Caught in the Act

Someone has been digging in my newly seeded pots outside. I had a pretty good idea who it was but I couldn't prove it... Until now. I happened to glance out of the window earlier today and caught this rascal in the act. He knew he'd been caught and starting "clucking" at me. I then proceeded to scare him off of the porch.

Sleepy bunny out in the garden

I think my corriander is getting ready to be bagged. My book "Gardening in Iowa" says that when the seeds start to turn brown you should put a brown paper bag over it and tie a string around the bag. This is done to catch the seeds.



My Pepper plants are getting so big! they are almost as tall as my tomato plants. The habaneros are starting to really produce. None have turned colors yet though. I think my moms ok with that though. These might be a tad too hot for her. Jer said we should put them in just for her ( she did say she likes to eat hot stuff)

Harvest today: Lemon Boys,Better boys,bell pepper, green beans, lemon balm, and pinapple sage.

Heres a cute picture of Obama defending her spot on the coffe table. I havent gotten to take many pictures of the bunnies outside. I get out in the backyard and all of my attention turns to my gardening.

This is a really dark picture of a little cucumber. I always go out to check the garden before I go in for the night to see if I missed anything (If I dont get it the critters will) I found this little guy and a couple of his friends hanging out in the cucumber patch

Here's the harvest for today: 3 tomatoes, an eggplant, a banana pepper, and one yellow bell that refuses to turn yellow :(

Heres last nights dinner. It had so much garden items I just had to put it on here.

Porkchops in an orange sauce

Fresh Green Beans

Eggplant delight (my eggplant and my onions fried up and topped with cheese)

Lemon Boy tomato

Baked Spaghetti Squash ( from a neighbors garden)

Jer of course refused most of the vegetables, but he would at least try a little before he said no. He did however take a liking to the beans. Tonights dinner chicken noodle soup. Stuff used from my garden: onions,carrots, green beans

Yard Work and Powdery Mildew

I went out to the garden to inspect and collect yesterday, this is what I found. My cucumbers seem to have been affected by Powdery Mildew :( Everything I've read says to pull the affected leaves out. My plants aren't very big, if I pull more than 1 or 2 I'm afraid I wont have a plant left! I found a recipe for a baking soda mixtures that a couple people said might help. We'll see

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 quart of water

couple drops of liquid soap

We did lots of yard work yesterday. Robbie came over to help. This is him on our roof trying to clean out the gutters. They were really bad. There was even a newspaper up there! Apparently the tenants before us didn't feel this was anywhere near the top of their priority list. It was on ours though. Debris was catching at certain spots and making the gutters sag. Unfortunately one of those spots was right over our pond. Robbie was nice enough to help clean out the pond too. Our fishes love him I'm sure.

This is Jer with his new weed eater. He was excited to get out in the yard and use it. He had the weeds running in terror! Especially the ones on the neighbor guys side of the fence. I had Jer whack 'em because they kept creeping over into my garden. Other accomplishments from yesterday:

Cleaned out the garage

Put up new feeder (yes, another one)

Mowed everything, including in the bunny cage

Cleaned the grill

Here is my harvest for today. 2 Better Boys, 1 Lemon Boy (Isn't it pretty), and lots of lettuce. I decided to clear out the remainder of the lettuce because the kind I had left is really not my favorite. (Its Bibb and not arugula ) I'm going to seed the patch again maybe tomorrow with arugula, spinach, red and green lettuce. I'm still having issues with the shoulders of my red tomatoes being green. Here is what I found out from tomatocasual.com :

Intense heat or light is the culprit. Ways to prevent it are having good leaf cover, having a good potassium level, and selecting varieties that are not prone to green shoulders. If all else fails pick the tomato as it first begins to ripen and put it in a window.

Here is a July overview picture of my garden. I like the way it looks now. Everything looks in its place and there's not nearly as many weeds as there was a month ago. Still waiting on my garden gate. I think it will be almost perfect then. The ear of corn that you can see in the picture was attacked by what I'm assuming was raccoons. They tore through the husk to get to the little kernels inside. That does not bode well for corn next year.

This is one of my Tender Pick bush beans. The beans are almost ready to pick. I was told to wait until they are 5 inches long. The "test" bean i picked today was 4.5 inches. Looks like another day or 2 before harvest.

This plant volunteered itself in my front yard.Its right next to our pond and in a patch that i neglect to weed. Hence how it came about. A bag of squirrel feed got ripped open in that spot, so I think it came from that. It looks like maybe a pumpkin or a squash. Its got little tendril reaching out. I hope it flowers, maybe that will give me more clues as to what exactly it is.

Teasing the squirrels

Jer found this contraption at or local feed store. Hook corn cobs onto the screws and you've got entertainment for the next couple of hours. As the squirrel tries to get the cob, the contraption starts to spin. The end product is a very upset squirrel either clinging upside down to the cob, or laying on the ground. After a few go's of it though they usually manage to get a cob off and eat away. FYI forgot to make it to the store to get more corn cobs :(


This feeder is my peace offering for the squirrels I manage to tick off with the other contraption. I like to watch them eat from my living room window. It's especially neat when its raining or snowing. Every once in a while, the feeder will cause the critters to scrap. Yesterday one was inside eating and another came up from behind. The one inside tried to run out the closed side of the tea jar. Unfortunately for him there was glass there. He ended up almost knocking himself out and on his back trying to escape.

Harvest today: lots of eggplant, one less than spectacular tomato, and a similar pepper. I have a feeling more eggplant delite is on the way!

Massacre in the Backyard

As I walked out to my garden yesterday something seemed awry. Then it hit me. Try as I might, I couldn't stop the scream that came from my mouth "Oh my god they killed everything!" After that came the wailing. I'm still not completely sure as to why 911 was not called. Any spectators Ihad (and I'm sure I had them, the way I was going about) must have thought I found the dead body of a loved one in the back yard. Scattered about were the remnants of my tomato,pea,bean,carrot,beet,and cucumber plants. I have never been so upset in my life to be at the point of being physically sick... until yesterday. All that hard work gone. I thought of the many days I had worked until I couldn't move anymore. I thought of digging out the lawn in 35 degree temperatures. I thought of the money that had just flown right out the window. Then I was MAD. At this point if I had been the "They" I spoke of earlier I had run to the next county. Also at this point I began to understand completely why some murderers were allowed to plead mentally insane. While poor Jer tried to piece back together what was left of y garden, I was heading into the house. "They" knew they were in trouble as I opened the door. Everybody ran. At which point I was trying to think of how I would haul all of these animals to the pound.

Stepping back a couple hours, you would see 3 cute little fuzzballs being let out into the backyard. 1 of the fuzzballs being mine, while the other 2 were my parents. We had agreed to dog sit while my parents were away. No big. We had had the dogs over before, no problems. I let them out into the backyard as usual. They all began a game of tag. They most I feared at this point was that they might get out. (One had escaped a couple weeks back and had terrorised a neighboring golf course for 2 weeks)

Anyway, as I was packing the animals up (including another dog we were sitting, who had absolutely nothing to do with the mess outside) Jer walked in and tried to calm me down. I was hearing none of it though. I then preceded to try to pack up the cat (yes another innocent victim). Jer walked me back out to the garden. No it wasn't AS bad as I had thought, but it certainly wasn't good! Some of it was repairable. So that's what 8 hours of my day was spent doing yesterday. "repairing" my poor garden. Needless to say it looks very "thinned" out. I got some seed packets from Earl May (the only store within a 50 mile radius who still had them) to hopefully put something into the bare spots. I ended up with rainbow Swiss chard, 2 kinds of lettuce, spinach, yellow wax bush beans, and some silver dollar radish. I think I will still have room left. I'm not sure what else I will put in. Things I do have left are 4 better boy tomatoes, 2 Early girls (3 if you count 1 mangled, sad looking plant), 1 lemon boy, 1 very tore up German green tomato,some lettuce, 3/4 of my cucumbers, and 3/4 of my bush beans. My other stuff peppers, eggplant, pole beans, watermelon, strawberries, and herbs were left untouched. To upset yesterday to take pictures :( Here's the pics of the suspects of the "massacre". The 3rd dog Doesn't do much but lay out in the sun (hes very old) so I did not suspect him in the crime.

Wanted

Bubba

Copper

Lots to Talk About

We have gotton our 3rd round of baby sparrows. I thouht it was a little late in the season for them but apparently not. They are very hungry ( and loud) babies.

I got to my strawberry first! The critters did not get this one. And boy did it taste GOOD. Suckers

I was supposed to plant sweet corn for Jer, unfortauntly that didnt happen due to the fact that I had a need to expand my garden and that wont happen until next year. So when this volunteer corn stalk popped up I left it there just for him. ( I think the squirrels took a kernel from the feeder and decided this was agood spot to bury it) Somehow the cornstalk has a little corn on it. I wonder if it will get big enough to pick.

These are my bush beans. I thought they might never show any signs of getting ready to produce. Fortuantly they have begun to flower madly . I wonder how long it will be until I get some green beans? No sign of anything but reaching for the heavens with the pole beans.

I planted cucumbers a while back and was worried that maybe they had been started too late. Lucky for me Sherbondy's was having a sale. They too felt like cucmbers and such should have already been put int he ground so i got each plant for a $1. At the time they seemed much bigger than my plants at home. I went home later that day and planted both the store cucmbers and my cucumbers. Well, The store ones are flowering ( lots of flowers). However, the plants i seeded have buds and are just about the same size as the ones i bought. We will have to see which produces first. BTW: the top plant is the store one and the bottom picture with no bloom is mine.

I picked this last week but I thought it was so nice I'd share it with you now. I used the eggplants in eggplant delight. It was very good (Jer even said it smelled good, heaven forbid he actually taste it) It consisted of my eggplants and my onions fryed and topped with cheese. Sophie and Obama enjoyed the carrot tops, while I enjoyed the carrots. Today I picked lettuce, more banana peppers, peas, and some garlic chives. Oh and 1 eggplant

I got my first tomato last friday. It was off of one of my early girls. There was 1 more but something got it before I did. A storm last week toppled my early girls (bad stakes were used on those oops) Now I can not get them back up, they are too big. So now I'm left digging through them to find tomatoes. I found one that will most likley be ready tomarrow. Heres to hoping I get to it first.

My herb garden is lacking soil. I have neglected to repot some of my herbs :( Despite that my onion chives have flowered. I did get about half of my herbs into the garden before I ran out of room. The corriander is starting to seed, and my garlic chives are big compared to when i got them. My basil leaves alot to the imagination though. the leaves are itty bitty. Humph. I started it by seed a few months ago, maybe next time i will just buy it. My pinapple sage is going to have to be moved, it swallowed up my thyme and apple mint. I didnt imagine it would turn into a bush.

I decided to give beets a try in the garden. I put out some seed of Red Ace. These are some of the little sprouts that came up.Hopefully they are yummy. If not I hear Grandma Shirley likes them.

One of my strawberry plants decided to give it another go this week. I now have 3 little strawberries on it. Yum. Now this time I'm going to get to it before anything else does! I only got to eat 2 of the dozen that formed in the spring.Bird netting is a definant thing next year.