Garden 2011

Salsa ingredients from the garden - tomatoes and hot peppers
Salsa ingredients from the garden - tomatoes and hot peppers
Now that 2011 is over and the garden has been long gone, I am finally getting around to showing it off. This year I did a few things differently than in past years. Instead of using black plastic, I used weed block, with mulch on top of it. This seemed to work quite well in keeping the garden from getting too warm. It also helped keep in the moisture, and did in fact block the weeds, except in the peripheral areas of the garden where I ran out of weed block. Maybe next year I will spend a few extra dollars to get a bit more.
Garden progress - putting mulch over the weed block
Garden progress - putting mulch over the weed block

I also experimented with alternating rows of tall plants (tomatoes) and short ones – herbs, eggplant, peppers, etc. This seemed to work fairly well. The tomatoes did very well this year. I was particularly happy with the Black Krim, which produced a fair amount of incredibly tasty fruit. The pineapple tomato barely produced anything, which was disappointing. All of the cherry tomatoes did very good as in past years. The eggplant didn’t end up producing much. They had lots of flowers, but I only got about one piece of fruit per plant. I’m not sure what I did wrong there. And the giant pumpkin produced one giant pumpkin – 92 pounds. Speaking of squash, I also had a couple volunteer patty pan squash from the year before. In addition to all the tomatoes, I tried an armenian cucumber, which tasted very good – a little crunchier than a gerkin. We also tried a tomatillo plant, which thrived, but when they were finally ready to be harvested, we were too busy to figure out what to do with them. Oh well.Time to start planning the 2012 garden.

I made a little chart of the garden, displaying approximately what I planted where. Hover over the name to get a more thorough description.

  Pepperanaheim   TomSweet 100   Herbparsley   Tomblack krim       TomBig Boy PepperHungarian Wax Pepper   TomChampion 2   PumpGiant pumpkin
                  EggFairy Tale       Herbbasil      
  Pepperanaheim   Tombrandy wine   Herbparsley   Tomladies first         PepperHungarian Wax Pepper   TomTomatillo    
                  EggBlack Beauty   TomSun Sugar   Herbbasil      
  Pepperjalapeno   TomSweet 100   Herbbasil   TomLemon Boy   EggBlack Beauty     PepperPoblano   TomEarly Girl    
Pepperholy mole         Herbbasil           TomSweet Chelsea          
  Pepperjalapeno   TomEarly Girl   Herbbasil   TomPineapple   CucArmenian Cucumber     PepperBanana Pepper Herbspruce basil TomSweet Chelsea    
                  SquPatty Pan Squash SquPatty Pan Squash            

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