If I only had beans :( could have some good veggie soup
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Today's harvest
And now it begins :) I'm doing a happy dance
If I only had beans :( could have some good veggie soup
If I only had beans :( could have some good veggie soup
Friday, July 20, 2012
Rain
Yesterday and the day before we finally had a significant amount of rain. The garden looks so much better now. So do the dang weeds! LOL
The beans are flowering, and the Italian peas are blooming also, it is easy to miss the pea blooms and I found a few pods on the plants already. As I said last year, these need to be picked daily because they produce over a nice long period of time, like the pole beans.
I ate a carrot from the garden last week, yummmm, should have a few more in a week or 2, I tried to get one out of the ground a few days ago and it wouldn't budge, the ground was too hard. Tomorrow I will try again and see if I can get the biggest ones out.
The chard is still producing nicely. There are two plants and I get a nice bunch to eat about every 3-4 days. I like to wilt it with some vinaigrette, wine, a few drops of liquid smoke, a bit of sugar and a little water. I planted 4 more a few weeks ago but I don't think they will grow. There wasn't enough moisture even though I watered the spot every day. Maybe it was too hot. Some seeds don't like to grow when it is too hot out.
The beans are flowering, and the Italian peas are blooming also, it is easy to miss the pea blooms and I found a few pods on the plants already. As I said last year, these need to be picked daily because they produce over a nice long period of time, like the pole beans.
I ate a carrot from the garden last week, yummmm, should have a few more in a week or 2, I tried to get one out of the ground a few days ago and it wouldn't budge, the ground was too hard. Tomorrow I will try again and see if I can get the biggest ones out.
The chard is still producing nicely. There are two plants and I get a nice bunch to eat about every 3-4 days. I like to wilt it with some vinaigrette, wine, a few drops of liquid smoke, a bit of sugar and a little water. I planted 4 more a few weeks ago but I don't think they will grow. There wasn't enough moisture even though I watered the spot every day. Maybe it was too hot. Some seeds don't like to grow when it is too hot out.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Hot summer
It certainly has been a hot hot hot summer so far. Today we have heat warnings in effect. The temp will be between 105 and 115. This is almost unheard of here. And with the humidity we always have, it will be too uncomfortable to be outdoors. I went out this morning around 6:30 and watered my patio plants, my little lilac and rose bushes and my two remaining raspberry plants.
The blueberry plants are dead. All but 2 raspberry plants are dead. The soil I have here drains almost too well. There is a lot of sand and the water just percolates through it. It will be a few years before I have accumulated enough organic matter in the soil to help it hold moisture.
With that said, I have been watering half the garden one day and the other half the next. I have been hand watering because 1 of my 4 soaker hoses won't water anymore, there is some sort of blockage in it, and two of them have sprung leaks that create fountains lol. In this heat I have been going out after dark when it is cooler to water. It takes me 30-45 minutes to get it done.
The garden from the south east corner. There is the pvc squash trellis I made last year. This year I planned to have 5 butternut squash plants on it but there are only 2 and one will probably not give me ripe squash before fall sets in. That's ok though, they are good eating when they are small. You can eat them like summer squash, skin and all. Very tasty. The reason there are only 2 plants is since the weather has been so very dry, the birds visit my garden every time I water to peck worms and bugs out of the ground. In the process, they also peck my young plants to death. This is what happened to my carrots and squash. Both had to be replanted and covered with bird netting to keep birds off. I feel sorry for the birds. Food and water are scarce for them this year. If I had the money for it, I would have a bird bath in the yard.
This is not a very sharp image. There are red potatoes here. Behind them are the Italian peas. I saved seed from last year and they are doing fantastic in this heat. They seem to thrive in this hot dry summer. They have already grown bigger than they did last year. I can't wait to eat some. I doubt any will get canned, they will all be eaten fresh and of course some will be allowed to go to seed for next year's crop. Off to the left of the peas you can see the remains of my borage. It has flowered, had hundreds of bees on it and now is starting to dye off. But there are more of them growing so there should be more soon. In front of the borage is the sage and horehound.
Ahhh, here we have my one little tomatillo plant in the cage. It got started a bit late but there are little tomatillos on it already. To the right of the tomatillo are two rhubarb plants that survived of the 4 I started with. They are multiplying like gangbusters. Next spring I will have a nice little bit of them to taste. Behind the rhubarb is the peas.
This is my Mother's day rose :) Poor thing, it is so hot. There were 2 pretty little flowers on it last week.
There are 7 tomato plants here. From front to back, one cherry tomato plant that only gets about 4 feet tall but there are loads of delicioius tomatoes. I pick them almost every day now. Behind that is a volunteer from last year that I moved. I don't know which variety it is but I suspect it is the beefsteak type that I had last year. Third is another beefsteak type. In a couple of days I will be eating green fried tomatoes again. Yummmmy. Then there are 4 roma plants. I like to eat them fresh as well as can them. They are so tasty.
This is a view from the north side of the garden. It shows the sweet potato hill in front of the pole beans.
The sweet potatoes, as promised, truly love this hot weather. Hopefully there will be a nice crop of them to dig before fall hits. They are Georgia Jets. These are said to mature at 95 days. That's plenty of time. I found a website that explains that it isn't so much the number of days that sweet potatoes need to grow, it is the number of heat units during the growing season. You need a specific number of heat units to be able to get sweet potatoes to grow. Being a short season variety, these will be just fine as long as our hot hot hot summer continues.
And oh yes, there is one corn stalk LOL. Must be a bird or squirrel "dropped" a seed. I have let it grow just for visual interest.
I had to replant the pole beans. They are no longer Kentucky wonders. They are now blue lake. Eh, that's ok, I have planted them in the past too. They are also OP so I can save some seed for next year. A rabbit chewed through my plastic mesh rabbit fence and ate all 3 rows of beans down to little nubbins. Luckily I was able to find some more seed at the local greenhouse. And I went to Menards for the WIRE rabbit fence.
There have been some problems with the bamboo bean poles. The wind knocks them over even without a load on them. I am thinking that there will be more trouble with them. There is one that continues to fall over and the ground is too hard now to push it in farther so I splayed the legs out more, hoping that will help. Maybe I should do that for all of them. I am hoping that when there is a load on the top poles, the entire thing will be more steady. But then again, if it gets windy it might just be a huge sail. Wait and see.
The blueberry plants are dead. All but 2 raspberry plants are dead. The soil I have here drains almost too well. There is a lot of sand and the water just percolates through it. It will be a few years before I have accumulated enough organic matter in the soil to help it hold moisture.
With that said, I have been watering half the garden one day and the other half the next. I have been hand watering because 1 of my 4 soaker hoses won't water anymore, there is some sort of blockage in it, and two of them have sprung leaks that create fountains lol. In this heat I have been going out after dark when it is cooler to water. It takes me 30-45 minutes to get it done.
The garden from the south east corner. There is the pvc squash trellis I made last year. This year I planned to have 5 butternut squash plants on it but there are only 2 and one will probably not give me ripe squash before fall sets in. That's ok though, they are good eating when they are small. You can eat them like summer squash, skin and all. Very tasty. The reason there are only 2 plants is since the weather has been so very dry, the birds visit my garden every time I water to peck worms and bugs out of the ground. In the process, they also peck my young plants to death. This is what happened to my carrots and squash. Both had to be replanted and covered with bird netting to keep birds off. I feel sorry for the birds. Food and water are scarce for them this year. If I had the money for it, I would have a bird bath in the yard.
This is not a very sharp image. There are red potatoes here. Behind them are the Italian peas. I saved seed from last year and they are doing fantastic in this heat. They seem to thrive in this hot dry summer. They have already grown bigger than they did last year. I can't wait to eat some. I doubt any will get canned, they will all be eaten fresh and of course some will be allowed to go to seed for next year's crop. Off to the left of the peas you can see the remains of my borage. It has flowered, had hundreds of bees on it and now is starting to dye off. But there are more of them growing so there should be more soon. In front of the borage is the sage and horehound.
Ahhh, here we have my one little tomatillo plant in the cage. It got started a bit late but there are little tomatillos on it already. To the right of the tomatillo are two rhubarb plants that survived of the 4 I started with. They are multiplying like gangbusters. Next spring I will have a nice little bit of them to taste. Behind the rhubarb is the peas.
This is my Mother's day rose :) Poor thing, it is so hot. There were 2 pretty little flowers on it last week.
There are 7 tomato plants here. From front to back, one cherry tomato plant that only gets about 4 feet tall but there are loads of delicioius tomatoes. I pick them almost every day now. Behind that is a volunteer from last year that I moved. I don't know which variety it is but I suspect it is the beefsteak type that I had last year. Third is another beefsteak type. In a couple of days I will be eating green fried tomatoes again. Yummmmy. Then there are 4 roma plants. I like to eat them fresh as well as can them. They are so tasty.
This is a view from the north side of the garden. It shows the sweet potato hill in front of the pole beans.
The sweet potatoes, as promised, truly love this hot weather. Hopefully there will be a nice crop of them to dig before fall hits. They are Georgia Jets. These are said to mature at 95 days. That's plenty of time. I found a website that explains that it isn't so much the number of days that sweet potatoes need to grow, it is the number of heat units during the growing season. You need a specific number of heat units to be able to get sweet potatoes to grow. Being a short season variety, these will be just fine as long as our hot hot hot summer continues.
And oh yes, there is one corn stalk LOL. Must be a bird or squirrel "dropped" a seed. I have let it grow just for visual interest.
I had to replant the pole beans. They are no longer Kentucky wonders. They are now blue lake. Eh, that's ok, I have planted them in the past too. They are also OP so I can save some seed for next year. A rabbit chewed through my plastic mesh rabbit fence and ate all 3 rows of beans down to little nubbins. Luckily I was able to find some more seed at the local greenhouse. And I went to Menards for the WIRE rabbit fence.
There have been some problems with the bamboo bean poles. The wind knocks them over even without a load on them. I am thinking that there will be more trouble with them. There is one that continues to fall over and the ground is too hard now to push it in farther so I splayed the legs out more, hoping that will help. Maybe I should do that for all of them. I am hoping that when there is a load on the top poles, the entire thing will be more steady. But then again, if it gets windy it might just be a huge sail. Wait and see.
Ahhhh Strawberries. I never grew strawberries before. Should have. Yesterday I went out and spread some of my old hay around them so the berries won't get dirty and it will keep the moisture in as well. There are many nice little berries here. There are also some plants without berries. I let them develop runners to make new plants. Those will be used to expand the strawberry bed next year. Every year I will let a few of them set runners so I will have new plants every year. These are ever bearing strawberries so, as I understand, they only last 3-4 years then the berries get smaller so I think it best to let a few new ones grow every year to be able to rotate them and every year I will get nice berries. Hopefully. These did well, out of 25 only one died and one was pecked to almost nothing by birds but it has had time to recover.
There is bird netting around the strawberries. Those pesky birds are NOT going to get my berries! If you notice the poles laying on the ground around the strawberry bed, they are holding down the edges of the bird netting. The netting is attached, at the 4 corners of the bed, to bamboo poles about 18" off the ground, there is about 6-8 inches laying on the ground. I used zip ties to attach the netting to the poles. When I want to get in, I simply remove the poles on the ground on 3 sides, remove 2 of the bamboo poles and walk them to the other side to lay them down. When I am done, I just put the bamboo poles back in their holes, make sure there are no gaps around the edges and replace the poles on the 3 sides to keep the birds out. Easy Peasy.
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