Garden Sprawl Friday

The Boss and I have grown a few crops on some land he leases - about four acres; and to start this year we did not even grow on a third of that. For one, this was the first time growing on this field, and we wanted to start small, sort of to just get a gist of things without making a big production. Second, we have the landscaping to do, so we wouldn't have a whole lot of time to do harvesting.

We had it to the teeth with just the small planting we did, keeping on top of the beans; they have to constantly be picked. We sold to some farms and caterers. The beans were top quality. Our plan for next year is to grown more, and to get into the farmers markets, selling directly to people. We grew some lemon cucumbers as well as the beans.

And, as one can see in the following pictures, pumpkins. All the pumpkins were from seeds I saved from approximately twelve or nine pumpkins which I grew in the backyard (their purity was kept intact). I did a post on that, which can be found here. They are the heirloom, Rouge Vif d'Etampes, or commonly known as the "Cinderella", pumpkins. They didn't get as red as least year, due to the cooler season and later planting, but many were quite bigger, which was likely due to the soil being tilled for the first time.

My mind still boggles at the inundation of pumpkins (more than we know what to do with) that came from the seeds from those nine or so pumpkins (the pictures don't get across how many pumpkins, as the leaves and vines hide them). I didn't plant all the seeds but made sure to keep a good quantity to plant again next year in a location where cross-pollination won't happen. In an adjoining field some other kinds of gourds were grown, so the risk is too great that the seeds in these pumpkins will not grow true to type.









Some medium to smaller-sized ones: