Beefsteak Heirloom 'Maters. Part of my Inevitable Zombiepocalypse Emergency Mobile Garden.
It means a respite from digging in Hubby's soon to be tomato and pepper patches, and carrying 5 gallon buckets for watering some of the beds. Plus the rain barrels are filled up again.
Speaking of rain barrels, it is skeeter time, and hubby had me get some skeeter dunks for the swimming pool and rain barrels. I just want to mention an alternate treatment that I have sometimes used - it works. Just float a spoonful of vegetable oil in the water - skeeters can't grow.
It's been a busy week with such nice sun shiny days that I have spent most of my time gardening, harvesting, and cooking or preserving stuff. Today I have to hit the housecleaning hard, get some food prep done for Sunday, and hit the supermarket specials.
The lemons are now about the size of ping pong balls. 17 of the tomatoes are transplanted into gallon containers and awaiting the final transplant into 5 gallon buckets. 7 tomato starts in 5 oz Dixie cups are in desperate need of transplant, so I may go ahead and put them in gallon buckets for a while, since I still need to pick up the buckets and clean them up.
Hubby's target date is May 15 for transplanting his tomatoes and peppers, and I have a little over 1/3 of that bed prepared - so that's my priority for next week's project.
I have one winter density lettuce head left and two Winter giant spinach left to harvest on Sunday for Mother's Day Salad. Most of the rye has been harvested and grass trimmings used for mulch.
Sunday I'll be starting my next batch of yogurt, and grinding some more wheat for bread. Last batch of pretty good, but still a bit too sour for Hubby-but a big improvement over the traditional week long starter process. I thought it was pretty good, but I like the tartness of sour dough.
The scraggly potatoes that I got into the ground have actually come up and are about 6 inches tall - if I get any potatoes, I'll be surprised. One of the fruit trees in the orchard by the walnut tree has pea sized fruit - kinda looks like a plum.
It's a mystery tree. The metal tag got lost, the map we drew says nectarine, but we never ordered one of those, and it is too cold to live here anyway. It was the first tree to bloom this year, and it had white blossums all over it, and bees just swarmed it like crazy. I thought surely it was one of those ornamental pear trees. So we shall see what happens from here.
Have a great weekend. God Bless.
Pinging the List.
Does anybody do biointensive? I’m curious if the 2-6 times greater harvest is true.
Glad to hear that you've got rain .
Here in Western NY we have what Joe Bastardi last weekend called :" Suddenly Summer"
No rain yet , but expected this weekend.
Keep going ,..and growing !
Tomato plants and peppers have been in the garden for three weeks. All have little fruits showing and we’re optimistic that we’ll have red cherry tomatoes in 10 or 15 days.
Today’s rain knocked down the awful oak pollen. It was beginning to be impossible to mow the grass without a bandana around my nose.
Some kind of cut worm destroyed our cucumbers. We had these plants protected with tin foil but they still got to them. Looks like we’ll have room for something else, bought at the farmer’s market tomorrow.
I bought 4 tiny cayenne peppers locally for $1.98 and they have their own home in a big pot next to the raised beds. Don’t know why we didn’t start these with the rest back in February.
Rain is a blessing...
I feel like a slacker. My mom’s roses are blooming and they look beautiful. So nice to have them for Mother’s Day. Last year only three roses bloomed and so these “new” ones are just a delight to see and smell. All the plants I put in last year are thriving. I even had some surprises. I’ve not planted the tomato plants I started from seeds. I’ve not even got around to planting some shade plants I got for the front yard. Like I said, slacker.
BTW .. Where does one buy a good grain grinder these days?
We used to have Hugh ones on the farm in the granary.
Wednesday evening, it hailed. We were expecting rain, but the hail we were not. It battered the snot out of most of my garden, destroyed all but one hop plant, tore through the leaves on my squash and tobacco and beat down many of my tomato plants. I ran outside and grabbed as much as I could and started dragging it in the house, but by that point, the damage was done.
I've spent the last couple mornings before work nursing what's left, which ain't much, in the hopes that it will pick back up. Time will tell.
Beefsteak Heirloom 'Maters. Part of my Inevitable Zombiepocalypse Emergency Mobile Garden.
Doing fine here. Finally decided to stop harvesting the asparagus but it was a fine season. We had some every day and plenty in the freezer.
The only other thing I'm harvesting right now are the wild blackberries which are VERY good with all the rain, some strawberries that I put in mostly for ground cover (they don't grow well here) and plums. Still waiting for the thornless blackberries to come in as they are loaded.
Tomatoes are doing well as are the potatoes. The corn looks, at best, just okay. Have no clue.
The big success story is some basil. I had tried to remove a rock but it turned out to be VW sized so I filled in what I had dug out. Ran into a bunch of basil seeds I'd harvested from last years crop and kinda spread them around the loosened soil and bingo, a huge number coming up and an inch tall.
Also started up some homemade kefir for the first time. Had bought some at the store a couple of weeks ago and had forgotten how much I liked the taste so I got some "grains" and have already made a batch. Gonna be a lot cheaper than store bought.
Hi greeneyes!
There is a tree that started out as an ornamental shrub (introduced) that has taken over my part of south Florida. It has nasty, greasy little flowers that destroy the paint on our cars and cause me sinus headaches and hives.
The stupid “hippies” on our city council will not allow our complex to remove them because they are “mature trees”, even though they are officially an invasive species.
Oh...and they smell like rotten meat.
Too bad chain saws at midnight would wake up the neighborhood!
FYI, Walmart has New Zealand Spinach in their yellow and orange 50 cent seed packets.
Big storm came through today so guess the garden was wiped out - again. Loud rushing waterfalls of run off continued half an hour after the rains ended.
We’re getting there in southern Ohio. Another couple weeks and I’ll have plants in the ground. I have 18 tomato plants ready, still need to condition them to direct sun. Lemon boys (my favorite), Mr. Stripeys, Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes, a Cherokee Purple, and a Black Krim. I grew some Cayenne peppers from seed and their doing well. If I have nothing but Tomatoes, Peppers, Onions, and Okra I will be happy, maybe some cucumbers since they do so well in my garden.
Plum is an early white bloomer; apricot is the earliest, with pink blooms; opens even before the plums. Both bloom before the leaf buds start to open.
Cherries—white or pink, depending on type—are just after apricots, but their leaf buds start to open first.
Pear is a late—after most apples—white bloomer; peaches are also later bloomers.
Right behind the house, our gully is full of a wild plum thicket, both yellow & red varieties. They were in full bloom this past week, and the scent was nearly overwhelming.
Chokecherries will be next; earliest apples started with the cherries & plums; others are just beginning, and the lates haven’t haven’t started yet.
Meanwhile, the strawberries are in full bloom, but raspberries are just leafing & putting out the new shoots. Grapes, as usual, look 90% dead, with just a few buds swelling here & there.
This week I discovered that one of the weeds that’s taking over my parents’ backyard is actually cranesbill, which is worth about $3.50 a pound for the dried root. I’ve been digging a little at a time due to a shortage of drying space. It’s amazing how many of those little roots it takes to make a pound...
Still trying to get out of this house.
About 3/4 Lady Bender's Marigold starts also in the garden greenhouse ~~~
My favorite Bearded Iris ~~~
We had fierce winds for our neck of the woods Thursday. I think everything survived but we had to roundup the patio furniture...
