June 3, 2013 - Harvest Monday

June already!  We are finally beginning to get some warm weather.  Forecasts are for days in the mid-80s to low 90s, with night temperatures finally into the 50s.  Just one lovely, sunny day made the garden spring into growth.  I think the squash, beans and corn all doubled in size overnight!

Harvest weights have been slightly ahead of last year, thanks to the lettuce and strawberries.  Looking back, last year the harvest was more varied, and included some lovely carrots and beets.  My beets are getting close, but the carrots are a long way from ready.

I picked the last of the spring spinach on Saturday, then pulled the bolting plants and replaced them with seeds of beets and cabbage, and a few lettuce transplants.

We had a huge wilted spinach salad for dinner last night, along with freshly dug potatoes and freshly shelled peas that were made into creamed peas and new potatoes....pure heaven!  I also used a sweet onion in the salad, and Mr. Granny got strawberry shortcake with the latest small picking of berries.  The barbecued baby back ribs weren't bad either, but not from the garden of course.

I didn't photograph all of the strawberries.  I've just been getting a small bowl of them at each picking now, as I wait for their next big flush of fruit.  The "sugar snap" peas, that turned out to not be sugar snaps, are being used as shelling peas.  My refrigerator is filled with lettuce, and there is more ready to pick.  

This week's harvest:

Lettuce: 44.5 ounces

Onions: 10 ounces

Peas: 9.4 ounces

Potatoes: 30.7 ounces

Spinach:  22.7 ounces

Strawberries: 32.4 ounces

Total this week:  149.7 ounces ( 9.35 pounds)

Total to date:  31.1 pounds

Be sure to check out Daphne's Dandelions to see what others have harvested this week!

June 1, 2013 - Granny's Pot Garden

Not that kind of pot.  Wash your mind out with soap, LOL!

Some of the potted plants were getting too tall for the patio shelves, and Otto and Annie annihilate any bedding plants in this bed, so I moved a bunch of pots to fill in some of the bare spots.     I could have kept the basil and rosemary in their original places, but they get a bit more sunshine here than they did on the shelves.  The square pot on the right is temporary.  It holds a few lettuce seeds that will be transplanted into the main garden when/if they reach the right size.  Nothing of color here, so I stuck in a few marigolds between the pots.  I had planned on filling these beds with impatiens, but it never happened.  There was just too much to do this spring, so the flower beds got ignored.

A Monster in the Garden!

I saw something strange in the veggie garden this morning.  I went out to see what it was, and discovered this monster!  I had just cultivated that spot yesterday morning, and it wasn't there then!  I won't tell you what Mr. Granny said about it (wash his mind out with soap).  He did tell me I had better not put a picture of it on my blog!  I'm not into mushrooms, I've always compared the texture to that of chewing on rubber tires, but it does rather look like a morel.  Whatever it is, it's going into the garbage!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Aaron

Connell High School

Class of 2013

May 30, 2013 - The End of May Garden

It's the end of May, but it feels and looks like the end of April.  The weather has been 15-20 degrees below our normal for most of this month, and we've had a lot of wind.  These past couple of days we've also had quite a bit of rain, but the wind dries the soil out quickly.  The garden is growing, albeit slowly.  Potatoes, lettuce, spinach and strawberries have been the stars of the May garden, along with lilies, Sweet Williams and Johnny Jump-ups.  Surprisingly, the tomato plants have been growing quite well, and most are blossoming.  Several even have little tomatoes on them.  Same with the peppers.  The plants haven't grown much, but there are a lot of small peppers on them now.  Two beds of corn have suffered in the cold weather, but the third, an early variety, is growing well.  The beans aren't growing well at all, and they are plagued with insect damage. I keep planting bean seeds, thinking it has to warm up so they can grow quickly, but I'm not having much luck with them yet.

Random Garden Photos

May 29, 2013 - No Sugar, No Snap

It's a variety I've grown in the past.  I've loved the fact that the pods are stringless, tender and sweet.  It also grows only 3 feet high and is semi-leafless, which makes picking so easy.  I could hardly wait for my first harvest of lovely Sugar Lace Snap Peas!

It happened yesterday.  Just a handful for my dinner salad, but so many more on the vines!  The vines, which are 5 1/2 feet high now, not 3.  The vines that have a lot of green, and are definitely not semi-leafless.

I brought my handful of precious peas inside, and proceeded to snap off the ends of the pods.  TOUGH!  NO SNAP!  STRINGS!  I bit into one and it was tough and bitter, not a bit of sweetness.  I don't know what happened.  A couple of weeks ago I took one pod off of a vine and ate it right there in the garden, and it was fine.  These weren't over mature at all, as the tiny peas were just barely beginning to form in them.

I planted two packets of those seeds this spring.  I can see that some of the vines are shorter, the expected 3-3 1/2 foot height, while some reach nearly to the top of the kennel fence.  If it ever stops raining today, I'll go out and taste test from a short vine and a tall vine.  In the meantime, my dream of sweet, crisp sugar snaps has turned into a nightmare.

May 27, 2013 - Harvest Monday Addendum

This really should go on next week's post, but I couldn't wait.  You see, I'm impatient when it comes to my garden produce.  I've been looking at those lovely purple potato blossoms all week, and this morning curiosity got the best of me.  I carefully dug my fingers under and around one of the blossoming potato plants, and came up with...................

This!  The first potato for 2013!  

I didn't weigh it, it was too tiny to bother.  I just washed it off, stuck it in the microwave for one minute, cut it open and topped each half with a tiny dab of real butter and some salt and pepper, then ate it in four delicious little bites. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  No store bought potato could be that good!

May 27, 2013 - Harvest Monday

 5/20 - I picked these and cleaned them and forgot to weigh them!  It was a nice bag full for the freezer.

 5/24 - 5.5 ounces of Walla Walla Sweet onions to add to our salads.

5/24 -  I did remember to weigh these beauties!  That's 22.6 ounces of goodness.

 5/25 - 30.3 ounces of rhubarb.  Two cups of sliced rhubarb were made into a mini pie, and the remaining 4 cups were put in the freezer for two future mini pies.

Of course, every time I head out to the garden, the neighbor's Big Dog is at the fence waiting for me to bring him his cookies!

 5/26 - I needed room in the kennel garden for more carrots, so I pulled all the lettuce (there's plenty more in other areas of the garden)!  Most of it is Romaine, and the heads were big and beautiful.  That's a very large basket they are in!

 All cleaned up and in my largest pan (it won't even fit in my oven), the Romaine alone weighed just over 2 pounds.

 When I added the other varieties to it, I ended up with 69.4 ounces.  Such a pretty variety of leaves, don't you think?

5/26 - With the big basket emptied, I headed for the spinach patch.  Some of the spinach is on the verge of bolting already, so we need to enjoy it while we can.  This weighed in at 26.6 ounces.  As much as I love spinach in my salads, I think this is all heading for the pot.  I'm already begging my kids to take lettuce, I don't need even more salad greens!

This week's harvest:

Lettuce: 69.4 ounces

Onions: 5.5 ounces

Rhubarb: 30.3 ounces

Spinach:  26.6 ounces

Strawberries: 22.6 ounces

Total this week:  154.4 ounces ( 9.65 pounds)

Total to date:  21.74 pounds

Be sure to check out Daphne's Dandelions to see what others have harvested this week!

May 25, 2013 - A Few Garden Pretties

May 20, 2013 - Granny Junior

Before I pack up the laptop for tomorrow's trip, I must show you the new guardian of the garden.  The sparrows were taking their toll on the greens this morning, so something had to be done!  One broomstick, a nail and a piece of 1"x2", an old shirt, my sweat pants, a panty hose head with Mr. Granny's cap...................Granny Junior!

Can you see her standing out there?

Otto and Annie went crazy when they saw her!  Otto was pretty brave, but Annie did her barking from the protection of the patio.  Otto wouldn't stop barking at her, but see how fast that tail is wagging, LOL!  I can only hope the birds are as scared of her as Annie is.

The new car (it has 14 miles on the odometer already) is packed and ready to go.  The alarm is set for 5:00 a.m.  Granddaughter Alicia is coming over to dog sit with "the kids".  I'm taking the laptop, so if I get bored with all the down time I can always blog, or at least keep up with reading your blogs.  I'm ready for some fun!