Harvest Monday 7.29.13

It's the end of July already. It went so fast! I practically blinked and it was over. The peanuts have flowered and sent their pegs into the earth. I'm thinking saving seed wasn't the smart thing. This crop doesn't look very healthy. I don't know if it is the exorbitant amount of rain or the saved seed, but the leaves are not fully opened they seem somewhat stuck together. This is not something I've seen before. Usually I deal with rust, or some other issue like fungus. These plants look somewhat dwarfed because of it.

This weekend was productive. I harvested a pomegranate, a sweet potato the size of my head, and a few others (enough for dinner for all of us one night) and some mulberries. Those were chicken fodder however. It's just too buggy right now to be eating them fresh. I managed to cut the mulberry tree in half and this was a good thing. I didn't chop the top half off of it, I trimmed off all the crazy limbs that were taking over the sandbox and neighboring apple tree. Now we can see out of our dining room window again to watch the kiddos play. It's truly amazing how much that tree grows every summer. It quite literally gets chopped in half in the spring and again in the late summer. The best news is that this heavy pruning spurs on the best mulberry crops. In about 8 weeks I'll be so happy I did this. :-)

I also managed to pull out 2 small beds of summer crops to ready them for the Fall crops. One was planted with the first set of 5 tomatoes and 2 tomatillos. The other will be for a second crop of limas. The first crop isn't fairing well and will be replaced. Fordhook does not give a second crop here the way that Eastland does so after I use the rest of this seed it will not be saved nor bought again. I wish I could grow pole limas here there are 2 varieties I understand do exceptionally well in our heat and humidity. I think next year I'll try anyway. I do have one small trellis to try with.

The Avocados that are in the garden beds got trimmed up as well. Not a hard pruning like the mulberry. I wouldn't want to stress those trees out, but just the few bottom branches needed trimmed up to let in more light and not to interfere with the blueberries new growth. While I had out the shears I hacked away the orchid tree that hangs over the privacy fence. I found that the newest orchid tree is different from the others. This is something to be celebrated. I'm praying it's not going to be dropping those blasted seeds into my garden like the mature one that we already have does now. If the hummingbirds didn't love it so much and it was so beautiful for months I would have chopped it down years ago. The new flowers are much skinnier and CORAL colored! If the white blooms attracted the hummers, I can't imagine how much the coral ones will!

 

So, that was my excitement for the weekend. Unfortunately I don't have any other pictures. I only have this one because I got the flower in the house on Friday night. Otherwise I would have missed it, too. After all dirty hands make it hard to take photos. LOL.

 

Hopefully I'll remember to get pictures of the pomegranate before I eat it. ;-)

 

See you soon!

 

Barbie~