Around here today....

Or yesterday or the day before. Around here in the last two or three days. Okay well the last few pictures we've taken....


11 little chickies under a VERY good mom born yesterday!! They're going to be our new layers for next year. Dad is half Rhode Island Red, Half Buff Orpington and most of their moms are RIRs as well though there might be one or two with a Buff Orpington mom. Don't know why my Barred Rock didn't lay in there. But we have two half RIR/Buff O half Barred Rock pullets running around so that's fine. SO much fun getting new batches of chicks. I'm SO over new batches of ducklings this year. If we don't get another duckling until next year it'll be too soon! We've only had maybe 50+ ducklings hatch this year, maybe way more.

Did our first batch of canning Clay and I. 4 quarts of tomatoes, 5 of green beans, 3 quarts of bread and butter pickles and a pint of bread and butter pickles that won't be waiting the 4 weeks to age and get yummier. First time using our ROCKIN' All American canner. Can't wait to can 100 more jars with it~! It's amazing!

Clay's garden has loads of acorn squash growing on it. We'll get more from his garden than we ever thought possible!

Our first garden carrots. Why I wasn't planting these all Summer I don't know, but next year I will be! They're amazing. Amazing.

One of the two kinds of pumpkins that we have growing in Clay's big garden. This is the first one finishing up. We're not really sure when it's going to be done as we've never done pumpkins, but we're read online and hey, live and learn. But it sure LOOKS good right? We have some super cute Cinderella looking sugar pumpkins out there as well.

Just a quick post until later....

Garden Journal - Tuesday June 30th

Smaller Garden:

• Loads of green tomatoes. Haven't seen any aphids or tomato hornworms yet.
• A handful of cherry tomatoes everyday
• We've gotten maybe 8 big tomatoes. A couple Mortgage lifters, a few Bush Goliath, and a few of something I didn't pay attention to what they were.
• Cucumbers are just now reaching 5 feet tall on the trellis. Are getting a handful (5 or 6) of cucumbers everyday.
• Lots of hot chili peppers on the plants. Have picked a handful of the thin green ones.
• Bell peppers are starting on a few plants as well.
• Getting a handful of green beans off the teepees everyday.
• A few small yellow squash on the ys plant
• Zucchini plants are big and vining over and I get a zuke off each plant every couple days.
• Basil is flowering.
• Thyme's looking dead
• Dill looks horrible. Bottom half looks yellow and dead. I think it's on it's last leg
• Potatoes plants are all dead. Time to dig!
• Onions from garden center are falling over and looking done
• Amish bottle onions are flowering, some are falling over. Wonder if it's because I just did the heavy weeding the other day? Hope I didn't kill them
• Eggplants officially all dead
• Brussel Sprouts eaten to death and I might pull them
• Huckleberry plants are ginormous and are starting to get purple berries
• Sweet potato plants starting to perk up and vine a little bit
• Corn has it's first small corn on it! And the flower thingamajigs on top.
• First butternut squash plant vining and about 3 feet long
• Planted new yellow squash and zucchini a couple weeks ago. Chickens destroyed about half of the starts. Ugh. Need to get new seeds as I left them in the yard in the rain. That's why I planted them when I did lol.

Clay's bigger garden

• Corn is getting pretty big.
  
• Pole beans growing up the corn on two 100 ft rows
• Pumpkins are vining and getting yellow flowers
• Pumpkins wilting in heat of the day
• Bush beans were getting a few handfuls a day but they're getting eaten by rabbits
• Clay put up a fake owl yesterday to try and scare the rabbits
• Clay found a few surviving watermelon plants. They're about a foot long LOL but have flowers.
  
• His butternut squash are going slowly but going
• Sweet potatoes not so great but limping along
• Two pumpkin plants have died. I see no sign of cutworms or squash bugs. I think he's not watering enough

I know this is just for me, thanks if you even read it lol.

Bounty

Oh neglected blog how I miss you so.

We've gotten so much out of our garden over the course of the Spring. I've taken pictures and then never get around to posting them. Like this yumminess from the Spring:
But those great lettuce and bok choy days are gone. Unfortunately for us the inexperience gardener I am didn't plan well enough, didn't plant some things early enough and all those type mistakes so we had a dry spell between Spring and Summer harvesting. But here's a taste of what we've been getting the last few days.

We still have lots of potatoes still to dig up (it's going on Clay's weekend project list) and of course the zucchinis are just getting started.

Oh my do I love fresh onions. They just make me happy.
Zukes and the first yellow squash. Bad picture but still yummy.

And you know it goes when you miss a day picking cucumbers. Ours have just started and one missed day and we walk with 10 at least. In a few weeks, we'll be overrun!

We have been getting tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, herbs, zucchinis, yellow squash, hmm... what else? Don't know why I don't have a picture of our lovely tomatoes. They're sitting right there on the counter right now lol.

Okay fly by quick post. All I have to say is that I am amazed by the miracle that is putting a tiny seed in the ground and having a huge plant that gives our family food grow from it. Amazes me every year.

Garden Journal - Sunday June 14th

Before I forget, going to do a quick garden journal. This one will have pictures though!

Currently:

• All broccoli and cabbage are done and gone. Had bad infestation of caterpillars that did my cabbage in. Planning on row covering them next year to see how that goes.
• Loads of green tomatoes
• Pole beans huge and overflowing. No open flowers yet but close
• Potato plants starting to die back
• Cilantro totally flowered and fallin over. Needs to be pulled
• Amish bottle onions flowering
• Most eggplants dying from flea beetle infestation. Gotta find out what to do about those. I've read loads and can't find a good answer.
• Lettuce tall and bolted.
  
• Lost 2 out of three of the first yellow squash plants lost to what look like vine borers.
• Inch long zucchini on the plants.
  
• Planted loads of sweet potato slips yesterday
• Have lots of hot peppers growing on the hot pepper plants
• Caught a gazillion squash bugs by spraying water on the plants and catching them as they crawled up to dry off. Kids loved that!
  
• Cucumbers just starting to flower
• Brussel sprouts have little buds, lots of caterpillar damage but I couldn't find a single bug one them yesterday. Maybe getting too hot. Hopefully.
• Clay's winter squash seeds he planted are starting to peek their first true leaves. Just peeking. He planted those about a week and a half ago
• Lots of green huckleberries. The huckleberries have really made it through and grown big despite the flea beetles.
• Amish bottle onions flowering, open flowers. Took all flowers off all the other onions.
  

Clay's garden:

• He put some fertilizer (gasp) on the corn. His corn is finally starting to get bigger with all this rain. Some are still 2 inches tall but some are 2 feet tall or taller.
  
• Pumpkins starting grow. A couple are about 5 feet long with vines.
  
• Two official nice yellow pumpkin flowers
• Bush green beans just starting to flower
• Planted 50 foot row of 2-3 wide of sweet potato slips yesterday

Garden Journal - Thurday May 14th, 2009

Okay so I haven't blogged in a month. And even now I'm not going to really :) I realized that whether I blog or not I am going to keep track of what is going on in the garden. I wanted to do a written one but I'll never get it done or lose the notebook or something.

Tuesday May 12th:
Planted 4 zucchini plants (8 seeds) about 2 feet apart
Planted 4 butternut squash seeds in a hill - hoping for 2 strong seedling on hill
Planted about 12 feet of cucumbers (1/2 straight Pepino or something and 1/2 pickling cucumbers. Will look at seeds tomorrow) Planted about 8 feet of pole beans
Planted row of Romaine lettuce (ugh I should have pulled out the seeds so I could know what variety but I'm too tired now) between the 2 pole bean teepees in other bean bed
Transplanted second batch of peppers - 20 plants - sweet Italian stuffing peppers and the Hot Pepper Mix from bountiful gardens. I started those under lights this year. About 50 plants in total. I'm thrilled about it.

Garden status:
2 broccoli plants out of 12 going to flower
Other 10 plants have smaller heads slightly smaller than a baseball
1 Bok Choy out of 6 flowering. Ate it. Was amazing
Big Romaine heads ready to eat. Salad tomorrow! Maybe whole wheat pizza and salad. Sourdough pizza crust. Yeah.
Onions have unopened flowers
Straight neck yellow squash planted two weeks ago looking good. About 2 inches tall with 1 set of true leaves.
Mesclun too tall. Must eat.

Clay's garden status. All his silver queen corn is up. Compost transplanted Amish pumpkins looking way stronger than thought all with one set true leaves.

Today Thursday May 14th:
Cut 3 heads of cauliflower. Slightly smaller than store bought ones, nice slight purple color :) They were starting to open a bit so I cut them today. Sauteed with some Spring onions from the Amish, butter and fresh Thyme from the garden. Honestly the best cauliflower I've ever had. Honestly.

Boy it's been raining a lot. Raining a few times a week for 3 weeks at least. Everything in the garden going off, weeds too. Though suddenly my Spring veggies are wanting to flower. Sigh. I guess I need to eat them. Yum.