Today was another bean day. The older kids and I picked, snapped and froze 9 qts of purple beans.
Philip and Nathan wanted to help in the garden so I had them start pulling yellow onions. They pulled 240 onions that I later bundled into bunches of 20 and hung in the garage to dry. I've been pulling and using onions as needed. Almost all the greens have fallen over now so today was the start of the onion harvest.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Need Potatoes for Dinner
Today I wanted to make potatoes and eggs for dinner but was out of potatoes. So I grabbed a shovel and went down to the garden to pull up another potato plant. There was 1# 12 ounces under that dead plant. I also grabbed an onion and green pepper to add to the eggs. I love eating food fresh from our garden. It makes all the hard work worth it!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Beans
Today was our first day harvesting beans. We picked snapped and froze 19 quarts of beans. We only have a partial row of yellow beans because we don't use these as often. The break down was 3 qts. Yellow, 3 qts. Purple, and 13 qts. Green.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Green Onions
Today I pulled all my green onions. They filled 2 5 gallon buckets. I'll use many of them fresh. UPDATE: I ended up freezing 3 quarts of these onions diced for use in soups this winter.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The first Potatoes
We needed potatoes for dinner tonight so we pulled two plants and ended up with 3# 8 oz of potatoes. Not bad. I think I'll let the plants on these potatoes finish dying then we'll harvest them all on a warm day in a couple weeks.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Beets and Peas
We've been enjoying lots of food from our garden so far this spring and summer. Lettuce, spinach, green onions, snow peas, sweet peas, and beets to name a few. We've already harvested 5 gallons of snow peas, 13 gallons of beets, 8 cups of sweet peas.
We still have a couple gallons of beets to harvest. Depending on the amount of rain we get hopefully they will be done in a week or shortly thereafter so we can replant that plot. We pulled up all the snow pea plants this week and will be preparing those beds for more rutabaga's and beets for winter feed for the animals. We also will be planting more beans, lettuce, and spinach soon.
Our back garden plot didn't get fully planted because of all the rocks. We did get some squash in and a nice section of sweet corn. We also put some potato boxes in the back garden which will allow us to add some nice topsoil once the potato boxes are broken down in the fall.
The tomatoes are flowering and forming nicely, I hope to eat our first cherry tomatoes this week. The green, purple and yellow beans are all flowering. The rutabaga's are about as big as softballs and will be harvested soon. Our strawberries did well and are sending out lots of new shoots. This week our big projects will be do replant the beds that have been harvested along with weeding and redirecting in the strawberry bed. I want to guide the little offshoots to stay close to the current rows. We also need to put about 4 inches of straw around the base of the potato plants before the potatoes start peeking through the surface.
We've not been getting enough rain so we will continue to try to water a couple sections of the garden each night. It takes me about 4 evenings of 8 hour waterings to get the equivalency of a 1/2 inch of rain on the plants. The plants seem to be doing well, however I was shocked to see how a nice nitrogen filled rain that we received last night perked up the plants more than all my well water has. Some of the plants seemed to double in size after last nights rain.
We still have a couple gallons of beets to harvest. Depending on the amount of rain we get hopefully they will be done in a week or shortly thereafter so we can replant that plot. We pulled up all the snow pea plants this week and will be preparing those beds for more rutabaga's and beets for winter feed for the animals. We also will be planting more beans, lettuce, and spinach soon.
Our back garden plot didn't get fully planted because of all the rocks. We did get some squash in and a nice section of sweet corn. We also put some potato boxes in the back garden which will allow us to add some nice topsoil once the potato boxes are broken down in the fall.
The tomatoes are flowering and forming nicely, I hope to eat our first cherry tomatoes this week. The green, purple and yellow beans are all flowering. The rutabaga's are about as big as softballs and will be harvested soon. Our strawberries did well and are sending out lots of new shoots. This week our big projects will be do replant the beds that have been harvested along with weeding and redirecting in the strawberry bed. I want to guide the little offshoots to stay close to the current rows. We also need to put about 4 inches of straw around the base of the potato plants before the potatoes start peeking through the surface.
We've not been getting enough rain so we will continue to try to water a couple sections of the garden each night. It takes me about 4 evenings of 8 hour waterings to get the equivalency of a 1/2 inch of rain on the plants. The plants seem to be doing well, however I was shocked to see how a nice nitrogen filled rain that we received last night perked up the plants more than all my well water has. Some of the plants seemed to double in size after last nights rain.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
What's Up in the Garden?
LOTS!! We've learned a lot these past couple weeks. I killed my first 15 broccoli plants putting them out too early, so I've started more. I also killed almost all my lettuce and spinach that I had started early inside by putting it out too early. A cold spell did them both in.
Even though I failed with these two plantings other's have started beautifully! We have a full bed each of turnips, rutabegas, and beets, 2 beds of shelling peas, 1 ½ of snow peas, ½ a bed of garlic, and ½ a bed of lettuce, spinach, and green onion mix that have sprouted!! Each bed is approximately 20' X 3'All these beginning crops look promising! It is so cool seeing neat little rows of plants springing up through the earth! The strawberry plants are also doing GREAT!! We were given another 120 plants that I transplanted, a five hour job, a couple weeks ago. Our strawberry patch is 80' X 5'.We already need to spend some time weeding out the crack grass in the snow pea and strawberry beds.
Our big pressure project right now is getting the potato beds ready. We will be planting blue potatoes, red through potatoes, red skinned potatoes, and storage potatoes. The potatoes are supposed to go in the back garden which has only about 1/8 ready for planting. I've been told they can go in the ground the 1st of May.
I need to get raspberry plants in some of the area that is ready and must get an 80' X 20' ish area ready to get the potatoes in the ground. Hopefully we'll be able to finish up that much by Saturday so we can plant early next week. The rest of the 84 X 84 plot will be finished over the next couple weeks Lord willing. It looks as if a section that is about 20 X 20 might not be usable due to some very LARGE boulders. This will cause some major planting modification in the back plot. I don't think it will effect too much though since I have decided not to do cherry bushes, huckle berries, and choke cherries.
The other crop I'd like to get in very soon is carrots. I'd like to do 2 beds early next week. I also need to harden up the rest of my storage onions and leeks so I can add them to the beds we've already started for them.
Hopefully by the end of next week I will also have the cabbage, cauliflower, and celery in their beds. It will depend on the weather. I will probably have to protect these if I get them out next week because I'm sure we'll still have some cold nights that they won't be able to handle. I have 100's of canning jars that will do the job nicely, so we'll be fine if we need to protect them.
About half of the tomatoes that I started back in March are already over a foot tall. The other half that were started in the soil packed inside toilet paper rolls are only about 4 inches tall. HUGE difference between dirt and the peat pellets!!! The pepper plants are all a few inches tall and are establishing some nice leaves. Last year I noticed that my pepper plants grew much slower than the tomatoes, I'm not sure why, but it must be normal because this year the same thing is happening. The tomato plants smell WONDERFUL!! I can imagine how yummy the tomatoes will taste by just smelling the plants.
For those that are wondering we did manage to make just over 6 gallons of Syrup in March and early April. It was a great syrup harvest for our first year!
Even though I failed with these two plantings other's have started beautifully! We have a full bed each of turnips, rutabegas, and beets, 2 beds of shelling peas, 1 ½ of snow peas, ½ a bed of garlic, and ½ a bed of lettuce, spinach, and green onion mix that have sprouted!! Each bed is approximately 20' X 3'All these beginning crops look promising! It is so cool seeing neat little rows of plants springing up through the earth! The strawberry plants are also doing GREAT!! We were given another 120 plants that I transplanted, a five hour job, a couple weeks ago. Our strawberry patch is 80' X 5'.We already need to spend some time weeding out the crack grass in the snow pea and strawberry beds.
Our big pressure project right now is getting the potato beds ready. We will be planting blue potatoes, red through potatoes, red skinned potatoes, and storage potatoes. The potatoes are supposed to go in the back garden which has only about 1/8 ready for planting. I've been told they can go in the ground the 1st of May.
I need to get raspberry plants in some of the area that is ready and must get an 80' X 20' ish area ready to get the potatoes in the ground. Hopefully we'll be able to finish up that much by Saturday so we can plant early next week. The rest of the 84 X 84 plot will be finished over the next couple weeks Lord willing. It looks as if a section that is about 20 X 20 might not be usable due to some very LARGE boulders. This will cause some major planting modification in the back plot. I don't think it will effect too much though since I have decided not to do cherry bushes, huckle berries, and choke cherries.
The other crop I'd like to get in very soon is carrots. I'd like to do 2 beds early next week. I also need to harden up the rest of my storage onions and leeks so I can add them to the beds we've already started for them.
Hopefully by the end of next week I will also have the cabbage, cauliflower, and celery in their beds. It will depend on the weather. I will probably have to protect these if I get them out next week because I'm sure we'll still have some cold nights that they won't be able to handle. I have 100's of canning jars that will do the job nicely, so we'll be fine if we need to protect them.
About half of the tomatoes that I started back in March are already over a foot tall. The other half that were started in the soil packed inside toilet paper rolls are only about 4 inches tall. HUGE difference between dirt and the peat pellets!!! The pepper plants are all a few inches tall and are establishing some nice leaves. Last year I noticed that my pepper plants grew much slower than the tomatoes, I'm not sure why, but it must be normal because this year the same thing is happening. The tomato plants smell WONDERFUL!! I can imagine how yummy the tomatoes will taste by just smelling the plants.
For those that are wondering we did manage to make just over 6 gallons of Syrup in March and early April. It was a great syrup harvest for our first year!
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