Final Garden Update of 2015

Well, I'm almost 2 weeks into my 2-3 weeks of rest. I used some rest time this past week to do some yard work and clean up our garden.

We just wrapped up a successful 2nd year of growing veggies in our tiny garden. (Here's a link to some photos from the first year.) Below are some photos from throughout the summer of 2015. Any of the photos that are a "scrapbook" of multiple images are files that I Instagrammed throughout the summer.

May 9th: shortly after planting.


In the north box: zucchinis, cucumbers, peppers, and basil peppered in.


In the south box: peppers, tomatoes, basil, lavender, and rosemary.


Before a mid-May frost.


A month later. We also had a cherry tomato plant on our patio, and we transplanted some rhubarb
from the neighbor's yard (the home that's for sale - it was going to be dug up during landscaping).


July 1st: the cucumbers reached the top of the trellis.


July 7th: Charlie and I both got stung before we found a burrowing wasp nest
next to our garden. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THE QUEEN AT THE BOTTOM!


Harvesting a lot of cucumbers on July 12th (and then grilling tasty food).


Henry with 2 cukes a few days later...


… and 3 more cukes and 2 nice zucchinis.

Sometime in mid-July, we had a big storm come through and knock a lot of stuff down: all the peppers were tipped over, and the tomatoes fell too (including the one in the pot on the patio). It didn't seem to damage our yields, but it made everything ugly and harder to manage. (Like my body hair.) Next year, I'm going to cage our peppers, and do a better job with the tomato cages.

Early August. Note the big tomatoes tipped out of the planter box and into our neighbor's yard.
Also the pepper plant that looked so nice 2 photos above is now tipped over sideways.


A good harvest on Aug 13. (Along with an onion from my Mom's garden.)

Then, about a week ago, we did some final "green" veggie picking before a hard frost to close out the year. Here's Henry dancing around the garden last Thursday:

The cucumber vines were all dried up, and the tomato plants were more horizontal than vertical.


Final harvest: lots of tiny zucchinis, some final cukes, and a lot of green tomatoes.

Earlier this week, we pulled everything out:

Henry yanking on one of the tomato plants to pull it out.


Everything out except for the rosemary in the middle (which I want to pot and bring inside).
The zucchinis to the left were pulled out and set aside to dry up a bit.

Here's our final 2015 "harvest count" for our little 18" wide garden:

- "Early Girl" tomatoes: 33
- "Beefmaster" tomatoes: 22
- Cherry tomatoes: 97 (but my wife ate a LOT off the plant without keeping good count, so it's probably more like 120+)
- Cucumbers: 50
- Zucchinis: 16
- Yellow peppers: 9
- Red peppers: 1
- Orange peppers: 1 (Squirrels/bunnies got a lot of our red and orange peppers as they ripened.)
- Lots of basil
- Final end-of-season picking yielded 28 more tomatoes ("early girl" and "beefmaster"), 7 small zucchinis, and 4 red/orange peppers.

Oh, and I used up most of those final tiny zucchinis 2 nights ago by sautéing them with garlic salt, rosemary, and some parmesan cheese. We ate them on top of lasagna:

So I'll cage the peppers and tomatoes better next year, and MAYBE do more with containers on the patio, but otherwise we'll plan on doing something similar in 2016. Happy Fall!