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.