thursday July 23rd. 2009

The garden is starting to reward all of our efforts. So far to date we've gotten almost 7 lbs. of peas (shelled weight). The green beans are just getting started and we've gotten a total of 3 lb. 4 oz. of them. We've dug some red and white potatoes, given away about 10 lbs., and kept 3.5 lb. of reds and 4 lb. 12 oz. of the whites. I've cut 3.5 lbs. of broccoli so far, and planted a new batch for a later crop. Our Texas sweet onions look wonderful, and I gave 4 of those away yesterday. The 188 heads of garlic are drying nicely and I hope to be able to start cleaning and trimming those up in 1-2 weeks. The savoy cabbage has headed up nicely and we'll be able to start eating that soon. There is a disease all around us that is killing everyone's tomato plants, we're hoping that somehow we miss it, so far the plants look good.
We're still nervous about Loki, he's blocked up again. We'll know more after we see Doc Margie tomorrow.

whew!

It's been a busy weekend. My little dog Loki's surgery seems to be healing well. It was only Friday that we thought we were going to lose him, but Doc Margie worked her magic once again on this guy. He has a nasty looking incision on his belly, but she opened up his blocked intestine and sewed him back up. He'll be on antibiotics and steroids for a couple of weeks, but so far he seems to be doing well. Well enough that he and Jack got in a rather nasty disagreement this morning, with Jack coming out the worst - these dogs are making me old fast.
So...other than walking Loki frequently (which is good for both of us!), not much else got done this weekend. I did manage to weed 2/5 gallon buckets of weeds from the garden - where do they all come from?! We picked our first squash of the season, so far we've had 3 zucchini's, and 2 summer squash. I also picked the first green beans of the season, enough for dinner tonight, a half pint of blueberries (also the first of the season), and dug the first hill of potatoes which happened to be red pontiac's. It's a little early for digging potatoes, but we've got oodles of them planted and I hate to think about digging them all at once. And when I saw how many potatoes were in the hill, my back really aches thinking about digging them all :0) - we got 3.5 lbs. in one hill. Oh...and we picked peas again today, ending up with over 3 lbs. shelled weight.

garlic!

Dug up the garlic crop today - 188 heads!

fruits of the summer

Here's just a few pics of some of the fruits of this summer that we've been enjoying so far.

daylilies

I have MANY daylilies. They were established plants when we moved here, so I don't know the names.

mini garden

The raised beds garden that we have at the honey house is probably some of the best used space that we have. Zip built these beds at least 5 years ago, and we've managed to grow a lot of goodies in them ever since. Right now I have a second planting of spinach started, about 2 dozen broccoli plants, two volunteer tomato plants, a few rows of beets, a zucchini plant, two summer squash plants, oodles of green onions and some extra strawberry runners that I had to stick in somewhere last year. There's also some green beans planted and a couple of rows of peas. These beds have an irrigation system, so I'm able to water if and when necessary.

new garden pics

I finally got around to taking some current photos. The garden is finally starting to grow - our corn is finally knee high. I was impressed with a friends garden earlier this week because their corn is already in tassel! Our corn won't tassel out for a few weeks, but we have small tomatoes, the beans and peppers are in bloom and we're eating swiss chard and fresh peas. I'm still waiting patiently for the first squash, it looks like we'll have a yellow zucchini in a few days. The garlic is getting close, I pulled one out of the dirt today and it looks pretty good, but I'll let the leave die back a little more before I get the rest pulled.
Our strawberries were a little disappointing. With all of the rain the berries just rotted on the vines. We did manage to pick 71 qts. of strawberries. I've made bread and pies and fruit pizza - and froze a bunch! The spinach crop was small - 1 lb. 4 oz., but I pulled the old plants and replanted a new batch. We put 5 lb. 3 oz. of sour cherries in the freezer, and we've picked 24 oz. of peas so far (shelled weight). I picked the first of the swiss chard last night - about a pound.
Zip managed to get the whole garden tilled up this week, so it's not looking half bad. I pulled 6 - 5 gallon pails of weeds out of the garden this week. The first planting of potatoes and the peas are over run with weeds right now, but I'll try to pull a few more today.
My first glad is in bloom, it's a pale yellow. The day lilies are in bloom now too, if I feel ambitious I'll try to get out and dead head some of them. The poppies are starting to bloom, as well as the sunflowers.
My herbs are surprising me and look pretty good. With any luck I'll have my own dill for pickles this year.