This has been a weird summer! The weather here in the PNW could never really make its mind. We went from rainy and cold to 90 every few days. I did manage to get a few nice crops along the way though.

My cherry tomatoes loved the weather and this is the 4th harvest off that same bush this summer. The peppers have been steady and the Romas are looking great. I have easily another full size 7-8 Roma tomatoes that will be ready by end of September. The large heirloom tomato has produced a few good sized fruits but the weather played havoc with them and for every 2 I could use, 1 was split and not useable. I have made a ton of salsas and red sauce this summer much to the delight of friends and the SO. If you find you have a ton of cherry tomatoes, try this recipe (Oven Roasted cherry Tomatoes) for an easy salad or vegetable topper that you can make ahead of time.

The green beans have been less than thrilling but if I had more than one plant, I could have actually made
more with them. Even though the edamame was a disappointment, I got a lot of great seeds to save for next year!

For fall, I was hoping my squash would survive but the pill bugs have devoured all 3 plants. I used diatomaceous earth but the rain every couple of days just washed it away. I am certainly going to plant a few more of the bush beans as they seemed most resistant to my new nemeses (seems like that should be nemesisi?) the pill bugs.

The Brussel sprouts are coming in strong and we should have a lovely side/dinner of them in just a few weeks. The little green garden spiders did their job well this year and took care wasps, caterpillars, and flies! They creep me out but they are welcome to live in the Brussel sprout plants if they keep killing the wasps. Next year we will mulch and have new supports for the beans and tomatoes. Now on to fall and winter veggies!

This poor vegetable. Broccoli is such a wonderful vegetable but I think it suffers from the lack of understanding how to cook it. It is super easy to grow, very easy to take care of, and such a wonderful vegetable full of wonderful things.

Broccoli is best started in the early spring, just after the last frost. It doesn't like warm weather, so it is best to plan to pick it before July for most places. If you have a cool fall but no frost, you can usually sneak in two crops. You can grow from seeds but this is one of the few vegetables that I prefer getting starters for. If you live in unpredictable weather areas, then you should lean toward starters to get the maximum growth and harvest. They are not picky about soil but they do like lots of water. They also like a lot of sun; if they get too much shade, they can develop some leaf mold/fungus (looks like white flour on their leaves).

For a brief history about cruciferous vegetables, see here. Broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, kale, etc. are actually descended/bred from the same plant. They are very high in vitamin C and have a wide variety of flavors and textures.

Pests and Such: Soapy water is my friend!
The big thing for broccoli and all of the cabbage related family is cabbage worms. They are actually larvae of a moth, so caterpillars are a better word for them. If you see white moths around the broccoli, be on the look out for the caterpillars as they hatch. I just pick them off and kill them but you can put soapy water on the leaves to kill them.  Aphids can also be an issue along with cutworms. Again, soapy water is your friend. Spray on dear friends, spray on.

Favorite Uses:
1. Blasted Broccoli: see here for the recipe!
2. Broccoli Coleslaw: this one is great but it can be hard to shred the broccoli without a food processor. However, just a touch of store bought coleslaw dressing, raisins, and cashews and you are in business!
3. Stir-Fry: for a quick mid-week meal, I mix fresh broccoli with chicken and any other vegetables I have laying around and cook it in a couple of tablespoons of oil, then toss with my favorite Asian style sauce or marinade.
4. Dip Transport System: Let's be honest, if you are eating a yummy dip the vegetables are just a transport system. However, broccoli adds a lovely crunch to almost any dip hot or cold.

Related: See Preservation for Raspberry Jalapeno jam and Raspberry Orange dessert sauce (great on cheesecakes!).

Living in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), I am very lucky that berries are "easy" to grow. In fact, certain non-native berries like blackberries are considered a weed and are highly invasive. In my back yard, I have a long fence that separates the neighbors behind me and my yard. They are the nicest couple and very tolerant of all of my crazy berry plants!

Raspberries are fairly easy to grow and if you get the "thornless" (they still have them but very small), you can avoid many of the hassles usually associated with berries. There are very few pests that can kill the plants except cane worms...those can be a problem. However, I definitely operate under the theory that if you plant enough bushes, you will get enough berries! Raspberries are an early summer harvest. With the heat wave we have had this year, it is not surprising that I have already harvested my first big set of raspberries. Blackberries are much later in the summer. [Side note: I do not plant blackberries due to the massive thorns and their very aggressive, non-native, invasive status! However, I also can't kill them or make them go away, so I at least try to get the berries out of them.]

Raspberries are tricky to harvest only because the shade of color means a lot and you have to battle the canes and thorns. You also have to pick them one at a time and delicately place them in the harvest bag. Color is everything for raspberries. Squishiness (very technical term) is a secondary factor but you can usually spot the purple, squishy ones that are over-ripe and no good. The ideal color for your regular red raspberry is ruby to garnet color. You don't want fire-engine red with super hard little berries, you want the deep vibrant rich red. However you also do not want purple, squishy berries. As soon as they are harvested, I rinse them in a salad spinner and began to sort based on what I will be using them for.

I can't take credit for actually building this. My boyfriend and I spent about $50 on lumber (basic 2x4s from hardware store). Then he put it together for me. He likes screws instead of nails so he used an electric screwdriver and put it together. The dimensions are 3'x8'. Why? because then we didn't have to buy as much lumber. This was absolutely on a budget and I did not want to have to pay for a bunch of extra pieces. So, this way we could use the ends left over to cut the supports and the braces.

After it was filled we spent another $50 on a bit ofgravel for drainage on the bottom, a bunch of bags of garden soil (not potting soil!), and compost. I also put a fine mulch on top that I happened to have laying around. Lesson learned is I should have put more compost in for about 50/50 ratio of soil to compost. However, layer appropriately. The bottom layer is about 1" of gravel to keep off the concrete (This can be omitted if you have it on grass/dirt. Instead put down cardboard to keep weeds out.). Then we filled half of the box with garden soil. Then I starting alternating between compost and garden soil layers. Leaving about 4' to the top. I then added another 1" of fine mulch to the top. Next box, I will also add in a bit of the garden pest and food into the soil before the mulch.

Now, I fully intended to plant and follow my (in my opinion, gorgeously drawn) plans. But good intentions and what not are quickly replaced by reality. I had originally drawn this out based on companion planting as well as square foot planting. I marked out the optimal time to plant based on my Zone 7 growing times. I also added in the marigolds for natural pest repellant (they keep the ickies off my squash and cucumber!) I had a few store bought plants which I had to get in the soil as fast as possible due to the quickly warming temperature. Broccoli and brussel sprouts like early spring to grow and mature while it is still cold out. I also had to get my first group of arugula and cilantro going if I wanted to get multiple crops for the year.

I setup my seedlings and I started them indoors. You can purchase this little tray for about $30 or less at any hardware store. I labeled and separated all of the seeds with pipe cleaners and stickers, so I could keep track of what varieties I used and which seed packet grew better. I am very happy I took the time to do this because the "blue" tomatillo seeds didn't ever really grow right and the watermelon and cantaloupe seeds were a total bust! They have since been returned for a full refund thanks to the 100% guarantee on the package.

This also allows you to stage your crops. For example, I knew that some of the tomatoes were going to be super fast and the pepper super slow. but I need them at the same time for salsa. so, I planted my first set of peppers much earlier and then planted my tomatoes. They should (fingers crossed!) ripen at about the same time. In theory....

I had a few deaths, so I had to replace a couple of the tomatoes with seeds. This time I sowed them directly into the dirt. Most of the transplants worked out great. However, the direct sowing method for the beets, chard, peas, broccoli, and brussel sprouts are just awesome. I am hoping to harvest the beets in a couple of weeks. The broccoli are showing but not ready yet. The arugula is ready to be harvested and the spinach will be in another week or so. So far, I am very ahppy with the garden box. Very little pests and watering it is super easy.

For now, I will post updates on the actual harvest and link over to recipes that I am going to make with what I grow. I am already planning on a tomatillo salsa (salsa verde); a beet, arugula, and goat cheese salad; and spaghetti sauce. Yum!

Things I Want to Try Next:
- I want to maybe work in an automatic water (drip maybe?) system.
- I will also build in trellises like I originally planned rather than the cheesy metal circles