Quick harvest updates

On July 9th, I picked our first bucket of Yellow Transparent Apples.

They could be bigger, which would be nice, but they still made good applesauce.

I also picked our first blackberries that day.

The next day, I picked our first cucumbers.

The next first harvest will probably be sometime next week when our peas are ready.

First zucchini

 

Of many.

Garden roundup for June

During the month of June, our chickens laid 100 eggs, 77 of which made it to the house.  As to the broken eggs, I think they’re just messing with me.  For example, I used to just record the number of good eggs and the number of broken ones.  But then I realized I should keep track of which nests the broken eggs are in, to change them more often.  For the first round, there were eggs broken in all three nests, so I changed all of them.  But for the second round, eggs were only being broken in the left and right nests.  Since everything in the middle nest was still good, I figured I’d only change the left and right ones.  So when I gathered eggs one day, I cleaned the grass clippings and shredded paper out of the left and right nests.  There wasn’t any egg leakage in the shredded paper, but I left the nests empty for a few hours to dry out just in case.  Well, when I went back to fill them in, there was a broken egg in the center nest.  And since I changed everything, broken eggs seem to alternate between the center and right nests. 

June has been a hectic month.  We discovered that it wasn’t a rabbit eating our peas and beans, but slugs.  We’ve tried several ways to deal with them, and I don’t know if they helped, or if the plants have just gotten big enough that they’re growing faster than the slugs can eat them. 

The red currants are just about done.  We have a couple containers in the freezer, but if I had the time I could easily fill a few more.  Our red raspberries are going strong, and our black raspberries and blueberries are starting to hit their stride.  I mentioned when I first picked some black raspberries, that we had one patch where they grow pretty big.  I said I should get a picture, so ….

The small one is one I picked at random from one of the other patches.  The first one I picked at random from the big patch wasn’t that much bigger, but then I saw the one in the photo.  The big ones are nice because they fill the container fast.

Something else we picked, on the last day in June, was our first tomato.

We buy a bunch of tomatoes from the nursery that are all at the ready to transplant stage.  But we also buy one or two older tomatoes that probably should have been transplanted a couple weeks earlier.  Not only was this one blooming, there were little tomatoes already on it when we finally transplanted it.  This way, we get some tomatoes earlier.

Other things, we finally got the potato patch worked up and our potatoes planted.  As well as a spot for carrots. 

As I said, June was hectic, and July will probably be even worse. 

June 24th Harvest

Today I was going on an errand and saw a few ripe black raspberries.

 We have five or six patches of black raspberries the birds have planted in various places, and when I checked them later, I found a few more ripe ones. 

 

I’m not sure what the difference is, but there is one patch that produces raspberries probably the size of my thumbnail, but they’re somewhat shadowed, so it will be maybe a week before they ripen.  But I may take a few photos of them once they do just to show them off.

I also picked some red and even purple raspberries.

 

Purple raspberries are some hybrid between red and black.  They taste like red raspberries, but it does seem that they start out a normal raspberry shape, but once they ripen they get somewhat deformed.  Someone with more interest and time than I can figure out why.  But it does seem that a few years ago, there were only a couple plants, but it seems I’m finding more each year.  Maybe someday, I’ll keep them separate to make purple raspberry jelly, but for now I just lump them in with the red ones. 

You can also see some blueberries in there.  These aren’t the first blueberries I’ve picked, that was last Friday.  But my sister and I were watering the blueberries and we saw a few were ripe, but they didn’t last long enough to get photographed.

I also picked a small fraction of the red currants that are ripe.

 

All last week I meant to spend an evening picking currants, but by the time it cooled down, it was time to water the garden and by the time that was done it was dark.  It did rain some yesterday, so we didn’t need to water tonight, so I finally was able to pick some.  But there are a lot more that need picked.  I just stopped because I was tired.

While I was picking currants, I also harvested a couple of things I didn’t want to: Japanese beetles.

 

These were the first ones I’ve seen this summer.  I put them in a container of water so their wings are wet and they can’t fly.  I then feed them to our chickens.

A day’s harvest

This is what I picked on Thursday, June 13th.

On the left are the first wild strawberries I’ve picked this year.  One year, I did manage to pick enough to make a batch of jam, but that was a looooot of work.  We might have a ton of strawberries growing in our fields, but I have 8,000 other projects.  These will end up mixed in with boughten strawberries for shortcake or jam.  On the right are some red raspberries.  I picked the first raspberries a couple days ago, but I forgot to get a picture of them because I was trying to do twenty other things.

This is the third, or fourth harvest of currants I’ve gotten, but the first ones were just two or three.  There are a lot more that are half-ripe, which I’ll have to pick next week.  If the birds don’t eat them first. 

What I do with all these berries is freeze them, then sometime this fall my mom and I will make jelly out of them.  If I pick enough red raspberries, we’ll make a red raspberry batch.  If there isn’t enough juice for one batch, my mom will mix in some currant juice to fill it out.  And if we don’t have enough of everything, we’ll just mix everything – currants, red raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries – into one mixed berry jelly.

Trying something new – sky lettuce

I recently came across this video about using plastic bottles to grow plants.  And I thought it was great, but I didn’t have any place to hang such bottles.  Then I remembered we have a fence around our main garden to hopefully keep the deer out, as well as around the tires we use as raised beds.  And I figured I could cut out the side of a milk jug, and tie the handle to a fence post. 

I made one and planted some lettuce in it because, well, it was starting to get to the point where I needed to plant something.  But I only got one plant that came up.  I don’t think the seed is that old, but we did have a few cold nights shortly after I planted it.  I planted a few more seeds, but so far, nothing else has grown.  A few days ago, I made the first harvest, which was not quite enough for half a sandwich. 

I’ve made two more, one has some marigolds in it, and I made a second one for lettuce.  These are a little deeper, and have more of the top cut away so they get more rain.  I do think one problem I’ll have with them is that they’ll dry out pretty quick.  So far, it’s been a rainy spring, so I haven’t really had to water them much, but we usually have dry summers, so that’s one thing I’ll have to keep an eye on. 

I have plenty of jugs to make more.  I just have to think of what best to plant in them.  One idea is to plant some perennials.  That way, in the fall I could just untie the handles, and set them somewhere they won’t have to deal with the snow, and put them back out the next spring. 

A quick harvest update

Yesterday, I finally managed to harvest a currant harvest. 

I didn’t drop this one as I had the last.

I also picked some leaf lettuce, just barely enough for a sandwich.