As far as I know, everyone will be at Lunch Bunch today. It’ll be a nice reunion. We have a few errands to do, but won’t be out long.
DepositPhotos.com
I’m having a lot of fun in my art room, working on the presents I’m painting for my friends for Christmas. I’m making 8 things, and I’m almost finished with some of the first sides. Apparently I smile while I’m painting – I’m finding my cheeks are hurting a bit in the evenings. :0)
Lucia Heffernan – MyModernMet
I’m going to do an extra-long session of yoga this afternoon. I missed it yesterday and my body is reminding me about it today. You would THINK that after so many RE-learnings of this lesson, the message would stick. All I can say is I’m fighting sloth, stubbornness, and stupidity – a pretty lethal combination.
This morning’s harvest. We went into withdrawal yesterday because we didn’t have any ripe tomatoes from our garden to eat. Today makes up for yesterday, with more coming, probably tomorrow. YUM.
Holly Kildreth Photography-Juan Carlos Rodri On Twitter
We’re about to leave for lots of errands this morning. Our news and weather website reported that we should expect it to be 2 degrees cooler today due to a ‘cold front.’ Oh, the relief!!!! Only 101 plus heat index today. Be still, my heart!
I’m hoping we’ll have more ripe tomatoes for me to gather when we get back. We ate the last one yesterday and may go into withdrawal if we don’t have more…
I’m having a truly wonderful time working in my art room on the Christmas presents I’m making for friends. Each day brings a bit more progress. Yesterday my husband came up to say, “Hi,” and remarked that I was smiling while I was painting. YEP.
No exciting news today – just deep down happiness that things are going nicely here.
I slept well – in fact, we even slept late – but I’m feeling lazy this morning. I have no excuses. I’ll have to push myself to get something done today.
I did go out a minute ago to get a pic of our elephant ear plants and to see if any tomatoes were ready to harvest. It’s warm, but cooler than yesterday.
The poor elephant ears have had a tough time this season. The main problem was that we needed to have our well house set up modified so we could have TWO irrigation systems, one for the back and the 2nd for the front. The one in the back was working, thank goodness, because the two tomato planters are on that one. We just got the 2nd one – the one for the front – Friday morning. The elephant ears are starting to perk up, and they look better since I cut off the dead stuff and cleaned up the planter. Hopefully, they’ll have an easier time now.
We had two tomatoes ready to come in this morning, and they’re beautiful. We’re becoming totally spoiled, enjoying ripe tomatoes for lunch and dinner each day. :0)YouTube – Suda the painting elephant – uploaded by F. Schleyhahn
I spent a good amount of time in my art room playing yesterday. The presents I’m making are starting to come together now. I really get into the zone when I’m up there, listening to wonderful music, playing in my paint, enjoying when our dog or cat come up to visit. Having some ‘alone’ time is what my soul needs sometimes. I’m lucky I have a place I can get it.
MyRecipes
I don’t have to cook this evening! We’re having “Main Meal Salad” tonight with leftover chicken from the Lunch Bunch. We both enjoy this every once in awhile. I’m even able to sneak in a couple of extra veggies without my husband complaining…
We’re looking at what I hope will be a quiet day. I hope yours is enjoyable, too.
Yesterday our plumber came and put in the 2nd line for irrigation in the well house. My husband helped him figure out the ‘plan’ on all the pvc pipe in the well house, and they finished the job in just under the hour we had before we needed to leave for Lunch Bunch. We thanked him profusely for working us into his over-busy schedule.
When we got home, my husband got the timer programmed and ran the system manually. The poor plants in the front yard have only had the rain, and not any of THAT lately, for far too long. I’ve been dumping water into the elephant ear planter, but that’s all. Today I got out and cut the dead stuff out of that planter. I’m hoping we can save the plants we have in the front yard. I’ll try to work on things early in the morning or just before dark, trying to get things taken care of again.
I also harvested 2 more ripe tomatoes today – with 4 more probably ready tomorrow! My husband said he noticed some ripening when he was outside yesterday. I’m back inside now. It’s too hot to stay outside very long, but I can get what I need to accomplished if I just get off my duff and get out there at a reasonable time.
I finished listing some new products on my Etsy website late yesterday afternoon. Things are in good shape there now, I think, and I’m hoping to get some sales.
Today I’m planning to play in my art room. The website took all my time yesterday, and I didn’t go up to my art room at all. I look forward to making some progress today. (I was painting in my dreams last night. :0) )
Chef Dennis
Yesterday I made the tuna casserole we’ve loved for years, but haven’t eaten, due to the carbs. Now that we’re on the Mediterranean eating plan, I updated it to include a BUNCH of veggies. The casserole included tuna, macaroni, cream of chicken-mushroom soup, onions, mushrooms, carrots, green beans, broccoli, some fresh Parmesan cheese and some Mozzarella cheese. My husband said, “This is GOOD!” He didn’t mention the veggies, so neither did I. :0)
We got a big boom of thunder right before we went to bed, but I didn’t see any rain when I looked. Later, when my husband took Amber out for the last time of the night, he said he could see it rained, but it wasn’t when they were out. We must have gotten 3 drops of rain. I’m reminding myself it’s better than none.
Right now we have our front and back doors open and ceiling fans on, enjoying a nice breeze airing out the house before it gets too hot and we have to close up and turn on the a/c.
123RF.com
I got a good start yesterday on the Christmas presents I’m making for my friends this year. I’m painting themed tote bags, personalizing them for each of my friends.
Yesterday I brought them downstairs and ironed them. I decided I would leave them on my desk down here so that I can work on them in-between other things, doing a bit at a time. There is a LOT of sketching to do on each of them. I don’t want to run the a/c upstairs in CASE I find time to work up there, and my life is such that good session times are harder and harder to find. Having them down here in the office will allow me to make some progress without disrupting our routine a lot. I wrote down notes on what I want to do on each one, and printed some reference pics from the net. I’ll work on them down here until it’s time to paint.
Unsplash
I didn’t SEE anything last night, but our down-in-the-valley-behind-us neighbors were setting something off, with a lot of popping and banging. Amber woofed some, but didn’t freak out.
We shared a tomato at lunch and another one at dinner yesterday. YUM! We could get used to this! :0)
My friends, Kay and Bud, are enjoying a visit from their son this weekend. My friend Linda is in Tennessee, enjoying visiting with one of her daughters and her family. It’s just my husband, our animals and me here, but I had a nice online chat with our son this morning. We’re all so lucky to have family.
The zucchini are growing, but very slowly. I’ve never grown these before, so I’m not sure what to expect. The red onions seem fine. All else is gone, with the exception of my two tomato planters on the other side of the house.
The elephant ears are doing well, in spite of our having to water them manually.
The FIRST ripe tomato of the season!!!!!
The tomato plants were looking dry, so we ran the watering system for the back manually to make sure all was working as it is supposed to.
My zucchini are doing fine, though they are growing a little more slowly than I expected. The only things left in my raised bed, square foot garden now are sweet red onions and zucchini.
Our tomatoes seem to be doing fine. No sign of disease or bugs or worms yet.
“Niche” planter
I’ll spray the tomatoes and the zucchini today with EIGHT to protect them from pests. Otherwise, I’ll try to do some weed whacking. I didn’t do anything after the last time my husband mowed, so maybe I can say I’m AHEAD of him THIS time… Weed whack, and then spray with KILLZALL to try to at least keep up with things, if not get a little bit ahead of them…
This puppy is a genius – eating AND getting in exercise at the same time! I’m not sure what that yoga position is called, but I’m impressed :0) I’m going to make beef stew for our dinner tonight. Less stew beef, many more veggies. I’ll freeze the leftovers into individual serving containers and put them in the freezer.
I finished cleaning out and weeding the square foot garden yesterday. It took a total of three sessions and about 4 hours to get things cleaned out the way they should be, but I feel good that it looks like someone cares again. I’ll research summer crops and then see what is available locally. The tomatoes are doing fine so far, too.
If you look really carefully, above the lowermost leaves on the bottom left of the plant, you can see a small green tomato!
And finally, this has nothing whatsoever with my ‘garden,’ but I’m delighted to see that all three elephant ear plants are now coming up. You have to look carefully at the center of the planter, but you can see the first sprout of a leaf breaking through now.
Today’s project will be attacking things with my loppers. I’ll be clearing up areas that are giving my husband trouble on the riding mower, and then trying to cut down weed trees around our burn barrel between the house and the shop. It’s supposed to get to the 90s today (50s two days ago) with strong sun, so I’ll have to be careful.
After a week or so of not being able to work in the garden, things are pretty out of hand. My tomato plants are looking healthy, but I’ll need to get serious about pruning this week. I’ll concentrate on trying to be outside early in the morning, or before dark in the evening, or both, until I get things under control. I’ll try to carefully prune, then anchor the plants to the supports.
The veggie garden has exploded. The onion stalks are now over a foot tall. The zucchini plants are huge and blossoming. The record heat has almost done-in the broccoli before it really had a chance to get started. It’s starting to bolt, so I’ll harvest what I can today. Weeds are rampant. The lettuce leaves are huge.
Here’s a close up of a broccoli plant. You can see that the broccoli isn’t nice and compact. It’s growing tall. I need to harvest today to have anything from these at all. :0(Aside from the gazillion tiny weeds, you can see how TALL this lettuce plant is. That’s not a good sign. Lettuce, broccoli, spinach and cauliflower are early spring plants, needing the cooler weather. I hope that the lettuce leaves are not already bitter. I’ll bite one and see.
I’ll be doing a lot of careful harvesting this weekend, one thing at a time, between rain storms. You would THINK with all this rain the temperature would be cooler, rather than like a sauna…
I’ve only had to cover up my veggie plants once for a freeze since I put the plants in the ground, and for that I’m thankful. I’m watching the weather forecasts like a hawk, but so far, things are going well.
leaf lettuceSpinachBroccoliCauliflowerYou can see the red onion sprouts, too. You can also see some of the neon-pink surveyor’s tape I put on the fence so the deer won’t run into the fence.
Next up, I plan to put in radishes, bell pepper, and celery.
Today’s plan is to start prepping the two brick planters on the far side of the house that we converted to square foot garden planters, preparing to add some tomato plants, probably next week, depending on the weather. I need to get the weeds out, and then add a bunch of Mel’s Mix (a mixture of peat moss, Vermiculite, and at least 3 different types of compost) to each of the planters. Who knows where this stuff GOES?
Isn’t this guy beautiful? – and the photograph is awe-inspiring.
We don’t have any outside errands today, so we’ll get our mail later and consider it done. :0)
Audrey Hepburn – Katiedaisy.com
As soon as I finish this, I’m going to fill up my two-gallon spray container with EIGHT and go out to the garden to spray it in the garden boxes, murdering any bugs there. (I’m still having to treat the ONE sting/bite a fire ant gave me the other day, though my arm is finally not swollen anymore). If the heat is not yet lethal (it’s supposed to FEEL LIKE 110 this afternoon) I’ll fill my other container with KillzAll and spray the boxes for weed roots I missed while cleaning out the boxes. Fingers crossed.
Clipart
I had an idea of what I would like to make for my friends for Christmas this year! I ordered some things and received them a couple of days ago. I started work on them yesterday in the shop and will turn on the a/c while I’m out spraying so I can continue working today on them – plus a dragonfly I’m refurbishing.
agirlandagluegun.com
We’re getting to the very last of the tomatoes now. We were delighted to find these yesterday right before dark.
The sum total of my ‘harvest’ today. With the over 100 degree F. heat, even with our irrigation system, the tomatoes are boiling right on the vines. I’m afraid we’re almost finished for the year.
I do have some tomatoes from the last harvest in the fridge. They are getting soft, though, so I’ll cut them up and freeze them for stews later on.
I told you before that I still need to harvest our sweet onions from our raised bed, square foot garden so they can start drying. “I” tend to “boil right on the vine” in this heat, too, so I’ve been putting the task off.
We’re supposed to have a cold front moving through this Sunday, so hopefully I can do this, plus start to clean up the garden for the season. Right now it looks like no one cares. :0(
On a happier note, here are the some of the elephant ear plants –
The grocery store was selling lettuce plants yesterday! I bought two, having little hope that they would do anything this time of year, since they are a cool-weather plant. One of them has already croaked :0( – but this one is still alive as of this minute. I’ll probably have to go ahead and clear out the garden for the season, since my yellow crookneck squash plants are producing lots of huge leaves by very little else. I’ll go ahead and pull everything out, unless this sweet plant is still alive. I’ll pull the onions and start drying them out. We have possibly severe storms coming in this evening-into-tomorrow, so this will wait until next week. It was a fun thing to try, though.
Meanwhile, though my tomato plants don’t look pretty, they are producing. This is what I brought in this morning. There are more to come tomorrow. This is the time of year we feel super rich. We have lots of ripe tomatoes to each for both lunch and dinner. :0)
I’ll take pics of the onions when I get them onto the trailer screen to start drying.
Usually, I have the better crop from the two plants in what we call the ‘nook’ planter – a brick planter we converted to a square foot garden planter that is square and is in a niche beside our back porch and in back of the house. It is protected from a lot of the wind that whips through here and doesn’t get the unrelenting sun the other planter gets.
This year it’s the opposite. The eight foot planter – also converted to a square foot planter – getting full sun and unprotected from the wind – is giving us the better yield.
We are very grateful to have ANY tomatoes because I’ve heard from others that this is a ‘hard year’ for tomatoes. People are getting plants, but they aren’t blossoming or growing tomatoes. We have sharing one larger tomato or two smaller tomatoes as part of our dinners this past week – the first of the crop – and enjoying every bite. When I told my husband that we had hit the lottery today, he wanted to have some – RIGHT NOW.
You can’t get fresher than right off the vine and still warm from the sun. Love and tomatoes! :0)
We had a good harvest yesterday. My spinach output is dwindling with the warmer weather and soon will be finished, so I’m getting as much as I can and freezing it so none will be wasted.
I’ve never actually done much with yellow crookneck squash before, so this is a lot of fun. I have a lot of little bitty squashes coming on. I decided that the ones above were large enough to harvest. I have a spiralizer tool that will make them nice for sauteing this evening to serve with some pork chops. :0)
It looks like I might have a good sweet onion crop this year. I won’t actually know until much later, but things look good right now. I also have some celery that I grew from cutting off the bottoms of celery I bought at the store. The stalks are ‘spread out’ rather than like the ones you see at the store in the tight groups, but they taste fine, so I’ll take them.
We have small green tomatoes and lots of blossoms on our tomato plants. We have two brick planters that we converted to square foot garden planters. I’m hopeful we’ll have lots of ripe tomatoes to slice and enjoy soon.
I need to do some weeding, but it’s getting dark outside, looking like it’s going to storm. Maybe I can get something done between raindrops…
Raised bed square foot garden May 13thThis is cabbage. I’ve never tried to grow this before and I’m like a kid at Christmas. The center portion is where the head of cabbage is forming. I’m going to find as much information as I can. It’s FUN!One kind of lettuce.2nd kind of lettuceCan you see the cute yellow crookneck squash?I have blossoms on the tomato plants, although none show in this picture.
The forecast is for thunderstorms EVERY DAY between the 17th and the 27th. I’m going to try to get a nice harvest in, either today or tomorrow, before all the rain starts.
I’ve been covering my veggie plants and tomato planters with sheets for 4 nights now, and so far, things seem to have come through the freezes all right. The Zucchini has had the most reaction. I’ve had to cut off several leaves from the plants. They blackened with the frosts and freezes. There is enough left of the plants that still looks good I think they will make it.
According to the weather website we are now past the freezes. This is really unusual here. Usually, our last frosts are April 5th, and that is even pretty late since I have been trying to grow things. We are supposed to get rain tonight and all day tomorrow.
I have the sheets spread out on the fencing around the garden, trying to dry it out during the day today so I can bag them up and put them away.
I HOPING that things will get back to normal for gardening soon.
Although the veggies seem to be doing all right, my elephant ear bulbs did not make it over wintered in the garage. I have finally given up on them and ordered more bulbs. I am hoping those will arrive soon so that I can get them into the ground.
I gathered my first harvest of the year recently, and we enjoyed a main meal salad last night, featuring our own spinach and lettuce! It’s been quite awhile since we were able to do that. I loved it!
Things are looking very happy right now. We are under a possibly severe storms warning most of the day, so I’m HOPING that the storms are just rain and wind, rather than hail.
I just came in from about 20 chilly minutes outside. It’s not really that ‘cold,’ (52 degrees), but it’s raw-feeling and quite overcast and the wind is whipping around, making it FEEL a lot chillier.
I am planning to have several short sessions outside while it’s not actually raining, since we’re supposed to have rain tonight through Thursday.
This first time I gathered the few ripe tomatoes on the vines and then was caught up by some pretty blooms on our Rio Samba rose bushes. We also have a couple of twice-blooming iris, but I haven’t decided it I’ll bring them in or not. :0)
Even at mid-week, I was having to put on a sweat band to work outside very long. Not so today! I wore a much-used down vest and still got cold.
I will fix us some lunch and then see if I can get the irrigation system controller off the agricultural faucet next.
I’m getting ready to leave for a much-needed massage. It looks like I’ll get a second shower, too, as it’s dark outside with thunderstorms predicted. I’m not water-soluble, so I’ll be happy if there is no hail associated with the storm.
I’ve been working hard lately cleaning, so I’m hoping to reward myself with time in the art room this afternoon. I have a new design for earrings in my head, and I would like to see how it goes. :0)
Our irrigation system brains in the well house keep getting zapped by the various short power outages we’ve been experiencing lately. We ordered a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) lately and my husband put it out there and hooked it up. Hopefully, now we won’t have to reset the thing over and over again. Fingers crossed.
I gathered some tomatoes yesterday. Most were the size of cherry tomatoes, but I will happily use them in salads. Nothing else from the main garden at this time, except some good-looking weeds.
My husband is out mowing now – even though it’s too wet – because the rain has been such that there is NEVER a good time to do the job. It will have to be enough. Since the heat index today will be in the area of 110 degrees F., I’m glad he is out there getting the job over with now. (The weather people says it will get REALLY hot this coming week!) Right now, though, it is still cool enough to have the doors open and the ceiling fans on.
My zucchini and yellow crookneck squash plants are still looking healthy, but no actual veggies growing yet. The celery I planted is still alive and I have two more celery bottoms in water in the house. The onions continue to look good. I’ll go out later to see if we have more ripe tomatoes.
I worked on painting a new design of wooden earrings yesterday in my art room. I’ll post pics later.
The zucchini and yellow crookneck squash plants are looking pretty good, though none have started to produce actual veggies yet. I will have to make time to weed out there very soon. The sweet red onions are continuing to get larger.
This is today’s haul of tomatoes. I really don’t know why we’re getting so many little bitty tomatoes, but I’m grateful we can enjoy them with our meals.
It’s really humid out today. It’s 80 degrees now, which would be wonderful, but the humidity is 78%, making it feel like a sauna the minute you go out. We have had the doors open to enjoy the morning, but are going to have to close up, or I will melt into a puddle onto the floor in front of my computer…..
Yesterday I spent about an hour weeding in my raised bed, square foot veggie garden. We built six 4’x4′ boxes and installed them on metal supports, so they are like tables. They are about my chest height, so I can do almost everything I need to do, from planting, feeding, weeding, and harvesting, without having to bend over double or get down on my hands and knees.
We mix up “Mel’s Mix,” a soil alternative that is a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and as many different kinds of compost as we can find or create.
The garden is as protected from critters as we can make it, having a high fence around the perimeter, and then chicken wire around the bottom. We have a door gate.
We fixed an irrigation system on a timer, so the veggies are watered each day for a specified time.
Right now I’m trying to grow yellow crookneck squash, zucchini, and sweet red onions. I will also try some radishes soon. Yesterday I planted some celery that I started in my kitchen.
I got three of the six planters weeded yesterday, and will try to finish the job today. So far, the plants look happy.
This is one of the two celery plants. I never really thought of celery as “cute,” but I think these are. :0)
We also have the two brick planters of tomatoes. We have bright yellow blossoms and lots of small green tomatoes. We are hoping for a good crop, because fresh, sliced tomatoes from our garden is one of our favorite things.
Yesterday I planted three yellow crookneck squash plants and 4 zucchini plants in the garden after weeding and prepping since I pulled the spinach and lettuce plants out. I gave the new plants LOTS of room because the vines of all of these spread out all over the planters. I want to give them all the room they need. I have developed a taste for both of these since I spiralize them to use in place of pasta and rice on my keto eating plan.
I can clean and use the spiralizer on them, put them in individual serving sandwich bags, and then put the bags into a gallon freezer bag. I can then pull out what I need and quickly microwave MY ‘pasta’ or ‘rice,’ and cook the regular stuff for my husband when I making spaghetti or one of my ‘sauce over pasta or rice dishes.
I listened to a video that taught me more about growing and storing onions. He said that the ones that grow tall and make a flower are not good for long-term (over the winter) storage. Those should be eaten whenever you’re ready, but should be eaten soon after pulling. The others are fine to try to dry for storage. (You can see my onions in this picture.)
Here you can see that some have a ‘bulb’ on top. These are the ones the man was talking about that should be pulled and eaten soon after harvesting, rather than trying to prep for storage.
With all the rain we’ve had, the tomatoes got really big and bushy quickly. They do have some bright yellow blossoms, and if you look carefully, you can see a tiny green tomato. At this point, I’m just going to prop them up the best way I can and hope for the best.
This is the ‘nook’ planter, where 4 plants have also exploded in growth. With three weeks or so of pretty steady, heavy rain, things got out of hand. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we actually get tomatoes, rather than just a whole lot of greenery.
My veggies were smiling when I went out to take these pictures this morning. Everything seems to be doing very well now.
I told you how hard I was trying to get the irrigation system going for my garden a couple of days ago. If my husband and I couldn’t get it going, I was going to have to fill my watering can over and over to give them a drink. We FINALLY figured out why we weren’t getting water in the outside agricultural water faucet we have – a faucet control in the well house was turned off instead of on.
Now that it is running perfectly, and the timer is set for daily watering, we are getting rain every day from yesterday through Thursday of next week. A beautiful illustration of Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives. (Finagle’s law of dynamic negatives (also known as Melody’s law, Sod’s Law or Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s law) is usually rendered as “Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment.”) We also have it to mean “the more you need it, the harder it is to fix” or “you will get it fixed when you no longer need it.”
My garden is such a joy. The boxes we built allow me to continue gardening with pleasure, not having to bend over double or get down on my hands and knees over and over. The fence keeps large critters out. The chicken wire around the bottom keeps small critters out. The Mel’s Mix in the boxes (peat moss, vermiculite, and as many different kinds of compost as you can find or make) allows plants to grow well and happily, not having to depend on the quality or quantity of our soil.
The cool weather crops, spinach and head lettuce, will hopefully do really well before it gets too hot here. The red onions will stay where they are until harvest, probably in October. When it gets a bit warmer, I’ll add yellow squash and radishes, if not some other things, to the garden.
I have two large brick planters on the other side of the house that we converted to be square foot planters. We devote both of them to tomato plants.
So far, I have smiling, happy veggies. Fingers crossed that this will continue.
Of all the signs in our yard, this is my favorite. I laugh each time we drive up to the house. It’s on a tree to the right of the top of the driveway. :0)
I’ve told you I had to clean out our raised-bed square foot garden a few weeks ago because the intense heat was too much for the remaining plants. I haven’t been able to find any plants locally to plant for a fall garden, and it’s been too hot to start any seeds in the greenhouse, so I think we’re pretty much finished for the year.
The only thing we have left is the tomatoes in our two converted brick planters on the opposite end of the house. The plants look really sad, but are still producing tomatoes. They aren’t as large or as perfect as they were at the height of the season, but they are still delicious in our salads or cut up as an extra veggie on the plate. We’ve had a pretty good garden this year. I’ll start making plans for the spring garden soon.
I just came in from taking a quick look at the garden, and then to the other end of our house to the tomato planters. This is today’s harvest, but it’s obvious that the super-hot weather lately has brought a halt to most of the harvests now.
We have had a wonderful time this year. We had a LOT of lettuce, radishes, and tomatoes, and were able to share some of each of these with our friends. The zucchini made big plants, and we harvested several zucchini, but I’ll read about how we can do better on these next year. I also want to plant yellow crookneck squash next time.
The cantaloupe was fun, but all we have are either green or yellowish small ones, all hard as a rock with vines spreading everywhere. I have no clue if they’ll actually continue to grow and ripen or not. Another subject for a lot of reading. The red onions are still looking good. As soon as the weather gets a bit cooler, I’ll start looking to see if any are ready to come out of the ground.
Beautiful World
Of course when I was the farthest away from the house, the rain started. I toweled off when I came in, but it’s a very good thing I’m not water-soluble. :0)
I’ve been working on our garden, trying to get it cleaned up after I had to neglect it for about a week. My husband came out there with me today – a rare and delightful thing – and we did a good amount to prune and clean up. I have another session to do out there, but it will wait.
There is always more to do in the garden, but we improved things a lot today. I pulled up my radishes a couple of days ago, the last time I was out there. For some reason, they didn’t make successfully this time. I was disappointed, because I got spoiled with a really super crop with the last batch I planted in the spring, having enough to give to my friends and having lots for me to enjoy. I’ll concentrate on trying not to be greedy. I’ll plant another group soon.
The zucchini plants are still looking healthy, although I’m having to read everything I can get my hands on to figure out what I’m doing.
We have lots of these small cantaloupes! I didn’t know they start out green, but we made sure each one is now sitting in a plastic bowl to keep it out of the dirt, as I read they like. Fingers crossed that they actually grow into something delicious to eat!
Red onions.
Our weather has been really different this year. Our tomato plants are looking pretty sad right now. I have no clue whether we’ll get more or not. We’ve had such a good crop this year. I hope I can extend the season some. I took bags of ripe tomatoes to our friends at Lunch Bunch this morning, and then another bag to our hairdresser on the way home. I love it when we can share the wealth!
It’s been about a week since I’ve been able to get out to the garden. Needless to say, there is a LOT to do out there now.
I did some weeding and harvested this zucchini and some tomatoes. I’ll go back out there later and prune a bunch of stuff and do more weeding.
We have some cantaloupe! I used several plastic ‘bowls’ with holes in them that allow the cantaloupe to grow while keeping them off the soil. I have no clue if we’ll actually get anything edible, but I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas watching them grow!
I’ll try to get some pics of the garden later to share.
GOOD NEWS – more ripe tomatoes and it looks like lots more to come. The radishes and sweet red onions seem to be doing fine.
IFFY NEWS – I have a lot of ‘greenery’ and blossoms from my zucchini and cantaloupe plants, but the actual veggies and fruits are looking wimpy. In three days of my concentrating on other parts of the yard, the weeds are trying to take over. The heat index is 105 today, so I’ll have to wait until dusk to do anything out there. I’ll weed as much as I can and then put some extra fertilizer over things and see what, if anything, happens.
I absolutely LOVE trying to grow veggies and fruit. I have a wonderful set up, with chest-high wooden 4′ x 4′ planters filled with Mel’s Mix (peat moss, vermiculite, and several kinds of compost) and an irrigation system for consistent watering. I have unlimited hope and enthusiasm, but little expertise, though I’m reading and learning what I’m supposed to be doing on a regular basis. Thus far, the list of things NOT to do again is growing much faster than the successes, but my motivation is still strong.
Each lunch and each dinner features fresh, ripe tomatoes from our own garden. I ‘spiralized’ (made spaghetti-like stuff with the aid of my kitchen gadget) from one pregnant-looking zucchini from our own garden and my husband pronounced it ‘yummy.’ Next year I plan to grow yellow squash, too. We’re spiralizing that, too, and my husband is shocked that he enjoys both of these. He did say, though, that he’ll TRY some as a substitute for actual pasta, but doesn’t hold high hopes for the idea yet. I’m hoping I can convince him. :0)
After we got back from relocating the raccoon this morning, I went to check on the tomatoes and the garden. I harvested these from the larger planter – the plants I thought were going to croak earlier because the leaves were turning yellow and falling off. These plants still don’t look ‘healthy,’ but they are producing delicious tomatoes. The nook planter beside the house has only two plants in it and they are HUGE, green, and leafy. I’ve only gotten two ripe tomatoes so far. There are lots of green ones, though, and lots of blossoms. There might be a lesson here somewhere, if I can just figure out what it is. I would appreciate some opinions from people who know what they are doing in the garden.
In the larger square foot garden, I couldn’t do much because the irrigation system was going. I have large, leafy-looking zucchini plants now with large yellow flowers and a few actual zucchini! I harvested one pregnant-looking one so far. I have several now that might get large enough to harvest.
I also have the cantaloupe plants whose arms are spilling out over everything with lots of blossoms. There is one small cantaloupe that I have supported by a plastic round thingie with legs and holes in it. I have no clue whether we’ll actually get anything worth eating, but it’s great fun to watch the progress. \
The onions are expanding, even though their tops were so damaged in several storms I elected to cut them off.
I need to do some weeding out there and then I’ll take pics to share.
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