The Garden in August

This has been a banner year for me in gardening, but that doesn't really mean much since I have only really been at it for two summers. In the past, I have tried in vain to grow indoors or on a deck, and those times never went well. I can't keep anything alive inside. Ask Mike, he'll let you know that the only plants that stay alive are the ones he cares for.



Some things aren't doing so well, like the herb garden I have in a large pot. The picture you see above is from when it was planted. Everything did really well for June and July. The plants were huge! Now they look like they’re ready to die. It’s so depressing I refuse to take a photo of it. I've been using it all summer for pesto, mojitos, and caprese salad and it looks like I might not be getting anymore out of this. I refuse to water my garden, but a small planter like this probably needs more frequent waterings since it can’t hold as much moisture. I’d say there’s a lesson learned here, but my guess is that I will probably not water it next year either. I’m stubborn and lazy, a terrible combination.

 

Those are our banana peppers! We have three ready to pick. It’s mild salsa time, everyone! The rest of our peppers, including the much desired sweet mini peppers, are progressing at a painfully slow rate. There are a couple of pathetic little guys, like that adorable jalapeno pepper below, and a few flowers as well, so not all hope is lost yet.





The basil in the garden bed is doing fantastic. We luckily still have plenty of that for more margherita pizza and pasta sauce. I <3 basil.





I think I mentioned that I packed the beets way too close together. They are maturing now and I have gathered 4-5 so far. All of them are radish sized. I've been saving them up to roast a bunch all together for salads and just to eat by themselves. I’m a sucker for roasted beets, especially when paired with some chevre.



The other thing that was packed to closely together was the carrots. Not ready yet.

 

Lots of eggplant now! Since learning of my husband’s hate of eggplant (after six years of eating lots of eggplant), I get to enjoy these bad boys all by myself. Our brussels sprouts plants are starting to develop the little buds that grow into brussels sprouts. We're both getting excited about this. Mike, who is turning into a picky eater before my very eyes, still loves brussels sprouts.

 

The corn seems to be doing okay. We have cobs formed in the stalks and a couple of them look ready to go. We haven’t harvested anything from them though.





The cucumber plants continue to produce lots of cucumbers. We are starting to get to the point where I should learn how to can them so they don't end up going back into the compost.



I just planted this butternut squash about six weeks ago, but it looks like it might work out. There are a couple of flowers forming already, so I’m a happy girl.



Potatoes. They look as if they are wilting and ready to harvest. I’m going to wait another week or so before pulling one out and seeing if they're ready. I don't want to pull them out too early since last year’s came out the size of gumballs.





The tomatoes are still fantastic. A handful of cherry tomatoes are ready for picking every day and the roma tomatoes are just starting to redden. I've decided to freeze tomato sauce when I get to the point of too many tomatoes to deal with. I'll let you know how that goes when it happens.

Some other things that did not get photographed:

Beans and peas. Seriously slowing down on production, and I didn't get much to begin with! I’m pretty disappointed by this.

Lettuce and spinach. Not doing great. Pretty lackluster year for these guys.



Berry bushes and vines. They are covered with a bunch of the stuff in the photo above. I haven't seen them in a while! I've been working on clearing this area out to finish the fence, so hopefully I will be able to tell how everything is doing soon.

Pumpkins. The pumpkin plant is also buried in this prairie. I was able to look at it the other day and it didn't look very good. I’m not sure if it is just getting crowded in by the grasses or if it hasn't gotten enough water or if the soil on that hill is crap or what. It’s a mystery. Mike has been most excited about this plant, so he will be one sad kid come Halloween. I’ll have to take him to a pumpkin patch :)

That's what our plants are up to this month! How are your plants/gardens doing so far this summer?

The Same Age

The husband and I are just about the same age. Seven weeks separates us in birthdays. Mine was last month and for a few weeks, I was a year old than him. Over the weekend, Mike turned 27 and now we are the same age again! 

We've been trying to eat healthier lately and Mike has been doing a great job of sticking to no junk food and very limited sweets. For his birthday though, I told him I’d make him breakfast. He could pick anything in my repertoire – French Toast, Waffles, Pancakes, Eggs and Toast, you name it – and he chose waffles. I whipped up a couple and put some chocolate chips in his (his favorite!). I also made a little bit of blackberry syrup. So so good. 

Mike made it look pretty and told me I needed to put it up on the blog.

Also, he got some cool presents from his parents. Mike will be doing the biking portion of the Hy-Vee Triathlon next month and was in need of a new computer for his bike. He also wanted to do work while he biked, so they bought him a workstation that clips to your bike handlebars. Pretty neat!

I’m a pretty terrible wife. I didn't get him anything. On Saturday, I took him out for dinner and a movie (RED 2) and told him to buy something for himself off of amazon (he has a list). I’m sure he will be able to find something to buy.

We also did some work on the garden this weekend (with Gizmo’s supervision, of course)! Slowly but surely, folks. This lil’ project sure is taking FOREVER to finish! Most of the work to be done is reinforcing the lattice and laying down mulch. It wouldn’t take very long, but we don’t seem to have a chance to work down there for long stretches of time. It is more like two hours here, an hour there… I am serious about being finished with it before school starts back up though!

Our Wild, Overgrown Mess of a Garden

Hope everyone had a great fourth of July weekend. We spent our time fawning over our little baby, Leela.



She’s very timid for an almost eighty pound bear. Gunshots, thunder and fireworks terrify her and we had to do a lot of cuddling and comforting to get her through the night. She is now afraid to go outside after dark. Sigh.

Today I wanted to show you all how the garden is doing.



It’s a wild, tangly mess that is doing very well! We are getting so many cucumbers that I'm surely going to need to figure out how to can pickles. Lately we've been enjoying them on salads and sandwiches and also as “cucumber salad.” I'm not sure where this came from – could have been from my mom’s head – but we ate it all the time as kids and I still enjoy it today.



We are starting to get raspberries! The harvest this first year is sure to be low, but here are the first small batch:



Four whole raspberries! Pretty dirty too – the bush is still pretty low to the ground.



If you couldn't tell by earlier pictures, our garden is an out of control mess. There are things I can't even get to on the hill because there are so many tall weeds! On terrible aspect of all these weeds are bugs. We have been lucky enough not to get mosquitoes, but I'm pretty sure the wild parts of our garden are infested with chiggers. I have eight bites on my body that itch constantly from gardening this past week. We need to get rid of the weeds pronto!



The corn seems to be doing well. As with most of the garden, the plants didn't get thinned very well, so there’s a lot of corn in a really small space. We'll just have to wait and see how it goes because the plants are too big to thin out now.



The beans are a tangly mess that beg for organization. But everything seems to be going well here. There are some peas starting to form and lots of flowers, all good signs.





Bed two is where one variety of eggplant lives. I can't remember which went where. Thriving and close to producing fruit!



The Brussels sprouts look pretty much the same, except bigger. Both Mike and I expected them to grow taller by this point, but we are trying to be patient.



The cucumbers have pretty much taken over this bed. I try to give them direction and there are some offshoots that vine down off of the garden bed. Pretty neat! Like I said, we are now harvesting cucumbers and it doesn't look like it will let up anytime soon.



The carrots and beets are getting bigger and more out of control. Very little thinning done means the yield will probably be low. The spinach and salad greens are needing harvesting. If I cut the salad greens, it should continue to grow for a while. The spinach yield is so low that I’ve just been giving most of it to the chickens, who love it as a treat.







The tomatoes and potatoes are fighting for space in the small bed. Both are huge. I plan on building something for the tomatoes soon. The pepper plants seem to be surviving with the other plants hogging up all the space and sunlight. There are some peppers on the plants, but for the most part, I haven't seen much from those guys yet.



If you look carefully, you may be able to spot catnip, basil. tomatoes, and potato plants in this picture! Having a successful garden has been so much fun this year. So far, the secret has been lots of rain (haven't watered my garden once!) and a good mix of organic potting soil and compost. I’m sure that it could be much bigger and better yielding if I used fertilizers, but I'm content with this after my lackluster garden last year.

To see how the garden looked one month ago, check out this post.

Summer To-Do List

We've been officially into summer for more than a week, but things at our little homestead are so behind that I'm just now getting around to figuring out what I want to accomplish this summer before going back to work. Too many things.



1. Finish the garden.

You know, like actually getting the fence done. Putting the rest of the mulch down. Weeding out the mess.

2. Clean up the basement.

The workout room is pretty much finished. And the bathroom is functional. But the main room is a disaster. Boxes and broken items, a stove and a refrigerator, a huge pile of recycling lie around waiting to be taken care of. This needs to be done before winter hits again (Hey, four months comes sooner than you think!).

3. Get the craft room organized.

It’s in the same state as the basement, minus the old appliances.

4. Finish those curtains!

Yeah, the fabric is still sitting on the cutting table waiting to be sewn up.

5. Paint the living room.

Gray.

6. Kitchen

The current plans are to refinish the countertops with concrete and paint the cabinets. This will be a semi-big project so this will probably be the focus of the second half of July.

That’s it. Only six items on the list, but most of the projects are pretty lengthy. This week’s focus is the garden. Then we will be heading on vacation, so by the time we come back, it will be time for the kitchen. If we are able to get that done before the end of July, that will leave only two weeks in August to complete the rest. Eek! Better get on it!

We have a gate!

It stopped raining for a whole day so we were able to install the gate that we built a while back.

Looking at this made me squeal with delight.

Nearing the completion of our garden project, we spent Saturday making the area pest proof. We installed the gate, put rocks along the bottom of the fence, and started putting the trim around the lattice.

Gizmo and Leela were around to help.

We created the gate some time ago using a piece of lattice cut to size (it’s something like 3.5 feet wide) and four 2x4’s on each side. The lattice is sandwiched between the eight boards. Then we bought a self-closing gate kit at Lowe’s. It was very easy to install. We first had to decide which way the gate would swing. We hopefully picked the way that is the most functional for anybody who would want to come down here!

Mike was able to do most of the installation himself, so I was able to snap some pictures. Just screw the hinges on, and put the latch on, and you’re done! We also bought a handle, but since the gate is self-closing, it’s really just for show. We haven’t put it on the gate yet.

As you can see, there is still a lot of lumber remaining in our garden! We did get a start on making the pile smaller by framing out the lattice on the fence.

This is going pretty quick, so hopefully it’ll be done soonish.

Mike filled in the gaps in the fence with some large rocks that we dug up while putting up the fence. I spent most of my time weeding and laying down mulch. More of that to come later. It’s really starting to look nice!

Once the mulch is down and the trim and header is put on the fence, we will be able to call this thing done!