Harvest Monday 8.12.13

It's Harvest Monday again.

I've decided to take the tally down. I don't keep track of how much I'm bringing in currently so it's pointless really. Maybe I'll put it back up. But, I realized that I never accounted for any of the blueberries, or the potatoes I harvested... much less the sweet potatoes I've harvested. I'm just not good at it. I know I've gathered over a hundred pounds this year. And the most productive time is yet to come. Heck, I had my garden completely out of order for a few months while I created the new beds. (I seriously love my new beds BTW)

SO, news for this week? I had a harvest to show you. I had a lovely bunch of green beans... well I should clarify. Green yard long beans in a bowl waiting to go inside. In the bottom of this bowl I had my cow peas. Pink Eye Purple Hulled and a couple holstein beans. I set the bowl down to go out and trim up the orchid tree where it was rubbing the fence... guess what I had when I came back?

Only the dried or drying cowpeas. All the green type beans for fresh eating were gone! THIEVES! DAB BLASTED... FREAKING FRACKING.... bushy tailed RATS!!!! Now, granted that I went from just trimming that single branch back to all out cutting a third of the tree down as it was encumbering my guava bush and it ended up taking me an hour - but sheesh! I'm guessing this may be part of the reason my harvests have gone down so drastically this summer. Not that I have a lot to harvest, but this was the frist time ever that I've actually been out working and had the critters steal stuff from under my nose. >:-( Grrr...

OK- Onto another interesting development. One of my little lovely fluffy butts has given me a little gift of wonderment. She normally lays eggs that are a plain pale pink but yesterday she gave me one that apparently went in for a second coat in the paint department. What a beautiful egg! I'm not sure I'll be able to bring myself to eat it.... wait a minute. I'm sure I'll get hungry enough at some point, but it will be hard to crack that pretty thing.

Normal above - Yesterdays speckaled job below

 Pretty eggs. Make for a yummy breakfast. Thanks Dusty! She's a great bird. Now that it's getting so close to Fall I'll have to start thinking about ways to preserve some of their eggs. They are all over a year old and likely to stop laying over the winter. (BOOO, HISS!)
 What would I do if I had to pay for eggs?


The main garden was turned under as promised and I sowed out this weekend: corn, roma bush beans, Kentucky wonder beans, pole Violetta, popcorn (different silking by 30 days) and watermelon. Also in the main garden is: Tomatoes - Betterboy, big huskey cherry, bog boy and solstice.
I also have a good 30 tomatoes chitting currently that are mostly determinate type for the high raised bed. These are due to be planted into the first cups today if it doesn't rain and I can get the mix on the way home. I should have a good 10 extra tomatillos if anyone needs some. LOL.

That's all the big news at the moment form this end. Things have been quite in blog land because summer is coming to a close and we have been busy making preparations and finding courses to enroll in. I'll delve more into that in another post since we have a complicated mix here. I hope the Back-to-school preparations are going well in your land, too!

See you soon!

Barbie~

Lessons - learning...

Times TWO!

First of all is a sad and BAD lesson.

Squirrels like immature persimmons. Yup. That's right. Freaking, Fracking, Stinking, I'm gonna run 'em over and then back up over 'em and then get my shot gun out.... OK I'm in a residential neighborhood so I'm not gonna get my gun out - but I might just sic my kid on them with his paint ball gun... with pellets in it. GRRRR..... Squirrel stew is sounding good about now. With new potatoes and carrots because I still have about 10 left from my potato haul and I still have carrots. LOL.

Onto better things. The second thing that I learned. First let me begin this by saying that while i've been gardening a long time- I've only grown certain things for most my life. Namely my grandmothers garden and she grew watermelon, bush beans, some tomatoes and left most of the other stuff to other local farmers where we would trade and barter.

 I have had a broccoli plant that I've been letting bloom and keeping trimmed for nigh on 8 months now. Over the winter I needed something to keep the pollinating bugs in the yard and happy. I chose this plant because it was consistently in bloom and required little to no extra care other than for me to go out weekly and collect the seed pods so that I didn't have 5,000 broccoli plants growing in this one tiny planter. Being the thinking ahead kind of person that I am I chose to put this particular plant under my peach tree. Smart, right? Bring the pollinators right where I'll want them in the spring. Teehee. I thought that was sheer genius. And, it was.  Somewhere around November we had the tail end of a tropical storm that knocked this (then) young broccoli plant down. It actually knocked it in between the slats of my planter and I could not right the plant without damaging it further. So, I determined that I would simply leave the plant there and see what happened. This is where my lesson comes in.

Like tomatoes and squash broccoli is capable of laying down additional sets of roots. Did you know this already? I most certainly did not! But, I do have some proof to show you. This picture shows you not the main roots, not the secondary, but these are the Tertiary and quaternary roots. OOOOoooo big words. Third and forth sets of roots. This particular plant continued to set off side shoots for the entire 8 months (if you ever wondered how long your broccoli plant will keep producing now you know) and as long as I didn't clip it in the first few days it would send it to flower. Now, IF as I did when it started to warm up and I no longer needed the flowers you then keep the flowering section trimmed off the plant it will not try to blot as fast. So by keeping it trimmed or letting it bolt you can control if you want to harvest from the beast or not. That is not to say that while the plant is in flower you cannot harvest from it - you just have to be vigilant. If you don't cut the floret in just a day or two it will be bolting already.

I'll stop talking- here is the picture -

Keep in mind that I yanked that sucker up. I had no intentions at the time of trying to save those roots or show anyone what it had done. You can see that the lower part of the stem had gone completely woody at that point and made a true root. The plant was easily 3' across and 5' tall - well it was 3' tall but only because it had fallen. The woody portion that you can see in the picture from one rooted section to the other is the length of my forearm... and I have very long arms. I'm 5'9" tall if that is any indication to you.

The actual root section was so large and so infiltrated with the peach tree that I had to leave it in the ground. That was the not so stellar thinking on my part. But, this learning curve really got me thinking  about how these plants survive in the wild and I can just see not only the pods burst open over and over spilling MILLIONS of seeds per plant, but the longevity of this plant due to it's ability to grow up, fall over re-root and gain strength each time. Amazing plant, and we as gardeners tend to think of it as a short term plant. Huh...

Gives ya more to think about.

'Till next time!

Barbie~