Garden Diary

One of the purposes of having our blog this time of the year is to help us chronicle our garden.  It has seemed that the past two years, in between gardening seasons, we forget what we had planted, how much, when it started producing, how much we processed and the recipes we used.  

And so, today I am chronicling our garden from the past week.

6/17 - picked 1/2 gallon snow peas, cooked for dinner in a skillet with orange zest & 2 tbsp fresh orange juice and 2 tbsp fresh ginger.

6/22 - picket 2 head of cabbage.  Tried a new recipe from Better Homes, sweet and sour cabbage, I highly recommend it.  

6/23 - picked 1 head of broccoli, 9 jalapeno peppers and transparent apples.  The jalapeno peppers we remove seed stuff with a mix of cream cheese, bacon, garlic, onions and cheddar cheese, then grill until cooked through.  YUM!  The transparent apples are best used for applesauce, "fried" apples, or apple pie filling. But first the have to rest for several days to completely ripen.

6/24 - picked 1 head broccoli and 1 head of cabbage to give away.

6/25 - picked 1 gallon snow peas and 11 heads of broccoli (see picture above).  Blanched and vacuum sealed to freeze.  Processed 5 bags (about 2 cups each) snow peas and 12 bags of broccoli.

The garden, as you can tell, is coming into harvest.  Our second planting of snow peas will be ready by this weekend.  What is not included in above is our Raspberry picking.  Roughly every other night we are picking 1-2 quarts of raspberries.  Some are small, but most are the about the size of my thumb and sweet!  With any berries that we pick, we wash, lay them out on cookie sheets in the freezer then place them in freezer zip-lock bags (quart size).  By freezing them first on the cookie sheet it prevents the berries from squishing each other during the freezing and having an overabundance of frozen juice in the bottom of the bag.

Happy Gardening!

Garden Diary

Enjoy some more pictures from our garden.  Yesterday (6/22) we were able to pick some cabbage, more raspberries, but then we strung green beans (probably my least favorite job in the garden).  I planted more flowers from seed, hoping that they will do better than the last flowers I planted.  I love having fresh cut flowers this time of the year.  

On the docket for today, Travis mowing the lawn, picking apples, picking broccoli, making a visit to the farmers market, sewing more lettuce seeds, spraying weed killer, smoking a pork shoulder for dinner and then actual work like laundry.

Enjoy the pictures! 

Garden Diary

One of the best parts about this time of the year is what little time we spend inside.  No matter what we're doing, we just enjoy being outdoors.  I realized recently that Travis and I spend more "quality" time together late Spring through Summer than we do any other time of the year.  We work as a team, gardening and processing, trying to produce some of what we consume. 

Since the last post on June 3rd the garden has hit several growth spurts.  Plus we planted another 4 rows of corn, roughly 3 weeks later so that we have corn late into the summer!  We've picked our first snap peas with broccoli and cabbage not far behind.  Tomatoes are coming along nicely, some of the most beautiful plants we've ever had, thanks to Travis' experiments.  Beets and Carrots won't be ready for awhile, but the beet greens taste awfully good!

In the past two weeks Travis has been working to get the automated irrigation system up and running, we made the finishing touches this week by laying the drip tape.  Each row of our garden can be watered separately if necessary, but more impressively, just the plants are being watered, not the weeds or in between rows.  Getting the irrigation finished was just in time for the first day of summer along with hot dry conditions.  Our peas have already thanked us by looking much perkier than before.  All the squash and zucchini are growing well and we now have a leaning cow panel for our cucumbers to climb.

In the up coming weeks/weekends to-do list is stringing the green beans, they are roughly 3" out of the ground and need stringing up so they have something to climb and keep them organized.  Weeding is an ongoing process as well as picking raspberries.  We are up to about 2 gallons of raspberries picked, easily, and that's just the start of it.  It is time to sew new lettuce seeds and hope that the slug bait will keep away those slimy buggers. 

There is always something going on at the Birdsell residence and although some days are long, gardening keeps us happy and healthy.

Our "Semi" Sustainable Oasis

This time of year there is one thing that Travis and I spend the most of our time on and that is gardening.  I guess you could say we strive to create a "semi" sustainable oasis.  Considering how little time we've actually been here and how early in the growing season it is, we are well on our way.  Typically, planting of any kind does not happen until after May 16th, our last frost free date, but this year has been different because of the mild winter we've had.

So today I will be chronicling the work we've done in are garden up to yesterday (6/2/12) and hope to try and keep all who read this blog up to date on our sustainable living adventures.

3/15 - Sprayed garden spot with Round up

3/21 - Plowed garden

4/12 - Tilled the garden for the 1st time.  After the grass has died, the ground has been plowed and rocks     have been removed the land needs time to "breath" before tilling the soil.

4/18 - Spread 18-46-0 fertilizer and gypsum on the garden

4/29 - Tilled the garden for the 2nd time, picked up rocks.

           Planted:  Row 2 - Red Candy Apple Onions

                         Row 3 - Farao Cabbage, Super Red Cabbage, Amadaeus Broccoli 

                         Row 4 - Farao Cabbage, Sugar Ann Snap Pea (56 days to mature) 225 seeds in 1 row

5/1 - Sprayed Fennel (in planters in the front of the house) for Aphids

                         Row 5 - Sugar Snap Peas (70 days to mature)

                         Row 1 - Walla Walla Garlic (1 bulb = 10 cloves)

                         Row 6 - Forono Beets (60 days), Golden Detroit Beets (53 Days), Hybrid Harrier Beets                             (50 Days), Tender Sweet Carrots (75 Days), Atomic Red Carrots (70 Days)

5/6 -                 Row 1 - Larksper, Zinnia "Zahara Starlight Rose", Zinnia "Super Giant Blend", Batchelor                                      Buttons "Fireworks Blend"

                        Row 7 - Golden California Wonder Yellow Pepper (4), Green Bell Pepper (4), Red Bell                                      Pepper (4), Ichiban Eggplant (8), Packman Broccoli (8)

                        Row 8 - Yellow Bell pepper (1), Sweet Banana Pepper (12), Jalapeno Pepper (6), Chili                                      Pepper (6)

                        Row 9 - Brandywine Tomato (2), Marglobe Tomato (8), San Marzano tomato (12)

                        Row 10 - Large Red Cherry Tomato (6), San Marzano Tomato (10)

5/28 - Weeded cut rows, put up cattle panels to hold up tomatoes, tied up sugar snap peas, put up post and           wire for green beans

                        Row 11 -  Foretex Beans

                        Row 12 through 15 - Gotta Have It Corn

           

          Also on 5/28 we tilled and planted a lower garden, all of which are our vining plants.  Everything in this garden was planted in hills and so after we hoed up the hills we covered them in black plastic to keep the weeds down and the plants warm.

                        Row 1 - first 5 spaces Hybrid Sweet success cucumbers (54 days)

                                      spaces 6 & 7 Armenian slicing cucumbers (64 days)

                                      spaces 8, 9 & 10 mango melon (80-90 days)

                                      hill 1 & 2 Costata Romanesca Zucchini, hill 3 Thelma Sanders sweet potato Acorn

                                      hill 4 empty, hill 5 Goddess Hybrid melon (68 days), hill 6 butternut squash, 

                                      hill 7 Argenot winter squash (140 days)       

                        Row 2 - hill 1 & 2 Table queen acorn squash (87 days), hills 3, 4 & 5 summer squash

                                      hill 6 Costata Romanesca Zucchini, hill 7 Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Acorn

                                      hill 8 empty, hill 9 Goddess Hybrid melon, hill 10 butternut squash

                                      hill 11 Argenot winter squash

5/31 - In lower garden planted sweet potatoes in row 3

Our view from the "upper garden"

The lower garden 

6/2 - Trellised Raspberries, built by Travis.  In addition we weeded raspberries

6/3 - Today we tilled the aisles in the garden for weed control.  We had a tomato plant die and some extra space at the end of Row 9 & 10 (tomatoes) and so we planted 8 Okra plants.

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog!  We hope you'll enjoy watching our garden grow.  As time goes on and we begin harvesting the produce we will post about our canning and preserving process.  Stay tuned for more information and pictures on our raspberries.