My miniature pineapple lilies, plumeria and mandavilla are all blooming nicely -- until the hot winds kick up in the next few weeks!
I am still fighting gophers, though and can't seem to get rid of them.
Today is a nice 73 degrees with sun peaking in and out of the clouds. Monday we had rain! Four inches of rain, so all the barrels are full, and the pool has been replenished, but not quite full.
The storm lodged over the few Country Gentleman corn plants that I had managed to sprout. Broke half the roots, so I am just going to leave them be and see what goes, it should have been ready to harvest in a couple of weeks. Darn.
On the other hand, Hubby's corn is ready now. He just harvested a bunch, so that'll be my evening chore along with a batch of blackberries and cukes. Harvest sometimes comes faster than a person can handle it, but he'll probably help me with the cukes.
Tomatoes! We have about 10 harvested in various sizes and colors. Eating one for lunch on a salad. Will be having BLTs tomorrow. Loving it all.
Hope ya'll are doing great and having some successfull produce so that you have great eats. Have a good weekend. God Bless.
BLT BLT BLT.. MY tiny tomaters are yummy, the big ones are still growing,, should get a nice little crop off of five plants.. Some Asian pears are almost ripe too .. Fujis are a couple more weeks at least.. Squirrels have been kind and feasted on neighbors nectarines so far.
Nothing like a BLT.. Or I like a cheese and bacon samwich too.. Salad on the side
Bon appetite!
Pinging the List.
Garden talk here in Red England indicates that this is a ‘tomato year’...does that seem to be the case around the country? My plants this year are stunning, BUT that may have something to do with the Texas Tomato Food that I am using...
Pinging to the list.
Up here just to the southwest of Overland Park, Kansas I’m usually eating my first BLT at this time of the year. Yesterday, my wife and I canned 7 quarts of tomatoes from our 15 plants. This is the first year we’ve canned tomatoes and I can’t wait to use heirlooms in Chili this fall. I may go for canned salsa if we get another bumper crop.
My miniature pineapple lilies, plumeria and mandavilla are all blooming nicely -- until the hot winds kick up in the next few weeks!
I am still fighting gophers, though and can't seem to get rid of them.
In the last 3 days, something has been getting into my tomatoes!! I’ve lost 4 green ones and two almost-ripe ones. I’m fairly sure it’s the crow family that hangs around - I find the tomatoes lying on the ground with the pulp stabbed out of them in a couple of places. I did catch a squirrel yesterday stealing a tomato out of a separate, small kitchen garden - the tomato was about 1/3 as big as he was & he dropped it a couple of times, trying to make it to the apple tree. Although Mr. Squirrel is no longer with us, I found 3 “stabbed” tomatoes again this a.m. I’ve put up a ladder on each 4’ side of the raised bed with a long board down the 8’ length & that is supporting bird netting that we used on a fig bush last year. I had to use ladders because the tomatoes are pretty tall & I needed to get the netting up fairly high. Bricks are holding down the edges. This is temporary until I can get some pvc pipe and make hoops to support the netting. This should happen over the weekend ...... can’t wait (the ladder situation looks terrible, but it works!).
Meanwhile, some “trivia” .... been using a pole tree trimmer & my rope came loose. I couldn’t figure out how to tie it again so I looked it up .... if you ever need to retie a trimmer, here’s a link:
http://www.cnwes.com/cpgl/productimg/200631015544181-1%20.jpg
Hello from Massachusetts! It was a lovely day here as well. Since our recent heavy rains, the bug population has exploded, particularly the deer fly population. Walking up to the mailbox is challenging.
Our lettuce is bolting, as are our radishes.
We’re very pleased with our garden this year. Strawberries continue produce 2+ gallon a week, beets and carrots are adding to our evening meals as are the Yukon Gold potatoes. Sweet corn will be on the menu by early August. The Humboldt Bay region of Northwestern Calif has a ample supply of water as Ruth Lake was the only reservoir to fill and overflow this winter. We have 2 years of water in case it never rains again and that ain’t gonna happen. The garlic crop was the only disappointment due to the Rust disease for the second year.
My first round was to slice a dozen hot peppers in half and place them inside the little basket. Eight hours later, I had hard, crunchy pepper poker chips that will store easily and that can be added to soups, pizza, etc...
We’re doing great here near Philly. So much better than last year.
Tomatoes are loaded with fruit, starting to turn red — I may be canning a bit early this year if everything goes at once! (not complaining) — 2nd round of radishes are sprouting, lettuce is regrowing strong after being cut, peppers doing better. — Already harvested 10 zucchinis (also had to toss a few that had blossom end rot) & there are many more on the way .. will be baking zucchini bread for all! — Plenty of cukes, herbs are strong and we have a watermelon about the size of a coconut — Fun!
White peaches are sooooooooooo sweet and wife loves them. Guess I need to buy a net to put over the tree next year. Mockingbirds decided they taste goo too. Yellow peaches will be ready in a few days. Still firm but have a nice skin color.
12 hours late to the thread.
Spent the day in The Big City, buying feed, and other ranch supplies. Then dinner. Then a double feature at the drive-in.
We left in a thundershower, with light hail. Garden needed it. Radar showed it pop up over Wind Cave, barely 10 miles from us, and move our way. No big deal; we drove out of it as we left Hot Springs. When we just got back, there was TWO AND ONE HALF INCHES in the gauge! I watered good yesterday evening, because it was supposed to be DRY and about 92 today, and headed for 96-100 Saturday & Sunday.
I’ll find out tomorrow morning what, if anything, got flattened by it.
We’re getting salad cucumbers, Napa cabbage, cilantro, radishes, and leaf lettuce. Swiss chard will start to get picked this coming week. Cherries should fully ripen with the weekend heat, if the rain doesn’t cause them to crack.
The grains did need all the moisture they could get, however, as the rye is in the soft dough stage of ripening; and the wheat isn’t far behind. I dug out the ‘grass’ scythe blade (a “grass’, a ‘weed’, and a ‘brush’ blade were all left in the kitchen when we bought) and sharpened it, and got it adjusted to my new snath. There was an old snath in the barn, but it was broken. Youtube makes scything grain and grass look soooo easy and effortless; I can hardly wait...for Mrs. AR to rub me down with liniment afterward.
The adult chickens are too little, too late: 4 eggs from 8 hens day before yesterday; none yesterday; 3 today. Less than a dozen the entire week. Got new Mason lids on sale today, so the chicken canning is that much closer.
Maybe more in a day or three, but I’m done in tonight.
Oh boy, BLT’s I haven’t had one of those in a long time.
Nothing going on here but some peppers . Tomatos were ate by critters long ago. I may take cuttings to start some for fall and see how that works out.
Squash... lots and lots of squash... lots and lots of squash.
BLT’s. Haven’t had one in eons. I remember how good they are with fresh garden tomatoes! Yum, yum.
Assessed the storm damage from yesterday.
Corn is very bedraggled looking, but upright. Most of the tomatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, and cowpeas have pretty much had their leaves stripped. The potatoes and Napa cabbages have some leaf/stem damage but not bad. Onion family stuff is all pretty much okay, except for the shallots, which took a bit of a beating, as did the carrot tops. The grains were not hurt at all.
The good news (WHEW! It was a close call!) is that none of the weeds seem to have suffered. :-(
The other (maybe) good news is that the last time this happened, the tomatoes recovered with a vengeance, and gave us our best crop to date.
Quite a harvest of zucchini, yellow crockneck and patty-pan this morning. Still have lots of wax beans, gonna pull some beets and cut some greens. It’s getting pretty dry over here, tho - and I’ve got a summer cold and just don’t feel like doing much more than what absolutely has to get done now. Weeds can wait a few days. So emphaisis this weekend is harvesting the zukes before they grow to weapons-grade size and water, water, water.
I managed to get out to my land this weekend. The fishing line fence worked great! You can see the trail where the deer came up to the fence, then turned and walked around it. If they had run at it, they would have broken through, but if they approach slowly, they get disconcerted by strings they can feel but not see, and avoid the area.
I had brought another spool of fishing line to repair breaks, but there wasn’t a single broken line there!
I have pictures, but I need to get them uploaded. My first planting of corn is doing well, the silks are starting to dry down. Several stalks are doing the “octo-corn” thing, which multiplies the harvest but would make it impossible to use machinery to pick. My second planting of corn is about a foot tall, not bad for 2 weeks old. Everything is up except the tobacco.
I also transplanted some of my surviving strawberry plants out to the land. They’re hardy enough not to need much tending, and I’d like a big strawberry patch when I finally move there.
Closer to home, the peas are drying down faster than I thought they would. I took a sturdy needle and some upholstery thread and strung them up by the stem end of each pod, that should help them dry down completely. As the plants dry down, my one nuna bean is filling in the space, I hope it flowerrs soon. It’s from the pack the seed bank sent me. They would only send me 10 seeds, and of the 7 I planted only one grew.
Today I canned black raspberry syrup, mulberry-plum sauce, and chunky cherry syrup. There were odds and ends from each type, so I also have one jar that has all of them mixed, along with a few diced strawberries. I didn’t want it to go to waste.
(They were all small batches, so this wasn’t as much work as it looks like. Everything fit in a single canner load.)
I finally got my new grain grinder unpacked and cleaned up. The guys at the factory didn’t wash it, there was a greasy fingerprint right in the hopper! The burrs are taking long enough to dry that I’ll have to wait before I can try it out. Oh well.
Melons have blossoms, tomatoes are getting bigger but still green, and my chickpeas have little pods on them!
My grandfather’s caretaker is planning on unloading her extra produce on us this year, I’m looking forward to having too many tomatoes. Last year I didn’t have enough!
