Check out my tracker here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AjtB-Fu9W7yOdDlxc19Da3FzOWRMeGdTOGRib3VWQlE&hl=en

If you save it as an excel document the formulas and drop down boxes work a lot better!

The 2nd garden was for corn, beans and squash. We had never grown corn before, and we were late in planting, as the bed needed to be prepared. We had about 18 ears or corn. The beans in this bed weren’t successful; neither were the cucumbers. It was too cool for the watermelons we planted.

We had an abundance of blueberries, freezing about 5 gallons. We also planted 4 new plants and red raspberries as well.

We learned a lot, and will be spreading chicken manure/bedding, and straw soon. Garlic has been planted for next year.

The benefit of this goes well beyond the dollars spent and saved. This is locally grown food, grown without pesticides or any chemicals. It connects us to the land on which we live. And this is, I think, good.

Planted heirloom tomatoes, carrots, rainbow chard, bell peppers, basil, thyme, leek, cilantro, strawberries, and green onion. Everything grew really well except the green onion and cilantro.

Like you, I recently had to harvest semi-ripe tomatoes and let them ripen on my kitchen counter. I’m really looking forward to spring and I plan to plant different veggies next year.

I am a renter, and we don’t have a lot of non-concrete backyard to have a big garden, but I have transformed our concrete patio into a fenced container garden that was home to 5 tomato plants, including a couple of indeterminate monsters, 2 cukes, a couple of snap peas, some broccoli, more salad greens, 3 bell peppers, & some carrots and beets. I just had a few of everything, and it was pretty experimental, so my yields were relatively small, but it was so exciting to eat our own carrots, and make a salad comprised entirely of our own veggies.

I’m overwintering broccoli, kale, chard, and planning on harvesting salad greens throughout the winter by covering everything in plastic with row hoops and a makeshift coldframe. (I live in Arizona.)

I’m not realizing financial benefits at this time, but love learning how to become more self-sufficient for the time I can have a great big garden in the ground.

Thanks for posting all of your hard work and the process behind it.

The beans in the photograph are scarlet runner beans, which we grow for the bees and hummingbirds. These are seeds being saved for next year’s planting.

Thanks for the tomato-saving tips! I’ve heard the one about hanging the plants by the roots, but it seems like it would be messy? By October, the tomato plants are taller than I am. Maybe next year….

May I ask what sort of beans those are in the second photograph? They’re so brilliantly colored!

If there is a starburst projecting from the bottom of the tomato, it will ripen. If not it will eventually rot – I use the ones that will not ripen for either green tomato pickles or fried green tomatoes!

Your preparations for winter fascinate me. I live in South Australia, where the coldest it gets in winter is about 5 degrees Celsius (about 41 Farenheit) – and that’s overnight. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in your winter. In complete contrast, today we have had our first summery day – 35 degrees Celsius (95 Farenheit). Different kind of garden work altogether!