I has a broccoli

Yesterday i picked 4 smallish heads of broccoli. They were delicious. I didn't even cook them, we all ate them right after the heads were washed.

There are a few more heads forming out there, it will be another week before they are ready.  Not much beats fresh broccoli!  I'm shocked that i have not been woodchucked yet this year.  Simply amazed.

I got some free time yesterday and i took some random pictures.  My camera wasn't wanting to focus right so some are a bit blurry...

Kossack kholrabi is starting to bulb up

Lots of weeds, but lots of plants.   (potatoes, broccoli, cabbage)

Corn rows

Volunteer tomatillo beginning to flower

Sweet Chelsea tomato beginning to fruit

49r summer squash just starting to make squashes

Edelweiss grapes

Marechal Foch grapes, getting bigger every day

I think this is Frontenac

Elderberry flower buds getting bigger

Blueberry bed

Berries beginning to get ripe

From the other side

Apples are getting bigger faster than i would have guessed

jerusalem artichokes...  they'll get ready to flower soon

Houseplants on vacation

Potted fig doing nicely

I decided to do a little video walkthrough of the yard.  It was so nice out yesterday evening.

Weather.

Almost 95 degrees out there.  A strong line of thunderstorms are coming through Vermont right now.  I expect them to arrive here by 6pm.  Looks like they may carry heavy rain- i hope so, we really need rain.

Growing things

Marechal Foch a week ago

Marechal Foch today

Frontenac last week (just blooming)

Frontenac just setting frui

York elderberry last week

York elderberry today

Apples. Looking good, a little russetting but better than bugs

The leftmost Edelweiss, putting on some berries.

Morning Glory

Some petunias to match the house

Its growing!  Beans are newly up as well

Weeds!  And a few plants.

I can SEE the corn.....mostly.

I forgot how tall potatoes get. What was i thinking?

I even have some volunteer tomatillos in there

Broccoli, yay!

Cucumber trellis up.

So many weeds, so little time outside.  But so much is growing. I'll have to look back a bit to see how it compares to last year. It will take me a few years to get a feel for the garden events like first ripe tomato, first cucumber, first bloom of squash....

Today i saw Japanese beetles and cabbage butterflies.  I'll have to break out the BT soon.

I think it might be time to pull some new potatoes in about a week.  If i remember what side i put the red ones on!


It hit 90  degrees today, supposed to stay warm tonight.  Great growing weather!

Weather

THIS is the time of year when 6 foot snowdrifts sound soothing!

When the idea of putting on a swimsuit and going out to the back yard to make snow angels sounds like a fabulous idea.

I melt at 75 degrees.

88 with 100% humidity is almost unBEARable for me.  Thank God for air conditioning.

The garden is looking well.  Marechal Foch is clustering and the berries are growing more rapidly than i imagined they could.
I'll have to get pics.

But i'll do that when the sun comes up.  I'm having a sleepless night, but i have to try to sleep.

2 am and 65 degrees out, its the mugginess that does it. But 65 degrees means plants are growing.  I forget the actual calculations, but the numbers mean good things.

i just need to kill Colorado potato beetles and striped cucumber beetles tomorrow when i get pictures,  they are everywhere.

I started to put up the cucumber trellis, but didn't have time to finish. I had bought another 6' fence stake (the metal ones) thinking i needed one more for the grapes, then realizing i didn't need it ( i had also bought 4, 4' wood stakes without understanding how i was going to attach the netting to them) since i had no more full-sun space to plant that red seedless grape i bought last year (that i now have in a 5gallon pail)...  so i pulled one of the end stakes from the grapes so i could put that up for the cukes with the new stake (follow?)...  the metal stakes have hooks,  i can just hang the nylon netting on them.  I needed to pound them in with the mini sledge that we have, so i didn't get to it.  The posts are pressed into the ground as far as i could get them with bare feet....   so i'll pound them in later so i can hook on the netting.  The cukes have grown by leaps and bounds in the last few days.  They looked pretty sad until just about today when i really got a good look.

Last year was weedy,  this year is crazy. I just don't have the time.  I spend about 2 hours outside each day,  but that time is spent enjoying it with my little one. Not weeding.  But the weeds are seriously getting away from me this year.
My corn made it to just about knee-high (by the 4th of July), but some of the weeds are more enormouser...

My broccoli is starting to bud so that is going well, cabbages are looking good. Things are going well so far.  No woodchucks (PTL!) so far and that is a major reason!  This year so far, my biggest trials were direct seeding that was fruitless and those peapickin weeds.

Slow time.

For me this is the slow time.  Its too early for anything to be ripe, too late to plant early crops, too soon to plant fall crops. The only thing that needs doing is weed...weed....weed...  and i still can't keep up.  I could be weeding right now but i caught up with much of the housework so i could take a break from it much of this holiday weekend.  Hubby gets Monday off for Independence Day so its a 3 day weekend.  Anyway, so all my energy is mostly used up though it looks like little actually got done.

I drained the worm bin of juice today and i put it on the small tomato volunteer i replaced one of the Pruden's Purple tomatoes that up and died. One of the Banana Legs also croaked.

I'm totally redoing my garden plan for next year.  I won't have enough tomatoes at this point to can. 

Though the corn is almost knee high (by the fourth of July), i'm wondering if i'm being totally silly even growing it.  I don't have a grain mill...  i stick to mostly grain-free eating...  But then, i have seen people selling these types of corn strung on thread as beads in ceremonial Native American necklaces.  Maybe there is a reason to grow it. Hummm...lol
But next year that space is going to something we actually will eat lots of.  Be buy a lot of canned tomatoes at the store so canning tomatoes, be it stewed or sauced,  will be worth it since it definitely will be used.  I eat a lot of green beans, so canning them will be worth it as well. 
I'm going o be able to tell if my small plot is big enough to be worth growing potatoes in.  I'm from a major potato state, so they are not very expensive up here.  So it will depend on how much yield i get from most of one wide row and 6# of seed.

I guess what i am now is bored. 
Last year i had all this stuff i could think about. I was planting grapes, berries, studying pruning, researching comfrey, composting methods, pressure canners, dehydrators....  now i've done all that and am just waiting to use what i have learned and what i now own.

I have been crocheting some, but as i have mentioned before, a toddler makes free time hard.  Right now she is sitting on me watching Kipper ( a somewhat educational cartoon starring a very cute beagle) while i type this out.  A post normally takes a whole day to write up, 5 minutes at a time.  I take her outside for at least a couple hours each day and sometimes i get pictures of the plants while i am getting pictures of her.  And sometimes her naps are long enough for me to post all the plant pics.

Its just such a different year.  When she is older and more predictable i'll have more opportunity to utilize.  I hope she grows up in the garden.  I so wish we had this extra yardage when my oldest was little! The oldest one looks like me, but the youngest one acts like me.
Well, back o garden stuff.  We are having a dry spell. The garden plants are looking well.  The kohlrabi is beginning to bulb up.  I wish it would hurry.  I want that space for the remaining volunteer tomatoes that are kicking around in that plot.  I also want to eat the kohlrabi and see if i should plant it again.  I like kohlrabi, so unless this kind turns out too fibrous itt should be a go for next year-- only i'll get it planted early.

The purple sprouting broccoli seems to have been a waste of space because it got planted too late.  It went straight to flower immediately on me.  I left the flowers there because i think i read something somewhere that brassica flowers attract beneficial insects.  I guess i'll see if it does something for me then.

There's not really much else i can think of to make a note of right now, so i guess that's it for today.

Pictures June, 28, 2011

Finally decided to retake the pictures i lost in the computer fiasco.  Please excuse the weeds... between rain and my limited time its been hard to keep up again this year- even with my scuffle hoe.

 Remove the bug and it will look delicious!

 Potatoes--  i think i should take pics of the garden from this side more often.  Our patio might be littered with toddler toys but its a better backdrop than our neighbors' melted siding and bare clapboard! lol

 Tomato, cucumber and 49r summer squash.  I'm really disappointed by the cucumbers.  They are going very slowly. I've learned for next year to not direct sow anything! lol

 One tricky thing about raised beds is how quickly weeds grow up the slopes. 


49r summer squash....  Not sure if that silvery color along the veins is normal for this variety.  I had wanted to plant Golden Zebra, but 49r came as the substitute.

Tomatoes are starting to bloom!

Front end of the tomatoes

 Potatoes again

 Kossack kohlrabi and then cabbages.  There are some volunteer tomatoes in that row where the kohlrabi are. I'm planning on leaving them there so when i harvest the kohlrabi, i can have some extra tomatoes growing. I'm guessing they are from the yellow pear tomatoes i had last year.

 Onions. They always look so bare and forsaken.  The herbs are at the far end with the marigolds.  I have parsley, oregano, dill, basil, rosemary, cilantro and sage.

 Mostly full shot.  The empty spot near the clump of marigolds is where i planted the second round of green beans.

 Some houseplants vacationing outside. Mostly hoyas,  some citrus, cloves and a jade plant.   I need to bring my cardamom plant and bay laurel outside too.

My potted fig

My Nova elderberry might be thinking about setting a bloom. It would be a nice treat to see that in its first year. 

My unnamed elderberry from last year died to the ground, so its no closer to blooming right now than it was in fall of last year.


Stanley simply looks awesome.

Blueberries, starting to get blue

Comfrey, Bocking 14

It needed water, but the big leaves are almost the length of my arm from wrist to elbow.  This is the infertile type, propagation is by crowns i guess--- not sure if cuttings can be taken from this plant with its growth habit.  I'm hoping to be able to share these out because they are not cheap or easy to find.

So i got to take a little stroll around the house with no purpose but to enjoy it. I just let myself look at things for how they are right now, not how they will look once i can get this or that done- or how they will look if they survive the winter or how i have to prune in a year...  It was nice to be able to let go of some of my self-inflicted anxiety for once.
The air was fresh and warm, little breeze making the leaves float a little on the branches...  birds were chirping. The sun was getting ready to set.  It was really nice to just be in my little yard with all the things growing.

Broccoli

I picked a small head of broccoli today. IT WAS DELICIOUS!    I also planted another round of green beans and weeded. I took pictures but i fell victim to a malicious script which caused me to have to do a full system restore on my computer so i lost the images i had saved to desktop.
Other than that today was simply a day of weeding and peering at how things were going and things are looking good!

Raintree Plant Order

On Thursday of last week, i hinted to my hubby that another $100 in plants would pretty much complete my berry collection and finalize the yardscaping goal.  He said OK willingly and on payday he reminded me to go ahead.

So i submitted my order to Raintree on Friday.  They have unusual plants and a decent reputation.

SKU	Product	Item price	Quantity	Total
D743	Titan Seabuckthorn(fem)-Gal Pot)	$22.50	1	$22.50
C315	Prunus maritima 'Beach Plum' sdlg	$4.50	4	$18.00
H2024	Goji Berry Phoenix Tears-4 Inch Pot	$9.50	2	$19.00
E031	Goldbeere Elderberry-Gal Pot	$16.50	1	$16.50
E015	Caerulea Blue Elderberry	$14.50	1	$14.50
D746	Sea Buckthorn(male)	$19.95	1	$19.95

Subtotal:	$110.45
Shipping cost:	$26.95

Now i'm not sure if they are still shipping, Starks is not, but since i ordered Friday afternoon nobody will get my order until Monday and if there is a problem i will be contacted soon.
I did notice something about plant availability on their website but i didn't see a cutoff date- so i'm guessing that if i don't get some or all my plants this year i can get them next Spring. That will be fine by me as long as all of the varieties are available still.

I had planned to try growing Goji from seed,  but last year's attempt didn't pan out. The seeds sprouted readily enough, but growth was maddeningly slow.  I did find this article How to Grow Goji From Seed and i think the problem was the depth of the growing container- i guess Goji stop growing once their roots hit bottom. The bottom comes fast when the seedlings are growing in a styrofoam mushroom box that is only 3 inches deep.

I have seeds for Seabuckthorn--- but Seabuckthorns come in male and female. I'd have to grow twice as many seeds to be assured at least one male and then it would be 3 years before the plants could be sexed.  If i buy one male i could grow more seeds, knowing i have a fertilizing male already. Not wanting to wait too long, i got a female known for being particularly prolific as well.

My beach plums from Oikos died over winter. I think the buckets got too dry before freezes came. Raintree's beach plums are cheap enough to try out.  They are salt resistant and should do well next to the roadway where their salt resistance (winter road salt) will come in very handy.

I'm getting a good collection of Elderberries now that they are no longer restricted up here, Yay!  I'm hoping Currants will come off the list soon as well.  I have never eaten either...  
Anyway, two more types will give me a collection of 5,  three black, one golden and one powdery blue.

So i can't wait to learn if i can expect things this year or next.