Harvesting a Small Garden

Harvesting a small garden should be a simple task, however doing it from the distance of  a hospital bed is the tricky part.  Mostly it was done by my neighbor who offered to water my plants. I eagerly took her up on her proposal and in exchange she got to enjoy the tomatoes and green peppers, but alas, the eggplant did not grow and produce.  I thought about the situation for a solution.  I think I came up with the reason for slow growth and spindly plants.  I knew the soil was good as my helper had hauled in three loads of top soil and all was going well at first, but as the plants grew and demanded more water, the hose watering I had been doing could not keep up with the demands of the thirsty plants.  I noticed one day that the Leyland cypress planted behind the rock wall had grown out so far that they were completely  shading the garden  where my plants were struggling to survive.  No wonder they were not thriving, they were suffering from lack of moisture.  The only way to remedy the situation would be to cut away the branches of the trees, not a good idea.  I could go back  to the hose but modify it with a drip line and run the water for long periods to soak the ground.  That may be an option for next year.

The blueberries however were outdoing themselves.  There were more berries than ever before and they were larger than ever before.  I attribute the size to the high percentage of rainfall this summer.  I was not there to enjoy the blueberries  but I invited my friends and neighbors to pick all they wanted.

I did not expect kiwi as I had all of the vines cut back to the ground and had a wooden trellis  built for them to grow on when they did begin to grow.  My faithful helper, Jacob, with my guidance began a system of training the vines up and over the shoulders where I want the fruit to grown next year.  It does require some advance planning to grow kiwi.

The many grape vines are ripening and as with the other fruit, I have invited my friends and neighbors to help themselves, but with the admonition that  am not responsible if they should receive any injuries while on the property.  I usually have some men who want to try their hand at wine making and housewives who want to make grape juice to put up for the winter.

One of the greatest joys of gardening is the sharing of the harvest.  Even if you do have to pull up  roots and leave the harvesting to someone else it is still very satisfying to have grown them in the first place.