What a busy day!

Okay I have a few more minutes here to breathe, (lg inhale).

It certainly has been a busy day. Got up at 6:30 am, picked my mom up and we went and picked blackberry's. It was a good thing we went today because they are just about done for this season. I have determined that we are starting a blackberry patch here at the house. We picked on flat for mom and it cost her $30.00.

I understand the concept of having a business and making money, I used to be the regional manager of five retail stores. I do however believe there is a difference in making money and just flat ripping people off. So many people, primarily our children, need to be eating fresh fruits and vegetables, they simply cannot afford it. While waiting for our Tomato's to be ready my mom stopped at a road produce stand and they charged her $5 for three Tomato's. That is just insane! 

If you and I went to Wal Mart, each of us having $200 to spend, one of allowed to purchase only things that are good for you and healthy and the other only allowed to purchase junk food, the person purchasing junk food would have so much more food in their cart. And they wonder why in America we have such a problem with overweight people. The economy stinks, jobs are hard to find and you have to buy to eat what you can afford. (That coupled with the fact that game stations and TVs are the best babysitters, instead of getting kids outside running and playing ) Okay I'm off my soap box now.

After we got her Blackberry's we stopped at a couple of garage sales and then came on home.

Mint Jelly and Cantelope Jam has been made. I started Grand Scale Zuchinni Relish. You mix half of it together and then it has to sit for 24 hours before you can finish it. I had to get out of the kitchen for a few so hubby could make supper and then I'm back in there to finish up the Watermelon jelly, probably two batches of that. Again it's a good deal I have help because this is just too much in one day.

Then once it starts cooling off outside we have to go out and get another bed of green beans and a bed of peas planted. It's a good thing they are only 4x4 beds. I may not even make it out to get that done, hubby may have to do it without me because my CHP is really kicking in. I usually don't take MEDs in the middle of the day but I'm going to have to today and hope that I can get it under control enough to go to Church tomorrow.

I'm going to get the recipes I've been using put on here so that if you would like to try them you can. I won't get it done today, maybe Monday, but I will get them on here.

I'm off of here for now I've decided to lay down and take a little rest. I hope you are all having a wonderful day.

July 5, 2012 Garden Pictures, Really starting to see damage from the heat.

 

For those of you new to the blog these strawberries had to be removed from our large patch. My husband and son have started raising the strawberry patch so the size of it had to change. These plants were in the way so they had to be removed. My daughter and I transplanted them into this container and within a day we thought we had killed them. I cut off all the dead leaves leaving the roots in the soil. Slowly but surely the plants starting come back and we have actually gotten about ten strawberries out of this container. My suggestion if you ever have to transplant strawberries, never give up on them, they are quite the hardy plant.

If you are not aware there are two types of strawberries you can get, the plants we have are called Ever bearing. Ever bearing plants will continue to put out strawberries for most of the summer, the other type puts them out one time and that’s it. Ever bearing Strawberries can get quite large but not as large as the other variety. I would prefer having strawberries all summer over having one batch of very large berries.

This is one of the plants in the container, here you can see that it has a small berry that has turned red. You can also see here that on this plant alone there are three more that are still green. Not to bad for a plant that basically had to start all over and catch up with the others.

The two pictures above are showing the range in sizes of strawberries we have been getting. Some have been smaller while others have been quite a bit larger. The really important aspect to us is they are YUMMY! (I like to use big adult words as often as possible. LOL)

The picture on the left are the Blue Lake Green Beans, in this photo they look very good. In the next set of pictures you will see how the heat has really done a number on them.

In the picture on the right are Bush Green Beans, I’m not certain of the brand of these. They had done quite well and had produced like crazy. Then they started looking really bad when the triple digit heat hit us. I went out to pull them out and start a new batch but when I got close and looked they are producing new leaves under the dry ones on top.

I’ve opted to give them a bit more time to see if they come out of the damage the heat did to them and start producing again. If they should not start looking better soon they will be removed, compost added to the bed and another batch of beans started for a fall picking

I took this picture in an attempt to show you the base of this tomato plant. That is one plant, when it was planted it had one stem. If you don’t pick off the sucker leaves on a tomato plant they will start growing as well. These however are not sucker leaves, the stem actually branched out under ground and came up like this. The base of this plant is small in comparison to some of the others.

These have by far been the most amazing Tomato plants I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

This picture taken at a distance doesn’t do justice to how pretty the Loofah plants are. I was attempting to show you the height of the plant. I will have some pictures later on that will show it better. They have reached a height of about 5 ft tall so far.

The two pictures above and the four below are all basically showing the same thing. I am forever amazed at a plants ability to stretch its “arm” out, grab a hold of a supporting object and wrap around it.

Some of these you can see where they had to reach a fair distance, some sent runners one way and then another and yet others just kept wrapping around in the same location.

The plants “knowledge” that it needs to do this in order to support the items it will produce is just something to behold.

I’ve finally gotten my daughter to just sit down and look at plants with me. I mean really look close like this and see the truly amazing things they do.

July 3, 2012 Catching up on picture posts

 

You might wonder what the fish has to do with this blog, but really the fish is quite important. Every time we go fishing we go and buy a box of worms. Once the worms are gone we take the left over “dirt” and pour it into our houseplant pots. It is making a huge difference, they love it.

 

Then once we catch fish that qualify as a keeper we take them home and hubby cleans them for us. What is left over goes out to our compost bin and is therefore recycled and ends up in our garden. No part of the fish is thrown away, we use it all.

Aside from all the uses of the fish we absolutely enjoy going fishing. We go as a family and enjoy our time together. Often times we have a hard time leaving to go home and have been caught walking back to the car in the dark, staying until we have no choice but to go home.

Going fishing started out as hubby’s hobby. Our daughter and I have learned a lot from him about fishing and have worked hard to be good fishing partners for him so that he can enjoy himself instead of always having to take care of our stuff for us.

We even learned to put the worms on our hooks. Mind you we do not like doing that but again we want to be good fishing partners and not be little sissy’s about putting the worm on the hook. LOL

Before we left I got these pictures taken. These are our Radish’s. They really came up good and strong. We tried to thin them out and they didn’t do well. Since the soil/compost mixture is so loose we are just leaving them, we think they will be able to make the room they need to grow.

This is the 3rd bed of green beans that we have started. These are Blue Lake Bush Green Beans. We were so excited about them, but as you will see in the following post’s I’ll be making they are not doing near as well as they started out.

They started out so well and had such huge leaves on them. They did get planted right before the triple digit heat hit and that could be why they are having such a hard time now despite the fact that we are diligent about keeping them watered and taken care of.

This is one of the first beds of green beans we started out with. We thought they were Blue Lakes but we now know they are not. They no where resemble the above pictures. Not sure how we got them all mixed up.

The Tomatoes continue to go crazy. We had one plant that had a tomato on it that got so heavy that it actually broke the branch it was on.

As you can see here the plants are just loaded. In this small space there are 7 Tomatoes.

It’s a bit hard to see in this picture, I’ll try to get a better one. The Strawberry Patch is really doing well. The plants have been sending out lots of runners and really are spreading the plants. I’m hoping by the end of summer this bed will be full and we will need to start another.

The number of Strawberries that these plants are putting out this year is by far our best year ever. It may not sound like a lot but we are getting around 20 per day on average, and they are much larger this year than they were last year.

Our grandson just loves checking on the Strawberry Patch. At 4 yr. old he can tell me if they are new/babies, if they are big and not ready and if they are ready to be picked. He has a sincere love and fascination for the garden’s and their produce. It brings me such joy to watch him and our daughter learn so much about the plants and how to care for them.

This is one branch of a Cherry Tomato Plant. As you can see on this one branch there are 9 Tomatoes showing. Each plant in total has on average about 40 per plant.

We are still averaging about 2 Asparagus coming up each day. Normally they are done by this time of year. Since we changed the way we are watering them and the amount of water we are giving them they have done very well. They continue to produce, it’s impressive. I always like to mention that if you are going to start a patch you must salt the ground.

My sister was telling me yesterday that she loves White Asparagus. I had not seen that before so now I have to see if I can find seeds for those and start a patch of them.

You will always want to maintain your patch. In case you are not aware they will continue to come up each year. Normally you will get your first plants that are big enough to eat in about 3 years time.

The Loofah plants are still doing well. They have continued to climb quite well. We have not seen any blooms yet, I’m starting to get concerned that we may not get any Loofah’s this year. I certainly hope I’m wrong. They are so useful and I have no more left from the last time we grew them.

The Cucumbers are doing quite well also. They are climbing well and really starting to put on the cucumbers. However, due to our heat some of the cucumber starts have dried up on the vine before they could get started well.

This is a side shot of the Cucumbers. Not only are they growing in height but they are nice full plants. That is helpful as they are loaded with blooms and soon we should have more cucumbers than we know what to do with them.

This is another shot of one of the Tomato Plants, as you can see there are so many tomatoes on this plant. They are hard to even count anymore, I gave up trying to figure out how many were on a plant.

This is a picture of our small garden bed, it is located under our Hummingbird feeder. These plants really attract the birds to the area. When we started this bed, in case you didn’t see the pictures of it, it looked terrible. We started with about 15 small plants. It looked so empty but in just a few short weeks it really starting filling out.

Now we are taking advantage of the seed pods that each of the flowers make. We have collected so many seeds from the different flower varieties that we will not have to purchase plants next year. We can plant from the seeds we have.

This is a new rose from our Double Knot Knock Out Rose Bush. I really enjoy this rose bush, it is so pretty and it blooms fantastic. At any given time it will have many blooms at the same time.

This is a group of three Roses on the same plant pictured above.

 

I’m in great hopes that I will soon have very nice pictures of Roses to share with you. We happened to be at Wal-Mart when they had a huge sale going on. We got 2 each of Red, Pink and White Rose Bushes and paid a grand total of $1.25 for each of them.

That put us at a grand total of 6 large Rose Bushes and 4 additional Double Knot Knock Out Bushes that we had pictured a few days before. We took the 10 Rose Bushes and have planted them along our driveway. I think it will end up looking very nice. I’ll get pictures of them tonight so you can see what I’m talking about. They are just about naked though, after I cut off all the dead leaves from them not taking proper care of them. They should spring back quickly.

Green Beans in a Raised Garden Bed

We already have two raised beds of green beans going in our garden, they are doing so well this year and producing a high yeild that we decided we better get another one going.

I  can already imagine it being winter, snow on the ground and then sitting down to supper and tasting a garden fresh green bean.

If you have never had a garden fresh green bean I challenge you to get a hold of some and do a taste comparison between one directly from a garden and one out of a can. I don't care how much you pay for a canned green bean the taste difference will amaze you. .

This picture shows our 4x4 Raised Garden Bed. Please note these do not have to be fancy, however, they can be as fancy as you like. We prefer these pine boards because by next summer they are a touch weathered and fit in to our "farm/country" theme both in our garden and in our home. Aside from that we just don't see the sense in spending a lot of money on them as these will last a long time. One very important note, if you purchase lumber to make your boxes be sure you DO NOT PURCHASE TREATED LUMBER, there is the possibility of that leaching into your soil and plants.

The box is filled with compost, garden soil, peat moss and regular peat. Once the box is finished for the summer we will continue to add compost to it over the winter so it is refreshed and ready to go for the next planting season.

One other note I would like to make about the raised boxes is these work out well for elderly or handicap people, or people who have a difficult time getting down low due to bad backs or people who just don't want to crawl on the ground to pull weeds. :)


If the box is for a handicap person or someone with a bad back this would be my recommendation. I am disabled due to a back injury and while the two layer box as seen below is many times better than getting down on the ground I'm finding they just are quite high enough to keep from causing me pain. Hubby will be adding a third layer to the boxes that house small plants for me next year to make it easier. I have also see where some people do these boxes and put them up on legs so they are waist height, that is a consideration but since we live in tornado alley I don't want the strong winds to possibly knock all my hard work over.

We started this box 5 days ago. The box was built, filled with our compost mixture and the seeds were planted. After that we gave it a good soaking and have done so each evening since.

As you can see here, on day 5 we have sprouted Green Beans beginning to push through the soil. This is what they looked like when we saw them this morning, by evening there were several that were already about an inch tall. One they start growing they are amazingly fast. Just for reference these are Blue Lake Bush Beans

On the left side of this picture you can see one of the bean plants already standing up nice and proud. I was pretty impressed that they came up so fast. We have had really good luck with this brand of green beans. Last year and the year before we planted a different type and didn't get a single bean plant. That could have been the brand we bought or just a bad year. I would suggest researching to see what grows best in your area or what friends have had good luck with. Result will vary drastically sometimes depending on the region you are in. We are in Missouri.