done). I give you lots of credit for growing a garden the size of an acre......must admit tho if we had a plot that size I'd be leaving larger spaces between the rows for rototilling. We just came back from another 5 hours of digging and planting and oh do I feel it.......you must get one heck of a work out! ;)

That's okay Brenda........we all have those days. ;)


This message was edited May 21, 2006 9:19 PM

I even planted some of Perrynguyen's bird house gourds in there (praying here that our summer will be long enough for them to get to maturity)!!!!!! We certainly will be having the heat here for them to grow this summer.

Coming along now. :)

We've had early pickins of large Viking potatoes, beans, Swiss Chard, beet greens, Kohlrabi, patio and tumbler tomatoes; the early cabbage is ready to eat, pumpkins and squash are forming/formed, Zucchini has already shown up on neighbours doorsteps, marketmore cucumbers have been sampled and the corn is tasseling.



But for some reason or other finding ripe peas has been difficult. :( Crossing fingers and toes here that the longer season tomatoes have time to ripen.

Looking good Pam. What's your closing off date for tommytoes?

Joan

Hard to know Joan (and thank you :). Some years we are blessed with a goodly part of Sept being free of f*r*o*s*t and reasonably warm (only having to cover a couple of times). And on a rare occassion it can strike very early and stay.

I've got a number of tomatoes out there whose seeds were planted well ahead of the ones pictured above. The gallbladder surgery I had slowed down the early planting of my imported seeds. But given the number I have growing (and they all have maters growing on them now) I wouldn't need too many tomatoes off each plant to make me happy. If the crop is really good I'll be dropping off bags of tomatoes (and green fried tomato/pickle recipes at work and on the neighbours doorsteps ;). This year was more of an experiment to see how well some would grow here and which ones we enjoyed the taste of.

Delicious has grown into a monster that will soon be towering over me. The two plants of it I've got growing in taller/stronger rebar cages. May of the others will be allowed to sprawl.

Here's hoping you have lots of bags of tomatoes to drop off.

You must enjoy all this extra space.

Joan

Joan re space it's had it's ups and downs but it sure has been a wonderful escape from work. Added bonus is being able to speak to all the other gardeners out there. Some are retired fellows that are tickled pink to share their gardening secrets. Some also are a little difficult........one fellow doesn't like sharing *his* tap so he's welded his hose connection on (or so it seems ;). But the others aren't that way and even the tap hogger is nice otherwise (am wondering how he'll disconnect his hose this fall however).

Got down on the ground yesterday and discovered a couple of pumpkins are growing *very* well and some of the tomatoes have larger fruit than I was previously aware of. From what I saw I'm pretty sure we will be dropping off tomatoes. Yesterday I managed to corner one of my co-workers and she left with Zucchini, Swiss Chard (she's never tried it before nor did the other one I gave some to), Lima Beans, taters. and lettuce. re: zuchinni I'm guessing some will be avoiding me eventually. ;)

In our own kitchen we are getting pretty inventive with the Zucchini (this year I planted 4 plants since the past two years mine mainly produced male blooms.......of course this year they are putting out females like there is no tomorrow :S ).

Stupidly we also borrowed male blooms from some of the other gardeners there to fertilize our early females. :

This message was edited Jul 30, 2006 1:04 PM

Sound like you are having a bountiful garden, despite any set backs Pam. We have been eating off of Silvery Fir Tree for a couple of weeks now and some of the others are ripening now. Ginny is over and we had a lovely yellow tomato too with our lunch. I am so happy to pick a couple of icecream pails of beans from my four foot row, but now I have to do something with them. Everbearing strawberries are real nice to have this time of year too. Getting hungry again, .........what's for supper?............

LOLOLOL something that we are almost getting tired of eating.......at least Swiss Chard is good for you at least not so sure about the nutrient value of Zucchini.

Your maters sound wonderful Brenda. We are just about to head off to the garden to pick some of the Stupice and maybe the Silvery Fir Tree (thank you so much for its' seeds......it is such a lovely (and unusual) tomato plant to look at :). I was also very excited to see that many of the different varieties of the later planted imported (seeds) cherry tomatoes are at the stage that they should be ripening shortly.

Zuccini has the most important nutrient value. NO CALORIES! I live on them all summer in my soup, fried in corn meal, Placed on top of salmon barbecued, Sauted with a little pasta, and of course the major sugar content of zucchinni bread. Yummmmmmmmmmm Hi Pam

LOLOLOL re sugar content........ Hi Steve :)

Hadn't thought of adding them to soup, or frying in corn meal :)......we usually make a number of Succotash with them, triple Chocolate cake (I really think they make the nicest moistest choc. cake), add em to spaghetti sauce and make zucchini pancakes.

So Steve do you have your zucchinni bread recipe nearby??? :)

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Does anyone have a good green bean soup recipe to share (didn't pick 4 litres but almost filled a Safeway's bag with them this afternoon.

Must admit I love the onion sets.......I've tried seed onions before and had awful results with them but the leek/red/green/multipliers are sure coming along well. :)

Zuchinni Reciepe One big bowl of shredded zuchinni 5 cups-6 cups, 2 cups of flour, 1cup of brown sugar and 2 egg ,Baking powder 1 teasp, nutmeg1/4 teasp, and cinnamon 1/2 teasp, 1 cup of chopped wallnuts, Any way you get the drift. This is off the top of my head cause I never use recipes. By the way this is a very moist bread ( that is how I like it) and it needs to be referigerated. If you like it more bread like add more flour.

Thanks Steve it will be nice to try something new. :) We fell in love with the choc zucchini cake (for a couple of years it was the only way the kids would eat it ;) so I've never tried to bake it any other way (also never had this many zucchini to eat and we can only have the choc one so many times ;).

Found this recipe for the beans.......I'm not a big fan of the ones that have bacon in the recipe.

Soupe aux Haricots Verts
Pronounced: soup / oh / ah ree koh / vehr
Creamy Green Bean Soup with Parmesan

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
* 8 oz. green beans, trimmed
* 1 garlic clove pressed
* 2 cups vegetable stock
* 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
* 1/4 cup light cream
* salt and freshly ground pepper
* 2 Tablespoons chopped parsley

PREPARATION:
1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the beans and garlic and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes.
2. Add the stock, season with salt and pepper. Increase heat and bring to a boil.
3. Lower the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes or until the beans are tender.
4. Working in batches, pour the soup into a blender or food processor and purée. Rinse the pot and return the puréed soup back into the pan.
5. Reheat the soup slowly. Stir in the Parmesan and the cream.

To serve:

Ladle the hot soup into 4 bowls and sprinkle with the chopped parsley. Serve immediately.


This message was edited Jul 30, 2006 10:57 PM

This message was edited Aug 11, 2006 8:47 PM

woohoo!!! had my first three cobs of corn for dinner tonite. earliest ever 31 july. been picking vine ripe tomatoes (full size) since 30 june
who says global warming is enemy number one - i know i'm selfish

We don't want to say it too loudly but I think in my lifetime I will be growing Acer Jap, and Bananas in Montana. Our water comes not from the snow melt like everyone thinks that always goes down to the columbia for the other guys. Our water table will be healthier when the snows stop falling and rain runs deep. Tomatoes here too. Too hot for me to put any beans in soup. I have a hard time getting them out of the garden when weeding and gathering veggies. I forgot to plant zuchinnis this year. Bummer.

Congratulations Lynn! So which full sized varieties of tomatoes did you plant this year?

Steve if you cross before freeze up I'm sure I can supply you with some. :)

I won't make it that far this year. You will be on my schedule next year. Looking forward to seeing you.
I have come to love the smaller varieties of roma tomatoes because of their rapid maturity, flavor, and mostly the firm and easy to slice property. I tried bok choy but they did poorly. I needed to get them in earlier because they went to seed right away after starting to grow.

Looking forward to seeing you Steve (and thank you for the early warning.......I'mma going to have to get busier in my back yard, plot looks great tho ;).

I'm going to be growing Amish paste next year.......I too like the Roma's but this year I swore I was going to try some heirlooms and some of the other varieties that we never see up here. The tomato forum opened my eyes to so many different varieties and I really am looking forward (drooling in anticipation ;) to *tasting* them. :)

BTW It's the Rhubarb Chard I'm growing and it turns out it is the favorite veggie of one lady from Afghanistan at my workplace. It turns out tho that it is the Swiss Chard that they grew there and she had never tried the Rhubarb (she thinks it is much tastier:) and she said since I've been supplying her she would make us a dish with it from her homeland. Ü