Since we're on the subject of gardens, let me finish up. This year we had 2 gardens. The main one with all of our "normal" vegetables and then one behind the pole barn where we planted squash and corn.
For the squash patch we simply did 16 mounds.. well as we found out later we kind of planted intensively. In fact I don't have a picture of the garden later on.. but try to imagine the above image, completely covered with a moving green mass of squash plants, growing in, over, on top of, and through each other. It was pretty crazy!
But to leave the squash for a second.. right above the squash patch I decided to have a little fun and plant a corn maze. Well really a corn spiral! With a help of a friend from church we planted the corn, with sunflowers in the middle and at each entrance!
Behind the maze underneath all the crazy growth, little baby squash began to form.
The corn patch actually did relatively well for how haphazardly its was thrown together; we even got quite a few yummy meals with corn on the cob as side dish.
But the Squash patch... that outdid itself! Seriously!! I had planted 6 different kinds of squash. 2 we have grown many times and love, Butternut, and Spaghetti Squash, but the other 4 were experiments of sorts. In the above photo from top to bottom, we have a Blue Hubbard (huge odd looking vegetables, but with an amazing taste!) then the Galeaux d' Eysines (don't ask.. long french name, and that's really only the ending of it!), The Long Island Cheese (a squash, which is actually a pumpkin, that is called a "cheese." Identity crisis just happened.) and on the bottom, the Hidatsa squash (native american heirloom variety)
This wasn't even all of our harvest!!! (you can see the pile behind the cart... uhuh)
In fact we loaded so much in the cart for the photo.. but then had to unload them because it was too heavy and the wheels went flat!
All in all, I think the "other garden" did it'self proud.. and if the world runs out of food this winter... we have squash.
~Chs
