Summer Has Arrived!

Yes, we have actually had some hot weather the past two days.  Both afternoons gave us a thermometer reading of 80.1 degrees in the shade.  Can you believe it?  Glory be!  And has the garden been loving it!  As my daughter said today, "Your garden is finally growing and looks like a real garden."  No kidding, it made visible growth in the last two days.  Amazing.

Today (in the heat . . . but I shan't complain after our endlessly cool weather) we got all the wood that took the nose dive out of the big wood shed re-stacked and started on the very last tier.  Notice in the picture where Papa Pea placed a couple of old 2 x 4s on the ground to tilt this last tier back?  No way we want it to fall out again!

We also worked on getting some more wood split up.  Sure am glad we have our mechanical splitter to use.  We both had sweat dripping off us during our splitting session, and I can't imagine what swinging a splitting axe would have felt like today.

I got the potatoes in the garden hilled up for the second time.  Out of the three rows, I had one two foot space that has been bare . . . until today when two potato vines poked through.  Guess those eyes just needed the shot of hot weather to start growing.

I've been picking about a quart of strawberries every day.  I don't know how long it will last, but we sure are enjoying them.  So far, we've been eating them fresh, in smoothies and in the Strawberry Shortcake I made.  I'd really be happy to get several quarts in the freezer for smoothies after the season ends, but I don't know if that will happen or not.

We also went out into our little hay field (yepper, more sweating) and picked up what we call "green chop" that hubby cut yesterday.  He cuts it with the cycle mower and lets it dry for 24 hours.  Then we run the lawn mower over it (with the blade set as high up as it will go), and the grass/hay is vacuumed up into the bagger.  That then gets dumped into burlap bags that we hang up high in the storage shed.  During the winter, we feed out the "green chop" to the poultry.  They gobble it up like it's candy.  Must taste pretty good when they haven't seen anything but snow on the ground for months.

'Twas a good day, and now I'm tired.  I was going to go into my quilt room to make a little progress on my current project, but I don't even have the energy for that tonight.  I'm going to grab a book or magazine and hit the couch for an hour or two.  If I don't fall asleep first.

Ooops!

How many times do you have to handle wood before burning it?

Top of second tier is about to go, too.  Sigh.

There's A Pox On My Peppers

I mentioned a while back that some of my green pepper plants were looking very stressed . . . and one was just about dead.  Because I noticed what looked to be an invasion of ants in the corner of the raised bed nearest the worst looking plant, I wondered if the little buggers were doing damage to the green pepper plants in some way.

I liberally sprinkled the area where the ants seemed to be coming and going with both cayenne pepper and cinnamon which are supposed to be natural ant deterrents.  Papa Pea also dusted all the plants with a mixture of diatomaceous earth and Surround (kaolin) which are both natural bug inhibitors.  Now I'm noticing only a few ants, but the pepper plants continue to succumb.

Although some plants still look okay . . . 

. . . and have tiny pea-size peppers forming on the, most are not looking good at all.

They start out looking a little "off" . . . 

. . . and get worse . . .

. . . until it's all over. 

The only thing I can think of that might be causing the problem is that something bad is left in the soil of this particular raised bed.  Last year it held broccoli which was attacked by downy mildew.  My bad for not remembering this and letting the bed lie dormant (or planting a cover crop on it) this year.  The peppers don't show signs of downy mildew though as far as I can tell.  I know for sure that next season this bed will be a designated composting area in the hopes we can burn out anything that might still be in the soil.

The other thing I need to do is pull up one of the affected plants to see if I can notice anything unusual on the root system.

Let it be a challenge, eh?  Oooof.

* * * * * * * *

To end this post on a good note . . . 

My good ol' geriatric strawberry bed has been giving us luscious berries for a few days now.  Each year, I have to splurge and make one of these wicked good Strawberry Shortcakes.  There's a piece for any of you who can make it over tonight for dessert! 

The Last of 'Em

For the last couple of weeks, every time I go into our basement, I've been met with the wafting aroma of onions that have spent the past winter happily residing down there.  The definite onion aroma is coming from onions that now no longer want to be kept in the dark recesses of storage, but ones that think it's time to sprout their little hearts out.

They've kept very well in the 50 degree basement temperature, but now most of those that are left have reached the point where they are not keeping well. 

Although I planted the same amount of yellow onions and red onions in the garden last season as I always do, I had a bumper crop that grew to be bigger than usual size.  So since each bigger onion went farther than a smaller one would, I suppose I used fewer onions.

All this is to say, I had quite a few remaining onions to sort through today, tossing the soft sprouted ones in the compost bin and keeping the ones that still looked good.

Surprisingly, the red onions that are said to not keep as well as the yellow onions seem to have made it through all these long months of storage in better shape.  Curiously, too, it's the onions that were smaller in size (both yellow and red) that seem to have kept better than the larger ones.  I've still got about half a milk crate left after I did my sorting.

Last year's onions still looking good at this date?  Can't complain about that at all.

Staggering Through The Garden

Actually, it was just my usual walk through the garden tonight, but I may have been staggering a wee bit since I'm fairly well p-double-ooped.

Yesterday we hit the wood working really hard.  We put in a very full day of running the splitter and stacking the wood in the wood shed.  After dinner (can't even remember what I made) and a long shower, I was ready for bed shortly after nine.

Along with the wood work, I did manage to strip our bed, wash and dry the sheets and get them put back on.  I did this mainly because my better half had asked me to take the down comforter off the bed and replace it with a light-weight blanket.  Seems Old Hot Body (as I refer to him) has been getting way too warm at night and declared the down comforter had to go.

The result of this change in our bed clothes was that even though I was bone weary from my day of hard labor (anyone feel sorry for me?), I slept very poorly because I was C-O-L-D all night!  I had thoughts of going up into the attic and getting the comforter from where I had packed it away, grabbing a quilt and snuggling under both of them on the couch so I could sleep comfortably.  (There was no way I could convince myself to do that in the middle of the night, of course.)

So today I managed to stall getting out to the wood working area until almost 11 a.m., and we quit right around 4:30 p.m. because of yours truly threatening to collapse if we didn't.

But back to the topic of this post.  The garden.

This morning before the wood working began, I had Papa Pea help me remove the Wall O' Waters from the cherry tomato plants and the two eggplants.

Even though our weather is still too cool for successful tomato growing, you can see the poor plants were getting too tall and spindly to stay in the wall O' Water protection.

Same with the eggplants that need room to spread out and look bushy.

Something else:  For two days now, I've noticed those little lovely (NOT ), attractive (NOT) white butterflies flitting about the garden.  They are the white cabbage moths that lay their eggs (from which worms hatch) in brassicas.  Although I've experimenting planting my cabbage and broccoli late this year to hopefully miss that cycle of the dratted insect, I couldn't do that with the Brussels sprouts.  They need such a long growing period in order to mature that they are prime right now for the moths.

With Papa Pea's help, I covered them with Agribon hoping it will protect them while the moths are in their egg-laying cycle.  Keep your fingers crossed this works.

The last thing I have to report on is the development of our haskap berries.  You can tell in the picture above that the berries are not large.  That's my little finger under the clump for comparison.  Each of our three bushes had a hay of a lot more blossoms than berries that have developed.  I'm not sure as to what to attribute that.  BUT we have noticed several crows in the garden lately (hopping around the haskap bushes) and upon close examination found several berries under the bushes that have big holes in them that could be from the crows pulling the berries off the bushes and having a taste.  Why didn't they eat the whole berry?  I think I know.

We picked a couple of the ripe looking berries for the first time today and tasted them.  Ugh.  Mine was so SOUR I spit it out.  I mean really sour.  Not just a little sour but so sour you couldn't help but make a puckery, eeuuuw-type face.  Even though they're dark blue, are they not ripe?  I suppose we'll give them another taste test in a couple of days (weeks?) to see if they've changed for the better.  If the crows have left any, that is.

Now I'm off to get ready for bed again tonight.  You can be sure I'll be armed with an extra quilt for my side of the bed.

If I can forget about that awful taste of the haskap berries, I think I'll sleep better tonight. 

The Case of the Vanishing Week

Whoa!  What happened to this past week?  Besides seeming like the shortest week I've experienced in a long time, I had my days completely mixed up.  Tuesday felt like Saturday, and I almost convinced myself today was a Monday.  No wonder the week got away from me.

We've been trying to hit the wood working this week, but there are always those "things" that keep coming up that "must" be done, and they've kept us from putting in big chunks of time every day on the wood pile.  But it will get done.  Eventually.  Slow and steady wins the race, ya know.  (Seems like we've been more slow than steady though.)

Took a walk through the garden tonight after dinner.

The potatoes have been hilled up for the first time and are already poking out of the soil.  Lookin' pretty good.  I pulled the top layer of straw off my experimental raised bed of potatoes and found . . . ta-da!  Three (out of 21) potato vines poking through.  Something tells me I should stick to growing the taters in dirt.

Our newly planted asparagus has all "ferned out" and I've filled in the ditches.  Looks like every root planted sent up at least one asparagus shoot.

Isn't this lettuce crowded attractive?  It's Allstar Gourmet Lettuce Mix from Johnny's Selected Seeds.  (Straight out of the camera, no coloration added.)

Look what a surprise I found!  This is in the garden of a person who can't grow cauliflower!  Granted, the head is only about 3" across but you coulda knocked me over with a feather when I saw it.

And lo and behold, what do I see down in the Wall O' Water surrounding one of my eggplants?  A blossom!  I'm starting to really like these Wall O' Waters.

Hope all of you can celebrate the 4th of July holiday tomorrow in the way that makes you happiest.  Being the introverts we are, I think we'll spend it away from the maddening crowds.