Journey11's Garden Journal 2014

Smart Red said:

Tell Ava that her melons look delicious. She did very well growing them. I've heard they develop their sweetness when stressed a bit by lack of water just before harvesting. Like I'd know!

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I think you are right on that. Everything here has had a very easy summer with plenty of rain to spare. I have never seen the lawn and garden looking so lush and green at the end of August!

That certainly makes it a great year for Ava to start serious gardening. Nothing to speed the addiction like a fantastic start to successful harvests.

That's my hope!

Train your children up in the way they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from it.

baymule said:

Train your children up in the way they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from it.

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We spent a lot of time worrying when we should have just walked in faith. I guess it was our impatience with the "when they are old" part.

A few garden pics from yesterday... Can't believe how green everything is for the end of August! It's just now heating up here. The hottest days we've had all summer have been the past few and Saturday's supposed to hit 96. The kids' pool sprung a leak, so I went and bought them another on sale today. It will finally be warm enough to get in it!

We're off to the beach next week. This might not have been the best time of year to go, but I've done a lot of canning, so I think I'll just let my mom come up and pick whatever she wants to can/freeze. We usually stop at the roadside stands in NC to buy produce for the week when we go, but this year I think I'll be bringing my own! Cantaloupe at least. 20 cantaloupe aren't just going to sit around that long and wait for me to come back.

The leaves are starting to die back in the pumpkin patch and reveal the goodies that have been hiding. I had written down what all I planted in there, but now I can't find the list. If I remember right, there was 'Big Moon' Pumpkins, Waltham butternut squash, Cushaw squash, Jumbo Pink Banana squash, Galeux d'Eysines ("peanut pumpkin") squash, Athena and one other type of cantaloupe, Crimson Sweet watermelon (don't think they did anything, overshadowed by the pumpkins) and Ananas D'Amerique A Chair Verte Melon (freebie from Baker Creek order, kinda like a honeydew) and there is one other green melon in there that somebody gave me and I forget now what it was.



Second planting of corn and mixed sunflowers in that blank spot I was holding have grown so fast, literally before my eyes. The Painted Mountain corn and the sweet corn of course tasseled at the same time and I was forced to cut the tassels off the PM. Felt like a betrayal. But the sweet corn will be more useful for us.



The sweet potato vines have run 6' or more in all directions. They are worse than weeds! I hope there is something tasty going on underneath all of that mess. It's been awfully cool this summer and I hear they don't grow well unless it's hot...(first time planting them.)



Ava's Button Box zinnias...


Peppers are finally getting down to business. I have Sheepnose Pimentos, Giant Red Marconi and the paprika peppers starting to turn red. Here's what I plant to do with the Pimentos...roasted red peppers preserved in EVOO.



Beauty Pod, a pole dry bean, sure lives up to it's name! (Thanks again, @marshallsmyth ) So pretty.

And my Hall of Shame moment....


In the 3 weeks I've been preoccupied with canning, summer festivities and the start of school, it has rained cats and dogs and given the weeds yet another opportunity to torment me. I've got a whole lotta weed pulling to do this weekend. They're in the pollen stage now and will shortly go to seed if I don't get on it quick. Absolutely insane the weeds here. DH has been bagging the lawn grass as he has mowed all summer and I have mulched and pulled weeds at least three other times. They're relentless!

I've got two wheelbarrow loads of tomatoes to run through the food strainer tomorrow. I'm just going to put it all in freezer bags for now and mess with it later after I get back from vacation. One more batch of cream-style corn and then on to beans the next few days. It's been a bountiful summer! Feeling very thankful, despite the long days of work.

Gardening where there is a good deal of summer rain looks rewarding, Journey. Obviously, you used excellent use of the time you were able to get out there! And, still making good use of indoor time. I hope you enjoy your time away on the coast .

I have wondered what it would be like to have so much growing season rain. It has been over 35 years since I gardened on the northern California coast. That hardly counts. Almost nowhere in the West is there much summer rain no matter what it does during the other seasons.

The newspaper in the nearby town where I lived had an article on this summer's forest fires that I was reading. In Eureka, California today, it will be 63° after a morning low of 53°. Of course, there will be continuous wind.

Their afternoon high is the pre-dawn temperature here right now. There are your almost impossibly cool gardening conditions, Journey. I remember lawns turning brown while ... well, nuthin' ... 'cept the wind, during months with no r's ...

Steve

digitS' said:

Gardening where there is a good deal of summer rain looks rewarding, Journey. Obviously, you used excellent use of the time you were able to get out there! And, still making good use of indoor time. I hope you enjoy your time away on the coast .

I have wondered what it would be like to have so much growing season rain. It has been over 35 years since I gardened on the northern California coast. That hardly counts. Almost nowhere in the West is there much summer rain no matter what it does during the other seasons.

The newspaper in the nearby town where I lived had an article on this summer's forest fires that I was reading. In Eureka, California today, it will be 63° after a morning low of 53°. Of course, there will be continuous wind.

Their afternoon high is the pre-dawn temperature here right now. There are your almost impossibly cool gardening conditions, Journey. I remember lawns turning brown while ... well, nuthin' ... 'cept the wind, during months with no r's ...

Steve

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It's interesting to see the layout on the TEG members map where most of us are gardening. Everyone is concentrated mostly on the West and East coasts, making you wonder if you couldn't grow a weed in some of those other places. And why isn't Florida represented? I thought they had year-round growing conditions... Surely someone down there has time to stop in and talk to us?

I remember one particularly devastating drought when I was a child where there were low reservoir levels and they really restricted our use of city water. It only lasted that one year. I really can't remember another real drought occurring here after that. I cannot imagine having those limitations for 3 years consecutively!

I try not to complain too much about the extra rain, because I know it's better than no rain and some of you guys would much rather work under those conditions. It comes with a few challenges of its own too though. I am starting to really consider the drainage in my garden and may need to dig some shallow channels along the side here and there to help prevent washout and run-off of all my hard-earned manure and compost. I've talked to DH about running drainage channels for the gutters to go to the big ditch by the road because we can't just them flow out into the yard anymore. Or maybe rain barrels... We're on top of a hill...you'd think it would just drain off. The clay holds on to a lot though. I had a little foresight to mound up the rows in my tomato patch because I anticipated it being too soggy, but then I ended up with swampy paths. Definitely need to do something there.

Really the slightly cooler and definitely less humid days of this particular summer had a lot to do with the garden doing so well this year. WV is notoriously humid on average and most years I battle a lot of fungal diseases, molds, mildews. As soon as it did reach "normal" summer temps and humidity for us just last week, I noticed the squash vines took powdery mildew and died back almost instantly. Other than mulching heavily and receiving consistent rainfall, I really just had a lucky roll of the dice this year.

Beauty Pod, @journey11 are true italian heirlooms, what I think is a mix of several italian family's heirloom borlotti pole beans, from sonoma county california