Lately we’ve been eating homegrown broccoli, strawberries, blackberries, and chard. It still blows my mind how delicious *truly* fresh food is. The bulk of our produce comes from our wonderful CSA, Horton Road Organics, but I think next year we’ll have to split a share with another family; despite some, uhh, learning experiences, I’m thrilled that our little experimental plots around the property have started giving us so much food.
The sweet corn is taking off nicely:
…and a few hundred yards away (to avoid interpollination) we are growing some ‘old fashioned’ or ‘Indian’ corn – the multicolored stuff that’s more commonly used for flour, grits, etc.
We had sooooo many radishes that many were left to go to seed, which will give us a chance to learn about seed saving. The plants are about 5′ tall now, with these seedpods on the top:
The tomatoes were started in peat pellets, and did OK inside the shed for a while. I planted them at three times, since everything we’re doing here is very much an experiment. The ones planted first got frozen and never recovered, and the last batch is sort of recovering from being rootbound in the little starter pots, but the middle batch have taken off and are starting to fruit:
I’ve started about 20 “Sherazi” tobacco plants, but it will be a long time before I see how that works out because proper curing is a year-long process:
What could be yummier than fresh sweet basil?
OK, maybe blackberries, which are just starting to fruit all over the place:
There are random sunflowers here and there…I think I’ll grow some on purpose next year and see if we can get seeds to eat:
The apples keep growing and growing…it’s hard to wait for them!
The plum tree has a few small plums going:
…a bunch of the fruit trees aren’t producing in the volume I’d like to see, and I suspect we haven’t had the irrigation on often enough OR that cutting the grass right up to the trees was a mistake…the apple trees that have big bunches of bee-attracting wildflowers next to them have way more fruit.
[UPDATE] Teri identified these, they’re “Oregon Grapes”:
Finally, here’s a few of this week’s random flowers out in the front yard:
