HollyHedge Keeps Growing

We started this growing season with good planning and pretty good luck. The spring rains were plentiful, often teetering on excessive. Despite some loss to wetness, we still managed a good harvest.

The spring garden was planted with leeks, peas... turnips & cabbages... & fennel... all ending up in the kitchen & on plates. In addition, this year we also experimented with onion sets, spinach & arugula.

Crowns of asparagus planted 2 years prior, offered their first delicious spears in May (asparagus requires a year or two to get established before harvesting). Our summer plantings, however, encountered quite the set back. Although fending off the critters is an annual struggle, this year was a particularly disheartening one. Cat birds feasted on blueberries despite our netting. Groundhogs & rabbits devoured our peas despite our fences & row cover. Pumpkins, squash, beans, broccoli raab, broccoli & parsley fell victim. Even hot pepper plants felt the sharp tooth of the hungry rodent. This certainly reinforced the idea that a diverse garden improves the chances of a successful garden.
While blueberries were eaten, our raspberry crop was beautiful. Though we haven't a single pumpkin plant left, the tomatoes have once again yielded more than the chefs could imagine. Even the cucumbers managed to inundate out baskets for a few weeks. Garlic continues to prove to be unpalatable to our garden fauna. Many herbs also seem to harbor those essential oils that rabbits just don't care for. And as of now, we have a promising apple crop hanging in the orchard.
Much of our summer successes also heavily relied upon our watering system; the rains didn't seem to frequent us as much as they did in the spring. Saying it was dry is an understatement. Each year, we seek to manage & refine our watering system, striving for efficiency and resourcefulness. Negotiating an irrigation system is plenty of work, and involves maintaining a balance between what is coming out of the ground and what is going back into the ground.

Ben finds himself watering each bed as it is needed & having the sustainable resource at hand to do so. We like to keep in mind that, in a way, the water the garden demands is the same water that offers showers at the inn, washes dishes after a wedding, or simply quenches our thirst.
Though on hot dry days, dragging water lines around is nothing short of hard work, we rejoice in what the sun offers. This July, our solar panels have provided our biggest solar output to date & we've just harvested grapes that thrive under abundant sun.

Summer Crops

The spring heat carried through into the summer months. Excessive hot weather usually means watering is inevitable. Calculated irrigation & mulch played a key role in keeping our plants healthy & prolific.This summer, like the summer before, we grew our staple crops... heirloom & cherry tomatoes... zucchini, eggplant, jalapenos & herbs in addition to a few new vegetables... tomatillos, purple string beans & a medley of hot peppers. (Visit Cross Country Nurseries, a great local farm that specializes in hot pepper plants.)The cucumbers were especially prolific, so we made pickles, relishes and, of course, used them fresh.There was a lot of excitement over the Asian Pear tree this year. Not only did it bear fruit, we managed to keep the squirrels from getting to it & earned a beautiful harvest!Mid-July also brought us chicks. In an attempt to help supply the kitchen with eggs for breakfast, we rescued 2 chicks from a shelter and bought 6 more locally. Fric, Frac, Sally, Lola, Cecelia, Corrina, Eleanor & Roxanne are all growing up, their first eggs expected late fall.

Lastly, our edible flower project has been going well. Short of a wedding or two, we managed to supply the kitchen with enough edible flowers for each dinner or salad plate.

Spring Crops

This spring's harvest was certainly challenged by the early heat. Unlike last year's endless rainy days, this spring was much drier.

Despite the hot weather, our sugar snap peas (strategically planted under the filtered light of an old ash tree) were a delightful spring success, a whopping 68 lbs. The plants grew almost as tall as last year, making us glad we also experimented with a shorter variety. Perhaps next year, we will not have to pick on our tip-toes. From plant to plate, the kitchen was supplied from the end of May through the end of June with a fresh & crunchy vegetable.

We experimented a little more with radishes & greens in hopes of having early cool weather crops and were thrilled with the bright red radishes & 2 varieties of kale.This year, the blueberries came early, thanks to the heat. However, our harvest was noticeably less than prior years, making us glad we had planted six beds this past fall... ... six new beds we hope will provide fresh berries for the kitchen & the birds for years to come. Once again, as tradition carries, as our harvest petered off, we turned the remainder of our crop over to the birds. You are welcome Catbirds.

The raspberries were ushered in early with the heatwave, thriving in the heat. Without lots of spring rains, the raspberries could sit & ripen without worries of rotting. We used some fresh in the kitchen, but kept a tidy quantity to make jam & vinaigrette dressing later.

Flower Gardens

This year, we planted a cutting garden with the hopes of providing plenty of flowers for the inn. Despite the excessive rain this year, the garden did well. And it even managed to survive the first frost, so we had flowers from June through the end of October. Even a few in November...

... zinnias, nasturtium, & alyssum ...... sunflowers (Keeping the bees happy) ...... cosmos & salvia ...... lisianthus, ageratum & rudbeckia ...... cleomi & huge sunflowers ...And in October, while harvesting the pumpkins, we cut some of the Kong Sunflower heads to collect seed for birds!

Flowers!

The summer sun has finally come around and stayed. With it came the summer flowers. The first substantial cutting made for our first home-grown table arrangements.The first collection of nasturtium, an edible flower, made its way to the kitchen, and then to the table on plates.And the vegetable garden seems to be kicking in, yielding zucchini, beans, and the beginning of the tomatoes. The blueberry bushes and raspberry canes are also putting plenty forth.Lastly, the herb garden (and over-flow garden) has been supplementing the kitchens needs.

Wet weather & the vegetable garden

After a particularly rainy early spring, the weather pattern continued. For parts of the vegetable garden, the rain certainly helped. Plus we didn't have to water the gardens once! The peas grew to over 8 feet high. You almost needed a ladder to pick them. Plenty of them and daily. The swiss chard flourished.

The rain, as it was excessive, did some damage. While we managed to save a few, many of our root vegetables essentially drowned. These turnips were ready for pulling. We still managed a springtime basket of plenty! Turnips, potatoes, peas, radishes, chiggia beets, swiss chard, onions & nasturtium (edible flowers)! Blueberries arrived as the sun finally managed to peak through the clouds. And the champagne pink currants are also finally starting to color. In the background, chamomile and and ladybugs lend their help. Lady bugs eat the aphids that eat anything green while chamomile attracts beneficial insects. (Some even say that it has fungicidal properties!)

With all the growth and new life comes and end too. An old pine was felled, but instead of it laying to waste, we had the lumber milled up to be used in future projects!

Spring has sprung.

With spring comes the flowering of our lovely old Weeping Cherry tree. This year, however, includes new additions. The young apple trees were an early addition, bringing simple white blossoms to the fields.Our established blueberry bushes set forth with gusto, preparing for hundreds of little berries with hundreds of little white, bell-shaped flowers.But with spring comes plenty of work (hence the delay in this post). New beds were dug in preparation for endless vegetables for the kitchen just as our asparagus came peeping through the mulch.New beds were also dug for grape vines so we could expand our vineyard. Black plastic mulch was laid to discourage weeds and eliminate the need to spray herbicides. The plastic mulch also warms the soil which heat loving grapes enjoy.As of late spring, the plants looked healthy and full of promise. And a bird has even moved into one of our gourd houses, where he has taken up watching over the orchard, preying on nuisance bugs. And the peas are happily creeping up, up and up.

A peak at last year's work

The spring was a lot of preparation work. Ten+ raised beds were dug, ready for planting once the frost date past. The plants themselves were started early in the spring, both indoors and in the greenhouse.We planted summer squash, a medley of herbs, heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, beans, a mix of hot peppers, pumpkins, winter squash, gourds, eggplants, and lots of marigolds.
An unripe heirloom tomato.
Our pumpkin patch in the summer months.
A bed of young mixed greens under row cover (to keep the rabbits off).We even attempted some late in the season greenhouse tomato plants.The first yield started with an early crop of sugar snap peas.In the spring, the orchard was planted. By mid-July, everything looked healthy.
Some of the apple trees...
And a little peach tree.