My Green Thumb

 This summer I had the privilege of experimenting with my first raised bed vegetable garden.  It worked out so much better than my previous gardening attempt in WV!

Jeremy built me a lovely box.

And we scraped it out.

We did not anticipate how much soil and manure/compost would be needed to fill the box!

And then I added the plants.

And we waited and waited for them to grow.

I grew 4 Heirloom tomato plants, 4 Better Boy tomatoes, 2 jalapeno, 1 chile pepper, 1 yellow squash, 1 cucumber, and 5 bell pepper plants.  Too many bell peppers!  One of them was supposed to be a red bell, but they always stayed green.  And the squash only flowered and eventually died without producing any fruit.

Stormy skies ahead!  In July, we had several days of lovely rain.

My hot peppers did great.  I had 2 jalapenos and 1 variety of chile pepper, unfortunately not pictured here.

First signs of strawberries.  Unfortunately, those 4 plants did really poorly and I got almost no berries.  Will skip next year.

The basil in my container garden does great.

Until recently, my cucumber plant did fabulously!  Will definitely do again, maybe even two!  However, they do need a trellis.

I had a bumper crop of tomatoes in July!  However, as soon as the heat set in,  they started getting these stripes on them where they busted open.  Still tasted good though!  The really ugly ones ended up in salsa or spaghetti sauce!

Next year, I want to do just as many tomatoes.  I don't think you can have too many.  Especially now that I know how to freeze them.  The Better Boys grew huge and we recently had to stake and tie them up.  Next year, I want to do some Beefsteak tomatoes as one of varieties.  As of yesterday, I noticed that the Better Boys are finally producing again.  Hopefully they will ripen before the first freeze.  Next year I want to plant everything about mid-March, or as soon as we clear the last freeze.  In the last month the bell peppers finally firmed and thickened and don't taste quite as bitter.  They were pretty small and thin all summer.  Sorry for all the notes to myself, just need to remember for next time!