What have you done today in the Garden?

We are up to our ears in zucchini. I have 2 70' rows... I am picking everyday 3 to 4 trays. maybe a hundred at a time. green beans are just starting to come on and I picked 35 pounds today and I am not finished. I need to do three more rows. whew, I am tired. it is hot and humid today and it isn't getting any better. Yesterday we picked 33 pints of raspberries and I need to pick again in the morning.

 

Wow Carolyn...I thought I had a lot of energy but I am an slug compared to you! Sounds like your farm is producing very well this year....but you must be bushed!!

Sjoerd...I love your description & photos of how to construct a clamp, but would a clamp work if the soil freezes? Here in Massachusetts (northeast US), the soil freezes to an average depth of 3 feet ( .9 Meters), some years more, other years less. Some years we have 1 foot of snow, other years 4 feet ( 1.2 meters) ...It might be hard to dig down through all that snow to find the clamp. Do you get snow in the Netherlands? Do all those canals of yours freeze over? Does the ground freeze?

BTW please tell your bride her recipe for courgettes looks delicious!! I can't wait to try it when our squash come in.

Chrisle... good news! I will definitely hill them up then. See what happens. That's part of the fun of gardening. Last summer, I let some lettuces go to seed. I collected the seeds, but have seemed to have misplaced them. No matter! We have lettuces coming up in various spots in our plot in the community garden, the compost heap, even my neighbors' plots!

 

Hey there Cayuga--Thanks for your nice words about my clamp piece. It ought to work fine there where you live. You dig down deeply and don't forget when you pile soil on top of the clamp that adds additional depth--well more than a meter. If it snows, that is an added bit of insulation. It does freeze and snow here. The weather is generally warming and so it has not been terribly severe lately.
The years that I made the clamps I would go to the garden and dig it out from time to time, but you do not have to do that...you can simply let it safely sit there undisturbed until spring, then dig up your horde of veg and keep it in your cellar or pantry. I was so pleased with how this experiment worked for me.
I did pull the stick out of the top a few days during the winter to let it aerate to help avoid moulding. I never did have any mould.

 

Oh I get it. It is a way of keeping vegies fresh through the winter until spring....so I wouldn't need access to them during the winter.

 

That's right. I only went out there that first year more to check on how it was going than to take veg back out of necessity. I wanted to see if there was any mouse, mole or freeze damage. There wasn't. It is a fun technique to try just for the pure pleasure of learning if nothing else. I enjoyed doing it.

 

we picked green beans and yellow beans. and 31 more pints of raspberries. watered, prayed for rain, pulled a few weeds.

 

I dead-headed roses this morning after cleaning the coops and communing with the hens and chicklets (which takes a while since I'm trying to "socialize" the chicklets).
We may have lost one of the roses we put in this spring, but since the stems are still green I have hopes. The other six roses are doing well, and my husband offered to take a trip to Chamblee's in October to get yet more roses. I'll have to research their catalog to see what we need, want, can't live without!

 

Harvested a baler of Swiss chard and processed it at night. Also, there was a bean harvest of runners, Rakkers and Spekbonen. All processed and frozen. Except doe a little taster sample, of course.

With all that Swiss chard, came our little garden friend-- the Slug. Here is where we soak the leafy plants as the first stage of the processing.


Inspected the bees and added another honey super on one of the hives.
During the period that the city's Lime trees bloomed there was high winds and rain. Sadly, my summer honey will not have much of that nectar mixed in.

Several of the big, white onions had white rot and so i lifted them, cleaned and skinned them then put them out to season and dry.

All of the broad bean plants have been removed and the green manure that we planted is coming up already.


The sweetcorn has tassels and small ears with silks. Our spuds are developing Phytophthora sadly. I shall pluck leaves for destruction until it is at a serious level of infection. I have already harvested some spuds for us and the visitors. the harvesting must be accelerated, I fear.

The neighbour man is away on vacation and had asked us to keep an eye on his spuds in case the blight would hit. It did, and with a vengeance, so we rolled up our sleeves and removed all the foliage from his potato's. The job didn't take all that long, but it was a hot job and nasty job.

It is a weird summer season here this year, and we are all having our problems.

 

Wow!! For some reason I was able to post this photo!!!!! This is yesterday's garden haul.

 

Garden looks good Sjoerd! What do you do with swiss chard? I am growing rainbow chard for the first time this year & I have never cooked it before.

 

I am watering too. The northeast is experiencing quite a drought. Some of my perennials are barely alive. I can't keep up with all the watering....afraid the well will run dry.

 

Toni, what a lovely idea to donate seeds to community gardens!
It was getting pretty hot when I finished doing the morning watering, cleaning the coops and turning on the fans for the hens, and transplanting a few volunteers that were in the path of the mower. By the time I got in at 10 a.m. I was dripping wet!
I finished cleaning the house, and plan to spend the afternoon curled up with a good book, appreciating the AC.
Cayuga, I hope your well holds out--we are getting to the half-way point on our water harvesting cubes. A 250 gal. cube is now at 175, and the other two aren't very far behind.