John gave me a portion of his vineyard at the very back where there were no remaining grapes to use this year for some of the taller crops. Mainly I was hoping to grow some okra, but I added some corn since the watering system would cover them anyway, and I like to use all available space when I can. And I even threw in a watermelon or two!
The okra are:
Hill Country Red
Simpson
Choppee - Bunny Hop Seeds
Orange Jing
Alabama Red
Corn:
Rustler
Hopi Blue Dent
Trucker's Favorite - Seeds for Thee
Incredible - Pinetree Garden Seeds
Watermelon:
Desert King
I have a horrible history with winter squash and pumpkins. Usually the bugs get them before they can produce much. I'm planting them up front this year along a fence so I can train them up and I'm planning a full scale-100% chemical fight with the squash bugs. Enough. It's war!
Almost all of these seeds came from the FB garden group, except for the experimental 898.
- Georgia Candy Roaster
- 898 Experimental Squash - Row 7
- Silver Bell
- Butternut Rogosa Violina Gioia
- Tennessee Sweet Potato
This bed is where I planted most of the tomatoes. They are all dwarf varieties, so the tallest will be under four foot, and most will be around 2 -3 foot tall. During the winter I planted clover and peas in this area to add nitrogen to the soil, and we amended the bed this year with composted cow manure. In each hole when I planted I added my mix of azomite rock dust, guano, more cow manure and worm castings. Thirty tomatoes in this long row.
This year the Squash House is planted in cucumber and pole beans. Not a squash in sight! I guess I should change the name of this structure, but probably won't since the sign is on the front. ha!
Front Back
Okay, this may seem like a lot of seeds/plants, but most are small amounts of each one, so it's not too crazy. On the left side we have:
- Rozella Purple Tomato
- Prima Gold Tomato
- Ancho Poblano Pepper - mild, about 1,500 shu
- Fish Pepper - medium, about 30K shu
- Juane de Doubs Carrots
- Dazzling Blue Kale - Baker Creek
- Marketmore Cucumber - Botanical Interests
- "K" Cucumber (I lost the packet, I know it started with the letter K, but have no idea the real name.)
- Boston Pickling Cucumber
- Biet Alpha Cucumber
- Japanese Long Cucumber
- Early Fortune Cucumber - Baker Creek
- Poinsett Cucumber
- Muncher Cucumber
Then on the right side, I have:
- Shadow Boxing Tomato
- Dwarf Stone Tomato
- Mulato Pepper - Farmacie Isolde - mild, about 3K shu
- Peter Pepper - medium, about 10-20K
- Spanish Tolosano Beans
- Skunk Pole Beans
- Nona Agnes Bean
- Borlotto Lingua di Fucco Bean - Farmacie Isolde
- Fort Portal Bean
- Eye of the Goat Bean
Another small bed, 2 ft. x 8 ft., another 16 sq. feet.
This bed started out entirely in spinach, but I've already harvested half the bed. I think the back half was getting more water from the spray system until John found the problem, because the front part of the bed was growing much slower. In the next week or so I'll finish picking most of the spinach and plant more cow peas in the front of this bed.
I recommend Pinetree Garden Seeds highly, this packet of spinach seeds were from 2016 and I was leery about anything coming up at all, and just about every seed germinated. A great company!
The cow peas are:
This bed is inside the small tunnel and is 2 ft. x 8 ft., so it's one of the smaller ones. Total 16 sq. foot.
Greens and beets in here. For the greens we have:
The beets are:
Final bed in this row. This one is a bit bigger, 3ft. x 10ft., so 30 square foot.
The pepper in this bed is also hot, in the 40-50K range:
Aji Orange Drop - Trade Winds Fruit
The tomato:
The garlic is Moroccan, and was a gift from one of my FB garden friends in New York state. It's done very well and I planted it in the fall. I did have to dig them up and move them, and they've recovered just fine.
The rest of the bed are all summer squash:
This pepper is pretty mild, about 1/2 of what a jalapeno is, I believe:
The kales:
The green beans:
The Swiss chard plants are a carry over from the fall/winter garden and have really gotten lush and pretty with the spring weather. They are:
The rest of the bed consists of:
- Utonyok tomato - orange dwarf
- Mrs. Burn's Lemon basil
- Lettuce Leaf basil
- Yellow Spanish onions - started these from seed in the greenhouse last fall.
You might be able to tell that the theme of my spring garden this year is green beans, tomatoes and peppers! I'm trying my darnedest to get enough to freeze and process as much as possible this year!
The pepper is one that I'm growing to share seeds with my FB garden group. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out! Supposed to be about 5K on the scoville scale, so not too hot.
The white garlic was sent to me by one of my FB garden friends all the way from New York State. It is doing very well, and should be ready around the middle of the summer.
Green Beans:
The tomatillo is an unusual one:
To finish off the bed:
The outside beds have been planted now and are all growing. The white garlic was planted back in November and will be harvested in early summer if all goes well. This was garlic I purchased at our local fruit/vegetable stand.
The cabbages are both Chinese cabbages:
- Chirimen Haikasu
- Napa Chinese
The bush beans are:
The rest of this bed includes:
- Dwarf Bush Chaborovsky tomato
- Black Granat Basil - Nikitovka Seeds
- Unknown Dill - the cats down in the garden knocked over my whole tray of herbs and the only cups to lose their labels were the dills. We'll just be surprised with whatever we get! ha!
- Orchid Pepper - This is a hot pepper, although I believe it's in the mild range. I got this through my FB garden group, so I'm hoping it's going to grow true, because I'm excited to try this one. It's in the same shape as a Bishop's Hat, so should be a really pretty red pepper.
Bed B1 is the other side in the high tunnel. Same size, so basically 17 ft. x 3 ft. and it is a raised bed.
The remainder of the sweet peppers are in this bed. Description of each is in this post. They are:
- Weaver's Mennonite (1 plant)
- Bogdan (1 plant)
- Largo de Reus (3 plants)
- Tequilla Sunrise (1 plant)
- Zulu (2 plants)
- Petite Marseilias (1 plant)
- Carmagnola Rosso (2 plants)
At the far end there are three types of celtuce:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfIpbAO2DDNTrgyuTlrjFFRdrZ_9RWGYKKZu_WKeQklOhYqeuWDacnl6ikBfGqu3PThrQ_CRaPcubw9N6nqoIho5ct9oCQb1qXZhOqThLBRjm-v-xw9XyQ9u3XTiBH-JSMH2KNVMdJalt2/s320/IMG_3267.JPG) |
Celtuce |
Filling in some space are:
- Chinese White Celery
- Dulce Fresca Basil - Park Seeds
- Bibb Lettuce
- Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce
- Bronze Beauty Lettuce
- Paris Island Cos Lettuce
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYMkCqtounwMMkvsC6oOgANB7-juaYFL4JheAPO0qSOvzRFpB8Dszyqu3HMQWcTQJQuBWEmxOMW1VwwbHmsMQzV9k-gQKICy5mwrtCLGnm55tkrwe6UvKs4-YTEIp70btD5UGVEgOf8xuF/s320/IMG_3269.JPG) |
Chinese White Celery |
All seeds without a company name by them were received from my FB garden group. The bush green beans in this bed include:
- Contender
- Purple
- Jade
- Burgandy
- Tenderette
Everything is up and growing in this bed, too! Looking forward to that first pot of home grown green beans! Yum!