Garden Update - Mid-May

We finally finished planting in the garden today. Whew!

Some of the earliest stuff we put in is getting big and beautiful, but so far, we haven't harvested anything yet with the exception of a few pounds of rhubarb. Our pea and onion plot is looking lovely, but the pea plants, for all their vigor, have yet to set a single flower. It seems to me like we should have had our first peas by now.

Clarke's Beltony Blue Shelling peas and Yellow Rock onions

The Watermelon radishes were also a disappointment. They started to bolt before they ever even began to form a bulb! I pulled a few and found that they were all scraggly and sad looking, so I pulled the lot. We have another succession planting of them already about 2 weeks in, so we'll let those grow and see if they come out right, and if not, I guess the bunnies will have a second feast. At least they get to enjoy them!

The carrots are starting to worry me too. No signs of life from that bed yet. :( I'll be hugely bummed if our carrots don't work out, since they are one of the veggies that we go through tons of year-round.

The potatoes finally seem to have gotten a foothold. The Purple Majesty are clearly the front-runners, with Rose Finn Apple and Yukon Gold well behind, in terms of foliage. Weird, since the Purple Majesty's are a mid-season variety, but whatever - progress is progress - I'll take it.

Seeded/Planted out today -

*Cucumbers - Addis Pickle

*Pumpkins/Squash - Small Sugar, Oregon Sweet Meat

*Corn - Dakota Black (popcorn)

*Beans - Robert's Royalty (bush)

*Sunflowers - Giant Greystripe, Honey Bear

*Peppers - Pimento

*Melons - Minnesota Midget Melons (cantaloupe)

*Ground Cherries - Aunt Molly's

*Flowers/Herbs/Botanicals - Hungarian Blue Breadseed poppies, Resina Calendula, Hyssop, Bachelor Buttons, Bouquet Dill

I had planned on putting in a bed of just cutting flowers, but food plants come first, so they didn't end up fitting in. I think we're going to try to find some room somewhere to shimmy in some borage though, since the bees go absolutely nuts for it. Besides that, I daresay we're about done planting stuff, with the exception of a few succession plantings (cilantro and radishes).

Done with the seeding! Now begins the watering/weeding/cursing-at-hungry-bugs phase of the garden. 

Mother's Day Weekend in the Garden - Sunday

After a good, late wake-up and a lovely Mother's Day breakfast prepared by my youngest kiddo, Bill and I managed to get back out to the garden today to chip away at the nightmare that is reed canary grass, and weed and put in another bed's worth of plants.

What we accomplished today -

*Weeded and re-seeded empty spots in the beet and radish plots
*Thinned out and cleaned up the rhubarb
*Planted out 18 Bodegold chamomile cells (started indoors back in March), one 4" Flora Plena chamomile, one 4" spearmint, and about a half a packet of Resina Calendula seeds.
*Sowed about 1/4 of a packet of Bear Necessities kale in the greens bed, amongst the volunteer Russian Red kale babies from last year.

Ok - writing that down makes it seem like I/we didn't get much done. I tell you though, trying to rid the raised beds of the canary grass roots and rhizomes is a battle without end. If the goats didn't enjoy eating that grass (and it didn't make such nice free hay), I'd hate the stuff altogether.

Regardless of how much I managed to get done -or not- in the garden today, it was a nice way to have spent my special day with some of my most favorite people and critters. And eventually, maybe, I'll get some tea and salad out of the bargain as well. :)

Penny, aka Princess Pickle-butt, sampling some of our pasture.

Mother's Day Weekend in the Garden - Saturday

We had a very productive day in the garden today, planting out a few starts that we got from Spring Creek Nursery, as well as some of our seed stash. Started today -

*Cabbage - Copenhagen Market, Mammoth Red Rock
*Lettuces - Red Leaf (romaine type), Buttercrunch (bibb type)
*Cilantro - Standby (the fist of several sowings)
*Basil - Thai, Genovese, Sweet
*Thyme - Lemon, standard
*Tomatoes - Sungold, Roma, Black Prince
*Peppers - Anaheim, Purple Jalapeno

If I'm not too achy tomorrow from today's exertions, I plan on planting out my German chamomile, hyssop, spearmint, calendula, breadseed poppies, borage and assorted cutting flowers. We have only just passed our average last frost date, but I'm feeling pretty under the gun about getting everything in and started ASAP.

I really need to get the corn, beans and squash in the ground as soon as can be managed as well, but I feel less guilty about putting them off by a few days in favor of crops that are either less heat tolerant (and more cold/cool/generally-crappy-weather friendly) and those that have a longer growing season (90 days and up). I suspect that we will have an Indian Summer this year, but if living and gardening in Western Washington for 40 years has taught me anything, it's that the weather and seasons defy logic and predictability the vast majority of the time.

There isn't much to do except wait and see, and so I will. :)

Puttin' it Up

My boo had the day off from work. The plan was for him to go salmon fishing in the Sound, just down the road a piece. Well, some bozo's boat had come untethered in the night and blown ashore at the boat launch, preventing Bill from putting in until the tide came back in, allowing the bozo in question to move his errant boat back where it belonged. And so, the day meant to be spent slaying fish was out. Instead, he came home and helped me do some serious catching up and putting up re: our garden landslide.

Socked away/made today -

Chelle -

Processed (washed, cut and froze)
*5 gallon bags of carrots
*6 gallon bags of summer squash

Picked and thrown in the dehydrator
*1/4 cup +/- bread poppy seeds
*1 cup German chamomile
*1 cup calendula blossoms

Bill -

Made
*1 pound goats milk mozzarella
*1 pizza dough
*1 beautiful Apple Pie (with our apples, of course)
*1 gallon apple cider (fermenting now)
*1 loaf white sandwich bread

Bill's homemade apple pie, bread and pizza (with his mozzarella)

Tomorrow I need to make a decision about what I want to do with our 10(ish) pounds of rapidly-ripening pears. Maybe jam, cider, pear sauce or ???

The pumpkins and tomatillos cometh SOON so I need to get ready for a wallop.

Today's Take - 8/28/13

I've been doing an atrocious job of keeping track of our garden haul these past two weeks. And of course, it'd be just when we're getting tons of stuff too. Figures!

Zucchini - 11 pounds
Yellow squash - 4 pounds, 4 ounces
Eggs - 4
Goats milk - 1/2 gallon
Chamomile - 1 ounce
Tomatoes - 1 pound
Sweet corn - 7 pounds (weighed after I shucked it)
Scarlet runner beans - handful
Peas - handful

Today's Take - 7/26/13

Blackberries - 2 pounds!
Zucchini - 1 pound, 3 ounces
Yellow squash - 14 ounces
Chamomile flowers - handful
Lavender - handful - I think I waited just a little too long to try and squeeze one last harvest in. :(
Eggs - 7
Goat milk - 1/2 gallon

I was so happy to see my German chamomile finally start blooming that I gave myself a case of over-analysis-paralysis about when/how to harvest it. Today I googled the heck out of harvesting chamomile and as it turns out, it's just like anything else - try to pick them on a warmish, dry day, just pop the flowers off and set them on screens (or paper towels) in an area that has good air circulation and that's that. And just like pretty much every other plant, the more you harvest, the more it stimulates it to produce more blooms. So we may just end up with fair amount after all.

The honeybees were thick on the chamomile and borage this afternoon. I was going to bring in a few borage blossoms as well as the chamomile, but thought better of it when I saw the bees working the heck out of the borage. I didn't want to take food from their hardworking little mouths.

We're hoping to have the farm stand open this Sunday, to coincide with the first day of blueberry season. We should have zukes, yellow squash, kale and eggs aplenty, and maybe some basil as well, though it has started to bolt. I'm thinking of have some homemade scones on offer as well. We'll see if tomorrow feels like a baking day or not. ;)

Today's Take - 7/15/13

Zucchinis - 4 ounces
Golden beets - 2 pounds, 10 ounces
Eggs - ?
Goat Milk - 1/2 gallon + 1 pint (The girls always seem to have a little bump up in production when they eat mostly pasture, rather than hay.)
Lavender - 7 ounces
Hollyhock blossoms, borage leaves (for soap & tea) - a few handfuls

Today's Take - 7/10/13

Once again the peas needed picking today, in spite of my plan to let them go until the weekend. I think I'll leave off picking them from now on though, unless they get redonkulously big, in which case I'll keep on pickin'.

I had my first ripe cherry tomato straight off the vine today - heaven. I have a few more sitting in the kitchen windowsill ripening, and quite a few more still on the vine, all in varying degrees of greenness.

The tomatillos are blooming and fruiting like mad, though none have reached harvest size just yet. I anticipate that we'll be able to make another good sized batch of verde salsa if the plants keep on kicking them out like they are now. Speaking of verde salsa, that reminds me that I need to add more apple cider to my vinegar jar, so that we have enough for canning salsa when the time comes. Note to self: Get your ACV going!

The only other thing that I picked today were a handful of borage flowers. Bill and I hope to make a batch or to of soap this weekend, so I set some borage in olive oil to infuse. I think we're going to make a batch of Homegrown Lavender soap, and maybe a second batch of something else if we have the time and gumption. I don't know just yet.

By the way - we saw one of Bill's honeybees (one of the Carniolans, I think?) in the garden today, checking out the beet greens for some weird reason. At least we know that they know that the garden is there, I guess.

So, the pickin's were slim again today, but everything is still steadily moving in the right direction. :)

Peas - 1 ounce +/-
Borage flowers - handful
Goat Milk - 1/2 gallon
Eggs - 7

Today's Take - 7/5/13

Lettuces - 12 ounces
Basil, thyme, lemon balm, chives - Just a few sprigs, enough to make an herby viniagrette
Beets - 8 ounces? I didn't weigh them, just thinned a few, then incorporated them into our dinner plan.
Eggs - 10!
Goat Milk - 1/2 gallon

Today's Take - 7/4/13

Happy, happy Independence day to you, 'Murica!

I spent much of my day of freedom bushwhacking Scotch Broom and blackberries in the chicken yard, followed by a few hours spent curled up in a ball of pain because I accidentally ingested the teensiest bit of coconut oil in the form of a dollop of canned whipped cream on top of my fancy coffee beverage. Coconut and palm oils are the darling of the Paleo/GF diet movement, and therefore are now showing up in EVERYTHING. Booo.....! :\

Anyhoo, before agony struck, we managed to haul in -

Russian Red Kale - 15 ounces
Eggs - 7
Goat Milk - 1/2 gallon
Basil - 2 ounces
Oregano - 3 ounces
Rose petals, Hollyhocks, snapdragons, borage & lavender (for soap, tea & potpourri)- Handful of each

 The greens bed that giveth and giveth :)

First Minnesota Midget Melon blossoms! :)

Today's Take - 7/2/13

Besides taking from the garden, I gave a little too, finally putting in the chamomile and calendula that I started indoors Way back When. 

(By the Way, if the text/font in my posts looks Whacky, the sudden death of my dubble-you and kyoo keys are to blame. I'm having to past letters in When auto-correct doesn't catch my drift. Oh, bother...)

Russian Red Kale - 1 pound, 12 ounces
Lavender - 4 ounces
Goat Milk - 1/2 Gallon
Eggs - 6