I took a video of the farm garden on Labor Day!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpTea6syX8U
Farm Garden July 22 Update
July 23, 2012 by 1 Comment
WOW, is all I can say. Everything is exploding. The white and yellow corn is over 7 feet tall and tasseling. The ears on the yellow corn are filling out. The squash and pumpkins are taking over. I have at least one good nice sized watermelon. I’ve been thinning out the beets and harvesting a bunch. The new swiss chard seedlings are growing well. I thought the garden was booming a couple weeks ago but now it’s super booming, so we’re thinking on getting a fence to protect all the product from our work, and with the help of the CAN Supply Wholesale fencing supplies, we can do this work fast and easily. With so much produce we are going to try our hands at the farmers market. Today will be our first day. We have beets, zucchini, cucumbers, kohlrabi and basil.
While we waited for the gardening process to be complete we used several essential tools to help us grow the best harvest. One of them was a silky saw that is a sharp teeth saw used for cutting lumber, shrubs and trees.
It’s Golden
July 22, 2012 by 1 Comment
It’s chokecherry season and my two little trees were loaded. I took these photos about a week ago. The red cherries were just about ripe. I was hoping they would hang on until this weekend as I was traveling out of town and could not pick them at their peak. Well, I guess they peaked because the tree was stripped bare by the time I got back to it. The birds didn’t leave me a single cherry.
The golden chokecherries, however, were just hitting their peak of ripeness. I picked 5.6 pounds off of that one little tree I have. A pretty good harvest that will net me a good gallon or so of golden chokecherry wine. Golden or yellow chokecherries are quite rare in North Dakota and I was happy to discover that this one tree was yellow. Unfortunately that tree is battling black knot fungus and will probably succumb like all the chokecherries around it in another year or so. I hope to take some cuttings when the wood goes dormant and try to root some yellow cherry starts. I’ll plant them far away from the shelter belt that is inundated with that damn black knot.
Booming July at the Farm
July 11, 2012 by 2 Comments
Zucchini growing waist high. Pumpkins spreading out. Beets being harvested. Corn tasseling. It’s not just the fireworks booming in July. The Farm Garden is growing beyond my expectations. I knew being a horse pasture that my soil was fertile. But I never realized what a difference it makes having rich soil coupled with full sun! My little shaded city garden is growing well but nothing like this. The giant sunflowers are already over 5 feet tall. I’ve pulled all the spinach and lettuce I can eat and took out the plants. The heat has made them bolt. I planted some Swiss Chard seeds that are just sprouting. And a kind gentleman on the Bayou Gardener forum sent me some purple hull pea seeds that are coming up as well. Lots of photos below to look through. Near the end you can see some shots of my tomatoes and peppers that are suffering from herbicide contamination. I’ve determined that most of it is due to the manure pile just to the side of that area.
Farm Garden Update
July 1, 2012 by 2 Comments
The farm garden is doing surprisingly well despite the spotty herbicide contamination. Other than the beans and half of the tomatoes, the rest of the garden is lush and producing. Things are growing rapidly. The corn is already knee high and it’s not yet the 4th of July. I have already harvested a lot of spinach and some lettuces. The cucumbers are growing by leaps and bounds. The squash is exploding. And the beets are starting to bulb out already. Even the brandywine tomatoes and watermelon that the rabbits got to have bounced back.
Here are some snapshots of the June 30 garden.
