Garden Update

One word to describe this years garden: Dissapointing. :(

This year is not a good year at all for me. My tomatoes have all be ravaged by blight. I'm not the only one. This is the problem this year for most farmers in the northeast.
Fortunately, I still have something in the garden for me to harvest. We have decided that due to the blight problem we should pull our potatoes, that way we at least get the ones that are good. I planted about 2 pounds of potatoes(Yukon Gold and Dark Red Norland) and the picture below shows what I got from it. Not many but at least I got something.

The garlic I planted last Fall did great! I planted German Extra Hardy. They were pulled about 4 weeks ago. We have used a few heads already and they are delicious! Note to self: plant more garlic this Fall.


My cukes and zukes are doing good this year. I had initially started the seeds I purchased but those didn't grow, so I went to the local nursery and bought 1 plant each. These are the zukes and cukes I picked over the weekend. I have picked a few times before this and made an awesome Zucchini Apple Bread this past weekend. Don't worry, I will post the recipe sometime this week or next week.


Also from the garden: cabbages are looking good as well. I haven't harvest any of them yet but should be soon. My purple haze carrots are/were excellent! Sorry no pictures. I really should have taken some pictures of the carrots because they are really cool looking. The outer edge of the carrots are purple but the inside is orange! I gave some to my co-worker and her daughter's first reaction was:"Eeewww...I don't want those moldy carrots". A few days later, she asked her mom to ask me for more "moldy" carrots because they tasted really sweet!
I have also planted some cool weather veggies for the fall: radishes, fennels, napa cabbage and peas.

Since I have no tomato this year, I had to buy them. This weekend we went to a local farmer and bought 1 bushel(roughly 50lbs) of tomatoes for canning. We made mostly tomato sauce and some hot salsa. Out of the tomatoes we got, we made 5 jars (pint size) of salsa and 20 jars (quart size) of tomatoe sauce. I am heading to pick up some more tomatoes for sauce as soon as I finish posting this post.

And lastly, I will leave you with a picture of some sunflowers. Have a great day!

Peek-a-boo, I see you

I started all my seeds last Saturday. About 3 weeks ago, I started the jalapenos, Italian pepperoncini and eggplants but unfortunately I had to "re-do" all of these. Reason being? A certain Golden/Husky mix(AKA June) decided to check out what I did and perhaps thought it was something new that's edible...

It was partly my fault, I know my girls don't get in trouble like that(they used to when they were younger), they don't jump on the counter or steal food, nor do they chew things up. So I put the egg carton(I used eggshells instead of peat pots and left the eggshells in the carton) on the floor in the guest room next to the baseboard heater for some heat. Well, that was a mistake. June went in there to check it out and sniff at it one night and decided that she wanted to check out the whole thing, so she took the whole egg carton in her mouth and when I went to check on what she was doing, she dropped the carton and everything fell out. Bad baby, bad baby...

The photos below are my seed-starting operation. The first picture shows the Organic Jiffy Seed Starting mix, my seeds(in the ziploc bag), my notebook, watering bottle(I poked a few small holes on the cap for easy watering), egg carton with sunflower seeds inside, and on the top left corner is the veggie tray. I saved the tray from last year, it was a seed starting set with starter pellets inside. I kept the tray after the pellets were used.

The second picture shows the filled peat pots, properly labeled. I will do a different post about what I am planting this year.

In other news, I couldn't resist the temptation of peeking in the garlic bed to see if there is any "action" going on there. Yes there is! I only uncovered a small section to check things out. And there they are, peeking out from the ground!(Please click on the picture for a bigger view, I circled them in red for easy viewing)

I'm so happy, oh so happy...

Sunflowers

Just wanted to share with you a picture of my sunflowers. This picture was taken at work at my desk. I was able to cut 4 of them from my sunflower plants because these are on the lower part of the plants. The rest are way too high for my reach. My sunflower plants are at least 12 - 14ft tall! I promise to take more pictures of them for you.

I would like to know how to save sunflower seeds for next year's garden. If you have done it before or if you know how to, could you please let me know? I thank you in advance!

>>>Breaking News: This just in, after many hours of back-breaking labor in googling "how to save sunflower seeds", I have came upon a site with very useful information: http://www.southernliving.com/southern/gardens/seasonal_gardens/article/0,28012,1116001,00.html