It’s July with the garden season in full swing. Most of our spring veggies are finished up. We’ve been getting squash and zucchini from the summer garden already and I fully expect another week will bring dozens of cucumbers and bushels of beans for canning.
Our beans did so well last summer that we’re hoping they do just as good this year-we even planted an extra row to help them out. Each day I tried to mark the progress of the beans as they began climbing. I noticed when a few reached the top of the wire and then suddenly one day I looked out and it was like 2 parallel walls of green.
What have you been eating from your garden?
Tipper
p.s. Most of what we planted is from Sow True Seed-a great GMO-FREE seed company located in Asheville NC. Sow True Seed sponsors the Blind Pig Garden-and their seeds are top notch so check then out if you haven’t already.
I’ve been eating okra, onions, lettuce, radishes, squash, cucumbers, green beans, onions, cantaloupes, watermelons, ground cherries, muscadines & a variety of tomatoes & peppers. As of lately most of it wasn’t straight from the garden fresh but I grew it & either canned it or froze it. I have collards, brussels sprouts, radishes & sweet peas planted now. Can’t wait to taste some homegrown Brussels Sprouts! The first time I grew some cantaloupe & my grandson tasted it (he loves cantaloupe) his eyes got wide & he said, “Papa, Papa, this is the best cantaloupe ever!” I hope to have the same experience with some homegrown Brussels Sprouts. lol
Rudy in Georgia
Like Ken, I too miss B. very much.
Unlike Ken I think #8 should be #1 forever and always. I checked out other singer’s versions of that song and your daughter’s is the absolute best, hands down, bar none! It’s not just the vocals though, it’s the orchestra that is backing her up. One guitar in the hands of a genius is all she needs.
I went out tonight to get my wife’s medicine and a few groceries. I usually listen to a Wilson Bros. or Paul and Pap CD but when I turned on the radio, NPR from Charlotte was on it and they were talking about saving seed and GMOs and such. My radio ain’t too good but amongst the fading in and out I listened to a guy from Renfrow Hardware in Matthews (a town on the wrong side of Charlotte, but a place where many of my kinfolks ended up.) They were talking about seed saving and heirloom seed preservation. This guy mentioned your sponsor Sow True Seed and how they and a few others like them were critical in preserving the few varieties of seeds that are still left.
Yesterday my littlest grandson and I pulled the onions I planted last fall. They are huge compared to what I usually grow. Some of them divided like multiplier onions.
I hope to try onions again this fall but from what I read I need to start from transplants or seed. Onions are biennials so if you plant buttons, which are last years growth, they are more like to go to seed.
I don’t get to spend as much time in the garden as I would like…too many hats to wear. I did get out there yesterday before a big rain, and I declared war on the weeds. I read somewhere that Purslane can actually benefit your garden. But, old habits die hard, and I scraped or dug it away with a vengeance.
Unfortunately, I am not a totally organized gardener, so volunteers are usually permitted to thrive. While the rows are not as neat, it does furnish pleasant surprises such as early potatoes, early cucumbers, and in the past corn.
Probably due to starting many plants inside and on the porch (what a mess), I have had a bounty of early cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, and green tomatoes.
I love the idea of planting by the signs, and hope one day to do just that. I usually do pickling by the signs, but missed the dates this time. Holding my breath on my crock full of vegetables!
As always love your blog, as only there can I go with my coffee and gain the same quiet uplifting experience my garden brings.
Tipper,
In the playlist, there are three of
my all-time favorites. They include Paul singing “Until Then” (#3),#4 “Just a Touch of the Past”, and Chitter singing #8 “You Ought to be
Here with Me.” Thank you!
My garden has went to plop this
year, since I fell and hurt my back, but I got plenty of green
beans left over from last year’s
canning.
I miss B. Ruth and her witty
comments!…Ken
We have a deck garden and are picking tomatoes, green peppers, green onions, cucumbers, and herbs and mint. I have posted photos on my blog and Facebook, check them out.
Pam
scrap-n-sewgranny.blogspot.com
My garden (and weeds) are growing like never before due to our record rainfalls. The squash and cucumbers are ready to pick today. The yard long and Trail of Tears beans have already climbed to the top of the trellis and are working their way back down. I have never grown those beans before and don’t know what to expect as far as taste and productivity. The white half runner beans should be ready in a week or so. I was so excited when I found Nancy Hall sweet potato slips at Sow True Seeds. It’s been thirty years since I have seen or heard of that variety. By the time I found them, I only had enough room left for a dozen plants. Thanks to this blog I know where to find the seeds and plants mom used to grow.
I meant to say something about some pumpkins we’re growing. Christine Cole Proctor, an angel disguised as a red head, gave me some three different varieties of pumpkin seeds as well as butternut squash – all of which trace their ancestry to places on the Fontana north shore section – what is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
One was a pumpkin her mother grew on Brewer Branch. Those seeds should come with a warning label. The thing to do when planting them is to:
1) switch from your work boots to your sneakers,
2) plan a route of escape,
3) put a seed in the soil, and
4) take off lickety-split before the vine runs you down.
My wife has canned 14 pints and 10 quarts of Volunteer half-runner beans from D. R. Mayo Seed Co. of Maryville, TN in the last two weeks. Have been getting cherry tomatoes about the same length of time and a few Romas and Rutgers. Will soon have a few Cherokee Purple. Have been picking yellow straight-neck summer squash in the last 10 days or so but the borers are tunneling the stems. Also picking a few jalapenos. Have Danvers Half-Long carrots. Am getting a few Peanut heirloom beans that came from near Cumberland Gap. Have picked 3 whole cucumbers but both they and the tomatoes have something amiss with them and the leaves are dying from the bottom up.
Spring garden broccolli, lettuce and spinach have sucumbed to the heat. Red Pontiac potatoes did also and I dug all of them on Monday, or what the tater-eatin’ critter left.
That’s the Crop Report from the Mini-Micro Farm here at the Upper Piedmont – Appalachian Foothills interface.
So far I have had bell peppers and cucumbers. Tomatoes seem to be slower this year, perhaps, due to the lack of rain in our area. They are watered each day when no rain occurs. The Pumpkin Cushaws are growing and the cand stripes are growning, but not fruit on either one. They have giant leaves.
In terms of summer vegetables, we’ve had squash and bush beans for about three weeks, and I made the first of what will be many pickings of Ken Roper’s Nantahala quadruple-runner beans a few days back. It’ll probably be another week to ten days until we get corn and tomatoes. Were it not for groundhog love of okra leaves, we’d have had okra by now.
This past weekend, I pulled up what was left of the bush beans and we put up a couple of gallons of beans using a new (for us) method which I suspect will be discussed in detail in these blog pages before long.
Tip, I can’t believe how full and lush all your vegetables are. I think those green beans are gonna leave the wire and reach the tree limbs growing beside them. They are just growing wild.
The tomatoes have so many little ones growing I am afraid they are going to break the vine.
The various squashes and cucumbers are growing everywhere and are covered with blooms and babies.
It is a beautiful sight to see. You and the Deer Hunter have created a bountiful garden, for sure!