A "Summery" of the Garden

Here are some updated pictures of the garden!

The beans in the new bed in front of the house (I'm not sure what possessed me to want to plant more beans!!)

The potatoes (they're really small, I know. The soil has some deficiencies, but we'll work on building it up)

Romaine lettuce, yellow zucchini, volunteer zucchini and pole beans

Swiss chard! I planted a variety called "bright lights" and it's very pretty, with yellow, red, pink, purple and green stems/veins on the various plants.

 Onions, marigolds and beets

Basil and onions

Carrots and tomatoes!

Peppers and cukes (LOTS of cukes!)

 The new bed in back (we put a row cover on it for a little while) with kale and lettuce

 I tried sun-drying some kale to make kale chips. It worked pretty well until it started getting windy and blowing the dried kale away! I had to finish them in the dehydrator.

 It's an apple. It's an alien. It's kohlrabi!

The lettuce out back

This tomato looks like three growing together!

 Spinach (I'm surprised that this spinach actually grew over the summer! I guess it was cool enough for it up here)

I'm currently harvesting cucumbers every day, and yellow zucchini every other day or so. The beans are slowing down a bit, thankfully (since we have PLENTY of them already!). We have enough lettuce for us to eat about 10 salads per day...  most of the broccoli is in and processed, along with the cauliflower... what else. Oh yeah! We made our first batch of basil pesto! It is SOOO delicious. I should pick more of that soon. Anyways... let's just say I'm almost a vegetarian these days. :-) I even brought in a head of cabbage yesterday. That is significant because I thought that the cabbages were goners due to the out-of-control cabbage worms.

I'm happy that our garden this year has been very rewarding. We are greatly blessed with lots of produce!!

Just a Peek!

It's hard to capture the summertime in photos (especially at my house! ;-). Here's an attempt at it, in any case. Enjoy the pictures!

I went for a walk one of the two dirt roads that connects my house's road to the main route. It's actually rather scenic all year round, but the summer greenery and wildflowers add a lot to it.

On the way...

One of the splendid views along the way.

The road home.

A fine specimen of a butterfly

Queen Anne's lace

The little pond by the road.

In another post I will have photos of my "exploding" garden!  Let's just say we've put away enough beans (pole beans and bush beans) for... well, maybe two or three winters? :-) And with over 40 kale plants, which are all ready to be harvested, kale chips are definitely on the menu!

What's in the Garden?

I said that I would post pictures of the garden, so here they are!

The potatoes (the garlic is just past them)

The black seeded Simpson lettuce

Mesclun and more Simpson lettuce

The rather anemic-looking summer squashes (the soil needs more nitrogen in general)

Eggplant

Pole beans!

Romaine lettuce (some of which we already harvested)

Cabbage...

 

Onions and broccoli

The beets that mysteriously sprung up that I never actually planted right there...

Carrots!

Tomatoes and peppers (with radishes sprinkled in)

Pole beans (cucumbers are down at the end under the trellises)

Sad-looking sweet potato vines... :(

Snap peas

The basil bed

More onions!

More broccoli! (We have cauliflower growing, too)

And the garlic again!

We also got some strawberries from the farm, which will hopefully produce next year.

I am looking forward to raspberries! There are lots of plants growing in the woods in our backyard. I've already seen some tiny green berries.

We are being inundated with lettuce! It's nice being able to have salad for every meal, though! Some friends of ours are juicing theirs, they're getting so much. :-) We are going to attempt to make pesto out of garlic scapes and lettuce. Has anybody out there ever tried it?

My week in a few Words

When I don't have much time to write a full-blown post but I still want to update the blog, I may occasionally write a post that just summarizes what I've been up to lately. Stay tuned for posts expounding on the details!

Summer. Biking. Gardening. Friends. Church. Bible studies. Studying. Prayer. Birthdays. Volleyball. CYIA. CEF. Camp. Packing. Last minute. Clothes. Bonfire. Goji berries. Cocoa nibs. Sunshine. Enjoyment. Scripture.

How would you describe your week in a few words?

Pillar of Fire

I saw this unique rainbow in the sky today. It looked even more amazing in real life!

Waiting... but not for long!

Today was just too beautiful for words, so here are some photos!

(pardon the black spot in the upper right-hand corner of these photos... our poor little camera has suffered a lot of abuse! I suppose you could consider it a watermark... :-)

Here's the garden, waiting to be tilled and planted planted. Kale, Swiss chard, broccoli, bell peppers, onions, green beans, snap peas, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, zucchini and squash are some of the things we want to plant, in addition to the garlic, which took up residence last October. We already have peppers, onions and tomatoes started in little pots.

Here's the bonfire, waiting to be lit! Most of this brush came from the woods where Dad wants to put in another garden plot. The spot we have our current garden gets a bit wet, since it's in a lower elevation. We'll still use it this year, but we're hoping to have the other garden up and running next year.

Speaking of which, here is the site of garden 2.0.12! It doesn't look like much yet, but with a little (lot) of work, hopefully it will work out well for another garden spot.

Here's part of our lawn, waiting to be mowed! It's so refreshing looking out of the window and seeing GREEN instead of WHITE on the ground. Though I'm sure when summer comes I'll wish we had a little of that white stuff. :-)

Here's the recently-pruned lilac bush, waiting for flowers!

Here's the trusty weather station that never needs to wait for weather!

You can actually view the data from it here!

Here's one of the first few flowers in our flowerbeds, waiting for company.

They do say that two is company...

Speaking of which, Tucker kept me company on my photo expedition around the yard.

But he really doesn't like the sound the camera makes when you click the "shudder" button! :-)

So, there you have it! Spring at Green Gambrels.