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I failed to track down a photo of the garden last year when it was in full form, but it went alright for our first attempt. We were generally pleased with the plant growth but the only thing that produced up to our expectations were the tomatoes. Almost everything in the garden would start fruit all over the place and then abort them. I'm told that this is most likely due to poor pollination so we are going to go ahead and get a beehive.

We ordered one of these beautiful cedar langstroth hives from beethinking.com

We are planning to run with an itallian bee and see what happens. I'm almost as excited about the bees as anything else we are doing this year. I've read that we might produce as much a 80 pounds of honey a year from a single hive. That sounds too good to be true but I am certainly not going to complain if they are that productive. The great thing is the calories. My goal is complete food independence so every calorie I can produce it a big deal to me. Being able to completely fill our sugar use with honey without losing much growing space is going to be wonderful.

I spent the morning at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds http://www.rareseeds.....egetables/.

I found about a million things I wanted to grow but narrowed it down to these:

Tatume Squash:

We grew these last year. Our three plants produced about 20 softball sized squash that turned me into a squash lover. They have an excellent mild flavor that is good either savory or sweet. This was the worst offender on aborting fruit. We counted at least a hundred squash that just shrivelled away into nothing. This year we are planting 8-10 and hoping to have so much squash we have to buy a new freezer. We learned that even though the immature fruit we normally pick will not store well, if you cook it and freeze them they come out of the freezer just as good as they went it.

Lemon Cucumbers:

These things are amazing. By far the best cucumber I have ever tasted and they last a month on the kitchen counter with no ill effects. I would like to tell you how much longer they might have held up, but my experiment came to an abrupt halt when I decided I just wanted to eat that last one too bad to leave it sitting there any longer. We are growing ten of these plants as well and hoping to make a ton of pickles. These produced very poorly for us last year, but we planted them too close to the squash and they were choked out pretty bad. They started their real growth about a month later than the squash and could not keep up. They were also horrible about aborting fruit. We picked ten but counted 50 that shriveled away. I consider it a pretty good sign that even when they were choked for space they could have been decent producers had they been better pollinated.

Red Ripper Cowpeas:

We grew bush style black eyed peas last year and were generally disapointed in the yield. This could have been another symptom of our poor pollination but I went with these vining black eyed peas to avoid taking any chances. These are reported to be a very tasty cowpea, and a fantastic producer. I cant wait to see how they do for us.

Navajo Winter Watermelon:

These are reported to be a small to medium watermelon and I hope that is accurate. I am going to grow them on a trellis and hope it works out. Worst case scenario I might have to put the fruit in slings, but I'm told that that is often not an issue even with some of the larger watermelons. Knock on wood, maybe I'll do ok. What attracted me to these were their shelf life. Some of the reviewers claimed the lasted a month on the counter no problem. I really like the idea of being able to take the time to eat them over the course of the winter rather than just trying to shovel down the whole crop in a few weeks.

Po'suwaegeh Blue Corn:

I hate corn but my wife likes it so we are growing this crap. I hope it all fails to germinate so I can plant something tasty instead.

Casabanana Melecoton:

This is the most exciting new addition. supposedly these things taste like a cross between a cantaloupe and a peach. I love both of those so I am really stoked to find out what they mean. These are a south american vine that they claim grows up to 50' in a year. They are usually grown next to trees and in a no freeze zone are perrenials. People claim that once established they will completely cover a tree in a few years and produce astonishing amount of fruit. They are not recomended for anyone farther north than me, but I hope to have a decent year.

The common theme is of course vining plants. We have pretty limited space and have some pretty lofty goals in terms of food independence. I have some fun ideas that I'll be trying out this year to expand the garden to the front yard without pissing off my old retired neighbors with "an eyesore". Stay tuned, I'll try to document my garden alot better this year. With oil prices so low I'm only working 40 hour weeks and plan to really take advantage of all the time off. My goals for the spring include finally getting my fish tank up and running, converting my tool shed into a rabbit farm, and finding attractive ways to turn my front yard into my second garden.

Yup, those lemon Cucumbers were amazing. I want to grow them by the bushel. One of these days I may have to burn down the neighbors house to make room for a larger garden