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. 

Garden Tour

Well I took a tour of the garden this afternoon assessing what work I needed to do tomorrow. Seems like a lot of work needs doing :)

Tomatoes definitely need some work.

The heat and storms have really taken a toll on the plants. 

Pickling cucumbers have just about had it.

White onions I got them in the ground later than normal this year. Weeding needs done.

Carrots still growing.

Wife's sunflower in a pot. 

Squash plants. Not many squash yet. 

Zucchini plants have had it. 

Marketmore cucumbers still hanging in there.

Pulled the yellow and red onions out last weekend. Got to get them set out.

Weedy mess.

Wife's row of sunflowers. 

Eggplants doing great this year. 

True black brandywine.

If you're bored you can come help!

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!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Father's Day

First, Happy Father's Day to all Dads. As I say, it's the best job around!

I was out of town Wednesday afternoon to late Friday night. There was a storm system that rolled through Thursday and to my surprise look what I found Saturday.

Tomato down! So most of my Saturday was spent tying and weeding everything in the garden. And we are finally getting some produce from our 1/2 acre. 

German Queen. Got my eye on this one!

Our haul. Lot of hot and bell peppers, a squash, few roma tomatoes, and we dug up three potato plants. Think we'll give them another week or so.

And the result from our work was stuffed peppers that evening.

Totals from the haul:

Green peppers- 3.1 lbs.

Hot peppers- 1.3 lbs. (we froze these for later)

Tomatoes- .9 lbs. 

Squash- .5 lbs.

Potatoes- 1.6 lbs.

Cucumber- .2 lbs.

Strawberries- .11 lbs. (wow)

Peas- 2.1 lbs. (from earlier harvest)

Totals YTD- 9.81 lbs

As my Father's Day gift my boys got me a new hopper for my paintball marker. So I had the idea of us getting our pictures taken in the woods near our house as we never had any good ones done before. 

We're not real menacing to be sure. 

Well one last image and it is a special one for me. This was taken on my dad's 80th birthday party a good friend of his through for him. That's ole TD and my sister. I miss him a lot.

Well off to bed as I have an odd feeling this will be a long week. Enjoy the week yourselves!