The Bag Lady is too embarrassed by the state of her garden to take any pictures to share with you, but she will admit that she is not going to be spending hours and hours harvesting the homegrown bounty. Her potatoes drowned. Her beets drowned. Her corn grew to the enormous height of about 8 inches. Her cucumbers didn't survive, either. She does have bean plants that are producing. The plants are about 6 inches high, but the beans are (seriously, she measured!) 10 inches long! Her turnips drowned, too.
For the first year in many, she has more lettuce than she knows what to do with, but not a hint of spinach. It's been a very strange year. Her peas drowned. The cabbage plants that survived the attack of the wild deer...... drowned. About the only things that didn't drown were the weeds. And the carrots. She has a lot of carrots.
On the other hand, due to the generosity of friends and relations, she has fruit. She has made raspberry jelly. And apple jelly. She made pluot jam. She has raspberry/apple jelly. She has half a pail of apples still to be dealt with, and a neighbour brought her a huge bag of crabapples just last night! So far, she has 42 jars of jam and jelly. If things continue at this rate, she would advise buying shares in sugar.
She heard through the grapevine that the high-bush cranberries are bountiful this year, so she might have to go berry-picking. She really likes high-bush cranberry jelly .... apparently, one can never have enough jelly! But there have been numerous sightings of cougars and bears lately, and bears really like high-bush cranberries, too.
The Bag Lady is hoping she will have enough tomatoes to make some salsa. She didn't plant as many tomatoes this year as she has in previous years, but thinks she will have enough for at least one batch of salsa. Her peppers and some of the tomatoes were in pots on her deck, so they escaped the deluge of rain that ruined the garden.
And she grew celery this year. She has never tried growing celery and is quite pleased that it seems to be doing well. She planted it in the tomato bed, which has better drainage than her garden, so it didn't drown. She may not be able to do much canning and preserving, but she can have salad!
8 comments:
I am sorry for the discouraging state of your garden, and glad that you have sources of fruit you don't have to fight the bears for. Reading this tale confirms my belief that I made the right decision this spring, after the fourth week of too much rain, to just give up on planting anything this year. If I had waited until the ground dried out enough to dig, and planted some things several weeks late, then I would have had to water them all summer long, because after the flood, drought.
Mary Anne in Kentucky
Go beans!
The jellies, tasty now, will be even more so in the dead of winter.
Good on you for growing celery.
Mmm...I've been toying with the idea of making crabapple jelly this fall. I just cracked open the last jar of Mum's I have and know I need to make some more so I can keep my addiction at bay :)
I'm sorry your garden got so flooded out this year. It's been the same here - coworkes who usually bring in tonnes of cukes and squash and such this year have very little to share :(. I hope you have enough for salsa - that jar you sent so long ago was soooo very delicious. Such delicious thing smust be made! :)
Mary Anne - I wish I had been as prescient as you! Could have saved myself a whole lotta work!
Leah - yes, those beans are a bright spot in the garden. (And almost visible, 'cause I did weed around them!)
Geo - I'm hoping there will be enough for salsa. (I do have a back-up plan. I froze a bunch of garden tomatoes last year, then promptly forgot about them.)
Speaking of crabapple jelly, I just this minute finished processing a whole bunch of crabapples..... shall I send you some jelly?? :)
Hmm, could you keep enough jelly for you through the year and sell the rest to buy veggies? Home made jelly as good as i'm sure yours is would probably be prized.
messymimi - mayhaps could barter some!
And now I'm wishing I had picked more things from the garden yesterday because it froze here last night!
Sigh
Oh that's too bad. My garden does not have good drainage at all, but surprisingly nothing has drowned. Has not been for lack of rain, that's for sure. My peas and beans refused to grow this year. There's a lot of stuff I just didn't get around to planting because it hardly ever stopped raining. Looks like I should have lots of tomatoes though. And the carrots are growing (I don't even like carrots).
JavaChick - I will have carrots, but they are stunted and misshapen because I couldn't get into the garden to thin them!
And my peas didn't make it, either.
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