The main garden is planted except for a couple of seeds. Yea! BUT the new drip system manifold isn’t working so I must take it back to Firebird to see what I did wrong in the setup. I’ll have to wait until Tuesday as Monday is a holiday. Meanwhile I’ll hook up the old system again so I don’t have to water the whole garden tomorrow by hand-what a dreadful thought! I use to like to hand water but since the garden has gotten so big and I saw how the garden did so much better on a drip system, I feel it is the only way to go nowadays. Besides it saves a ton of water which is important in the high desert of Santa Fe.
Tag Archives: VEGETABLES
It’s official!
It’s official! I finally got my acceptance letter from the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market. The Farmer’s Market has become so popular here in Santa Fe that you have to be juried in to sell there in the summers, not just send some money and automatically get in. I will be there this summer on Saturdays from 7am-12pm as soon as I have some crops to sell-got to get them in the ground first and with this late cold weather it hasn’t happened yet. I’m hoping to be there in late June with something but not the tomatoes-they won’t be ready till late July at the earliest. I have made room for 60 tomato plants and many more crops in my 1000 square foot main garden. So keep you eye out at the farmer’s market for ‘The Tomato Lady’-Heirloom tomatoes & exotic veggies for the discriminating cook.
more cool season crops in!
Well the weather is going to be beautiful here this weekend. YEA! It’s going to be in the 70’s temperature wise in the daytime. Both the veggie plants indoors and me are anxious to get in the garden! They are taking over the house! It’s still too early to get the warm season plants in the ground as the nights are still cold but now ALL the cool season crops are now in my raised beds outside up by the house. Lettuce, spinach, arugula, mesclun, orach (mountain spinach), cauliflower, broccoli, kale, chard, bunching onions, carrots and beets.
2009 giant veggie garden video
Romanesco Broccoli
I am starting some Romanesco broccoli seeds from Seed Saver’s Exchange, which if it will grow here, should be beautiful as shown. The apple green spiral pattern looks fantastic and they say the flavor and texture is better than regular broccoli. Grown and prized in Italy. The only drawback is it’s length of time and it likes cool weather. Great! Maybe I should grow it in the winter then but I’m gonna try it anyways!
The secret of carrots and beets in winter!
A couple of days ago was beautiful here so I went out and took out the last of my carrots and beets from last year so I can start some new ones for this year. I’ve been taking them out all winter even though it has been really cold here. The secret? I covered them last fall with about a foot of straw and they have been doing nicely under all that insulation. The ground never froze. Here are the carrots after I pulled off the straw and just before I dug them out.
The next picture is the freshly dug out carrots and beets. Notice I grew both purple and orange carrots. I planted all these last spring!
This picture- they are cleaned up in the kitchen. I love those purple carrots-really sweet tasting. They are purple on the outside and orange inside. Awesome!
And lastly is a picture of the chard from last year doing nicely. I will leave it in and cover it back up and will uncover it when it warms up. Chard is one of those vegetables that will come back each year if protected. And another bonus is the rabbits don’t know it exists under all that straw!
2010 GARDEN PLANS
Finally here are my garden plans for this year! I used a program from GrowVeg.com that is really fun to use and has all kind of useful info on it. It is free for 30 days and then if you like it, you can subscribe for a fee. I recommend it. I also saved this under my “pages” section so you can refer to it throughout the season instead of trying to find this entry later.
MAIN GARDEN-OVERALL GARDEN VIEW-DOWN BY BARN
MAIN GARDEN-CLOSE UP OF LEFT HALF (you can read it better)
MAIN GARDEN-CLOSE UP OF RIGHT HALF (you can read it better)
BRI’S GIANT PUMPKIN PATCH-DOWN BY BARN
SPRING GARDEN-UP BY HOUSE
Hercules
Here is a picture of my largest pumpkin I grew last year. The picture on the sidebar is Hercules at 166 lbs and in this pic, Hercules actually got to 352 lbs which is the second largest pumpkin ever grown here in New Mexico. I thought you’d like to see it. This year I hope to grow a 500-600 lber with the knowledge I’ve gained and will share here on my blog as the growing season unfolds.
striped german tomatoes
Striped German Tomato
Here is a picture from August 17th of last year of one of my giant tomatoes-an unriped Striped German tomato that was approximately 18″ circumference and weighed 2.5 lbs at this stage. It got to 3 lbs-but way before the State Fair here in New Mexico so we had to eat it! I did take first place for largest tomato at the NM State Fair but it was only 2.5 lbs at its ripest.
giantveggiegardener 
