Garden Planting - round 1

Round 1 of the garden went in today and I learned a few things about gardening this year vs last year. Nora is mobile and likes to eat dirt and also licked a few rocks and who knows what else. 

Fun times ahead... 

rows

1 Peas

2 peas

3 carrots 

4 beets

5 radishes 

Dirt eating champion 

Planting master 

Resting 

So many tomatoes

This year our garden has been quite possibly the best ever! We’ve had sooooo much produce that our freezer is fully stocked with vegetables and shelves with salsa and sauce. I’ve probably picked k we 700 tomatoes and hundreds and hundreds of little ones too. And I don’t even like tomatoes! But have found lots of yummy thing to try with them that I do. And we’ve given away lots. 

We’ve also had a bumper year or peppers. So many green , banana and jalapeños. I’m going to try pickling some this weekend. 

And new this year was carrots which have gotten a little crazy but taste great. 

And as always lots zucchini to mama bread and muffins which the girls love. 

Sauce Making

We’ve had a number crop of tomatoes and Ive been putting them to good use making salsa and sauce. And the girls have been super helpful and I love it. 

I’ve also been experimenting with roasting the tomatoes and making a couple variety of sauces. I’ll probably make 1 more batch. 

Garden update

Hands down our best garden ever! Helps when you don’t have much else to do. But we’ve kept up on wedding and picking and lots of freezing. So far we have like 10 bags of beans, 10 loaves of zucchini bread, 8+ of corn and then 8 cons of corn. And starting to steam and blend some baby food.  And so much m more to do yet. 

Garden is looking good

After we (I really should say Ryan) saved the garden, it's been doing awesome! We've had a great bean crop - my guess about 10 pounds of green beans and at least that many of yellow too. Huge summer squash. Huge zucchini. Lots of tomatoes on. Too many pumpkins to count. Tassels on the sweet corn. Flowers on the spaghetti squash. Nice look onions. A few jalapeño peppers.  It's gonna be a great year for RAD Farms.

And our helper!

Garden make over

Sunday we worked hard to save the garden.... Mostly Ryan.

First he had to weed whack the grass. Then we raked the grass out.  Finally he took the rototiller to it and made it look okay.

The before...

The after...

 

Still not as good as last year, but 100 times better than before.

We also ate our first summer squash crop. Very tasty on the grill. But oh my are we going to have a lot!

We've lost the garden

Last year our garden so squeaky clean... this year - not so much.  Not only did the deer find it after 2 days, grass and weeds have also found our garden.  The crops are there and look good but let's just say they are winning.  Have no fear, we are getting a rototiller and mark my words we will win the garden back.  You've been warned grass and weeds!

Our garden has been found

Rascally deer found our garden. Last year, we had no problems except the raccoons who ate our sweet corn but that wasn't until August.  Now 2 day after we planted it the tomatoes, cucumbers and spinach have been eaten.  So not happy.

Eaten tomato plant

Deer tracks

2013 Garden is in

Ryan and I spend a couple hours on Sunday getting the garden planted.  Greta helped by hanging out in the back of my car or the stroller.  She was a trooper.

We have lots of tomatos, peppers, peas, beans (green and yellow), onions, summer squash, spaghetti squash, watermelon, and some volunteer pumpkins.  Sweet corn still to come.

Ready for planting

The garden is officially ready to be planted. Julie and Jason brought down the tiller to work up the old garden and the new addition. Looks awesome! Now it just needs seeds to be planted.

Hedge Work

Mission for Sunday was yard work... and more specifically... take care of the ever growing hedge.  We have already trimmed it this year once and it was even taller now.  Ryan got himself a new attachment to use so he didn't have to use the chain saw again, which wasn't so easy last time.

While he took care of that, I did the lawn mowing, which isn't the most enjoyable thing to do for me these days.... but nonetheless I did it.

I made spaghetti sauce - by myself

My first attempt at making spaghetti sauce was 95% successful.  With a great recipe from Mom, who got it from Mrs. Worshkey (okay I spelled that horribly) - the best cook ever.  I say 95% because it's a little salty, but that's okay.  It's still tasty and next time I will not add all the salt but add in little bits and taste along the way.

I picked lots of tomatoes from our garden (and there is still lots more to go) and some teeny tiny onions.

Put them in the blender... and chopped them up.  Occasionally I added one of those tiny onions or chunks of the big on.

Then added it all to the big pot and let is boil and cook down for about 2 hours.  Then added the seasonings and unfortunately too much salt and let it cook a little longer.

The into the jars it went.  8 quarts and 1 pint.  Not bad for the my first batch.

Garden Disaster

So apparently while we were on vacation and not guarding our garden... the raccoon found it and destroyed almost all of our sweet corn.  Mary and clan found it when they stopped over to check on the house while we were out.  Luckily when we got back home I was able to find a few good cobs that were edible and they were yummy.  But the rest was hard and not sweet at all.

It has since gotten worse.  And we now have traps out there and they keep digging around them... but we haven't caught anything yet.

On a positive side... we have lots and lots and lots of tomatoes.  So many I'm not sure what to do with them all. And lots of pepper - so look out salsa and tomato sauce.  Mom... when you coming down to help?

Midweek Update

1. Ryan fixed the Chevelle last week.  Very proud of him and it didn't cost too much at all.  All it took was fixing some bad wiring by the previous owning.
2. Garden is going crazy!  We have beans on now - in a few days I'm thinking I will be picking them and starting to freeze one.  We have a couple corn cobs on.  I'm just hoping it's ready before we go to Alaska and not while we are in a Alaska.
3. We leave for Alaska in almost 2 weeks.  Where has the summer gone?!
4. Yesterday we set the record for temperature 102 degrees.  Where do we live again?
5. I miss summer when it was 80 and sunny.
6. I miss rain.  We need rain... lots and lots of rain.  Rain, rain, come our way!  There's a chance for tomorrow but I'm not holding my breath.  Some people got rain today, but of course we weren't one of them.
7. I mowed the grass on Saturday for the first time in a really long time.  Only did the front, and the back 40.  Not the middle 40 - it is completely dead.  Well the back 40 was too but it had lots of weeds that were driving me crazy.
8. I'm sick.  Boo for me!  Summer colds are the worst.
9. Work is crazy busy!  I feel like I'm drowning.
10. I ordered some pictures from shutterfly and they sucked.  Not going to order 4x6s from there anymore which stinks because they keep giving me free prints when they stink.  Oh well.
11. We had a brown out again last night and thus lost power.  Sucks with no power and 100 degrees.  But luckily we got it back on about midnight.  Let's hope that's the last time.

PS - Julie are the still reading... no comments lately? :-)

Holy Garden

So in the week we were gone on vacation, the garden blew up - in a good way though.  Check it out.  We have beans on, peas pods on, lots of green tomatoes, tassels on a corn stalks, and a pumpkins.

Lots of beans

Our first tassels

Holy pumpkin patch

 And our first pumpkin

Tomatoes... something is up with the leaves... all rolled up- have to do some research on that.

Finally peas

And more tomatoes.

Still waiting for some peppers to show up.  But we've already enjoyed some radishes, which are quite hot, but still good.