Diary 7/30/12

Black-cap raspberries

Wwoofer, Lisa, straining seeds out.

I am starting to see some progress on the bug front.  Sure did get attacked by aphids this year. Diatomaceous earth and Neem are slowly limiting their food sources and the ladybugs who are multiplying are getting the remaining bugs.  Our potatoes are not so prolific or big as last year.  Though I made such nice nests of goodie for them to grow in, they pretty much stayed put and just made potatoes shallowly. We will roast some this evening with a Jack Salmon( a two year old salmon that comes up the river, eats eggs that the 4 or 5 year old salmon lay, and then return to the ocean) that Tractor Guy caught on the river today.  Picked black cap raspberries over the weekend.  It is a good year for them.  The berries are too seedy to make good jam, so we usually make syrup for pancakes which we tried on Sunday morning.  Yum! Lisa heads off to another farm to day.  We will miss her keen interest in everything. Happy trails, Geo.

Diary 7/29/12

Felicity has been doing her job as a feline.  She has brought in two rodents today.  They are both pocket gophers, one of the main pests in the garden.  Gophers eat roots and whole plants which they pull down into their tunnels.  I have been battling them with buzzing spikes, gopher plants which may only work for moles, and some castor oil mix they are supposed to hate.  I wish there were more hawks or even gopher snakes around to help me.  That may account for the increase in gopher population.  Felicity has taken it on as a cause and gets extra pats for doing so.

Diary 7/28/12

I think we will work on the flowers today.  Some of the six foot tall phlox plants are toppling over and need to be tied up.  The same thing will happen to the dahlias when their flowers get blooms that out weigh the stems holding them up.  I also need to keep planting for Fall garden.  We did get a whole bed of cabbage, broccoli, napa cabbage, choi, lettuce, and cilantro in yesterday. There is still beans to plant for my friend's son's wedding in October.  No rest for the weary.

Diary 7/27/12

Finally turning the corner on the summer crops.  Boxes of red tomatoes, cucumbers recovering from aphid infestation and corn tasseling.

Diary 7/24/12

Though still a smaller harvest of garlic than I might have wanted, it is still way better than last year when the gopher ate half of it...Garlic braid time!

Diary 7/23/12

The battle against the insects will continue for another month until the day length retreats and the temperatures start to fall.  There will still be hot days, but not long, hot ones.  For now, it looks like I am growing sheets. The cover keeps leaf miners off the spinach and beets,  flea beetles from the lettuce, and moths which become caterpillars off of the cabbage and broccoli. Not aesthetically pleasing, but functional. Planted melons yesterday and at 85 days out, that may be the last of them. I need to plant green beans a couple more times and cucumbers once more, then I will concentrate on the fall garden with a thought on what will over-winter for our use.

Diary 7/22/12

Garden Girl came to visit for a day.  Slave drivers that we are, we put her to work immediately!  The neighbor said that there is a cougar wandering the neighborhood at night.  I have seen some suspicious poop. I put up a game camera, but I had only pictures of a single doe who visited twice.  It would have taken my breath away if I captured an image of a cougar.

Diary 7/21/12 again

Last night Liz and Lisa, alias Geo because she is a Geography professor in Texas, made pizzas.  We had tried another dough before, but last night's dough was definitely a keeper.  I had very little to do with it other than chopping as I cut my knuckle fairly deeply making a berry picking bucket out of a plastic jug.  Anyway, we had four different pizzas with all sorts of garden veggies and cheese and tomato sauce from last year.  Delicious!!!

Diary 7/21/12

So we were asked to do the Nielson ratings for TV this last week.  I gave everyone an alias because I didn't think they needed to know our names, I don't know why.  Anyway, Megan, alias Liz (for Elizabeth in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that we had just watched), made dinner for us a couple nights ago.  They were traditionally a Polish dish, a half moon pie sort of thing with potatoes and other combos inside. As she has a Polish background with a surname in the family of Zastavinski, she comes by the recipe through her mother. We made, squash ones, mushroom and onion ones, and even some dessert ones with berries and apples.  They were delicious and filling and although the pastry took time to make, a relatively simple dish that would keep well once cooked.  We had tried something similar that wwoofers made for us that they called miner's pies, but they contained meat and were deep fat fried. Bravo Liz.  This is why I love being a WWOOF host.

Diary 7/19/12

Geo fighting aphids with foil that confuses them as to where the sky is supposedly.

Liz transplanting cabbages while it was overcast.

Allen putting up another cow proof fence.

We accomplished so much today!  And where was I? Taking pictures, of course, lol.

Diary 7/17/12

Our first fig of the season.
Big day in court for us tomorrow.  Won't go into it here, but think good thoughts. Sleep now.

Diary 7/16/12

I think I will blog now because it looks like a storm is building up out there and I may have to turn the computer off if there is lightning so it doesn't fry the switch.  The rain is great, but the lightning not so much as it will usually start a forest fire somewhere.  Berry season is upon us.  Not only do we have the raspberries, strawberries, and now boysenberries in the garden, but we also have wild dew berries and black cap raspberries.  Better get picking!

Diary 7/14/12

Night before last, as I was folding and putting away towels, I stepped on a scorpion at the threshold to our bathroom.  There are scorpions in our bathtub on occasion and I am not sure how they get there, but this one was making his way out.  Anyway, I was stung.  It felt similar to a yellow jacket wasp sting and became red and tingly with a sharper pain at the bite site.  I did what I do for bee stings; I found some plantain, a common lawn weed, chewed it up, and put it on the red dot for 15 minutes.  As I experienced no further symptoms, I Googled about it.  The report said temporarily paralysis and severe pain.   I had neither.  I also read that because I stepped on the scorpion before he could become combative, there was probably little venom in his stinger pouch.  Thank goodness.  I did feel some pain up my ankle and for a little while thought my throat was swelling, but by bedtime, I was fine.  My husband killed this particular scorpion as he had a head injury from my weight, but I often remove them to the woods as they eat ants and termites. Sadly, Garden Dog lost his partner, Friend Dog, today. We will miss his goofy goodness. RIP. Finally you can get all the squirrels you never could here.

Diary7/13/12

A cooler much more doable day.  Harvested for bags, weeded, and Megan, our very capable wwoofer, transplanted some baby lettuces.  The garden is coming together and growing so quickly now.  If I were not so busy, I would set up a camera and record time lapse photos of the garden growing.  I know it would be amazing.  Bag folks received cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, zucchinis, carrots, green beans, one small tomato, and raspberries today.  Lots more of that coming.

7/12/12

Roma escapees

Weeded and worked on tomato frameworks.  I never have quite the same row configuration for the tomato plants year to year, so I end up re fabricating frameworks each year from misc. parts. The Roma tomatoes I am growing are an heirloom with a very ethnic name, Ceure Di Bue. They are looking cool, pretty large with wrinkled shoulders. The plants have escaped the fence and we added on today.  The last planting of SuperTasty tomatoes got their framework also.  Need to cut more slats to slide in between the plants to hold the branches laden with green tomatoes up.  Allen ran the wheel hoe and cleaned up alot of the corn areas.  Meg worked on the onions and moving down through the beds towards the ones she has already weeded.  It is slowly coming together.  Have only 6 folks tomorrow.  They should have nice bags with raspberries and tomatoes.  Upward and onward!

Diary 7/11/12

Went to a meeting about making Jackson County, Oregon a GMO free zone.  Sounds like a great idea to me.  I really can get worked up about this one and the fact that whoever control seeds, may control food.  Whoever controls food will control us all.  The fact that GMO crops are being grown secretly right here within wind spreading pollen distance of some of my favorite farmer's plots, disturbs me especially when you know how many lawsuits Monsanto and the other GMO seed producers have won, putting good, hard-working people out of their farms.  Scary.  More about this to come.  Enough for now.  I will make a new page on the blog soon.  Meanwhile it was very hot today and that is going to help to finally kick things into gear.  I think I could probably watch the pumpkin vines grow.  I should mark where they are in the morning and then check again in the evening. Our blueberry bushes are loaded, so are the grape vines.  That will help to make up for the fact we lost all the cherries to hail, and have only a few plums on some of our favorites while other plum trees still have quite a few.  The apples are happy.  Picked the first batch of tomatoes today and several  1/2 pints of raspberries. At last, we are underway.

Dogs

It constantly amazes me how different the breeds of dogs are.  Here we have Fang, a recent chihuahua visitor, so small but full of  self esteem, and Garden Dog, larger dog, still wishing with his long string of drool, to be more.

Diary 7/10/12

The range cows are back.  If you have no idea what I am talking about, check past posts.  Briefly I will tell you that we live in an area where cows are allowed to roam freely and I am supposed to fence them out if I don't want them.  I know, it sounds archaic and old west, but it is a reality here. Last year they got the better part of my corn.  This year we have put up an electric fence, but have not electrified it yet. We just had 9 children here. Besides, I feel that I , myself, will be getting shocked daily.  I can almost guarantee that Garden Dog who has grown used to the fence, will be the first to be bit. Poor guy, but as the bovines close in around us, I feel the need to get the ground rod in and hook up the plug-in is drawing nigh.

Diary 7/9/12

I think at last summer is upon us with hot days and warm nights, everything is kicking into gear and growing lush and green.  I picked a handful of tomatoes and a basket full of nice sized zucchini today.  Now for the berries to ripen faster than the birds can eat them. I think the rainy weather we had so late was nice, but it has been difficult to harvest enough produce to get all my customers on board.  Hopefully the late start won't put too many off from the idea of a bag oo produce each week. Will try a Saturday market to fill in the gaps, but not quite yet.

7/7/12

Winding down from the family reunion.  We made pottery, painted, had a Sasquatch calling contest, did fireworks, went fishing, made sand candles, and ate, and ate, and ate.  Now sort of post traumatically putting things away and getting on with my life, my garden, and the rest of summer.