Bedspace and Daydreaming...

First, here's the shirt!

I didn't finish Finn's shirt (haven't even started it!), but it's okay because when I checked the kids' calendar I found out that it's only Loch's class doing Hawaiian Day and not the whole school.  I had to promise Finn I would still do it soon, though.

Today's harvest was pretty standard for the season, more peas and lettuces.

The snap peas are still coming, but there are no new blossoms on the snow peas, so I ripped them out and sent them to the compost bin today.  I might add the heat index is now in the lower 90's so their time was limited anyways, I'm already more than pleased at the pea harvest this year.

Above, before the snow peas came out, below after... it looks so bare!  The peppers and beans that are also in that bed I'm sure are happier now to have more sun.

This brings me to now... I've been sitting at my desk looking at my seeds and surfing the web and trying to figure out what to grow there.  I am surprised that I seemed to have found myself with a little space to try something new if I want, oh the decisions!  I planted much more intensely this year, and have already planned for a 2nd crop of bush beans in the other pea bed when they come out, so what to do?  I'll probably dwell on this all night until I find I have wasted 12 hours on deciding what to plant in a 1x8 space in a bed, and end up putting some more boring bush beans or something there!

One thing I am not going to plant there:  weird dogs or weird carrots!  I washed this carrot up and threw it on top of hubby's salad he took to work today so he can amaze his friends and co-workers, haha!

So what would YOU plant if you found yourself with a little bit of extra space in your garden and you already had your regular things going?  I thought about chickpeas but then looked them up and saw they have like one per pod... can you imagine the labor involved there LOL?  I'll stick to the health foods store bin for those.

Child Labor Season Begins!

It's like Groundhog Day around here, but in a good way!  With the amount lettuces and peas coming in, I had to break out the big guns...

Finnegan!

This kid is a pro at picking peas, he always gets all the "hiders" as he calls them.  Loch isn't much for helping harvest anything, he prefers to be involved in the planting and sprouting of things, packing his magnifying glass and spritzer bottle, and prefers planning the spaces and companion planting to actual transplanting.  Finn on the other hand, loves to harvest things.

Groundhog Day - "Pick Lettuce, Pick Peas, Wash Lettuce, Blanch Peas, Freeze Peas, Bake Bread, repeat"!

My squashes are finally up!  There are little radishes planted around them as per the Carrots Love Tomatoes book to prevent squash bugs - yeah, that made me laugh too!  But at least I could remember where the squash hills were.

One more for Grandma...

Eating the green

Just a quick post, we are headed out to do some chores and cleanup in between rain showers, expected on and off rain all weekend.  We need it, but ugh, why does it have to be on the weekend?!

Lots of greens... this is an oil pan (not used for that LOL) if you know the size of that.  I harvested a whole pound of greens, and that's a lot for such a lightweight produce!  I took a bunch in to Loch's teacher since there is a whole bunch more that will have to be harvested as soon as we can eat it.  My little tester carrots I pulled are looking good, not much longer.

The peas are coming in!

Above, Oregon Sugar Pod II snow peas, below are Cascadia Snap peas.  They are both looking like they are going to be very productive over the next couple of weeks.

Enjoy your day!

Peas!

Only a few so far, and they aren't really ready yet, but I stole a few anyways.

For stir fry!  I am also getting down to the end of my frozen veggies from last season, so I think I'm starting to get how much we need to put away for our family.  I had plenty of peppers and beans, but definitely need more tomato sauce this year.

I had to do a little wildlife control on the front porch.  Despite my best bamboo skewer efforts, the darn sparrows are building nests in my newly planted baskets.  Luckily they were caught just as they were starting to build - they had just pushed my skewers out of the way, LOL!

More skewers, and we are back in business

I had to break out the big guns for the darn mahogany wasps.  They are huge, I hate them and their sting packs quite a punch.  I do everything I can for all the bees, but these guys have got to go, they always build their nests right over the front door and in the kids' fort.  They are the only guys who get the foam spa treatment around here :) 

I spent the better part of the day in the 2nd grade science classroom again, this age group is hilarious.  Today was the first time I had the "yuck" reaction to the herbs.  We had all kinds of herbs out for them to sniff and all we heard was "yuck" and "ewww"!  The first kid said it and then of course everyone else followed suit :)  The school I was in today has turned their little courtyard into a butterfly and bird habitat and are going to plant vegetables too this year.  When I asked what was going in to the little bed I was standing next to (about 2 x 2) I was told squash, LOL!  Guess those kids will get some entomology lessons too!

An Unexpected Harvest & Reviews!

Not sure why it was unexpected, other than it was 90 degrees at 8:30 am and I had only planned on watering the garden and then hiding out the rest of the day! Alas, the heat and humidity over the past week had other plans in store for me! Since my tomato issues had me preoccupied the whole week, other things were left on auto pilot and went unnoticed until today! Here they are, along with my personal observations since they are mostly all new varieties to me this year:

Today's Harvest

1.0 lbs carrots (Purple Haze, Cosmic Purple, St. Valery), 1.0 lbs Dragon Langerie Beans, 11 oz Heirloom Yellow Wax Beans, 4.5 lbs Peas

'Purple Haze' Carrots - hard as a rock, horrible tasting, my dog who loves carrots wouldn't eat them, will not grow again!

'Cosmic Purple' (don't have a close-up) are purple splashed with orange - while moderately interesting, had a tough core and not enough good about them to make me grow them again

'St. Valery' grew very well here, crunchy yet tender, carrot-ey, passed the Finnegan taste test so it must be good! This was free seed I got last year from Baker Creek, otherwise I wouldn't have grown it - will order more next year. I grew it last year, but didn't get a decent germination or harvest, Granny's seed mats made the difference this year!

I do understand that these may perform differently in other areas/zones, but for me, they are the hits and misses!

Dragon Langerie (Dragon's Tongue)

I know a lot of us jumped on this bandwagon this year, and how could I refuse the delightful photos in the seed catalogs? They must be hugely popular this year since mine were backordered for a long time. Other than their beauty on the vine, these fell short of expectations in my garden. They are beautiful however! Tip for picking, they lose color and get huge VERY quickly! The color is most intense while small, also more tender and tasty then. They do of course, lose color after cooking and in my opinion there are other beans that taste far superior. My summation: grow these if you want to have beautiful things in your garden during a outdoor dinner party as people walk around and ooh & ahhh over things, but in the kitchen they fell short for me.

Dragon's Tongue after blanching

Now on to what I consider the superstar bean of the century! Why have I never grown these before????

Heirloom Golden Wax Bean

I can't say enough about these - slender, pretty, great bean flavor, tender, the easiest bean to snap the ends off I have ever encountered. Bush bean that produces like a pole bean. I will be picking these daily from just 1/2 of a raised bed's worth. After blanching, no color loss, still snappy, I will definitely use these to mix with my green pole beans when they come in for beautiful bags of frozen beans in the winter, and they will make for great Dilly Beans once I am ready to start canning. For those that want to know, I got this seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, and I will be ordering more pronto. On the website, their picture looks like the beans are a little too mature for me, harvested skinny like mine they are extremely tasty and pretty! Tip for harvesting, don't wear polarized sunglasses, that's how I got some that were still light green, LOL!

(they still taste just as good this way)

Heirloom Golden Wax Bean - still gorgeous after blanching!

I could not have done all 5 lbs of peas today without my child laborers!

Marley underfoot while we are working, she had little green peas all over her by the time the kids were done shelling, I'm just glad they didn't spill the whole bowl on her, she might have actually woken up!

For those of you who wanted to see the Food Saver in action, here it is!

I put the entire harvest into the freezer today since the chances for me cooking a decent meal this weekend are non-existent! It is in the upper 90's so we will probably go to the beach tomorrow evening once it cools off and eat sandwiches.

What about tonight? The USO is putting on free concerts for a Military Appreciation Festival on the beach all weekend and tonight I will be toes-in-the-sand watching Hall & Oates! I am showing my age now, but I am excited to see them, and although they are old now guess what? So am I, LOL! And yes, the kids are coming with me! Should be a fun evening, even if a hot one!

Catching Up

Yippee!  Sailor/Farmer is back home again (for about a month) !  Even though he wasn't here to orchestrate a stress-free Mother's Day for me, we managed to have a good time anyways.  I took the kids and packed a picnic lunch and we headed to the beach for a couple of hours.  Without the husband to tell them how to act on Mother's Day, I had to improvise a bit.  When they started acting up and getting whiny I explained to them that they HAVE to act good on Mother's Day and when I was asked "why, Mommy?" I pulled out the big guns and told them that Santa watches them very carefully on this particular day!

While Charlie missed alot while he was gone, he managed to get here in time for the first peas being harvested from the garden.  Not a ton, but enough for dinner that night.

No time for rest, though...I am going through my first traumatic gardening event, and it's with my tomatoes!  Yes, the heirloom tomatoes I nurtured from seed for the last half of winter, and then GAVE AWAY the surplus that I didn't use...(note to self!).  I will give you the horrid details and then let you see for yourself.  There are 3 new raised beds this year, filled with delivered compost that hold ALL of my tomatoes.  They were planted about a month ago, and seem to be frozen in time.  They have not grown, but are not wilted, either.  The leaves started becoming a dark green, then yellow mottling that looked alot like sunburn.  I thought this was the case for awhile since the day after I planted them was the start of a week of mid 90's temps that lasted about 6 days that caught everyone around here by surprise.  They never seemed to recover.  The past few days shows mottling, the undersides of the leaves has deep accentuated veining.  I am about ready to pull them and take one to the extension office, but am not hopeful, since I have read a ton of tech manuals and disease id's and know about as much as they do at this point!  I freaked out over tomato mosaic virus, the worst, but know that it is rare and they were not exposed to tobacco contamination unless the virus was in the compost that was delivered (this virus lives in the soil for 10 years, yikes!)  I have also seen some pics that sort of resemble mine that describe a phosphorous or manganese deficiency, but I believe this is unlikely since I have been using seaweed/fish emulsion and top dressing with my own compost and all my other beds are really healthy.  Anyways, any ideas???  I know I should probably just rip them out and start over before whatever it is spreads, but it's so hard to do!  Here's the evidence...

One of the Brandywines:

Close-Up of Brandywine leaf:

The Black Krims and Black Truffles in the next bed are starting to show signs as well:

Pic showing tomato size after being in ground for over a month:
I should mention that the 2 extras I had that I planted in my old beds are doing well and are getting huge, and the ones I gave away to friends are doing great.  Is it possible there was something contaminating the fill for the beds I had delivered???  I hate to think of having to remove all the fill and dispose of it.  I guess if you garden long enough, something is bound to happen.  I may laugh about it one day, BUT NOT TODAY!

Planting peas...AT THE RIGHT TIME THIS YEAR!

The spring planting is officially underway!  I had good intentions of getting those peas in earlier this year, like February, and it is now March...but I feel good because last year it wasn't until April and the year before that in May!  Needless to say, the year I planted peas in May was completely ridiculous, since they wilted in the 90 degree heat as soon as they were about 12 inches high!  I blame that season on the fact that I had a 3 year old and 1 year old and still had not regenerated the brain cells lost in childbirth.  My best friend is only into her 2nd season gardening and had her act together, peas and all, before me...the nerve!  Anyway, after a week of sub-freezing temps and snow, we woke up this morning to a beautiful day, with highs in the 60's, and set about soaking our peas.  By afternoon, the kids were placing them gently, or should I say "chucking" them into the bed willy-nilly and getting as dirty as all little boys should be!  They are very proud and made sure I grabbed some shots of them planting the first crops of spring.  Here they are in all their glory-

                

                

We also are finally seeing bulbs!  I had never planted bulbs before, so last fall I ordered a bunch and Loch and I dug them all in, not really knowing what to expect...well, a few are up and I have no idea which ones they are or where the next one will pop up!  I didn't make notes on this particular venture, so all I know is there are a bunch of alliums somewhere...and "some other stuff".  It's fun every morning to "walk the estate" and look for these surprises! More photos to come on that...

We are finishing up readying the rental property this weekend, we have new tenants moving here from WA next week, so I may not post again for a few days.  A busy weekend filled with boring painting and cleaning up, but eagerly awaiting the return of rental income!