It's Been A Long While

It's been a long while since I posted last. What has kept us so busy is that we plant gardens in the Spring. This year, it seems they occupied our time more than usual. The problem is weeds. Lots and lots of weeds. Here in SC, we can have no weeds one day and the next day they start shooting up. I come home from work and pull some. Hubby, who is retired, pulls some during the day when he's not doing a chore or two. It's constant and unforgiving work. However, the upside is that we get veggies and fruit. Yeah!

First, let me say that we had a really wet Spring. We got a late start on planting and we didn't do too bad considering we couldn't plant when we wanted to. Some of the veggies couldn't recoup from the water and some died. That was our luck this year.

Here are some pics of what we started with this past Spring. I have a cage that I made for sweet potatoes. I didn't plant any this year, but I put my daikon seeds and a couple of potatoes that were sprouting in the house. I got only one daikon. The heat came and the rest bolted quickly. No potatoes. They died.

Daikon and Lonely Potato

 My hubby called this the "Indian Burial Ground". The teepees in the foreground are for pole beans. The teepees in the background are for cucumbers. The story here is our weather was really weird this year. We go rain and the cukes drowned, except for two plants. Those two plants gave us a few really nice cukes this summer. The pole beans, green beans and carrots were mowed down by rabbits in one night. They were only about 6" high and they were gone. Them pesky wabbits!

Indian Burial Ground

 Some of the best tools I own! Hubby had a broken rake that he was going to throw away. I asked if he would make me a 4-prong rake on a stick so I can get between plants. One day, he cut and welded and made these two. Boy can they yank weeds out of the ground with little effort!!!

Hubby's Hand Rakes

 Radishes and more radishes. I didn't think I'd get any because we have moles. The moles must not like radishes. We were grateful for these.

Radishes

 Here is one of our strawberry patches. We did really well this year with them. We had some slugs, rabbits, squirrels and birds getting to them. We managed to get about a pint to a quart every night when they started bearing. They bore clear into July. These are Ozark Beauty everbearers. Love them!

Ozark Beauty Strawberries

 My herb patch / nursery. Foreground large green patch is oregano. I harvested, dried and froze a lot for this Winter. Garlic chives looks like hair. This stays pretty much just like this all year 'round down here. Back right corner is thyme. I didn't get anything much from this this year. I don't use much thyme.

Herb Garden

More Radishes

We planted tomatoes, lettuce, yellow squash and mild banana peppers. The tomatoes are being scorched by the heat and the stinkbugs are mating and sucking the juice from them. Yuck! That really ruins the tomatoes. We got very little lettuce because of the heat scorching the leaves. The squash did well. The peppers are still bearing.

That was our Spring and Summer in our food garden.

Take care.

Gardening for Food

Ever since we've been married, we've been putting in a food garden every year. It all started with a couple of tomato plants and a couple of jalapeno plants. Our first garden gave us the biggest and best tomatos we've ever had. I also had so many jalapenos from two plants that I had to either freeze or can them. Here is another glimpse of what we have going this year.

Strawberry Patch - before weeding

Here is the strawberry patch before the second weeding. We have about 300 plants total among this and the raised beds. We have Ozark Beauty plants and they are everbearers. However, our weather in SC is too hot for them to bear as much as they are supposed to. But this year we've had a bang-up crop of berries. We've had two bearings and a third smaller bearing is coming up. We ate most of the berries and the birds and slugs had some too. I have enough berries in the freezer to make about 8 pints of jam. That is a favorite thing for me to eat with my homemade biscuits and a cup of freshly-brewed coffee. Yummmmm. Back to gardening.

Strawberry Patch - after weeding

Here are some of the lovely plants growing in the Back 40 garden.

Zucchini and Summer (Crookneck) Squash

Pattypan Squash

We finally got zucchini to grow. We had six summer squash plants last year and just three made it this year. One or two zucchini and two Pattypan plants. I guess the zucchini makes up for not having so any summer and pattypan squash this year. If you've never eaten Pattypan squash, you'd really love it because it is a nice fresh flavored squash. It is best eaten when the fruit is about 6" in diameter or the green tinge has just gone off of the white skin. If it grows too big, you have to peel it to eat it. The skin becomes very hard.

Cherry and Grape Tomatos

Cherry tomatos on the top right and grape tomatos on bottom left. We have eight plants of cherry tomatos and two plants of grape tomatos. Our other tomatos are a mixture of Mortgage Lifter and Better Boy plants. They are all doing well but we are having a few problems. Blossom end rot and rust. We've pulled about six plants already. We probably should pull at least two more with rust, but they have nice tomatos growing on them. I don't know how that will affect anything, but we have to be careful not to touch other plants when we've pulled leaves from the rusty plants. Don't compost rusted leaves. That's not good for the next round of tomato plants.

Beans (squash to the left)

Here are our green, pole and speckled beans. They are all bearing well, right now. It is so wonderful to have fresh veggies on the table. They taste so good! I will have to freeze some of the green beans. They are really producing.

Now, all of these plants can be planted again in our zone beginning in July. We've never done a second planting, but we will this year. Then we'll figure out our fall crop for the winter growing season. It's three season gardening down here.

Herbs and Nursery Garden

I love my fresh herbs. This is what I have growing this year. Garlic chives in the front right and oregano behind it. The small patch in the middle is thyme and basil is the large-leaved things behind that. Dill is the ferny stuff you see to the back left. My nursery items are a very small strawberry plant which grew to a massive plant with babies. Little pieces of sedum (variegated and green) and a lantana plant that I didn't think would amount to much. I'm considering one whole box of herbs for next year and one for the nursery items.

Well, I have dinner to make and a lot of housework to do. You betcha we're having green beans for dinner tonight!

Take care.