Well, this is probably our last Chauvin Produce Company update, ever…. It’s been mostly fun, mostly delicious and we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and how to grow a garden! Next year we will have hopefully found a local produce grower that we can purchase our vegetables from.
All of the main garden vegetables have been pulled up.
The green bean produced really well until recently. They stopped producing and the small bushes just died. The fresh cooked green beans were delicious. I think I will be buying fresh green beans from now on instead of canned ones.
The cucumber vines produced pretty good at first but recently dried up and stopped producing. We enjoyed several delicious tomato and cucumber salads when they were producing well.
The bell pepper plants were eaten by something over time. Seemed like every day there was one getting pulled up with no leaves on them. Before that, we pulled several small bell pepper plants, chopped them and froze them for seasoning later.
The eggplant bushes produced several small tender eggplants at first. Then more grew on the bushes but they were very small and hard.
The 14 big tomato and cherry tomato bushes produced well at first but then the plant leaves withered and the tomatoes were real small before the plants were pulled up.
Only the okra plants produced really well the whole season. As I was writing this Roy was pulling the okra out of the ground.
The pictures below are of the main garden dismantling over time.
This last photo was this morning before Roy pulled up the okra plants.
Roy is leveling the garden getting it ready for healthy St. Augustine grass runners to be planted there. One thing that is nice about the garden being gone is that we can see all of the pond from our patio!
The beautiful tomato bushes down by the pond are so so pitiful looking now. They have almost no leaves and just a few small tomatoes on them. But hey the azaleas are blooming great! The tomatoes down there were watered well and fertilized as needed. We have gotten a lot of nice tomatoes from those bushes until now.
This picture of nothing is where our green beans were!
The dog cage garden is an interesting hod podge of vegetables. The green beans were long ago eaten up by some critter.
The carrots are what is doing well and I look forward to when we can dig them up. The two rows of carrots go down the middle of this picture. Some of the watermelon vines are on the right.
The potatoes produced about 4 small potatoes. The watermelon vines are very nice but have only produced two watermelons, both are small and who knows how they will do! In the first photo below you’ll see the pitiful potatoes and one of the watermelons. Yes, at a time when all around our area massive oblong watermelons are being sold on the side of the road, yet we have two small watermelons no larger than a golf ball and a small cucumber!
The turnips that looked like they might be okay just withered away. The watermelon vines got so big they overtook the turnips!
Lastly are updates on our fruit/nut plants.
The pecan tree has lots of new leaves on it. No pecans but those will come.
The plum tree is the same with new leaves and no fruit yet.
The two fig trees are growing well. First, the smaller tree has several new leaves and several small figs. A few have ripened.
This is the taller tree that has many many green figs. None have ripened.
So that pretty much brings our 2020 garden to a close. We are thinking about either planting four vegetables near the house or in large pots near the patio. The four vegetables will be creole tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans. This all may change before next year but we will both enjoy not having any gardening to do. I am looking forward to being able to relax on the new back porch without seeing something that needs to be done in one of the gardens!
We’ve had a lot of rain lately which filled up the pond. These two pictures are of the water coming from the surrounding land into our pond one morning. It stopped before going into the duck’s cage, thank goodness!
We are puppy sitting our precious grandpuppy Samson this week while his family is on vacation. I am working on a blog post about our time with that little man! Hope to publish that one soon! Samson thinks he is protecting the house from Bo and Peep here!
Ya’ll have a Blessed Weekend!
BECAUSE HE LIVES 