Stoney Acres

The week between Christmas and New years is always a time for me to take a look at the past year and evaluate how I did and what I want to do for the coming year’s garden.  Since this is my first year blogging about my garden I thought I would let all of you in on the process.

First I should report my grand total produced for the year.  We grew a total of 738.5 pounds of produce from our 1210 square feet of garden space.  This was our best year ever by over 100 lbs.

I’m going to break the 2011 garden review into 3 parts and post about each over the next few days, that way it won’t be one giant post that will put you all to sleep.  Today I will talk about the new garden crops we grew this year, the next day I will look at the “star producers” in the 2011 garden, and the last day I will cover all the other crops we grew and how we did with each.

New garden crops for 2011

We grew 8 new varieties in 2011.  7 of these will stay one won’t make it back.

Sorrel – Large Leaf

Until this year I had never even tasted sorrel.  We are really happy with the results.  Sorrel is a perennial plant.  The leaves are similar in texture to spinach but have a very distinct lemon flavor.  They taste very good mixed in with lettuce in a salad.  We have also read they go well cooked in soups or used as an herb to flavor chicken or fish, but we haven’t tried it that way yet.

We started it from seed indoors the end of January.  The seedlings went out in the cold frame on March 12^th.  The plants really didn’t do much until June, and then they took off.  The four plants provided us with a good supply of leaves all summer and fall.  What we couldn’t eat went to the chickens.  Really I think two plants would be enough and I may pull two plants out in the spring.

Tuscan Kale

We have grown kale for a few years but this was the first time we tried this type.  Tuscan kale has a long crippled leaf that taste super good.  The leaves are a little easier to clean than some of the other types of kale.  The plants grew well all summer providing us with an occasional harvest.  The plants were then big and healthy when the fall came and the frost sweetened up the leaves.  The plants were very hardy and produced up until early December unprotected.  The two plants we grew produced almost 5 pounds of leaves for us to eat.  In addition we also harvested 5 more pounds I didn’t count in the totals because I feed it to the chickens.

Raspberries – Heritage

These were actually planted in 2010 but really didn’t bear until this year.  I was super happy with our raspberries; the only disappointing thing was there just wasn’t enough.  We love raspberries, so the 15 pounds we got this year wasn’t nearly enough.  I think I will continue to expand the patch in hopes of maybe doubling the production.  The berries are sweet and large; we ate about half of them in the summer and froze the rest.  Now we are eating them on our morning cereal or pancakes and loving them!!!

Popcorn – Yellow Hybrid

We planted just a small patch of popcorn this year.  The plot we planted it in was only about 5 x 5.  We got about 2 pounds of finished product which isn’t really much for 25 square feet of space.  We grew it for the novelty of it and we will plant it again next year.  We may not plant any sweet corn in 2012 so that would mean we could choose about any spot in the yard and not have to worry about cross pollination.  If you would like to learn more about growing popcorn click here to read my post from a few months back that covers the whole process.

Lettuce – Larry’s red

A fellow gardener in the area gave me the seeds to plant this variety of lettuce.  He didn’t tell me the name so we just named it after him.  It is a great tasting leaf lettuce with a great color and texture.  It did ok in the spring but really did well in the fall and early winter.  This one will stay on our list for years to come.  It is an open pollinated variety so we will be able to save our own seeds.

Lettuce –Paris Island Cos

This was my first experience with romaine lettuce.  In the past we have mainly stuck with leaf and bib varieties.  We were super happy with the taste and texture of this lettuce.  It remained hardy in the cold frame until December and lasted a long time in the fridge after we harvested it.

Garlic – Soft neck

We have never been really big garlic users.  I think this is something Mrs. Stoney and I acquired from our parents.  Neither of our mom’s uses fresh garlic in their cooking.  In 2010 we bought some garlic from the farmers market and started using it to cook with.  We liked it so much we bought some extra and planted it last fall.  We ended up with 11 bulbs or about 5 pounds.  Garlic turned out to be easy to grow and has been a great addition to our cooking.

Hampson Tomato – DX-52-12

This variety of tomato was our one loser for 2011.  I won’t be growing it again.  This variety is recommended by our local extension agency but I wasn’t impressed.  We planted healthy transplants in late May in what I consider one of our best spots, no weeds or other competition, plenty of compost and water.  Despite all of this they just didn’t perform well.  The four plants produced less than 10 pounds of really small tomatoes.  In comparison 3 nearby tomato plants produced between 10 to 15 pounds each.  This tomato will not see the light of day again in my garden.

That’s it for the new plants in 2011.  Tomorrow we will talk about this years star producers.

Related posts:

1. Early October 2011 in the Garden
2. Year Round Gardening Series Part 2
3. Year Round Gardening Series Part 1