Starting to Wither - Late August

It's been a while since I posted because we have added a new addition to the farm. 'Captain' the Vizsla puppy has joined us and has settled in quite nicely. He's high maintenance and I have had to watch him closely in the yard, but so far, he has not torn up any of my pants, or Stella. He did make it behind the tomato vines once, but that was a fluke.

The garden is looking ok. The heat of the summer got the best of some of my younger plants, while the BLASTED WHITE FLY and Potato/Tomato Psyllids (Nymphs) enjoyed destroying some of the foliage on my 8 foot 7 inch tomato vines this August.

There is significant damage to the tomatoes, starting from the bottom, up. The vines are still surviving and producing the sweetest fruit though. At first, we used the Neem Oil, diluted with water and a little dish soap to keep it mixed up. After my homemade remedy proved to be less than perfect in the height of the infestation (it was gross) we went for a concoction that was store bought. I had been growing these flipping plants for 9 months! I was dammed if I was going to lose them now, right at harvest. We still went with an organic pesticide, Captain Jacks Bedbug Brew, ironically, my dogs name. After applying an entire 8$ bottle to our plants, it seems to have halted the infestation. I still see some flys kickin' it, but for the most part, the plant seems to be healthier. I hate bugs. Bees are cool.

New Addition: 'Captain',  garden dog

We have been getting lots of cucumbers from our vines. I've been pickling them in Vlassic brine and making the most wonderful crispy pickles. This is my new favorite thing to do this year. We are actually growing the pickling cucumber variety so it works out perfectly.

 2 zucchinis (left), 2 pickling cucumbers (right)

Here is a glimpse of what's been going on in the garden.

Standing on a standard height chair, measuring the Tomato vines @ 8 feet, 7 Inches tall

Largely still healthy, with the exception of the lower interior of the plant. Almost 9 feet tall!

My Brandywine Heirloom got over the blossom drop and started making LOTS of tomato

Visible pest damage from white flies and tomato nymphs - they eat the leaf, not the fruit

8 feet 7 Inches!!!! Healthier at the top

New sunflowers getting munched

Brandywine Heirloom (from seed)

Perfect crop to grow with tomatoes, just need a cow to make cheese

Lettuce gone to seed

Yummy sugar snap peas

The FIRST Brandywine Heirloom of the season, I ate it like an apple

Red onion from seed

Watermelon Vines

Pumpkin Patch, I dunno about this one, not seen one Pumpkin yet!

Captain enjoying his garden

Growing along - late July

Everything is going really well. The compost tea seems to be working. The plants are getting really big and tall. There is a level of learning involved during every season of growing. No two seasons the same, no two years alike. Every year, some new shit goes down that didn't happen last year.

Last year, my plants did not get too large and they did not produce as much as I would have liked. I had somewhat of a pest problem and the plants were kind of malnourished because I refuse to use chemicals, but had not figured out a really good organic fertilizer yet. I think compost tea has solved that problem for me this year.

This year, my plants are 4x larger, healthier, greener, thicker trunks, but what amazes me most of all is lack of pest infestation I have experienced this year. Granted, I moved, maybe I left them all behind. Maybe they haven't discovered my garden yet. Or maybe my compost tea has made my plants wax (like human skin) so thick and healthy that those buggers can't even bite through it! Who knows, but I like it. I'm not saying this year has been incident free..... I lost 3 tomato plants to blossom drop...a disease that is a result of sweltering heat. Not much I can do about that. Makes me glad I'm not a really real farmer, I really feel for them. They can't control the weather any more than I can, and they can lose their whole livelihood.

Here is a look at how we are growing along.

Peas reached the top of the latter

Arugula, ROUND 2

Tomatoes, now 6 feet tall, 3 on left not producing due to blossom drop.

Zucchini, Cucumber, Summer Squash, Watermelon patch

Beautiful Zucchini Blossom (iPhone you still take my breath away)

Watermelon!

Kohlrabi

Eggplant blossoms

Radishes are 4x bigger than last years leaves. Almost no pest damage.

Heirloom stand alone

Pumpkin Patch gets bigger every day

Baked Zucchini for Desert

The first Zucchini that we harvested was far to large to eat as a steamed vegtable, so we gutted it and stuffed it with goodness. That's my pastry chef workin' it at home. Desert included the following ingredients in no measured out order:

Butter
Cinnamon
Streusel
Walnuts 


Baked at 375 for 30 minutes of so.

Yum!

Orchards in Bloom

Since we moved to the new house, our fruit orchard has grown leaves, bloomed and given us fruit. We were not sure what one of the trees were at first, but we are going with Pluot now that we have tasted the fruit. We also have a grafted walnut tree on the property. A sweet plum tree and a pomegranate tree hang over our back fence from the neighbors yard as well, lucky us! No pomegranates or walnuts yet....

Pluot tree on right, English Walnut tree (branches) on left

Yummy Pluot

Filling in the holes

The patches of dirt left bare between the seedlings are beginning to fill with new life as the baby plants stretch out their new arms to compete for the sunlight. Watching a garden grow is such a rewarding experience for me. Every morning, I walk down my back steps, let Stella out, and examine all the growth that took place the night before. Then I go to work. When I return, I water the plants that look stressed from the heat of that day using Stella's pond water and examine the changes that took place that day. Maybe over the course of the week visitors may see some differences, but to the gardener, we see them every day and night. 

 The Zucchini plant is healthy and has gotten huge. I had to take down the little white picket fence aka "duck barrier" in front of the plant because this huge Zucchini grew right into it. Technically, you should not let your zucchinis get this big because they become fibrous and woody, less juicy and not as sweet, however, we are going to let this one go, and go, and go, and see how big we can get it. We might make zucchini bread, or a roasted zucchini boat out of it. We have plenty of others that we will be eating. It was a good thing I tool the picket fence down when I did, because it's been growing an inch a day.

The zucchini leaves get bigger every day

Remember the first pics of it??

Watermelon vines

Flowering cucumbers and summer squash

 I don't really know what is going on with the leaf at the very bottom on the pic below. It seems to be a healthy green leaf, but the veins are turning white. To me this indicates a deficiency, a disease, or a pest. I'm going to do more research to find out what it is. We did just have a heat wave, so I'm hoping it was just the result of extreme heat, but it might be low in iron or something.

Cucumbers, one with white vein (bottom)

Kohlrabi

There are a lot of advantages to successive planting. Unfortunately I do not do it as often as I would like. The nice thing about successive gardening or planting, is that not all your crops mature at the same time. It is the best way for a home gardener to have a continual harvest, its just hard to remember. I also have a hard time hold back on seeding my entire plot!

Below is a pic of my radish crop that I am successively seeding. I planted some 1 month ago, and the others 1 week ago, and I still have some fallow dirt.

Successive planting of radishes 

My worm bin, started last year sometime

My little red friends

More worms in the bin

My pumpkin patch 

Stella loving her new pond, she gets in herself 

Midget melon flowering, can't wait for this one

Huge tomato vines

Like, huge, like probably 5 feet

GARLIC!!!

Laura's red onions

Bolting lettuce. I need to eat this stuff.

Peas Starting to climb