The Garden Chronicles

Some of you may have noticed that there not been much to say about the garden this yea.  A consequence of there almost wasn't a garden this year.  

All of this is a result of timing a European family vacation precisely during the critical three week window of planting and establishing a garden in our already short growing season.  And then there were the critters.  What I did plant the birds and ground squirrels while I was in England.  They ate my peas, my expensive sweet potato slips uniquely suited to our growing zone.  They ate the lettuce and radish plants too.  And the weeds took-over.  Thankfully a neighbor had my potted stock to tend until we returned from overseas.

Returning home, I weeded the entire shebang, replanted radishes, peas, four varieties of lettuce, four types of herbs, four sweet pepper plants and a dozen tomato plants.  The critters dug-up and ate a huge row of peas, one Italian parsley plant, three pepper plants, all the lettuce, and two of the tomato plants.  The weeds returned.

GAAAHHH!

What is left is doing OK, protected by cages, and I even picked some radishes this week.

I did not plant anything else as I was significantly behind schedule with a garden half-way between the equator and the north pole.  Fortunately, there are reserves of canned and frozen garden goodness in the basement bunker.

And it you can believe it there is this.

A massive tomato plant that emerged on its own from the composter.  It is ginormous.  The tomato plant that ate Toledo!  Not willing to kill it (just yet anyway) I want to see what manner of fruit it yields, if any.

Vive le Jardin Magnifique!