Saturday, August 13, 2016

Here is What Has Been Happening This Summer

This year I am doing more yard clean up.  If you ignore your yard a little or a lot for a year or two or three like I've done then you will have a lot of clean up.

June 7, I decided the pineapple plant that has been growing in a pot for years needed a bigger pot.  I was quite surprised when I saw the root system.
 
All the roots were short except one that wound around the bottom of the pot.


Hubby has been slowing cutting down the dying Pussy Willow bush that he kept trimming to grow like a tree.

The bottom is growing like crazy, but the doves are enjoying it as a new perch.  One is up high.  Is he looking at the one on the lower part of the stump?

Tuesday August 10, I went outside to pick more ripe tomatoes.

This is the third tomato I have found this way.  They are in the middle of the plant like this, so I know there is a tomato horned worm somewhere, but I cannot find him no-matter how much I look.  Hubby and I have both looked.  I'm picking the tomatoes while they are still orange and I'm getting them before the tomato horned worm.  There is another tomato plant next to this one.  I hope the worm doesn't find its way to that plant. 2014 was the first year that I saw tomato horned worms.  There were 3 on a plant in a pot on the front porch.  I haven't seen one again until this year.  I'm hunting this one tonight.

Some critter came for a food haul from the compost bucket.

The bucket is just inches away from the trailer fender.  Early the next morning this stash was nowhere to be found.  I must have interrupted his collecting adventure.  That is what happens to compost material when you don't keep it buried in non-critter-eatable material.

Look what I found at the edge of the garlic bed. They were mostly shaded by the wooden frame around the edge of the raised bed.

I've now know that if you leave your garlic in the sun for a month it will start turning green. LOL. I guess those will be some on the ones I replant soon for next years harvest.

August 11 I picked the last 65 pounds of peaches from my dying tree.

We have canned peaches, peach jam, peach syrup, and peach leather for this winter.

The cabbage and Brussels Sprouts from my neighbor are growing good.

I cut the bottom off of some buckets and put two around this plant.  When there was only one it kept blowing off and something kept eating all of the leaves.
I haven't covered the cabbage yet and so far there are no cabbage worms in it.  There will be tomorrow after saying there are none.  Isn't that how it goes?

Here is what my cabbage bed looked like last year and almost daily I found a cabbage looper moth trying to find her way out.  She had no problem getting in.  I killed more eggs and worms than I want to ever see again.


I want to know what is doing it's daily duty in my garden.

As you can see, it is dried and has fallen between the cabbage leaves.  I swear there are geese in my garden.  I am constantly dodging these geese sized land mines.


The lettuce is going to seed.

The lettuce is flowering and will soon be going to seed.  This year I will collect the seeds and not leave them in the paper bag for 2 months and let the bugs eat them all.  Little Freckles (the darker one) is my favorite lettuce and I planted the last of the seeds this year.

I planted potatoes in pots this year.

I covered the growing plants with soil in the 4 pots grouped together, but none have done well.  The two huge pots have grown even less.  I added a little soil once to those growing plants.  They didn't flower this year and are dying as small plants.  This seems to be the same problem a lot of people are having this year.


I dug up the dead plants and this is what I got.
The back left two are Kennebec (usually a large potato), the back right are Blue, and the front group are Yukon Gold.  I told Hubby that we should have eaten the seed potatoes.  They were a bigger crop that what has been harvested.


On a happy note:

This is the first year we have gotten Green Gage plums from our tree.  Hubby picked 6 more today.  They are hard to find on the tree, but the birds can't find them either.


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