Don’t eat the apple in the Garden of Eatin’

Bad stuff’ll happen….weeds will take over so badly you can’t catch up and all you can hope for it to clear little areas around the still producing plants so they aren’t choked out. Tomatoes will grow so insanely big they’ll all fall over and you were dumb and planted them so close together you can’t untangle them (I’ll be canning tomatoes here soon though!). Cucumbers will be so thick and thorny that is a risk of death to pick anything. One squash plant will completely take over the onions.

Yeah, I’m keeping Earth Juice around :thumb But laying down better weed control next time! It’s really bad, I’m not kidding. Maybe I’ll take a picture if I think I can deal with the embarrassment :lol

Contests and give-aways

I’ve thought about doing a contest for months but can’t seem to come up with anything good. I thought about something with photos – maybe best garden photo involving kids? No, that would leave kidless out (or anyone not willing to put their kids photo on the net)…..Maybe have entrants send me their strangest gardening photos? That might work. Someone give me a better idea?

But then, what to offer as incentive? I thought about food – cookies, bread, jam? Would any of that survive shipping? A magazine subscription? A book? A gift certificate to Territorial Seed? Whatcha think?

And dude! I’ve got 29 readers! Thank you :love

Phat gardener lewts

Click on this link to check out my CafePress Shop. I’ve had it for some time, but recently added some gardener items and am working on adding lots more!!

Nevermind, CafePress decided to bill me for 2 years of a premium shop even though I downgraded it 2 years ago…it didn’t actually downgrade apparently and even though I made no money during that time, I have to close the shop to get my money back. I’ll be on the lookout for a smarter company.

What a bounty! Woohoo!

Wow. I haven’t even set foot in the garden in 3-4 days because of the heat then rain and I was thrilled by what I found. Our first red roma tomatoes, crooknecks and zucchini, lots of corn and more. Check it all out :thumb

And the crookneck squash siamese twin that wants to be a porn star:

Rain

So much for planning on weeding today. A big storm came in last night and will last all week. With the amount of rain we’re going to get, I think the weeds might just take over :lol

I did manage to get the zucchini shredded and frozen, and got a bunch of peaches and have started freezing them. I got some from the store and some from a local orchard and am doing half of each in fruit juice and the other half in very light sugar syrup. I thought about canning some, but just can’t get the ambition up. Freezing is incredibly easy!

General growy-ness

Just a general update on how things are going in the Garden of Eatin’ today.

The weeds are taking over. I need to get out there and attack with the weed whacker, it’s that bad. It’s not stopping things from growing, so that much is good! But it won’t happen in the next few days…yesterday we had 100F+ temps, today we’re due for 105F and tomorrow is supposed to be 100F, and Sunday 90F…temps should be back in the mid 70s on Monday, so I’ll plan on going lots of work in the garden then, with before after after pics.

The tomato stake experiement has literally been a giant FLOP. As soon as the tomatoes started getting big, the plants got so heavy and thick they’ve tipped over, breaking the stakes and I have lots of tomatoes on the ground at risk from bugs…trying to keep them UP but they just keep growing and falling more :help

The corn is nearly 7′ high with lots of ears. I think we might have some grilled steak and corn for dinner tonight.

The lemon cucumbers are finally growing, well….like taking over their corner of the garden. I definitely planted too many. And the little vines have built in protection to keep me from picking too early, their thorns leave me bleeding when I try.

The strawberries stopped producing fruit all together after giving us hardly anything and are producing runners like crazy. I tried stopped that to see if it would encourage fruit, but it didn’t.

I’ve gotten 6 gigantic zucchini now and there’s lots more growing. I’ll be shredding and freezing it this weekend. Those suckers grow fast!

The crookneck is finally starting to grow fruit, but only after the plant grew to “Little Shop of Horrors” porportions.

Out one pumpkin is about basketball sized and just starting to turn orange.

Potatoes will finish being harvested tonight, there’s 3 plants left and I want to make potato salad. I forgot to write down the ingredients I used last time, I’ll do that this weekend and post the recipe :D