Vegetables are Growing: Pride (and Shame) at Our Helping Hands Plot

I've been really absorbed (and perhaps a bit lost) in a lot of goings-on lately, with children, work, cooking, gardening, trying to spend time with my husband, and bracing for some big lifestyle changes that are coming at us over the next year or so.  It seems to me that summer might not always be the most productive period for this little blog, but I wanted to share a few photos from our community garden plot (and a half) as the season is now really underway.

You can tell by those super long shadows that it is pretty late in the evening!  My plot is the one at the back just beyond the wheelbarrow.  The plot in the middle is one of the food pantry plots, and this one in the foreground is a plot I am sharing with my sister.  Her seeds were just recently planted on the left, and I planted some seriously discounted late-in-the-season eggplant, Roma tomatoes, and canteloupe transplants on the right-hand side, then surrounded them with wood chips.

This is a view of my beloved plot.  Those trellises are for pumpkin, butternut squash, and zucchini.  I realize that they are likely not big enough and may not work, but it was my first year and I was trying to cram as many plants into a small plot as was humanly possible.  I'll let you know how it goes!  Note the un-mulched section on the right.  I'll give a close up of it next  (this is where the shame comes into the post)...

OK so this is my weed patch, otherwise known as the section I planted spinach, swiss chard, carrots, broccoli, and herbs.  Why does it look like I am nurturing lambsquarters, dandelions, and some random feral-oregano-type-herb-intruder?  Well, when it was tilled this year (the very first time in probably ever since the park was established) there were a lot of small clods of sod left in the garden.  I took the biggest ones out, but left the smaller ones to (a) keep some biological matter in the soil to break down and (b) when I took the clods out I lost a lot of dirt that I wanted for planting.  Unfortunately, since most of these weeds are attached to the clods, when I pull a weed out I get a big old chunk of garden with it.  I didn't want to disturb the seeds, so I sort of let the weeds go crazy.  No I really have to spend some serious time with it since my other plants are barely coming up and having to compete with some much tougher garden companions.  Oops.

Clockwise from top left: zucchini, bush pickle cucumber, butternut squash, and pumpkin.  What is the deal with bush pickle (from the name, I would assume it is supposed to grow like a BUSH) being all vine-y and not bushlike at all?  Now I am realizing I squished it in between peas and eggplant because I thought it would grow up, not out.  Lesson learned.  The pumpkin is doing really well, the zucchini not so awesome but those transplants were in need of a little love when I bought them, and my precious organic butternut squash that I grew from seed and looked like it would die a terrible, lonely, neglected death, have come back and are doing really well, even if they are smaller than the others.  Yay!

It's like "Where's Waldo" looking for desirable plants in the weed patch, but here are some broccoli, swiss chard, spinach, peas (actually they're not lost in that patch, they're being smothered by non-bush-like bush pickle cucumbers farther down) and some precious little carrot seedlings.

Exciting and healthy!  Eggplant (first time growing, probably will be my first time eating, actually) and I love those fuzzy leaves!  Tomatoes: planted better boy, lemon boy, beefsteak and Roma and they all look super happy and are growing well; red bell peppers, and corn.  Fun!  I don't care if the corn doesn't do well but thought it would be fun to try and it'll be one of very few veggie varieties the children will actually eat.

Wheelbarrow with my poor little guy's snow shovel in it.  His real little shovel is at my parents' cottage, so he had to make do with this less-than-efficient one when helping me shovel shavings into the wheelbarrow and then onto the garden beds.  Do you appreciate the edge of my finger in the corner of the shot?  I thought so.  Bet you wish you could take stellar photos like I can!

Dancing gardener boy is still excited after a long hour of hard work and dances his way home to bed.  I love this little helper!

This post is shared with the Little House in the Suburbs Linky, The Homestead Barn Hop #70 on Homestead Revival and Frugal Days, Sustainable Days.

Planting My Plot at Helping Hands

Yesterday was our big kick-off, advertised for fun, snacks, games and gardening at 3 pm.  All week the weather forecast for Saturday had a high of about 18 and sunny.  Then, two days before the big day, the weather was 18, sunny, with cloudy periods.  The night before, cloudy, with a slight chance of showers in the afternoon.  Yesterday morning, I got up, and the forecast was still iffy on the showers, probably scattered and light, but the forecast for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia was rain all around and I knew we wouldn't be that lucky to escape it.

Needless to say, it rained and rained and rained all afternoon.  And there was definitely no large, enthusiastic crowd at Helping Hands for our big opening day.  But a few of us hardy souls showed up and made the most of it!  (One even made an extremely brief appearance with her family to drop off fresh-from-the-oven banana chocolate chip muffins.  Thanks Andrea!)  I used the opportunity to plant the rest of my family's plot.  Friday night, after a day of small child stubbornness and blessed but tiring parenting, I got about 45 glorious minutes of planting to start my plot, all by myself, in the evening calm.  I got 32 square feet of 100 square feet planted with spinach, swiss chard, carrots, broccoli, parsley, dill, and summer savoury.  For the kick-off I went back and did almost the rest of it--I forgot the pea seeds, and I am waiting to root a few basil cuttings rather than growing them from seed.

The photos are pretty terrible, because it was pouring rain and I was soaked, muddy, cold, hungry, and in a rush.  I promise I'll post some artfully-taken ones as things develop through the season, but I'm so excited to have my long-awaited vegetable garden that I am posting them anyway!

I'll start with my planting plan (which I have almost perfectly stuck to):

The whole, obsessively planned and drawn, planting plan.

So there's a little overlap here, but you can get the gist of it.  I left out the cilantro, mostly because I accidentally planted summer savoury seeds in the cilantro holes, then felt absolutely fine with it because I don't like cilantro anyway.  Also, my much-loved San Marzano seedlings ended up not doing so well, so I left them out.  Sniff.

A blurry shot of red peppers, eggplant (hugged by marigolds), and bush pickle cucumber.

From left to right: Roma, Beefsteak, Lemon Boy, and Better Boy.  I SO hope these do well!  I know I could do better than tomato cages but they were 60 cents each and easy to install in the rain.  We'll see how it goes, and I'll modify next year likely.

Difficult to decipher photo of butternut squash, pumpkin, and sugar baby watermelon planted around teepee trellises.  Again, this is my first time growing squash/melon vertically, and we'll see what happens.  I used 8' 2"x2" pieces of untreated wood, lashed together at the top by zip ties, and buried between about 1- 1 1/2 feet.

Corn.

My darling, pride-of-my-summer community garden bed.

 One highlight: the Journal Pioneer showed up with a camera to document us, covered in mud and soaked to the bone, but happy, planting pumpkins, raking, and digging in the bed.  I think he even got my Jamers in the photo.  Keep your eyes peeled this week for our photo!

Shared with Homestead Barn Hop #65