Thank goodness for the broccoli starts though! They’re cheering me immensely, even though there are so many I can’t think of what we’re going to do with the extra. If they produce all at once, some will end up at the local food bank and some might end up with the neighbors. Hopefully before we get too sick of the dark green goodness. Fortunately peas and broccoli are our staples for the summer stir fries, so we’ll sauce them up and eat like kings.

As for the beautiful pepper plants, they’ll continue to be safe and warm under the grow lights in the basement. There’s no way I’m putting them outside until we stop getting fresh snow on the mountain.

My current setup is a cheapo metal shelving unit with the start bed in a cookie sheet. I’ve cut the bed so that it actually fits, as opposed to last year where I had it canted at an angle. I water the seeds from the bottom by dumping water in the cookie sheet and allowing the plants to pull as they choose. This seems to be much better than having the sheet on the counter; it was ust an enticement to the cats to graze on my starts last year. The seem to really like baby broccoli.

The biggest, and most important,  change to the setup is the addition of a shop light hanging right above the seedbed. I run it on a timer for 8 hours and it provides heat and light with the right intensity to get the seeds to germinate well. So far I’m at 100% germination, which is way above average. If each of these little guys keeps going at this rate, I’m going to fill the garden from 2 cookie sheets worth of trays. I love that idea.

With the visit of the consultant, I was able to draw out a plan for 4 circuits to allow water to run to the garden. So we rented the trencher and went for it. There are now rows and rows of upturned soil just waiting to be smoothed and have pipe laid in them. We didn’t get any further than opening the trenches because the rocks here kept throwing the the chain off the machine. Two man rocks are just too big for even a good sized trencher to handle, and taking the thing back to the shop the have the chain reset multiple times sucked out a lot of usable hours.

But now, the initial routes are ready and the smoothing can happen at our leisure. I have the list of pipe to buy, and the drip system doesn’t require plumbing or electrical work to get us up and running. We’re so much further along than I anticipated! We can lay each circuit independently and won’t really need them until June, so we have tons of time to take this project in small, kind to our back, increments.

Of course, he also left me with a brain full of rain barrel cisterns, chicken raising ideas and some fantastic ideas for vines to put in the chain link for edible content and beauty. Now I must find a way to fulfill my huge desire to hire someone to put all the pipe in the ground and figure out how to get the water pressure high enough to make the whole thing work. Having 28PSI water pressure is killing us.

I’ve also decided not to worry about getting the starts going – I’m just going to concentrate on the tomatoes. So the transplants will arrive in mid-May ready for dropping in the ground. Now I just have to hope that we don’t have a late cool snap.

I only planted 2 of each plant, making sure they had plenty of room to grow by putting them at the edge of the garden plot. I figured they could sprawl into the lawn and it wouldn’t hurt anything. The plants did remarkably well there even taking into account the tiny amount of water they got and the terribly late start from seed. All but one of the seeds sprouted leaving us with more squash than we could handle. The zucchini were easy enough until they got too big, then they just ended up in tons of loaves of zucchini bread (and bags of frozen shreds ready to make yet more bread). The crooknecks were harder to deal with – they didn’t steam or saute as well as the zucchini and had tough rinds. The tiny ones were ok but anything beyond about 6 inches was a loss. Lots of those went into compost, with a few going over the fence to feed the rabbit that taunts the cats.

The hubbards, however, are a whole different story. They’re huge. We only ended up with 2, thank goodness, at right about 7 pounds each. Seven pounds of squash at one go is more than we can handle so I’ll be hacking those up and sharing the bounty, assuming of course that I can get the cleaver through them. I’m hoping that they’ll turn into decent soups, or taste good enough plain that we can just bake them. I love baked squash with butter – it’s easy and tastes fantastic. Of course, if anyone knows of any hubbard-specific recipes, Id be glad to get those as well.

This year I’m going to be a bit more on the ball and get the seeds I want, instead of settling. Butternuts and acorns, picked at the right time, are a good size for one meal and easy to store in our new cool room. It’s worth the bit of planning to be able to get stuff we like and can cope with easily.

The arugula came up spectacularly. All 20 row feet produced plants and they are still alive even now. We managed to harvest it in a way that meant the same plants kept producing new leaves all summer long. Giant arugula salads were regular, as was sauteed arugula. We’ll definitely keep this much next year, and may even expand it a little bit.

We managed to get a few plants of the Swiss and Rainbow chard to come up. Not many, maybe half a dozen or so, but quite enough to keep us in greens all summer. With the way they produce and our culling techniques, 20 row feet next year would be overkill, assuming the watering gets sorted. We’ll also definitely need more recipes for eating it as sauteed chard gets old after a while.

The New Zealand spinach was a complete dud. It was supposed to be a variety of plant that would give us spinach without bolting in the late summer, but our summers are hardly long enough for it to grow at all. Of the 2 plants, we took no leaves for food. The plants themselves looked like weeds to start and ended looking just like deadly nightshade. I pulled them with rubber gloves, and they went into the trash. I don’t need any nightshade in my compost, thanks.

And last, the herbs. We ended up with 2 basil plants, sprouting in September. There were about 5 leaves between them. It was definitely a watering problem, but the location will be good for next year. Full sun seems to be good for productivity.

I can’t wait to start pulling lists of things for next year. There’s so much extra room in the garden it’s not even funny.

My main criteria when looking for plants was that they not require any extra hardware. We didn’t have the budget for it, and bush plants were easy enough to come by. Little did I know that there was a good reason for that. I grabbed the Venture beans because they were a bush type that should work well in our climate and the Xupars because they looked interesting. Yes, that was science and planning.

Both sets came up pretty strong and produced beans all summer from a single planting. They also kept producing well into October, which was great as our CSA box stopped giving us beans about August. We love those little guys steamed and in stir fries, we’re huge fans of the young crisp bean.

Late September was when I figured out that we won’t be planting the Ventures again. While they’re prolific and great young, it’s a shelling bean. If they go too long, they’re hard and flavorless when used in our preferred methods of cooking. They really need to just be left alone at that point until you’re ready to shell and dry them. And while my husband loves cooking chili, there’s no way I could stand shelling that many beans. One of us would die if that ever happened.

So next year, I’ll be looking for another bush bean, something that stays small and tender like the Xupars did. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Oh, and if you want to try a Xupar, go to a good Chinese food restaurant and order the beans in black bean sauce. And save me some.

For next year, I will be trying the following:

1. Use grow lights for the seedlings. The sun here in the early months of spring just doesn’t cut it.
2. Harden the tomatoes in the unattached garage. I skipped this step, or shortened it too much. The plants were frost-burned in their first week, but recovered.
3. Buy cages. Even the bush tomatoes need cages. They fell all over the ground, leaving the fruit in easy reach of the slugs.
4. Water with an automated system. The ad-hoc watering I did meant that the fruit cracked. Not pretty, but still edible.
5. Be around for the end of the season. This year, we went on vacation. But then, I expected the fruit to ripen before we were scheduled to go. I was only a month off. Ha!
6. Force the fruit to ripen. If I do this one plant at a time, I should be able to handle the amount of fruit. Then again, it takes 3 pounds of fruit to start a sauce, so all at once would be fine. Better than expecting the fruit to ripen on its own.
7. Be prepared for green tomatoes with recipes. Try some recipes out before the last minute so they can be ready to go.

I must remember to consult this list in the spring so that I get it right next year. Fresh tomatoes are too spectacular to let them go to waste.

The good news is that we’re still getting food from the garden. The chard is producing and the broccoli and leeks that I planted as seedlings haven’t died yet. They may not survive much longer, depending on how cool it gets and how quickly it does so, but there’s hope yet. Not much, but some.

At some point, I hope to get out a summary of each plant we tried this year. Some, such as the zucchini, were amazing and easy. Others, like the herbs, failed for water. And still others totally bombed out. Can I just say that New Zealand spinach looks like nightshade? We ate none of that, or at least, I think that’s what was growing.

I’m already dreaming of seeds and sprouts for next year. We’ll definitely get the water situation sorted before it comes time to plant. I’ll even have a better system for starting seedlings, if I have my way.