I know several people in the area that go to the Amish vegetable auction and buy all their produce there in large quantities and then do more than double the price of it and resell it to people in town. I'm not against making a profit but I am against setting a price so high that you are ripping people off. We are not supposed to treat one another in that manner, those who do that are no better than the big box stores like Wal Mart. I won't ever be accused of that or of treating someone in an unfair manner. I wouldn't want someone to do that to me and I'm not about to do that to others. While the garden extras if there are any will mainly be my husband and daughter doing that, I will be in charge of getting help and getting things canned and put away for us and our families for the winter.
Okay so here we go with the photos. I know a lot of you are reading my blog and I would really appreciate any comments you would like to leave.
The Tomato plant below has had some kind of history already this summer. We nearly lost this one because we had to wait so long to get them out and planted. We were having unreal amounts of rain in this area. This particular plant just has not reached the height of what it should be in fact it is about a third the size of all the other Tomato plants.
Not to be outdone by the bigger plants this tiny Tomato plant is a giant producer. Check out the photo below. I tried counting them all and came up with forty six tomatoes on this one tiny plant.
The photo below is showing you some of the branches on a Tomato plant. Some of these are what they call suckers others are just the lower branches of the plant. We try very hard to keep the suckers pinched off so they don't take away from the producing branches, we also remove several of the lower branches. This enables us to see under the plant for weeds, makes watering the plants easier and it is better for the plant. There is no sense in the plant wasting energy or resources trying to keep those branches alive when MOST of the time they are non producing branches. Now having said that we have several plants this year that are producing on all branches.
If you remove these suckers or lower branches there is a wonderful thing you can do with them.
The picture below shows the branches removed. If I were to now take those in the house and put them in a jar of water in just a few days time they would put out an amazing amount of roots and therefore be viable Tomato plant that you could turn around and plant in your garden. It will grow and produce tomatoes just like the mother plant they came off of.
The next two photos are showing the tops of my Dill plants. They have gone crazy and will soon be ready to use in canning. I put out a set number of canning jars, depending on the number of cucumbers I am working with. I take an educated guess. I put all the seasonings and the entire top (the part that is yellow for now) in the bottom on the jar. Then I proceed to put the spears in the jar, packing them in as tight as I possibly can. These dill "heads" will make our dill pickles taste 100% better. Not to mention the fact that I love to look at them, they are such a bright yellow and very dainty looking, I almost hate to tear them up to use them they are that pretty.
This is my amazing husband. He works more than full days away from home, often going in early and working overtime. Once he gets home one would think he would just sit back and relax for the evening to be rested for the next day, he does not. He realized that despite the heat I was outside this afternoon trying to get a few little odd jobs done and he was right out there with me and started trimming around all the garden boxes. I love how "kept" they look when the grass and trimming has been done.
I noticed this evening that my Rose Bush is putting out new leaves. Upon close inspection I saw that the new leaves are coming out a very dark shade of red and then once they start to mature they turn green like all the others. I don't know how useful that information is but it is just a neat thing to know.
As I told you a few days ago we got another garden box started. In this box we put Carrots, Radish and Parsley. The Radish had to show the others up, it waited til day two and you could just see them starting to break through the soil. The picture below shows them at day three. There is going to be a lot of thinning and moving plants within the next few days. Some things are okay to plant close together but the Radish and Carrot are not. They each need space to produce and grow, in a over crowded situation as they are at present would stunt the growth and if you got anything out of them they would be s small they wouldn't be worth dealing with.
This is the new Green Bean box we started oh...just over a week ago, it appears ninety nine percent of the plants did come up, so that is great. It will take some time for them to be ready and start producing beans but that is perfectly okay in this household. We try to stagger things as much as we can so that we are not trying to can three or four different veggies at the same time.
The next four pictures are just flowers from the box we have under the Hummingbird feeder. They are such a cheap flower and they will not come back next year. Maybe it is their simple beauty that attracts me to them but every time I'm outside with my camera I manage to stop and take pictures of them. They are growing well and starting to fill the box up. Some were laughing at me when I first planted them because there was so much open space and the dirt was showing through. Well needless to say they are no longer laughing at me as the box is nearly full now. They are fast growers.
I couldn't help but to add another picture of the Bat plant. It is simply amazing how much each bloom looks just like a mini bat. It working with my plant this evening and removing the dried out blooms I was able to locate what I believe to be the seed pods for this plant. If that is the case by summer next there will be a lot of Bat plants around our house. LOL.
In this photo you can see all the new growth around this small pink blossomed flower. It is a mixture of wild flower seeds. Oh it's so like Christmas just watching them grow, assuring they are watered every evening and just taking care of them, yet you have no idea what they will end up being. I certainly am excited about this and can't wait to see what they become.
I've got to do some research on this and see if my guess is correct. This is the top of one of my Lillie's, I am assuming this to be some sort of a seed pod since this flower is very well known for reproducing itself. I removed one a week or so ago and looked inside and it didn't appear to be seeds to me. On the other hand I haven't a clue one what a Lilly plant seed looks like. So again we play the waiting game to watch and learn.
This pictures helps to show what I was talking about earlier. With the mowing and weed eating done the entire area just looks so manicured. I've often heard people make remarks about farmers, their homes and gardens etc. While we are working on ours for a personal goal I know many farm family yards that would put city yards to shame. Of course since I'm a country type person and I grew up on my parents farm, my opinion might be a bit jaded, but I don't think so.
I'm super excited about this. We got this Garden Archway Entrance at Lowe's last year on clearance. (I love a sale) and couldn't decide where we wanted to put it. Now that the choice has been made Wally needs a few things to complete this task but it should be up soon. I told him unless he has a reason or a plant he likes better I want to get a climbing Rose bush and start it on one side and just let it grow up and over the arch. I think that would be so beautiful!
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