Garden Project 2021: Beginning to Harvest

_{The first cucumber harvest! ^^}

_{But now Pūciņa invites you to walk with us through the garden to see the progress for yourself! Purr}

_{Bell peppers are now fully grown. Interestingly, the ones planted in the tiny greenhouse are a lot bigger in size than the ones planted on the “outdoors” bed with no cover. It could be a coincidence or the difference in the variety, but even the black ones that should yield decent-sized peppers are turning out quite small which makes me think that they still prefer a more greenhouse-like environment.}

_{Out of all zucchini seeds, only one sprouted. It is perfectly fine though because it has quite many flowers and is producing a fair bunch of them!}

_{The raised beds filled in nicely with herbs and greens. The empty spots are where spinach and one variety of salad leaves were. I could have resowed them, but I think right now would be a bit too close to the end of the growing season. Or maybe I will build little roofs for each bed and cover them with the frost cover material. That’s an idea!}

_{Look at that spikey Milk Thistle monster! It is just as huge as I remember and I am glad I left it just enough space in its corner of the box. Parsley also has quadrupled in size, and calendula flowers, which weren’t even visible yet in the previous post, are about to bloom.}

_{Basil has flowers now too. It is one of my favorite herbs and scents ever!}

_{The dill forest. They share the box with asparagus and at this stage, they look like distant cousins.}

_{There you go, like I mentioned in the previous post, cucumbers do take over all the free spaces surrounding them. We have harvested many 10 liter buckets of cucumbers by now and consume them in fresh salads, as well as canning them into pickles, and pickle salads for winter.}

_{The Strawberry patch needs to be maintained regularly or it turns into an absolute jungle with new strawberry plants popping up even on the walkways, and of course, weeds and grass are also trying to sneak in.}

_{The second cucumber bed is also filling in. I sowed one bed earlier and the second one a few weeks later. This way once the first one is finished producing, the second one will only start.}

_{I am gathering a bunch of herbs such as mint, basil, lavender, and other wild medicinal plants for drying. I might write about it in the future to a greater extent, and explain my process and uses for them. It feels like one of the witchiest/pagan shaman-like things I do. Sneak peek below!}

_{Let’s follow Pūciņa to one of her favorite hangout spots, the big greenhouse! What do we have here? Tomatoes! A whole tomato forest kingdom. She loves the tomato energy and often sits on the ceiling planks and enjoys the greenhouse warmness.}

_{Meow, everything looks in order here!}

_{I have learned that my new lavender plants appear to be of the early variety and also smaller in size than the previous plants I had. It is good to know this for harvesting next year.}

_{On the left side, we can witness the monstrosity of what the big field would look like without weeding xD It is wild, isn’t it?}

_{We have managed to keep it tidy enough though and the cabbages are hiding underneath the white frost covers right there! Here we also have carrots, beetroots, onions, zucchini, pattypan squash, and sad-looking beans that most likely won’t yield much, unfortunately.}

_{These are bell peppers. The top image is the ones that grow under the cover and the bottom image is of the ones that grow under the skies with no cover. I wonder if the second ones would have been bigger if they also had the cover. Maybe not.}

_{Hey! Paws off of my veggies! Time to grab a bucket and harvest some!}

_{Not bad, huh? It is ok to pick bell peppers and tomatoes even before they have turned into the right colors, but remember, you need to keep them in a cool place, or they will start to wilt quickly.}

_{That is where we are at with our garden so far! Also, isn’t Pūciņa the cutest kitty?}