Veg, veg, veg

written by Yvonne

We've been very busy lately. Unfortunately, our busy-e-ness has not been garden related. As you can see by some of the dates on these photos, some were taken a while ago and I haven't had a chance to post them until now.

Stuff pulled from the garden for a nutritious dinner one night.

Because of a bout of good rain, the pea pods got kinda' big so they weren't great to eat as pods. So I opened them up...

took the peas out, and threw them into a pot of something or other I was making.

The color has not been adjusted on this - the beets were really this color.  Used the food processor to slice them real thin and made beet chips.  YUM!

The fig tree (right) is doing very well, as are the sunflowers.

Won't be long before the sunflowers burst open with lots of bright yellow!

Been using the basil and oregano frequently in dishes.

Tomatoes are stabilized.

Overview of all the tomatoes.

Slight accident here with the zucchinis. They were overtaking the small squash on the left and the tomatoes on the right.  So I cut back some of the large leaves and things seemed fine. Next day I came out and... oops. Maybe you can't really "trim" a zucchini plant.

Funny thing - although both plants are in distress and dying out, they are still putting out veggies.  This past weekend I took one of the baseball-bat sized zucchinis and shredded it in the food processor.  That one zucchini yielded 8 cups which was enough to make 4 loafs of zucchini bread!

Bees doing their job in the garden.

This is the squash that was being overtaken by the zucchini.  One plant didn't make it but this small one is hanging on.

Beans are taking off!  These are borlotto beans - we had them last year as well.

The borlottos grow super fast.  They are already budding up.

These are the burgundy beans, which we also grew last year.  Oh.. and Olive.

These beans are budding up as well.

A few cucumber flowers have some out.  I hope those bees get to work pollinating them 'cause I'm ready for some cucs!

Parsley hedge, a cucumber plant, small tomato plants, and kale all doing well.

Carrots are super yummy.  Going to plant more of them now that we have the hang of it.

Cow peas.

And here are the cow pea pods. Kinda looks like a praying mantis.

These next two pictures might not be suitable for younger audience members. June bugs are out and apparently havin' a good ol' time on our one, tiny okra plant.

Since this okra plant got stunted by the cold and wasn't producing anyway, I'm glad some creature can enjoy it since we won't.

The potatoes that Tom planted are doing fantastic.  It won't be too much longer before we can harvest them!

This one blackberry bush is bizarre. It was the first one to flower, the first one to produce fruit, the first one to turn red, and yet the berries are not ripening.  All of the other bushes we've picked clean.  This one just is kind of hanging out in this state.

It's time to harvest this year's supply of garlic!!!!  Once the tops start turning brown and fall over, it's time to pull them up.

So pull them up I did!

Two big batches of yummy (although dirty right now) garlic.

These will dry out for a week or so, then I'll clip the tops off and we're set!

More Veg.

written by Yvonne

This weekend was mostly standard yard work; mowing, edging, spreading pine needles, etc. Got the berry bush area looking nice with a new layer of pine needles.  Olive found the pine needles to be nice and cushy - a perfect shady spot to chill.

THEY'RE TURNING BLACK, THEY'RE TURNING BLACK!!

And yes, I realize that just because a few have turned black doesn't mean they're quite ripe yet... but I couldn't help myself. I ate one and OOooh doggy! was it tart

Look! Our squash blossoms have squash growing behind them. Yep, green squash alright.

What? You think that's zucchini, not squash?  But... I feel CERTAIN I planted squash seeds.  ?

Look! Our zucchini blossoms have zucchini growing behind them!

This picture of borlotto beans is from last Thursday when I planted the seedlings.

Here they are, a mere five days later. WOW! There were four plants but only two had popped up. Now, all four are up and they've just about doubled in size.

End-of-Spring Push

written by Yvonne

The weather is still nice so this week and weekend will be our big end-of-Spring push to get everything in the ground before the weather becomes too hot.

Last weekend Tom took care of the potatoes. He started by tilling up the potato patch. There were signs of onions growing, but when he pulled them up, there were hardly any bulbs to them.  We're finding that this patch is really only good for potatoes, so that's what we'll stick to for this mostly-shady spot.

During the tilling process, he found a few potatoes left over from last fall.

He created rows and dropped the potatoes in.

He covered the whole area with straw that he'd used as a wind block for the bees over the winter.

"I see wabbits!" Our neighbor bought his daughters a bunny for Easter.  They keep it in a cage between our house and theirs. Olive is a border terrier; bread to hunt small, animals.. ya know, like bunnies. She keeps a close eye on the wabbit every time we're outside.  (Next time I'll get a picture with the wabbit in it.)

The raspberries are coming in a hand-full or so at a time.

Raspberry-licious!

This is probably a two cups or so. Hee hee!

Blackberries taking their time ripening. Trying to be patient but COME ON BERRIES; HURRY UP AND RIPEN! I got jam, cobblers, and crisps to make!

Blueberries moving from green to green-blue.

I started flower seeds a month or so ago. The two on the outsides are sunflowers, the one in the middle (which you really can't see) are wildflowers.

Because it appeared that the cold snap killed the basil, I started some more in pots.  I was going to restrain from over doing the basil this year but I think I'm going to end up with an abundance once again.  It's hard to see but right in the middle of this photos are a bunch of very small seeds that sprouted.  I went ahead and planted them all.

And as luck would have it, the basil (front) that I thought had been killed off is doing FANTASTIC.  The oregano (back) was a cutting from a student of mine, and it's doing well too.

Yesterday I did a LOT of weeding - something we haven't kept up with very well this Spring.  After weeding all of bed #1 and parts of the other three, I set to getting all the seedling planted.

Longtime followers of TYs VeggiePatch will no doubt recognize this flower because we've taken a similar picture every year. Squash blossoms have arrived.

This is the other squash plant. Both of these are the crookneck variety we've grown every year. The other two squash plants (not shown) are a new variety and not nearly as far along as these.

This is bed #2 where the buttercruch lettuce and radishes were. We'd eaten all the radishes, except for one that went to seed. I harvested all the buttercrunch that was left because it was showing signs of bolting. After pulling them out (along with about 10 pounds of weeds), I put up stakes, and planted the bean seedlings.  These are the borlotto beans...

and these are the burgundy beans.

It's nice to look at your garden when it isn't overrun with weeds, don't you think?  In addition to planting the beans, I trimmed back the dill and cilantro, planted additional cilantro seedlings, and pulled out the unsuccessful broccoli and cauliflower. (Shhh... don't tell Tom. He has a hard time pulling up plants that are still alive, but these hadn't produced any broccoli or cauliflower and they certainly won't as it gets hotter). The mesculin (sp?) lettuce didn't look close to bolting so I kept it in.

In place of the broccoli and cauliflower I planted the golden and banana peppers.

I didn't end up picking the scapes off the tops of the garlic. I did notice they were getting bigger and kind of bumpy so I went in for a closer look....

Seems as though when the scapes grow, they produce the seed pods and will soon turn into a puffy flower. Looking forward to seeing what this looks like when it opens up all the way. Stay tuned.

After several days of good rain, I knew there'd be lots of peas ready to harvest. And boy was I right. Just pulling off the largest ones gave me about four cups worth.

Look at how huge this one is!

This is one area I didn't weed yet so it's hard to distinguish what's what. But what you're mainly looking at is the cowpeas that struggled to come up. Once they did come up, it looked like they got killed by the cold. Then they came back. They are officially doing well. Now... if I can just remove enough of the weeds to really see what I've got.

Again with the plethora of weeds... but the pant in the foreground is okra. This must be a dwarf variety because the plant is very small but...

it already has okra forming! I'll be happy if this thing doesn't become a 10' tall tree like the ones in past years.

The amount of rain we got caused everything to quadruple in size. This kale had a few leaves at best the last time I looked. Now, it's over taking the beets!

The parsley is basically a hedge at this point. Around the kale, beets and parsley, I did some trimming, harvesting and weeding and...

this is the result. I harvested a lot of the kale (now shown to the left of the beets) and made kale chips (YUM!).  Didn't do anything with the beets at the moment but this weekend I'll harvest several and roast them up for Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad.  I also trimmed the parsley "hedge" on all four sides as well as the top.  Now it no longer hangs over the bed.  This allowed room for a few more tomoato plants. These tomato plants will likely get way too big to be here, but by that time the beets and kale will be gone so we'll encourage it to grow towards where the beets currently are.

I couldn't seem to get rosemary started from seed so I asked around for anyone who might be able to spare a clipping from an established plant. I put this cutting in the bed where we can't seem to get anything (but more weeds) to grow. We'll check back in a week or so to see if it's taken root.

Fig tree still doing well. Hopefully it will make it out of the pot and into the ground sometime this year.

Whew!  I worked hard to get as many of the seedlings planted as possible and seeing how little is left in the mini-greenhouse, I'd say I did a good job. What's left are onions, chives, and a mystery plant.

A reward for a hard day's work in the garden. A glass of champagne and a bowl of raspberries, bananas and a dollop of vanilla yogurt.

Keep up with T's Bees apiary at www.tsbeeshoney.com