Not much to say…very busy with non gardening stuff!

The garden is still doing great, I have about 6 or 7 zucchini , 2 summer squash, a bazillion tomato flowers but still no fruit (what’s up with that?), the corn is waist high, the remaining taters are huge, one pea vine is at least 7-8 feet tall, I have twice as much parsley as before I dried the last batch (that was a pain in the ass to do, will be finding a dehydrator as soon as I have the funds – this being poor shit sucks)… lots of growth…I wish the tomatoes would FRUIT so I could do something with them before we move dammit.

I thought it might be a good idea to check out the taters that were getting flooded over and over. The bottom 4 plants, the ones at the end of the line so to speak that keep getting the most water, got pulled up last night and turned into dinner. The 3 russets and 1 of the red plants, completely harvested, gave enough potatoes for 5 of us to eat (my 4 year old wasn’t interested) as a main dish. The peas are going nuts and today many are being frozen and I will indeed have zucchini coming out my ears very soon, like so many new gardeners!

The next few months will be hectic, as I am going to start getting rid of mass quantities of our crap that I don’t want to pack and unpack again, plus work and the garden and everything, but I’ll shoot for a post every 3-4 days with updates and pictures.

Here’s some for today:

Everyone was interested to see what broccoli looked like flowering, so we let one plant do so.  Very pretty:

Our tater harvest:

Peas, plus a couple carrots that needed to be pulled to thin out the row and an onion just ’cause:

First zucchini:

Really. When I saw the thermometer in my van and it said 106F, I died. Thankfully the a/c brought me back. Well, maybe not so much, it’s still 80 degrees inside my house at 11pm and I’m miserable. I’m sure I sound melodramatic, but I tend to get awful migraines with the heat (got one yesterday) and it just makes me feel so horrible. Blech. I’m really not thrilled about this climate change stuff!

The garden is doing marvelous (I felt compelled to use that word, I don’t know why)…I finally have a teeny tiny oh-so-cute little green bean that I will get a picture of tomorrow. I dug up a little russet tater too, so see how they were doing, and it looks excellent. I will be cutting and drying parsley tomorrow, it’s taking over! I wish the basil would do so well. And the oregano and thyme…and chives…I’m getting the distinct impression my herbs don’t like this soil, at all. Time for a container herb garden?

The peas are producing like crazy. So far, no one else likes them much so they are ALL MINE! HA! Their loss! I found I much prefer the sugar snap to the Oregon snap, better flavor and crunch, but the sugar is tasty too. Lots of strawberries, and the kids and Chris report they are awesome. Tiny little things even fully ripe, but very juicy and tasty. The pumpkins, zucchini and crookneck squash are growing very well, getting big and leafy, but no blooms. I’m guessing in the next 2 weeks I’ll see some.

See you soon!

I haven’t had a lot of time the past week with family coming, but they are gone now and as soon as I catch up on work, I’ll have more blog time. Even the garden was getting neglected, I wasn’t watering enough, but I made up for it and it’s happy again.

Peas in the sunlight, I saw these and had to snap a couple pictures (too bad my camera’s focus is going to shit and it didn’t focus on the peas themselves, grr):

In other news, the potatoes are getting very big, I need to get some more dirt to cover them with. I cannot wait to eat freshly harvested and roasted taters!

I couldn’t wait to get out and get pictures…I’m like a kid opening presents with this garden :lol

Here’s a pea pod:

One of the ripening strawberries:

And the tomatoes with their new supports (the smaller plants are the early girls that I started from seed much later then the beefsteak and roma)…I wasn’t able to get a decent shot of the flowers, my camera has been having issues focusing:

The biggest corn:

And in other news, I went to Fordyce farms and got a 1/2 flat of strawberries for way more then they are worth and made jam:

I still have enough to do another batch of 4 pints, which I’ll get done today before they go bad:

(sometime…around visiting my dad and working and getting the house cleaned for my brother and his family that is coming Monday :dizzy )…Not gonna be a relaxing weekend!

I’m so excited I can’t stand it :lol

I bought plant stakes at the Grocery Outlet yesterday and got plant tape at Lowes today (last roll in the whole store) and went out and took out the tomato cages I had (they were given to me, so no loss) and tied up the tomatoes to the stakes… everything I’ve read about the cages say they are just bad business for growing good plants. Pictures tomorrow – they’re starting to flower! I do have to take back what I said about the tomatoes loving being flooded, the 4 of them that got the most water aren’t so thrilled. I’m letting the area dry out well (not too well) so the roots can recover from being drowned.

Then I tied up the sagging peas… had I done the trellis vertically in the first place, the peas would have a good hold on the twine, but they are heavy now and have a hard time holding themselves up. The tape helped immensely – they’re much taller! And – I have pea pods! At least a dozen, both sugar snap and oregon snap, with a couple ready to pick so I did. I haven’t had snap peas in many years and I might be biased, but they were really freaking tasty. I’ll get pictures of the smaller ones I left on the vine tomorrow.

There are many more strawberries with a couple turning red, which of course I’ll get pictures off, and I dug into the potatoes and found a teeny little russet and a teeny little red potato…I covered them back up to keep growing and can’t wait til I can take a picture of their harvest!

The broccoli is growing quickly, as it the lettuce and the parsley – I’m going to have to cut some soon and dry it. I bought more basil seeds, 4 types and will try them again. The corn is crazy…we drove by some corn fields yesterday on the way to visit my dad and mine are thicker and much livlier

I want to be able to buy a house with land so I can farm so bad!!

Doesn’t this little guy seem to be saying something? Like, “thanks for putting up a PROPER TRELLIS, you SLACKER“?

Yeah I thought so.

My camera settings were odd in Super Macro mode for proper contrast and brightness, but the kids were literally climbing on my back as I kneeled to shoot, so, ya know.

Photoshop fixed some of it.

Went to Lowes today and got a couple 10′ lengths of board and redid the peas. They are much happier (and taller!) now. It was delicate work removing the old twine (which I reused as much of as I could) and keeping the vines from breaking or bending too far.