The garden is starting to really produce now. I have already harvested one tomato! An Early Girl from my grafted plant. That tomato is the only one that has ripened yet, but a lot of others are on their way. We are getting beans and squash and kale and chard – lots of it. I’ve started freezing beans and zucchini already. I have gotten some nice cucumbers already and have started some refrigerator pickles. Here are some pictures of the garden lately:
My parents planted hollyhocks several years ago, and they keep coming back every year. And each year before they bloom, I forget that they aren’t all the same color, until they bloom. They are beautiful. Here are some pictures:
We have been very busy. Last week I went camping. While I was away, it seems that my garden has exploded. (It tends to do that when you don’t see it every day). I hatched hatch# 3 of chicks a couple days ago, and we found our first duck egg today! Here are some pictures of the latest happenings:
Exciting times!
We had an extremely busy day (well, evening). First I worked all day at my job. Then I drove for an hour to meet with this lady to buy some hatching eggs! For our large hatch we are using some from our own chickens, but I saw an ad on craigslist for hatching eggs of Black Copper Marans and Olive/Easter Eggers. I went and met with her today and got a bunch of hatching eggs. She threw in some Bantam eggs. I’m not sure how that will go, since bantams are so small. Their eggs are very tiny. She said they should do fine mixed with regular sized chickens though. Here are the cool hatching eggs – you will see why I wanted them:
I got home after my egg-adventure, and the ducks, who are STILL in the house for tonight, needed a bath very badly. We are planning on getting them outside tomorrow – my hubby is off so he said he’d start getting their temporary outside housing set up, and I’ll help get them in there tomorrow when I get home. But with this bathtime, I finally got some pictures of the blow-drying ducks:
One other thing, actually kind of frustrating, that happened today – I ordered a bunch of trees and fruit plants this year (raspberries, strawberries, elderberries, etc) – I got a notice that they already shipped last week – We still have snow here, although it is supposed to warm up this week and stay warmer (fingers crossed). My plants came today. Which means I had to figure out what to do with them/get them set up. I’ve been saving milk jugs for most of the winter, so that I didn’t have to buy buckets or large pots. I plan on keeping most things in pots for a year or two, so we can keep them safe from deer and the lawn mower. Some things were dormant but most said to plant right away. Here are my new plants, all dressed up and nowhere really to go yet:
Oh, and also – an update on my test hatch. It turned out that of the last 4 eggs, 2 were duds (I candled last night finally, and they were completely empty). The other two had chicks that never came out. I opened them tonight and they were dead. I gave them till tonight to start pipping but there was nothing. So, of the actual fertile eggs, I ended up with about a 2/3 hatch success – 4 out of 6 eggs hatched. Those 4 chicks are doing very well. I cleaned and disinfected the incubator and set it to dry. I am not sure if I will start the “real” hatch tomorrow or Friday night. I will have to see how much work moving the ducks tomorrow night is.
In winter I would go bananas if I didn’t have green things growing, so I have a lot of houseplants. I have a few sunny windows in my house, most get partial sun. I have two windows in my bedroom that are south facing. Unfortunately, my cat Wizard likes to lay in one. He would eat any plants I have there, so I only get to use the other window, near my dresser, for plants. But when I start garden seeds inside in spring, he gets temporarily banished from his window. Here are some pictures of my indoor garden:
I have been growing Artichokes this year. I love artichokes – especially whole ones steamed/boiled with Italian dressing, where you pull off the leaves and dip them in butter. Yum. I tried to grow them several years ago living in L.A., but with my work schedule they didn’t get watered enough and they didn’t do so well. I’d read that they can grow as annuals in northern climates, so I planted 9 plants. Two have produced fruit! (Actually a thistle, not a fruit). They are pretty small, but I’m still very excited.
I noticed that one of my plants is now growing another thistle off the stem where one of the above fruits was cut off.
I think one reason that only two of my nine plants produced fruit was that they ended up getting overcrowded by my nearby tomatillo plants. The tomatillo plants are very large and leggy, almost growing like an indeterminant tomato plant. My tomatillos got fruit this year also. Last year I planted some very late in the year, and didn’t get any fruits. This year I got them in early and I have a decent sized crop – some of them are a little small, but they were ready to pick. Here they are in a pot boiling up for Salsa Verde:
I will definitely be growing more artichokes next year (and giving them more space), and more tomatillos.
We’ve been having some hot days lately, and last night we had a crazy thunderstorm. This morning my yard is very wet – I had plans for some yardwork jobs, but it’s just too wet. My garden is still going strong. I’ve been getting some nice corn cobs, despite the early visit from some raccoons.
I had a few tomatoes fall off the vines while I was picking suckers, and my son also decided to pick a few that were starting to ripen. I didn’t realize I grew an orange tomato, but I did grow a couple new varieties so I guess this one was orange.
I’m growing indeterminate varieties – I had been cutting off suckers and new flowers, but I got impatient. We don’t have the longest growing season, and I don’t want a repeat of last year – because of frost warnings we had to pull all the tomatoes in so they could ripen inside (none started to ripen on the vine last year). Luckily we’ve had a lot more heat this year. I went at my tomato plants last week and cut off the tops of the plants, extra leaves that were shading the fruit, and any extra branches that didn’t have fruit on them. That has seemed to help speed things along.
I also have a bunch of tomatillos – they are still small, but they are getting there. Last year I grew some but I added them really late, and they didn’t start forming fruit till mid September. These ones have been growing for about a month now.
I am attempting artichokes this year – I read that they can be grown as an annual. I haven’t seen any sign of any fruit, and really didn’t know what to expect. This morning I found this:
I looked on another plant and have at least one other one forming as well. Very exciting, even if they are very tiny.
I’m growing Evening Primrose this year, I didn’t realize they’d take so long to bloom. They started this week:
Here are some marigolds that I planted, they are doing extremely well, but they are really easy to grow:
My sunflowers are going strong. The bees and hummingbirds are enjoying them now. They should start going to seed soon, and then we’ll have the chickadees and other birds, and chipmunks and squirrels, eating them.
I’ve gotten a lot of vegetables so far this year. I’m still waiting on my tomatoes to ripen, but they are coming along. I’ve been picking suckers and new flowers left and right, and I can see the tomatoes are starting to get a pinkish tint to them. We’ve had 80-90 degree temps this week, and it’s expected to continue – I think that will help with the ripening.
In the winter we were buying a lot of kale, so I grew a bunch of it, and we haven’t used a whole lot yet. So this weekend I decided to pick as much as I could, and freeze it. I left the plants, with new baby leaves in the centers, so I will still have fresh kale until we have snow (it supposedly can survive frost, and gets better after a frost, so we’ll see how that goes). I ended up with a giant basket of kale:
I took the leaves off the stems, blanched them for 2 minutes, and then froze them up. I ended up with about 10 cups of frozen kale.
This year I decided to grow lemon balm. I picked some to dry for tea. It smells so good!
I have had tons of zucchini and yellow squash, and I have frozen a lot of it. I read online that you can get away with not blanching it first, so I am trying that this year. Last year I blanched it, and it worked fine but it was more labor intensive; Also, since it was wet when I put it in freezer bags, I ended up with blocks of frozen zucchini. I don’t know if the slice/freeze method will still produce this result; I’ll have to wait and see.
I also grew acorn squash for the first time this year. I had four plants; most produced only one fruit – I did have two forming on one plant, but when I went out this weekend I realized that one of the fruits was rotting on the vine. The other four seemed ready to pick. The plants still have flowers so it may produce more, I will have to wait and find out.
My corn is getting close to being ready. The silks are turning brown on the cobs. Last year I read that you wait 10 days after the silks turn brown – I checked a few cobs and I think by this next weekend they may be ready. I noticed today though that I must have raccoons or something attacking the corn. It must be raccoons – they are notorious for getting into corn in this area – I found a half eaten cob in my garden on the ground. I hope they give me time to get at least a few ears before they get them all. I’m not sure how to deter them – they climbed my fence. I’ll have to figure out some kind of raccoon deterrent – maybe putting a lip on the top of the fence so they can’t come over the top of the fence.
I love sunflowers. They are my favorite flower – I even chose them as my wedding flowers. I have about 7 or 8 sunflower plants that are growing very well. Last week, one of them bloomed.
The funny thing about this one, is that it is not very tall:
This morning I woke up to find this flower bloomed:
I planted a bunch of different kinds: some orange, some lemon yellow, and some giant mammoth sunflowers. The rest of the plants are on their way, they all have flower heads forming. It will be interesting to see what they all look like when they bloom.
This is my favorite time of year. I love when I can just go to the garden to pick dinner. My vegetable plants are really starting to produce for me. I had some chard and kale already this season, but the last few days my zucchini and yellow squash have started to have large enough squashes to pick. Yum. I have a lot of plants so I know I will eventually be overrun.
This year I have 5 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, and I think 4 acorn squash plants. Last year I had 3 or 4 zucchini plants, and by mid September I was very tired of zucchini. I froze what we had left and didn’t eat any for a couple months. They were very delicious in the middle of winter when I wasn’t sick of zucchini any more. This year I received a pressure canner for my birthday, so I’m planning on using that to can a lot of our harvest. I also plan on freezing some things.
I have gotten some pea pods, but not enough to do more than just eat the peas straight out of the pods. My son has been enjoying that. I worried my peas wouldn’t like the heat we’ve been having but they are doing well. Next year I will have to have more plants.
My beans have been producing well. I actually got enough from my first harvesting of them to use for a side dish for tonight’s dinner:
I started with some green bean plants, but they didn’t do very well at first. I wanted more plants, so I bought a packet of purple beans. They really took off, and I’ve been getting more purple beans so far than green. The green plants are growing taller than the purple, and I can tell they are going to produce well – there are a lot of flowers and baby beans growing along the vine where they’ve climbed up my string support system. They are even climbing one of my sunflowers. Last year I had a few bean plants, but I never got enough beans at one time to cook on their own; it was always just enough to cook up with something else. I’m hoping to can or freeze some this year – hopefully I have enough to do that.
I have a lot of green tomatoes forming. I’m growing three varieties of indeterminate tomatoes, and the plants are going crazy. I have been consistently pulling off suckers from the plants, and now because there are so many baby tomatoes, I’m pulling off extra flowers too, in an effort to let the forming tomatoes get bigger faster, and possibly ripen on the vine. I worry that they may take too long if I don’t do that – last year I had to let my tomatoes ripen in the house. Our growing season isn’t very long – we may get frost by mid September.
It’s an exciting time of year.
My tiny u.p. farm 