First harvest.

Peas!

Small harvest, but a harvest. Tim and I picked these few little peas yesterday right before our thunderstorm. They are so sweet. I never liked peas, but man, they are delish right off the plant. So sweet and crunchy. I don't know if I'll get any more peas off these plants or if they are done. I know that if I don't get out there and weed that the weeds are going to do them in.

I also noticed that a couple of our potato plants have flower buds on them. I need to do some more reading on potatoes but I think when it flowers that is an indication that there are potatoes underground. I think I have to pile some more dirt around the bottoms. Again, it will require some reading. This is why this is an experiment I guess. I don't know what the heck to expect. It' fun learning along the way. Look at these plants. I think they all grew another 2 inches in the three days that we were in NY. Crazy.

Buds on potato plant.


Forest of potatoes.

For some reason almost all of my beans are done. I don't know if I transplanted them too early of if they didn't get enough water or animals enjoyed them. I have two wax bean plants left out of all the ones I put out there. I think it's too late in the season to grow any more. I don't know if I'll plant beans again next year. I probably will and try and do it a little differently and see if I get a better outcome.

Brian...you had a question about re-potting a tomato. It can be done. Two years ago we didnt' have access to a nice in ground garden area and we had a deck garden. I grew tomatoes in a big pot along with Tim's hot pepper heaven. All you have to do is get a pot that is bigger than the one it's currently in. Fill the pot with a good soil, add some compost or other organic fertilizer and then put the tomatoes in with a stake or a cage. It's easy getting the tomato plant into the pot. Just turn it upside down in it's current container and carefully squeeze the pot to loosen the soil and it will drop into your hands. If the roots are all balled up you carefully loosen the soil up and kind of tear up the roots a bit. Drop it into it's new home and put in a stake or cage at that point. And then water. We made the mistake of not staking/caging it when we planted. I had no idea the plant would get as big as it did and when it started producing tomatoes they kind of fell all over the place. It needs support. We had to try and slide this cage over a huge plant and I think we lost a couple of branches. Lesson learned. I actually think I like the idea of stakes even better. That's what we've been doing on all of the tomato plants this year. We have to keep tying them up as they grow but they seem to grow better when they are not trying to conform to a cage.


tomato plant grown on deck in 2006.

I have a lot to do in the house today because yesterday was a loss for anything. I will get out into the garden either later today or tomorrow. We are supposed to have perfect weather this week, if not a little chilly. Our highs this week supposed to be in the high 60's and low 70's. Nice weeding weather.

Have a great day!

Re-potted

I re-potted my shamrock yesterday. I'm now willing it to survive. I so want this plant to make it. It doesn't look very good right now but I'm going to give it some TLC and try.

I should be packing right now. I' m not. I've got packing down to a science now and I'm not too worried about throwing everything in the suitcase at the last minute. The biggest thing is to make sure I have all of Connor's pump supplies and insulin. If anything else is missed it can be picked up in the travels. We are heading out to Olean for the weekend for a family get together. It should be interesting. I've heard rumors that there will be over 100 people there. Too many people for my liking. I would prefer to be out playing in the dirt and taking care of my babies. Oh well. It will be nice to get away for the weekend and hopefully not think about jobs and crap like that. Tim is at the car place now getting the oil changed, the inspection done (it had expired and we didn't know it) and the traction control system hopefully fixed this time. When he gets home, we'll hit the road. One of these trips over to Olean I hope that we can scoot up to Buffalo and see it. I've never been and would like to see it. Probably not this weekend though. So, I will not have any posts over the weekend about our garden experiment. I trust that Nancy will keep a watchful eye over our plants.

Kids are fighting. Gotta jet. Have a great weekend!

Nothing major to report.

I missed a post yesterday because Tim was working from home and when he does that all schedules get messed up. It was cooler yesterday after we had some major thunderstorms roll through the night before. It's back in the 70's and sunny. We've been watering all the gardens with the water that was in the kid's pool. As of tonight, I'm draining the rest of it out because it's just gotten so disgusting. It's amazing how nasty the water got in just a couple of days. I'm hoping that in the morning it will be done draining and I can do a quick wash of it and put it away until probably July 4th weekend.

Today I went to Home Depot to get a teeny tiny screwdriver for Tim and I picked him up a soldering iron. He's wanted one for a while and now maybe we can attempt to fix Connor's Nintendo DS. We think we had a power surge while it was plugged in and charging and it blew a fuse. We are going to DIY fix it. While I was in Home Depot, I of course, had to run through the garden shop. I wanted to pick up a pot to put my shamrock into and then I saw this really neat looking plant and then I had to get the plant and a pot to put that into. I also picked up some more bird seed for our army of birds and a bad of organic soil so Tim could put more soil into his pepper pots. His peppers seem to be really taking off right now.

New plant...not sure what I'm going to name him yet. Any ideas?

I just came in from planting four rows of onions. I fear Tim put too much water on them but I'll check them tomorrow and see how they are doing. I also weeded around the cabbage and the potatoes. All is looking happy in our little gardens. Man, I hope we don't have to leave here. It will make me sad.

Quick comparison

Here is a picture of our one tomato patch on the day we planted it (May 17th):

Here it is today:


I would say they are growing! We tied them up again in preparation for some storms heading our way later this afternoon. We are under a severe thunderstorm watch and a tornado watch. The sun is shining still. We'll see.

What do you do when it's hot?

You go from this:



To this:






Mylie had all of her fur shaved off. She will be a very happy doggie this summer. I wonder if we should do that with Patchy...but I'd be afraid of what he looks like with no fur. If it starts to look like he can't handle the heat we will trim him back a bit. All I know is that when it's 90 out he does not want to do his 4 mile walks.

This morning when Tim and I were out surveying the gardens I found these on the rose bushes. I know the picture isn't very clear, but they are tiny little green inchworm things. They are eating the leaves of the rose bushes like I've never seen before. Entire branches of leaves have been chewed up. On the first picture, at the top of the bottom leaf you can see a light green little worm. (I should really play with photoshop some more and then I could add in little arrows to point to them.) In the second picture at the top you can see a curly little twig that used to be full of leaves and then you can see the holes in the rest of the leaves. I'm going to have to do some research today on how to organically eliminate those little buggers. I think for now I'm going to trim the bush back trying to get as many worms as possible and put it to the curb in our city pickup of yard waste.



It doesn't appear that they are munching on any of the other plants around in the area. I hope I can nip them in the bud before they take over the potatoes or radishes. The rest of the gardens are looking great. I think all of our tomato plants have doubled in size. They appear to like the heat wave we have going. My beans looked much better today too. It appears that I lost three of the green bean plants but I still have four left (with a couple seedlings in the basement waiting to go out) and I have 5 wax beans that are doing well. They are starting to get their next set of leaves. I'm happy about that. We have a lot of weeding to do. I am going to attempt to get some of that done this morning when my allergy pill kicks in. I woke up fine this morning and then in the last 30 minutes I have the worst allergy symptoms. I want to claw my eyes out they are so itchy. It makes me cranky. I've already apologized to the kiddies. I do want to get out and get some weeding done early though. It's supposed to be up to 92 again today but there are some fierce looking storms coming out way for this afternoon and then it's supposed to cool off again.

Oh, and look what I got last night!!

It's a shamrock. I noticed it at Barbara's house and asked her what kind of plant it was because I fell in love with the leaves. She told me it was a shamrock and that I could try and save it as she was slowly killing it.

Look at that leaf! I love it. I did a little bit of research on it and it looks like I'm going to have to get a wide pot to put it in because it likes to shoot out long runners and then the runners root themselves. I've pulled all of the dead leaves and runners off of it and watered and sprayed some worm poo on it and I hope I can get it to bush back up. It also mentioned that it likes to go on vacation (who doesn't) and it's supposed to go dormant for a couple of months and then be brought back. I'm assuming that she got it for St Patrick's Day in March so if it doesn't come right back with some TLC I will put it down into the basement and let it rest. It's just too cool though. I love it. Thanks Barbara!!

So, I should go get some indoor stuff done while I wait for my Zyrtec to start working and then I can head out and do some weeding. I hope everyone has a fantabulous day!!

Mondays.

I can't really complain about Mondays. I don't have to get up and go to work. I can sleep in with my wee ones, although I rarely do. I usually get up and get the coffee started and cruise through the newspaper before Tim takes it over. It's even nicer knowing that I don't have to do school with the kids. Plus, today I woke up and found this beautiful lily. The lilies have a ton of buds and this one is out on this bright cheery day.


It's another smoking hot day here today. It is supposed to be near 95 again. We are staying indoors today and keeping out of the heat. We had quite the thunderstorm last night again though. We got more rain out of it this time. I don't think we are supposed to get any storms tonight so we will have to go out and water tonight. A cold front (is there such a thing in June?) is supposed to roll through tomorrow. We'll see.

There is not much going on in the garden today. I did feed the birdies again today. Our little gluttons have gone through 25 pounds of food in the last week and a half.

I also need to thank Nancy for my new gardening book. It's an older version than the one listed here but it's fabulous. Thank you, thank you, thank you. =) It makes me really want to sit down with a paper and pencil and map out the whole yard and seriously look at planting some perennials and expand out more than just veggies. I suppose I should wait and see how the veggie garden works out before I get all over-ambitious and end up with more than I can handle. I should also wait and see where we end up living in the next year.

Hot, hot, hot.

One of our potato patches. I swear these grow by an inch a day.


A very happy looking zucchini plant. One of two. Tim is waiting for zucchini bread.


Our baby tomatoes continue to grow each day.


Oh my. How did farmers go out in the fields all day and tend to their crops? I was out for maybe 20 minutes working on the potatoes and I nearly passed out from the heat. Of course, I was doing it at 2 pm when it was probably the hottest of the day. Yeah, sometimes I'm not the brightest. I think my time gardening will be spent either in the early morning or at dusk.

We did end up having a very fast thunderstorm last night. It lasted maybe 5 minutes so I'm glad that we had watered. It was neat though because it got really dark and windy and it cooled things off a bit. It's been nothing but sun and the 90's again today. I don't remember it being this hot last year at this time. Last year at this time we were coming over to this house every day painting and fixing up for our move-in in July. We had windows open for most of the month because it wasn't that hot. I guess we are gearing up to have a very hot summer. But, I can enjoy it knowing that in about three months fall will be upon us and we'll be harvesting lots of yummies. For those of you who don't know me all that well, fall is my favorite!

I keep getting off the gardening news. Everything looks good except for my beans. They are drying up too fast. And something appears to be eating the leaves of the beans and peppers. The zucchini look fabulous as do all of the peppers. I don't see any spinach coming up but it may be to hot for that now. Oh, and Tim said he saw pea pods. I didn't check on my peas today and I will have to when it cools off a bit. I did trim a bunch of the dying roses off the bush. I will get the birds feeders tomorrow. Oh, and we saw the falcon again. Tim saw it in the front tree two weeks ago when I was planting my shade garden and we saw it this afternoon chasing down a bird. It is huge.

Ok, everyone is screaming about hungry they are so I suppose I will go start dinner. Have a good night.