It’s time for another update from the garden!

Some quick background for new visitors: I garden in NE Minnesota where we have a very short growing season. I use hugelkultur raised beds and apply permaculture methods throughout my garden. Nearly everything I grow are heirloom varieties and all are organically managed- no chemicals, pesticides, or anything unnatural.

The garden is just overflowing at this point. It reminds me that my wheelbarrow-width walkways between the beds are just barely enough, especially when it comes to the potatoes. They are just falling over the sides of the bed- and to think, these plants were buried 4-5 times! So there should be a really nice place for those potatoes to grow. The flowers are just so pretty…although I secretly await for these plants to die back a bit so I can sneak my first few potatoes 🙂

The onions are getting some really nice size to them.

The bush peas should be ready for picking later this week! They are quite the tangled mess. As mentioned in my previous update post, these shelling bush-type plants were not supposed to need staking. But they have grown wildly out of control and so next year I will definitely be providing support for them! However, despite having not providing them a trellis, they have done well at climbing up each other and keeping the plants mostly upright. Harvesting will just be interesting 😉

The bush beans are doing just awesome. A few weeks back, they were a little on the yellow side due to some uneven watering (I allow Mother Nature to do the majority of my watering, so I am typically one who looks to the sky when things are looking dry…and we had a bit of a dry spell for a couple of weeks). But now that we’ve had some really good, consistent rainfall, everything has really gotten green and the beans are flowering. The flowers are just lovely- from light lilac to fuchsia to dark purple. I’m growing some “Royalty Purple” bush beans that I ordered through Territorial Seed Company, and I think they will definitely be a new staple in the garden due to the absolute beauty of their flowers.

I mentioned previously that I intensively planted this bed. There are roughly 320 bean plants in just this one bed, each spaced 4″ apart. This method proves that you don’t need a huge space to plant a lot of plants! As you can see, they are very healthy with little or no evidence of insect damage. And because crowd planting does a great job on its own of keeping out the weeds- paired with some mulch- this bed is maintenance-free.

This is potato bed #2 of 3, with bush beans planted in between the rows (can you see them there, reaching for the sky?). Beans are great companion plants to potatoes, and vice versa. Beans deter the Colorado potato beetle while potatoes offer their own helping hand in deterring Mexican bean beetles. Additionally, beans have shallow roots which won’t compete with potatoes, and they fix nitrogen in the soil which helps aid in the potato’s growth.

I will say, however, that my poor beans have really had to fight to keep up with the rapid growth of the potato plants so that they don’t get snuffed out all together. In the future, I will plant the beans on the outsides of the bed rather than in between the rows.

The sweet meat squash is finally starting to take off. I had started some inside this spring which were killed by the late hard frost we had end of May/beginning of June. So I had to start over. In this bed, I have 3 of them planted with corn. I am going to let them sprawl over the bed to keep critters from getting to my corn plants.

This bed of corn, cucumbers, and radishes is doing great. The cucumbers are starting to flower and the first tiny little soon-to-be-pickles have appeared.

Watermelon and some really late corn which really took a beating from a pesky rabbit I fought off all last week.

My last potato bed, planted the latest with blue potatoes, bush beans, and Calendula.

The rabbit pest problem of last week meant I had to put up some hoops and netting to save my poor plants. Now, I’m back to picking a handful of ripe berries morning and evening. I planted bare root Tribute strawberries this spring and they have been pleasantly productive. Next year, with another expansion to the garden, I will be putting in another bed of 25 plants, probably a June bearing variety.

They keyhole/hugelkultur tomato garden…

…and the very first paste tomatoes are just starting to show :).

How is your garden growing this season? If you’re a fellow blogger, share your link! I’d love to visit you!