The garden is doing very well. We've been battling some caterpillars on the cauliflowers and aphids on the peas, but all else seems well. In fact, the peas have ceased to produce (related to temps, not aphids) and we pulled them up yesterday. Here's a shot from the garden gate.
We've got squash. Three rows of hills. The first row has patty pan squash, the second has yeller squash, and the third has zucchini. We're predicting that we'll be eating homegrown yellow squash by the end of the week.
We're also reasonably close to having some tomatoes. We've got 9 plants and three different varieties. Three each of Cherokee Purple, Roma, and Yellow Pear. The romas seem to be leading the charge.
My special project is growing the heirloom peanuts. The seeds were given to me by a friend in the mountains of NC. The same guy who gave me the heirloom pumpkin seeds some of you are growing. He gave me three varieties of peanut seeds and thought these ones tasted best. I asked what they were and he said they're called, "the black ones". The skin of the nut looks very dark purple to black. Anyhow, the plants are having some leaf issues, but I have some flowering now.
We had quite an ordeal with finding the "land plaster" required for successful peanut growth. Land plaster is simply finely ground gypsum that supplies the peanuts with the calcium that makes them the most productive. When I lived in Whiteville, this was easily found at the local farm store. Up here, we visited 3 or 4 places before we finally found it at Martha's Farm and Garden in Smithfield. $6.50 for 10 pounds. You apply the land plaster when the peanuts start flowering.
Other than that, the peppers are flowering, the pole beans are growing, and the potatoes keep on keepin' on. The blackberry thicket we've been tending is also doing well. Should have some fresh blackberries before long. This photo shows only a small percentage of the total blackberries about to ripen.
And for those of you in the Inland Empire, this one's for you. Don't worry about the onion to the left, we've had a lot of rain, it'll perk right back up. This is one of my handful of Walla Walla sweet onions. Mmmmmm.
Lately, we've also started letting the chickens out to peck around in the yard. They make for pretty effective weed eaters. They've been working their way around the garden fence chewing up the long weeds along the edge.
I also caught the great shot below and so I thought I'd leave you all with this photo of three of the ladies hard at work.
1 comment:
Sounds like you're garden is doing way better than mine!
Just thought I would throw in my two cents struggling with aphids. I've found a squirt of dish soap in a spray bottle of water does wonders without using any other chemicals. Spray twice a day if it's a bad infestation, then once every day or two for two to four weeks.
The moisture alone (even rain) will knock a lot of aphids off the plant where they won't be able to feed and reproduce. The detergent in the dish soap kills the adults, but you need one or two reproduction cycles to get them all.
This mild detergent also seems pretty good for the plants themselves, as quite a few not infested themselves have really thrived with the treatment.
An even simpler solution I've discovered is to grow beans. The sticky underside of the leaves and outside of the pods catches nearby pests like natural fly paper. It's better for flying pests, but seems to help in the clearance of aphids from and area as well.
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