The Bounty of 2015

My first love in the garden is flowers, but over the past few years I've found myself adding more and more edibles to the garden.  Nothing can beat the taste of fruit and veggies just picked from the garden; I actually never liked tomatoes until I grew my first tomato vine a few years ago.  When I tasted that first sun-warmed cherry tomato I knew my mother had been right.  It's true, the store-bought ones don't quite taste the same.

Two years ago we built a nice, big 20x20 fenced veggie garden, and, after some lackluster success, this year we added raised beds.  It took us quite a while to build and fill all those beds, carting free compost from our local dump, so we didn't get most of the veggies in the ground until June, but it was still a great harvest this year.  Raised beds are definitely the way to go in New England!

The final totals (for future posterity and so I have a shot at remembering what all I planted this year)?  Well, between the veggie garden and the Tomato and Pepper plants that were in the greenhouse, we ended up with:

18 pints Tomatillo Salsa (salsa verde)
6 half pints Tomatillo Salsa
several large grocery bags full of Tomatillos to give to friends
Tomatillos coming out of my ears
Tomatillos thrown in the compost because we just couldn't look at another...well, I think you get my drift.

Needless to say, no one should plant three large beds of tomatillos.  Ever.  Unless one wants to go into the Salsa Verde business.

Tomatillos and more tomatillos.  And a couple cucumbers.

The rest of the bounty included:
8 pints Tomato and Ground Cherry Salsa
6 pints Tomato Salsa
4 quarts Arrabbiata pasta sauce

and for random consumption/cooking (and including the most scientific way of measuring for future reference):
Snow peas (oodles)
Ground Cherries (bushels)
Green Beans (lots)
Cucumbers (maybe a dozen, which was too many for us)
Jalapeño peppers (a few handfuls - not totally sure, since Mr. Red House was constantly picking them whenever he could)
Carrots (a good amount)
Horseradish (awaiting processing still)

Ground Cherries and Green Beans from the garden

I like to choose different Tomatoes to grow each year and try.
The Tomatoes of 2015 were:

Amish Paste - a nice Roma type paste tomato

Chocolate Cherry - small dark cherry tomatoes.  Flavor was superb - I don't think hardly any made it into the house, as we just ate them all straight off the vine.

Green Moldovan - a bright, citrusy-tasting green beefsteak tomato

Minibel - small cherry tomatoes that grew on foot high bushes, great for containers.  These plants were incredibly productive and hardy! They just wouldn't die.  Even when I wanted them to.  Because the tomatoes tasted that bad.

variety of tomatoes from the 2015 garden

Of course, there were challenges.  We had a Zucchini crop fail, as my plants were decimated by Squash Vine Borers, Cabbage Worms turned my Bok Choy into Swiss Cheese, and Potato Beetles started into the Tomatillos.  But still, not too bad of a year!  I also started planning for some future fruit harvests, planting patches of Rhubarb, Raspberries, and Strawberries, and several little Blueberry bushes this past summer.

It's been a bountiful 2015, and I hope that this coming year will be just as blessed.

I wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year!  

And, as always, happy gardening!

p.s. It is my unfortunate duty to inform you of the demise of the Red House Garden computer.  It finally groaned to a stop at the end of the year, weighed down by the excessive amount of plant photos.  A new computer has been installed, but connected to an old monitor, and of course with totally different photo editing software.  Thus I can make no promises as to the quality of photos or to my sanity for the immediate future...

Merry Christmas!

I am out of town this week and very thankful to be visiting with extended family that I don't get to see often enough.  I wish everyone safe travels this holiday season and a very blessed Christmas and New Years' to all of you and your families!

December Blooms and... Bees?!

Well, it's now the middle of December.  Here in Massachusetts that surely means it's getting cold out there.  Winter coats and boots have been brought out and snow blowers and shovels made ready for the very real possibility of snow in time for Christmas...

Or not.

The weather this December has been so mild that I could almost call it balmy.

My new Helleborus niger 'Jacob' is in bloom and attracting the pollinators that are out and about in this unusually warm weather.

While I still have some Alyssum and even Yarrow still holding on to blooms, it is the new flowers of this early blooming Hellebore that are the most enticing for the pollinators.

This one's mine!

I am quite surprised to have flowers blooming and bees buzzing in December...

but after last year's record-breaking winter,

I'm definitely not complaining!

Happy gardening!

To find out what else is blooming in other people's gardens around the world this December, visit Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens blog.