An Experiment in Scotch

I haven’t writ­ten much about the gar­den of late and since I’ve got noth­ing else on a Sun­day, I fig­ured some pic­tures were in order.

This first one is the view of our gar­den which has been quite a suc­cess this year, par­tic­u­larly if you like yel­low squash and zuc­chini. In the far back­ground, there are three tomato plants, one roma, one BHN 444 and one heir­loom black tomato. They are all over 6 feet tall and with the excep­tion of the heir­loom, are all loaded with toma­toes. There is a row of jalapeno pep­pers on the other side of the toma­toes, out of view that are just start­ing to pro­duce. The two rows are black eye peas, one #5 Cow­pea and one Crow­der of unknown ori­gin. Between the peas and the toma­toes is a row of extremely dis­ap­point­ing pep­pers, all but one of which was use­less this year. The ser­rano is the only plant out of 5 that pro­duced anything.

Off to the left is a mish mash includ­ing Mex­i­can oregano, win­ter thyme (both of which are get­ting trans­planted next year), spaghetti squash and the afore­men­tioned yel­low squash. One thing I’ve learned is that I don’t like yel­low squash enough to grow it. Next year, we’ll replace it with cucum­bers. At the extreme left is a very pro­duc­tive zuc­chini plant and a black berry bush. At the right, along the rab­bit fence and grow­ing on the trel­lis is luffa, or chi­nese okra. It’s exactly what it sounds like, the gourd that pro­duces luffa sponges. When it’s young, you can slice it and fry it though we didn’t try that last year. We still have a luffa sponge from last year that’s hold­ing up pretty well.

In the fore­ground, we have the next crop com­ing up, water­mel­ons. I’ve never grown water­mel­ons and in real­ity, don’t have the room but I didn’t want to leave the ground fal­low after the onions and gar­lic came up so I decided to give the mel­ons a chance. We already have 5, one of which you can see below.

At our next house, I’d like to have a plot about 4 times this big and work towards sup­ply­ing enough fruits and veg­gies to last 3 sea­sons. I’m learn­ing a lot with this lit­tle trial gar­den and for the most part, it’s been pretty suc­cess­ful this year.