HARVEST? MONDAY 5.21.12

I don't have much to share. But, linking into Daphne's Dandelion's to share it! Thanks Daphne for always being a great hostess. Don't forget to stop by her place and say hi!

 The last week has been about the summer change.  Here is the one basket I remembered to take a picture of.

These carrots have changed my mind about how I'm growing carrots from now on. I loved growing them in with the onions all willy nilly. It worked out well - and this giant type also worked out well. They took no longer really than the smaller types and I got so much more! Look at the normal sized on in there next to the larger ones. Wow! What a difference. Considering how MANY carrots this family eats....I'm thinking go BIG or go HOME! er... OK I am home- but you know what I mean.

The biggest honking carrots, and nice sized green garlic (I'm begining to think I'll only get green this year) a good cuke, some okra, berries, zucchini, broccoli, a few beans, a young red onion. A decent haul. I got a couple chilis and 2 small romas this week as well as a few more okra and broccoli- but that is about it. I really was concentrating on getting things changed over.

More sweet potato slips went in. 6 more - so 12 total. I won't be breaking a record with that number, but I have so many other things i want to grow that I don't have space for much else. They are all bush type of course. The peanuts are all up, the soybeans didn't germinate very well. I'm quite disappointed. I think I'll risk moving the plants and distributing them so that they can at least benefit from the area given to them rather than leaving them crowded to one side, as it seems the ones that did germinate all were together. (figures) There wont be any more slips going in now. I used the butt of the potato to generate the last of these. They had some great roots though! Awesome for not having transplant shock. LOL

The last stand of sweet corn for summer is up. I'll try again in fall. I don't know what my failure is with it all the time. Like carrots I just keep trying. I'll figure it out at some point! ;-) The last batch from a few weeks ago was delicious, just miniature. I'll plant popcorn in the heat of the summer. Funny- the corn always grows up in the plots in Alabama. Humph. Guess the clay holds the nutrients better and longer. Even with all the amendments and how wonderful things are doing (compared to how they USED to do) I still can't get corn to grow. Oh, well!

I also cleaned out the rest of the non vining green beans, so any green beans you see now until fall will be non green, flat Italian, or for the first time ever, POLE! Speaking of - it seems to me that I may have stumbled upon something. My dragons tongue beans are not very, uh - 'poley' they are much more bushy. They are also not holding up well in our humidity. :-( They have loads of beans that isn't the problem at all. Its that the poor little plants have already gotten mildew. *sigh* Can't win for losing 'round here I suppose. You should see those beans here next week.

Hopefully the growth of the seedlings will be good this week and I can do some update shots soon. Right now it would just look like a blank garden and then a lot of the same old stuff you always see. (the allium patch, the blueberries, etc)

Summer is here officially - we have our first Tropical storm off the coast of Florida and it's 'officially' hitting 90 each day this week. Yikes!

Stay cool my friends!



'Till next time!

Barbie~

Bloom day.

Because I wanted to. Because I can. And because... these are too good not to share. I forgot to update the size, lighting and shapes, so some of these are straight out of camera – Oh, well.  That’s ok. These blooms are good enough on their own. Too bad I didn’t get back out. I’ve got some sunflowers that are begging to be shown off. But, I’m willing to bet they’ll still be around for next month, too!

Enjoy...

 

I love the BACK of this hibiscus... *sigh* It's actually a doubls hibiscus so that is saying somehting that I'd prefer to look at the back of it!

The wall garden is filling in nicely now, too. :-D

Poor HOA doesn't know what hit 'em.  *snicker*

The small Roselle are peeking up here and there. It will be nice to see them filling in through the summer. It will be nicer still when I'm making 'Cranberry tea' with them. :-) What a lovely bloom they have. I can't wait to share it with you!

'Till next time!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 5.14.12

I skipped a week. We had a family emergency going on. We lost one of our Matriarchs. She will be keenly missed and fondly remembered. I missing the weights on the majority of the harvest because of this, but I do have some pictures. I should have more than these, but... Ah - lets say I missed a day or two.

I pulled the majority of the remaining cabbages. The cabbage moths are getting pretty bad now, so I gave in. Besides it's getting hot and they won't have much chance of getting any larger now. There is one purple one left out there. It's just beautiful and so petite I got all sentimental and left it for a few more weeks to try to pull a decent head size from it.

 

The purple beans are producing, and the last of the green beans were pulled out of the garden. Of course, the next batch are already flowering so there will be hardly a lull in the harvest of them. The June bearing strawberries are producing well now. Love that. The spring berries disappeared a month ago and now the summer berries have arrived. :-)

These are (about half of) the carrots that I had sown in with the alium bed. This is the easiest way to grow them that I know of.

 

They take no extra space or care and the grow just fine. I just sprinkle extra seeds in when I sow my onion and garlic sets in the fall, and Voila! I have carrots  waiting for me here and there throughout the spring. In this case 1 pound 8.9 ounces. Impressive for not even truly sowing them.

Below is a miss mash of stuff I yanked out last night after going out to adjust the sprinklers. The first okra of the season. Exciting, but soooo depressing at the same time. That little baby corn is the only one that made it in the house. The kids and I sat in the garden and ate them off the corn stalks. We didn't get much - like always but they are such a treat. It's not quite as small as it looks. The cuke, okra, berries and zucchini are all much larger than they look. That barrel is about as big as my arms are if I form a circle with my hands. So nearly washtub size!

So the soybeans and peanuts are sown, and the zucchini and okra are producing well now. I'm still bringing in broccoli, cucumbers, berries, green beans and carrots for now. But, the season is creeping in fairly fast so I'm savoring what I can.  I only have about another pound or so of carrots in the garden, and the zucchini and berries can only last so long. I find myself torn between wanting to go to the beach and enjoy the heat, and wishing to be able to have the things in the garden that can grow in the cooler weather.  Then again, freshly roasted peanuts? Oh Man - that's fantastic!

I hope that you had a wonderful Mother's Day.

In Memory of Mildred Walkinshaw

A WONDERFUL Grandma and Great-Grandma.

We love you.

'Till next time!

Barbie~

Goldylocks.

Oh My!

Lookout! It's the attack of the Fifty foot... Marigolds?

Pardon the horrid picture- It was raining and my phone is new. So I whipped my phone out, snapped the picture and didn't even gaze down at the phone to see if it came out. Apparently I was in too muc of a rush. But I couldn't NOT share this picture. These are the TOPS of the marigolds that I pulled out of the Tendergreen "bush" beans. Mine were not nearly bush beans. But, after their production I'm not complaining. I know to give them a few more stakes to climb next time.  They certainly gave me enough to harvest. In the 2 weeks I spent harvesting them I got over 3 pounds out of a 3'x2' plot. That is nothing to complain about! Especially seeing as how right at production time I went for a trip and came back to mildew on my plants. Bad gardener that I am I didn't treat it right away, either.

Mildew in Florida is one of the recurring nightmares here. It's one of the main reasons plants get pulled long before harvest or frost kills them. Mildew, massive bug infestation, rot, and molds are the major kickers. SO, in my garden there is very little tolerance for the white bloom. Once it got to where it had the chance to spread to other potential crops  (namely the newly planted sweet potatoes) the beans had to go. I have other beans waiting to replace these.

I have to say though. Normally I grow bush beans. I grow 2 types of them. Petite fillet and regular dwarf. I have always avoided these in between varieties. This particular variety grew about 4' tall. WAY to tall for me normally. But between flavor, productivity, ease of harvest, look of the plant, (yes it was a very handsome plant!) and viability this plant has earned the right to come back to my garden. Not many do that. I'm always trialing green beans to find my favorites. This one however will be one you will see time and again!

Next time though, I think I'll leave the marigolds to the tomato bed, and maybe the cabbages - I've just never seen a marigold go quite this crazy. Was is all the nutrients received from the beans? What was it exactly? Daphne - this is a single plant of your ground control seed you sent. Any of yours get like this? It was easily entwined with the entire bed of beans and had gotten into the eggplant next door and the blueberry bush next to it as well. Three foot tall and easily 4 foot wide. Amazing.

FWIW the section of the beans that was touching the marigolds at first seemed to exhibit a natural tendency to ward off the mildew for a while. Of course once the plant was covered in it - well that was too much.  Also to note that even though the bean plant was covered in mildew it was still both flowering AND putting on baby beans after the main harvest was completed. :-) Definitely a repeat for fall and future, even though it seems it may be susceptible to our Florida white creeping grudge. Then again - what isn't? Mushrooms... yup that's about it! Too bad I don't like them. :-P Oh, and this beauty - she likes the wetness. Canna's seem to do well. Too bad you can't eat them.

So, out with the Tendergreen, and the Petite Fillet as well. In went the Romano 14 - and hopefully this weekend the Soybeans will go in. The Okra is getting ready to bloom. I'm ready okra fritters will be on the menu again! I've kinda missed them. The first true spring tomatoes are well, late. Theya re small yet but on the vine and the onions just need pulled to go into those lovely golden fritters.

I broke down and ORDERED peanuts. I did. I couldn't help it. I have last years 'seed' But I wanted to try to get a heftier crop as my goal is to try to make some peanut butter this year. So I got a variety known for it's prolific harvests. We'll see. Anytime you can get 4-5 nuts in a shell rather than 2-3 you should automatically double harvest, right? I hope! It will be the first time I've paid for peanut seed. I do hope that doesn't make me a fool. Since I was ordering I also got some Soyu long cucumbers. I know they are supposed to do a lot better in our heat and be sweeter -so I'll keep you posted - Harvest Monday style. :-)

Speaking of sweet, hopefully I'll have a zucchini to share with you Monday - the first of many, many more to come. 3 plants this year 1 gray and 2 dark so hopefully I'll at least get enough to get sick of them before they start keeling over.

Tomorrow I'm off to go get the next generation of Benz that will hopefully grace my driveway for the next 15 years the way this one has. Wish me luck!

'Till next time!

Barbie~

So this is Goodbye.

Goodbye to an Oldie, but a Goodie.

Oh we've had good times, and you've been there for me through thick and thin.

It never seems to amaze me the way you seem to light up when I'm feeling dark.

LOL.

WHAT!?!?!

I can't help it. 170,000 miles is a long time to build a trusting relationship with a car. Seriously. This chicks gotten me there and back and never left me on the side of the road. Not even with a flat tire! 

Well... until now that is. Now it sits in my driveway. It still didn't leave me stranded though.

Only bad news is that it still needs to sit there for another few weeks because we are refinancing our home and the bank said NO WAY! No new car right now! *POUT* So I'm car less for the moment. But, I wanted to say goodbye to her the way she deserved. After all 15 years is a good amount of service.

I hope the next car can say the same.

Hopefully I'll be back sooner rather than later to introduce the next generation.





'Till next time!

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 4.30.12

April is on it's way out. This is the last Harvest for April, and it seems like it just got here. This Spring is nearly done here. The bugs are out in full force by 10 am yelling up a storm announcing that it's too hot to be out. Yet if it's the weekend I'm braving the heat sweating my booty off in the sun. The nights are still strangely cool thanks to the cold front that came through last week, but the highs in the daytime are hitting 90 religiously now and there is no more turning back I'm afraid.

The garden is starting to show the heat stress already and the humidity is in full force now. Fun times the next few weeks!

This weeks harvest:

Mulberries continue to come in at 2 cups (1lb 6oz)every day or two,  or whatever I feel like picking at the time. 3lb 5.6oz green beans, 3lb 2oz onions, 1lb 5oz carrots, 4lb cabbage, 5oz parsley,  6oz broccoli, 4oz strawberry, 5oz blueberry.

a bucket of parsley for drying and chimichuri sauce...

A few zucchini blossoms, I only get these on the weekend when I'm there to go out in the morning.

Oh and the best of all- a pool that is FINALLY ready to swim in... Did I show you this already? I apologize if I did - but it is VERY exciting news around here!

This is probably the best news so far. It gets the kids approval for sure! ;-)

Off to check my seeds and see what type of cowpeas I'll be trying this year....

'Till next time!

Barbie~

*ETA* Linking in to Daphne's Dandelions - I'm so embarassed that I forgot!!!! Don't you forget!!!

This weeks project.

This weeks project was...

SWEET POTATOES!

*Please ignore the grass starting to invade my decking around the pool pump here - how embarrassing*

I am lucky that sweet potatoes can live here nearly year round. But these are special sweets, these are bush sweet potatoes, these are Silvia's sweet potatoes. :-D

First I had to clear the Sweet Ann's out of the way, but my conscience took hold and a few along the back managed to stay because they are still yummy even though very few are coming off the vines now. They won't make but maybe another 2-3 weeks when the green beans next to them come out. But the kids and I eat them as snacks while we harvest and what a bad mommy I would be if the pleading and begging didn't keep the kids from taking them all out? *snicker* OK OK, I admit I like them as much as the kids do and the vines in the back were the best of the bunch so I caved and here is what was left.

After lifting the slips, and rooting them sufficiently this is what they looked like - it was due time for transplanting.

And lookie! My garden gives forth my little squirmy friends again! I just hope that the potatoes will be happy here. I know they tend to do better in Florida in our native sandy soil, but I don't have anywhere I can plant them where they wouldn't be trampled and would still be able to be harvested easily. Anyway - I just wanted to show off my wiggle worm friends again. They fascinate my kids.

And - the first transplants in. The remaining transplants are rooting (I showed the slips coming in the first picture) There will be 4 or 5 more plants to put here. I'm not sure if overcrowding will be an issue with the sweet potatoes, but it sure wasn't with the others. We'll see! Good news is I can always take out a few plants and let the others continue to develop.

I have another type of sweet potato as well that came unnamed, but it looks different so I"m going to say that it won't be a bush and I may be in trouble with that one. I might put it's slips into a pot just so I can keep an eye on it. I know they tend to ramble a lot more than some.

The garden is quickly transitioning to summer now. The zucchini has blossoms going crazy and the tomatoes are setting nicely, the berries are nearly done (except mulberries they seem never ending) the peppers are coming along a little late. The melons and squash are rambling and the onion & garlic.... well I think I may not get any bulbs this year. I may have relied a little too heavily on my new soil. I should have fertilized better. Live and learn. I'll try one last effort in fertilizing, but this late in the year it may send them to bloom. Such is life. Burmese Okra looks completely different than last years crop of Clemson. I'm loving the new look. I hope that the claims of less goo hold true - but honestly the goo hasn't stopped me from eating it, so I'm not sure why I'm worried. LOL. It's nearly time for the cowpeas to be planted and then I'll be moaning and groaning the summer blues of nothing to report again.

Off to the Blueberry U=Pick this weekend to complete the freezer stash, and someone has actually asked to come and see MY garden. *blush*.  SO sad to share it when I just got hit with a horrid case of PM on my tendergreen beans this week.

See you Monday!

'Till next time!

Barbie~

Critters....

WHY ME!?!?!

Why is it that just as my peaches were starting to blush - I mean just 3 had blushed and now this week they ALL disappeared... and I got to WATCH. IT. HAPPEN!!!
It was...

The She Devil - and her offspring! The Cretans strike again! By all the peaches- I mean EVERY STINKING ONE! They didn't even leave one that I could bring in the house and try to ripen in the window sill. >:-(

I'm Angry! And, it must be the weather because Dianne had the same problem this week! Maybe it's this freaky weird weather system that moved in 'Cuz these squirrels did this the night before this system came through.

The other Why Me?  That question is this....

New born kittens.... again. NO- not my cat, again... What the heck is it with cats giving birth and then people bringing me kittens? These two won't make it unfortunately. The momma left them out in the cold last night, and in an ant pile. GRRRR... but I'll get them warm and as comfortable as possible and try my darndest.  One of these times I'll end myself up with another cat. LOL. True newborns like these two born just last night are nearly impossible to raise this way. But the one from a few weeks ago? She would have made it just fine. It's so sad when Mother Nature doesn't kick in and tell the mothers how to behave. I'm 90% sure the momma cat to these kittens is a kitten from a feral cat and not but about 4 -5 months old herself. It's not a huge wonder that she abandoned them. A shame, but certainly no wonder. So, I'm off to comfort these little wonders while they drift to another world. Bad momma kitty. Someone needs to learn about spaying and neutering!

*as a side note I wanted to post this as a PLEASE SPAY OR NEUTER YOUR PETS not just to tick off people*

'Till next time

Barbie~

Harvest Monday 4.23.12

Hey hey hey! It's Harvest Monday again. Well, What do ya know? Monday's tend to roll around pretty quickly around here. Joining in over at Daphne's Dandelions once again. Don't forget to stop on by her place and see what people are harvesting from all over the world!

This weekend was a rain filled one. It started Friday and didn't end until last night. It was certainly good for our parched Floridian soil. Most of our local wildfires are out, but I haven't heard yet about statewide. Hope to hear from other bloggers soon. At my house we got only a little over  a quarter inch Friday, 1.5 inches Saturday and close to another inch yesterday. You'd think we'd be drowned in that, but our sand wicked that up lickety split and it was dry as a bone this morning. Windy and cool with a high of only 74 today. It actually feels like Spring! Woah - weird for us. This whole weekend is strange for us. The temps never got very high and it is always odd when the skys don't turn blue after a rain shower. Normally rains only last a few hours tops. Even the times when I report several inches of rain it is typical that that accumulates extremely rapidly.

This week was a good week for me again. I pulled the rest of the beets and turnips so they are done for Spring. The green beans turned on production this week, Some broccoli, strawberries, the potatoes of course, some carrots, a green garlic some green onion as well. But, some how the tomatoes (just a couple romas) blueberries and cucumbers keep slipping out of my pictures. I'm not sure how I manage that! Here are the pictures I do have:

 

 

Ah, I do love living in Florida this time of year. Soon I'll be cursing the okra, and cow pea - lucky to have a watermelon posts - but for now I'm still loving it!



'Till next time!

Barbie~

Digging friends.

I had another post. I did, really. All about the other friends I got to see and things I got to experience at Silvia's place last weekend. Things about pickled carrots (Who knew?) and not being able to keep track of everyone I got to meet while I was there. Let's see... Ricky, Carmen, Cheryl, the infamous Dianne who I was so keen to finally meet face to face. Silvia of course and Willy our wonderful hosts, Keiki, Tom...Whom I might add asked me how my garden is growing, so I'll be forced to do a State of the Garden Address very soon now. Honestly I can't keep track of everyone I met.

Believe it or not I'm even doing it again tomorrow. It's supposed to rain - not just any rain but severe thunderstorm stuff 2+ inches and none of the stations can agree on just how bad it will be. That's never a good thing. Less than 24 hours away and they still can't agree. Yikes. But, I'm still planning on going. This time to a place much closer to home. I know it will kill the attendance but at the very least the hostess will be there! ;-)

And that brings me to the next part of the topic. Since I really did have the other post, but blogger seemed to have eaten it overnight and left me with only the first 3 lines I decided to lead one post to the other. The weather will be nasty this weekend - all weekend so I decided at dusk last night to hurry up and harvest my potatoes. After all I don't want to do it in the mud and rain. So...

Here is the tiny potato patch before...

The plants were just starting to yellow. and wither. The first plants died back this week while I wasn't looking. They were yellow like this on Sunday, and yesterday they looked like this.  Dry, brown leaves and a withered stem. A sure sign, indeed that they not only wanted to be harvested but were ready for harvest! WAHOOO! My calendar was right on track for once. OK, it usually is close but this was my first ever attempt at taters so I wasn't entirely sure. I did learn a WHOLE LOT about them though.  I could have spaced them a whole lot closer if I used only one eye per plant (like I did) OR I could have used more than one eye per plant. Either way would have yielded a much larger crop. I also could have gone a little closer to the edges of the planter. Taters tend to grow straight down, not out so much - or at least these did. Then again I only used one eye per plant so that may have had something to do with it.

At this point I tried to get a picture of the potatoes in the ground but apparently my phone doesn't do dirty fingers. Go figure! It wouldn't cooperate so no more pictures until the harvest was complete. Sorry!

Only one plant gave me a disappointing harvest and I don't know what made it any different from the others. It only had a single potato, but it had about 10 tiny potatoes that would have matured if the plant had been left alone so while it did disappoint me, perhaps it would have made me the happiest in just a couple more weeks, who knows?

So I could have fit more plants, and I could have had a bigger harvest - so what? Know what I got?

5 pounds of taters. From just 3 seed potatoes (or did I end up using 4? I can't recall now)

Some Old school hands on knowledge that I can really use next year.

And the happiest worms ever! (This is the reason I could get any more pictures.) :-D Seriously, the worms are happier here than any other part of my garden. I think because the paper shreds kept the ground so much cooler and moister (is that a word?) than any where else. Every time I dug just the tiniest bit I'd have 2-3 worms in my hand it was amazing! The kids had a blast picking them up and naming them. I had HUGE ones, itty bitty ones, and loads upon loads of these teenage sized ones in my hands here. they went from surface to about a foot down where the soil is the most fertile. It's got me really thinking about what to put in this little 3' square spot of my garden now. I think I've got enough green beans growing elsewhere -

 What would you do with this soil? What would you plant here?

And what in the world am I going to do with 50 pounds of paper shredding now? OK that I know the answer to. It seemed to do so much good with the taters that I'm going to use it around the garden as mulch for my tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.

So while this little spot of my garden has hit the proverbial pot of gold... (I took this on my way to work. Thought it too funny and had to find a way to use it today.) :-)

I await your suggestions on how to use that spot, I'll welcome Florida's famous thundershowers to hopefully knock down some of our local fire activity. We sure could use the rains for that.

Once the rains go away I'm working on the grape vine and Pomegranate bed. It is past time for a rehaul there. Unfortunately I forgot the 'before' picture and already tore out the old weed infested mulch and strawberries. I'll try to at least get a during picture.

'Till next time!

Barbie~

*Small disclaimer - my phone is just fine it was just the film of dirt in my fingerprints that kept me from being able to tell the phone to take the picture - you shouldn't dig taters and play with worms while playing with an iPhone or Droid*