Homestead Acres

Posts Tagged ‘garden’

I can’t believe that it is September 1st already!  This summer seems to have flown bye so quickly.  In some ways it wasn’t quite the summer I had thought it would be.  The year started off with heat waves in March, sooo not normal for us.  Early summer was very dry, with gardens needing to be watered almost daily.   Then the rains started…  And seemed never ending for much of the summer.  I think I lost count on how many times our gardens were flooded.  We lost some things, like the new potato patch and 100 or so tomato plants and others were stunted.  But other things did quite well!  The huckleberries are loaded with fruit, potatoes in the dryer gardens have done nicely.  Despite the squash bugs, the zucchinis yielded very well to.

I’m still working canning my way through the garden.  We should be digging up the potatoes for storage in another week or two.  I really am looking forward to Fall and Winter!  I’m ready for a quieter time of year.

I haven’t been on here much lately.  In between the gardens and canning, I’ve been reorganizing the house.  Sorting, packing and purging.  And lots of school lesson plans to!  I’ll share a little about them latter. 

Well I’m finally feeling pretty much better. I’ve talked to a few people hit by this virus. Its a nasty one. Anyway now I’m playing catch up with the garden.
Harvested the onions today, yesterday (forgot to post last night lol). Then laid them out to dry. They will need a few days to harden the skins well. After that they can be safely stored in the cellar.
Then I started working on the tomatoes. I lost some that got over ripe and split. But they’ll make good chicken feed.  Still ended up with lots of tomatoes. There are still green ones out there to.
I guess I’ll be starting more sauce tomorrow! Also going to dehydrate some.

I haven’t posted a garden update vid in a while.  We’ve been getting almost non stop rain.  So some things like our new potato patch rotted, other things like the cucumbers are doing well.

Don’t mind the weeds.  With all the rain the ground is so soft you can’t till it and the hoe just gum’s up with mud.  I’ve been hand weeding when I can between rainy patches.  But most of my time is held up canning right now.

This week hubby noticed something strange on some of the corn plants.  The kernels looked gray and hugely deformed.  We had no idea what this was and hadn’t seen it before.  We were growing a heirloom type called Golden Bantam.  After posting this short vid on YouTube many shared with us its called Corn Smut.  And in Mexico and other southern areas people actually eat it.  Ok I think I’ll pass!  LOL

This has been a very wet and humid year for us.  That’s led to more mold problems then normal.

This past week we’ve been fighting a flu like bug.  It really knocked Hubby, ds and myself for a loop.  The girls were a little sick as well.  Thankfully it didn’t last long, although I’m still fighting it.  I’m sure if I can get enough rest it will pass quickly.

Wednesday we had a cold front move through.  Thankfully the heavy rain and storms staid south of us!  I was finally well enough to head out to the garden this afternoon.  I did a lot of weeding, still have much more to do before I will be caught up.  But weeds or not, the garden is producing great!

I harvested a large bowl of cucumbers, 4 more zucchinis and our first cabbage.  Then from the children garden we harvested more cucumbers, a few purple beans and cherry tomatoes.

Huckleberry’s

Okra finally starting!  This will be our first time growing and eating this.  Anyone have good recipes I can try?

Eggplant flower, I think they are pretty!

Sunflowers starting to bloom in the kids garden!

Well today was a busy day on the homestead.  Today I canned 7 pints of pickled beets and 6 pints of cherry jam, if you don’t count the 3/4′s full jar.  That’s getting tuck into the fridge to enjoy now.

We headed out to the gardens this afternoon, to find the Italian zucchinis had exploded with the last rain.  We harvested a whole wheelbarrow full.  Two had already been taken out before I took this photo.   I will have a lot of canning and drying to do!  I might start on my zucchini relish soon to.

I also picked 1/3 of a storage bin full of green beans.  I guess I’m canning and drying beans tomorrow to!

Hubby just finished building a grape arbor for us.  We have a grape vine planted on each end.  I love having it as an entrance into the raised beds!

The Swish Chard is growing great to!

Each garden season is very different from the last.  Or it seems that way the past few years.  Our weather has not been the more stable warm temperatures with just enough rain that I remember growing up.  It rained all day Monday and part of the night, a heavy soaking rain.

Finally got a chance to go and check on our gardens about mid day.  And as I had thought they were under water again.  Its drying up slowly, but their is more rain coming latter this week.  I’m hoping the plant roots don’t start rotting.  Our road was also flooded out farther down the town.

Day's rain almost filled our wheelbarrow

Potato plants under water

More potatoes underwater

Road closed signs

Well the flooding in the gardens has gone down.  Thankfully we have had no rain in the last 3 days.  Although the weather has been very cool 16 to 18 C it has been windy.  That has helped to dry up the ground.

This afternoon I headed out to do some weeding.  The ground is still soft, but not as mucky.  At least that makes weeding by hand easier!  I finished weeding the Italian zucchinis, eggplant and two rows of tomatoes.  Many more to go! LOL!  I did harvest to large zucchinis and sadly found a few that had rotted during the heavy rains.  I could hear water inside the stems of the zucchini plants to.  But at least we are starting to harvest the zucchinis, we love them!

Since tomorrow is Canada Day here we’ll be enjoying a quiet day at home.  And I hope to do more weeding.

We have been working at my sewing room renovations.  It’s done!! So the last few days I’ve been unpacking bins of fabric and yarn.  Its taking a while to get things set up the way I want.  But I’ll share photos when I have it done.  Now we can start working on the summer kitchen side again!

We have had so much rain this month.  The ground hit its saturation point on Sunday.  We had a lot of rain and ended up with at least 8 inches of water in the gardens.  Thankfully today the water has gone down quite a bit!  This week is suppose to be dry and that is so much needed.  After a few days, I’ll be able to get in and get caught up on the weeds.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Downpour shuts Union subway station, Lake Shore Boulevard (theglobeandmail.com)

It’s been raining hard here for some time. We had a week of straight rain. Then it’s been every other day since. The gardens are a mucky mess. Can’t use the tiller or the hoe. The hoe just wont work in the mud. So I’m pulling a lot of weeds by hand, in between the rainy spells. Would be nice to have some warm dry weather again!

*Adding my youtube vids here.  I’m behind lol