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. 

May Days

Yes, 3 posts in May. Seems to be a new record for me this year.
Things are going swimmingly along here on the homestead. I half laughingly stated that as it's been the rainy season here this year. Not that we are complaining too much but it makes for muggy afternoons. Garden- wise everything is planted including my sweet potato slips that came in earlier this week. Had to run a fence line for them too. All tomatoes are staked out and beyond weeding there's not much more to do right now. Speaking of tomatoes I believe we didn't plant any cherry tomatoes so that may have to be fixed with a trip to the store. Let's take a tour.

Daylillies. My favorite.

Tomatoes getting blooms.

Cucumbers doing nicely.

Main garden beds. See, tomatoes are staked. Did them early this year!

Green beans in the field.

Strawberries are blooming. These are the ones we transplanted earlier this year and thought we lost most of them but they've seemed to have pulled through. I need to weed the bed. 

Wife's corner flowers and the mix. 

That's the Wife's sunflowers on the left.

That's about it for this week. I always say I'm going to blog more and I will try to.
Happy Memorial Day to everyone and thanks to all that have served our great nation.

April Showers

And boy did we have some yesterday. Supposed to be just a shower here and there but it poured pretty good. Aaaannnnnddddd about 2:00 in the afternoon it cleared up and brought the wind with the sun. And a continuation to today wind- wise. Got a lot of work done today.
Finally weeded the garlic and onion beds, tilled the upper field (fixed tiller, or rather oldest son did and I didn't actually till it, the youngest and father-in-law did), relocated the strawberry plants, and transferred the tomato plants to larger containers. Let's do a run down.

Redid the front flower beds.

Red onions are the only ones we got going on right now. I can't seem to grow onions from seed. I got these from a supplier. 

First garlic bed. Notice the lower left corner. Found a nice fire ant nest there. 

Second garlic bed. I get my garlic from Sow True Seed. May try to keep some this year for next years' crop. 

The Wife brought brought out some potatoes from the kitchen that had grown eyes so I cut them up and let them sit for a few days, then put them in the ground and see what we get. 

Strawberries at there new home. 

All planted out.

Looking ready for planting time. Now like to have some compost/manure. 

Tomatoes in their new home. 

Well that's it for this week. Tired and I foresee a long week ahead for me work- wise. 

WOF of the Week. Told you this was going to happen. So we'll showcase all of them this time. 

The WOF

The Dude. 

Miss Trouble.

Making Progress or Not

Welp, didn’t get as much done as I wanted to get done this weekend. Worked like crazy Saturday until about 5:00 in the afternoon and pretty much overheated myself. Guess I’m not used to the heat yet  Got up early Sunday and started again until the rain came early in the afternoon. I managed to get all of the strawberry plants I ordered from Gurneys plated after tilling up a new area for them, planted out some sweet banana and chili peppers, weeded, planted eggplant, weeded some more, replaced some onions, mowed, burned a bunch of crap, etc. We actually did some research on the strawberries and found the correct ones for our region. Junebearer is the type that is the best for our region. Ordered about 100 plants because The Wife wants a lot of jam so there you go. We’ll see what we get off of them this year.

Good looking pepper roots.

Peas. Need to get supports up!

Cabbage, Bok Choy, etc.

Bees LOVE this.

Spreading out some.

Speaking of bees, our wonderful addition from a few years ago, Chewie, loves to spend his time outside trying to catch them. I have no idea why he likes to do this but he will jump and run after them. Here he is on patrol after losing his last attempt.

Chewman.

As I said I got the peppers and strawberries all planted in, mostly. As I type this I realize I still have to work on some bell peppers.

Strawberries.

Chili and banana peppers.

Weekly view.

I have a good selection of plants for the sale we’ll be having soon with more coming. The local farmer’s market opens May 9th this year. We’re still on the fence about trying to join it this year.

Plants for sale.

Busy week ahead. Hope to get everything else planted out this coming weekend. Got to get back on the room upstairs. Have a good week!