July and August are my least favorite months to garden. It’s hot and humid (95+ degrees, 90% humidity most days) and we’ve been gardening for 5 months already. We’re tired and the plants are tired. A lot of people in our area just go ahead and till up their gardens in July. We don’t, we try to get … Read more
The last few weeks my kitchen has been transformed into our canning kitchen. But we’re also doing some freezing and dehydrating. We’ve harvested 13 cantaloupes and I bet there are about 20 more on the vines. Esther was super excited to smell the first one we cut open. We’re eating one a day and have cut … Read more
Lots of stuff is growing in our little backyard right now. I thought I’d share a few pictures…. The pineapple is looking nice. I’m not sure how long it will take to get full grown, but we check it almost every day. The blueberries are kind of lame this year. I’m not sure why but it … Read more
After traveling this past weekend, I was glad to spend some time in the garden yesterday. It’s amazing to me just how relaxing piddling around is the garden is to me. Our Swiss Chard and kale are still growing well and have not gotten bitter yet. We’re enjoying them several times a week either sauteed, in soups … Read more
Sunday afternoon Carl called me on his way to a funeral and said, “The dewberries are ready. We need to go pick.” Can I just say, this is the worst possible week of the year for the dewberries to be ready? We have about a 2-3 week window of picking dewberries each year. We try … Read more
We’re supposed to have a couple of days of rain so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to go ahead and plant our green beans. Our average date of last frost was the 15th so I think we’ll be ok. I’m really, really hoping to get enough to can this year. Benjamin helped me … Read more
The garden is doing pretty good. We’ve had a few nights that we’ve had to cover our plants because the temps have dropped below freezing. Not much below freezing but enough to scorch the edges of leaves that don’t get covered. We’ve enjoyed fresh broccoli, lettuce, beets, kale and swiss chard. But our cabbage … Read more
Just a few days after I posted about our garden last month I went to water the garden only to find 2 completely empty boxes. The hens not only ate all the plants but took dirt baths and so messed up all of the seeds. Needless to say, they’ve lost their freedom of roaming the … Read more
We are slowly getting our fall garden in. My boys were kind enough to build me two 4’X8′ boxes for raised beds. These are beets and swiss chard. I’m going to confess and say that I’ve always thought I didn’t like beets. I think because I’ve only seen canned beets on a salad bar and … Read more
Over Labor Day weekend we worked on our fall garden. One of the great things about living so far south is that we can keep a garden going year round. The only months that it’s really hard is July and August usually we just get okra and peppers then. But that’s great for me because … Read more
One of my goals for 2012 was to have a complete garden planted by May because it gets too hot here to plant anything after May. So far, we’ve done pretty good especially since I was so distracted this spring. We’ve already harvested a lot of yellow squash, zucchini and white patty pan squash. I’m … Read more
One of the more fun surprises we’ve had since moving here is the discovery of our neighbors mulberry tree that over hangs on our property. It’s probably about 20 feet tall and full of berries. Everyday someone or several someones are picking berries. This is the new place that the ladder belongs. Also in this … Read more
Last week we were able to get our citrus trees planted. I can’t wait to see the area in a couple of years when the trees have filled out. We planted a Myer lemon, a Satsuma orange and a CaraCara orange (at least that’s what the man on the side of the road said it … Read more
When we began digging the potatoes the neighbor’s cows began to come to the fence and watch us. They are so funny. I’m sure they think the same thing about us. Notice those things hanging in the sky in the picture above. Those are clouds and rumor has it that they hold rain. Rain is … Read more
It reached 100 degrees here a couple of times this week – and that did not include the heat index. Rain also came through our area, we were driving back from a scout meeting in a town about 30 miles away and it hailed on us for about half of the way. We hurried home … Read more
This is what I brought in one afternoon. I’m not sure how one hen laid 2 eggs, but apparently she did? We harvested our corn on Saturday. We have 38 ears of corn with a few more still in the garden that were not ready yet. This was a great lesson in procrastination. One of … Read more
The dewberries are ripe and when the dewberries are ripe, you just have to rearrange your priorities and put picking berries at the top of the list. So far, we’ve picked about 6 gallons of berries. About half of that has been on our property. The berries are pretty small due to our drought conditions but … Read more
Several years ago I began compiling information about gardening in our area and putting it into a notebook. I listed each item we grew on its own page and when I would learn something new about that item I wrote it in my notebook. In the back of the book I had planning sketches of … Read more
We have had such a beautiful couple of weeks, it’s hard to believe that just the 2 weeks before that we had severe freezes going on. Those freezes did quite a bit of damage to our plants. I only cover the garden when it freezes, the other plants are on their own. I know, I … Read more