Garden Reflections

My garden is something of an obsession. I love it. I spend a ton of time out there and love to watch things grow. This year has been something of a disappointment though in some aspects of the garden (not due at all to the fact that I was busy earlier this summer!) Our nasty month of June saw the demise of many plants. All that rain allowed the slugs a buffet of my recently sprouted seedlings. The flea beetles knocked out so many early greens and broccoli plants that it really irritated me a LOT. And then there was the whole case of tomato blight which knocked out all but two of the 50 plants we originally put in! And we bought some bigger blueberry bushes this year since the tiny one we planted last year are really about the same size and didn't even flower this year. We waited patiently for those berries to ripen, only to realize that they'd been swiped by some form of wildlife by the time they were ripe. Damn it.

But like all situations, there have been some highlights as well. We have 50 beautiful bulbs of garlic in the shed. And garlic happens to be my new favorite crop. The snow melted in the spring and the garlic was already out of the ground! We planted some onion seedlings (not sets) and leek seedlings that I got super cheap-o at the farmers' market and they have done FANTASTIC! Our tomatillos (never grown before) are incredibly cute - like paper lanterns for the spiders. We harvested a pretty good amount of potatoes that have been DELICIOUS. Our brussel sprouts look incredible. Our eggplants have been prolific and we've been enjoying quickly devoured trays of roasted eggplant out of the oven.

We planted strawberry plants this year and against all our instincts plucked the flowers to keep them from fruiting this summer, so that next summer we'll get more strawberries. But the crazy plants are still at it and we finally gave up and let them fruit. We've only eaten a few, but boy they were good! Hopefully next year we'll get a whole lot of love from them. Last year I put in some raspberry canes. We got a good handful this summer, but the most exciting thing is that the plants are FULL of fall raspberries. I can not wait for them to ripen! Our pear tree is full of pears that Makili couldn't reach.


And we've planted a whole bunch of new stuff in our greenhouse, hoping for a fall harvest!