Sometimes life throws you a curve ball

Well, my gardening will be very curtailed for at least the next month. I will have to rely on friends to help me plant and weed and tend both the garden and the yard.

This past weekend coming home I lost control of my truck and went off the side of the road and it flipped a few times.

So now I have 5 or 6 fractured ribs which makes it hard to plant and turn soil, etc... And I have 40 1 ft high tomato plants ready to go in the ground and 40 pepper plants that need to go outside. Hopefully I can find some kind friends to help and give out cucumbers and peppers in exchange. I think I will not be at farmers market for a couple of months.

Such is life, keep rolling with the punches.

Planting and canning

A busy week! Planted all but 6 of the squash. Due to the heat I lost a couple in the transplant process. And before I planted I had to pick off all the squash vine borer eggs that had been laid on the plants. So about 30-36 squash/ pumpkins plants and the soybean as well. Still have the sunflowers and tomatoes but will get there. Plus I need to figure out where the Malabar Spinach is going.

Meanwhile, I tried my first attempt at canning. Make peach jam, peach preserves, two types of peach butter and some peach/strawberry ice cream base which I need to freeze tonight and tomorrow. All the peaches were from my peach tree so that was cool. Actually I am not a big peach fan but I have the tree so might as well. There are still a few peaches left but they are on the small side and I am losing 1 -3/day to squirrel and birds. There are some nice ones towards the top of the tree but that would require climbing the tree so that might have to wait a little. I hope to post a pic of all the canning stuff later. It is still cooling and I wanted to wait until 24 hrs to move it around a bunch, plus I need to label it all.

Latest transplant count

So I finally decided to count how many transplants I have since I have to start planning the fall garden. I don't think it will all fit in the garden so I will probably be selling some of the transplants next month at Farmers market.
Here is the list:
Squashes and Zuchinni
6 -Sweet Pumpkin (pie or small jack o latern size)
6 - Jack be little pumkins
5 - yellow straightneck squash
6 - Zephyr squash (yellow green summer squash)
6 - Spaghetti Squash
3 - Hasta La Pasta (orange spaghetti squash)
3- Latino Squash - Italian type Zucchini
3 - Patty Pan Squash
5 - Gold Rush (one peat pot has two plants, one has one) a yellow zucchini
5 - Lightening Squash (within 3 peat pots)- Delicata Squash
6 - Eight Ball Squash (within 3 peat pots) - round zucchini
Tomatoes
12 - Rainbow Bells (Yellow, red and orange grape tomatoes)
12 - Golden Rave (yellow sweet Roma)
11- Ildi (yellow grape)
12 - Marcellino Hybrid (cherry)
12 - Tumbling Tom (yellow cherry)
6 - Roma
Peppers
11- Mohawk (Yellow container pepper)
10- Redskin (Red container pepper)
11- Jackpot (Large golden bell pepper)
Other
12 - Edible Soybean var. Early Hakucho
16 - Summer blend lettuce
24 - basil plants (multiple plants in each cell)

Whew! That is quite alot to figure out where it will go in the garden. Tomatoes come down this weekend and some rearrangeing of trellis will hopefully make room.

The latest pic (sorry for the quality)

Well, here is the latest. It was in the evening so it is a little blurry. The plant in the front on the left in the cucumber monstrosity. On the right front there is the peppers with their new stakes (cut up extra fence boards.) The higest ones in the back come up to my chin.
Then the stuff in the back are the tomatoes which I think I will be taking down this weekend. I can seem to get rid of the spider mites so I just need to start over. Clear the plants, prep the soil and rest it a little before starting over again. I might even take out or move the eggplant so I can readjust the trellis to the back, vs. the middle, before the new planting.
Lots to do in the next few weeks. August starts the fall garden planting so it will get a bit crazy again.

Late summer/Fall transplants

So here are a few of the many transplants that are currently growing in the laundry room. The short ones are basil and the tall ones tomatoes. (I believe the planting date is August 1- September 15 so I will be on the early side. They will probably be ready around the end of the month at the current growth rate.

Meanwhile the outside transplants are just about ready. Looking at rain the next couple of days so hopefully Sunday I can finish prepping the soil, building the new trellis and planting the 6+ types of squash/zuchinni, soybeans and pumpkins.

The corn transplants didn't make it so hopefully I can do som regular planting of corn as well. It will be a busy and hot Sunday.

I keep thinking for all the sweating I do working outside I should lose some weight. Hasn't worked so far. Hmmm.

Pumpkin on a stick

I admit I like to grow the unusual stuff and when I saw this online with one of the seed catalogs that I was ordering from, I said why not? OK, so I am not growing this again (famous last words) but they do look sort of cool once you strip the leaves off and even though it is a bit early, supposedly you can dry them.

Even though they look like pumkins, they are actually ornamental eggplant (or Chinese eggplant, they are edible.)

Just something different for the day.

Harvesting by candlelight?

Well, due to the clouds and the promise of rain meant no watering (hopefully) but in case we got a bunch of rain I needed to harvest at least tomatoes so they wouldn't split. But I needed to leave the house by 6:45am so I got out my camping headlamp (modern candlelight) and went to harvesting. Mainly cucumbers and tomatoes and the last spaghetti squash but I did fill my harvest bucket half full. The baby squash plants are coming along well with first true leaves and the corn will be harvest this afternoon or tomorrow and see if there is anything worth selling at farmers on saturday (depending on weather.) If is raining or likely to rain I will not be going just due to the nature of the wood products, decreased attendence and there is alot more stuff I can be doing. I will be having ceramic products soon so keep a eye out at the end of the month. It depends on the firing schedule of the studio but I plan to make this month a major ceramic month vs. the wood. (Let someone else pay for the air conditioning.)