Second Planting!!

Our garden is doing GREAT!!!!  We lost a few lettuces, collard and cabbage plants but... we have replaced them and look forward to a plemtiful and abundant harvest.

Bed 2, red sails and romaine!

The Lettuce should be ready in the next two weeks and if they are anything like the spring, I cant wait!!! Behind what looks like a tree at the back of the bed, we will plant some Mesculn lettuce mix.  The 'Tree"  is an African Blue Basil Plant that has attracted every 'BEE' in Columbia to our garden.

Red cabbage, Basil and Watermelon, OH MY!!!

 
The Collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts will be ready for Thanksgiving.  I will begin posting recipes for healthy, but good, Thanksgiving dishes soon.

The Watermelons will not have time to fully ripen before the frost so... we will be pulling them up.  Don't fret, We will plant more Collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, OH MY!!!!

We also want to plant spinach and Swiss chard and stagger the planting of our greens so that we will have them through the new year!

Check out our salad dressing page for delicious, healthy dressings and and if there are any late eggplant or peppers, check out that recipe page and FIRE UP THE GRILL!!!!!

Year Round Vegetable Gardening Symposium 2011-1

Ed

 

 

Ed's front yard, year round  garden!

 
Our Partner, Ed Brogdon of  Back to Eden, held a Symposium on Year Round Vegetable Gardening on September 17 at the North Main Library. 

 Ed planted the seeds to put us in the mindset to plant and harvest year round!  He also left us with a wealth of knowledge concerning soil, fertilizers, spring and fall crops and doggonit, we just had FUN!

We will be at his next Symposium and if you missed this one, you should make plans to be at the next one too!!

More Lettuces and a "Stray"

The cool weather is GREAT for our lettuces!

Buttercrunch, Red Buttercrunch and a "Stray"

We added 8 Red Buttercrunch plants and 4 "stray" Buttercrunch on August 7 (our "stray "was accidentally left in the trunk of the car on the 5th.  It was perky and unharmed!) 

Red Romaine

We added more Red romaine plants!

  All plants were watered and all are looking good!!!

Starting to Plant For Fall!!

Fall planting!!!  We plan to have 2 ½ beds of lettuce and we will fill the rest with veggies!

Bed 1 Buttercrunch, Red Sails and Tat Soi

On August 5th we planted Buttercrunch, Red Buttercrunch and Red Sails Lettuce.  We also planted the Tat Soi seeds we saved from the lettuce we planted last spring. 

Romaine and Red Romaine

We also planted  12 lettuce 9 Red Romaine Lettuces.  We will fill out this bed with Mesclun lettuce mix.  We look forward to lettuce by the end of September. 

Bed 3 Four Georgia Collards up front. 

 Linda Planted a bed of lettuce form the seeds we saved from the spring plantings.  We also have four of our Georgia Collards planted in the front of the bed. The two green plants on the middle right and the left rear corner are "Volunteers" left over from Spring!!

Bed 4 Broccoli Collards up front, Georgia Top Collards in back

Along with the Lettuce we planted two types of collard greens

Bed 5 Brussels Sprouts and Broccoli

We have 16 Brussels Sprouts plants and 8 Broccoli.  Can't wait for the first Roasted Brussels Sprouts... YUMMMMMM!!! (The tall plant in the back is our Okra.  It is still producing and we hope to have Okra until the first frost.) 

Bed 5 Close up of Okra Plant

Bed 6Basil bush, Red and Green Cabbage, Watermelon

The Basil and the watermelon grew like wild fire after we prepped the beds with "Compost" material on August 6.  The Red and Green Cabbage are in the rows up front. We plan to plant more Cabbage and Brussels Sprouts when we take the Watermelon Vines up.  

Bed 6 Crimson Sweet

Bed 6Missouri Heirloom Yellow Watermelons

We will be planting more throughout September, look to hear how we are doing on Monday!!

Let's Catch Up!

I know it has been a long time and so much has happened.  Spring planting went well.  Our lettuce bed was spectacular!! Black Footed Simpson, Buttercrunch, Red Romaine, Winter Density and Tat Soi made for a wonderful salad mix.  Made believers out of us! The lettuce was so good; I refused to put store bought salad dressing on it! I just cannot bring myself to buy lettuce in the bag again. 

Our tomatoes were , hummmm, just OK.  We Had Ed Brogdon, of Back to Eden, help us out.  He let us know that we did not have enough compost so our tomatoes were mal-nourished, the yield was scant.  The Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes were somewhat prolific and we had a few Cherokee Purples and Green Zebra’s.  The ones we had were delicious and all were good enough to plant again next year!

We don’t want to talk about the squash.  After having beautiful, lush green plants with bright yellow blossoms, the squash began to turn yellow and wilt.  We fell prey to the Squash Borer.  That is a nasty little varmint that literally sucks the life out of the plant.  It seemed they between the Squash Borer and the Squash Bug, none of the gardeners had a decent squash crop.  We will either plant very early next year or not at all. 

The white and green Cucumbers were wonderful, again the yield was off due to poorly augmented soil, but this was a learning experience for us.  

None of the beans did well, but that will not deter us from planting again next year.

 Ed put us in touch with the Bright Morningstar Horse Ranch in Blythewood, SC.  Ranch manager, James Smith arranged for us to scoop some poop!  On August 6, Gordon’s Gardeners went out to the right Morningstar Ranch in Blythewood, SC and we up three pickup trucks full of poop to augment our soil for our fall planting.  We can’t thank Ed, James and the Bright Morningstar Ranch enough!

We loaded six beds with our bounty.  Three weeks later, the Okra plants had grown at least two feet and the scrawny little basil plant is a bush.  The African Blue Basil covers the entire bed!  We are so excited for the fall planting!  

Our partnership with Azeez Mustafa, the first and largest African American organic farm in the state of South Carolina had given us some creds!   We are now producing members of SCF Organic Farms, a cooperative of farms based in Sumter SC.   We look to be certified Organic before the end of the year.