Harvest Monday; July 3, 2017

Happy Harvest Monday to everyone. Harvest Monday's are hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

Well, this week has been somewhat of a slow one in the garden. My wife and I took a long weekend which has been nice but it seems I'm still not getting everything that I want to get done, done. As I sit here typing this on Sunday evening I am already planning tomorrow ans Tuesday, although I may go golfing or paintball Tuesday as well. Gotta half some fun, right?

As you can see it was slim picking this week. One thing I am kinda surprised about are the cucumbers. The past few years we haven't had good luck with them. Now it looks like pickle making tomorrow. Beyond that everything else is taking its time. Green beans are slowly dying off and I may get a few picked Monday but that's pretty much it for them. I did get the pole beans planted and they have come up. Reminding myself now to spread out the slug killer. I also have a few tomato plants that are struggling a bit, yellowing leaves at the base. One thing I have been particular about this year is weeding and fertilizing. Not sure what it is but I'm keeping my eye on it. I am trying a compost tea from the Blak Cow mix to see if it will help. Onward to other things.

Speaking of compost tea. Filled it with water and stir it once in a while. Pour it out Tuesday and a few plants.

Bee getting his/her thing on.

Pulled the garlic out of this bed and cleaned it up for fall crops.

Guess what? I have a squash plant.

Amazing cucumber bed.

If you look close enough you'll see some green peppers there. 

Second bed of cukes. 

Started cleaning out a few bush beans and got welcomed by some fire ants! Lovely little creatures. 

Weeded.

Tied up the tomatoes and weeded out between them. 

The bush beans are having their last picking soon. 

Garlic I picked. Idiot shadow too :)

Our volunteer onions. They were turning brown on the bottom parts so time to pull them.  

Got a few nice sized ones. 

My volunteer watermelons. 

Those pole beans.

Not sure why a took this crooked? 

Banana peppers starting to set too. 

Front daylilies finally have bloomed. These smell great!

Praying mantis cruising the inside of our umbrella by the pool.

Cabbage and broccoli starts are doing well. Probably transplant the broccoli tomorrow since it's growing so quickly. 

WOF of the Week. Must have fallen asleep reading her nook. 

That's it for this week. Happy gardening. 

Harvest Monday; June 5, 2017

Happy Harvest Monday to one and all. Harvest Monday is hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

Harvest picked up a little bit but only by happenstance. I walked by the volunteer onion bed Sunday afternoon and notice a couple of the red onions seemed to be done so I pulled them. 7.5 ounces plus probably the last strawberry picking this year.

Spent Saturday afternoon weeding everything except the volunteer onion bed and another bed were aren't using for anything. Let me tell you that was a fun job! Especially that summer is in the south now. One good surprise is that my belated order of O'Henry sweet potatoes were delivered which meant that I needed to find a place in the garden for them. Onwards to Sunday. Spent the morning shopping and meal prepping and hit the garden again. I staked up some tomato plants and put a row of netting for the cucumbers, hoping that they'll climb their way up. Then I went about tilling up a patch of ground up from my compost pile several times, then planted out about 38 slips. I didn't get the netting up for them as they are climbers because by that point I was spent for the day. But as always happens I remembered that I needed to transplant my late Romas. Got that done too then planted some Alyssum and transplanted some of the rogue marigolds out of the walk paths into another container. Then I was finally done. Anyway I want to show off the weed- free beds as this is probably the last time they'll be like that :)

This is the location I picked for the sweet potatoes. I had already ran the tiller through this once and raked it out. I watered it good, tilled it again, raked it out. Then I ran my small tiller through it to get rid of the remaining wiregrass clumps. Hate the stuff.

Here's the slips. Bought them from Sow True Seed in Asheville. 

And the final product. A lot of work went into this trust me. Get some netting up and call it done. 

Elephant garlic. Should be about another month before they are done. 

Take a guess. 

Green Bean number 1. 

I told you I didn't weed this bed!

Bell peppers. Slow but sure.

Cucumbers. See the half- ass netting I put up? Last year I let them run on the ground so i hope this will be better for them.

Tomatoes. I lost a couple in this bed and honestly forgot what's what. Guess I'll find out when they set. 

Copra onions. Took me probably an hour to weed this bed. Lots of small weeds everywhere. 

Green beans number 2. 

And number 3. 

Strawberry patch. Until next year.

Sad- looking squash plants. I hit them up with some fertilizer Saturday. 

Tomato row. I have those romas that I'll run down the left side. 

Remember those beans I planted last weekend? Surprised even me coming up as fast as they did.

This peach tree is doing great.

This one not so much. It is trying.

Took these marigolds out of the path....

And put them in this bucket. Amy and I were shopping a few years ago inside a grocery store and there was a couple of stacks of these, maybe 12 to a stack, that had a "free" sign on them. Of course we grabbed them. The knee pad with the sprinkler on it is where I planted the alyssum. We had rain coming in Sunday evening and I didn't want the seeds pelted.

Amy's $8.00 tree she got from Lowes last weekend. I had to come down and pick it up. It is a flowering cleveland pear tree. Hope we don't kill it. 

A couple overall shots. I try to do this weekly from the same place to get an idea how things grow. 

Last but not least the harvest for the week, save the strawberries as I ate those. Nothing too big but I didn't plant them either!

No WOF of the Week. Just didn't really see anything that stood out. I write this out Sunday evening as Mondays are work days for me, so I set the schedule for Monday at around 6:00 am. I just have to remind myself to go to Dave's site and link up. Almost forgot to last week. Until next time.