A Promising Harvest



 



Harvest in my garden this year not only promises to be bountiful, but also very interesting.  A few of the gourds here look just as pictured on their seed package, but thanks to cross polination, we have some very unique specimens as well.  Every time we take a walk through the patch we get another surprise, which usually leads to discussing how we are going to use the new find in our Halloween display.  We just can't wait to pull out all the little creepy crawlies and create a spooky but fun display with everything we pull out of the patch.                  

                                                                            


 

I also grew a few other interesting plants for the first time in the garden this year.  To give you an idea of the size of this plant, I called my 100 lb puppy over (he's not quite a year old yet).  This is a little plant I found in the greenhouse in the late spring, and it was just too different to pass up.  It's called cardoon, and although it is edible, I just grew it as a feature plant.  I understand it is a perrenial, but I doubt it will survive our climate.



From seed, 8 seeds to be precise, I also grew flowering kale. Out of the 8, only 3 came up, but they did very well. Everyone who comes to check out the garden stops to admire them.

 

These are zinnias that I directly sowed into the ground as well.  Not only are they a wonderful mix of colours, but they are wonderful as a cut flower as well.  They seem to last forver.  I've collected seed from this patch, and intend to grow a much larger patch next year.  

 

 

This is Scottish kale, and directly sown once again, it came thickly and quickly overtook its part of the garden growing to be 3 feet high.  It even covered up its neighbor and cousin, flowering kale.  I love the hedge it has created and have plans to do something more creative with it in years to come.                                                                                             This is the first large garden I've had, and planning it should prove to be fun over the long, cold winter.