Farmer Friday

RATS!!!

Boy this week has gone by fast! Can't believe it's almost the middle of August already! Our weather went from cloudy and almost cool back to blazing hot and dry. A rat ate through one of my sprinkler hoses and I lost some squash plants before I got that situated. Then lost some bean plants because their drip line valve was turned part way off. I have no idea how or when that happened.

sprinkler hose ziptied to fence

I actually got the idea to raise up the sprinkler hose from a really old garden book from the '50s, something about growing roses I think. They raised a sprinkler hose like this up on their fence behind their rose garden. I zip tied this one to the chicken wire around the squash garden and adjusted it to spray down and across the garden. It goes all the way around the fence so the whole area gets good coverage.

a dozen cockerels in their new pen

I did finish the cockerel pen and moved 12 cockerels over to start working compost. They seem to be doing OK so far. They don't have a lot of compost material to with yet, but I'm hoping to be able to haul more manure this coming week.

beans and cucumbers

The cucumbers are trickling in. Despite some of the plants getting crispy there were some beans to pick on Thursday.

Scarlet Kale

Rainbow Chard

 there were greens to pick; Scarlet Kale, Rainbow Chard and Georgia Collards (not pictured). I didn't pick any of the Lancinato Kale (aka Dinosaur) because it's looking a bit puny and some of the plants are anemic. I'm not sure if that bed still has nematodes or some other issue. I will probably spray them with fish and seaweed mix as soon as the weather cools back down. I may also add some blood meal and Dr. Iron and put down some new compost. Those plants aren't that old and kale produces for a long time so I'd like to revive them if I can.

The whole squash harvest

There were cherry tomatoes but I didn't take a picture.  Of course the squash harvest was down,especially in the smaller sizes. This was the harvest.

oops, except this one I found later

Oops except for this one that I found later. 

Hales best cantaloupe, ripe and smells wonderful

And one stray cantaloupe. Perfectly ripe and perfuming the air.  All ready to go to our farmers market in the morning.

Farmer Friday

almost 2 pounds of basil

pesto!

Farmer Friday! A little late getting this done, I've had a ton of stuff to do this week and today. The other day I picked a bunch of basil and made pesto.

cherry tomatoes

More cherry tomatoes, still a lot of splits and rots from the rain. Not as many as before, and some of the plants seem to have a blight or something. I'll be cutting them out this week as soon as I have time.

trying to get in the garden gate!

Wild asters, lambsquarters, volunteer tomatoes and a giant squash vine are clogging up the access to the new garden, but I did manage to get in to pick beans.

picking beans

part of the bean harvest

I was worried that I wouldn't have enough beans to fill my pre-paid orders, but there were plenty, almost 10 pounds!

squash, lots of gold patty pan

More squash of course. this week there were a lot of gold patty pans, with a few of each of the other kinds.

Armenian and Market Moore cucumbers

A good amount of both kinds of cucumbers. I also picked some greens, kale, chard and collards, but I figure you've already seen them. I didn't have time today to pick herbs and flowers, so I'll do that in the morning before I go to market.

Harvest Monday and #eatwhatyougrow

a mess of green beans

Harvest Monday once again, hooking up with Dave over at Our Happy Acres. I got over 3 pounds of green beans this week from the older patch. The new bed of bush beans is up and off to a great start with the rain.

more squash

There was a good amount of squash this week and I only had one left over after market on Saturday so that is always a plus.

Hales cantaloupe and Black Tail Mt. watermelon

I got some more watermelons and cantaloupes. They have been pretty good tasting.

Georgia collards

I made the first picking on the new bed of collard greens. They have really started growing fast since the rains have come.

Armenian cucumber

Market More cucumber

I picked one Armenian and a couple of Market More cucumbers. The Market More have had the slightest tinge of bitterness to the skin. I think probably because sometimes they still don't get enough water. but they are still tasty, they just have to be peeled.

I cleaned up an almost empty bed of carrots and also found some volunteer new potatoes. 

cucumber & yogurt salad

#eatwhatyougrow Besides having cucumber in regular salad I've been making a cucumber salad with yogurt and chopped fresh herbs.

omelet in the making

ready to eat

I used up another dozen silkie eggs in an omelet for lunch on Sunday. Along with a couple of collard leaves and some parsley. I also added a lot of Monterrey Jack cheese. Mom says there is no such thing as too much cheese.

Harvest for week of July 24-30
July 24
 large tomatoes      1#  1oz

July 26
Scarlet Kale     1# 12oz
Lancinato kale 1# 8oz
Collards           2# 0oz
New potatoes        12oz
carrots                   3oz
Armenian cuke  1# 12oz

July 27
watermelon   11# 0oz
cantaloupe    5#  7oz

July 28
Cherry tomato 5# 3oz
cucumber        12oz
green beans 3# 12oz
squash       28# 3oz
basil 2oz
sage 2 oz
oregano2 oz
curly parsley 3oz
flat parsley 3oz
rosemary 1oz

July 29
basil 6oz
sage 2oz
curly parsley 4oz
flat parsley 4oz

July30
large tomatos 1# 8oz

TOTALS for the week
large tomato  2# 9oz
kale                3# 4oz
collards         2#  0oz
new potatoes      12 oz
Armenian cuke 1#12oz
watermelon    11# 0oz
cantaloupe      5#  7oz
cherry tomato 5# 3oz
cucumber        12oz
green beans 3# 12oz
squash        28# 3oz
fresh herbs  1# 11oz

GRAND TOTAL 66# 4oz

HOME GROWN FOOD SECURITY October 3, 2009

HOME GROWN FOOD SECURITY

October 3, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Some of my family & friends do not understand my passion for my garden and canning and preserving the food I grow. To me this is my own form of  Social Security. If things go to pot me and mine will be provided for. If, when I retire, the system doesn’t give me enough money to live on, I will be fine, because I have taken on the responsibility of providing for myself.  Some object that it is cheaper to buy things at the store. That could be, in some cases, modern agriculture and mass production have given us cheap food and goods. However, cheaper is not necessarily better. Some of these systems are actually making us sick! Look at Mad Cow disease, swine flu, bird flu. There is evidence that genetically modified foods are very bad for us [and, if given a choice between natural and GM grain, animals will eat the first and refuse the second! Lets be as smart as the animals!] Besides all these reasons, I enjoy what I do. It gives me a great sense of pride and accomplishment to look at the shelves in my kitchen, bursting with food I put there myself. Besides which, there are many things I can make at home that you cannot possibly buy at any price.
Bean soup, potatoe soup, dilly beans, green beans, pickled peppers, tomato sauce, pickled eggs… there’s more you can’t see, blueberries, apple sauce, jams, jellies, pickles, sauces, marinades. This year not everything was grown at home. I took advantage of terrific sales and the farmer’s market. But next year most of the cupboards will be filled with home grown goodness.  Also not in this picture are the things that I’ve dried, plums, apples, raisins, tomatoes, jerky, herbs for seasoning and tea.

It’s a Jungle Out There September 6, 2009

It’s a Jungle Out There

September 6, 2009 at 3:48 pm

Well, here’s a few pics from around the yard to catch up since I missed so much of August.
Heavenly Blue morning glories cover an arch by the front gate.
The small sunflowers are still blooming. They attract a lot of butterflies and bees of all kinds.
One of the surviving Heritage raspberries has put on a few fruits.
The Moon & Stars watermelon is going strong, tho no fruit yet.
Elephant Ears & Canna lily
The Jicama are going strong, just hope they are making nice big roots!
Can’t hardly walk beside the house for all the plants out there.
Delicata squash almost ready to pick.
The eggplants in pots on the patio are doing very well.
A couple of Rio Grande pepper plants loaded with fruit.
The back garden. The two empy beds in the middle are for carrots and parsnips.
Kentucky Wonder green beans cover a 5′ wire cage. So far it’s been so hot they haven’t set any beans, but I found one yesterday so we should have lots of them soon.
Apache Purple pod beans cover part of the greenhouse. They are just beginning to bloom.
Cucumbers & beans. I don’t think we’ll get many more cukes tho, they are severly infested with aphids. I think I should probably just pull them out.
Four o’clocks bloom by the front gate.
16 baby artichoke plants in their pots. Just not sure where I’m going to plant them!
The 11′ Lima beans, which still have yeilded no beans.

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Tally HO!

September 5, 2009 at 4:05 pm (corn, cucumber, food, freedom, gardening, grow your own food, self sufficiency) · Edit

All right, I’ve gotten a bit behind posting here, just soooo much going on in Aug! The grand kids went back to school and so did their mom, so we have children 7 days a week now. But the numbers are in for August; 100 eggs and 79.5 pounds of produce.
Heavenly Blue morning glories cover part of the greenhouse. You can just see one of the Kabocha squash in the leaves at the lower left.
Here  you can see that corner of the greenhouse on the right, then the baby corn, the row of paste tomatoes and on the left some cucumbers and an apple tree still in it’s pot.
Yesterday and again today it is raining. Actually when I took this pic through the front door it was also hailing. We got .4″ of rain yesterday and it is very dark and rainy again today. We were going to go to the lizard walk at the arboretum today, but don’t think that is going to happen. This rain looks like it might hang out all day. It is 9 AM and it is as dark outside as if the sun were nearly down! And I’m loving it and so it the garden.

Tally HO! And in the Kitchen August 1, 2009

Tally HO! And in the Kitchen

August 1, 2009 at 2:20 pm

WOWSERS! The tally for July is in and a big surprise!
Eggs, 102, which is down a bit from previous months. That isn’t really a surprise, since it has been so hot, the hens have been in a bit of a moult, which always lowers production.
alfalfa & comfrey, which I grow for the rabbits and chickens: 4.8 pounds
Produce: 101.75 That is the big surprise. The bulk of the poundage has been potatoes, tomatoes and onions, but includes strawberries, several kinds of beans, swiss chard, tomatillos, peppers, cucumbers, Tromboccino squash, eggplant, basil, apples, watermelon, mesquite beans [which will be ground into a flour when really crispy dry,  high in protien with a sweet lemon taste] and baby corn.
And there is more to come. It has been too hot for the lima beans to set pods, but as soon as it cools off a bit I think we’ll have lots, the cukes and yard long beans are just now hitting their stride. The baby corn is just coming in, to the girls delight [they've been waiting all summer for baby corn and are eating it raw!] The Kabocha squash will probably tote up a lot of poundage, there’s the yellow Moon & Stars and the Jubilee watermelons, the cantaloupes, a couple of kinds of pole beans, peppers and eggplants, to say nothing of the fact that there are still potatoes in their pots.  While it’s been too hot for the large paste tomatoes to set new fruit, once the daytime temps stay under 90, they should set a lot.
So it is quite possible for Aug and Sept to show even more poundage than July.
Each time I go to the grocery store my list gets shorter and shorter, partly due to the produce coming in from the garden. Part of it is because I am making more and more things from scratch at home. For instance milk was very cheap when I went shopping yesterday so I picked up an extra gallon and it is ‘ripening’ right now to make cottage cheese. I have found a really delicious brand of yogurt and while I am also going to begin making my own, especially when milk is cheap, it was on sale too so I got extra. The extra carton is now draining to make ‘yogurt cheese’. This is a soft and creamy spreadable ‘cheese’ to which I will add fresh herbs and eat on crackers.
Peelings, cores and bruised bits of apples sit in a gallon jar becoming vinegar. The cucumber crop is in various jars becoming fermented dill pickles. Scott eats tons of mayo so that is another one I’ll start making at home. He also loves garlic and I have a garlic mayo recipe to try out on him.
I’ve really been disappointed with BBQ sauce and salad dressings since I started really reading labels. Also with ketchup. They all have tons of corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup in them along with chemicals I can’t pronounce.  This makes most of them way too sweet and of course any non organic corn product is likely to be genetically modified, something I don’t want to eat. So I have been experimenting with making my own sauces. One really good one has been garlic & ginger. When I get it tweaked just right I’ll post it here.

Too Darn Hot! July 29, 2009

Too Darn Hot!

July 29, 2009 at 3:16 am

whew! It has been about 105 for several days, last night at 9:00 it was still 93.  I don’t do well in the heat and would much rather lay around in the shade drinking icy mint tea, but no rest for the wicked as they say. So in the garden I am busy trying to keep everything watered so it won’t die and it repays me with abundance. [I looked at the tally sheet for July and I think we are pushing 100 pounds of produce for the month ]
Here’s the big corn patch, most of what you can see here is the Bloody Butcher beginning to tassel. Also the patch of small seeded sunflowers. Close up is a part of an old greeting card rack, which has become a trellis for a couple of luffa plants.
I love the color of this small seeded sunflower!
Compare this shot of the yellow Moon & Stars watermelon plants with the one from July 4th and realize that is only 24 days of growth!
The Elephant Ears are getting huge and the canna isn’t doing too shabby either!
A tomato forest. After I took this pic I actually pruned these back a bit. With it being over 100 degrees every day I know that none of the current blossoms are going to set, so I took out some of the excess suckers and branches. That way the plants will stay shorter and are less likely to break later when they do start setting fruit again.
Here you see Miracle’s triple header sunflower is falling down on the baby corn. Her giant 8 & 1/2 foot one is in the background.
If you look closely where the leaves clasp the stalks you can see the little ear shoots coming out on our baby corn. The girls haven’t seen it yet, but they will be excited when they do-they have been waiting for the baby corn all summer.
The yard long beans are growing like crazy in the heat. The yellow blossoms are the Double Yield cukes from www.freedomseeds.com
Pickles on the vine.
The Kabocha squash by the greenhouse is turning orange already.