Fruit Bushes, because why not?

Well after a long day of spring garden clean-up and planting and finally get all my pots planted and the sidewalk cleared off again, I was very ready for showering and relaxing after a hard day's work when...

...husband comes home from the hardware store with raspberry and blackberry bushes.

"ooh, can you plant these too?!!"

Um...where, exactly?!

Why in our fruit bush section, of course!

See, in the fall I had brought home a blueberry bush without realizing how big it would get, so that ruled out the edible garden. So we decided, what the heck, why not just dig into our yard some more!

And so we planted it and a soon to follow brother along the back sidewalk.

They kind of failed. A lot.

But somehow he felt other berries would do better, so I sighed and pulled back out the shovel.

I also happened to look at the tag to see how big they would get. I knew blueberries and raspberries can get like 3-4 or 6-8 feet depending on the variety; I believe the raspberry was on the higher end of that spectrum if I recall properly. What I do recall exactly is looking at the blackberry tag.

"[HUSBAAAAAND???!!] Twelve feet?!!! Did you know this thing can get up to twelve feet tall and wide?!!"

He gave one of those half truly surprised and half trying to look innocent expressions: something like, "well, I knew it got big, but not THAT big".

So we laughed (me probably a bit more uneasily), he assured me he'd keep it trimmed and in the ground it went. With this mischievous branch shooting off in a rebellious confidence which he likened to his dear wife. 

After a few months he purchased tall tomato cages to contain the unruly fellows.

So here we are at the end of summer with our bushes proudly marching up towards four or so feet...

Pardon the hideous trash bins behind, but the white was the only way I could capture the branches reaching their little hearts out to all corners...

We did get about 3 blackberries, which was exciting. 

So we shall see what the spring brings for these grossly oversized bushes growing about 2 feet from the sidewalk! 

The ONE thing I can be good at...

Meet my hot peppers...

Aren't they cute!

I pick them and they make me happy. They have a beautiful color.
I do not like eating them because I can't handle spice, but I cook them up for my husband.

Last night I told him, "look, I grew peppers for you!"
He tasted a piece and went, "wow, that has some good kick to it".

Yay! I grew hot peppers for you! Look at how wonderful I am! I did it! I win!

Or so that's how I felt until he smiles and asks if I know how peppers become hotter?
"Ummmm...leave them on the plant longer...? [Pretty sure I read that somewhere]
And....water them...?"
Actually, he's read that NOT watering them as frequently helps make the pepper spicier.

But..but...but...

...I was so proud of myself!

Oh well; at least there is ONE thing my ineptitude can help with. I can dehydrate peppers into spiciness...go me!

Utopian Paradise

My co-worker and I share a nearby garden plot.

Every year is different...the first was more peppers than anyone should eat in a span of a few weeks (when you get to "free, take some" from the kitchen at work, it's a lot!), last year was a crazy abundance of strawberries (those we didn't give away :-D) and okra and a good amount of cucumbers while the vining plants did pretty pathetic. And then there's this year.
As we have already established; it is apparently the year of the vine. Cucumbers failed miserably all over, but it's a great year to be a squash or melon, that's for sure! My yard, another co-worker's Chinese squash vines, someone else I talked to, and the garden plot all have these crazy vines trying to take over the world.

I've done a terrible job of getting out there for the first half of the summer, but my coworker would send me photos entitled, "I think our garden has gone feral".

It certainly looks that way. You walk in and the beds are still somewhat separated, but there are those trying to cross borders and tear down divides.

Since this picture, this little guy grew to about the size of a volleyball and picked himself so we ate him. He was actually quite good!

Cantaloupe took over the potato towers.

And a pumpkin decided to crawl up the fence and grow.

The whole grand scope of chaos (except this is only about half of the garden)...

Last year our raspberries got a disease which apparently stays in the soil so we would never be able to plant raspberries in that spot again. Alas.

Except that this year one of the three started growing back! Wow! 

Ok, we'll just let it be and then put down 2 paving stones next to it and put pots on them.

Except that two more started growing out from underneath the paving stones. Okay then. 

My coworker calls them zombie raspberries because they really did like come back from the dead and reach out from under their tombstones and call out, "braaaaains" (ok, I may have made that last one up).

They are going strong and the biggest has produced a few little raspberries! 

So yes, you walk into our garden and see chaos: green, overgrown chaos...and most especially vining chaos. And therefore you could conclude that it's a wild jungle of craziness. Unruly, disorienting and unpleasant.

But then I look over and see a pumpkin nestled cozily on top of a tomato cage in a bed 8 feet from where it started; in and amongst (and under and over and around) the tomatoes and peanuts...and I see not chaos and disorder, but a Utopian paradise where, despite their differences, species freely live in harmony together. One might even say creating their own trellises using each other's vines as support.     It's beautiful. 

Touching, really.

And then we eat them.

And the Garden Grows...

Here's a hodgepodge of pictures I've been meaning to share to show the progress of the garden this year. I wish I could say it's been neat and tidy, buuuuuut, well, you'll see...

I got my annuals all planted up in the ever-increasing number of pots (see them dwindle down as I potted and moved them around the yard)...

Most go on the deck and have had varying degrees of success. Marigolds are one of my new favorites; those have done spectacularly all summer! It's really a trial and error on what goes ok on the deck because it's fully full sun. 

Dahlia bulbs don't overwinter well from what I've heard and from my two year's experience.

But there were a few that didn't look horribly maimed and diseased, so I planted them in one of the pots with a little annual and figured I could just pop in another annual if they didn't come up. They both did! And then I forgot to water them and they died! But then different shoots came back and now they're green and 15" tall and about to bloom again! I'm the best gardener ever!

Also the best photographer who hasn't taken any photos of the pots. Go me.

And what about the edibles?

Well, let me tell you; I started off the garden as it should - first thing in the spring with peas and lettuce.

First little row of peas!

One they got several inches high, I finally put up the stakes and twine. Now mind you, I wound twine 5-6' high last year and those measly peas got to be about 18" tall. What a waste of twine!

So I was conservative this year and put about 2 feet of twine up the stakes.

Yeaaaaahhhhh...

Once they surpassed that mark, I quickly wrapped more twine up higher.

Yeaaaaaahhhhh...

By the time I finished putting the twine to the top of the stakes, the plants had already grown bent over and twisted horribly around each other, so I just let them be and enjoyed peas which were neither abundant nor abundantly spectacular in size, but we got enough to be respectably proud of.

Meanwhile, my beans and lettuce did fabulous! We enjoyed many a meal with spinach and kale.

The beans typically didn't make it to a meal; we like them raw. A lot.

As the spring crops started petering off, time to focus on summer crops. The herbs in pots were already well on their way, I planted a nice better boy tomato and a hot pepper plant and I had a few extra zucchini and yellow squash seeds in the freezer, so since we eat a lot of squash, in the ground they went too!

And look - the seeds started coming up!!! 

And not in the places I planted them...oh....wait.

As they continued in their growth (in the foreground below), it started to become clear that they were not all zucchini or yellow squash. 

And yet again...

the seeds
in the compost
 with the candlestick
 was thought to be the culprit.

As they continued in their growth, it started to became clear that NONE were zucchini or yellow squash.

If you're keeping track of squash - 4 seeds I planted: none

4 seeds compost planted: 4

Not including the Little Shop of Horrors butternut squash in the front yard and 2 more butternut squash growing in the back of this garden (not even joking ... see below).

I see you poking your not so little leaves out from under the rhododendron...

...and producing 6 more butternut squash...

So as you can see, it's one giant jungle of a mess. 

One large tomato plant did well and we've gotten quite a few fresh tomatoes...before it doubled the size of it's tomato cage, clawed its way around all of my attempts to stake it and limped upside down on top of and over the side of the vacant potato barrel. Yet still those little balls grow! They've been green for awhile now, though, so that may be the end of that.

Fried green tomatoes!!

You can see the hot peppers are quite abundant (to the right of the tomato cage in the photo above, just behind another zombie squash vine). Red and green bell pepper plants I planted did terrible. As in, produced like 2 minuscule fruits that molded away. May have to re-think their location next year. And not let them become strangled by zombie vines (they were already too small and not doing well before the vines took over; don't judge).

Another tomato I planted later did not do so well (as in, at all) and so yet another rogue butternut squash mutant stowaway decided to climb the cage instead...and grow a squash (see it all cute and green and getting bigger by the day inside the tomato cage on the right?)

And what's that little round thing down there in the center of the photo? Oh, just a cantaloupe. Huh.

I did get out there this week and chop down the spent kale and gently redirect the vines so they had more space and sunlight. It's still a jungle, though.

Next year I think I may just clear the bed, spread compost and say, "have fun!"

Will probably be my best garden year ever.

In other news, the cannas look pretty on either side!

Oh and remember how I said that I'd done an experiment where I left some in the ground for this year and was curious how they did?

Go back to the top and scroll down through the photos again and you tell me? 

See them along the stairs? I planted maybe 3-4 of those plus the few in the large pot next to the stairs. The rest just came up on their own - earlier and more abundantly than the ones I plant - and then they mutated themselves underground and grew more little friends which also came up and created a rather delightful, albeit overcrowded wall of flowers blocking our white trash assortment of tools and lawn equipment just laying out openly under the deck awaiting our building a little closet for it.

I need to thin them out for sure and will save some bulbs again since last winter was unseasonably warm, but my grossly unprofessional opinion is that canna bulbs do survive staying in the ground over winter in zone 7A. Yay! Less fall work!