It's my favorite time of the year - Garden Season! And in just a few weeks it will be my next favorite time - Canning Season!
Our current place isn't big, but it offers a large patio with some space to plant. I've learned how to maximize gardening in small spaces to turn a harvest that keeps me busy in the kitchen all summer long canning and preserving the fruits of our labor. We often gift our canned homemade salsa and sweet pickle relish to our loved ones or save them to enjoy throughout the year.
Toby, our "Patio Puppy", keeps a watchful eye on our garden. He's my shadow every time I water or weed the garden.
I've always loved tomatoes and when I first started the patio garden, it was strictly a tomato garden. Over the years, I've experimented with different plants in our space and have found that a combination of tomatoes and cucumbers do the best in our current space. The more meaty, less juicy, tomatoes are great for canning salsa and sauces. They have more substance and result in less watery/runny sauces. This year I planted primarily Celebrity and Super Sonic tomatoes because we've had luck with them in the past. Last year I tried mainly San Marzanos, which are a smaller, meaty tomato that looks similar in size and shape to a Roma tomato. They were great for canning, but we had a tougher year for our garden and they didn't seem to give us as large of a crop as in previous years. This year we're back to our staple tomatoes - the Celebrity and Super Sonic varieties. As a special personal treat, I also planted a yellow tomato called, "Pineapple". I've never tried it before but look forward to taste testing it soon.
Tomatoes on June 3rd
Tomatoes on June 19th
Cucumber plants thrive stretching their arms and growing upward on tomato stands.
Cucumbers have become one of my favorite patio plants - they are easy to grow and they produce quite the harvest. (Last year alone we canned 24 half pints jars of sweet pickle relish!) I was told by the gentleman I buy my plants from that they will grow upwards if you put them near a fence. While they never grabbed hold of our patio fence very well, they do incredibly well on tomato stands! Their little arms will stretch out and they will grow straight up and the cucumbers will actually hang like fruit on a tree off of the stands. I highly recommend them if you have a smaller space to garden and love cucumbers or want to try your hand at some pickles.
Cucumber plants grabbing onto the tomato stands as they grow. Onward and upward!
Lots of yellow flowers from the cucumbers. Soon the spikey cucumbers/pickles will start to grow.
As we enter the hottest and most humid part of summer here in Ohio, our garden morphs from a neat, cute garden into a full jungle and hot mess of plants! (But we at least will have lots of food to enjoy!) Check out the growth from June 3rd to June 19th in the photos below.
Later in July we'll likely be able to start canning relish and in early-mid August we should be able to can salsa.
If you're in middle of Garden Season yourself, I hope your garden is growing well!
From cute and somewhat manicured on June 3rd...
To a true jungle of growth on June 19th!