Carrots

I lost track of my carrots and hadn't paid any attention to when I should expect them to be ready. When I got home from vacation, they seemed to have grown quite a bit, so I decided to start pulling them up. I planted two varieties and got two very different results.

Short 'N Sweet

Scarlet Nantes

If you look closely, you can see that the Scarlet Nantes are a little gnarly. Look at these crazy things:

I know there are a variety of things that can cause this, but I'm not going to worry too much about figuring out the culprit. The fact that I pulled over three pounds of carrots out of my garden this year, with the poor germination I had, is good enough for me.

Guess what this is:

It's carrot pie made with carrots and onions from the garden! Don't feel bad if you didn't get the answer. Since I was too lazy to make a crust, it can hardly be called a pie, and the picture is so horrible even I can hardly recognize it. While I was mixing it up, I realized I could've used dill from the volunteer in the garden, too, but if I had picked the dill, what would this little guy eat?

I'm home!

It didn't rain at all while I was on vacation, but D did a good job of taking care of the garden.

dying potatoes in front of peppers, carrots and marigolds

the tomato forest and falling onions

 

 The zinnias are beautiful.

 

 



And I'll be pulling onions soon.

It's good to be home.

While I'm gone

Zinnias will be blooming.

Potatoes will be dying back.

Onions will be falling over.

Tomatoes and peppers will be ripening.

And hopefully beans will be growing.

I'll have a lot of work to do when I get home.

The garden July 14th - looking north

The garden July 14th - looking south

Garlic

I harvested my garlic the other day. I wasn't sure if the time was right, but with vacation fast approaching, I figured it was now or never. 

 

I think that some of the plants were ready and some weren't, but it sure looked impressive when I got it all dug up.

I was very surprised at just how hard it was to get out of the ground. Those little roots hold on tight.

It's all hanging out in a warm, dry place for now, so we'll see how it turns out. Just to be safe, I'll probably plant more this fall.

No matter how many times I plant something and watch it grow, I'm still always amazed. I can't believe I started with this just a few months ago:

Today's birds: blue jay, sparrow, mourning dove, downy woodpecker, white breasted nuthatch, chickadee, cardinal, robin.

Beer and gardening

Two of my favorite things.

I'm leaving on Monday for vacation, and I'll be gone almost two weeks. I'm working to get the garden ready, and the beer helps. D is going to be on watering and harvesting detail. Looks like there will be tomatoes and peppers to pick while I'm gone.

My first zinnia has bloomed.

Orange - my favorite

I'm thinking I might have to try starting these guys inside next year so I can have flowers sooner.

Tomatoes!

I picked the first full sized tomato on Monday. Instead of taking a picture of it for the blog, I promptly threw it into a skillet with olive oil, garlic, basil and green olives and had that over pasta. This morning I realized that there are a lot more tomatoes on the way.

If things keep up like this, I'll have enough for canning and making tomato sauce.

Today's birds: blue jay, mourning dove, sparrow, grackle, downy woodpecker.

Around the garden

The hot daddy pepper plant is growing like crazy.

June 27th

July 4th

July 8th

I'm going to be picking peppers before you know it.

In other news, I have rosemary sprouts.

I planted the rosemary seeds several weeks ago, but it takes about four weeks to germinate. I've seen lots of little sprouts in this planter, but it wasn't until recently that I could be sure which ones were rosemary.

On a disconcerting note, something in my yard eats marigolds.

It's not like he bit off one and left. The carnage is everywhere.

These are in the big garden, but I've notice one of the marigolds in my front flower bed has been chewed on, too. To be fair, they aren't actually eaten, but some of them have been torn apart. Until I have more evidence, I'm blaming the squirrels. Those little hairy bastards chew on everything.

Ready to compost

This is what D and I did on the fourth of July:

 

 

We built a compost bin. Per the usual course of things, I told D my idea, and he improved on it. I would expect this thing to last for years except for one thing: I used untreated wood. I didn't want to use treated wood because of the chemicals. Also, it remains to be seen whether or not I can actually make compost on this kind of scale, so I didn't want to pay for cedar.

If you're wondering what Lucy is doing, she is eating the dirt that came out of the holes I dug for the posts. It's better than her digging her own holes, because she puts them where I don't want holes.

Funny story about the compost bin. I told D I wanted it four feet square. As we were building it, I kept saying, "that thing is huge", and D just said, "it's made to order". When we took it to the backyard, I realized where the confusion came from. I thought my garden fence was four feet tall, so when I said four feet square, I thought it would be as tall as the garden fence. Turns out, the garden fence is only three feet tall.

 composter close-up

I covered the bottom with some small twigs and branches from our front yard. Today, I pulled out the pea plants and threw them in. Other than that, I haven't put much effort into it yet. When I'm ready to really get started, I'll add some compost out of the little bin I use for kitchen waste to hopefully help things get going. Come fall, I'll be so glad I don't have to bag my garden waste.

My science experiment

This guy started sprouting in my cupboard, so I decided to see what would happen if I put it in water. It's been in the vase for several weeks, with roots slowly growing. Over the past few days, there has been an explosion of root growth, so I decided it was time to move the experiment outside.

It's now in the garden, next to the garlic. I have no illusions of harvesting sweet potatoes, but I figured since it had that much will to grow, I would give it a good spot to grow in.

The garden July 4th - before sweet potato

Today's birds: sparrow, blue jay, cardinal, grackle, mourning dove, white breasted nuthatch, chickadee, robin, downy woodpecker.

Today's harvest

The first tomatoes!

I've picked a grand total of 15 pea pods and have eaten most of them straight out of the garden.

This little guy is coming along nicely.

That's a Burpee Hot Daddy hybrid that's supposed to get up to 12 inches long and turn bright orange when it's ripe. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with the peppers, but I've had such bad luck with pepper plants the past few years, that I'm trying not to jinx myself by preparing for a good harvest.

Today's birds: sparrow, blue jay, grackle, downy woodpecker, cardinal, house finch, mourning dove, chickadee, robin.