The grafted tree

 

A few years ago we experimented with grafting, partly as a botany lesson for the kids, but also desiring to preserve the old apple tree that Matt's grandparents planted behind the house that is slowly coming to the end of its life. We had success with eight of the ten that we attempted, but then lost all but one to deer over the winter. HOWEVER, the one survivor has continued to grow nicely, and this spring has its first blossoms! Still undecided if we're going to pull the blossoms to get one more season of good growth before putting energy into bearing fruit.

Harvest of the day

 It has not been a great year for the vegetable garden. Too wet and cool, I think. (And because it's been so wet, Matt hasn't been out there with his special fertilizer, either...that could also have something to do with it!)

But yesterday, for the first time, I was able to put together supper almost entirely from the garden.

Add a little salt and olive oil and roast it all up...yum!

We ALSO picked one of Eben's sunflowers today at his request. This spring when we were buying seeds, he was the one who voted that we don't just get giant sunflowers that grown 12 feet tall, but get "Pikes Peak" sunflowers which can get up to 14 or 15 feet tall! They have NOT disappointed, even with this less than great year. (This is just the very top of the plant - I cut it off as high above my head as I could reach, and then cut another 18" off so it would fit in the vase we have for it!)

Thinning the carrots

 Last year was so dry. I think it rained twice all summer. This summer, we're short on sun. For once, the tomatoes and beans are doing not much of anything. 

But our carrots are growing well. There's always something that does well. That's part of what makes gardening interesting.

Last night I thinned the carrots, with this as the result:

Washed and chopped, and it's the start for soup for supper.

New residents in the Motley Garden

 It's worth noting that two weeks ago we got six new residents in the Motley Garden: Henrietta, Attila the Hen, Mrs. (Lavender) Allen Milgrave, Princess Leia Negg, Bethlehen, and Charlotte have moved into a coop Dad helped the girls build in the back of the small side of the shed.

It will be into the fall before we get any eggs, but we're hoping to have them doing some free-ranging and some time in a mobile run and have them do some work on the grubs in the gardens!

Here are the babies!!

This is Ebenezer with Mrs. Allen Milgrave. The night before we got the chicks, we read about a character in our book who was described as looking like a "sleek gray hen" so they decided if we got a gray one, she would be Mrs. Allen Milgrave. But she needs her own given name, too, thus the "Lavender."

This is Rinnah with Henrietta (I think. I have a harder time telling Henrietta and Charlotte apart.)

The girls helped Dad build a mobile run with leftover bits of lumber that we have laying around. We purchased hardware cloth, but everything else is just leftovers! Flipped over, it gives the chickens an easy way to have a little more space to run outdoors without concern for then destroying the gardens or hawks (or cats!) destroying them.

Blueberries

 Every year those bushes get bigger! That's a good picking of blueberries, with more coming! Rinnah made blueberry bagels with them, and we think there's still enough for a batch of jam.

Eating the yard

 Rinnah took "eating the yard" to a whole new level as she attempted a week of eating ONLY things that came from our yard. She allowed herself both fresh and frozen (from last year), and at our pressing, salt, but otherwise NOTHING beyond what had come from here. (So, for example, jams were out because the pectin and sugar were purchased.)

She only made it three days before her stomach mildly protested, but she wants to give it another go in August when the list of available fresh options is greater!

Spinach, beet greens, purslane, topped with rhubarb, blueberries, and black raspberries and a few sunflower seeds!

First salad

 No idea what to make for supper? Well, the greens in the garden provided a good start...

Spinach (yes, it's bolted), black-seeded Simpson lettuce, and beet greens.

Potatoes 2021

 We got the potatoes in late this year, and they just weren't dying down until FINALLY we got a light frost over the weekend. With heavy rain supposedly coming tomorrow, that meant yesterday and today were our days to get them in. So we did! I did most of the digging, but Matt came out for bits of time as he was able, and Owen put in a good hour in the afternoon after school as well. And these two girls (and Rinnah, too) were tireless, not only with the fun task of pulling up the potatoes (we got some amazing potatoes after what did not appear to be a promising year) but also with the not so fun job of pulling up weeds ahead of my digging so I could see what I was doing.

Tomatoes

 While we certainly haven't been as invested in the veggie garden this year as last, we're still doing a decent job of keeping up and getting a quite decent yield.

Here are Dad and Evania picking tomatoes from the annex on the west end of the veggie garden where we put all of the volunteer plants that we found in the spring! They filled the entire turkey roasting pan with cherry tomatoes!!

A new wall by the blueberries

 We're always looking for ways to tidy up the yard and make the best use of what we have, and decided that a little low wall along the south side of the (enlarged) blueberry patch would be useful in a variety of ways. We *still* have leftover limestone from years ago when we dug it out from the neighbors, and though it's not a lot of nice big pieces any more, there's enough for a 3-4 course high wall. It will keep the mulch from sliding down, and give a nice edge to that garden.

Here's Matt measuring out where we want the edge to be so he can dig a solid, level foundation!

Winter gardening

 Yesterday's record October snow coincided with my plans for carrots in our soup for supper, so out I went with my boots and my shovel...

...to dig up some carrots! Thankfully I know roughly where they were planted, and the ground is not frozen under the snow. Still, it was a new experience to thrust that shovel through six inches of snow and come up with this:

A ton of food

 Today marks the day that we surpassed 2000 pounds of food that we've pulled out of the yard! The girls and I processed just over 80 pounds of pears today, and that (plus a bit of kale and about a pound of green beans) was enough to push us over that magic line.

Now we can say quite literally that we've grown a ton of food this year. ;) That's pretty cool. 

Reuben made himself comfortable near the compost pile where we're throwing all of the not-so-good pears.

Rinnah's climbing the ladder to pick the beans off the 12 foot tall sunflowers! Thankfully they're bending down as the season progresses.

Three kiddos tossing pears into the pile.

One of the perks of having a big brother is his big muscles! He's got three little sisters in there!

Picking, picking, picking pears.

Pumpkins and potatoes/half a ton

 For our friends at church...all the potatoes in apple bags are coming along this morning. Later in the afternoon, I managed to drop off some more from the mesh bags with two more families. So neat to be able to share!!

Check out these beauties! I've photographed from the front/south side of these guys, but from the back/north, you can see five gorgeous pumpkins nearly ready for harvest! They're so funny to see hanging there mid-air!!

I'm wondering now if we'll be able to say, literally, that we brought in a ton of food from our yard this year. As of yesterday, we surpassed half a ton, and we've got the heaviest stuff yet to come (pumpkins, squash, pears, and still a good chunk of potatoes and tomatoes as well.)

What are you doing, Dad?

"What are you doing, Dad?" ask the little biker girls.

"I'm measuring the sunflowers, girls," says the Dad with the big floppy hat.

"It's THIIIIIIIS big!"

We couldn't quite get the tape measure to stand up tall enough, but were able to determine that this one is between 12 and 13 feet tall!!! That's a big sunflower!

And since height is apparently one of the themes in the vegetable garden this year, here's a picture from the day before of Matt harvesting cucumbers.

Still growing, growing...

 Two months ago the sunflowers were twice as tall as the little girls; now they're twice as tall (or more) than Matt!

It's gorgeous, too...

So incredible to see all the different stages of growth all at once on that head!!! (I had to climb to the very top of our step ladder and hold the camera above my head to get this photo!)

And, just in case we didn't have enough potatoes, I cut up and planted two that were going bad from the store midway through the summer, and sure enough, we've got one more row of taters to dig in a few weeks. The wonders of a garden never cease to delight me!

Compost: it's what's [not] for dinner

 Thankfully! Although I do enjoy teasing the kids sometimes as they walk into the kitchen asking what's for supper, and I motion to the bucket in the sink exclaiming, "Soup!!"

In all reality, though, I find great pleasure in the buckets and buckets full of "gray" water and other organic waste that we can throw out into the yard. I don't always keep the water in the winter, but it's breath-taking to me how much perfectly good water gets put down the drains in our society!!! NONE of that needs to be put through a sewage treatment plant, but that's where it would go if we didn't intercept it on its way down.

Corn!

Matt insisted that we try corn again, after trying years ago with really no luck.

It's working this year! We're rookies, so harvested the first ones a bit late and they were rather starchy, but went out the second day and did a more rigorous harvest so the others that were ready or past ready didn't go too far, and check it out! Thirty-some ears of corn!!!

That's a funny looking one! The girls think it looks like a kangaroo.

Well, that's explains it!

In case we ever wonder why there don't seem to be as many tomatoes coming into the house as it seems there should be...

...it just might be a matter of the crew!

Uncle!

We don't stand a chance against this monster of a pumpkin!!!

For that matter, neither do the tomatoes, the corn, or the rhubarb!

Growing, growing, growing

The giant sunflowers are living up to their name! They're twice as tall as the little girls!

The late tomatoes are starting to take off - not nearly as big as the ones we planted earlier in the season, but we'll get tomatoes from them, I'm guessing, before the summer's over! This is the little rock-pile wall that Owen built for us at the edge where the rhubarb grows. We had to co-opt the space to the west of it for the tomatoes because the regular garden is out of room!

The vertical pumpkin growing is a great idea, but would work better if we only had one plant on each trellis! Our winter squash are doing fine, but these pumpkins are taking over. I'm beginning to hope they reach far enough back to climb up the pine tree!

This is looking to the east from the other side of the co-opted tomato space. You can see the corn through the trellis, and on the far left of the photo, the south side of the vertical pumpkins.

One of our zucchini patches. Four clusters here and three in the other location. Curious to see how many pounds of food these babies put out this year!

And this is a view into one of our fenced-in areas. Beets in the front, and some bush beans that got planted late. Middle is lettuce, zinnias (just to be pretty!) and carrots, and in the back, just visible, a hydrangea, more beets, and a cabbage.

Zinnias are such boisterously exuberant flowers!

 

The largest cluster of Roma tomatoes. Lots of fruit; none ripe yet.