Fool Me Once, Shame on You...

Living in the north GA mountains like we do, I've learned a few things about the weather. You can't predict it, but you can try.

When I came here, Mel had this hard, fast rule of never planting anything in the ground until May 1st and nothing is planted by Halloween. I've fudged on that with potatoes, onions, garlic, and leeks as fall plantings in November (heavily mulched in). and as early as March, but these crops can take a little colder weather before springing back to life or going dormant for the winter. For the most part, I follow her rule. She's got a couple of years on me garden wise in this climate.

So last week when the temperatures soared into the 80s with consistent lows in the 60s, I waited to plant my heat loving crops like eggplant, tomatoes, and okra knowing the temperature was sure to drop again. Sure enough, it did, but this should be the last time unless the Polar Vortex gets absolutely nasty again. I don't think it will but you know what they saw about ASSUME.

Still we were tempted to air out the house on the days we could. We opened the outer doors leaving the screen doors closed. Our free ranging chicken decided to free range through the pet doors and venture inside. They have developed a taste for cat and dog kibble. No sooner did we chase one set out the back door another set would be entering through the front. Chinese fire drill anyone?

A week and a half ago, Mel caught a flu bug. We'd already been though the COVID so we knew it wasn't that. But still she was feverish, coughing and huddled under a throw which a subscriber sent us one Christmas. She didn't eat for three days. I pushed clear fluid on her augmented with bone broths, and my white clover jelly made into a tea. She had almost every pillow in the house propping up her back so she could sleep, but she slept sporadically and fitfully. She's on the mends now. Her fevers have broken for good. Me, whatever it was, I didn't get it Thank God for Kimchi and it's probotic and immuno-boosting powers! It's a good thing we laid in groceries before she got sick.

I've got my 6-month check in with my PCP this week. I imagine his office has been going nuts with all the updates from my other doctors. Lord knows, he shouldn't have to order any blood work. My left arm is still badly bruised and painful from my endarterectomy earlier this month. He'll just check that I'm still breathing and renew my prescriptions for my allergy meds.

That's it for this week. How's it been for you?

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Weather Woes for the Garden

We've been chomping at the bit for the weather to warm up a bit to start planting in the garden. For weeks now, we've had everything laid out for our Ruth Stout/no dig market garden ready. Tthe weather finally cooperated We had a week of warm spring like weather, but then here came the rain. Followed by another cool patch.  Isn't that always the way it works?

Now, we're watching for the weather to clear and warm back up. Oi Vey! At least the weather clears long enough to have a goof turn out for the Farmers market on Saturdays. Nothing is as miserable as packing the Blazer to go, setting up, and sitting at the market in rain with no customers save those who placed orders the week before.

We're spending our time starting more seeds, and crafting.  We're concentrating on planting summer crops now. We have trays of tomatoes, okra, peppers, and sweet corn started for us and the market. We've also propagated some roses and blueberry bushes from our own stock when we trimmed them in the fall to sell to transplant and sell at the market. Mel started her usual assortment of pansies, zinnias, and petunias to plant baskets for the front porch and to sell in our recycled pots just in case someone is not interested in just vegetables. It'll make our tent more interesting with spots of color.  By selling the plants, we won't be in direct competition with a long time vendor at the market who sells cut flowers. It's frowned upon by the vendors.  It also gibes us our independent niche.

We're hoping the weather will cooperate so we can get our spring garden planted soon before the GA heat makes it impossible to grow. With all this warmer weather the peach trees, wild violets, and strawberries are blooming. The area's dogwoods, red buds, and apple trees brighten the landscape with, pink and white blooms. Is there are better tell that spring is on its way? Of course, seeing a red breasted robin sings to me it's so although this one is more orange.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Garden/Market Ho!

We've got lift off or at least germination in our soil plugs. It's so exciting!! Many seedlings have their first leaves already thanks to a jump start I gave them that I found on YouTube. Actually, I've done this before with fruit trees, but not with vegetables before.

The jump start is soaking the seeds for at least 8 hours. They swell making them much easier to pick up and place on a damp paper towel. I put them in labeled baggies and let them sprout first, and then planted the sprouts in my seed starting mix (50% peat, 40% perlite, &10% compost) . Total time was one week Even long to germinate carrots are showing their first leaves! I was amazed because usually it take 2-3 weeks for them to reach this stage.

The plastic wrap came off the trays today and I turned on the grow lights. I positioned the lights (via the chains) to one foot away from the plants. By the germination-seedling rate, we should have a pretty good garden this year... if the weather cooperates.

Years ago I showed y'all how I made my soil block maker, didn't I? Yes, I did. It's here. I used my empty pill bottles that are 2" in diameter. I've since that time, made several of them. I can make six of them (3x2 layout) at a time. I tried a 4x2 layout but my hand wasn't big enough to make eight uniform blocks so I adapted the design to this. I connected them together with paint stirrer sticks. The double layer makes it sturdy. I simply drilled a hole in them and used a washer and nut to attach it. My hand easily stretches across the top bar to push it. I had perfect 2"x 3" soil blocks. Heck with paying $36 for a metal one. It's bad enough that I have to pay for my drugs every quarter (because I HAVE to have them), but sending all those plastic bottles to the landfill should be a crime. The 2" size will allow growth until several true leaves form. Then, the plants can go into the ground or container with ease. No pots to unmold or tear, just dig a hole and plop them in.

We're off to a good start for the spring garden and for selling transplants at the farmers market in two weeks. The market was very, very slow last yesterday. I blame it on the cooler temperatures and the rain.  Next Saturday will tell the tale it's supposed to be in the 60s and no rain.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Decision Made...Garden Ho!

 

After a week of yet another artic blast sending daytime and nighttime lows plummeting below freezing, I reached a decision about the garden. It's full steam ahead with seed starting this week. I just can't chance a long hot summer arriving too soon.

I've got some broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, napa, carrots, and onions planted into soil blocks. It's no where near what we'd need to be self sustainable, but it's something. Yes, I'm trying for a spring planting of my cabbages this year. I've ordered row covers to help protect them from the moths. I'm shooting for a 35% of our needs. That will be a pretty good start for these new sustainably bound crops. I rarely plant brassicas because the in season price makes it unnecessary. But things change and times are demanding I rethink this. I'd rather have some than none. If I get a fall season planting too, that'll increase our yield to 50%. 

The garlic and leeks beds have over wintered quite well under the thick hay mulch. As did the asparagus so far. I should be set at sustainable levels for garlic and leeks this year. I'll be dehydrating most of those harvests. I can always pull some up that have naturalized in the orchard area in a pinch. Oh, and all those yummy garlic scapes to cook with. I'll have to share a recipe with y'all for them on a Wednesday entry when it's time to harvest some in May.

We are watching and waiting for the chickens to start their spring laying glut of eggs. We are down to eight hens now. It's been a rough winter for them. At the peak of summer they numbered twenty-two. Mel is so fed up that she's lost interest in chicken farming as an income producer for the homestead. All the hens that went broody last year are dead so it will be interesting if any of the others will go broody this year. Now that Big Red, Rhode Island Red rooster, is entering his 4th year on this earth it'll be interesting to see if he's still fertile. I'll decide next month whether I want to bother and order some new chickens.  They won't start laying until summer. I still think it's good idea.

The quail are doing fabulous. We are now fully self sustainable in the little, dark meat birds in eggs and meat with just 25 quail for the two of us. In the spring, I may bump up their numbers to 50 and try to sell the eggs, hatching eggs, and breeding quads (3 hens and 1 roo).  I may just look into being certified for selling across state lines, but then again the way things started out last year and are continuing this year, I may do well just selling them in my five county area too. I wonder if the local livestock market will be open this year? They suspended all auctions last year because of the virus. But, there's always Craig's List. Or, I can just be happy that I'm self sustainable in one meat product.

Anyhow, I just thought you'd like to know what we're up to this week.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Planting the In Ground: To Garden or Not to Garden

 I'm facing the dilemma I do every year at this time, to plant my garden or wait. The nights no longer fall below freezing, but the daytime highs are still low. I planted potatoes and carrots, and it snowed. I started seeds are the temperature plummeted to highs in the forties for a week. The days warm up to the 60's one week and then we get another artic blast come through. The weather has been predictably unpredictable.

I looked into buying heat mats to go under my transplant trays. Bot, they want a pretty penny for them, don't they? I'd need at least five for my lettuces and brassicas alone not to mention the electricity to run them. There's also no guarantee that they'd last over a year of seed starting. 

Grow lights are a different story. It's just a question of replacing tubes as they burn out. Not that those are cheap, but they seldom go out all at once either. In my experience one or two out of twenty-four bulbs will burn out a season and the starters will be replaced about every three years or so. So I get a whole lot of bang for my buck. But the warming mats, it's all enclosed so if a wire inside breaks there's no way to fix it short of cutting it open and try gluing or taping it back together ruining the waterproof nature of the product. Water and electricity shouldn't be mixed, right? Not without at a minimum of tripping the circuit breaker, nasty shocks, never working properly,  or causing a fire.  So, it's basically trash and there foes money down the drain. 

I have a healthy respect for electricity. This was reinforced by an incident I experienced as a young teen. I was helping the servants buff the terrazzo floors. I grabbed the power cord to move it out of the way as I buffed. Unknown to me, there was a break in the cord and the protective wire coating had worn off from I assume was running over the cord while buffing the floors. All 240 volts shot into my hand. My fingers tightened around the cord and I couldn't let go (darn reflexes). When I finally let go, my index  through the ring fingers  were burned almost down to the bone along the first joints. I was lucky. I could have died. To this day, I have minimal use of those three fingers because of the scars. It's a permanent reminder of how dangerous electricity can be even with the US's dialed down 110. 

I think I'll err with caution and wait until the end of March or April before I plant outdoors.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Hello February! Let the Gardening Begin!

It's hard to believe we've already had a couple of months off from gardening. Maybe because we were laying out the new beds in the orchard until mid-December. It always seems to be a bigger and bigger push to get the garden to bed before Christmas. Although typically, it should be done around Halloween or the latest Thanksgiving. We just never seem to make it. I was still fresh harvesting Collards and Kale for New Year's day dinner. I could count on one hand how many daytime temperature highs were below freezing so the cockeyed weather continues. No snow until yesterday evening, and then we had a steady snow fall of large flakes for several hours for a total accumulation of a couple inches of white stuff on the ground. It just goes to show ya, winter ain't done with us yet.

So why am I talking about gardening? This week I sowed our Red Bliss and russet potatoes are planted in their hay bales with compost. Carrots, green peas, and a host of cool weather crops fill my shelves as soil plugs to germinate all snug within their plastic bag coverings. It's the excitement of the coming spring and it's contagious! Any homesteader, or even just the run of the mill gardener feels this way. We set up trays of seeds that we are looking forward to growing, harvesting, eating, and putting by. Anticipation is at an all time high. Yes, that's February!

Not much is actually planted in the ground yet, but in the next 60 days it will be and the race will be on once again to beat the bugs and weeds into submission.  So we might have a decent harvest to hedge against shortages and starvation. But from the later part of January, when our seeds were ordered and started arriving and now we dream of the abundant harvest and the lush, green plants to come. Somehow the bleak, gray days of Winter seems a bit brighter. Even though the hoped is sitting in trays of plugs that really won't show anything for a few weeks yet.

This is the beginning, it's a fresh start of the 2021 garden. It's an exciting time for us. One of hope and promise of good things to come. It's the first ten trays of  a multitude to follow. May all our gardening dreams come true in 2021.   

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

More on Implementing the Ruth Stout Method Comes to Screeching Stop and Alternative

The first order of business is to weed whack the garden down to the ground.

Then, we replaced the fence around the garden. Can you imagine the mess our free ranging chickens could do over time to our neatly partitioned rows?!!

We measured and mark the rows with stakes and string per market garden set-up guidelines, but expanded the walkways to 24" instead of 12" to allow for my converted toy box garden cart. Did I tell y'all about that? I found a plastic toy box at a thrift store that I paid $3 for. I added wheels from two upcycled tricycles, and a pull string (leftover clothes line).  On the back end, I fashioned a rack out of scrap 2x6s which holds my long handle tools like a hoe or shovels so I don't have to kneel. It holds all my hand tools a water jug, and a tray of plant starts to plant. I can sit on it to care and harvest my plants. The harvest can be piled inside for easy carrying. So I can go out for my mornings in the garden and work without traipsing back and forth for odds and ends. There's even a pocket slots inside to holds a glass of iced tea, and a bag with ice and a washcloth in it so when I take a break and cool down, I can just sit and take one. The slot pockets inside are held in place by loops screwed into the 2x6 board at the top and bottom so it doesn't move.

The next step (not Ruth Stout, but it can't hurt) is a layer of wet cardboard. It will feed the worms all winter too. We'll be doing the orchard area again too. All the rain we've had since last winter has eroded the tiers, somewhat. 

Think multitudes upon multitudes of hay bales gotten in eight bale lots. Why eight bales? That's all the will fit inside and on top of the Blazer. We'd attach a trailer, if we had one, the top of the access road was fixed by the owner. Luckily where we are getting the hay is only eight miles away round trip. One bale will cover a 3'x2' section of a 32' gardening row. Sixteen bales for one row times nine. That's just in the vegetable patch closest to the house. That's a lot of hay! Yes, the big rolls would be cheaper but the last time we did that, it almost killed us 60-ish old widows. 

That's as far as we got. Everything came to a screeching halt when Mel reminded me that we had other plans for this area. Now we have to undo all that we had done so far to relocate it all to a section of the orchard we had grown orchard grass in. Sigh! One step forward two back. We're still stuck on an area of the orchard to use that is accessible for me to use daily for the garden that already doesn't have a use. 

For now, I've done three rows behind the planned construction area and the house. The space measures 12'x 45' so it's not huge. For that we can use the square bales foe. This may be just a fresh eating patch until we make an area in the orchard accessible for me down on the third tier without using the tractor. To make it accessible for me will take steps and hand rails midway in the tiers. A winter project, if ever there was one. For that we'd need a roll of hay to produce enough vegetables in the orchard garden. Two would be better, but one will work. They'll be pulled apart cart load by cart load and placed where we need them. That's the plan for now anyhow.

We might be slower, but we're gittin'- r- done with age but, if CRAFT would stop occurring it would be faster. But at least the old garden area looks nice. Maybe, we'll plant some actual grass where to garden was in the spring? The soil is rich enough. It'll be nice to mow grass instead of just weeds until the buildings go up. 

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

 

Cold Storage in My Garden for Late Crops

Credit

I planted very little of a fall garden. I pulled 40 lbs of sweet and russet potatoes about two weeks early. The five heads of cabbages were cut also with a lot of extra leaves still attached. They were all smaller than I liked and the size they should be, but I had to pull them. I pulled about a dozen Danver half longs. That's all that were left in the garden.

I put three 2 lb heads of cabbage in my harvest basket with the carrots to rinse them outside and bring them inside. Wednesday's "Canning with Chef Jo" will tell the preserving of these. The rest of the hurry-up-before-the-big-freeze-hits harvesting lay in milk crates near the house in the garden. I'm cold cellaring them in place.

To cold cellar in place you need some items like styrofoam coolers. You know the kind you can pick up at any store. The cheap ones that keep drinks cool and hold your fish in. Yep, those are the ones. I'll stack the harvest in them. For this harvest, I'll only need about ten of them. 

I'll dig a trench about three feet deep and and three feet wide, and then line it with straw about a foot thick. Place the coolers about a foot apart in this trench. The tops of the coolers are even with the top edge of the trench. Back fill with a mixture of straw and dirt around the coolers until just the lid will be visible.

In the lids of each cooler, I'll stick in one- 1/2" x 3' PVC pipe and one 1/2"x 5' PVC pipe. One (5' length)will be placed at one side of the lid and go down in the cooler within 3" from the bottom. Fill the cooler with produce. The second piece (3' length)of PVC pipe will go on the opposite end of the lid just through the lid. This will create a fresh air intake and an out gassing pipe. Put lid on the coolers.

Cover the whole area with 1-1/2 feet of straw. Top with remaining soil. That's it. You've just created a cold cellar in place. Now if you get several feet of snow during the winter, you'll need to adjust the pipe lengths and the depth of straw covering. You do not want melted snow or ice getting into these pipes. It will rot your produce. I have done this method with an old, broken chest freezer to with some modifications.

During the winter months, you'll need to withdraw and check your stored produce weekly. You are watching for rot and mold. But only do this weekly or every two weeks for the cold storage to hold your produce for months. You may have noticed, I didn't wash my veggies before placing them in the coolers. I just brushed the excess dirt off them but left it alone. Washing the vegetables will promote decay. 

Just to prove how well this system works, my cousin lives in northern Nebraska. She told me about this method she garnered from our grandmother's journals. She has 8-9 months of cold weather. One year it started snowing on Halloween and it didn't get warm again (over 50 degrees) until the 4th of July! (They all went swimming on that 4th too! Brrr!) I can remember winters like that too, except I got smart and moved south. These older bones can't take that much cold. Here in the northeast GA mountains, it's six months tops and that's not very often. 

Y'all have a blessed day! 

Cockeyed Jo 

Still Time for Sweet and White Taters?

I may fail at this but I'm going to try and beat the odds. It's late August almost the end of summer with the first freeze date of October 26th. It a gamble.

So what am I doing? I've had russets and sweet potatoes sprouting all over the place. The humid Georgia summer is to blame. I planted them all this week. I must be insane, right? I planted vegetables that require 89-120 days to mature.

I'm second guessing Mother Nature here. But, check my reasoning. We've had some down right, cockeyed weather this year. Our spring had a late start. We had lows near or at freezing until mid June. So the summer heat didn't consistently really start until July. It's still in the 90s with lows in the 70s. So there's plenty of time until the projected freeze date for sweet potatoes to get some great growth on to form tubers. It's the same for potatoes, but they'll love the cooler temperatures. I'm banking on a day in the first freeze date being off by 30 days or close to it.

I'll dig up the tubers around Thanksgiving (US) giving them a full 90 days. The tubers will/may be smaller than if I had planted them at the proper time, but every mouthful counts in the lean times, AKA winter.

I may fail, but nothing ventured nothing gained. Worse comes to worst, I'll leave some of them in the ground and they'll put on new seed growth when the temperature is ripe for them to next year. I'll just mulch them heavily over winter and add compost in the spring. Or, I'll have a fabulous harvest. It's anybody's guess. Wish me luck.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Organic Fertilizers

Just because we grow our vegetables and fruits organically, doesn't mean we don't fertilize our gardens and orchard. We just don't use commercial fertilizers (nutrition made from chemical compounds) that are not organic, (plants or organic animal sourced ingredients).

For pretty close to four decades, I used rabbit manure both composted and fresh for my garden, as well as compost even in a suburban setting. That put tons of nitrogen and trace minerals in my soil for beautiful, lush green plants which grew fast. Since the rabbit poop was self contained, little, round pellets, it acted as a slow release mechanism doling out the good stuff over a few months as they decomposed. But for the first time this year, my garden is missing them. We have no meat or fiber rabbits on our homestead. Although we did have some when I mucked out the rabbitry for the last time this spring. So, I needed to find an alternate source for nitrogen rich pellets.

We live in zone 7, although you couldn't tell it from the weather this year. For most of us seveners, our spring gardens runs into our summer garden and our fall plantings runs into our summer gardens so we set aside spaces from our spring gardens to plant our fall gardens after after amending our spaces with compost and fertilizers. I usually amend the soil of our spring garden areas when I side dress the summer crops.

Since we don't have rabbit manure to use anymore and the chicken (hen house) waste hasn't reached its 6 months to a year's worth of composting yet, I was stuck with nothing to amend the garden patches with. The solution I fell back into my old urban fertilizer mixture to add to the area we set aside in our garden for fall planting.  I guess I should have tested the soil, but I pretty much knew what had been deleted from the previous planting.

My General All-Purpose Fertilizer Mix
(Broadcast spread over a 800 sq ft garden
Or, divide in half for 1 TBS side dressing plants)

Available @WalMart for $5

1-4 lb bag of Expert Gardener 4-4-4 organic fertilizer
1-3 lb bag of organic blood meal, 12-0-0
1- 3 lb bag of organic bone meal, 2-14-0
2 cup wood ash, for 13 essential nutrients
2 cups Epsom salts, for magnesium
2 cups egg shells, washed and ground into a powder,  for calcium

It's pretty balanced as most general fertilizers go. Extra nitrogen for plant growth and extra phosphorus for good root development. Magnesium is added because it's essential for calcium absorption. Calcium prevents root end rot in tomatoes and squashes. It also makes for healthier plants. In plants like broccoli, it boosts the nutritional calcium value in the end produce.

DISCLAIMER-I know you shouldn't mix nitrogen rich compounds with wood ash. It creates an ammonia gas, but I mix it and use it within 12 hours, and it's never seal and stored. Wood ash also raises the pH of the soil, but I use so little of it. The insect repellent qualities and the essential nutrients from the wood ash makes it a necessary ingredient to my mix. ***If in doubt, leave it out.*** Wood ash can be hand broad casted over the area separately and raked in.😀

So how does your garden grow?

Have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Picking Peaches

Ah, yes. It's summertime. When you can take a break from working outside, get a drink, and sit in the shade. That first sip of iced tea sizzles down your throat and into your stomach. It makes an almost audible hissing sound as it travels down.

About eight years ago, Mel watched a Youtube video about how to grow fruit trees from seeds. She started three peach, an apple, and a lemon tree seeds from produce she had purchased from the store. As they grew into quart, then three gallon sized containers, she began thinking of where she'd plant them. She decided to leave the lemon tree in the greenhouse because of the cold winters. She planted the apple tree out where the

Three peach trees in our garden.

orchard is now. It was later killed by the Bobcat when we terraced the orchard. The three peach trees were planted at the edge of the new side driveway. The garden didn't stretch as far as it does now. It was only for a year so she could move them when she figured out where she wanted them to go.

Fast forward five years, we now have an orchard area to plant the peaches in, but the peach trees have gotten so large we can't move them easily. She did top them off so the main trunk only reaches five foot. All three are planted together in a clump with barely a foot between the main trunks. Up until this year, all the peaches either fell prey to insects or squirrels. So, we never even tasted them.

This year was different. In spite of Mother Nature sending cold weather until June, we have an abundance of peaches that even the bugs, squirrels, and birds couldn't consume them all. They are smaller than usual, between a golf and tennis ball size, and quite tart. Yes, we finally got to taste our peaches!


It would probably take ten of them sliced to fill a pint sized jar with peaches. Currently, only one of the three trees have ripe fruit. The other two are loaded with green peaches. So we'd have no shortage of them if I wanted to do that. I haven't done anything in the way of fertilizer or cared for these trees in the five years I've been here. I didn't see the since in wasting my time and resources with these trees if we weren't getting anything from them. For five years, I've held off moving the trees or removing them out of my garden. But surprise, surprise! We have a bumper crop this year. So I'll be fertilizing them this year. Actually, we decided to take the smallest one out so the other two would have a better chance. We are seriously talking about moving them down to the orchard if next year's produce is larger and sweeter...if not all three will be cut down and we'll start over.

So what am I doing with all these tart little peaches? Well, I've been picking them. I've been dicing them up for jams and jellies. I've even halved some for cobblers and pie filling. All these things have loads of sugar added to them so the peaches being tart is a mute point. I will say our little peaches are packed with a great peachy flavor. It's a case that we've been gifted these peaches to harvest. It was totally unexpected. So as usual, it's waste not, want not, and see where it goes.

How to make money with just some ingenuity and a little bit of time? The year was 1991, I was a single mother, working my way through college with five children underfoot. I'd pick up cull peaches for free from other vendors. They were too bruised or weren't pretty enough to sell. The next week I'd have more peach jam to sell. Not to be out done, my children picked up corn husks and silk from other vendors. They made corn husk dolls and corn husk refrigerator magnets to sell too.

 What better way to serve a "Little bit of Georgia in every bite!" This is the tag line I came up with when I sold my peach jam at the farmers market. Tourist's snatched them up by the case load. Soon, other vendors offered to sell our wares for a percentage and I didn't have to get a stall at the market anymore. I just delivered 20 cases of jam to the vendor before the market opened and settled up after it closed. I also picked up their culled peaches. By the time the market closed down in October, I'd made enough money for my textbooks for two semesters, and my children had saved enough money for their own back to school supplies. How's that for cents making sense?

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Giving Up on the Garden for This Year, Sort of

The heat and no rain has killed my Roma tomatoes...ARGH! It didn't matter how much I watered them. Same was true for most of my summer garden. About the only plants that are doing fairly well is Mel's experiment bucket garden. My straight neck squash and zucchini finally put on some female and male flowers respectively. The only problem is they have no counterparts. I've never had such a bad gardening year. It only took three weeks of blistering heat and weed growth to do it.

But I have a plan for a better spring next year. What I don't plant in the fall will get a new foot of hay, a layer of compost, and at least 6" of fallen leaves (when they drop). I'll sprinkle the whole thing with nitrogen rich blood meal and let it cook for fall and winter. I'll do the same for the fall garden when I finish harvesting it and it will cook all winter. There should be very little of the weeds left by spring also. I hadn't planned building 8" more inches of soil but I gotta do something. Short of spraying an herbicide on it, I can't think of a better solution. Besides, the worms and other beneficial organism will love it. I'll be hitting up the orchard after the trees and bushes go dormant. I'll spike them with Jobe's Organic fertilizer stakes this year too for good measure. I want to sow amaranths and millet around where Mel has planned the new coops and runs for extra goodies for the chickens. We just love our chickens. It's also a good shield from predators.

I ain't tilling no more.  Uh, uh, no way, no how. I'll be saving pennies all fall and winter to afford more of the landscape fabric and pins. We'll also be investing (Haha! They're free) in more five gallon buckets to make Mel's experiment a reality in a big way for all my tomatoes and pepper plants. I'm thinking 40 more buckets and two more stands to start with. So we'll both have a busy winter projects. I'll probably splurge and buy a couple 1"x 10' PVC pipes even though we probably have something that we can make do with here, but I'm not sure if we have enough to do 40 pots. I've got to get another 1/2" PVC pipe for another quail triplex watering system anyhow.

This time, I plan on spreading the landscape fabric underneath the bucket benches. I sure got tired of pulling the weeds that kept growing up between the wire shelving, because we didn't do it in the spring.  Lesson learned. Isn't it amazing how we keep learning as we go in homesteading?! Even when we think we know it all we are still learning. That's what I love about this lifestyle.

So it's back to the drawing board for our organic garden, sort of, to get the weeds under control again. Honestly, it was time to pile on a fresh layer. It should be done every year and we skipped last year because I wasn't able to do it. Usually it's about 6" worth not 18", but it's been a couple of years. All that composting being done shrinks with time. Healthy, nutrient rich soil equals better produce, Over the winter, I'll also be sprinkling wood ash too.

Yes, next spring will begin a great gardening year, starting with revitalized soil and less weeds.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Is This Corn?

It's a little over my 5' waist in height. It's about 3' high at the most. It has tassels and silks. If it had been 6' or 7' tall I would have believed it to be corn. But. I dunno. I'm talking about my five lone plants in my corn patch. These are the five planted corn seeds that survived the chickens and the dogs out of twenty seeds that sprouted.

Getting them to grow to this stage has been a constant battle. The have been knocked over by the animals and storms repeatedly this growing season. I dutifully propped them back up trying to will them to survive. It's April's and May's unseasonable cold spell that I blame the stunted growth on. I've never seen corn so short. It will be amazing if the ears fully form. I did my usual bag pollination as soon as I notice the pollen falling to enhance a possible yield. There's only one ear per stalk though so I'm not holding my breath. It remains to be seen.

My straight neck yellow squash has put off showy male blossoms but no female flowers yet. Watch them be sterile. Now my zucchini is just the opposite, all female and no males. I've watched the fruits go unpollinated, turn brown and fall off the stems. The good news is that everything has survived the onslaught of Japanese beetles and so far, no sign of aphids nor squash beetles. But then, I've seen great flurries of ladybugs and lacy wings. I've even seen a few praying mantes. They have to be eating something. Since we've not been able to keep the grass mowed, I figure there's an abundance of food for them in the weeds. So far nothing has touched my tomato plants.

I had to water the plants this week for the first time in months. We've actually had a dry spell of dour days without rain! Although the ground is still moist a couple inches below the live ground cover (clover) they were a little thirsty and limp so I gave them some out of the rain barrel. With barely a cup and a half per plant, they stood taller and happier. The thunder rolling off in the distance tells me I won't have to worry about it tomorrow.

The heat index is in the 90s finally with the lows in the low 70s. It's definitely summer. I think I'm going to plant some more cucumber seeds tomorrow. It looked like stem rot or cut worms are nibbling the bases of my six plants.

Mel lost interest in her experimental garden when it didn't instantly didn't take off and it developed weeds. Sigh! I pulled the weeds, scratched in some bone and blood meal, and then added some organic 4-4-4 fertilizer to each bucket she planted. There's no such thing as a "no work" garden. It needs love and attention. The added boost has produced about a foot of growth in her experiment. She had planted wild flower seeds with the cucumbers and the have robust growth. 

In Mel's partial defense, she has building the new coop and run in the orchard. First she had to cut down the 5' weeds in the spot she wanted to place it into. No mean feat with only a hand sickle and no power tools. She picked up the wrong canisters at Lowes for our weed eater. She has since rectified it so the second coop and run will be easier. But loading sand and concrete cap blocks have to be done manually down to the second terraced level one load a a time in the cart. The cap blocks are the flooring for the 4'x8'coop and 4'x8'feed/straw storage building. Some 40 blocks later, they are all leveled and sanded in. The walls and the rest of the coop is just wood working, and for Mel, a piece of cake. She's definitely getting her exercise going up and down the 6' drop between tiers with first the blocks and bags of sand, and then the cut lumber. After the building goes up, she'll be digging the post holes for the 2x3 fencing for the run. It will be covered on five sides for the ultimate predator protection. We've got enough lumber and fencing around the homestead for the first one and egg sale money for the second one. The chickens are now laying an average a dozen eggs a day. We've set

aside monies for the next purchase of breed specific15 chickens for the coop nearest the house for a grow out area until they start laying. Then, the second chickens will go into the the coop and run on the third tier. By keeping two roosters with the 13 hens, we should have a good fertilization ratio to let the first batch of hens go broody. For of them have already tried to brood some eggs, but with no rooster with them, it was a wasted effort. The coop and run nearest the house will become the brooding/chick house. The chicks will either be sold or allowed to become layers. That's the plan, anyhow. So Mel's Poultry Farm is finally on it's way, and will continue to grow a bit smaller than she first thought, but it's going.

That's our update for the week...

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Green Beans Avalanche in my Homesteading Kitchen!

I'm up to my knees in baskets of picked green beans in my kitchen right now. I'm picking almost 20 lbs of them every other day. I'm not complaining mind you. I'm loving it! Last week I planted the final succession planting of bush green beans for the season. They'll be harvestable in early September. As one planting rotation peters out, the next one is ready to be harvested.

A 20lbs harvest will only fill 15 pint jars which means I'll be 4 jars short of a full load. I hate wasting the energy to can without a full canner load, but then I could use my smaller canner and just do multiple batches too which cuts into my time for other things. What I'll usually do is can a smaller load and save the unused green beans to can with the next 20 lb harvest. So every other batch is a small canner load. With the larger canner every third rotation uses every green bean for 19 full jars (a full big canner load) with no beans leftover. After so many years of doing this, I've got the math down pat. 😀

We need them to be able to eat greens beans twice a week until next harvest. This doesn't includes beans added into soups and casseroles. I calculated 104 pint jars for the two of us. We will eat one full jar in one meal unlike other vegetables that can be stretched over two meals. There's 3/4 of a pound of beans in each jar (1/2 a lb serving equals a little over 1/2 a cup for me and a 1/4 of a cup for Mel). We'd need a minimum of 78 lbs to fill 104 jars as just a side dish. But I need extra green beans for beef and chicken vegetables soups, fried green beans, green bean casseroles, etc.

I calculated 6 gallon bags of fried green beans are needed to go with sandwich type dinners. A one gallon bag makes four servings for us. I'll need five lbs for each of dozen jars of beef and chicken vegetable soups I can of which I'll make a total of 24 jars of each for stores. I'll need another 5 lbs for the vegetable based mixed vegetables jars for pot pies and the like. It's these little things that bring the total pounds needed to well over 100 lbs of this one vegetable and every other vegetable in the mix.

Sounds insane for only two people, doesn't it? But take a look at your consumption and you'll soon realize this is what it takes to feed someone for a year. In the mean time, there's the fresh eating of green beans twice a week while the harvest is ongoing too. We'll have almost six months of this going into the stores after the beans are all harvested and the plants are pulled for composting. We will have a six month worth of just in case like last year's garden failure. Keep in mind I'm also saving seed for the next planting too.

I read about the Ruth Stout method of gardening. I wish I knew someone who had horses. Manure and old hay would be a godsend for completing the orchard planting area. The expense of hay is one I'd like to do without, plus we don't have a truck to haul it anymore. I know people have them because I've seen them. We'd have to get a hitch and a trailer to be able to get it. Right now with the months of rain we've had, the main drive in of the driveway is washed out very badly. Nobody wants to chance messing up their trucks even attempting to come down it even with 4 wheel drive. And yet, we go up and down it in Mel's Blazer and the neighbor farther up the hill does too. Of course, we have no choice either if we have to leave. Sigh! It's always something.

Well, I've had enough resting of my foot. It's time to start canning again.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

Garden Update for Beginning of Summer

We are almost a week into summer and I thought I'd give you an over all update on the garden. I'm loving the weather now finally. It seems like summers of five years ago though not as hot. On average, from 7AM to 5PM it sunny and breezy. From about 6PM to 7AM it rains. My gardens are loving it too.

I'm two weeks into the green bean harvesting of the first planting of this vegetable and the second planting of four 4'x10' rows is just starting to come to size for picking. Since I'm planting the bush variety, they tend to all ripen within two to three weeks of each other. They'll get another burst of flowers but the harvest will be smaller. I planted my fourth succession planting two weeks ago and they are already ankle high. This will give me a continuous harvest until fall.

My sweet, bi-colored corn that I planted the beginning of spring is over waist high and doing wonderful. Unfortunately the dogs and chickens have wrecked so much havoc upon them only five out of twelve survived.  But that's okay. I filled in the spaces with baby, green limas and pumpkins to make it into another three sister grouping. I still have my three sisters sweet corn (30) that are doing well. If you remember two years ago, I got 30 ears of corn to can and freeze whole. I just pulled the last jar I canned. So even if I only get one savable ear plant I'll have plenty. The limas are putting out stringer towards the corn and are flowering. The squash is developing flowers too.

The temperature seems to have settled down again, although the nighttime lows are still in the 50s, I finally feel it's safe enough to plant my Roma tomatoes in the garden. While Mel planted heirloom Beefsteak tomatoes in her bucket garden experiment a couple months ago, They've just come out with their third set of true leaves. The weather really delayed them. Meanwhile, my Romas have had the  benefits of inside temperatures of 70+ degrees to grow in so they are bigger. No, they do not have tomatoes nor flowers on them yet. They have been on the porch steps for a week now so they are ready to go into the ground. I'll have to burn holes in the weed cloth a little bigger for them to fit and run the fence between the rows. None of my marigolds sprouted.😒 I guess the seeds were duds. I'll have to go to the garden store and purchase some to go around the tomatoes.

On Mel's experimental garden, only the green beans did not come up. I've replanted them with an extra yellow squash and two basil plants in the two empty buckets. As I said above, the growth was stunted somewhat because of the weather but they are doing well. The cucumbers are almost a foot tall and I gave them each a 5' stake to climb up. She planted wild flowers in the buckets also. I harvested some nasturtiums for some peppery high notes in our salads.

I split my rosemary plants between four truck tires along the front of the garden. They reseed or propagate themselves over time. I gave each plant a severe "haircut." Some I brought in to root to propagate and the rest I dehydrated. My stores needed the boost. So far I've dehydrate 5 lbs to fill a quart jar full. It always amazes me how little there is left after dehydrating. Next week, I'll be clipping some more for skewers for my grilled chicken. Yes, it will have grown long enough again to do this with by then.

I'm still cutting and replanting oregano into new spots. So far, I've harvested 8 lbs all from six little oregano plug packs three years ago. Of course, this herb reseeded and propagated itself many times over the years. I love perennial herbs for this very reason. I hardly do anything for them either. In early winter, before the first frost, I'll clip it all back to about 3" lengths, throw some well rotted compost on them, and cover them with straw. In the spring, I'll leave only a thin layer of straw on them, water them in well, and leave them alone. Soon, green stems and leaves begin forming again. It's instant oregano! Just add water and give them space to grow. It's so thick that it blocks most weed growth.

So the race is on to grow, harvest and stock the stores building out building again before the first freeze. I don't know if we'll make self-sufficiency levels because everything got such a late start, but I'm trying. All I know is canning season has begun for me with the green beans. May it continue for the next 4 or 5 months.

Our fruit trees are heavy with fruit even with the squirrels and birds. Our harvest season for the fruit trees are about a month behind the usual harvest seasons. The early fruit drops were minimal. Our peaches and apples are almost the size of baseballs now. I'm honestly looking forward to getting a harvest. The cherries should be ready next month, if the birds will leave them alone. We loped the middle trunks of each to five foot during the early dormant season last year. The blue berries are ripening so Mel and I grab a few ripe ones when we work on the new chicken coop and run in part of the orchard tiers. The raspberries, I'm sad to report, died back in winter and did not return. I'll need to replant them later in the summer or early fall. The grapes are having a slower start this year. Although I'll have grape leaves for pickles, they haven't even flowered yet. It's doubtful as to whether we get enough grapes to make Mel's (and Whirling Dervish's) wine ration this year, but there's still time.

Well, there's my beginning of summer garden update.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

 

Cooking with Chef Jo: Canning French Onion and Mushroom Soup

I've had two six packs of Yuengling beer sitting in my refrigerator forever just taking up space. I know one six-pack has been in there for five years because it was in the refrigerator when I got here. The second one was purchased by a friend of Mel's over a year ago. I don't know how long beer keeps but it still fizzed so I figured I'd use them. Of course, I'd asked Mel before I did. She said she didn't.  I could hear her now, "Soup is such a waste of good wine." Now, I haven't drank alcohol in 35+ years so I wasn't going to drink it.  Would you chance drinking it? I also had a surplus of onions that was starting to go soft that I had to deal with. I was thinking of dehydrating them or freezing them, but what I decided to do was a good way to use them too.

There are several recipes I could have made with the beer like beer battered fish or onion rings, but I couldn't use that much to empty my refrigerator of the beer. Unless I fried them and put them in the freezer. But, I was looking forward to a bumper crop of tomatoes too that would eat into my freezer space. My other one was filling fast with meat, a side at a time. I guess I could always can the meat to free up some space too.

I took one bottle and tried it making my French Onion and Mushroom Soup, instead of red wine, with it and it turned out fabulous. It went into a 8-serving batch. It cooked for hours at a simmer, so any possible alcohol that was left in it was a moot point. After dinner, I asked Mel if this was another recipe I could can up? Basically did she like it well enough and she gave a definite affirmative answer. To reinforce the affirmative answer, she added, "I could stomach having it at least once a month or more." I knew I had the answer for the 11 bottles of beer left in my refrigerator. It turned out so well that I thought I'd share the recipe with y'all.

I created a concentrated recipe so you'll have to add a half or full jar of water when you make it for a two servings depending on how much water you add of my canned soup recipe. I have to conserve space in my storage pantry out building. So one pint will make about four servings of soup or two very large servings. I also did the conversion for roast beef 'Better Than Bouillon' instead of beef bone broth for you if you didn't can your own because honestly, I debated whether to use my own bone broth or use the store bought version. 😄 Homemade beef bone broth, while healthier, would be expensive and could be used for other things.

Jo's French Onions and Mushroom Soup
Makes 16 pints or 8 quarts
What you'll need

10 lbs of onions, diced into 1/2" pieces*
4 lbs of mushrooms, I use a combination of baby bellas and white, shaved*
4TBS butter*
2TBS olive oil*
1 whole garlic bud, smashed and minced
12 bottles of lager type beer
2 TBS dried thyme*
3 Medium Bay leaves, or 2 large, or 6 small
4 qts water + 1-3.5oz  container of Better Than Bouillon roast beef
                                                                       OR
                                                             4 qts beef stock or beef bone broth
                                                             1/4 cup + 1TBS Worcestershire sauce, 5 ozs.
                                                             1 qt of water, divided
                                                             1 cup Clear-Jel
                                                             1 1/2 TBS noniodized salt*
                                                             2 TBS black pepper

Notes- * Most standard recipes for this soup calls for the onions to be thinly sliced, but I prefer dicing the onions so you get onions with every bite to the last drop of broth.
*To shave mushrooms either 1) use a mandolin, or use a knife, slicing the mushrooms paper thin. A food processor doesn't cut them thin enough for what I wanted.
*Use dried thyme for this recipe. With fresh thyme, first you'd need 4 TBS and when canned and stored the thyme breaks down to mush in over a year.
* Salt to taste or just below. Salt tends to intensifies while canning. Remember there is salt in the broth too.
*Oils and butter tend to be a no no when canning, but you will find very little of these left after the onions caramelize. Be sure to wipe your rims with vinegar just in case before putting the lids on. Mixing the oil and butter allows for a higher/longer cooking temperature.

 Putting it all together

• The day before, dice the onions, shave the mushrooms, and mince the garlic. Store in Ziplock bags separately in the refrigerator. Do this the night before because this step takes hours!
• In a large stock pot, place the oil and butter. Heat until melted.
• Place the onions in the oil mixture. Toss onions to coat. Turn the heat to medium low. Put lid on the pot. You won't be able to put all the onions in the pot in the beginning unless you have a very large commercial pot. No worries. The onions will shrink as they cook so you can add more.
• Add 2 tsp of salt, it will help the cooking onions break down faster.
• Stir about every ten minutes. Add additional onions in as space allows.
• Once all the onions are in the pot and cooked down, remove the lid and increase the time in between stirs to every fifteen minutes. 
• Gradually as you stir you will notice a color change to your cooking onions.  They will begin to caramelize and turn yellow. This step will take 45 minutes to an hour. Add the garlic and the mushrooms, and stir well. Continue cooking with lid off for ten minutes.
• Increase temperature to medium. Add the beer to the onion mixture and continue cooking until most of the liquid has simmered away...approximately 30 minutes. Stirring occasionally.
• While the liquid is simmering away in the onions, prepare the soup base.
• Pour beef stock in another pot.
• Add Worcestershire sauce and pepper. Add enough salt until you barely taste it. Remember you salted the onions already. Bring to a boil.
• Add 2 cups of water to the pot.
• Mix clear-jel to the remaining 2 cups of water and dissolve into a slurry.
• Add clear-jel slurry to the broth by halves. Bring to a boil while stirring. Check the consistency.
• Add more clear-jel 1/4 cup at a time. Bringing the mixture to a boil after each addition.
• When the consistency is like a thin gravy, stop adding the clear-jel.
• Stir well.
• Taste it for salt. Remember to err on the side of not quite enough. You can add more when preparing to eat it. Mozzarella cheese is fairly salty.
• Ladle soup into hot jars. The onions will sink to the bottom of the jars. Ideally, you will have 1/3 to half each jar full onions.
• Wipe, lid, and ring the jars finger (armpit)tight and place in the pressure canner.
• Pressure can, weighted for your altitude, 45 minutes for pints or 60 minutes for quarts.

To serve- place in a saucepan with half to a full jar of water. Bring to a full boil. Taste for
salt and adjust to taste. Toast a thick slice of baguette until crisp. Pour soup into an oven safe container. Be sure to divide onions evenly between servings. Top with the baguette. Place a thick slice of mozzarella cheese. Place under the broiler until the cheese is toasted and melted. Serve hot.

This recipe is time consuming but well worth it!  It can also be used in other recipes too. I served this with a green salad. With all that beef flavor and goodness, what else do you need? Oh, I also made strawberry mug "shortcakes" for dessert. Ya gotta have something sweet, right?

Y'all have a blessed day!

  Chef Jo

Crazy Weather Affecting Plant Growth

It used to be that you could predict the weather by the seasons. Especially here in Georgia. Even though I moved to the northern part of the state, it's still Georgia. Maybe it's the climate change, but the past few years it's been insane. You can't predict nothing.

In the past three years we've had...

• 100+ days of drought.
• A category 1 hurricane hit us in these mountains.
• Torrential downpours, flooding, washed out roads, etc even in these mountains.
• Snow and ice in March and April.
• Unseasonably late cold snaps.
• Unseasonably late or no seasonal changes (a two day spring and fall)

This year alone, it's the normal expected temperature for a few days or maybe a week, and then it's be cold again. Our poor garden doesn't know what's going on either.  It's supposed to be summer. But yet, the weather went from a normal highs in the 80s & 90s to a high of maybe 70 for a week, and then back again.

My heat loving veges like tomatoes, okra, squashes, peppers, eggplant, and melons are happily dancing in the sun producing flowers and fruit one week to having their leaves curl up and dying off the next. We experienced gardeners are left scratching our heads at a loss of what to do, what to plant, and praying that we get a crop this year. Others, who just started gardening this year, are wondering if the "new age of victory gardens" is a cruel joke and are disheartened.

I mean normally by now, I'm in shorts and tank tops, and praying for a cool breeze. I still haven't packed up my flannel shirts in various thicknesses. Every time I wash them all intent on packing them away, the weather turns cooler again and I'm grabbing them again. It's the end of June already!

Does this mean we are facing a later longer fall season? Your guess is as good as mine. There is no second guessing Mother Nature. Of course, with greenhouses you could combat some of this unpredictability. If this month was any indicator, I would have raised or lowered the vent sides four times or replaced the plastic with shade cloth and back again. My corn (and other plants) will be knee high by the 4th of July but will be stunted in growth with this weather.

Bees and other pollinating insects do not like the cooler temperature either. Many a morning (earlier than 9AM), I'm finding bumble bees in my garden on the ground too cold to fly. I'll gently pick them u in my gloved hand to warm them. Once they are warmed, they'll fly away and get busy. If they don't work, we don't eat. Yes, it's taking my life in my hand to do this. I've already stated in here that I'm highly allergic to bees on this blog, but if they get too cold, they'll die and I need them. The sun has been up a few hours already, but they are still too cold to fly. It's summer fer God's sake! Luckily the smaller bees and wasps that frequent our garden are busily working on my green beans, peas, and other vegetables that are flowering. And yes, even though it's almost July, my English peas are still growing and flowering! My lettuces and spinach still haven't bolted yet. I'm still waiting for my potatoes to flower. I should have harvested them by now. At this rate, it will be time to plant my fall rotation of cooler weather  crops again by the time these spring garden plants die off and are fully harvested. Is that insane or what?

I know it's the same all over the country because I read other bloggers. Except for maybe Florida, Texas, or California... farmers are complaining. Meanwhile, my orchard grass needs to be cut, dried, and baled. We don't have rabbits anymore that will need to eat it. Sigh! The only high point in gardening this year is a mute point. Only the

her blog

grass crops are doing well. We really don't eat the grasses, but we may have to learn. As much rain as we've had I should have planted the upland rices like Leigh over at 5 Acres and a Dream did, but I didn't. Isn't hindsight wonderful?! But it all goes back to how unpredictable the weather has been.

 
Well enough complaining and back to work in the garden and the critters. We've had a total of two of Mel's hens get loose and are now part of Big Red's harem. I have no idea where they are laying their eggs and I'm not about to challenge him again to get them back with the rest of the girls. It took me almost three weeks for the puncture wounds to heal from our last battle.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo

English Peas- Disappointing Harvest

Harvest hopes dashed!

I'm not sure what I did wrong, but my projected harvest for English peas is way off. I'm averaging one to two peas per pod versus 6-10 peas per pod. The harvest started out well, but has now dwindled down to this. I'm thoroughly disappointed. Even with 99% germination of the seeds, there's no way I'll meet my goal of self sufficiency in this vegetables unless we have a very productive fall crop.

I believe part of the problem was over worked pollinators. When the peas flowered there was direct competition from the peach trees, apple trees, clover, and assorted other things in bloom. I wish I wasn't so allergic to bees. I'd keep a hive or two. Even after four years of being here and eating local honey, I still have to grab my Epi-pen when popped by the local population. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen once or twice a gardening season.  Epi-pens ain't cheap. If my airway didn't  try to close off with swelling, even when stung on the leg, I would bother, but it does. Anyone with this severe reaction has no business being around bees, but they are a necessary evil for a garden.

The other part of the problem was the seed itself. While I got 99% germination. I'd never planted this variety before. The variety, Lincoln, I usually planted was sold out when I purchased the seed. I had to go with an unknown heritage variety. Needless to say, I won't be buying it again. It had a no star rating. Now, I know why. But at the time, there was no other choice. At least I made up for the cost of the seed...just barely. Lesson learned! 

Meanwhile, the first plantings of Tendergreen bush green beans have flowered and the bees are busy with those. I'm getting ready this week to add compost and plant another three 8' rows more this week. The first plantings of sweet corn that survived the chickens and dogs will be knee high by the 4th of July while the second planting of the 3-sister mounds will be a little over mid shin worth of growth. The dent corn is once again planted in the orchard area.  It is at mid shin level, I'm not worried about it though. It'll catch up and be harvested before the first frost. The black eyed peas, kidney and lima beans, and the squashes have sprouted They look to be strong shoots. I've sowed the pumpkin seeds closest to the far end of the garden from the house. They'll have plenty of room to spread out. 

The cantaloupe and watermelon have been once again trellised to grow vertically once again on the repurposed metal DVD rack Mel picked up at a store closing liquidation sale, No sign of rust in 7 years of use outdoors and its bear to move. More than enough support for two Sugar Baby watermelons and cantaloupes on each 3'x 6' side. It's easy to train the vines up the rack.

I'm still hoping to produce enough to get us by for at least a year. Here. we're crossing our fingers for no more disappointing harvests.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo