Soup Beans

Hard to believe there is anything growing in this bed (besides Bermuda grass) but we are still harvesting kidney beans....unfortunately they do not all come off at the same time. I've been picking dried beans for almost 2 months now. Not sure this experiment will be tried again :)

Then there is the shelling process.

And I've only gotten 3 lbs. of beans so far.

But it is kind of fun filling up more jars for the pantry (I'm weird that way).

Oops!

Pretty.....

...not so much.

As you can see, this blog is not the only thing I have been neglecting lately. With our trip over I can finally start to work on the garden...and there is plenty to do. Many of the beds are overrun with Bermuda grass, the bane of valley gardeners. The stuff makes a great worry-free lawn because it grows with little to no care, let alone water. However, that is exactly what makes it such a pain-in-the-butt weed in the garden. Some of the roots go down several feet and it's almost impossible to completely eradicate. This should be fun :)

Death by Bug

Our wonderful plan to grow our very own pumpkins for Halloween Jack-o-Lanterns has been thwarted by the nefarious squash bug....bummer.

These guys were absolutely merciless; the plants went from healthy to decimated in less than 24hours!

Fortunately, they don't seem to like the Butternut squash...

...or they're just full :)

Aptly Named

Joyce and I have decided that this tomato has earned a place(or five) in next years garden. It's called Gold Medal but I think it looks like a sunset, very pretty inside and out....plus they're huge and taste great.

We have a Winner!

August Seedlings

Waltham Butternut Squash...

(kind of need to weed this bed)

...Provider Beans...

...and Big Max Pumpkin

August Plantings

This weekend I'll try to post pics of the plants already coming up, but these are the beds we did a second planting of ....

...Provider Green Beans....

...Butternut Squash...

...and Big Max Pumpkin.

This is a bit of an experiment as we don't usually bother with more than one 'crop' in the summer. But fall plantings are months away and it seemed a waste to leave these beds empty. I'm sure the beans will be successful (if the pill bugs don't eat them all) and we've had good luck with this particular squash. As for pumpkins... since the first crop was so sickly and unproductive, I amended with plenty of compost this time around.

Now we'll just have to wait and see.

That is one BIG tomato!

And there were actually 2 of them! I wrote a couple posts this week on what we are doing with all our lovely tomatoes from this garden and from our home garden. For the first time ever...I made tomato sauce and for the first time in a non-electric dehydrator I made sun-dried tomatoes.....Go see!

Zucchini

It happens every year. First the lady bugs fight off the aphids and then just when the plants seem to be recovering, the leaves start growing out....for lack of a more descriptive term....skinnier. The plants look anemic.

And then of course there's this...

The funny thing is, despite all the problems they've had the plants are still slowly producing veggies. And with the total for these 12 plants at 40lbs. I think we're doing ok :)

Melons?

Thought I'd start with the saddest looking plants in the garden...

....and add one of the flowers, so it's not too depressing.

Not sure what happened to our melons/pumpkins this year. We got 4 cantelopes on 2 plants, but nothing else produced anything edible. The watermelons started out fine, but ended up splitting before they were ripe (the chickens loved them :) and the pumpkins have been on their deathbed from about the first week. I've been reading that they can be planted as late as Aug. for Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns so we are going to give it one more try. We'll keep you posted.

Another Progress Report

What a difference a month makes...

(above photo was taken July 25th, the one below June 14th)

I will try to post pics of the garden this week, tho much of it looks pretty droopy (because of the HEAT). The tomatoes and peppers are going strong (made a batch of salsa today...yum) but the zucchini and cucumbers are barely hanging on. The green bush beans have stopped producing and the soup beans are drying on the vines (which they are supposed to be doing).

Them are some tall tomatoes! (Steve is 6'2")

Corn

...sort of. This is actually a testimony to how deceiving a photograph can be. For one thing, the plate on which these ears are sitting is actually a....

...salad plate. Which makes these much, much smaller than they appear.

And if you turn them over, most are quite sparse in the kernel department....sigh.

Next year, we plant more or none at all. Corn needs to be planted in large blocks so it can properly pollinate and despite my shaking the stalks daily, our success was minimal.

The chickens, however, were quite content with our failures.

Cantelope

...And it was absolutely delicious!!!

Beans (and more Beans)

One of my goals this year was to learn how to use (and not be afraid of) the pressure canner.

I think I accomplished half of that this last weekend...these things still slightly scare the beegeebers out of me.

The green bean plants have been pretty prolific so far this summer. We are harvesting from 2 beds of snap green beans; the pole beans are not producing yet and the other 3 beds of beans will be used as dried beans for winter soups.

Right out of the garden...

...washed and ready to go into the jars...

I used the cold pack method because beans are fairly tender

and will get soft quick enough once the cooking starts.

Added 1/2 teas. kosher salt and filled jars with boiling water.

Into the monster they go.

I love the fact that you can stack the pint jars

to get more into the pot; it actually holds 20 total.

Holding steady at 10 pounds of pressure.

Ta Da!.......11 pints of 'to be eaten this winter' green beans.

I've also frozen about 10 pounds of beans

but the freezer is filling up fast.......and it's a BIG freezer.

(more than one person has commented that we could fit a body in there....who are these people?)

Ladybugs...

...to the rescue!

As predicted, we are being inundated with aphids. They have covered the zuchinni and the cucumbers and are starting in on the melons. We've even found them on tomatoes. For the first few days of the infestation I just washed them off with the hose and waited for the cavalry...which has finally arrived.

Hopefully in time :)

Pupa stage...

...Larva, which actually eat the most aphids...

k

...and the adult Lady bug.

So if you see these little creatures in your garden....let 'em alone, they have work to do!