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.

Harvest Monday; March 27, 2017

No harvests to speak of. I never planned on growing anything over the winter and with our schedules I never saw the benefit of trying anything this spring. This doesn't mean that I've given up. I do have some spinach plants started that I hope to have in the ground next weekend along with some onion starts maybe. I say maybe as I've never had any luck starting onions from seed. In the mean time I have transplanted my Roma starts and as of last night transplanted the remaining tomatoes starts I have. Off the top of my head we are growing: Roma, Solar Flare, Better Boy, Mortgage Lifter, Box Car Willie, Rutgers, Grape, Rainbow, Katja, and Red Pear that I got from Seeds of Italy. Except for the Better Boy seeds, the remaining tomatoes are from my saved seed. Pretty happy about that. The Red Pear is a new try this year, based from Italian seeds. Interesting to see how they grow. I also bought some onion and flower seeds from them. Here's a link: Seeds of Italy.

Peppers are another story. I have great germination of bell peppers but nothing else. I meant to start more last night after the tomato work but was just too tired to get that done. Maybe tonight. 

See what I mean. Two rows of peppers out of the whole tray, sans a Cayenne pepper plant. I watered them really good last night and will give them a few days to make an appearance then it begins again.

Overall view of the growing stand. The onion starts are on top. 

WOF of the Week. The cat makes her first appearance in WotW. She lives the back porch. 

Short and boring, just like me :) Honestly, I'm not that short. Anyway check out other Harvests and people actually growing and harvesting things at Dave's site, Our Happy Acres. 

March It Is

With the weather from a few weeks ago it seemed summer had arrived in February, but alas now we are back down to where we should be. 60s daytime highs and 40s at night. Still not too bad but it does kind of suck after you get 3-4 days of 80. So into March we go.
I haven't really had anything to post for Harvest Mondays so I don't link on Dave's blog as of yet. We are hoping for a good harvest this year so I am going to really concentrate on proper feeding and soil composition. I know this should always be done and I do it at times but with our schedules its hard to really get it done. I have already started a tray of roma tomatoes, peppers (which still haven't come up), onions and flowers. I hope to get everything else planted this weekend. Well, it has to be done this coming weekend or I'll never get anything in the ground this year. I like to do my main garden planting Easter weekend. It would be nice to try to get some stuff started in the evenings but when I get home from work, we eat and socialize for a time, clean kitchen, then I go change and hit the gym. By the time I get back from the gym it's bedtime. Thinking of going back to morning gym routine.
Well enough of me rambling.

Romas you say? Yes and for a while I didn't think these things would germinate but they did. This is 2 year old seeds I used. And I got my soil block maker out for a run.

Princess Leia had to go on her first vet trip and wasn't really happy about it. 

But she does have her favorite blanket at home!

WOF of the week. Meal prep Sundays. This is THE Official food tester. Got to make sure that chicken, steak, eggs, etc. are safe for consumption. May take a few pieces to be sure. 

Harvest Monday; October 17, 2016

Happy Harvest Monday. Cruise on over to Dave's site, Our Happy Acres for all Harvest Monday posts.
Contrary to popular opinion yes I am still around. Seems like anything that can come does come up. Been busy on other projects which means the garden has suffered. In my last post a month ago I was hoping to get some cabbage in but that didn't happen. I visited the garden this past Friday (and once before on the 26th of June) since last post and things weren't as bad as I thought they would be. Turnips came in strong and the mystery disease on the bell peppers seems to have gone away on most of the plants. Actually got a decent harvest of bell peppers and some turnips that will be cooked this week. Probably freeze the peppers. Let's take a tour.

Updated figures. Pales in comparison to last year.

I did some seed saving on the marigolds Sunday and plan on getting more seeds collected before years' end. 

Not real happy to see this Carpenter Bee cruising around but he/she is doing their job all the same. 

With the dire situation a lot of the bee population is currently facing, we need to do what we can to enlarge their habitat and garden responsibly. It is against the homeowner's covenants to have bees where we live but I may just do it anyway. I am considering mason bees as well as a hive or two of honey bees. 

Marigold Seed Saving 

Find the dead- looking ones.

Pull them out like you are deadheading them.

Pull the top off and there are the seeds. I got a lot of them saved into envelopes.

I also have more that are getting ready to bloom.

Pulled a few turnips out for meals this week. 

Part of the bell pepper harvest. 

As I know everyone is aware, Hurricane Matthew headed up the east coast last weekend and made a turn into North Carolina, our current home state. It started at our house Saturday morning and didn't let up till Sunday afternoon. We live about 120 to 150 miles from the coast so the wind speeds weren't hurricane- force but they were strong enough to topple a lot of trees. We did have a lot, I mean a lot of rain. It washed out a lot of the roads near us and people lost power for 2-5 days. Surprisingly we lost power for only about 5 hours Saturday. Usually we are the first to lose and the last to regain. People east of us towards the coast were dealing with flooding all week last week and are now cleaning up. Not a real fun time for all.

That's it for me for now. Happy Gardening.

Harvest Monday; August 22, 2016

Yes, back on Harvest Monday. See Dave at Our Happy Acres!

Garden- wise, beyond peppers and watermelon, everything is pretty much had it. I know this is a repeat of every week but this simmer has been brutal for us gardeners (another repeat.) As I mentioned in the previous post, we took a small trip to the mountains and I just reviewed the garden when we got back Sunday. I also caught up my spreadsheet, here.

As I said I did a quick tour Sunday evening. 

Hope you can see four watermelon. That's whats there. 

Hot peppers and banana peppers seem to love this weather. My bell peppers all have bad areas on them. 

Marigolds. I have touched on them previously. I have done nothing to these. Maybe that's what I have to do with everything. 

Overall. Pretty sad. Got my work cut out for me next weekend. 

Our vacation wasn't a full week but a nice break from everything that seems to go in our daily lives. We are always busy with something. My oldest said such as much until he bought his house. Now I think he understands. Anyway we had a nice time and in looking at the pictures I see a few more upcoming posts so stay tuned. I will leave a few here. 

The house we stayed at had hummingbird feeders and I counted 10-12 at one time, fighting each other to eat. And boy do they eat. And very territorial. Actually kinda mean.

Biltmore. About 179,000 square foot. You want to clean it? 

70'-0" tall banquet room with organ. Note the carvings on the balcony. Everything in this home is hand- carved. Everything.

Atrium. Now that's a greenhouse. 

Part of the gardens. There's 30 acres of them. Needless to say this was at the end of our day at Biltmore and we were tired of walking. 

View from the top of Craggy Gardens in black and white. Sometimes I like to see black and white photos as I think they lend a different perspective. 

I took this from the deck of the house Sunday morning before leaving for home. We stayed in Little Switzerland. Notice the fog in the valleys. Yes, we hit a little of that heading home. 

That's it for now but as I said I have some great information for posts. Stay tuned.