June 8th Update

 Still no rain worth counting. We may have had an two inches since last post. We are at least 11" down for the year. 

A graph from local station showing where we are in 2026 compared to last four years. We desperately need the rain. 

I have taken photos since last post so I thought I would do some comparisons. First from last post I planted the green beans. All photos about 2 weeks apart. Those are the potato bags I bought and used some potatoes we had that sprouted eyes, so why not. I had to add extensions to the bags but more on that later. 

The planted sweet corn has really been taking off and I planted a few watermelon seeds in between where a couple plants didn't come up. 

Onions are still going well. Hard to mess them up.

I had that one bed that I needed to clean out of weeds and get planted, and I just so happened to have a few plants from the island of misfit plants to go in. One that I am interested in was one of the leaders on another tomato plant that I put into a jar of water for a couple of weeks. It didn't look too good going into the ground but I planted it deep so fingers crossed it works out. 

Some of these went in where a brandywine died off from unknown circumstances. I just can't get them to grow here. I have one remaining and it's hanging on. 

Here is said sad plant that I planted. 

And here is the former weed bed planted out. 

The rest are tomatoes that we are starting to get some cherries off of. 

Here are the potato bag extensions that I made. I was going to but and cut some plywood boxes to extend the bags as they are not big enough to contain the plants themselves. Instead a found this siding underlayment and gorilla tape. I just rolled it up inside of the bag and taped it off. I added more dirt and they seem to be holding in place. 

Here's a couple overall views. I finally got the edge border down, then put down all of the cardboard we been saving and doubled up on the landscape fabric where I didn't cover with cardboard, then mulched everything. I was a long morning for me to get it done. 30 bags of mulch is what it took. I also picked up some nice bushes that I installed at the front and some daylilies that will be for another post. 

There's the girls' coop on the right.

I'd like to have another 8 beds for next year. 

WOF of the week. We'll go with waste of feathers. We've been letting the girls out more and more so I caught a couple cruising around. 

Sorry if this seems cut up but I will try to post more often. 

Spring is Here

 Well it seems spring has arrived here in North Carolina, and it has come in warm. After the winter we had it is welcome to be sure. We have also passed the pollening (as we call it around here; waves of yellow and green over everything) so our sinuses are much better for it. With spring here we have started our outside adventures in earnest. I started the garden clean- up and Ms. TD has been dutifully working on her flowers as well as a new birding area. We also made a trip to the farmer's market in Raleigh this past weekend and I picked up some tomato and pepper plants as my seedlings have not done well at all ( a first for me) and some herbs, and found Pluto of Pluto's Inc., the best Caribbean jerk sauces and spices (met the man himself; check him out https://www.facebook.com/plutobliss/. He said he is getting his website redone.) I took some photos earlier in March for a post but didn't get it finished so we'll start with those. 

The girls have started producing a lot of eggs again. 

Bee doing bee things on the peach tree.

Cabbage plant that made it through winter.

My soil block that I make for my seedlings. Seeds seem to do better this way instead of the store- bought dirt. For some reason mine didn't this year. I get good bag dirt from Miracle Grow and some Black Cow, run them over a hardware cloth to remove any small sticks. 

Chips left over from screening.

Good clean dirt for the blocks.

Now to catch up from this past weekend. Tomato and peppers in this bed.

I like to plant basil with the tomatoes. Now I need to find some marigolds, which is surprising as we always seem to have volunteers everywhere. 

Onion starts I ordered seem to be settling in well. 

Some of Ms. TD's flowers.

Here's a little garden gnome we picked up at the farmer's market. My mother used to have them scattered throughout her gardens and landscaping. 

WOF of the Week. This is from the March photos. We have our biggest supporters watching us work. 

Really? We're Drowning Here

 OK. Not complaining about droughts again. It has rained pretty much everyday in July. Yesterday and last night we got close to 4". It gets hot during the day, then rains which makes it even more miserable since it does not cool anything down. Oh yes, the humidity has been through the roof too. Just not a fun summer so far. Matilda does not like the storms at all. She gets nervous and paces and pants. We got some calming pills from the pet store but they don't seem to help. This makes for sleepless nights for us. 

The garden has suffered, especially the tomatoes. They grow through the day then get hit with 2" of rain, then they crack. And it seems there's not any time to work on it. As soon as you do it rains. This past weekend I had to fix the weed eater, lawn mower because it wouldn't steer and change the wife's oil in her car. Also mowed the front lawn and cleaned up the chicken's coop. Got done around 1PM and was spent. 

Now we seem to have a leak on our west facing wall of the house. Every time it rains we somehow get a small leak inside by the fire place. That will be this coming Saturday's job. always something. 

No pictures of WOF of the Week. Coming this weekend. 

Sky Water Did You Say?

 Finally! As I type this is is lightly raining. Took the pups out in it and of Course Benjamin did his thing and ran back into the garage. Matilda? Rain doesn't affect her. We walked the yard and then some. We had a real good rain earlier in the day. 3" according to the rain gauge. We definitely needed it and then some. My burn pile is high but for fear of setting the county on fire I have been letting the set. We are expecting more rain this coming Tuesday so maybe next weekend we'll get that pile down. 

Ms. TD and her friends went to the antique market in Charlotte Saturday so I talked the new front steps handrails and post caps. I didn't have all of the materials to finish everything and one of my boards for the handrail spindles was warped badly so it didn't put it in. I got the top rails in and one side bottom. I got the top caps cut and installed. Routed out a nice cut back on the caps, cut 2 small 4x4 pieces to hold the new light Ms. TD bought and set the lights in place, I thought they screwed in but apparently you have to use outdoor adhesive. Finishing up the stairs for good will be this coming weekends' job. I did some weeding in the garden afterwards but took no photos. I got overheated as it was horribly humid out so called it a day. Ms. TD and I have a four day weekend coming up so hope we can get a lot of things competed. 

We got another small harvest from the garden earlier today as well. Cucumbers are really producing this year. Tomatoes not so much right now. 

That's about it for this post. Hopefully more to come this weekend. 

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.