Thursday, July 14, 2011

Just...stuff...

We got pouting rain yesterday evening.  Probably about an inch. We didn't get more tthan one rumble of thunder but the rain was coming down like buckets.  I think we also got some sprinkles overnight,  bu the rain did the garden good.
I'm looking to the weeds as some sort of living mulch at this point!

I may take some small bowl and a paint brush with roundup and see if i can paint away the weeds.  I also need to dust the grapes for Japanese beetles.  They are eating my leaves like mad.  Even the prune plum is getting defoliated.  I had planned to spray the apple tree last night but i took the kids on a visit to my parents and we used the pool and stayed until dark, so no spraying got done.  Hopefully tonight...

I'm going to start Kefiring again. I just put in an order of kefir grains to Marilyn Kefirlady. I killed mine last fall through neglect.  They were making more kefir than i could keep up with, i had a backlog and i was reluctant to store more and more only to dump it out.  Also my mom has been buying kefir from the store, so i'm going to get her started on the real stuff.   The store bought kefir only has about half the strains of beneficial bacteria as homemade. Plus you can chose what milk you want to use- whole or skim and there's no sugar or unnecessary flavorings added.
Photo borrowed from: http://joannasteven.blogspot.com/2010/11/fermentation-series-4-milk-kefir.html




UPDATE:  Grapes dusted, apple tree sprayed.

I picked a load of broccoli today and two 49r summer squash.  Broccoli for dinner it is!

Squashes are about 8 inches, not sure why they look so different, they are from the same plant.


Green beans,  second sowing. The first sowing is about to flower


Sweet Chelsea tomatoes


Cucumbers and weedy grass *sigh*


Squashes before picking


Broccoli and cabbages


Japanese beetles are doing in my grape leaves, this is Marechal Foch


Elderberry flower buds.


 This is what the Japanese beetles are doing to my Stanley prune plum.  I have dusted both this tree and all the grapes.


Autumn Olive is doing well.


Petunias doing well- and a small bee in flight.


Purple smoke bush starting to fuzz.


Mostly full garden shot.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Weather

Another hot day starting up.  Its only 9am and its 77 degrees out there.  We have a good chance of getting some rain along with thunder.  Its pretty cloudy out so its possible i won't heat up much more than around 85.
So here i am, looking forward to rain, and a possible light show.  I do like it when the temps are high like this, especially overnight-- a least for the garden. We are lucky to have air conditioning units in every room but the bathrooms, or else i'd hate this heat.
Yesterday it got to 100.  Some areas reached 102 close by.  I may have said this before, but we don't usually see temps like that until August and then it happens only every three years or so.
I don't think i took many notes on temperatures last year, it might not be a bad idea to start doing that this year.

Well,  while i have been writing this, we have gone up another half a degree.

Update-  10:02 am and we are now at 81

2:00pm  91 degrees. Good thing its been cloudy or i bet we'd be well over 95 or even into the 100's today.  The forecast broadcast says it will be gooling of quite nicely in the next few days.


Its now after 3pm and still  in the low 90's.  I got the chance to sneak out and i found the cucumbers and broccoli seemed to be wilting in the heat.  So i had to water.  I think a half hour will do it.  We've only watered a few times this year so far. It won't be terrible to do it today even though its not the best time of day to do it.

Even the Jerusalem artichokes were looking peckish.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Weather

Almost 82*F right now and its only 10:30 am.

The weeds have really taken over but there is not a whole lot i can do about it. I can't just go outside and start messing around with things.  The temps are another factor. Humidity is rising too...

I'm going to fire up the air conditioners in a few minutes.

Other parts of the country are seeing triple digit temps,  i don't know how they manage!


Edit to add-

88.5*F at noon

Friday, July 8, 2011

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.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

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.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

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.

Friday, July 1, 2011

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.