Is anyone growing veggies?

SO SO jealous!

We lucked out. We bought this house a year and a half ago, in February I believe. I had no idea what this tree was. It was an awesome surprise. It is massive. Maybe decades old. Last year I weighed and kept track of what I harvested. Over the course of six weeks it was more than 100 pounds! It’s a beast.

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So lucky! Figs!

We had a light frost the other night. The sweet potato vines bit the dust. The sweets are fine and will be yummy when I have a chance to dig them, but the vines are black. See the sweet potato? There’s more!
The rest of the garden weathered it well.


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Wow, so good to see all of these before-after pictures. I am learning at the moment, so I just read thru your posts.
I have only one small bed, and put some tomatoes there… which were grown, and now, the whole thing is crazy… all of those plants are too big, and moved out from the bed… so I need to figure out for next year :smiley:

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Sounds like you have great success with tomatoes, they can take over! Tomatoes need support…and usually much more than the wimpy tomato cages they sell you. Tomatoes can get wild. We grow ours up a string, we tie them up as they grow. This allows us to grow more in the space and easier picking. See that line of poles in my garden in a previous post. A small patch really benefits from vertical growing, peas, beans, even cucumbers can grow upward. And one I’ve never conquered, planting too close. Those starts are so small, they’ll never crowd each other out…right? :smiley:

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My attempts at growing tomatoes failed. Or that’s what I thought until I found this this morning:

This plant was growing very very slowly this spring but I didn’t remove it because it was difficult to reach. We’re having a warm and wet autumn and I guess this guy suddenly thought it was spring! It has grown very big in a short amount of time and there are even two tomatoes on it now.

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Fabulous! Congratulations!

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Whee, tomatoes. Our tomatoes suffered through a cool spring and then took off finally late July and into August. Between a slow start and a hot dry finish, it was a productive but odd year. We take a vacation every year on the first two weeks of August and often miss peak green bean and tomato season, so it was nice this year to stay at home and eat from the garden. And keep up with the weed for once.

We harvested sweet potatoes and regular red and russet potatoes. The new potato bed did not do well, I didn’t get straw down early enough and the drought was not kind to it. But the sweet potato bed and the volunteer regular potatoes from last year did very well. We cover the bed with black plastic in early May so it can warm up and then plant sweet potato slips around Memorial day in slits cut in the plastic. Well, this year both sweets and regulars came up like crazy. Last year the groundhog ate all the leaves off the sweet potatoes (which is why we moved the bed) while we were on vaca. Still had the groundhog, but sprays, traps, and watching and chasing paid off.

These are drying in the middle of the craft room floor. I’ll box and store in the basement this weekend. The sweets usually last until at least Christmas and the rest can last until spring. We don’t really have the right conditions to store them, the basement is too warm and the hatch way stairs often freeze things. Sigh, I would love a proper root cellar.

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Oops, and one very weird carrot!

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That is quite the haul!

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That’s a lot!!!

I know, anyone up for a roast veggie extravaganza? ONe my favorites is a huge pan of roast root veggies, and then a scrambled egg and left-over veggie breakfast the next day!

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I have a bunch of root veggies (plus a head of cabbage) that I am planning to roast up tonight. I’ll bag and freeze a lot of them, but roasted veggies over rice is dinner today, and probably lunch tomorrow!

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Oh, lol, that carrot!

We had the weirdest summer, it got hot quick & early which stunted a lot of the baby plants. Then we had pesty squirrels & a few burrowing insects. We did grow loads of tomatoes, big ones & cherries, red & yellow. We dehydrated a bunch & that was so fun, we ended up buying bushels of produce from the farmer’s market & drying jars & jars of food! It’s such a great storage solution. I did apples last, gosh, delish!

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I dehydrated soms things in the oven and it’s a great! Except it takes a long time. So I’m looking to buy a dehydrator soon. They were sold out over the summer because so many people have taken up gardening this year.

I harvested the last of the carrots today! All the small and sad looking ones. But they look pretty cute and I’m sure they’ll taste good.

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We dehydrated a lot this summer. My favorite was mushrooms. Have you ever done anything with carrot tops? I’ve not but I see folks on TV making pesto with them.

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I’ve never tried it either, but I know people are also adding it to soups and meat stews.

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Dehydrated pears are amazing, we meant to do peaches…it was an awesome peach year…but ate them or froze them all. Looking to do apples next. And has anyone tried kale? We have a forest of lovely kale. I love kale chips, but it’s like eating kale flavored air and disappears too fast for the effort.

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When I did a CSA and was overwhelmed with greens at the beginning, I pureed some and froze it for smoothies. But, I wish I had dehydrated them and then ground them up into a powder. It would have saved me space in the freezer!

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What do you use kale for? I would probably chop it and freeze it, but if you only use it for smoothies, making a powder is a great space saving idea. Personally, I don’t love the taste of canned kale.