Wahsega Valley Farm

Beans, peppers, squash, okra...

Here's a quick garden update for the garden watchers. I'm working on a hair update as well for my long hair friends and also a general life update. I've been super busy, so today it's mostly pictures of how my garden is doing.

First off, here is what I picked yesterday after work. This is the second basket of goodies and the first was bigger. What you see are Rattlesnake pole beans (prolific!), hot banana peppers on the left, sweet banana peppers on the right, some okra (must have waaaaay more plants next year), jalapeno peppers, and some grape tomatoes.

Here is a baby buttercup squash. I just about had a fit of joy when I saw this guy. It's about the size of a flattened softball right now, I'd say.

And check out this Delicata squash! It's one of my most favorite winter squashes, so I'm pretty excited to see it doing so well.

Here is a whole family of them!

The Rattlesnake pole beans are going crazy and I need to pick them nearly every day just to keep up. I might let some of them dry and toss the pods and just use the dried beans.

Here are beans I cooked night before last. I decided to roast them with olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar, sliced onions and garlic. They were good!

 

These two cuties are baby Emerald Gem melons... sorta like cantaloupes. They're starting to pop out all over. You can even see a tiny one just starting out to the right.

 

 Here's a maturing lemon cucumber.

And finally, my basil plants this year... left to right: cinnamon, Thai and sweet basil.

The garden is doing quite well considering a few things lacking this year. I really can't wait until next year when I can put more time into it and and grow more things. We only used about two thirds of our garden area this year... we just didn't have the time to plant more.

Herb garden planning

I'm thinking about what I want to grow in my herb garden and where to put it in relation to my veggie garden. I want herbs for cooking, medicinal purposes, skin and hair concoctions and tea making. And others just because they are so pretty and the bees will love them. At about the same time I plant my herb garden I'd like to set up our beehives. But I'm having a hard time finding a bee class right now. I've got books and articles and have done a lot of research, but would very much like to take a class or find someone who can advise.

I'm also trying to decide what style of herb garden I want to set up. Should it be a cottage garden with plants all intermingled and flowing into each other... something like this?  

 
Or one more structured one, like this? 

 
Or this?

 
Not sure yet, but it'll be fun figuring it out.

I've got a growing list of the herbs I want to grow - and there are quite a few. Right now I have a few left over from my little deck garden from last year and I think they'll be much happier out of their pots where their roots can run wild. Here they are just starting to come back out this year:

Included are catnip, basil, several oreganos, mint, one I can't identify, and 6 jalapeno pepper plants I picked up for the veggie garden since I didn't get any seeds this year. And three pots that have no life left in them (... just thought I'd give them plenty of time to make an appearance y'know.)

And for fun, I planted some coleus and impatiens last weekend to add some color to our new deck at the cabin. They'll be overflowing the pots in no time, looking really pretty.

I think it's supposed to rain this weekend, so am not sure about getting our garden fence up. Bummer. The cucumbers really need to get into the ground soon! I've already transplanted them into bigger pots, and I'm not sure they'll appreciate any explanation about why they will remain bound another week. Here's how they were looking two weeks ago:

In addition to all our plant planning, we are now checking out chicken coop designs and plans. We've not seen one we like yet, but I am quite sure that Mike will come up with something just right right out of his head.

Happy Friday everyone!