Nathan Comes to Visit

Nathan checking out the garden before the Harvest

Nathan with Grandma in the garden picking cucumbers.

Grandpa showing Nathan how to pick tomatoes.

Uncle Chris and Nathan relaxing after eating all those good vegetables.

These are our ichiban eggplants--they are going wild.

Note also the green and red bell peppers in the upper picture

This is our first Clemson spineless Okra---Time to cheer

This is one of two fig trees we planted several years ago.

This year it has gone crazy with an great abundance of figs. Love whole fig preserves.

We bought some Lemon Grass for an Asian dish and decided to plant what we didn't eat.

Here it is growing with great vigor.

Finally our latest harvest, Plenty of Okra, Egg Plants and Tomatoes.

Lots of Veggies

The cantaloupes are growing strong. We see them getting bigger everyday.

This is some of our harvest. The peppers and cucumbers have been abundant. While I was gone, my neighbors came by and loaded up on some great tomatoes, squash, eggplant and zucchini.

Wow!! It's been a while since we Updated our Garden.

The Ichiban Eggplant has been great. Here you see two of the many we have harvested. They are great grilled.

This is the Cajun Delight Okra which is going great. Though this picture is 3 weeks old and you can see how nice they look.

These are the brandywine tomatoes, they taste great but look terrible. They are all splitting, which we are still working on. We have been getting plenty of rain and we water twice a day. According to the square foot garden expert we can't over water so we still don't know the cause of the splitting.

Garden Pictures from May 19

This ichiban eggplant was recently picked. I used it to make a healthy eggplant pizza. Granny Burnette sometimes used eggplant slices instead of crust for pizza. It was delicious if I say so myself!!

Week 2 on our blog

Less than a week after our first post (6 weeks after planting), we are harvesting cucumbers, tomatoes and squash. (The green bell pepper is not quite ready to pick.) This is in addition to the herbs that we have been able to enjoy almost daily. We planted butterbeans this week and seeds for an heirloom radish.....watermelon radish. The radish is white on the outside and red on the inside. They have already broke ground!! Chris finished the last 5x5 in our large garden. The only item planted in it to date is a pineapple sage. My sister has one in her bed and told me that it grows to about 4 feet. So it was planted in the center of a bed!! We also planted two other kinds of basil, a cinnamon basil and a thai basil. I blogged about our long beds (8x2) but neglected to post a photo. As you can see it is placed against a 6 ft fence but we have placed trellis netting for the plants to grow on because the metal gets too hot and is not good for the plants. The ichiban eggplant will probably be ready in three to four days. There are more blossoms on the eggplant and all of the peppers. Chris can hardly wait for the banana peppers for they are one of his favorites!! I am still learning how to post pictures as I'm sure you can surmise. I need my computer whiz (Steve) to correct my errors!!

Square Foot Gardening Comes To The Burnette Garden

Chris preparing one of the 5x5 gardens

For many years we had discussed square foot gardening. We have the book, Square Foot Gardening by Mel Barholomew and we had envisioned that one day we would give it a try. The time has come and we are excited!!! We had lots of landscaping stones leftover from doing our flower beds so we decided to put them to good use. In March, we started building our square foot garden beds. Chris did most of the physical labor. Steve and I built the vertical frames when he was home the last of March. We are growing our cucumbers, yellow straight-neck squash on the garden trellis netting and also using it to brace our tomatoes. Chris and his Dad built the long beds (8x2) two weeks ago (4/26/09). The long beds (against the fence) have netting attached to them where the tomatoes, zucchini and cantaloupes will grow vertically also. We found the garden trellis netting at Home Depot. We planted our tomatoes with banana peels in the holes and also put a cardboard tissue roll around the base to deter cutworms. (Recently I learned from a P. Allen Smith e-mail that you can also wrap the base of the tomato with aluminum foil until the stalk gets tough enough to prevent cutworms!!) We did not use conventional soil. instead we made up Mel's mix of vermiculite, peat moss and five different kinds of compost. If you go to Mel's website http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ it will further explain the idea of square foot gardening and give you information on his mix. We have red, yellow, green and banana peppers. We also have ichiban eggplant. We planted two different kinds of basil along with dill, oregano, thyme, tarragon, sage, parsley and chives. We have three large rosemary bushes in our front flower beds. We planted Clemson spineless okra (from seed) and Cajun Delight okra (from transplants). We planted Cherry Belle radishes and White Icicle radishes on 5/03/09. They have already broke ground. We planted two different kinds of carrots that only get to be 5 - 51/2 inches long. It will probably take another week before they are visible. We have a few squares where Bush Garden beans have been planted, they do not need to be staked. We also planted Red onions and Texas Sweet onions. The tomato list consists of Lemon Boy, Beef Steak, Better Boy VFN, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine and a hybrid Cherry. We have some Sweet 100 seeds that we may plant later in the season. We are planting asparagus in the round bed. I only wish that we had planted asparagus years ago. I have been told that the beds can last up to 20 years. Next week we will plant Florence Fennel and maybe some bush type butter beans. We need those butter beans to go with our okra!!
We will be planting ornamental gourd seeds in a few weeks. Hopefully they'll be ready in time to harvest for fall decorating.