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.

Garden Update

I can hardly believe it is June 6th.  I thought I had posted picture earlier in the year, but I guess I haven't.  I have been a terrible blogger.  Now it is time to do better, so here is the gardening news.

These are Isis Candy cherry tomatoes that I started indoors from seed on February 3.  I kept putting them into larger pots until they were outgrowing the gallon pots.  They sprouted faster than I was expecting and got leggy, so I planted them up to the fist set of true leaves on the first transplant into a larger pot.  I took them outdoors and back in for several weeks to get them acclimated to the outdoors.  Every time they were almost ready to plant it got down to freezing.  Finally on May 29 I planted them outside.  They were starting to die in the pots and needed transplanting again. 

Here is another view of the Isis Candy tomato plants.

Planted potatoes on March 2.  Some of them froze three times.  This group was the worst.  I watered one day and they froze that night, so they looked really bad the next morning.  Potatoes are tough.  They keep coming back.

 Found a little potato in the ground a month ago, so I planted it in a pot.

These are Walla Walla onions in the front half.  They were sick little onion starts that I planted March 2.  The back half is big German Red Garlic that I planted the same day.  Garlic should be planted in the fall.  It is only available in the nurseries in the spring and onions and garlic can no longer be sent to Nevada from the seed catalog companies.  I planted most of it and used a few pieces to cook with.  I like the flavor of this one.  Hope it does good.

This is what is left of the lettuce that was planted last fall.  The ones on the left edge (side and front) are transplant form seeds I started in the house on Jan 5.

I have spent the last 3 weeks moving my raspberries.  They were behind the fruit trees and get too much shade and don't produce very well any more.  Most of them seem to have taken the transplanting well.

My poor peach tree is almost dead.  It couldn't hold all the weight last year and broke in many places.  It is a semi-dwarf and about 17 years old, so it is about done producing anyway.

Here is what is left of the garlic I planted in August last year.  A lot of it got eaten by who-knows-what.  I did cover it all Winter when I found it eaten to the ground.  Now I see something is laying in there.  A lot of smashed plants.  Probably the cat.  I have smashed clumps of daffodils on the other side of the yard too.  The back half is carrots that I started about 1 month ago.  I didn't cover them until about 2 weeks ago.  I see a few starting to germinate.  I'm thinking that most of the seeds were probably eaten by the birds.

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.

Garden Progress Pictures

These are the Cal White potatoes that I planted on 3/22.  They had white sprouts on them when I planted them.  They have grown enough that they have also been covered with 2 inches of peat moss.  Maybe next year I will take the potatoes out of the refrigerator and get them growing before I plant them.

This is all that has grown on the red potatoes that I planted 3/17.  There were no sprouts on these when I planted them.

The Yukon Gold growing in the tote are a little larger than the red.

The kids have lettuce growing better in their barbecue that I do in my bed.

That patch of green is mesclun.  The lettuce is just two tiny starts in front of the mesclun.  Spinach is on the left, looking like a few weeds.  Behind the mesclun is beets.  The carrots on the back left have not germinated yet.  All of these things were planted on March 29th and 30th.

A few of the peas are coming up good.  There are a lot that are just breaking through the soil and don't show in this picture.  These were planted 3/30.

All-in-all I must say that of the things planted outdoors nothing is doing as well as expected, except the mesclun and the Cal White potatoes.  Everything is slow to germinate this year.

This is cilantro that grows mostly in the shade at my front door.  This is what started growing a few months ago.  It has been in this pot for about 4 years.  Everything you read about cilantro will tell you to grow it in full sun.  All those in this area who grow it with success grow it in the shade.

This is one of the cilantro plants I started indoors from seed on 2/28.  This pot's label says that it holds a 6 inch plant.

Genovese basil that I started from seed indoors 2/28.



Tomatillos started indoors from seed 3/5.  We are going to plant one of these in a Topsy Turvy as an experiment this year.  If you use a Topsy Turvy, you will need to water it often.  Probably more than a normal container.

The Walla Walla onion sets I planted on 3/31 have grown grown quite well.

The garlic planted in the fall of last year are doing good also.

Here is a picture of my rhubarb. These are all the same kind, but for some reason unknown to me, the back three always grow a lot sooner than the front three.  I have one water well dug out so far.  It was full of volunteer violas that I transplanted.

Here is an asparagus plant that is 12 years old.  Ten to twelve years is about the life time of  asparagus.

One year old asparagus.  I won't harvest any of theses one year plants until the third year.

This rosemary plant is in a place where I removed the bed and the other herbs.  I pinned 4 branches that were curving upward into the ground with some tie wire.  I made a "U" shape and turned it upside down.  There is about 5 inches of wire going into the ground and about a 1/2 inch of soil over the wire.  I will check for roots in a couple of months.

This is all of the small buckets of water that I have left.  There has been a lot of evaporation.  The rest has been used on the garden outside and the seedlings/plants indoors.  I am looking for very large water containers for next year to make a better storage system, but I am very thankful for any free water.