Garden is (almost) DONE!

I spent the last week getting my raised beds weeded, tilled, built up higher and planted. The peas and beans sprouted before I was even done with the other boxes. I decided to try an experiment this year. Last year, I noticed that all of my beds (especially the one with the lettuce, swiss chard and radishes) had lots of earwigs. The ONE box that didn't have ANY bugs was the box with the onions. Hrmmm. Not even a grasshopper bothered that box. So I took the onions that had survived the winter and planted six of them in each box. Bug repellant that won't hurt my bees.

   

   I have my beans, peas, cabbage, bok choy, lettuce, asparagus, swiss chard, radishes, peppers, tomatoes, onions, and garlic all planted. I still want to plant a few Roma tomatoes, some cucumbers, squashes and corn. But the beds are done. 

   I found all of these slimy little mushrooms growing in one of my beds. In the desert. Who knew? I am going to leave them alone and just watch them for a while, our climate isn't friendly to mushrooms and I am not worried about them spreading or becoming a problem.

   We also added four fruit trees this year (along with the cherry tree we planted last fall). We got a peach tree, apricot tree, apple tree and plum tree. The bees will be very happy next year when they blossom. On the meantime, my neighbor is more than happy to share the fruit from her overloaded trees. She is noticing a big difference since I got the first hive.

Garden update

I went out of town for a week and my garden went CRAZY! My pumpkin plant has probably eight little pumpkins, this one is the biggest.

I have four or five little tiny watermelons.

Three deformed peppers, all on one plant.

Three of my sunflowers blossomed overnight. I will get better pics later.

My potatoes grew enough that it is time to add another box to the top. I couldn't get any closer because the bees get pretty pissed off when we mess with anything in the vicinity of their hive.

And I saved the best for last. This is my crazy, fast growing, gigantic tomato plant. All of my tomato plants have several green tomatoes on them but this particular plant just exploded. It is the same type of tomato, it gets the same amount of sun and water, but for some reason it is over twice the size of the other plants.

My corn is doing well but the wind keeps knocking the stalks down. I am going to build up the rows with more dirt tomorrow.

One of my chickens got out of the pen and made a dust bed in my new radishes and ate quite a bit of my lettuce and swiss chard. She's lucky she's one of my best layers or she might have ended up as soup. If she doesn't stay in the chicken pen, she will have to live in the empty dog run until after the harvest. My peas and beans doubled in size while I was gone and my onions are starting to blossom. (Do they need to be harvested before they do that?)

My carrots are almost big enough to start eating and my Jerusalem artichoke is getting a little bit taller.

Oh, the bounty of Summer

I've been canning a good amount of fruit lately. Mostly in the form of jams and pie fillings. In the next two weeks, both blueberries and raspberries will be in season. I have several things planned for both those berries, but I'm having a bit of trouble deciding what else I'd like to can. I didn't can aspargus like I wanted to, and frankly I'm a bit scared of my dilly beans (as in eating them without dying).

I get that canning fresh fruit now, you have it (in some form at least) during the winter. Obviously veggies and things are more $$ during the winter, and usually have been shipped in somewhere. But not being a child of canning (aka, my family didn't can anything) I'm really on the fence about how much canning to try for my first year. Is canned corn from home really that different then from the store?

If you can produce, fruits or meat (or meals like soups even) what to you see as the pros? Cons?