June 2010 Garden

Fast forward to a month later at the end of June and here are some updates on the backyard garden, things were finally starting to get growing!!!

This is my potato experiment where I planted 3 of my purple seed potatoes in this flexible tote with holes drilled in the bottom. As the plants grew I just added more soil to the tote.
After they flowered I actually ended up getting these tomato looking like fruits which I found out later are poisonous to eat and usually don't appear, they need just the right conditions to form. These fruits actually have the lots of tiny potato seeds.

This was another one of my patio experiments, I planted 2 small sugar pumpkins in this large pot and added a small trellis for them to climb. I actually was able to grow 2 small cantaloupe sized pumpkins! I plan on growing these again this year but in the garden.

Here's the 4x4 bed after the broccoli was done, the kale ended up going all the way into fall which was awesome! The peas were amazing! This was the first year I grew them and will definitely grow them again this year but in the 8x4 bed so I get more of them. I actually had some garlic and onions in the cells to the left which were alright but this year I'm going to make a conscious effort to grow a full bed of garlic.

Pea close up shot, these are the Homesteader (Lincoln) midseason peas.

Here's the 8x4 raised bed which was in full tilt. The zucchini and mystery squash, which ended up being a calabash or bottle gourd. I didn't attempt to eat them but they are edible. There are some green bush beans in here too which I plan on planting again this year along with some free marigold seeds I grew that I got at the Canada Blooms convention in Toronto.

Close up of the mini bell peppers, I had a few that turned orange but we ate most of them green.

The perennial garden was getting full too, the raspberries were sending up lots of new shoots and I planted some runner beans on poles in the back.

Finally, this was a new garden addition that I put in the summer, this is my hosta garden. I wasn't sure how well things would grow back here since I thought it would be too shady for most things, hence the hosta garden, but to my surprise things thrived back here! This where I'm going to just let the pumpkins run wild and see what they do.