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garden report: literally, "from the trenches"

We had our first square foot garden, here in the mountains of
North Carolina. About 2200' elevation.

We had some trees cut in the spring and used the 8"-12" trunks,
to 6-7' long, as edging for the plots.

Unfortunately, our 6 plants of cherry tomatoes were mislabelled and
we had, instead, big boy, or humongous, or one of those. With a medium
sized one and Romas, we harvested (15 plants) about 500 tomatoes.
Our damn freezer is stuffed with tomato sauce! Needless to say, it
was a great tomato year in this area.

We planted corn, "Kandy Korn" a dwarf plant. Corn, as well as tomatoes
is a real keeper, and we'll try several varieties next year. We didn't
use the bed, but put rows of sand in our red clay, and had a plot
15 feet long by 6 feet (3 rows) wide.

Yellow squash did well, and I tossed one yesterday, since it had some
sort of borers in it. Zucchini not so prolific, but I had a nice
photo of crosses between them: all 4 combinations laid out. Thanks
for the advice, ya'll. (Hey, gimme a break, I'm an ex-NooYawker, trying
to sound "more local".)

Cukes did great, and they were/are a small, sweet, green variety from
Better Homes & Gardens (bought at Walmart). Everyone I gave them to
want to grow them.

Beans also out the wazoo: bush, yellow bush, Romano (flat) and asparagus
beans. In the freezer, as well as many many bean meals.

Peppers did NOT do well, here. Green peppers (Bells) awful. Banana
varieties still going, and doing better since 9/1 (that's 1/9 in
other places!). It was not a pepper year here in the mountains.
Not sure peppers are worth it, except jalapenos: lots hotter than
in the stores, plus we got some red ones.

Ringed the garden with flowers (marigolds, cosmos, zinnias) from
old (to 1993) seed packets.

My wife does the herbs, but that's a different story.

Welcome aboard, southerners: it's good to hear about gardens in
other lands!

Bob Strauss

====================================================================
Bob Strauss      "Duke of URL"                   Cataloger
Hunter Library                                   Western Carolina U.
strauss@wcu.edu
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The 10 Commandments of the World Wide Web
   (*as told to Bob Strauss, 10/1/97)
=========================================
1.  Thou shalt have no other URLs before mine (www.GOD.hvn)
2.  Thou shalt not surf idly
3.  Thou shalt not take the name of thy Webmaster in vain (that is,
    www.vain.com)
4.  Six days shalt thou labor, but the seventh day shalt be to surf
5.  Honor thy Guru and thy Webmaster
6.  Thou shalt not use spam to kill discourse on the world wide web
7.  Thou shalt not adulterate thy homepage
8.  Thou shalt not steal other's homepages
9.  Thou shalt not bear false witness, but thy will create only
    viable links
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's homepage, nor his links


* "as told to," in the biblical sense, is roughly equivalent to
  "copyright."
====================================================================

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