Vegetable Garden

Ordering Seed

We don't pledge to be "Organic". I'm not against planting a hybrid. And, I do use commercial fertilizer.

That being said, I do plant a lot of heirloom vegetables. I rarely use pesticides or herbicides, but if the bugs are winning I will break out what is needed to 'rectify the situation'! I do a lot of 'companion planting' to try to keep the bugs at bay naturally. For instance, I always plant basil or marigolds inbetween each of my tomato plants. It seems to work because I have very few tomato worms since I've been doing that. Along with the commerical fertilizer, I also use compost from our compost pile - all kitchen waste, yard waste and manure from the barn - good stuff! I guess my motto when it comes to fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides is "everything in moderation".

I spent the weekend ordering my seeds for the garden this year. I start all my own tomatos, peppers, herbs, and cole crops indoors. We like to try a variety of heirloom vegetables that you can't typically buy at the nursery.

I won't bore you with everything I ordered this year, but here are the tomatoes and peppers I am planning on growing this year. Yes, there are a lot of them. I typically plant 100 tomato plants each year and 80 pepper plants. Do we eat ALL of it? No - but I like to experiement with different varieities. Some do really well, others are a complete flop. F1 means hybrid, H means heirloom:

Tomatoes: Bush Early Girl (F1), New Girl (F1), Souix (H), Beauty (H), Rugers (H), Opalka (H), BHN 589 (F1), Pruden's Purple (H), JTO-99197 (F1), and Martino's Roma (H). I plant Opalka every year - very large, awesome paste tomato, indeterminate. I also plant Pruden's Purple every year - technically they are a pink tomato; commonly over a pound - TALL plants. I planted the Martino's Roma for the first time last year - marvelous roma tomato that made really good tomato sauce. Definately worth planting again. PROLIFIC!

Peppers: Sweet - X3R Red Knight (F1) (my fave bell pepper); X3R Sweet Spot (F1) first try with this banana pepper - I'm on a mission to find the perfect banana pepper; Jimmy Nardello - plant every year, LOVE this pepper, long, skinny, very sweet; Pritavit Hybrid; and Trinidad Perfume - planted 2 years ago. Kind of a different little pepper. And Chervena Chushka - LOVE this very sweet, thick walled pepper - a yearly must have.

Hot Peppers: Leutschauer Paprika, Orchid (supposedly gets 5' tall!), Hot Lemon and Ancho (yearly must haves), and Big Chile Hybrid.

Now on to the Dried Beans. We plant a lot of these. Yum. You can't find these in the grocery store! We rotate through the following, and occasionally add a new one if it looks interesting: Yellow Stueben, Jacob's Cattle, Wrens Egg, Hidatsa Shield Figure, Christmas Lima (a yearly must), Swedish Brown, Soldier, Calypso, Black Coco, and Low's Champion. We save seed each year and replant from what we saved. There are so many different colors and they all are unique in their qualities and histories.

Berries

We Love Berries

From the end of May/early June all the way until the first frost, there is SOME sort of berry ready to be picked here. Following is what we have, sort of in ripening order:

Strawberries (Earliglow, Honeoye, Cavendish, Cabot, several others)

Red Currants (Rovada and unknown variety that was here) - make really good jelly.

Red Raspberries (Killarney, K81-6 and an unknown old variety that was here when we moved in)

Purple Raspberries (Royalty)

Black Raspberries (Jewel)

Black Currants (Ben Sarek and Ben Lomond) - Black Currants with Red Raspberries make a killer jam!

Yellow Raspberries (Anne)

Blackberries (Chester Thornless, Prime Jim, Prime Jan) - going to rip out the Prime varieties. They have nasty thorns. The Chester plants actually produce more then enough for us. Will replace the Prime plants with another thornless variety - definately the way to go in my humble opinion.

We tried Tayberries for a few years, but ended up ripping them out. Incredibly long canes with thorns from you-know-where. And, I'm not a novice when it comes to thorns. But the thorns on these were like none I've ever seen. Just plain nasty. Finally decided it wasn't worth the pain!

I am working on ripping out the Cavendish strawberries. They just don't work well on our heavy ground. They sit very low on the plant and lay right on the ground. If we have a wet spring, then these tend to rot before they ripen. I am very happy with the Honeoye & Ealiglow though. They are tall plants that hold the berries higher off the ground. They do much better for me here.

Fruit Trees

All Kinds - Old and New

There were 3 established peach trees, 1 Bartlett Pear and 1 old apple tree on the property when we moved here. I had always wanted my own little orchard, so we planted one.

My dad ran across an orchard in Michigan that was being bought out by another orchard. The new owners were going to bulldoze the dwarf heirloom trees (gasp!) that had been planted 2 years prior and replace them with full size trees. They were free to whoever wanted to dig them out with the shovel and take them home. Needless to say, I came home with 38 fruit trees crammed into my mini van. Plus, I had ordered 20 some trees from nurseries before I knew about this 'free tree opportunity'. So, all in all, we have about 60 trees in my new 'little' orchard now!

Apple Trees - Most of these are old heirlooms: Dutchess of Oldenberg, Pink Pearl, Honey Crisp, Stark Jumbo, Corail, Double Red Jonathon, Pound Sweet, Wealthy, Gala, Cox's Orange Pippen, Zestart!, Wolf River, Early Blaze, Chenango Strawberry, Hidden Rose, Yellow Transparent, Redfield, and Yellow Newton Pippen. Most of these I only have 1 or 2 trees of.

Pear Trees - Bartlett, Bosc, Harrow Delight, Harvest Queen, Seckel, Yellow Huffcap (Perry Pear)

Peach Trees - Red Haven, Glohaven

Cherry Trees - Emperor Francis, Rainier, Black York

Apricot Trees - Harcot, Hargrand

Quince - Pineapple, Orange, Symrna (I have them but I don't know what to do with them!)

Asian Pears - Shinseiki, Shinsui

Other Edibles

Asparagus & Rhubarb

There also was a small patch of aspargus on the property, which inspired me to plant more. After years of picking asparagus in Michigan as a kid, you'd think I'd had enough of the stuff. But, now I love it. We have 3 established rows planted, about 75 crowns, which is more then we can keep up with in the spring. I don't think there is anything much better then freshly picked asparagus for dinner in the early spring.

The rhubarb just is not doing as well as it should be for some reason. But, we have several plants of it. It's enough to make several pots of Rhubarb Sauce in the spring.

Garden & Orchard Notes

We plant a HUGE garden. It's really bigger then we can manage, but we can't seem to stop ourselves. I can and freeze for us, my mom and my grandma so the garden is feeding at least three families. There are actually four gardens ranging in size from 30'x80' to 30'x150'. Yes - I pretty much live out there pulling weeds and hoeing in the summer.

Most of the excess goes to the chickens. They have a great time pecking the seeds of out overgrown summer squash and tomatoes.

We tend to plant a lot of varieties of tomatoes, peppers and dried beans.

I can't remember the last time I bought a jar of spaghetti sauce or canned/frozen veggies from the store. I can or freeze just about everything - beans (green, romano, lima), beets, corn, tomato juice, whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, chili sauce, salsa, relish, red pepper sauce, peas, swiss chard, squash, etc. I also make tons of jams and jellies from all the berries and fruit we have. And, if you have never had home canned peaches, you are missing out on a real treat! I think canning is becoming a lost art, which is a shame. It's so nice to know where your food is coming from that you feed to your family.

What do you think? Was this helpful at all? If you are curious about anything or have questions, feel free to send me an email.