What Did You Do In The Garden?

[flowerbug]

weeded for a while this morning to try to get ahead of the purslane, carpetweed grasses and spurge. about an hour and a half of that and it was enough. picked a few drying bean pods and brought in a nice big green tomato that somehow got knocked off a plant - cut it up, put some garlic salt and butter on it and nuked it for a few minutes to have for brunch along with some leftover salmon patties from yesterday.

weighed in this morning, 173lbs, not too bad considering what i've been eating this week. it really does help to fill up on vegetables instead of sweets.

yesterday, to go along with the salmon patties, we pulled some of the squash out of the freezer that i put up last winter and had it. wow, still so good. since i double bag it there is no hint of freezer smell or freezer burn in it. oh and the salmon patties had a large amount of onions in them (we eat a lot of onions) from the garden that i lifted last week. one of them was grown from seed from last year and was four inches across. considering it was free seed and pretty much ignored until harvested other than a bit of weeding and watering i consider it a welcome bit of harvest.

 

[Zeedman]

The storms that wreaked havoc elsewhere in the state today thankfully went around us for the most part, just a little rain. Strong winds from yesterday's storms didn't damage the bean trellises... but flattened the whole stand of Painted Mountain corn. Some were on the ground, others fell into the adjacent row of Fortex beans (blocking access). So as soon as the rain let up, I went out in mud boots to straighten it up again, while the soil was still wet. I ran lines between the fence sides, looping them around each hill of corn to hold them upright. It went well, I only broke one stalk - and splinted it to the other stalks in the cluster. With fair weather expected for the next week, the stalks should continue to straighten & re-anchor themselves.

I doubt the sweet corn in the rural plot fared much better, but for better or worse, it's on its own.

 

[Phaedra]

Kept propagating strawberries from it's runners.

 

[baymule]

@Zeedman is your Painted Mountain corn close to being ready to pull? Mine got drenched as it was starting to mature and dry. I pulled and shucked it. Had to chop off tops of many of the cobs, had to toss whole cobs that were already sprouting in the shucks. But I saved the majority of it. I spread it on the table to dry and started shelling it. Then I spread the kernels to dry. You might want to pull some shucks back and check the corn.

 

[Zeedman]

@Zeedman is your Painted Mountain corn close to being ready to pull? Mine got drenched as it was starting to mature and dry. I pulled and shucked it. Had to chop off tops of many of the cobs, had to toss whole cobs that were already sprouting in the shucks. But I saved the majority of it. I spread it on the table to dry and started shelling it. Then I spread the kernels to dry. You might want to pull some shucks back and check the corn.

I'll check an ear or two @baymule , but I doubt they were mature enough to be damaged. If they look close to mature, I'll carefully bend the ears downward (like field corn) so they won't catch the rain. The ears look large & really full, I'm SO looking forward to the harvest. It may be a tough year here for some things (especially beans) but so far, it has been a great year for corn.

 

[ducks4you]

Found a new worker and hired him for an hour yesterday to saw down burdock in the south pasture, between the pines and the west fence. We had an excessive heat warning, so I sent him home, but he is coming back to saw again for about 3 hours Saturday, at 6AM, when it's a lot cooler. We had a t storm this afternoon and it's actually cool, again.
What a nice summer!

 

[Cosmo spring garden]

Harvested more painted mountain corn. Lots of bug damage but still ended up with pretty good harvest.

We planted a popcorn variety and the cobs are dry and ready to harvest. The kernels are very small tho so not sure if the popped product will be worth it.

Also planted carrots and beets. Harvested parsnips and salsify.

Kids and hubby have bee. Helping me shell pinto beans.

 

[Zeedman]

Well, DW & I spent a little time in the rural garden today. Still muddy, so all we did was harvest cukes, gherkins, okra, and more dry pods from the MN 13 cowpea - all of which are doing well. The sweet corn was still standing ("Miracle" is half the height of Painted Mountain), but all of the covers on the pepper cages were blown off, and some pepper plants broken. Many of the beans & peppers which survived the last round of flooding are wilting again, and may not survive. We've had 18"+ of rain in the last 6 weeks - our average annual rainfall is 34".

Bea hot pepper (left) and Grandma Roberts Purple Pole bean (right)

All of the tomatoes there are languishing too. Other vegetables have been more tolerant of the wet ground. The Garden Huckleberry, while less robust than I have seen it at Heritage Farm, is still healthy & producing a good set of berries... and apparently the birds have no interest in them. All of the soybeans but one (on the low end) are as healthy as normal. We picked some of the earliest edamame soybeans (Sakamotowase) today, and had them with dinner.

Garden Huckleberries (left), Tokio Vert soybean (right)

But if there was one good veggie to grow in a wet year, it was Water Spinach (Kang Kong). Hard to believe we just harvested it all last week.

Cool weather tomorrow, will likely be pickling & freezing all day.

 

[seedcorn]

What will you do with the garden huckleberries? Growing for first time after trying as a kid. Your right, birds, animals, chickens, people could not eat them-even after a frost.

 

[baymule]

Most of your garden is looking good. My Grandma Robert’s beans are looking sad too, but it’s the heat and grasshoppers. There ar lots of blooms, if the vines can hang on until cool weather, maybe they will bear again.