Yes Charlie Brown it IS the great pumpkin. My pumpkin vine had leaves bigger than your head and grew only 2 pumpkins. Both of which had to have weighed about 50 lbs each!!!
Gave them to my buddy Kris . Nobody carves pumpkins better than a kid!!
You know the whole potato thing kind of confused me. I guess I had problems wrapping my head around the whole in the ground thing added to the they will grow in straw piles thing. I have always been a show me , hands on sort of gal .
So when the monster grasshoppers ate the top off of my straw covered potatoes , I figured it was time to take a look . When I uncovered these a lightbulb went off. Seeing that they were just above the surface and did not grow in the straw gave me clarity.
No I did not trench them very deep as it was a last minute project. it will be interesting to see how the deeply trenches ones do but I'm thinking it will be pretty close to the surface too.
This made me wonder about the dirt piled potatoes. Yes they did have small potatoes growing in the mound. I believe I will just stick to the dirt mounding of potatoes . We shall see about growing them in the potato box. As much as I love gardening the shoveling of mass quantities of dirt does not appeal to me. I am fortunate to have ample space to grow potatoes in so I will continue to grow them in rows. Also I am planting my next crop in the end of July. kind of an extra early fall crop ?
Starting to enjoy the first fruits ,or shall I say veges, of my labor. Sundays breakfast was 100 percent courtesy of the homestead. Even Thelma contributed much to her dismay. She has gone full on broody recently and insists on hatching infertile eggs. Yesterday she stood in front of our garage office screaming for a full 20 minutes when I took her eggs. she was one pissed off chicken.
Pretty good looking potato scramble don't you think?
Here we are at 14 weeks already. I can honestly say the best thing I did this year was drip irrigation, it has already saved me tons of time and money on my water bill.
As I have been quite busy playing with my college grad daughter and buying a 5000 piece record collection for the record store, I have had very little time to garden. These pics show what my garden looks like after 2 to 3 weeks of no weeding. The small amount of weeds is unheard of this time of year.
My trees are growing great. Only a bit of apricots this year but it is their first year hopefully we will have a harvest next year.
My Teepees, well they suck. I take that back, so far they suck. I have to remember it is still early and they grew best in July / Aug of last year. I am getting lots of green beans and tons of cucumbers but the plants are small and not climbing.
It is easy to be impatient with the garden this time of year. Everything is " almost" ready. I will say there is cherry tomatoes growing on the corner of each one and they are already monsters .
My "Three sisters " planting is growing great guns , looks kind of cool. The squash is slow to grow but I think if I give them more water that might help as the drip is next to the corn.
The watermelon and cantaloupe are baseball size. Fun way to plant these items .
Well my corn is now as high as an elephants eye. In fact the last block I planted is as high as a giraffes eye. The first block is almost ready to pick. I do have an issue with aphids and ants on the outsides of the ears but "fingers crossed " no cutworms.
My grapes are also almost there. Lots of things are almost there. Not sure when they are ripe because I do realize the grapes you get in the store are huge . I also thought I purchased a red grape but see none of those in the canopy so maybe I have all white .No problem though as I do like all grapes. Erik keeps asking me when I'm making grape jelly . Haha ,yeah right.
The main garden is coming along. Still have slow growth on that section of peppers. The interesting thing this year is with the drip the plants are not growing as fast as they have in the past but I am getting a good amount of produce. I think this area having been used for 5 years is finally in need of some nitrogen.
Talk about frustrated. A gopher got my artichoke. Yes the artichoke that was growing great guns. I don't blame the cat this time as there are no holes in the yard and when I pulled up the plant the hole is coming from the neighbors yard. Yes the little buggers are tunneling to my yard. I will definitely use a gopher cage on my next planting. And will plant some gopher purge over there.
The second garden is going great guns. My Roma tomatoes on the fence are huge and have lots of tomatoes "almost" there. This is the first planting on this section. You can tell the years of horse doodoo have created a monster.
The citrus is blooming and or starting to produce.
And I have officially stopped purchasing onion.
All in all things are going great. I have been fighting ant wars and the aphids have finally found their way to the garden. I have had some top leaves munched by huge grasshoppers but its not too bad, yet.
I have already started to experiment with pickling. More on that later. Its going to be 106 today !!!! Some extra water is in order.
The gardening process is great fun but what keeps me going is the harvesting and of course makin stuff !!!
As my tomatillos are going gangbusters I figured a little quacatillo sauce was in order. If you have never has quacatillo it is definitely something to try. Kind of a ramped up sweet guacamole.
Almost everything came from the garden. The exception being the avocado and lime. Hopefully next year as they are pulling through.
Basically It takes 8 to 10 tomatillos, a small onion, some cilantro, jalapeño peppers,a clove of garlic, 1 to 2 large avocados and lime or lemon juice.
In the past I have just blended them in the food processor, my trusty Ninja. However this year I grilled them over the barbecue. the smoky flavor adds a lot to the taste and the tomatillos have a sweeter more robust flavor that way.
Put it all in the blender with the juice of a lemon or lime and blend away. Soooo easy. I also add an extra cubed avocado to the end product as we like chunks of avocado and they are ample in California.
Mmmm. Nachos for dinner tonight !!!!!
Yup the prettiest purple flower this side of the Mississippi. unfortunately for me , and the rest of you poor fools that actually read this, it only grows in San Francisco , California . It was going to edit my blog with her degree in Print and Online Journalism but was called back for a newspaper internship at the San Francisco Bay Guardian the day after it arrived.
Here's hoping this elusive purple flower has a wonderful future. I'm one very proud Mom.
What the heck is that???? Well it's the beginning of my " Three Sisters Planting". As I have started to blog about the garden, it was inevitable that social media was the next step. For a month or so I had been seeing posts about "Three Sisters Planting". From what I could gather it was companion gardening of 3 items.
Being a rather organized type gardener and the fact I just got back into corn planting, there was no real interest. It was confusing at best as everyone had their own bastardized version of how to do this. Then I saw a picture on a Facebook post and thought what the heck is that ?
I looked it up and decided to make my own "What the heck is that? " or as it is more commonly known "Three Sisters Planting".
This is what my "Three Sisters Planting" will look like in a few months, yeah right. It is actually an interesting American Indian form of planting using corn, beans and butternut squash . All of these items can be stored over the winter.
Make a four foot mound of dirt and fortify it with ash and smelly fish bits. Or if you are all out of smelly fish bits some good organic compost will do. I did use fish emulsion as it is part of my repertoire. Plant corn seeds 10 " apart in a 2 ' circle.
When your corn reaches 5" you plant a few bean seeds around your corn plants. They will then use the corn as climbing support and draw nitrogen from the air to fortify the soil for the corn. Damn that was a mouthful. Very interesting concept though.
A week later you plant 6 squash seeds around the perimeter of the circle. The large leaves will shade the base of the plants creating a mulch like effect and keep the weeds down. Not only that but It might look cool between my Teepees don't you think?
Here it is at 10 weeks already. Erik started hounding me last week for fresh fruit and veges. I never thought I would hear those words come out of his mouth as for 22 years he has been a meat and potatoes kinda guy. I explained to him that Mother Nature ALWAYS starts her bounty in June. like I said I'm not so sure planting early helped at all , they just grew a little slower. Maybe if I had a greenhouse but I'm not so sure I want or need that.
The Teepees are doing well. Not much vining on my beans but I do have blossoms and approx 20 green beans. Not sure but I may have bought a different variety than last year. The cucumbers are going to town. Lots of little 1" cukes.
The trees are doing well .I took care of my earwig problem and no more munching on the leaves. I read that earwigs love to munch on stone fruit so that's a good thing. Saw a bird picking earwigs out of the oil in a cat food can the other day. I guess I made "bird sardines".
My apple tree finally flowered. It's such a little thing I thought maybe it needed another year. I'm glad to see it flowering later as that means I will have space between the fruit harvests.
I had some plastic and pegboards so I decided to try burning the weeds out of this area. It is part of the flood plain and one of my worst weedy areas. After the rainy season I will move it to another part of my yard and see if it worked. My berries are growing gangbusters.
As are the grapes. They were creating a grape wall about 10 feet tall by vines twining together. I retrained them and kind of wished I had done the entire middle fence in grapes.that would be a lot of grapes for us though . I guess one makes raisins ?
The corn is as high as an elephants eye, actually not. The first section is about three foot and it is beginning to tassel. This is where the rubber meets the road. Do I spray insecticide for cutworms or go organic and put mineral oil on the tassels with my fingers crossed. I did find a cut worm in the weeds next to it while cleaning up. I'm thinking of looking for an organic product but not so sure they are out there.
The main garden is doing middling to fair .I need to start training the tomatillos up the sides of the pens. They are flowering like CRAZY!!!! My "baby" tomatoes are really starting to grow as well. One died and something ate the top of another but I always plant more than I need to . The peppers are starting to grow. I do remember in years past they grow best in the heat of summer so I'm not really worried.
That big black ugly thing is some old retail racks. One of of my potato conundrum fixes. It is full of straw. We shall see what happens.
Poor Pierre needs a makeover. Erin will be home soon for a visit so I'm making her fix him. Maybe this year he will have a little "post punk" revival. All three of my squash varieties have squash babies on them. I have zucchini, patty pan and spaghetti squash. I'm just waiting for them wiley critters to come munch on them. It seems they always get the first ones. I'm going to put some bird net on them today.
I planted watermelon, cantaloupe and the pumpkins in the tree rounds. I lost 3 watermelon plants to some kind of bug , probably earwigs as the can under that tree is mega full. looks like they will do well.
My eggplants have started to flower. They are a later season producer however.
My citrus grove is kind of status quo but the little trees are working on growing fruit so plant growth is at a minimum.
Artichokes anyone? This plant is on steroids. Currently there are 4 chokes. The big one is just in time for Erin's visit. My artichoke eating partner.
My avocados have made it!!! Woohoo!!! I really thought the frost killed them. Very frustrated however as they were prime for their first year of fruit. I think this is going to be a year of regrowth. Behind them on the fence are my Mothers Day kiwis. Cross your fingers for me as I'm thinking they will be very high maintenance and may not live.
Onions are growing great guns.
My Roma tomatoes are finally catching up with their onion partners. No white fly yet.
Finally my cilantro in the pig trough is starting to grow. These are from seeds saved last year. Its the first thing I have grown from seeds I have saved . I'm a proud Mama !!!!
I have had geese for about 12 years now. Geese are nasty mean critters but we love them . Best security ever , no ones coming in my yard if the geese are near. I even have golf clubs placed through the property just in case they have a feisty moment.
Mrs Gooserson had a mate for the last nine years. Come spring time she would lay her eggs in the dogloo, approximately 12, and she would brood. Rarely coming out for 2 months she would finally emerge looking worn and torn. No babies ever followed.
Her man died some 6 months ago. Not sure why as his body was intact with no damage. Geese can live to be 20 years old so I'm assuming being a captive goose 9 years was pretty old.
Springtime came and Mrs Gooserson started to lay. Knowing there was no way the eggs were fertile I started to collect them. No use in letting her go through the two months of torture as it is very hot in that dogloo in summer. As they started to build up I wasn't quite sure what to do.
It was around Easter so I started to give them away to people who still dyed eggs. I gave them to anyone who would take them from me. Satisfied that her 12 eggs were laid and gone I figured I had dodged that bullet until next year.
I went on vacation and came back to four eggs in the Dogloo. come to find out a goose can lay up to 100 eggs a year. Not so sure Mrs Gooserson has that in her as she is 9 years old but she is still laying.
So I did it. For the first time in all of these years I ate a goose egg. Scrambled of course. eating a raw yolk of the goose egg was too much for my first time. As you can see by the picture on top it was about the same amount as three regular eggs.
Not bad. A little dry as I scrambled it to death but like a regular egg. my husband however is a different story . I guess I will be eating goose eggs alone as he has made my pinky promise NEVER to feed him goose eggs. Hee Hee.....
My Moms garden is a special place . The cool tranquil tropical beauty beckons you past the worn kitchen door. You step out and instantly the stress rains off your shoulders. It is my mothers trophy , her Magnum Opus.
My best memories of my mother are her in a pair of old capris, ratty t shirt and blue keds sneakers. Her long black hair in a messy bun on top of her head. A trowel in her hand. The smell of fish emulsion wafting in the air. She is a connessouer of fine soil. She taught me what good dirt was all about. How it felt, smelled and what you did to make it better.
At 84 she's still at it. Pouring over catalogs. Finding the perfect plant to fit in a rock crevice. Reshaping and reworking her Magnum Opus.
My love of gardening is due to her. Thank you Mom for giving me this wonderful gift.
