Harvest Monday; July 11, 2016

And my first post to Harvest Monday of 2016. Where have I been? Name it. But mostly working around the house and doing that work-work thing still. Summer is always busy for our company right up until about the last 3 weeks of the year. On the home front we've been doing the gardening thing as well as working on the pool, house, etc. Seems like we'll never catch up. The weather has been somewhat extreme at times here in the sandhills with high daily temperatures, and thunderstorms in the evenings which manage to beat the crops to pieces and screw the pool chemicals around enough that everything is off kilter. It has gone fast and I'm surprised it's the second week in July already. I hope to make more appearances this year (I always say this.) Go to Our Happy Acres to see more Harvest Monday's.

First off I'll say we got our first tomato a few weeks ago. Early Girl I believe. Picture's fuzzy but it counts.

I try to keep track of the harvests and it is below. I didn't grow a winter crop. 

Welp, lets take a tour. This is an overall shot taken about a month ago. 

Peppers. Hot D*mn peppers if you ask me. I forget what they are but I grew them for the salsa mix this year. Hot.

Strawberry plants have pulled out nicely. We definitely need a few more and we didn't get any berries this year so fingers crossed for next year.

Cukes. I didn't trellis them this year as they seem to have a mind of their own anyway. Not getting too many off of them but that's OK. We still have pickles from last year. 

One of the tomato beds. Mainly brandywines (my favorite) but a couple of the plants look sickly. I try but they don't seem to do well in our area. 

First plantings of beans. Kentucky blue lake. They've done pretty well.

Three more rows of beans on the right side. The rightest row has pretty much had it so after this picture I cut them down. We'll be plating some more in the next week or so. On the left side are sweet potatoes. My first year of growing these and after weeding them they are on their way. Hope we get some potatoes off of them. Need hilled. 

Our first and second pickings on the beans. Surprisingly we've gotten 28 lbs. so far which means about 19 quarts canned. Good thing too as we are low on last years' stock. The bottom photo of the second picking also shows the last picking of the squash. I've had some good pickings this year and I make squash relish from it. I canned 34 half pints this year so the plants came out and were destroyed. No squash bugs in my garden this year! Hate them.

Speaking of squash relish...

I'll say this; with all of the rain the bell peppers are doing great. 

Same for the banana peppers.

Yesterday's canning session.

WOF of the Week. She was spending time outside on the porch with me Saturday as I was taking a break. Some dummy got his finger in the way. Until next time, happy growing and enjoy the sun. 

Harvest Monday; July 13, 2015

Little did I know that the longest day of the year has already passed and I never realized it. Where have I been? Falls coming I guess.
Pretty good week here on the half acre. Tomatoes and cucumbers were the big stars, each pulling in a boatload of harvest. Green Peppers weren't too bad either, but the tomatoes and cukes stole the show.

Yes, you saw that correctly. I input the information into my spreradsheet in ounces and it converts to pounds at the bottom and right side for the totals. We did two pickings this past week, the last being Sunday morning. That's 26 lbs of cucumbers and 76 lbs of tomatoes. Needless to say we have been a few away and I did a canning marathon Sunday. The garden can be picked again at any time! There's more out there and I didn't finish up everything Sunday! And on top of that I came to the realization that I haven't started any starts for fall garden. :/

Use a turkey fryer stand for our canning pot outside when we water bath. Definitely helps keep the kitchen cooler.

A few pints of pickles from earlier and the bottom picture is what I accomplished Sunday; pasta sauce, salsa (salsa- mad family), and dill pickles. Notice there's more cukes. 

My tomato processor I bought a few years back. Simple design and does the job!

Oh, here's what the harvest Sunday looked like.

This is the first year I've had any luck with Mortgage Lifters and they have done us good. Really surprised as I haven't done anything different from years past. Saved some seeds this past weekend from a good ripe one. 

Partial pepper weigh- in and eggplants. 

After canning I cruised the garden, particularly the squash plants as my wife said she saw my nemesis, the squash bug. Spent a good half hour pulling and ripping leaves of eggs. Nasty things. Haven't had any squash yet but I was a little late on them this year. 

Here's the rest and yes, the tomatoes don't look the best but I have been overwhelmed with everything. 

Need to do some heavy weeding.

Wife's sunflowers. Theres more coming up somewhere. 

Onions are getting close now.

My Morning Glory returned at the water station this year. Waiting on blooms.

More about ready for picking.

Awful I know

Welp that's about it for me this week. If you looked through the photos above you may be able to pick out one of my added projects this year. Visit Daphne's Dandelions for all Harvest Mondays. 

Harvest Monday 07/01/2013

Happy Monday to everyone. Visit Daphne's Dandelions to see what others are harvesting this week.

Have a good harvest this week which makes me happy. A lot of hard work  and bug fighting went into this one.

Harvesting the remaining potatoes and all of the onions really set it up for this week. The potatoes were ready to come out and I had already decided to do them and the onions were more of a Oh Crap we'd better get them out as a few were starting to rot off in the ground. 

With this week's harvest we officially pulled in 56 lbs. of potatoes. Not very big as some I've seen but they will be great in soup we plan on canning later.

Pulled and getting a tan. Better than those "fake bake" places on the skin I've heard. Eventually they made their way onto the back porch to dry out for the next few weeks before heading into storage and other peoples' homes. 

 

 

We were also able to pick off some tomatoes, cukes, squash, and some green beans that aren't going too crazy right now.

 

I took the two beds where the onions and potatoes were, through some cow manure in, scattered the straw and tilled everything up good. Now waiting for fall crops.

 

 

A quick garden tour.

 

Odd looking sprout off one of my maters.

 

 

Weird to see it go from one side. Never happened to me before but there's always a first time. 

 

I told you they found me. All I have been doing is scraping and scraping. 

 

I didn't think my melons were going to do anything this year but I have been proved wrong. Got to build a fence for them to go up now. 

 

That's the tour, sorry. Spent more time working and weeding than anything else. We finally did get around to making some salsa Saturday night and some pasta sauce tonight. 3 pints of salsa (medium mix and it still had bite so I may not make the hot stuff) and 4 3/4 pints of pasta which the 3/4 pint was enjoyed this evening.

 



 

Thought about planting some fruit trees around the property to get some jams and jellies too. I have really expanded the garden this year and am going to expand it some more for this fall. It's a little more work but not as much as I had thought it would be. I have most of my seeds, with a few that I need to get started for transplants, so I am hoping for continued success this fall. Broccoli, asparagus, cabbage, lettuce, brussel sprouts, and turnips to name a few. Probably looking at around the end of July/mid- August for those to go in.

 

This week: 108.96 lbs.

YTD: 146.7 lbs.

 

Good luck to everyone!