Farmer Friday; Abundance Everywhere!

Ladybug larvae

ladybug larvae

I was very happy to see this ladybug larvae in the hoop house. They eat tons of aphids. This is why I am never in a hurry to 'weed' as often the weeds are full of these. If you pull them up and throw them away you lose a lot of these natural predators. And sad to say, for whatever reasons I have not seen as many ladybugs this spring as I have in the past. It might be the weather, I'm not sure. But so glad to see them now.

Mexican Evening Primrose

I love these little wild primroses. These popped up from some wildflower mixes I tossed out last fall.

Chocolate flowers, they really smell like chocolate!

Red Flax and Bachelor Buttons

Some more wild flowers are blooming.

Summer squash plants of all kinds

Gold Rush Zucchini

The squash plants are doing well. It looks like the Gold Rush Zucchini will be coming in first!

Summer Bibb Lettuce, bigger than a dinner plate!

 

Summer Bibb, red and green and delicious!

Burpee's Gourmet Mix

So far the lettuce is going gung ho. I don't know how much longer  it will last with the heat, so eating as much as I can while it lasts.

Best onions ever!

I did a small experimental planting of onions last fall and some of them are whoppers. I'll be planting a lot more this fall! I planted Granex and Barbosa, both of them did well.

Besides lettuce and onions there was a little bit of spinach, another 5 pounds of snap peas, curly and flat parsley. If I have time this evening I'll pick some bouquets too.

Harvest Monday

a days harvest

Welcome to Harvest Monday. Sponsored by Daphne's Dandelions, this blog hop is a great way to share  your harvest and visit gardeners from around the world.

Well I've had some good harvests this week but I was not very good about taking pictures! But this was typical, eggplant, squash and tomatoes are the major items coming out of the garden right now.

Florence Red Bottle onions

I pulled out the Florence Red Bottle onions. They are not very big, but that is because the tomatoes crawled over them and shaded them so much. I'll weigh them either as I use them or when they have dried off and been cleaned.

In the meantime there are many other things going on; trying to get things tidied up and fall crops planted, the new chicken coop and pen built. You can see a garden tour in this post and the new mobile chicken coop in this one.

I've also been busy trying to get all my production data entered into a spread sheet. When I'm caught up to date I'll be revamping my harvest records here.

Around the Garden & in the Greenhouse

pea plants broken down by snow

Today was nice and sunny so I did a bit of work around the garden and in the greenhouse. I surveyed the damage from the snow storm last week.

The Bleushokker peas (in this photo) as well as the Sugar Snaps had some stems broken over by the snow and ice but peas are hardy plants and don't die from freezing. I'll probably just trim off the broken bits and feed them to the rabbits. Rabbits  happen to love pea plants.

freeze damage on lettuce

A lettuce bed covered with Agrobon frost blanket suffered freeze damage where snow sat for days on top of it and the leaves froze to the material.

Lettuce in the Snow

Another bed of lettuce which had been picked to ground level a couple of weeks ago had no frost blanket and so far shows no signs of damage. I think the thick layer of snow that was over it the first few days insulated it from the 22 degree nights.

Beets & carrots after the snow

The beets and carrots looked a little sad after the snow melted off of them, but they tasted just fine when I pulled them up. You can see there is still a little snow at one end of the bed (upper left corner of photo) and the soil is still frozen in some parts.

Dwarf Grey Sugar Peas in a tub in the greenhouse.

The greenhouse did get down below freezing some nights last week with the storm. Some little nasturtium seedlings froze to death. But almost every else is doing well.

Many things are sprouting up and growing. It gets in the 70's when it's sunny, though it can freeze at night, lately it's been just above freezing while outdoor temps have been just below freezing. One thing that seems to help is that the soil picks up a fair amount of heat during the day the surface is warm to the touch. I think this has helped the seeds sprout and the plants to grow. At this time I don't have any heat sink in the green house mostly due to lack of space, tho I'm thinking about at least using plastic milk jugs full of water.

Little Marvel Pea seedlings in the greenhouse bed

The Little Marvel Peas are sprouting up as well as a few other things.

onion seedlings in soil blocks

An onion plant left from last year and some radish seedlings.

Sweet Alyssum started in soil blocks and moved to plastic pots

Purple Pansies in the greenhouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old fashioned violet

Yellow Marble Tomato survives

A big surprise was to find that one of the Yellow Marble Tomato plants did not seem to have been frozen. It does lay over a couple of big rocks and perhaps they helped keep it warm enough, I'm not sure, but tomato season may not be totally over yet.

Don't forget to stop by and comment for Seedy Saturday's free seed giveaway. This week I'm giving away old fashioned hollyhocks, so if you have been wanting some for your cottage garden or to hide the compost pile, go on over and comment on this post to be put in for the free seed drawing.