Yep... Still Green

written by Yvonne

Honey and Olive wanted to make sure everyone knows how much they help in all of our gardening endeavors.  They did a good job of making sure these bales of straw didn't blow away.

And yes, you guessed it. We are still (happily) eating spinach and lettuce!  Baskets full!

And there is still plenty more growing!  Actually, after harvesting a good amount of the spinach pictured here, we started pulling up the plants because they've begun to bolt.

This is the other end of the lettuce/spinach bed. Tom tilled it and planted (from left to right) snap peas, Provider bush beans, Maxibell bush beans.  In the background you can see new rows of spinach coming up in bed #3.

The collards, Swiss chard and kale are just about ready to eat.  Next weekend I'll likely make something with the Swiss chard. Upon further inspection, Tom determined that the large plant in the right foreground is a couple of turnips, not collards.  Still good eatin' either way.

Only a few of the peas have come up so far (center).

This volunteer cucumber showed up out of nowhere. It's a little early for cucumbers but if it wants to come up now, fine by us.

Still plucking off the strawberry flowers and it seems to be working because the plants are really growing nicely.

We are a behind in starting summer seeds. We should have started melons, squash, peppers and tomatoes a few weeks ago, but there are only so many hours in a weekend.  Tom filled up the pots I made with dirt and tomorrow I'll get some squash, melons, and pumpkin seed started.

Tom also tilled the garden annex area. Ya know, I think we just like having this as potential so we get it ready every year and think we're going to find just the right thing to make it work. Yes, a few squashes materialized last year, but for the most part, it's been a dud. Well NO MORE! Boy do we have plans for it now!  You may recall we purchased rosemary and two kinds of mint plants in early Spring. This is where they are going to reside and we have high hopes they will 'take' since both are aggressive and hearty. We've managed to keep the plants alive through some really cold weather. Now that the bed is ready, they'll get planted tomorrow.  THEN, we're going to take chicken wire previously used for compost bins and hang it on the outside of the carport.  We'll secure it down at the bottom of this of brick wall with stakes.  Then we'll transplant some jasmine at the back of this bed and let it grow up the chicken wire.  We'll have a nice beautiful natural wall blocking off the ugly carport. It'll make for a much nicer view from the back patio.  We did the same thing several years ago on one end of the front porch and it's worked great.

Whew!  It's finally done! And what a job it was. It took two weekends, many hours, 3 broken tools, and MANY loads of brush wheeled to the front yard for pick up.  But the back fence line has now been completely cleared out. We cleared a third of it together two weekends ago then Tom finished the last 2/3 by himself.

Here's what it looked like before....

and here it is after!

Before...

after!

This is before mostly shows the overgrown compost bins. Nonetheless, here is before...

and after!  Doesn't even look like the same yard, does it? Now that it's a nice open, accessible space Tom was able to get to the trees to hang some bee boxes. (Read more about that later this week at www.tsbeeshoney.com.)  Our neighbors told us numerous times over the weekend how great it looked. Guess it was worse than we thought.

A Late Spring Frost

written by Yvonne

The snow, snap, and cow peas are all coming up (foreground).

This weekend I planted three kinds of beans and some crowder peas.

We're going to try this patch next to the house again for melons. No mystery melons that turn out to be squash, but actual melons. I planted four varieties and we'll see what happens. This area gets plenty of sun so that won't be an issue. The soil, however, is pretty dense so if things don't grow here we're going to have to work the soil more.

All the white flowers shown here will turn to blueberries. Wow! Now, if we can get to them before the birds do, we'll be in business.

The blackberries have come back as well.

To show just how fast the berries are growing, the first picture shown below is from last weekend. The next one down is one week later. If they produce as many berries as leaves, man we're gonna be happy campers!

The NC Extension service listed the last frost date as April 15. Guess they know what they're talking about because although it's been in the high 70s for about a week, all of a sudden we had a frost last night with another one tonight! Tom covered the peas, spinach, and lettuce before going to bed so hopefully they'll all survive these next two cold nights.

Holy Cow! It's October 1!

written by Yvonne

We've had pretty good success with the melons...

What do you mean, "Those don't look like melons, they look like butternut squash?"  Hmm. They sure do look like squash, don't they? Well, as it turns out, that's what they are.

Before you think us complete idiots, yes, we had planted some volunteer plants that we had assumed were melons, but we also planted a TON of melon seeds in the same location so we figured at least SOME of what came up were melons.

Early on, when we still thought they were melons, we cut one off the vine that was white-ish in color. It was green inside, but of course Honeydew melons are green so we proceeded to try cutting it with the intent of eating it. The knife wouldn't even go thought it. Then we smelled it - hmm, doesn't smell like melon. Kinda smells like squash. Know what? I think this is a squash. We left the others on the vine and just watched their progress.  They continued to change color and get more butternut-squashy looking until we finally determined, sho nuf' those are squash. We've eaten two now and these two are ready to be eatn. They taste GREAT as squash, not so good as melons.

We purchased new fall seeds from Sow True in Asheville to get more Fall crops going.  We bought 5 varieties of lettuce, two carrots and spinach. (Some of what's shown is seeds we already had.)

I did some work on the small herb box. The oregano finally came up but it was long after the dill, basil and cilantro. I cut most off this oregano to dry.

I cut back all of the basil and made a large batch of pesto. The first of the season. (Honey helped.)

Bed #1 is looking good with our late summer crops.

The dwarf okra is certainly dwarf in size. We really didn't get the okra planted in time but I think if Tom get's a least one serving, he'll be happy.  The days are still warm (high 70s) but the evenings are getting cooler and cooler so I don't expect they'll last long.

Tom has been pruning the tomatoes plants and it seems to be working. As new branches come out, he pinches them off. This is supposed to direct the growing energy to the fruit instead of the plant.

It looks like we'll have at least two varieties of late-summer tomatoes. Although today is October 1 so I think they'd technically they are early Fall tomatoes. Is there even such a thing?  I just hope they hold on and ripen before it gets too cold.

Same with round two of cucumbers. Hopefully they hold on long enough to produce something, but I won't be surprised if they don't.  Not sure if I mentioned this in the last post or not, but Tom planted these cucumbers the same way he did some of the tomatoes; he just took a cucumber that had fallen off the vine and partially broken open, and shoved it into the ground. It certainly worked!

Peppers are STILL putting out.

And changing colors too.

We have had several dinners over that last few months of Red Pepper Fajitas and it looks like there will be for this weekend!

The new kale Tom planted a few weeks ago is coming along.

The collards are small but are coming out.

Now, on to Bed #3. Here is the before of our embarrassing laziness of the latter half of the summer.

Tom got to work pulling out the mass of old tomato plants and VERY old kale.

Way to tackle it, babe!

Once Bed #3 was all cleared, I planted five types of lettuce. As I face the bed, from right to left is:

1. Red Romaine
2. Lolla Rosa Darky
3. Speckled Amish Butterhead
4. Green Oakleaf
5. Black Seeded Simpson

As much salad as we're eating these days, we felt a whole bed of lettuce would not be overdoing it.

Tom also added beets and more collard seeds to Bed #2 (behind him). Then a good watering for all the new seeds.

Last Bit of Catching Up

written by Yvonne

Here's the last bit of catch up, then we should be back on track with up-to-the-minute vegetable news from TYs Veggie Patch

Now this is a harvest!

On one hand, we had success with beans this year. We planted them in a new spot on the side of the house which expanded our growing area. That was great. The plants actually produced beans, which was also great. But we didn't do a great job of harvesting and eating them. They didn't produce enough at one time to constitute a full meal so they'd end up going bad before we had enough of them to eat them. (It didn't dawn on either of us until LAST WEEK that we should have frozen them as they came up! DUH! That's the whole reason we bought a big-a$s freezer.)

Where we didn't have such great success was in keeping the little yellow, fuzzy bugs away. This was not a new occurrence; these bugs got to our beans in previous years when they were grown in the beds, so the issue wasn't due to the new location. The little buggers take no time in turning otherwise big, healthy green leaves into lace. These just got decimated.

Of all the melon seeds we planted, this looks closets to the Swan Lake. It's not exactly the right shape, but it's the right color.

More melons on their way.

It wouldn't be honest to report only the good things, so here's our dirty laundry. This is what's become of our beds. Nightmare!! Yes there are tomatoes in there...

and yes the peppers (right) and cow peas (left background) are producing quite well, but we let everything else go to weed and it's quite embarrassing. But after a long, long span of ignoring the garden, we got back to it.

Tom cleared out all of bed one and I worked on the left half of bed two. He planted more tomatoes, kale, collards and peppers in bed one. We figured it being the beginning of August, there might still be time to get a late summer crop going.

Tom embarked on an experiment. He took a tomato that had fallen off the vine and had broken open and he planted it 'as is'. He didn't harvest and/or dry the seeds, but just planted the tomatoes directly into the ground. His theory being that we get so many tomato plants that come up all on their own (in the beds and in the compost pile) that they are likely seeding themselves when they fall off the vines. So why not just plant the tomato instead of buying new seeds? After all, we're using heirloom varieties and they seem to want to produce just by falling off the vine. We'll see.

The bell peppers are taking off! That's $6-$9 of peppers right there, my friends.

And the banana peppers produce three for every one I harvest. Not complaining, mind you.

And even though they are buried in the weeds, the tomato plants are producing. We got lots of these small, round ones and lots of cherry-type tomatoes, but not as many large tomatoes as I'd have liked.