Starting Garden 2013

We most likely will be moving this summer.  Possibly as soon as sometime in June.  Still, this past Wednesday I decided that I still wanted a garden.  We may not move till August, or even September, or not at all!  And, if that is the case I want my garden all summer.  If we do end up moving sooner than that, then I will just be leaving a beautiful garden to the next tenants and hopefully they will enjoy it as much as I do.

Since it is possible that we will only be here a short time I am going to focus on plants that will produce faster, and stay away from things like winter squash that won't be ready until October.  I will be planting peas, lettuce, cucumber, zucchini (because you can't have a summer garden without zucchini!), broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, potatoes (this variety said they will be ready around 75 days in stead of the normal 100!), and pole beans.

I decided on Wednesday that I still wanted a garden. Thursday our friend came over and tilled the area. Friday and Saturday I have been marking and forming rows, pulling weeds from around the edges, and today at the end of the day I was able to plant a few things as well. Because I don't know how long we will be living here I will try to get things in the ground as fast as I can this year.  The past two years it has taken me a few weeks to plant the whole garden.

In the picture you can see some things already growing in the garden. Along the blue barn are our asparagus, the dark green on the left is Swiss chard, and next to it is garlic that I planted in October.

Volunteer Squash

Last year we grew a variety of squash.  At the end of the season a lot of them ended up in the compost pile because they either rotted, molded in the basement because I was pregnant and not in the mood to make it.  So, this year, our old compost pile grew a lot of volunteer squash.  Here are some pictures of the random mutant fruit we have in the garden.

This pumpkin looks a lot like the Cinderella Pumpkins we grew last year, but I have never seen one so yellow!

 This also looks like the Cinderella Pumpkin....

These are just small pumpkins. (we didn't grow any small pumpkins last year, so who knows what combination this came from)

These are my favorite 'mutant' squash.  They have the coloring of the Delicata Squash, but they are shaped like pumpkins.  

I am not planning on eating any of these.  We have plenty of other winter squash.  I just thought it was fun to see what these volunteer plants grew.  Most likely the small pumpkins will be table decorations and the large ones will look good on the front porch.