What have you done today in the Garden?

Picked strawberries. Watered. Had customers all day long. Watched a new swarm fly over.....so I left my customers and followed it across the road. I am sure they thought I was crazy.

 

Super-dooper foto's Carolyn.
I hope that they will settle down and be productive for you.
Gosh I rarely see a swarm here.

Today I harvested another 2.1 ki;o's of strawbs and have nust now finished jamming them--another 9 pots of jam.
I gave water and mowed the paths.
I checked the honey super of one of the hives and removed it and gave them a new super.

 

thanks S. it was an interesting afternoon. I just happened to be outside with a customer (which I had customers all day on and off) so I could have easily missed it. it was a huge one, too. enjoy those berries they are scarce here right now.

 

while I was watching the swarm I happened to have two customers in my driveway. one I was helping and the other had just gotten there. one was a new customer the other was a repeat customer. I said I am going to see where they cluster if I can... I will be right back... and off i trotted across the lawns. I proceeded to holler across the road at two workers in a field installing a new septic for the new neighbor " watch for my bees to cluster.... as they began to fill the air of the field around them. one worker had never seen such a sight and the other was really okay with the whole experience. must have seen such an occurrence before. So, I came back to have the repeat customer pulling out of my driveway and said " I paid the other lady for my baskets".... I am sure that customer thought "OH MY" who does business this way. well evidently... I do. that was a real "pass the buck" situation. she was pretty good about it. she gave Kevin the money as he came back from the bank... she probably had a good story to tell when she got home, too.

 

Set out 2 Cherry tomato plants and 4 Costa Flora (As best I could read the hand-written name) tomatoes, a few onion seedlings, pulled weeds, scattered mulch around flowers, deadheaded Peonies and Roses, sprayed Roses with Epsom salts and water for Rust. Just general things one must do in gardening season.

 

Growingpains, I am wondering if your tomato was costoluto fiorentino. here is a link to a great tomato base.http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Costoluto_Fiorentino

 

We did not get to go mushroom hunting. So I went back to the garden
Weeding and I harvested garlic and Chard and some new potatoes and hilled up some other potatoes.

 

I had a productive morning in the garden today. I weeded and mulched strawberries. I watered with nettle stew. I hilled up potatoes and beans. I replaced the dodgy looking tomatoes with cuttings that had rooted. I removed the suckers and put them in the ground to root them. I prepared a bed to plant more beans and then I started off a comfrey potion. I am off to my other garden this afternoon.

 

busy all day with customers and general gardening stuff, but I had one customer at the end of the day that bought every last flat of flowers I had. hip hip hooray! they are all gone now. all I have are hanging baskets and potted containers and vegetable flats. YES!

 

trimmed some limbs off the tomatoes, picked army worms off the kale, mulched some of the tomato plants in my raised bed with hay, picked some blueberries and cucumbers, dead headed gaillardia, coreopsis, roses, calendula, zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, etc...and I've got two of these that look like this, this afternoon....
tomato sandwich coming soon!!!

 

Today I transplanted basil. I planted brassica, courgettes and pumkins. I harvested peas and carrots and strawberries and carrots. I weeded and mulched strawberries. I hilled and mulched potatoes. I watered with nettle stew. Like every day I got eggs and looked after the chickens. As well as pottering around and admiring everything. I sold my first 10 euro basket of vegetables to my best client.

 

I picked some tomatoes

 

I did the "Chelsea Chop" on the phlox plants today...a bit late, but the plants were finally large enough to perform the procedure.
Further, it was time to harvest the broad beans.


I shelled all the beans and froze them in...I did save some for supper tonight though. Here you can see all the empty hulls:


Most of the pods had 5-6 beans in them.

The broad bean is; in itself, a wonderful veggie...but the fur-like lining inside the pod is remarkable. Look at the lining close-up.


We are making plans for covering the blueberries now. We have given them water already and cleared the ground of the Limnanthes plants. The bees got checked and the empty honey frames were given to them for cleaning.

 

I laid a row of plastic by hand as the tractor and plastic layer wouldn't fit in a spot next to the new high tunnel. I planted that up in lettuce plants. spliced another section to finish up a row that had tomato cages in the way this Spring and planted gonzales cabbages there. planted two rows of cantaloupe, two rows of watermelon plants, a row of zucchinis and seeded another flat to plant in a week. watered the few plants I had left. put drip tape down in the greenbeans with Kevin as it is dry dry dry here. yesterday I had a market. I didn't do it last year as we were spread too thin with the fire and elderly parent issues. everyone was glad to see me as much as i was glad to see them. I missed them.