I've been hearing from people, here and there, about how they got contaminated garden soil this year. I truly feel that we got zapped by that here on Kelpie Kapers Farm, as well. We hauled in 5 cubic yards of soil, in 4 different trips. The first 3 yards, in my opinion, were not very good. This soil was highly recommended by the company that we bought it from. They said it was the best for raised beds. The problem is that nothing is growing in it. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing.
On Facebook, I know that I post photos of some lush garden beds that I have going. I have a confession to make. That's just one garden bed. It was here when we moved in and it was already full of soil. We just added a few bags of mushroom compost to the top of it. It has proven to be super fertile. It's the bed that I'm growing brassicas and Walla Walla sweet onions in.
I guess I'll just take you all on a garden tour and show you what I mean.
Before I start, I want people to keep in mind that we have had a wacky weather year here in western Washington state. We got a super late April snowstorm and it dumped several inches overnight. I had planted pansies and petunias along with the cabbages, broccoli and peas. The snow was so heavy that it snapped the tops out of several of the maple and alder trees in our pigpen. We still have another pile of broken trees to burn, but that's for this winter. It's not safe to burn here now.
Then it rained....
And rained...
And rained some more.
I didn't get these tomatoes, peppers, beans and cucurbits planted out until mid-late June. Just about the time that I got the last tomato planted out, it rained some more. They spent their first 2 weeks outside under a protective tarp.
Now, onto the promised garden tour.
The orchard is proving to be productive this year. Every apple tree has apples on it. We have no idea of type they are. I just know that I'll have plenty of apple pie filling, apple butter, applesauce and every person we know will have apples, as well.
We were soooooo excited to see that we had a couple of cherry trees. One tree has zero cherries on it. The other tree is loaded. We, at first, thought they were Rainier cherries, but upon further investigation, we realize that these are pie cherries. I'm okay with that. I'll put up a few jars of cherry pie filling. I really was hoping for Rainiers, though.
You can see the apples on these suckers.
On a side note, Bob went down there and cut the grass in the orchard. He said he knew that he had hit several field mice in the mower blades. We decided to go get a sprinkler to set up in the orchard to water the trees and, as we were driving back up the driveway, we saw a bobcat in the orchard. It was feasting on field mouse remains. It was beautiful. The FedEx driver saw it in there when they came up with a delivery a little while later.
I've blanched and froze quite a bit of broccoli from the garden. I'm pretty jazzed about that.
This is the fig tree that we bought and planted on the bluff side of the driveway. The deer have completely left this alone. I read that they were deer resistant. That's a good thing as we have quite a few deer here.
Another view of that fig tree. Bob cut the bottom out of the pot so that the roots can spread out. Once it gets a bit bigger and established, we'll cut the rest of the pot off of it.
This is another fig tree that Bob rooted from a cutting. We do not know what variety this is, but we'll put it by the other one on the bluff side of the driveway.
This is some orange thyme that I started from seed.
This is great that it grew for me because I lost my other orange thyme plant that I had grown for several years. This is Orangelo variety and I got the seeds from Baker Creek.
A random tomato picture that got uploaded at the wrong time. LOL.
Gooseberries and currants. It is simply going to be survival of the fittest here. We lost all the polar berries we were trying to grow.
All 5 of the Concord grape slips that we rooted are alive still. We going to pick up a green table grape variety this afternoon. The person said it was a 2 year old vine, so that will be good.
Now on to the tomato area of the garden. If you look at the ground, below the grow bags, you'll see a little cannabis volunteer. We're going to let it grow and see what it will do. We may take some clones from it. Who knows?
We trellised our tomatoes on 10-foot long, 6-foot high chain length fence panels. I can grow 40 tomatoes on 2 panels. I think we'll be adding 2 more panels next year.
For the most part, the tomatoes are flourishing now, although they are not very tall. As wacky as our weather has been this year, I'm just going to let them go and see what they do.
We also have 4 pots of tomatillos. I did not can up any green salsa these past few years. It's time for some.
I grew 2 of these out from seed (along with the tomatoes) and I bought 2 from the farmers market because I thought mine were going to be stunted. I can't tell the difference. Can you?
Much like the tomatoes, these are stunted, as far as growth.
But they are loaded with blossoms. So, we'll see.
Other than being short, they are beautiful plants.
The first tomato is the only store bought starter plant. It's an Isis Candy Cherry.
I think they are looking great...but short.
Like I said, I'm just going to let them grow and see what they do. I'm not even pruning them. I'm just putting the occasional clip on them to keep them growing up the fence.
I see some bottom branches that need to be taken off, however.
All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the tomatoes thus far.
Now, let's talk about beans. This is my pot of Dragon Tongue bush beans. As you can see, the deer have zapped it.
My Tongues of Fire (Borlotto) beans are doing much better.
The Scarlet Runner beans are blooming. They haven't gotten very tall. I have to be honest in saying that these didn't even get planted out until mid-June.
This is my pot of Tanya's Pink Pod bush beans. These are looking fantastic!
This is my surprise this year. I pulled all the kale out of one of my raised beds, threw some mushroom compost on the top and planted several packets of Dollar Tree seeds.
Keep scrolling to see these Dollar Tree seeds.
This is a pot of Chester Skunk beans that I'm growing out for someone. I'm not seeing that this is going to be a productive thing. I feel bad but, in retrospect, I have no control over our weather or over the quality of soil.
This baby bean is one of several that are popping out on the Dollar Tree beans!
The pole beans down in the bean bed are growing very well. I just don't know if we'll have time to get them to mature.
This is one of the Chinese Red Noodle beans.
They are getting new growth, but again, I'm not sure if they will grow and mature. We'll have to wait and see.
Here is that traumatized rhubarb. Not only did it snap out of it, we've been able to harvest several stalks of rhubarb off of it. We bought it a friend at the farmers market. I have seeds for rhubarb that I plan on starting over the winter.
Our potato bed. I'm curious to see if it turned out.
We'll be harvesting the potatoes in the bags very soon.
The violas and petunias.
More violas.
The top photo is one of the raised beds that I think got zapped by contaminated soil. Those are radicchio that I seeded out in March. They should have grown exponentially since then.
The bottom photo are a couple of hanging baskets that we got for half price at Lowe's. They said that they are tropical plants (hibiscus, I think) and that they need 6 hours of full sun. Well, we have like 10-11 hours of full sun up here.
These eggplant were planted over the top of where I planted carrots. I couldn't grow a carrot this year to save my life and those are usually one of the things that flourish for me. You can see the little baby carrots in the background. They never grew past that stage.
The eggplant look terrible, too.
This is the exact same container that I grew an amazing eggplant in a few years ago. You can see the baby carrot plants that just stopped growing. Anything that I put in this container looks horrible and this is with a full bag of mushroom compost added in.
The garlic that was uprooted and moved. I kind of understand why this looks horrific.
These are those pepper plants that were planted out at the same time that the tomatoes were. The only difference is that this bed was filled with the first 3 yards of soil that we hauled in and that's the stuff that I think was contaminated.
This bed was a mixture of the first 3 yards of soil and it got topped off with one of the final 2 yards that we bought. The sweet potato is growing somewhat, but the squash and pumpkins are not liking it.
This was the first squash I planted out in the last week of May. This is an Iran squash. It's not really doing anything.
That raised bed is not producing. I have a bale of straw that I'll cover it with this fall and let it compost down into it along with some more bags of mushroom compost. I'm hoping to salvage that soil because we spent a lot of money getting this garden going.
I'll be buying squash and cucumbers this year, sadly. I even bought a zucchini starter plant and stuck it down there and it didn't like it at all.
This is celery that I seeded out in April. Again, these containers were filled with the first 3 yards of soil.
You can definitely tell where we left off on filling this bed. One half was the first 3 yards of soil, the other half was out of the final 2.
This pool was filled with the first 3 yards of soil. It's like it came up and just stopped. The deer don't even want to eat it.
A look at the raised beds part of my garden. I'm hoping to get some beans so that I don't have to chalk this up as a complete loss.
I had started 14 varieties of eggplants to grow for this year. Unfortunately, I discovered that chipmunks apparently love eggplant seedlings because the one that kept getting into our shed had a feast. I wound up buying eggplant starts for this year. Unfortunately, they all got planted out in that bad soil so I'm struggling to simply get one fruit off of them.
This is African Nunum basil. I'll definitely grow this variety again. It's really growing!
This is Persian basil. Again, another variety that I'll continue to grow.
This is Lettuce Leaf basil. It can go into the "I'll Grow This Again" category.
This is an Ichiban eggplant. I'm hoping to simply get a few fruits so that I don't feel that I completely wasted $20 on starter plants.
I'm almost worshiping this one! I'm just sayin!
My peas, however, were planted out in the first 3 yards of soil and, while they were a bit stunted, they produced. I think they could have produced more, but I was able to harvest these and get them into the freezer for this winter.
I bought several of these varieties from a seed store in Ukraine. I tend to lean toward heirlooms that are Siberian, Russian, Ukrainian or French in origin. They grow well in my climate.
This is one of those Ukrainian varieties called Joff. It's still producing even after we had a run of warm temps.
This is a Spring Blush blossom. I'm not sure I'm going to stick with these tendril varieties. They just aren't what I have in mind as far as production.
This Swiss chard is producing. It's pretty small but I am using it in my salad blends.
This raised bed is my pride and joy this year. This soil was already here when we moved up here. It was recycled from an old cannabis grow, so it is full of good nutrients. Can you tell?? I have never grown a cabbage that looks this good.
These are Walla Walla sweet onions. I bought 25 slips for like $3. I'd like to quadruple that next year...but I have seeds that I'll be starting in December so I don't have to buy them anymore. Those onions are softball size.
I'm super proud of my cabbages. That's why I take so many photos of them to share on social media.
The 3 that I put into pots aren't doing so hot...and that's ok.
I've had this feverfew plant growing in this same pot since 2014.
Another look at my spectacular cabbages.
I found out just this year that I can not only harvest the heads of broccoli but the leaves are also edible. I'll be blanching and freezing those for the freezer.
I'm still getting small broccoli sprouts on the plants. That's very cool, in my book. I just harvest them, blanch them and freeze them. We really enjoy broccoli.
This is the back half of my "Pride and Joy" raised bed. I seeded in many different things: lettuce, peas, beets and there's even volunteer tomatoes in there! I'll be cutting out those red romaine lettuces soon, though. They are bolting. I keep tasting the leaves and as long as they aren't too bitter, I'll keep making salad out of them!
Just a few more photos of my Pride & Joy raised bed.
I still have my lavender plant that I've been growing for several years and I gained a few more! The other things that I inherited from the previous tenant are multiple oregano plants. I like that!
These are just some random flowers that Bob planted down in the terrace garden. So far, the deer have left those alone and have only eaten the blueberry bushes that we put down there instead.
This is a pot of wild onions and garlic that I've been growing since 2018.
This is a pot that an old neighbor gifted me. She said that she was supposed to have bought gold raspberries, but these are black. No matter. I love black raspberries! We need to plant these out as they are still in the pot.
We got tired of fighting the birds, chipmunks and deer over the strawberries. We netted them!
I have a patch of mullein growing across the driveway. These are one of those plants that many people think are weeds but they are a great medicinal plant. If there's a breakdown of society, these are great for asthmatics and they are also called "nature's toilet paper" for a reason!
I still have a huge pot of Jerusalem artichokes. I'll be transferring these out to the pool after this year. They can spread out there.
One of my favorite flowers is a clematis. I hope these snap out of it and I hope that they perk up soon.
We need to figure out a system for our hoses.
Rose is helping. Rose is a great helper.
I have several things growing inside of the greenhouse because our climate is just not all that warm here. This is Jing Orange okra.
This is some Okinawa Pink okra.
These are my 4 cucamelon vines. I'm hoping that I can get a few off of them.
This is a loofah gourd vine. I'm not sure I'll see anything off of it or not, but I'm going to try!
In this pot, I have Tigger melons in the back and Kajari melons in the front.
I'm even trying to grow out some bitter melons.
Thank you for taking the garden tour with me. If you are a gardener and you've had problems with soil that you bought this year, let me know in the comments below.
On another note, my birthday is coming up in a week. Bob bought me a vlogging camera set up. I'm going to try my hand at YouTube videos. I'll let you all know the details when that happens.
Peace!
