Monday, July 30, 2012

Harvest Monday. 7.30.2012

This July has been the worst yet for me on record. Of course, my record is fairly short. But this week things are finally picking up again.

There have been long beans, rice peas, mulberries, a strawberry here or there (for the chickens as they are seedy and kind of tart now) a pomegranate, some peanuts that ended up getting pulled when I pulled the marigolds last week, and a few other assorted things here and there... I didn't get a lot of pictures, but I did get a few. :-)

Peanuts, pomegranate, mulberries, an overgrown cucumber (was still good, btw)
a load of peppermint, rice peas,

 


and lady peas as well - these were delicious!

My gals. the little fluff butts. We got the first eggs this weekend. My what a raucous! You'd have thought the world was coming to an end. Sheesh. I'm afraid the chicken sharing with the neighbor will be coming to an abrupt end very soon. There is no way the HOA will put up with this. :-( It makes me sad.



This proud young lady is definitely the owner of one of the little eggs. Can't you tell? That  waddle looks like it's on fire! LOL

My son is showing off his bounty and contribution to the harvest this week. He and my husband went out with some friends... and my, oh my, did they contribute...



Nomnomnom....

So, while i"m busy eating, Y'all have fun.
Linking in with Daphne's Dandelions. Don't forget to stop by her place and see all the wonderful things that everyone is harvesting from all over the world!


'Till next time!

Barbie~

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

*Yawn*

I'm tired today. Oh, so tired. And, do you know what I learned yesterday? I learned not to plant those darn nematode chasing marigolds in with the peanuts. :-(

Now I might have messed up the peanut crop a little. I sure hope it doesn't affect it too much. When I pulled the marigolds out it pulled some of (OK quite a few) the pegs that were beginning to form the peanuts underground up, too. Now, I know that peanuts are resilient plants, but considering the crazy amount of rain that we've had since TS Debby I'm worried about my peanut harvest. Guess I'll just have to consult the calendar and see if there is enough time before the fall plantings to through in another section of peanuts. I had wanted to, but then life got in the way. Now I have no reason not to... and I have every reason TO DO!

If I can manage it the calendar says I can get a small crop of them in within the next week and out right around Thanksgiving. It's manageable but yikes that is pushing it. Well, but it would be a fantastic way to celebrate with a campfire, huh? Truly fresh roasting peanuts? MMMMmmm Now that is sounding fantastic! This crop that is in now is a very small crop anyway and is due out on the last day of August. I figured we would harvest over the Labor Day weekend if all goes well of course and hopefully it will. It's bad enough I actually paid that much for peanut seed. LOL. (Shhh... Don't tell hubby. He'd never let me live it down.) This batch would be done the old fashioned way - go to the farmer's market get a bag of peanuts, and plant them. That simple, and much less costly. I'd have enough to boil a batch for us, and roast a few and still have some for planting all for what I paid for those silly ones out there now. Funny though, they are actually growing differently than the ones I normally grow so here is to hoping that they taste good and grow better! They are said to grow denser (3-4 to a shell instead of 2-3) and have a sweeter flavor. Hope it's true.  

The steady and daily rain is kicking my booty. It's hard to stay awake. Think I'll go take a nap now.



'Till next time!

Barbie~

Monday, July 16, 2012

Harvest Monday 7.16.12

I thought if I didn't show up soon you would all think I took off for Canada!
So I show you what little I have.
Some late more season figs I only have about 4 or 5 left on the plant now. It's so tiny, I'm surprised I got this many!
A few tomatoes and yet another keylime.(also what is left of the onions from a previous post but I tried to keep them out of the post. The kiwi is from the store so don't look at it!) LOL

It's not much and the 3 okra didn't make it into the photos, but made it into the dinner. ;-) I also forgot to take a picture of my little bag of yard longs curled up. I think it's funny when they are wound up together. They kids like them that way before I cut them. They store a while like that too. I can continue to harvest the 3 or 3 I get every other day and at the end of the week I have enough for a side dish for us. Next week I hope to show you.

I did remember to finally update the tally. My little garden has given me just over 200 pounds of produce this year so far. Not bad for 200 square ft of planting area. Well, that plus I have things planted here and there around the house. But the majority of it is confined to that area. I sure do hope that my peaches, plums, apples and avacados take off this next year. I feel like I've been babying them for a small eternity for nothing. My citrus have all gotten destroyed with greening it just seems like such a waste to put so much effort in some times. Surely one of these trees (err... or in this case a pair) has to do well here. There were chosen for here.
The blueberries that I rescued last year have finally all either decided to start doing well or have died. Sad, or glad and true. Now I can take the ones that didn't make it and make room, and truly help the ones that did make it. Some are really looking well. Enough that I am having visions of granduer for Spring already. :-D

The chosen varieties of tomatoes for Fall? If all goes well the selection will look like this:
 Monomahk's Hat (an oxheart) 6each
Roma 10each
Better Boy (Hy for disease pkg) 6each
Big Rainbow 4each <3
Tomatillos giant and purple 3each

Because this fall I just can't deal with regular old tomatoes any more. I didn't get many tomatoes at all from the Spring line up of 26 tomato plants. I almost no tomatoes. Yes, I see 9 tomatoes in that picture they are puny, and they are bush tomatoes except one and they were a last resort and...really 6 pounds of tomatoes from 26 plants!>!?!?!?!? UGH What a failure. Anyway. I picked a vairety that someone gifted me a few seeds I wanted to try, a variety I love, a variety that is a standby for canning, one for it's disease resistance, and a variety that is fantastic for well, salsa verde - or in this case salse morado.

I will be buying a few extra pots in the coming weeks. Anything I can do to try to up my chances to get more of these jewels INTO my belly and not the trash, please.

'Till next time!

Barbie~

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Long time, no post.

It's been a week. Figured I would post. I didn't post for Harvest Monday for 2 weeks in a row. It's not that I didn't harvest. It's that my harvests were piddly. And I mean it. In the last 2 weeks I've brought in 6 tomatoes that weighed in at a whopping 9 ounces. a handful of yardlong beans, 5 figs,  6 key limes, and that's about it. I ate a couple of mulberries and the last few grapes that turned. There are still some that are green and I've got the great internal debate going on as to what to do with them. Do I leave them? Cut them off? I think I should cut them and let the vine put that energy into leaf production. The leaves are fighting diseases now thanks to our awful humidity here.

At any rate. I have gotten about half the garden turned and replanted. The other part is mostly weeded and under control. But 1/3 of it remains insane. I just can't seem to tackle it. I'm not sure why. I think that since i"m having such a hard time with it I will simple tear up the giant parsley and throw in an overload of marigold seeds and see what kind of damage I can do to the nematode population. One of the problems I'm having with replanting it with beans right now is that I know without a doubt that this is where I want my french beans come fall. It's the best place for them then. It's also where I'll need a load of compost or top soil because it sank the most from the recent rains. That means it would do best with the enrichment's to be planted with tomatoes or other plants in the middle as a partition. It's got my brain ticking for the Fall planting schedule at least! :-D

Speaking of.... this weekend I'm hoping to get my tomatoes into their first pots. I'm Chitting again! I sure hope that this crop goes better than the last. This spring did not do well at ALL.

Here is what I've been up to while I've been away from the blog the last couple weeks, I've been relaxing ....
I took my one child (yes, I only have one this week) off to a resort in Orlando to play this weekend. It was fun. But certainly not all it was cracked up to be. It's touted to be the best resort in Orlando blahblahblah. It's NOT. I wasn't happy. I went to relax. It was nothing close to relaxing. It was mass chaos - noisy, crowded and did I mention mass chaos! UGH. Even the 'Adult only" pool was only inches away from the kiddie pool where the DJ was screaming away for hours on end. I'm not happy that I paid hundred of dollars to "get away" when I've got beaches and white sand right here in my back yard. UGH.  (here is my I'm not REALLY enjoying myself face)
But the resort did offer one thing I can't get here.

a 4th story INDOOR view. LOL. The atrium was fantastic. Noisy with the kids screaming and running around, but really and truly amazing views...



I would be willing to go back in the slow season - DURING THE WEEK. M~A~Y~B~E,=. But, only maybe. I really like the places I stay to be quiet. Even Savannah didn't like how noisy it was... but she did like one thing...

The boardwalk and meeting the characters form Madagascar on it. :-) That really made her day. They chased after the more aggressive kids, but noticed how timid she was and were careful of her. It was nice that they didn't take advantage of it. Some characters do.

But I gotta say for the price I paid, I was happier at home, doting on the chooks... I told you all a couple of weeks ago I'd introduce you, and here they are -


 This is peck for obvious reason you can see in that little beady eye she's just waiting for you to not be paying attention. She likes to peck at my ring the most. It's not her 'birth' name - but no one can seem to remember that - so Peck it is. Behind her is Stripes. She a little camera shy. I take that back. She gets up close and personal with the camera until it makes noise. LOL. She likes to see herself in the lens, but as soon as it starts to whir and click she takes off. Annah has her favorite in hand...
This is Feathers. Yup. Ingenious naming scheme, huh? Feathers is undoubtedly the sweetest bird. She puts up with a lot. I mean a lot, too. LOL. Annah purt near tortures this bird. It's a good thing she seems to put up with it well and she gets extra treats for it at least. :-) What the other birds have learned? RUN!!! HAHAHA....

So that is what I've been up to. Hope you've been well.



'Till next time!

Barbie~

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Ah, a new project!

I've been immersing myself in a few new projects.

One of them is of course the repair of the leaking house....
About a third of the way through this process my poor hubby got an abscess on his leg.

That left me to do all the hard work. Ah - well, I'm OK with that. I'm not loving it, but I'm not a bit afraid of hard work either.

Here the trench is dug and I am ready to put in the elastopolamer coating... at that point I wasn't picking up the camera again. I didn't want to risk my phone not working because I coated it. LOL. It was hot work and the renters took no pity. The dang dryer ran the WHOLE stinking time. GRRRR.. a little bit of sense would have gone a long way here people!!!

So since I now have a white stripe down the house and lots of white lines zigzagging along the side I decided it's time to freshen the look of the house up just a tad... so We'll go from this washed out look ...

To this slightly Spanish look! all by just selecting a slightly brown paint for the base of the home and painting the garage door as well. It really enhances the spicey shutter color as well.

Sorry it's a pic of a pic - but I forgot to save it in the computer. LOL.

That of course got me thinking about my own washed out looking home just down the street....I'm not willing to paint in this heat but when it cools down I've got a project for the fall now!

from this....

To this~!

It's not a drastic change - but one I think the HOA will approve at least. LOL.

'Till next time!
Barbie~