Posted on 07/29/2016 2:22:50 PM PDT by greeneyes
*BUMP* For tomorrow. :)
Harvesting 5 to 10 Amish paste tomatoes every day. BLTs are weekly...
We’ve had massive pepper/mushroom sandwiches and stufffed jalapeños.
This has been a very good year for our raised beds.
I got to spend the day out on the land today. Managed to weed the entire strawberry patch, and it needed it! Between one thing and another, I hadn’t been able to pull weeds in over a month. The grass was knee-high in there!
I also found several ripe berries as I picked. About a pint of them made it home. That’s the advantage of everbearing varieties :)
The blackberries I planted this spring have half a dozen green berries forming. I was expecting it to be a year or two before they started producing. The elderberry bushes are also loaded with green berries.
I dosed my corn with mineral oil to prevent corn worms. Those are nasty little bugs, I’ve seen them take 3/4 of my crop before. Never again!
I also picked a few green beans while I was there. I’m growing dry beans, but the directions all say to pick the first flush as green beans, so the plants will produce more. I’m doing a controlled test of that advice, because I couldn’t reach one end of the bean patch. If one end produces more than the other, we’ll have our answer.
My hours are finally picking up at work, so I may not have to find a third job just yet! This summer cut it a lot closer than I like.
We’re finally getting a bit of relief from the furnace here in Central Missouri. It rained again last night. Another half inch or so. Total here since June 26 is close to 13 inches.
All of that water has been really bad for my tomato patch. Almost all of the slicer tomatoes are developing water cracks by the time they’re ready to pick. I went out in the deluge to pick after I got home from the salt mine yesterday, in hopes of salvaging something. I managed to find a couple dozen nice ones that hadn’t blown up. I plucked every tomato that was showing any color at all, and by the time I got home this afternoon there was another half bushel worth starting to turn red. I probably should have picked, but I needed to cut the grass, so that’s what I did. I’m going fishing on the middle part of the Osage River tomorrow, so the picking will wait until Sunday.
I’ve been getting a five gallon bucket full of cucumbers every other day for the last week or so. Between the cukes and tomatoes it looks like I’ll be delivering to the auction twice a week for the rest of the summer.
Good news and bad news in the kitchen garden. Watermelon, cantelope, and butternut squash are thriving with all of the moisture. They are loaded with blossoms and little baby melons. Mrs. Augie’s Russian cucumbers are starting to vine. Green beans are blooming like crazy. It won’t be long before they’re making beans. The pepper plants are absolutely fantastic this year. Best I’ve ever seen them since I made that garden eight years ago. They’re all waist high and loaded with peppers. The sweet corn, on the other hand, is probably doomed. I noticed this morning the first planting has come down with the smut. With all of the rain we’ve had I should have known to hit it with the Dipel dust as soon as it started tassling, but I didn’t. This is the first time out here that I’ve had a problem with the smut and I simply didn’t think to dust it. I think I’ll ask my buddy who runs the taco truck if he wants to add huitlacoche to the menu in a couple weeks. LOL
Lost about 1/3 of my russet potatoes.
Started turning brown from the bottom, up, until completely dead. Trouble began as they started to flower, with plants in the middle of both rows, and spread to neighboring plants in succession.
The ones that are left are puny compared to previous years; German Butterball rows right next to them are normal size & health, compared to previous years.
This evening, I dug the totally dead ones in one row, and got a relatively small number per plant of “new potatoes”, so underground growth was also puny, which I suspected.
Meanwhile, a deer got in, and ate the first, nearly ripe, Roma tomato: coincidentally, I scored a deer tag in the draw this week...
Beans are absolutely loaded with flowers and immature green beans; butterbeans & Great Northerns are full of flowers.
Peas are done, whether they know it or not. ;-’)
Also picked our first 3 cukes tonight, with plenty more coming.
A few days ago, we stripped our bush cherry, and added a few chokecherries to them. last night, I cooked them, then ran them through the Foley food mill, and let them drain in the fridge. The juice is now in a jelly bag, draining overnight, to make syrup. I’m the jellies & jams eater, but we both use syrup, so syrup it is.
Our lone peach is still green, hard as a carp, and still the size of a walnut in the husk. I’m starting to suspect that an almond rootstock was used, and it came back from below the graft.
Barb and Mandy came home from the trailer on Thursday. I had the house cleaned well=enough so that there were no complaints. I have made progress on the triangular-shaped cabinet to the right of the vegetable sink. Have the two, mirrored interior walls installed and the four plate glass shelves on order.
Our zucchini and tomatoes are starting to produce. Zucs of course are going nuts. My crazy Indian squash have set fruit. Potatoes and asparagus need weeding, badly.
We are still having a beard of bees on the left hive every evening. I took the honey super off of it and found a lot of comb/wax on the queen excluder. I scraped it as well as I could, but didn’t have a wire brush to really do the job. I took a full frame from the top brooder box, knocked off the bees and put it in the first honey super, replacing it with a blank frame. This is supposed to encourage the bees up into the honey super. I also put the second honey super on it. The right-hand frame doesn’t have a bearding problem. The bees are starting to draw-out the frames on the second honey super. We will have to watch it and prepare to buy another box and frame for that hive if they get close to filling the second super.
Now that my surgeon has cleared me to do as much as I can, I will get “down and dirty” in the garden.
Speaking of turkeys, the hen that showed up this spring and wanted in to our chicken and duck pen, is back with three chicks! Of course, she wants into our pen, which Barb graciously allows, and the hen (Thomasina), has proceeded to kick the hell out of our aggressive rooster, Galahad, and has put him in his place. I had to pull her off of him one day when she cornered him and started to pluck him!
That means they are not getting pollinated. You will have to do your self. What you do is take a Q-tip and rub it around the inside of the male flower it is the smaller flower on the stem . Stick the Q-tip down in the bigger flower and rub it around. That should do it, or pick the male flower peal the petals off and stick the pistil into the bigger one and knock it around.
Good for the sunflowers-I had no luck with mine.
Sounds like a good plant to grow.
LOL. Good for you! Hubby just got back from the corn patch. It is all laying on the ground, and something has eaten all but one of the ears of corn. No tomatoes, peppers or corn from his garden this year.
Summer squash, zukes, and a few potatoes is all. Good thing we aren’t depending on the garden for all our food.
We are not doing well with the tomatoes or peppers this year. Glad you are doing well.
Glad to hear about your garden success, and good to hear about your job hours.
I didn’t do anything for my vegetables and herbs today but water them. I did over an hour of weeding in the gravel without gloves, though. :)
I’ve neglected the front and back yards, as well as the area lining the driveway and the garden up near the street for years due to a knee injury. It’s going to take me a while to get it all back, but I am determined.
Well you are still way ahead of where we are. This has not been a very good year for us.
Excellent!
Beautiful!
Sounds odd that the row right next to the russets is normal. I wonder what happened to the Russets? Still it sounds like a pretty good year for some others.
Poor Galahad! He must have been devastated! :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.