I spent around $35 ordering 4 books from Chelsea Green Publishing because they are having a huge sale (I saved over $90 off of normal prices!). I feel bad not getting the books from a local bookstore, but on the other hand, those prices! And at least it’s not Amazon.
Last night, T hung out in the garden for quite a while. At first he was trying to walk off some miles while playing Pokemon Go, but he also got involved in some projects, such as trying to get water out of the hose, which was off. Whatever keeps you busy, kid. When he comes to the garden in the evening, he often asks me to show him what’s new 🙂 He loves to pick green tomatoes. Z found some really nice corn (see below). I didn’t get much done this week between the street getting paved and T staying home sick one morning. Last night I did turn the compost and pick 4 1/2 baskets of strawberries, and tonight I weeded and pulled bad leaves out of the tomatoes and peppers (east side of the bed). More pics below.
Z picking tomatillos; T picking tomatoes
need to look up these bug eggsand we have blossom end rot on our peppers – need to put some oyster shell lime before we get any more problems (that’s why I weeded tonight)
This week they’ve been paving our street. It’s about a mile and a half or so long. It gets a lot of traffic because it’s a major route between Santa Rosa and roads that lead to Rohnert Park – plus it leads to a bunch of places in the hills. Today they paved the part of our side of the street that’s outside of our house. I avoided the garden this morning so I’d avoid the fumes. I picked most of the pears from the trees that are at the front of the garden yesterday while 6 trucks drove by carrying asphalt. So many!
Today I focused on housecleaning. I got out there for a little while tonight -T helped me to plant some lettuce, carrots, and radishes. Why do I have so few packets of radish seed? Anyhow, then I also planted a packet of “blue” snap peas. They look like they might be a spring crop, though, based on what the packet says.
My in-laws picked tomatoes and kale, which were used in the pizza Z made tonight, and T picked basil. I didn’t have time to pick strawberries (had to run some errands in the afternoon, plus T was clingy!). So I’m feeling garden withdrawal. Looks like T is a bit sick so he’ll be home with me tomorrow = no fertilizing, moving compost, etc. SIGH! Plus it’ll be the 1st anniversary of my dad’s death. 😦 Nice full moon tonight!
sunflowers!
Last night I felt like I was pulling out as many bad strawberries as good ones (three baskets, gave one to the new neighbors!). We’ll see if I get to pick berries tomorrow.
I wrote to a local gleaning organization to ask if they wanted to come and pick pears. No response (yet?).
Z’s parents working in the tomatoes. Photo taken from bathroom 🙂
Yay, my in-laws helped me tie the tomatoes so they are up off the ground a bit. We tied some of the branches to the tomato cages (for the plants that had them) and they strung a u-or-v-shape between t-posts to try to hold the lower branches off the ground. Now I can weed, fertilize, and pull out dead leaves -time permitting!
Pears from trees that are in our garden
Z’s dad also got out there and picked just about 2 buckets of pears from the 3 trees that are in the garden. Pear season is on! And then, guess what? They went inside and cut up pears (a website recommended 1/4 to 1/2 an inch, but these were much thinner) and added some lemon juice (I got a ton of it at costco even tho it’s not organic, because i use it for cleaning the toilet), and put them into the dehydrator! So I need a vacuum sealer. Can’t afford to pay for a new one unless I sell like $160 worth of produce 1st.
I got out a bit later and finished making the compost pile. T helped for a while – he loves to spray out the buckets. He made some rainbows in the air, too. It’s still a bit less than 2/3 the size that it needs to be, but it might be the biggest one I’ve ever made. I need to get some compost bins for storing it once it’s cooled down. That would keep the compost out of the sun and moist.
sunflowers- amazing height variations (probably different varieties as this was a mix)Our beautiful collard plant
The (1st?) pea bed now has water lines (I straightened them this morning). I noticed that the line for the pea plants has to be on the same side as where the trellis netting meets the t-post so the plants are closer to the netting. That’s not the case this time.
I picked over a half a gallon of strawberries last night, and a huge Armenian cucumber, and some basil and dill. Today my father-in-law picked almost a half-gallon of ageing blackberries!
When I was walking around the garden this morning, I noticed these Marketmore cucumbers. Now that I look at them they don’t look quite as huge as they did in the garden!
I weeded in the young pumpkins this morning, and this evening I picked a gallon of green beans. We haven’t been keeping up at all, and they are almost finished. I was about to pick strawberries when I saw a car pull into our driveway- it was a guy who I had some classes with at the Junior College and his wife. His family has an old ranch where they grow chestnuts and I guess some grapes. He studied oenology, viticulture, and I think maybe he also got a certificate in Sustainable Agriculture. I like listening to his stories about how things were when he was growing up, what his son is up to (beekeeping, some gardening, and some small building projects). His wife works with little kids, so she likes to come by and see T.
photo of the bed I was weeding today- one can see young pumpkin plants, as well as tons of weeds. The left side of the bed is pinto beans (iirc)
Today was the first time that I was ever separated from T by a big bridge – he and his dad went to the East Bay for a few hours.
the pumpkins are starting to grow into the strawberry bed. Several kakai plants have pumpkins growing! That’s a week from flowering to fruiting.
It’s been a bit of a crazy week, as I had two morning doctor’s appointments. That can really mess up a morning in the garden, I tell ya!
Two days ago I harvested 4 baskets of strawberries; today I only got 2. It’s been damp at night and in the mornings. Today the sun didn’t come out until well into the afternoon.
We picked an Armenian cucumber yesterday. It was a teeny bit green inside, but good 🙂
There’s a Charentais melon coming along:
charentais melon
I keep getting this feeling of foreboding – the weeds are getting out of control, some of the lower leaves on the tomatoes are yellowing, some of the strawberries look bad, etc.
view of our tomato (left) and pepper (right) bed. Basil and marigolds are also visible
Z was out for hours with T- I got to sleep in an extra 2 hours (I was a wreck). Then I worked in the garden for about 2 hours. After my garden tour, I worked on hoeing my main lambsquarter crop and putting last year’s purchased compost on it. I’ve been planning on putting peas there. I have 3-4 loads’ worth to do in that bed. All that remains of the old compost is this:
the rest of 20 yards of compost that we bought a year ago
Z finished putting in stakes for the pole bean trellis. You know, I looked at the weather this morning and it said that our nights are down to a low of 49-50 degrees. No wonder those poor pole beans are having so much trouble! That is _cold_!
The cucumber beetles are terrible everywhere (I assume they are to blame for the holes in every single pinto bean leaf), and I have been noticing for a while that the undersides of tomato leaves tend to be wet. Tonight I got 2 tiny slugs on me. We never strung the tomatoes up, and the plants are so overgrown and bent over that it would be hard to do without losing fruit. That said, PLEASE, SOMEONE, HELP ME DO IT! Ok, maybe I need some short stakes for the job… gotta send Z to work with the truck, since he works close to Harmony Farm Supply…
I am still struggling with crop planning. I have at times been diagnosed with ADD, and it shows here:
We both froze and picked 2 baskets of strawberries today. I picked nearly a gallon of green, yellow, and purple beans. These are my last big planting of green bean-type beans. We are having trouble keeping up.
a handful of the compost that was delivered on FridayZ sits next to some potatoes that his dad, he, and I harvested today
That’s because I _am_ unproductive. I did harvest 4 baskets of strawberries and some greens today (plus I helped a bit with the potatoes), but I didn’t harvest blackberries, broccoli, cabbage, etc. I did a tiny bit of weeding in the north pumpkins and in my sad attempt at a late planting of pumpkins and green beans. But I have like 41 yards of compost to spread and plants to pull (bolting kale, tho) before I start a new compost. I have like 5 buckets full of stuff outside the house, plus several around the garden.
Grey Kitty on top of a mountain of compost
The 40 yards of compost that I ended up ordering from the place in the next county over where our green waste is theoretically trucked to looks pretty good. There is some trash in it, but it doesn’t seem like as much as the stuff I used to buy. There seem to be more “fines,” but I wonder if that stuff is going to just blow away (ideally we would tarp the 4 piles, huh?). The compost is pretty warm. I’ve been hearing from people that the compost they’ve gotten from various companies has been too “hot,” meaning that it hasn’t quite finished breaking down. That’s ok, I still have a yard or so of compost left from last year… ok, that won’t get me very far!
Some thoughts about the potatoes: we turned off the water like 2 weeks ago because the gophers had started eating the plants and tates. The ground is still wet down there. There were not a lot of potatoes- a large one, and medium one, and a tiny one per plant — but the gophers ate parts of the biggest ones :(. Z’s dad commented that they weren’t very deep. I hadn’t gotten to hill them up more than once. We picked tates from where Z had planted (he opened up the ground with a sledgehammer. Yes, he hurt his back doing it). There are still more to pick. Z baked some of them with olive oil, some herbs de provence, and salt. They were delicious. A bit sweet.
We saw our first sunflowers and pumpkin flower this week! Both tend to have pollinators stuck to them!
A beautful reddish-orange sunflower with a bee on it
I came to the realization today that it is really time to stop trying to plant summer crops (I never finished the north sunflower row, and the latest planting of pumpkins is not growing much and was likely a waste of seed). I got pretty sad when I realized that. I hate winter, and the fog came in hard this evening. This month it’s time to get peas and greens into the ground, and see what else I can plant while I’m at it. In another world I would harvest all that lambsquarter seed and use it for food, but I’ll be lucky to get it all hoed and out of the pea bed before it plants itself again…
farmingmum 