Garden and Yard Updates 7-20-14

Here are pictures of what is happening in my garden and yard.

The Champion radishes I planted Thursday are starting to germinate.

Little Freckles Lettuce planted the same day is starting to germinate also.

The strawberry plants are are going to survive the transplant are growing now.

This group has a lot of runners.  I am happy to see them.  On some of the runners I put dirt over the stem, just behind the new plant, so the runner will stay in place and the new plant will root.

I didn't put cages around my tomatoes, so you have to look around in the plants.  I found a few Sun Sugar tomatoes today.  Sun Sugar are the sweetest tomatoes I have ever eaten.

More are in the tomato plant jungle.

Even more hiding.

More on the last side.  It is too bad that Sun Sugar tomatoes are a hybrid.

 This fatty is heading to his summer home.

Under this giant grapevine is the summer home.  It is cool, big, and comes with food.  The baby quail have a hard time getting up over the cement block.

Lots of orange bell peppers in the making.  I picked off all of the flowers until the plants got bigger this year.

Here they are from the other side of the plant.

These are Red Hot Cherry.  One of Hubby's choices.  He likes hot peppers.  There are a few round green balls in there.

Another hot pepper he chose.  These are Mucho Nacho Jalapeno peppers.  These are hard to see too.  Mostly they are in the center.

My Soapwort is starting to bloom.  I will have to make some soap from it.  I looked on-line for directions and it looks easy enough to do.

This is the bed where the squirrel ate all of the Grape Hyacinthe.  All of the Morning Glories growing here are seeds that dropped last year.

If the middle of the Morning Glories is a We Be Little pumpkin plant.  I didn't know flowers would be coming up when I planted the pumpkin there.

This is the view out of my kitchen window.  I enjoy doing dishes when I can look out at my view.  This is slightly to the left.

Looking almost straight out the kitchen window.

Looking slightly to the right out the kitchen window.

September Garden Pictures Finally Posted

This working for a living is really interfering with my blogging fun.  LOL.  Here are some pictures I have wanted to post for a while.

The beets I harvested the day this picture was taken.  Notice the heart shaped one and the one with two tops.

My poor Big Max Pumpkin will never be big enough to carve.

The garlic is growing very well.  I later covered it with netting because the quail were digging their holes to sit in around it and dug some up.  Last week I found most of the garlic tops eaten to about 1/2 inch above the soil.  What I thought were chipmunks, and have since found out are Antelope squirrels, are eating them.  Now the netting is raised off of the ground so they can't eat any more garlic.

The grapes are getting ready to pick.  Picked the grapes the third week of October.  We made 20 quarts of juice out of approximately 65 pounds of grapes (stems included in weight).

The cool weather gave me the best crop of onions I have ever had. I was so proud of my big onions until:

My mom's onion was placed next to my onions.  We both grew Walla Walla onions.

A close up of mom's onion.  Five inches across.

My bell peppers are on the plant.  Mom's bell peppers are sitting in the pot.  Gardening in the high desert region of Nevada is a lot of work.

 The refrigerator drawer full of potatoes from Mom's garden.

A close up of the biggest one.  All of  my potatoes were tiny and most of the plants died.

More Garden update 6-16

These are the Cal White and the red potatoes.  The Cal White were the ones my husband bought that had long sprouts when we planted them.  The red ones were little ones I saved from last years crop.  The red ones have almost caught up with the white ones in size.

The blue potatoes are almost as big as the red.  The Yukon Gold have died.  I have decide that Yukon Gold potatoes do better with less water.  I have dug into the ground around all of the potatoes and the moisture is the same around all of them.  But the Yukon Gold have turned to mush.

These are Yukon Gold in the tote.  They are not doing very well.  I have raised this tote off of the ground so that the water can drain out of the crack in the bottom better.  The littlest one is now dead.  I hope the rest make it.

Planted green (actually purple) beans and a few beets in this bed on June 9.  This is the bed that the dove I was following around and taking picture of likes to dig holes in and sit.  I covered it with window screens to keep the dove out.  I have to cover the warm weather crops like this every year, because the birds eat the newly germinated plants.  Well for the first time the dove went under the edge of the screen and dug a hole to sit in.

The window screens are now on the ground to keep the dove out.

The bell peppers I planted in pots in the front yard the middle of  May look the same as when I planted them.

The chamomile has died.  I planted new seeds about a week ago and they are starting to germinate.  They are too tiny to see here.  What is the problem this year?

I have harvested a dozen or so basil leaves twice.  The plants look terrible and a few are starting to flower.  I picked off the flowers and hope I can keep them alive.  I'm not going to give up.  I probably should, but I am addicted to gardening and will keep trying.  Maybe the warmer weather will help.

Even the cilantro died.  That is a first. This bell pepper is still the same size it was a month ago when I put it in this pot.  I did reseed the cilantro.

The onions are the biggest I have ever grown.  The squash plants in the center died.  I replanted them and the pumpkins (in another bed) today (June 16).

Some of the onions are forming flowers like this one.  I am waiting for them to start to open and then I will break them off.  If they are taken off too soon they will just grow back again.  I want the flower removed so the plant will put its energy back into the bulb.