Planting by days off, not by the moon

 Blessings Darlings!

It was a day off of my 'paying' job today, so it was all about resting and garden work.  By 'garden work' I mean I planted more sprouting seeds in real soil and started hardening the plants off.  I can't work in the actual garden because we have a drought going on here at this time, and if I want to do anything with the garden I'll have to water it before I can work the earth.

While I never like to pump up groundwater for the garden, right now all the water I have is softened water.  When our pump died a couple of months ago, the plumbers removed the tap on the well head that was our only non-softened access to water.  Any water from the house taps has tons of softener salt in it, and kills plants.

Yes, there is a way to route water around the softener - but only for the entire house.  Tomorrow I am likely to do that.  Then I'll still have to first dump lots of softened water from the pipes on to the gravel driveway to the house/barn before I can get water that is free from the salt/etc.  It will waste a crap load of water plus electricity to pump it.  So I'll only water the parts of the garden that I'm likely to actually work on tomorrow.  And I'll have to do it after I wash and hang clothes so I have softened water for that (Local water is HARD HARD HARD in this schist rock area.) 

But I'll have to do it so I can prepare beds to plant.  And planting and eating what we grow is important to me.

Here's hoping that the rain that forecasters promise for this weekend actually arrives.  Forecasts have been wrong about that for the past 6 weeks.  This time they are promising a full inch of rain on Saturday afternoon.

That said, almost all my seeds are sprouting well, other than the usual lazy pepper seeds.  I lost the first round of Cherokee Purple tomatoes and shishito peppers when I went to the Sacred Space/Between the Worlds conference (I hadn't explicitly told the family about water and 'take them in if there is a freeze') so I'm trying to make up for lost time.  I found 11 shishito seeds I hadn't planted, so I'm hoping to get at least 3 producing plants from them.  I bought more Purple Cherokee seeds, and found I had some old Roma and Rutgers seeds, too.  Alas, no Brandywine seeds around the house. 

If I can work the ground tomorrow, planting (late, as always) beets, radishes, neeps, and swedes will commence.

And just maybe, the Chubby Hubby will get the rain barrel ready for Saturday's rain.

Frondly, Fern

Detailed garden update.

 Blessings Darlings!

Today ... like most days this week ... the forecast has been 'today will be much cooler than yesterday was'.  Today ... like EVERY day this week ... the forecast LIED.  It's still hot and miserable out.

My plan in the garden this year was to try to match most of what the garden produced with the amount of veggies that we eat fresh, other than my experiments with growing potatoes and dry beans.  I'm doing okay at that goal!  Yay!  Not all of the success has been because I planned well, tho'.

We haven't gotten ANY tomatoes from the plants I purposely put in yet.  We're eating the ones off one of the volunteer tomato plants.  I have no idea what its genetics are, but it's putting out about 8 oz round fruit.  Hell, one of the plants I bought and planted (pink brandywine) hasn't even set fruit yet!

I've only planted two plots of green beans this year - we had WAY too many green beans for eating last year, and I didn't want to mess with canning them this year.  I only planted the second plot late, two weeks ago, so we've not gotten any from that plot.   But since I wasn't after beans-for-canning, I planted my favorite bush beans this year - Contender beans. Last year I planted my second favorite, Tendergreen beans.  Both produce for a longer period of time than green bean varieties for selling or canning, such as Jade.  Now every few days, altho' I expect that patch to be played out, I still harvest at least a pound of beans.  ALMOST too much for us.  The second plot has half the number of plants in it (and can be protected from frost, since I did plant them a little late.)

When we get a cool day, I'll harvest the potatoes, and evaluate that harvest.  I put in 15 seed potatoes of Yukon Gold.  I'd rather have put in some russet potatoes, but this was the only option at the store at the time.  Things got SERIOUSLY sold out due to folks suddenly gardening due to Coronavirus this year!  I didn't to a great job of making sure that the potatolings were covered by straw to protect them from the sun over the season, so I'm sure that I'm going to have a problem with some of them being too green to eat (the green produces toxins), but it's still going to be interesting.

I lost the one grey squash zucchini to bacterial wilt, but got 3 squash off of it before it died.  The ONE yellow crookneck heritage squash has been producing more than we've been able to eat.  This is with using it for stir-fries, raw slices for dips, zoodles in place of pasta, and just cooking and eating it as a 'regular' veggie.  The plant is now dying off, slowly but very surely, so we won't be getting much more from it.  My husband is grateful for that.

Turnip and beets were about perfect.  Put in 12 or 15 of each of them.  Rutabagas ... I don't do well with those.  They didn't survive transplanting.  The 'volunteer' dill - I had one scrawny plant last year, so I just let it go to seed, and it gave me 1 plant this year - is doing well, but I'm letting it seed itself again.  If I get enough plants next year, and put in some Jade or other canning beans, I'll use some for dilly beans.  And maybe for dill pickles - this year I've not gotten any cucs yet but do hope I'll get a few from my late planting.  I've gotten enough basil for fresh use (barely) and to dry some for the winter, but not enough for the Spawn to make and freeze pesto.  Parsley has stayed alive, but not grown enough to harvest and use.  I've harvested lots of spearmint, oregano, thyme, and sage.  Rosemary is ... limping.  I'll be happy if it survives the winter.

The one bell pepper is doing okay, but not great.  The hot peppers are producing tons of peppers - I might skip growing them next year, and just smoke or dry these.  Next year I want more sweet peppers and maybe some shishitos, I really loved those last year.

Bounty

Blessings Darlings!

I haven't planted much stuff this year.  Like, only 2 summer squash plants, one of which is already dead of bacterial wilt.  Less then 1/2 the amount of green beans I usually plant.  I only put in two tomato plants, but a lot of others volunteered and I'm only letting 3 of them grow.

But not only do I still have too many summer squashes (I have NEVER had a yellow crook neck squash produce like this before) but the green beans have gone SNEAKY.  I thought I only had 'new born kitten' sized beans.  Instead, they were hiding some fully ready ones.  A half pound of fully ready ones.  I'm shocked.  And awed.  And overwhelmed at the return in my garden already this year.  Obviously the garden likes that I'm using cow manure to build it up. 

Which is a good thing, given that my old job at the old place probably isn't coming back. 

Rain is staying north of us, at least so far, today. So I removed a lot of Johnson grass.  And I transplanted in more Swiss Chard, finally, and watered it myself to make sure it was cared for.  It's steamy and windy out, but that doesn't mean that the rain will come to visit today.  All the lightning is up at Hagerstown.  UPDATE: We got a sprinkle of rain, not enough to count for rain ... but we got a wonderful rainbow!

Spent most of the last light pulling zoysa grass from the garden, so I can transplant the cucs in tomorrow, Gods willing and if the creek don't rise.

Frondly, Fern

Fireflies still MIA

Blessings Darlings!

My research into vinegar based weed killer shows that it's not going to work for me. So I've been working on removing Satan's Scrotum Hair by hand.  When my back is less unhappy, I'll cover it with black plastic to try to finish the job.  I got about 1/3 of the area that I need to work on done today.  It was a GREAT day to work in the garden, not too warm and only partly sunny. 

If this was an emergency food situation, I'd have run to what ever food store was open (because who knows WHAT would be closed in an emergency now) - let's say the local grocery store, 3 miles from here.  I'd get every single cardboard box they had, and ask them to let me raid the dumpster that they have cardboard in.  I'd take all that home.  I'd cover this area two layers thick in cardboard, using anything I had to hold it down.  Lawn furniture?  Sure!  The bricks I have saved to make a rocket stove?  Yup!  Jugs of oil for the car?  Yes - ANYTHING.  And I'd be taking Advil and keeping at it.

But at this point, I'm only 'concerned' about our food supply, not terrified. 

I used the garlic snapes that I harvested the other day in bi bim bap today, along with lambs quarters, zucchini, black fungus, spinach, and bean sprouts.  It's wonderful.  And we're going to have lots of veggies and meat left over, so it will be lunches or another dinner later this week.  But damn the soaking and harvesting and de-leafing and steaming and marinading took forever, and dirtied a shitload of stuff. 

In Coronavirus news, Florida alone keeps having 2000 new cases a day.  Some church in my county started having in-church services and now has a cluster fuck of cases, but no one will say which church.  And POTUS says that the problem is that we test for it. 

Such bullshit.

Still not many fireflies.

Frondly, Fern