The garden corral

In an effort to thwart the local deer, my veggie garden is a container garden located in what I'm calling The Garden Corral. 

The garden corral is located on what was our pool pad. To our sorrow, the Lord of the Manor can no longer safely get in and out of our little pool. Well, he can hold his nose and fall in, but it's the getting out we're not sure about. It's one more thing he's lost the ability to do as his overall health declines. Fifteen years ago chemotherapy saved his life, but the damage it did has lingered long after the cancer was dispatched. Life is a series of trade-offs. 

My little garden space is a work in progress. I started this year with grow bags and quickly graduated to 5-gallon buckets for the peppers. Next year will require something different for the cucumbers and radishes. The much-anticiapted strawberry grow bags are, in my opinion, a real bust. I don't like them so the strawberries have already been replanted. 

So on we go. 

I have fifteen buckets with peppers, thirteen grow bags with tomatoes, five grow bags with cucumbers, one with beets, one with carrots, one with a bush pumpkin, one with a bush watermelon, and one with sugar snap peas. 

The peppers are what I'm most interested in this year. With any luck, Cowboy Candy, pepper jelly, and a good amount of salsa will be added to the pantry. Past eating fresh tomatoes and making a few batches of salsa, I'm not sure what will be done with the tomatoes. We'll eat the watermelon, and I'll likely freeze the pumpkin puree. I tried canning pumpkin last year and never again. If I'm going to end up with mush, I'll just freeze mush. 

Will the harvest make me sorry I went on this journey? Perhaps, but the idea of having even a small amount of food in my pantry that I know has no preservatives in it is worth a little work. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor