With the threat of a possible hurricane, not to mention a dearth of free time, looming, I decided to pick the last of the veggies from the garden. I thought there might be a tomato or two, but wasn’t quite prepared to find this quantity:
In fact, I can’t even claim credit for most of them, as they planted, tended and otherwise took care of themselves. I found three tomato plants that I had not planted growing in the old compost bin down at the bottom of the garden. They had obviously sewn from seeds thrown out with the compost and were interwoven with the chicken wire covering the bins. At the bottom of the plants were several sprays of rather large fruit. One of the plants was evidently cherry tomato in variety. All-in-all, a nice surprise. Sum total of this final round of harvest – about two gallons of tomatoes and almost the same quantity of snow-peas:
I planted a second batch of snow-peas at the end of July and ignored them utterly, which seems to work for me. We’ve been eating them for a couple of weeks now. I finally decided to just pick the rest and have done with it, as I feared the high winds might damage them or that we might forget about them and the crop would be wasted. So it looks like we’ll be eating snow-peas for a few meals this week….. and next…..
Raising the Bar Strength & Conditioning 
wow what a great crop of tomatoes ! and peas 🙂
enjoy the rest of the week 🙂
I’m new to the whole ‘gardening thing’ but I decided to give tomatoes a try this year. I started off tending frequently but by the end of the summer they were rather neglected. To my surprise and against all odds, this fall I have harvested enough to make enough tomato sauce to take me through the winter… it was success enough to make me want to raly the forces and see what a diligent effort can produce next year.
If you can wrangle it, I’d suggest really putting some effort into soil prep and composting. I went to one of the local ice cream parlours and got a few dozen three gallon plastic ice cream tubs. We parcel them out to friends and collect them once filled. Adding a layer of compost, followed by a layer of peat, to our bin steadily fills it up. The resulting dirt is incredible.
The other thing I do for most of the beds is start the foundation off with a bottom layer of mostly rotted manure (sheep is best, if you can get it), followed by peat and compost mixed with dirt.
Next summer, in addition to tomatoes, zucchini and snowpeas, I’m going to neglect pumpkin, a couple of other kinds of winter squash, beans, and exotic potatoes. And elephant garlic. In fact, I should plant that soon…..
But the compost is the key. Next year I might try watering things, too.
When i saw the weather forecast this morning, i thought of you! Batten down the hatches and i hope things go safely for you!
There’s a self-help gardening book in here somewhere.
I like the new look of the blog.
Lush images these. I do enjoy compost ( can I say that in a blog!?). There is something so basic about making it and then spreading it on the garden.
Oh BTW in case I haven’t already said it Thankyou so much for adding SecretHill to your Links.
If anyone can explain to a basically 19 century blogger how to enter the 21st C and install some gizmo on her laptop that would enable her to keep uptodate when kind people add her site to their blogs..I would be v. grateful!
New header – Breaking surf is better than the street scene.