Harvest Monday

September 1, 2014

Quick Harvest Monday update…

This week, we harvested:

Peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, our first butternut squash!

Raspberries, Strawberries

I meant to take a picture before I doled them out. We harvested this x5 🙂 Only a trickle but what a treat!

More beans

Our last zucchini 😦

and…drum roll please!

Our first watermelon!!!About a foot and a half long,  about 8 inches long Red, juicy, and sweet on the inside!

We were really nervous when cutting into this one. Our last one was not ripe yet But this one was great! We ate two (comparable sizes) this week ad have about 6 more waiting for us.Yay fresh fruit! Yay lower grocery bill 😉

Check out what others harvested this week at Daphne’s Dandelions 🙂

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Garden in July

July 9, 2014

There is SOOOOOO much going on in the garden these days!

(Garden at the beginning of June)(Garden at the beginning of July)

Hard to tell much from afar, except that there is a lot more green going on 🙂

I’ll start from closest and work my way back…

POTATO PATCH

The potato plants are starting to die back. The purple potatoes were planted later so they are still green. We are harvesting whenever we need them instead of all at once.

TOMATO PATCH

Tomatoes are getting bigger and bigger. I can’t wait until they start ripening! We have a ton of baby bell peppers — just waiting for them to grow and turn pretty yellows and reds! The watermelon plant has sprawled as of late.

I found a baby watermelon the other day!(look really closely — towards the top)

And we have baby yellow squash 🙂 No zucchini yet…

CORN PATCH

The pole beans continue to climb the corn stalks.Most of the squash plants I planted in the corn patch have succumbed to squash bugs.(another one bites the dust 😦 )

One has rebounded, however — butternut squash! 🙂

As for the corn, it has GROWN (my mom is 5’10”) and put out tassels…Corn is in our near(ish) future!Moving along to the original SWEET POTATO PATCH (there are 2.5 more now because of all the slips produced)…It is starting to fill out. The sections next to the beans are bare — the beans seem to be hogging all of the moisture. The other patches are doing GREAT! One is in a raised bed and the other is where the peas were ripped out. Alas, no pictures…

Next up, SUNFLOWERS! (taller than the corn!) The blueberries are doing well…still getting 8 quarts/day. While picking, however, we have seen some bugs trying to defoliate the bushes completely. We have found them on a handful of bushes. We just pluck the leaf off or cut the branch. They are yummy treats for the chickens 🙂 A couple of bushes were almost completely decimated but hopefully they’ll make a comeback.

Moving along to the OVERFLOW GARDEN:

The spaghetti squash is producing like gangbusters!(the one in the forefront is turning color but there are more in the back — they’re everywhere!)

My daughter’s marigolds are starting to bloom.I am collecting seeds from my lunar carrots…And spinach seeds for fall planting. That’s what’s going on in the garden at the beginning of July!

Here is a pic of the first chicks hatched on our homestead (not ordered). They are in the tunnel. One is a hen and one a rooster. The rooster (Whitey) crowed for the first time yesterday! They are inseparable.

We have just started letting the newest chick and mama hen free range (supervised) in the evenings. The mama seems to be a good mama – very protective of the chick, as you can see…

How is your garden coming along? Are you about ready for the harvesting flush that is about to happen?

I am linking up with Green Thumb Thursdays today. Check out what’s going on at others’ homesteads 🙂