the Huge post-vacation harvest

So. We went on vacation. And while we were enjoying the Croatian sun and warm weather, it rained for 2 weeks in Holland. It feels like autumn already here. Hopefully august will be better, because right now you can't call it much of a summer. But the vacation was great, and our garden definitely enjoyed the continuous water supply.

We have some monster courgettes and cucumbers now. Left untended they just keep growing. The greenhouse is also nicely overgrown.

Greenhouse

A small harvest of large veggies

Great-gettes

Squashling

Big ass cuke and normal cuke

Beets

The first real gherkins, plus the cukes

So now we have to think of some new ways of consuming our veggies..........

Thieves!

We accidentally caught a thief in our garden. Here's the one whose been eating all our broccoli.

Don't worry, we let him go. And now Leonie has built an extra fortified bunker of netting to protect our crops.

June Update: Drought and 1st harvest

I haven't posted anything in a while. It's been a bit busy. But the garden is still going, and we seem to have come through the drought quite well. It was so hot and dry all of May, one of the driest may-months on record. Most of western europe was thoroughly parched for most of the spring. But the last week brought some decent rain, and the weather seems to be getting better. For us it meant a lot of biking to the garden to water it as much as possible. We lost a few tomato plants to the extreme dry conditions and from a storm that blew them over. But we've still got some nice plants, and the tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing fine.

And the rabbits also took out a number of plants. Most of our broccoli and cauliflower (we've replaced them now) and one of our brussel sprouts. But for the rest, all the plants are doing well and slowly coming up. We had our first little harvest last month. The cucumbers are also in perfect shape, and 3 of our plants are giving some nice produce. We planted 2 extra cucumber plants a month later, so they should start delivering in a few weeks also. Lettuce, courgettes and squash are also pickable. I also couldn't resist pulling up one of the garlics to see how it turned out. I'm happy with the result. Big cloves, and a hearty garlic flavour.

To get back up to speed, I'll post a picture summary of what's happening in the garden.

Basil

Helping hand

 

Courgette and squash

from L to R: Aubergines, gherkin, cucumbers, tomatoes

Cukes

The first garlic

Red cabbage

 

Lettuce

Butter lettuce

Beets and Purple Queen Beans

Spinach

Raspberry

Squashling

More squash

Taking a break

Cheers.

How to transport your seedlinga by bike: beer crate

It's not always easy moving plants across town to the garden without a car. We do everything by bike (this is Holland, remember), even transporting seedlings. I guess a plastic bag might work as well, but this new system was highly effective. Beer crates.

The great part is that the seedling pots fit perfectly in each bottle-cubicle, which keeps the plants upright and protected from the wind. And it was pretty easy to hold while biking.

We've got all the aubergines shipped off to the greenhouse and planted out. Half the tomato plants also. Just need to get the rest over there and put them in the ground.

So next time you need to move your seedlings around by foot or bike, might as well grab a beer crate.

Some extra colour

There's not much colour in the garden yet. Right now it's mostly dirt and a few small plants. The garlic area has some green, but there's not much else happening. So my parents got us some flowers to make things a bit more lively. Nice. We also bought some flowers at the Lidl, but they died almost instantly. So that was 2 euros down the drain. Don't buy plants at the Lidl, there's no point. But the flowers from the garden store are doing well.

Assortment of color

Flower

Tulip

Chive

Butterfly bush: Buddleja davidii

Wellies

Wellies are awesome. That is all.

 

Comments enabled

For some reason comments weren't working on this blog. Took me a bit of time to figure out the problem, but after a little HTML manipulation things seem to be in order. So feel free to comment! Comments are fun.

Renovation

Did a bit of blog renovation. I wasn't happy with the old template and was having trouble with layout and font. Further changes may follow, but for right now this is good. 

Advertisement says: "This week only, Healthy!"

I saw a sign in a cafe today advertising "healthy week." This week, and this week only, they will be focusing on delivering healthy and responsible produce. So I guess next week they will deliberately go back to unhealthy products. Why not just try to have "healthy week" every damn week? Or is that just a crazy idea...

Anyway. The weather in Holland is getting better everyday. Sunlight, glorious sunlight....!

Grow baby grow

And a few days later....
we have cucumber and tomato seedlings.

Go

The seedlings are making a move.

This is from a couple days ago. The rest are now also going strong. A bit too quick maybe.

Up close and personal

Some snacks we grew last year. 

Koolrabi

Boontjes

Aardbeitje

Young and old

Two of a kind

Last year

The last season went was alright. Some things didn’t come out at all, like the melons, but some did much better than expected, like the celeriac. The weather was strange and unpredicatble. Unseasonably cold until June, it turned hot and dry in July. August was all rain, with summer returning in September and October.

Celeriac ('knolselderij' in Dutch) was a surprise hit. They weren’t super big, but all of them came out well and they required almost no work. Plus we were amazed at the versatility of this vegetable. Great soup ingredient, works great with mashed potatoes, good all-round filler. Highly recommended.

This year one of my goals is to produce some decent eggplants. The aubergines the last 2 years have been unimpressive. We’re going to start them earlier this year. Last year we had them out pretty late, also because of the weather, but it meant the fruit didn’t have as much time to mature.

And I’m going to try to get some good varieties of tomato going. It would be great to grow some cool heirlooms. Anything with some colour and taste.

The weekly harvest we had from July to September. More or less.

Cheers.