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Summer Garden Video Tour

Posted on July 30, 2010 at 9:07 AM

I am back from my travels and the garden survived just fine, although I had some pretty large zucchinis waiting for me when I got home!   Thought it would be a good time to post a mid summer video tour and garden update.              

     

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Laura

kitsapfreedomgardener

Categories: Video, Vegetables, Chickens

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15 Comments

Reply hsheather
11:38 AM on July 30, 2010 
The garden looks great. It's too bad you've had such a cool season. I'm sure things will catch up soon. Your chickens are beautiful. Those first eggs will be wonderful.
Reply miss m
12:25 PM on July 30, 2010 
Love the video tours ! Siletz is really performing for you. Mine not so much. I planted too many zukes too and fear my cukes are not getting pollinated either. The garden is looking magnificent. Overflowing for sure.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
08:59 PM on July 30, 2010 
hsheather - The garden is generally producing well despite the cooler conditions this year, the only real loss so far has been alot of the early season berries. In general, it has been dry and warmish the past several weeks (not hot mind you - just warm) and everything has been responding with pent up energy. If the weather holds like that through most of August, then we should end up with a reassonable harvest year after all.

miss m - I am glad you enjoyed the video tour. Sorry your Siletz tomatoes are not producing for you, some years are like that.
Reply Richard
12:18 AM on July 31, 2010 
Laura,
The garden is looking fantastic! It looks how mine looked around mid-May...since then, between the heat (90+ degrees everyday) and an apparent fertilizer deficiency in my soil, the garden has really been devastated. Anyhow, I really love your garden and garden space! I'm always very jealous. I really enjoyed your garden tour videos. Very well done! Talk to you soon!
Reply Mike
12:07 PM on July 31, 2010 
I enjoyed th evideo tour, thanks so much for sharing it with all of us. Your gardens, as always, look fabulous. I am really looking forward to hearing more about your cranberries next year, I would like to try them in our garden. I am keeping my fingers crossed that your second strawberry crop does better for you. That is one of the nice things about strawberry plants that bear more than once, you get a second and occasionally third chance.:) We just started harvesting red raspberries a couple days ago...very late for us. Hope you have a nice weekend...it's raining out here today.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
12:42 PM on July 31, 2010 
Richard - Everything in the garden is about two weeks behind normal this year - with the exception of the zucchinis and the early tomatoes (amazingly enough!). Normally I would be harvesting green beans by the buckets full right at this time of year, and they are just now flowering! Such a weird / cool year. Despite the slowness, everything appears to be largely healthy and producing so I am not overly concerned. I will just have a shorter window of harvest and preserving than I normally have which will make things kind of hectic and hurried. Sorry the heat has done in much of your garden. Having been back east recently on a trip I have a good appreciation for the prolonged heat and humidity experienced in the east portions of the US and how hard that must be on the gardens over time.

Mike - I had hopes that the cranberries would produce this year, but like so many things this year, they seemed to be waiting for warmer weather earlier this spring to set fruit and it never happened. Hopefully they will give me some fruit set next year. There is good reason to expect a decent second fruiting on the strawberries, as one bed is flowering profusely and has some fruit setting already. Now if I can just keep the slugs away long enough to pick ripe fruit! We are in a steady pattern of morning clouds/fog that burns off mid day to a bright afternoon with temps around 75 degrees. Not bad at all but not necessarily pushing the heat lovers along very quickly.
Reply Dan Owen
02:40 PM on July 31, 2010 
That looks almost like a commercial sized garden. Do you sell the extra produce? Thanks for the video's.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
04:59 PM on July 31, 2010 
Dan Owen - It is a good sized gardens by most standards. I view it as a suburban mini farm because it's purpose is to keep us supplied with vegetables and to a lesser extent soft fruits for the entire year. Occassionally I do get more production than we need, and I generally share that with friends, family, and co workers, but that really is not all that often as I generally plant in such a manner to produce surpluses for preserving (winter supply) and the rest is designed to provide a steady and varied diet of fresh food throughout the year. It takes more crops and output to actually supply a family with food for a year than most people imagine is needed. I have a pretty good feel now for what it takes to feed a family of three having done it for quite a few years now, but now I am going to have to adjust a bit since we are now a family of two adults (daughter recently moved to Pennsylvania in preparation for starting college there). I may have more surpluses in the future as a result, but I doubt it really... since I intend to add more fruit production and increase the production of dried beans etc. - both of which we purchase so I can back off of the amounts I purchase.
Reply DanO
05:57 PM on July 31, 2010 
Hey thanks for the response. I'll keep watching your blog and thanks for sharing!
Reply meemsnyc
07:34 PM on July 31, 2010 
Wow, I just watched your garden tour and your garden is absolutely amazing! I am so jealous!! How do you water everything? Do you use a garden hose, or do you have drip irrigation?

My blog:
http://nycgardening.blogspot.com/
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
11:10 PM on July 31, 2010 
Dan O - Hope you find your way here often!

meemsnyc - I use seep hoses on three of the beds - the tomato, tomato/zucchini, and a bed that has rhubarb and bush pie cherries. Seep or soaker hoses work best on beds that are planted up with items that stay there pretty much the entire season. Most of my beds though have at least two crops in them in a given year and are not as good a candidate for using the soaker style irrigation. The rest of the garden is watered using either an overhead sprinkler or by hand using a wand waterer.
Reply Sinfonian
03:05 AM on August 01, 2010 
Man I'm jealous of your tomatoes, mine are ALL flowers, no friut, yet. I'm not hopeful. Definitely going to do some stilitez next year. You've convinced me.

As for the cukes, I've always hand pollinated. Mostly because I have wasps in my garden area and no bee attracting plants.

Boy your hens look great. Glad to see they're so healthy and that you'll get eggs soon. Also glad to see they like your plant scraps.

Lastly, great to hear your daughter is off at college. You must be proud.
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
11:07 AM on August 01, 2010 
Sinfonian - I had pollinate a lot of things but cucumbers are so small that I try not to unless absolutely necessary. I guess it might be absolutely necessary this year (sigh). Amazingly enough, one of my chickens laid her first egg last night. Way ahead of the schedule and probably a one off at this point - but it appears the girls are coming of age. And yes, I am very proud of my daughter, but also very sad about her leaving home. Everything feels very empty and too quiet around the homestead now.
Reply Toni Parker
11:01 AM on August 02, 2010 
LOVED... LOVED... LOVED your garden tour!!!!

You have a FANTASTIC garden! I'm growing Royal Burgundy beans for the first time this year. They are so pretty!

Here in Wyoming we have a terrible time with grasshoppers! I so want chickens to help me! Next year!!!

Thanks for sharing your beautiful garden!
Reply kitsapfreedomgardener
10:22 PM on August 02, 2010 
Toni - Glad to see you! We used to have terrible grasshopper problems when I lived and gardened in central Washington (dry arid area). Now I deal with slugs. Each area has it pluses and minuses!