Chemicals

We haven't picked anything from the garden since Monday morning.  Why?  We sprayed Sevin, a fairly mild pesticide, and you really shouldn't harvest for three days from when you apply it.  Last year I used a little Sevin powder, but that was it.  This is the first time we've actually sprayed the stuff.  The squash were covered with bugs, the sunflowers seeds were being eaten by worms, and strange orange and black bugs are all over the broccolli.  I'm not apologetic about our use of modern chemistry to ensure a good crop.  The garden is work, and I'm not going to just roll over and let insects enjoy the bounty we've created.   

I fertilize.  Yes, I also compost and till manure into my soil, but plants need food, and fertilizer is cheap, easy to use, and safe.  I hand-broadcast this 10-10-10 maybe every 3 weeks or so on most everything except the tomatoes.  This is a 10+ year old bag of fertilizer that Mr. C left in the Batcave for me.  It's ammoniated, a high ammonia content can prevent fruit set in tomato plants.

This is what I use for the tomatoes.  I prefer using water from our rain barrel and mixing up the Miracle-Gro by the spoonful in the watering can.  It has a very low ammonia content.  I'm a fan of Miracle-Gro...the regular formula is what I used exclusively on the garden as fertilizer last year.  This year the free 10-10-10 is working just fine, so that's just one less cost.

I have a lot of respect for organic farmers and organic gardening.  That's serious work, and you've gotta really know your stuff to be successful.  I really don't know my stuff, and it's not massively important to me to reach that level of greenness.  I feel good enough about having a garden.  I know I've gone a little earth-love hippie with the composting and collecting rainwater in a barrel.  Chemical use moves me a little back to the center.

Harvests

It's late June, and the garden is in full swing.  We were gone for 4 days on a trip, and it got ahead of us, even with a substantial harvest the day before we left.  Here's a zucchini that can double as a home defense weapon...

Tomatoes are coming in strong.  We're getting a half dozen a day of regular size varieties, and a dozen a day of the grape and cherry tomatoes.

Here's some of our other harvest pictures.  Here's today's harvest...4 days of growth.  My parents did pick some while we were gone.

Some other harvest shots from earlier picks...

Turnips were, and are, fantastic

This was the harvest before we went on the trip.

More from pre-trip picking

Angelia calls this section of the garden "The Jungle."  She won't do in there unless she's in long pants.  I admit that it's a scary place, but I've been going in barefoot and in short pants.  I've really got to feel my way through there to pick the veggies.  I planted stuff way too close together.  Another lesson learned for next year.

Turning Green into Green

Angelia & I have decided to sell produce from our garden: cucumbers, radish, lettuce, yellow squash, turnips, and from the herb garden: basil, cilantro, mint, & dill. There will be some that's already picked, and some that we (or you and your kids) can pick fresh. So, stop by if you're in the area SATURDAY FROM 8-1PM. No charge to see the amazing 9 foot mammoth sunflowers and 57 tomato plants.  We will have a sign out.  Send us a message if you need the address.

Week 14 & 15

We've been very busy in the garden.  Angelia got on a ladder and took this shot.  The garden is fully planted.  Turnips and spinach will be harvested in full soon, and then I'll probably replant those same crops in those same spots, and continue that process as the summer progresses.  I do need to put in some melons, once I can make some holes for them.

I never thought turnips would do so well, or be such a hit on the supper table.  Angelia and Jacob both like the turnips greens cooked my way.  My way is...saute onion in bacon grease, then add chopped up greens, let them cook down a little, and add vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper.  I've been using my hot pepper infused vinegar in the turnip greens.  I prefer the turnip bulbs mashed...You peel them, chunk them, and cook them until fork tender in sugar water, then drain and squeeze out the excess water.  I use a big clean handerchief, tie up the cooked turnip inside and then press down hard on it with a potatoe masher.  Then add butter, heavy cream (milk works too), salt, peppere, chives, and blend.  I actually prefer mashed turnips this way over mashed potatoes.

Here's Angelia standing next to her sunflowers.  These plants are over 8 feer tall.  The seed package said "Mammoth" Sunflowers, but this is a little ridiculous.  Towards the bottom, my hand won't go all the way around the stalk.

Here is the shot of the garden from the viewpoint I've been using.  The orange string is for the peas to climb.

Tomatoes on the left, hot peppers in the middle, yellow cucumbers in homemade "cages" on the right.  Metal cucumber cages are expensive.  I got some plastic fencing and 1 by 2 flashing and made something that will work.

Newest stuff here...butternut squash and crooknect pumpkins were planted using seeds taken from produce from last year.   Summer squash and cukes were from unused seed I had on hand.

This end of the garden is super productive...onions, broccoli, turnips,radishes, beans, lettuce, cabbage, and cucumbers.  There's maybe 10 or 12 cucumber plants in there and they are producing like crazy.

We have picked 3 ripe tomatoes so far.  In a week or two the tomato harvesting will start full-bore.  It's gonna be crazy.

We planted a row of poppies and daisies.  The poppies have started to bloom.  They were from a 25 cents packet of seeds at Dollar Tree. 

The harvest today: radishes, lettuce, basil, a tomato, yellow squash, mustard greens, cukes, turnips, baby carrots, and a handful of greeen beans.



Weeks 11, 12, & 13

Ok, I've been out of town the past 2 weeks, for a staff planning conference and then instructing at a training school in Mississippi.  However, Angelia watered and weeded while I was gone.  It's amazing how the garden transforms when you are gone for a week or two.

Week 13 garden

The sunflowers are pretty incredible.  They're almost 6 feet tall, and the stalks are nearly the diameter of my wrist.

In this picture you can see cabbage, cucumbers, leaf lettuce, young bean plants, young radishes, and turnips.  The turnips have done really well.  I didn't plant them last year, and they are definite keepers. 

Herb Garden Week 13

The herb garden is coming along nicely.  The cilantro especially has shot up like crazy.  I think it's bolting, attempting to produce seeds.  I pinched to tops off to stall that process.  I picked some basil, and it smells amazing. 

There's not much left in the greenhouse, but what is left is interesting.  Here's a day lily that I dug up at Beaverdam Park in February.  It was the size of my thumb, and now it's flowered.  Pretty cool.

Today was the first substantial harvest of the year.  I pulled a bunch of turnips, some lettuce, baby carrots, a radish, the first cucumber, cilantro, and basil.  I ate some lettuce for lunch, and cooked the turnip greens all afternoon for supper.  I boiled the turnip roots and mashed them up with butter, salt, pepper, and sour cream.  Angelia is in South Carolina this weekend, so poor Jacob was my guniea pig.  The greens and the mashed turnip passed his test, but the turnips were a little watery...next time I will put the cooked turnip in a cheese cloth and squeeze the excess moisture out before I blend it.

Angelia left steak in the fridge for me to grill.  I told Jacob that everything he ate came from the garden other than the meat.  He said that we should get a cow, and wondered if you needed a permit to have one.  Funny.