tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37122918010640100362024-03-18T23:06:52.006-04:00Back Yard Organic VegetablesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-71006689989362597262012-11-10T10:00:00.000-05:002012-11-10T10:00:56.053-05:00Our Fall Garden Harvests.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This time of year the harvests have really fallen off in volume. However, we got a few items in for the harvest tally.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Meager as it is, we got 1/2 ounce of raspberries this week. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The absolute last harvest of willow leaf butter beans gave us nine pounds eight ounces of beans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Since this was the last harvest due to the cold nights, I wasn't expecting very much. We were fortunate to get three pounds one ounce of shelled beans. Many of them were small, but with the very chilly nights, there was no hope for them to fill out any larger, so I picked them all. I saved the dried ones for seed for next year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I made two batches of green tomato relish with each batch using eighteen pounds of green tomatoes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Those thirty-six pounds of green tomatoes turned into twenty-eight pints of delicious green tomato relish! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If you would like the recipe, here it is as I have modified it:</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Green Tomato
Relish<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">(</span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">Recipe Yield Approximately 12 pints)</span> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ingredients<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></div>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">18
pounds of green tomatoes<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">3
red bell peppers, halved and seeded<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">3
green bell peppers, halved and seeded<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">4
pounds of sweet onions<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">3
tablespoons celery seed<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">3
tablespoons mustard seed<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">1
tablespoon salt<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">5
cups white sugar<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<li class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-line-height-alt: 12.0pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">2
cups apple cider vinegar<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></li>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Directions<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In a grinder,
coarsely grind tomatoes, red bell peppers, green bell peppers, and sweet onions. (You
may need to do this in batches.) Place
two large colanders in a sink and ladle in the tomato mixture to drain for 1 hour. (Pouring the mixture in risks spilling some of it into the sink thereby losing it.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In a large,
non-aluminum stockpot, combine tomato and pepper and onion mixture, celery
seed, mustard seed, salt, sugar, and vinegar. Bring to a boil and simmer over
low heat 5 minutes, stirring frequently. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sterilize enough jars
to hold relish (approximately 12 one-pint jars, or 6 one-quart jars). Have the
lids ready in hot water to prepare them for a good seal. Pack relish into
sterilized jars, making sure there are no spaces or air pockets. Fill jars to
1/2 inch head space. Screw on lids. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Place the sealed jars
into a boiling water bath canner with hot water already in it, making sure that
there is 2 inches of water covering the jars when they are all in there. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bring water to a full boil, then cover and
process for 40 minutes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">After 40 minutes,
turn off heat, remove lid from pot and let cool down for 5 minutes before
taking jars out of the pot. Remove jars from pot and place away from drafts on
cloth-covered surface, two inches apart, until cool. At this point, I use folded paper towels and let their weight touch the remaining water on the lids to absorb it. I do NOT press on the lids to wipe them off at this stage. Once cool, wipe off jars
with a warm dishcloth, let air dry, and mark contents and date on the lids.
Relish can be stored for up to a year. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some of the roma tomatoes ripened after I had picked them, so I made pizza sauce using Mrs. Wages packaged mix. It turned out very nice.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs8d4ojcWM-1xtDsCFmw6MtvY5Qs36sGSZ6OKhns9d6Vwq-RbCN2Tea0GkZtcywHGhNsIKR3ZPpyCl2tElCM9Bt8exli37lbGgI2Qf-ceTZ7PPVAI9OE6XgCp2Sx_SaTvRYNc0I41PZ50/s1600/007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs8d4ojcWM-1xtDsCFmw6MtvY5Qs36sGSZ6OKhns9d6Vwq-RbCN2Tea0GkZtcywHGhNsIKR3ZPpyCl2tElCM9Bt8exli37lbGgI2Qf-ceTZ7PPVAI9OE6XgCp2Sx_SaTvRYNc0I41PZ50/s320/007.JPG" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I ended up with six pints of pizza sauce, with each pint having enough sauce for two pizzas each. That was fine with us!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now I have to remove all the tomato vines, butter bean vines and associated fencing. Then I can plant the Vates collards that I was fortunate enough to find an entire flat of.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So for our winter garden we'll have collards, butter crunch lettuce, curly kale, broccoli and sugar snap peas. With the continued nightly lows in the low 40's, everything else is shrivelled up, including the cucumber plants that I was trying to nurse along.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'm still having difficulties with Blogger to the degree that I am questioning my continued use of it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Regardless of all that, have a great vegetable gardening day!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Veggie PAK</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-31948802697026798652012-10-28T09:42:00.000-04:002012-10-28T09:42:17.440-04:00Garden Preparations For Hurricane Sandy.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">As I thought about the effects of the approaching high winds from Hurricane Sandy on our garden, I thought I would make a few preparations to protect our harvests.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I picked the figs that were ripe/close to being ripe, because the tree location is such that the figs would probably be whipped off the tree. The high wind would be bad enough, but the wind gusts are concentrated as they buffet off the side of the house and into the fig tree. These beauties weighed eight ounces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I picked one ounce of what may be the last of the heritage raspberries for this year. They are somewhat protected from the winds by the house, so I'm hoping that I may see the new berries ripen for picking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Green Beauty Snow Peas have grown some, but I didn't see any blooms on them so I'm letting them ride out the storm as they are.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The cucumbers have exploded with blossoms! I just had to do <em>something</em> to try to protect them from the storm. They are too heavy to move, so I did the next best thing that I could think of.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I wrapped them up!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I took a painters dropcloth and wrapped it around the wire cage while at the same time overlapping the top edge of the wire fabric in order to help hold the cloth in place. After putting the cloth in place, I tied a rope tightly around the top of the wire cage to bind the cloth so it wouldn't slip down. Then I tied that to two of my raspberry fence posts in order to keep the cage from being blown over. The weight of the wet dropcloth should help hold it in place.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3XppwCWPRY_u2-ZDFU14OuVSGjNMG6CVUHVTGRaL07469EeO1n5PJlQw30zOEUu4NnlWZJRjXKLZ5UKPRSg8NOUcxgy0HmEt08ex5O0SZcJFiL5U2z1KX2p2x7MxX5_9-ZAVYSTTMU8c/s1600/DSC06841.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3XppwCWPRY_u2-ZDFU14OuVSGjNMG6CVUHVTGRaL07469EeO1n5PJlQw30zOEUu4NnlWZJRjXKLZ5UKPRSg8NOUcxgy0HmEt08ex5O0SZcJFiL5U2z1KX2p2x7MxX5_9-ZAVYSTTMU8c/s320/DSC06841.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This way, the cuke plants could get the rain and the blossoms would be protected from the strong winds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Another concern of mine was wind damage to the tomatoes that were still on the vines. I know from their position in the yard that the wind would blast the remaining tomatoes right off the vines and onto the ground, bruising and damaging them. To alleviate that concern, I simply picked all the remaining tomatoes. Canning Green Tomato Relish is in my immediate future! Oddly enough, we finished the last jar of our canned green tomato relish from last year the same day I picked all these.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here is the tally from this tomato pickin' time:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="color: #38761d;"><strong>Green Celebrity Tomatoes - 16 pounds</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-size: large;"><strong> Green Roma Tomatoes - 12.5 pounds</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d; font-size: large;"><strong> Green Park's Whopper Tomatoes - 41 pounds</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="color: red;"><strong>Ripe/Almost Ripe Romas - 8.5 pounds</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;"> <u>Ripe/Almost Ripe Park's Whoppers - 5 pounds</u></span></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> <strong><span style="color: orange;">Total Pounds This Picking 83 pounds!</span></strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">At this point, I think the garden is ready for Hurricane Sandy. I wouldn't mind if the storm made a sharp turn out to sea, though.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Stay safe and be careful during this "event".</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Have a great vegetable gardening day!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Veggie PAK</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-75378254784848384532012-10-24T10:12:00.001-04:002012-10-24T10:12:36.496-04:00I'm Happy to be Posting Again!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">First and foremost, I am not a computer geek. That being said, during August and September I haven't been able to upload pictures to my blog as easily as I had in the past . I thought maybe it was because I hadn't updated to Blogger's new templates. So I thought I would explore them and see if there was a new template that appealed to me, and at the same time I thought that utilizing a new template might alleviate the picture loading problem. While exploring the new templates, I tried one specific one and to my dismay, I couldn't get rid of it. There was no way to go back. There were no drop down menus or buttons to click on to go back, or even to do anything. I was stuck! I couldn't sign out or in but the only thing I could do was to scroll up and down. That was it. I went to the Blogger Forum and posted my problem, hoping to get some guidance. After a few days with no answers, I posted there again. Finally on October 23rd, someone posted a reply to my questions, only to say that they too, were having major problems uploading pictures.<br /><br /> <br /><br />I decided to try loading Google Chrome to see if that made a difference. It did, but only to a point. I ended up being able to select a template that was able to overwrite the problem one, but the font was tiny. I changed that and it worked in design mode, but when I viewed my blog the font went back to being tiny. I figured that I would learn to live with that, so I went on trying to see what changes went into effect using Google Chrome. Ultimately I found that I was able to upload pictures but was unable to change the font on my blog. I saved it all and closed it out and went out of IE as well. I went back in to Blogger via Google and opened my blog, thinking that I had successfully changed something that would now let me use my blog. I found that I still couldn't upload pictures there. It occurred to me to go back to Google Chrome and open my blog and upload the pictures there. It worked. But I still couldn't make the font change stick. So what the new post process has evolved into for me is this: Go into Google Chrome, try twice to get the "sign in" text to appear, sign in, upload my pictures, save and close it, go to regular Google, open my blog, sign in and do the editing there and save it. The process is tedious and frustrating, but at least I can still do my blog. At least I hope I can. If successful, this will be my first post using this method.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Now for my garden post:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-wP16Cx4WMe_CpjqFPP6T7-cu61FLrGhj_kg1B4st_sT7s6GHAkWohwplxtCMCzYQz1Nkh9jSwLgNTtKvn4CDNU4I7rqiRV61Hifm72sZeTgAPWaE7ziquqwhyYXZjIWT5TJ5qU_9NZ0/s1600/001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-wP16Cx4WMe_CpjqFPP6T7-cu61FLrGhj_kg1B4st_sT7s6GHAkWohwplxtCMCzYQz1Nkh9jSwLgNTtKvn4CDNU4I7rqiRV61Hifm72sZeTgAPWaE7ziquqwhyYXZjIWT5TJ5qU_9NZ0/s320/001.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is what my willow leaf Lima bean plants look like now after the tops have crossed over the rows and continued growing on top of the next row of fencing. After going through a period of several weeks where there were no beans there to harvest, we were finally able to pick some beans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I picked six and a half pounds of butter beans last Saturday morning. We were excited to get them and to see that there were many, many more pods on the plants that will hopefully fill out before we get the first frost in middle-to-late November. There are even more flowers than pods on the vines at this writing, so the potential is there for good future harvests.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Those butter beans shelled out to be two pounds seven ounces. I'm delighted to have that as a harvest at this time of year.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Beauregard sweet potatoes have been looking healthy all during their growing time. I only planted seven plants and this is the size their vines grew to. I'm not sure what we'll find when we harvest them shortly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is the only sweet potato flower that I have seen on the vines all during their growth. I wasn't sure if that meant there would be few potatoes or none at all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Much to my surprise, I had some nice sweet potatoes! I wasn't sure what I would find under all those vines after reading all that I did about the yields that you could expect. I had read that some people lift the vines every so often so they won't begin to grow fingerling size potatoes. I didn't lift mine, but found that there were both sizes under the vines. The nice sized potatoes in my right hand in the picture were dug from the outermost perimeter of the potato bed, not from under a main plant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When I reached one of the main plants and pulled it and hand dug the soil away, this is what the sweet potatoes looked like.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is the yield we got from the seven plants that I started with. Thirty-three pounds of Beauregard sweet potatoes. Most are nice sized, but there are many fingerling ones as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I found a very handy use for two stackable bread racks that I had in my shop. I use them for curing my harvest during the day in the shade and then bring them in at night so the dew won't settle on them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I must say that digging these potatoes was very hard, meticulous work. I only cut two of them, but trying to protect the ones out of sight under the soil resulted in the process being very laborious. It took me from ten o'clock in the morning to four o'clock in the afternoon to dig all these up. These potatoes occupied space in my garden for one hundred and thirty four days. That's quite an investment in garden space for the yield. In my current location, I don't think that I will be planting potatoes again. If I had a very much larger garden area, I would do it again and plant even more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Roma tomatoes are hanging in there into the fall. Last week I picked 106 Roma tomatoes and they weighed in at fifteen and a half pounds. I also picked twenty six Park's Whopper tomatoes at a weight of seven pounds and 10 Celebrity tomatoes at three pounds. Later this week I am going to pull <em>all</em> the green tomatoes and use them for making Green Tomato Relish.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I picked the last of the Black Beauty eggplant since my last post. The seven eggplant weighed in at four and one quarter pounds. I had picked some green tomatoes to try making fried green tomatoes, but I didn't get around to it quick enough and they ripened in the kitchen!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have one row of Vates collards growing nicely. I'm hoping to get some more plants to put in after I pull the tomato vines and prepare the soil there.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have two rows of broccoli that are growing very well. I need to get in there with the Mantis tiller and get those weeds before they get bigger.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">My Green Beauty Snow Peas are doing well in one of the half barrels in my driveway. I had to move the container from the center of the driveway over to the far side so the plants would get the most sun they could. When they were in the center of it, the shadow of the house next door covered them early in the day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since I have had nothing but bad luck with cucumbers for the last two years, I decided what the heck and planted some seeds in a half barrel. Like the snow peas above, I moved their container so it would get the most sun hours possible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Blossoms! Maybe I'll have success this time! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As of this writing, the raspberries have really slowed down. However, in the middle of the month they were producing pretty well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is three ounces of berries picked at the middle of October. There were more after that picking, but my granddaughter picked them and ate them right there by the plant. It's really special to me when a three year old child says to me, "Poppa, can I pick those?" I like that all my grandchildren know where food really comes from.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Another fruit that I have been enjoying for breakfast lately is figs. I take Molly out in the morning and walk around the garden and stroll over to the fig tree and pick two or three and enjoy them right there. There aren't many left on the tree, but every two or three days there will be a couple ready for picking and enjoying.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">On the north side of our house the ground doesn't get much direct sun, so I don't have to cut the grass there many times during the year. I was surprised to find that wild asters have grown up all over the area. I really like seeing all the insects that are buzzing around the flowers, and the wild asters serve as a great ground cover. I will be letting these go to seed and hopefully they will grow back even more next year. I need all the pollinating insects I can get to make sure my garden does well. If these flowers help support their presence, that's fine with me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Remember Molly, our little puppy?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Molly has grown!</span> <span style="font-size: large;"> She is now 68 pounds and a chaser of squirrels and an excellent protector of our home. We love her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">That completes this post on my garden activities. I hope Blogger will leave things alone for awhile now. It was an exasperating experience trying to overcome whatever it did to my blog. Nevertheless, I'm very happy to be back and sharing my gardening experiences with all the wonderful folks out there. I do thank Blogger for the ability to be out there with all of you!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Have a great vegetable gardening day!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Veggie PAK</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-76117695354565750252012-09-14T07:42:00.000-04:002012-10-22T09:22:35.132-04:00Canning Some of the Harvest.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is a short post on some of my canning activity. I had some time available so I made a batch of Sweet Banana Pepper Mustard using a recipe from the internet. It's the same recipe I've been using for a few years and it always turns out great.<br />
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I ended up with a dozen pints of delicious sweet banana pepper mustard! I used about 100 sweet banana peppers to make this batch. That's more than the recipe calls for, but time has proven that we like it better this way.<br />
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Here is a pot of boiling fig jam that I was cooking following another online recipe. This was just under three pounds of figs that I was able to accumulate over a few days time from my tree. Next year I'm hoping to have several more fig trees established to make acquiring a sufficient quantity of figs much quicker. I have one tree already planted and it has been growing all year. I have three more small ones in gallon containers that are coming along very nicely.<br />
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All that work provided me with three half-pints and seven jelly jars of wonderful fig jam. I repeated something that I had read about when I was making my peach preserves. I read that if you boil the mixture a little longer than the recipe calls for, somehow it makes the fruit not float to the top of the jars. It worked fine for the peaches and as you can see in the half-pint jars, it worked for the fig jam also.<br />
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That concludes this short canning post for today. Thanks for visiting and I hope each of you has a wonderful day!<br />
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Happy Gardening!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-70631633802776232852012-09-08T20:42:00.000-04:002012-09-08T20:42:45.352-04:00Our Garden Review.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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First, let me apologize for not posting or replying to comments for the past few weeks, but the situation was out of my control. I don't know what Blogger did, but it stopped me from making any posts with pictures in them. I tried several workarounds suggested by online forums, but had no luck until I loaded a new web browser. That was suggested through an email from <a href="mailto:blogger@googleproductforums.com">blogger@googleproductforums.com</a>. I loaded Firefox and was able to load my pictures into the draft blog post, and then I went back to Internet Explorer and edited the text. When I completed all that, reader's comments all the way back to August 16th popped into my blog all at once when I signed in. It was all very frustrating to say the least. <br />
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Now let's get to the Garden Review...<br />
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Labor Day has passed and the production from the hot weather crops has faded, so it's time to select the vegetables we like and to begin planting them in our garden as space allows. We're still anticipating some veggies from what remains growing in the garden.<br />
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The green onions I planted two years ago in a container are still producing scallions for us. This bunch weighed 8 ounces. Since this picture was taken, I harvested another ten ounce bunch, and in the meantime they're ready to be picked again.<br />
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Here are some Brown Turkey figs that I picked from our tree. One tree doesn't produce a quantity of figs fast enough for a nice batch of fig preserves because it takes so many, so I made some refrigerator fig jam instead.<br />
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Without having to do the actual canning, it was pretty easy and didn't take long. I used just under three pounds of figs to make this batch. It's great on toast in the morning! <br />
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I surely thought my Park's Whopper tomatoes had produced all that they would for this year, but apparently I was mistaken. The vines are growing rapidly and there are blooms all over them. There are quite a few tomatoes on the vines that are already larger than the size of golf balls, with some as large as tennis balls.<br />
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The Roma tomatoes are showing dramatic new growth and fruit as well. </div>
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Their vines are loaded with tomatoes already!</div>
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The six eggplant bushes that I planted have blooms all over them, but I've only gotten a few eggplants from them. Hopefully with the cooler weather, they will begin producing more. I think the hot weather we had affected the tomato production too.<br />
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We are enjoying the eggplants that we do get. After peeling them, I slice them to a thickness of about 1/8 inch or less if I can cut them that thin, dip them in an egg bath, then coat them with "House of Autrey's Seafood Seasoning Mix" and fry them in vegetable oil until golden brown. Boy are they good!<br />
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My Willow Leaf Pole Lima bean vines are doing very well. When I bought the seeds from Norfolk County Feed-n-Seed, they told me that this type makes a lot of vines. When the top vines can't stand up in the air any longer, they fall over and connect to the row next to them, even though the rows are three feet apart. That didn't concern me because I was very interested in the size of the beans they produced. They are a little bit smaller than the Henderson Baby Butter Beans that I had been planting for years. The pole beans had to do much better than the bush beans for me because I lost 3/4 of the bush bean crop every year to bugs and beans that I couldn't see, rotting on the ground. I would find that out when I pulled up the bushes and saw all the rotted bean pods. After that, I'm just not a bush bean fan, although I haven't ruled them out completely. I've been reading about people growing them in elevated rain gutters so they don't lay on the ground and rot. I might try that at some point. It would be interesting to see which method or bean type produced the greatest yield with the least labor.<br />
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The vines are producing hundreds of flowers, so I'm anticipating another crop, also probably due to the cooler weather. They are blurry in the picture, but you can see the beans forming in the left side of it.<br />
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I'm looking forward to a lot more butter beans from these vines!</div>
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Here are two rows of Waltham 29 Broccoli that I planted on September 1st. Hopefully I'll get some broccoli before the new year.<br />
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I also have some very nice Vates collard plants that I'll be planting in the separator row between the Park's Whopper and Roma tomatoes. This year we also bought some Kale plants for the garden. I've only planted those once before and had terrible problems with bugs. This year I'm prepared with some organic Bt powder. <br />
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In summary, I would be very happy to get some more nice red tomatoes, but I'm not holding my breath for that. I would be very happy with a good harvest of green tomatoes so I can make green tomato relish, which I think is incredibly delicious! If I can find a comparable lima bean with fewer vines, I might try them next year. I have planted my last beet seed. I simply cannot grow beets. I think the eggplant will do well and produce a satisfactory harvest. Next year I plan to plant a full row of them because we enjoy them so much. My grapes have all died after caring for them so meticulously for three years. The last vine produced so few clusters, that I let the birds have them and then I dug up that last vine. I pulled out one row of posts for more yard access, and the other two rows of posts will be used as part of the frame for a small greenhouse, only about 7 x 13 feet in size. My plan for next year is to reduce the east plot size by just a few feet in length so that I can put in some dwarf apple trees. I already have a small fig tree that I rooted early in the spring from the original one that I have. It's about eighteen inches high and very healthy-looking. Additionally, I have three other fig clippings that are actively growing in a container. I plan on doing several more of those. <br />
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That concludes this blog post from Back Yard Organic Vegetables. I hope you found it interesting and informative, and I thank each of you for taking your time to visit with me here.<br />
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Have a great vegetable and fruit gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-87607295361798202022012-08-15T22:18:00.000-04:002012-08-15T22:18:47.294-04:00Harvests Have Slacked Off Dramatically, But There's Other Things To Be Done.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Since the harvests have about come to a close for our summer crops, we started to plan for our Fall Garden. We also took advantage of the availability of some beautiful Georgia freestone peaches at one of our preferred local family farm stands.<br />
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I did get a small 8 ounce harvest of scallions from the store-bought onions that I planted over two winters ago. They're still producing beautiful scallions for us.<br />
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I don't have pictures of the rest of the harvests, but I will list them.<br />
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My fig tree is producing figs at a somewhat slow rate, but I'll take them however I can get them. In the past ten or so days, I have been able to pick 24 figs that weighed a total of 1.24 pounds.<br />
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There were four yellow pear tomatoes that together weighed one ounce.<br />
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I picked ten golden yellow bell peppers that weighed 15 ounces.<br />
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We got three small roma tomatoes at 9 ounces, five Park's Whopper tomatoes at 1.5 pounds, and four celebrity tomatoes for a total of 1 pound.<br />
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I picked three black beauty eggplant that weighed 2 pounds.<br />
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Finally, the raspberries haven't been producing as much as I had hoped. We only picked 5.75 ounces.<br />
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Now comes the hot part...</div>
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We bought sixteen pounds of Georgia freestone peaches so I could make my wife's favorite spread: <em>Peach Preserves!</em><br />
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I used the recipe from Cooks.com for my Peach Preserves. Even though peaches are a high acid food, to help ensure that I wouldn't lose any due to spoilage, I added bottled lemon juice at the rate called for in the Ball Blue Book. <br />
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You can see the numbers on the inside of the stock pot that indicate that there was less than ten quarts of peaches in the pot. That's still a lot of peaches! My experience with canning and resulting floating fruit prompted me to use my own judgement on the length of time I cooked this mixture. I brought up the temperature slowly by simmering it in my heavy 18 quart stainless steel stock pot on low heat for about an hour or so. When the outside of the stock pot got so hot that I couldn't keep my hand on the sidewall of it, I turned up the heat to high in order to produce a hard boil that couldn't be stirred away. I stirred this constantly at a hard boil for a full thirty minutes.<br />
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The end result was 30 half-pint jars of delicious and beautiful peach preserves that didn't float to the top of the jars.<br />
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Our grandson Noah spend the night at our house and he always wants to help in the garden, so I let him water the sweet potatoes for me. The patch of sweet potatoes appears to be rather unkept. Before the weeds got as high as you see them, the potato vines completely filled the area so that there was no room to step into the patch without stepping on the vines. I didn't want to do that, so I just let them be. Now I don't know if I did a good thing or a bad thing, because since then I have read that you should keep moving the vines so the strength of the plant will be at the main root. Otherwise, the vines may root and you might end up with very small sweet potatoes all around! We'll find out in the fall when the vines and leaves turn yellow. For now, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed!<br />
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That's what we've been doing around here for the last couple of weeks. There hasn't really been much to post about with the way the harvests have dropped off this time of year for us. <br />
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I hope everyone has been having a wonderful summer garden experience this year!<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-8993578305276047002012-08-02T08:52:00.000-04:002012-08-02T08:52:16.365-04:00Canning My First Fig Jam.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is just a short post on canning homemade jam. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Over a three day period, I collected three pounds of figs from my tree in our back yard. I love figs, so I decided to try making some homemade fig jam. Of all the canning that I have done, I think this was the easiest to do correctly.</span><br />
<br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">I used the recipe "How To Make Homemade Fig Jam - Easily!" which I found at PickYourOwn.org.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When I was through, I had seven half-pints of delicious fig jam, plus a little more that went into the refrigerator!<br /><br />The fig tree still has dozens of figs in various stages of development, so I will surely be making more, and if I get enough figs before the ants do, I'll make fig preserves.<br /><br />That's all for now. It was a short post, wasn't it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I would like to wish my mom a Happy Birthday today as she turns 89 years young. She still has her own vegetable and flower garden, and she is active in her gardening club.</span><br />
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Happy Birthday Mom! I love you!<br /><br />I hope everyone is having a great gardening day!<br />Veggie PAK</div>
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I thought I would do something different with this posting since my recent posts have been tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. I thought I would do a tally of what I have harvested from my garden this calendar year. Several vegetables continued to grow into springtime from last fall's plantings, so to keep track of all of it, my spreadsheet data goes from January 1st to December 31st of each year. Expenditures come out of the value of the crops for each year. I don't carry expenses from year to year. That makes it too much like work, and for me that takes the fun out of the whole experience.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Vegetable or Fruit Item Pounds</u></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Willow Leaf Lima Beans 20.31<br />Blueberries 5.02<br />Black Beauty Eggplant 6.53<br />Butter Crunch Lettuce 6.06<br />Golden Sweet Bell Peppers 1.75<br />Sweet Banana Peppers 0.59<br />Cherry Belle Radishes 1.31<br />Heritage Red Raspberries 2.78<br />Sorrel 1.75<br />Tomatoberry 2.58<br />Yellow Pear Tomatoes 1.64<br />Celebrity Tomatoes 95.42<br />Roma Tomatoes 144.38<br />Park's Whopper Tomatoes 135.36<br />Fortex Green Beans 70.13<br />Premium Crop Broccoli 23.19<br />Rainbow Swiss Chard 4.94<br /><u>Vates Collards 60.69</u></span><br />
Total Pounds Thus Far 584.43<br />
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In my next post, I'll have some pics of the current harvests at that time. The last two or three weeks have been hectic here, leaving me no time to post my harvests. I apologize for that, as I am humbled by your visits to my blog.<br />
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I hope everyone gets some rain for their gardens and you have wonderful harvests!<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-75739446618237189712012-07-10T12:31:00.000-04:002012-07-10T12:31:53.012-04:00My Organic Garden Harvest<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The garden has been doing really great in the last few weeks! I've had to recruit helpers in order to keep up with the harvest rate.<br />
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Celie and Eleanor help Poppa by picking the yellow pear (or balloon) tomatoes. </div>
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We picked 36 of these that weighed a total of 1 pound 1 ounce. There were also 18 tomato berries that weighed 4 ounces. (Not all were in this pic.)</div>
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The butter beans weighed 6 pounds 7 ounces in the pods. </div>
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Shelled they weighed 2 1/4 pounds.</div>
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I picked 10 ounces of Cherry Belle radishes.</div>
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The blueberries continue to be a major delight in providing me with a full 1 pound harvest this week!<br />
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The golden Bell Peppers were harvested for the first time in my garden half-barrel. I picked 13 of them for 1 3/4 pounds.<br />
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There were 9 banana peppers at 6 3/4 ounces.</div>
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One black beauty eggplant at 11 1/2 ounces.</div>
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The Celebrity tomatoes gave us 17 1/4 pounds at this last picking. </div>
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The Park's Whoppers gave us 13 1/2 pounds.</div>
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and the Roma's gave us 18 1/2 pounds!</div>
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When I was making my wife's lunch and sliced this Park's Whopper tomato, I just knew I had to take a picture of it. They are on a dinner plate for size comparison purposes.<br />
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Here is my first batch of homemade organic tomato juice! Fourteen quarts! Needless to say, I am spending a lot of time in the kitchen putting up the veggies.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzcaP9G4H6gGuEd296XsEVHm2Cdnt8E0Sw8TaFP7TPg_9kvmRwONbFI1ajdBrfpas_yw3bDsuycdHsvBbintg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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I thought I'd share a short video on the results of my gently squeezing the tomatoes before sending them through the food strainer. It really worked out great!<br />
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That completes another garden harvest report from Back Yard Organic Vegetables. I thank you for caring enough to visit my blog so I may share information with you on the successes as well as the failures of my gardening experiences.<br />
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Please forgive me, but I've been late on getting out my replies to comments that have been shared with me due to kitchen activity, but I will answer all within the next couple of days since it is raining again today.<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-59214170826295398392012-07-04T23:30:00.000-04:002012-07-04T23:30:11.492-04:00It's Tomato Time!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The tomatoes are coming in pretty good this week, and even better than last week! I have two tubs of tomatoes from a few days ago in our kitchen waiting to be processed into canned goods. When contemplating cooking them and then having to run them through my hand food mill to remove the skins and seeds, the thought of it was just too much to bear! I searched until I found the right tool for the job. I bought a Back To Basics Food Strainer!<br />
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This was a little pricey at almost $60 I thought, but I very much needed it in order to process the tomatoes. When I took it out of the box I was immediately impressed with the construction of it. It has a strong metal body and a handle that is made from flat metal stock, which allows for easy turning that provides a lot of torque to the screw auger. <br />
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The strainer has a large hopper to receive the food product. I learned to not make it too full because I had to use the push stick to make the tomato chunks go into the auger. With it this full, a couple of chunks tried to escape the hopper.<br />
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This is the first puree that came out of the strainer. There is not a single bit of seed in the receiving bowl! What looks like seeds is the reflection of the incandescent lights over the table. Look in the waste receiving bowl under the clear cone. That material is so dry that there is no juice in the bowl! This device is very thorough!<br />
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In only two hours time, I turned 45 pounds of tomatoes into 14 quarts of absolutely seedless tomato puree!<br />
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Fortunately for me, I have a large commercial-duty stainless steel stock pot that has the number of quarts marked on the inside of the pot. You can see the number "18" in the very top center of the picture, and the number "14" is partially submerged in the puree. Although this pot had those graduations marked, I needed something that suited my needs perfectly. We all know that a full canner load is 7 quarts. The lowest number of quarts marked in this pot was "10". So I remedied that. Before I started my cooking, I took the pot and poured 7 full-to-the-top quarts of water into it and let it settle while on a flat surface. When that was accomplished, I reached into the pot with a black crayon and slowly dipped it into the waterline at the side of the pot and slowly drew a short heavy line, about an inch long on the wall of the pot. This marked where 7 full quarts would be in this pot. Next, I poured the water out and dried the inside of the pot. Then I took my electric carbide-tipped engraver and duplicated the font and style of numbering and marked a "7" including the lines to the left and the right of the number on the inside of the pot. Now there is no more guesswork or wondering if there is enough product for a full canner load of 7 quarts! I was always perturbed when I was left with a 3/4 full quart jar after all that work. Not any more.<br />
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I had to cook this puree on a low heat over the course of two days to reduce it down from 14 to 7 quarts! (I let it cool in between and put it in the fridge overnight.) I should have remembered what I learned last year when working with tomatoes. After you cut out the stem part, turn it upside down and gently squeeze it and most of the clear liquid will come out, thereby requiring far less cooking time to reduce it down to 7 quarts. I'll remember that for the next batch.<br />
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I must say that this food strainer is one of the most incredible inventions for the kitchen I have ever seen as far as saving time goes. It's worth twice the price.<br />
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I picked 21 yellow pear tomatoes that weighed 8 ounces. There were 9 tomatoberries that weighed 2 1/2 ounces. Then there were the butter beans that weighed 3 pounds 5 ounces, with a shelled weight of 14 ounces.<br />
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I picked tomatoes yesterday and did pretty well. I'm not sure what's up with the tomato vines this year, but when you're reaching in to get one and you bump another, it doesn't take too much to knock it off the vine. Now when that happens, I'm sure to pick that one up and put it in the tub as well. Also, if they get too ripe before they're picked they'll spoil within a couple of days in the house. Fortunately for me, tomatoes continue to ripen after they've been picked. So this is how they look when I go picking. With a haul as large as this one, there's sure to be canned tomato juice in my future.<br />
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Celebrity Tomatoes - 70 each @ 36 1/2 pounds<br />
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Park's Whopper Tomatoes - 85 each @ 44 1/2 pounds<br />
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Roma Tomatoes - 337 each @ 49 pounds.<br />
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If you can see it in the previous picture, a lot of the Roma's seem to be getting half-red while the other half is still light green. If it's half red, I'm picking it rather than take a chance on it going bad before I get to it again. The Roma's in this picture used to look like the ones in the previous picture. In just a few days, they turned to this pretty tomato red. Many of these will go into a taco salad, while the rest will be made into juice.<br />
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We haven't given up on the Swiss chard seeds, but they sure take a long time. At this rate, they'll still be occupying this garden space at the end of August! That's okay. Just look at the density of the seeds on those branches!<br />
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Happy Fourth of July to everyone! don't forget that this country was founded by individual citizens, not corporations. Stay informed and protect your rights!<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-55923613108051185612012-06-29T22:30:00.001-04:002012-06-29T22:30:02.858-04:00Our Second Harvest of Willow Leaf Lima Beans, and More!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The harvests are in full swing right now and we are enjoying picking every pound of it! The Willow Leaf pole beans we harvested a few days ago were ready to be picked again this quickly, so that's what I did.<br />
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After picking three pounds just the other day, we got three pounds nine ounces more! They shelled out to be thirteen and one-half ounces of beautiful butter beans.<br />
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This is the bag of shelled beans from the second picking. </div>
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Here are the first two shelled bags of butter beans we have from our new type of vining butter bean.<br />
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Here is how they look after they have been cooked with some butter and salt. Delicious!<br />
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The first harvest period for the red raspberries appears to be over. This 1/2 ounce of berries is all we got after letting them grow for a few days. They provided us with a good supply of raspberries while they lasted!<br />
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The blueberries on the other hand, surprised me with another very nice harvest of fifteen and one-quarter ounces. The bird netting is functioning better than I ever expected. <br />
<br />I don't have pictures of the tomato harvest I got today, but it was a great one and it took quite a while to accomplish! Here is the tomato status from just today's picking:<br />
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Park's Whopper Tomatoes - 18 Pounds<br />
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Celebrity Tomatoes - 10 Pounds<br />
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Roma Tomatoes - 36 1/2 Pounds<br />
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This weekend I'm using a recipe for making 7 quarts of seasoned tomato sauce using 45 pounds of tomatoes. I found the recipe in the Ball Blue Book. <br />
<br />That concludes this late-week post. Thanks for visiting and sharing your comments.<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day.<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-42239991286489036962012-06-27T11:38:00.000-04:002012-06-27T11:38:46.523-04:00Our First Harvest of Willow Leaf Butter Beans, and More Tomatoes!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Garden harvests from your own garden are wonderful! We are benefitting a great deal from having a back yard vegetable garden! I wish everyone would start one for their own benefit. It really isn't hard to do in order to get some harvests from it!<br />
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I pressure canned the last ten quarts of snap beans for this year. These jars will be going to our storage area. I won't be canning any more snap beans this year because I'm letting the vines produce the pods of seeds of future plantings.<br />
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I went out Monday and picked all these veggies from our garden. These Park's Whoppers weighed in at seven pounds three ounces.<br />
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These twenty-two Celebrity tomatoes weighed nine pounds fourteen ounces. </div>
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These sixty-one Roma tomatoes weighed ten pounds thirteen ounces.</div>
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This represents the yield from the last picking of snap beans for this year. These beans weighed four pounds nine ounces and will be cooked up with a nice piece of country ham seasoning meat.<br />
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The tomato berry plant is not producing anywhere near what a plant did in a previous year for us, but we'll take these seven tasty little ones that weighed one and three quarter ounces.<br />
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Finally, the yellow pear tomatoes are beginning to come in like they should. These six weighed one and three quarter ounces.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-large;"><em><strong>Butter Beans!</strong></em></span></div>
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This three pound harvest of butter beans represents our first picking ever of Willow Leaf Pole Lima Beans. They are a smaller variety of Limas, similar to a baby butter bean. <br />
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Those three pounds came out to be twelve ounces of shelled butter beans! A very nice yield! The type of beans we are growing are reported to be able to produce through to the first frost. That would be spectacular!<br />
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After including the weights of some harvests that I had not added from my previous post, the total garden weight produced this calendar year comes to two hundred fofty-five pounds.<br />
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That concludes this impromptu mid-week report for our back yard organic vegetable garden. Thanks for visiting and please feel free to share a comment if you would like to. <br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-17005004613430825602012-06-25T10:36:00.002-04:002012-06-25T10:55:55.755-04:00Our Garden Harvest Report for June 25th.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />Our harvests from our back yard organic garden are doing great this week! We couldn't ask for more without being greedy.<br />
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Our first picking of red raspberries this week brought in three and one quarter ounces that are shown in this pic. Five days later, I picked one and one-half ounces for a total of four and three quarter ounces of red raspberries this week. I'm freezing the raspberries so I can accumulate enough to make jelly or jam.<br />
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On Wednesday I picked thirteen and a half pounds of green beans and canned them the next day. I needed a little more to fill a couple of canning jars to have another full canner load, so I picked an additional one pound thirteen ounces of green beans.<br />
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On Saturday I went and picked twelve and one quarter pounds of green beans. Today I'll be canning them. <br />
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I picked twelve Park's Whopper tomatoes that weighed five pounds twelve ounces.</div>
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I picked twenty-two romas that weighed four pounds six ounces.</div>
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I picked fifteen Celebrity tomatoes that weighed in at seven pounds fourteen ounces.</div>
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Here is my first blueberry harvest since installing the bird netting. It weighed in at fifteen and three-quarter ounces! On Sunday I picked an additional four and one half ounces, for a weekly total of over <em>one and one-quarter pounds</em> of blueberries! Realistically though, I'm not expecting near that weight for next week's report.<br />
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Here is a side view of the over fifteen ounce bag of blueberries. </div>
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This is the end result of all those green beans from last week being pressure canned: 33 Quarts! Now I have to pressure can the twelve pounds of beans that were just picked.<br />
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Granddaughter Celie helper her Poppa pick these fine organic vegetables. Four and one-half ounces of sweet banana peppers; three black beauty eggplant @ thirteen ounces; seven Park's Whopper tomatoes @ three pounds twelve ounces; and four Yellow Pear tomatoes @ one ounce. Celie told me they weren't pears. She turned one upside down and said it was a balloon! She was right. It looks just like one!<br />
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The harvest from this week brings the total harvest weight for this calendar year to 201 pounds so far.<br />
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I'll close now so I can get the pressure canner heating up for all those beans.<br />
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Thanks for visiting and sharing your comments with me. <br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-89448750856099005632012-06-18T18:34:00.001-04:002012-06-18T18:34:40.791-04:00Our Harvest Monday and Other Garden Info for June 18th, 2012.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This week has been a very good one for harvests. We are getting into full swing and we're enjoying it!<br />
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This is our first yellow pear tomato from our six plants that I have growing in a half-barrel on our driveway in the back yard. It weighed in at a whopping 1/4 ounce, but it had a half-pound of delicious in it!<br />
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<br />You can see that there are many more little pears just waiting to turn yellow and get picked.<br />
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Here is a mixture of tomatoes I picked earlier in the week. There were eighteen Roma's weighing four pounds. The five larger ones are Park's Whoppers that weighed two pounds five ounces.<br />
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Mid-week there were twelve Roma's weighing two pounds eleven ounces and four Park's Whoppers weighing one and three quarter pounds.<br />
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Later in the week we got four Park's Whoppers @ one pound six ounces, and seven Roma's @ one pound nine ounces.<br />
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<br />I picked one and one half pounds of sorrel that I have growing in a half barrel. I'll be making soup with that this week.<br />
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<strong><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: large;">Snap Beans!</span></strong></div>
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On Tuesday I picked four pounds of snap beans.</div>
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On Thursday I picked three pounds of snap beans.</div>
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But on Sunday, I picked <em>ELEVEN AND ONE QUARTER POUNDS!</em></div>
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From three of my protected blueberry bushes I picked eleven ounces of them for the first picking of this year.<br />
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<br />After having put the bird netting over my raspberry patch, I picked them on Thursday and got three quarters of a pound! <br />
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I came back on Sunday and picked five more ounces of them! The total raspberry harvest for this week was one pound one ounce!<br />
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<br />Now for non-harvest garden info:<br />
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<br />On the far left in the pic you can see the bases of my Swiss chard that is going to seed. I have found that seed saving involves a lot of time and space,but I believe it's worth it. Just to the left of center are my seven Beauregard sweet potato plants. This is my first time growing them but it's worth a try. The little green row between the sweet 'taters and the marigolds is cherry belle radishes. They germinated in three days!<br />
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There are three sweet banana peppers hiding in this bush. Can you see them?</div>
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Here are some Celebrity tomatoes just waiting to turn red. They are a very nice size for sandwiches.<br />
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Here are a couple more shots of them so you can see how plentiful they are.</div>
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There's one almost ready for picking!</div>
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The black beauty eggplants are doing great! There are several purple nubs that are actually the eggplant already!<br />
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Willow Leaf pole Lima's, or butter beans as we call them, are really producing <em>hundreds </em>of pods.<br />
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I have three 20 foot rows of them and they are filling out like crazy!</div>
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><strong>Fortex Snap Beans</strong></span></div>
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These are heavy producers again this year. We have picked over 37 pounds this year.<br />
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You can see that the beans are everywhere you look. </div>
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I prefer to pick them before the seeds swell up inside the pods. I think they're much more flavorful at that time.<br />
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These plants were grown from the seeds I saved from last year's crop. I'll be doing the same thing this year. It's a really big investment of time and space in the garden footprint, but it will be worth it.<br />
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<strong><span style="color: #cc0000;">Park's Whopper Tomatoes</span></strong></div>
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Here are a few shots of the plants that are full of big round tomatoes. The shape of these tomatoes is perfect for tomato sandwiches!<br />
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<strong><span style="color: #cc0000;">La Roma Tomatoes for Sauces</span></strong></div>
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The plants are loaded this year! I expect a really high total harvest weight at the end of this season.<br />
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<strong><span style="color: #bf9000;">Sweet Golden Bell Peppers</span></strong></div>
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<br />These plants are also growing in a half-barrel, but seem to be very happy there. Here are a couple of peppers already forming.<br />
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There are about thirteen plants in this 3.14 square foot surface area. </div>
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<br />I soaked a packet of Detroit Dark Red beets in warm water overnight and planted them the next day. In about five days they had begun to sprout... along with weeds. I have had dismal luck with root crops in the past, so this year before I planted, I broadcast four pounds of greensand over a 1,400 square foot area and tilled it in. According to what I have read on the subject of poor root crop yields, greensand is supposed to provide some special nutrient for root crops. So I'm giving it a chance to work for our garden. We'll see what happens.<br />
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Finally, here is our asparagus patch. These were two year old Jersey Giant crowns when they were planted. Possibly next year I can get a few spears. The composted material is about six inches deep. The instructions that came with the crowns warned of seriously impaired growth if you let weeds crowd the plants. Hopefully, they will do just fine.<br />
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I'm trying to grow Chayote again this year. It tastes like a cross between a cucumber and a cantaloupe. It is refreshing when sliced very thin and chilled. Last year I started too late and the cold weather killed the vines. I'm growing them in containers so we'll see how long they take to crack the surface of the ground. They went right from the grocery store shelf to the flower pot. Now we wait...<br />
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That concludes this week's harvest report and our stroll through the back yard organic vegetable garden. I hope folks found it interesting and inspirational and want to try new gardening methods and or plant varieties. <br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day and thanks for visiting!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-5551788881593710482012-06-11T09:19:00.001-04:002012-06-11T09:19:32.224-04:00Our Weekly Harvest Report.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We are thankful for our harvests that are increasing each week. This week was particularly good and we are quite happy with it. <br />
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Here is our first Roma tomato for this year. It weighed in at 3 1/2 ounces. We have 27 Roma plants so hopefully I will be busy canning various sauces. <br />
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This was our first picking of snap beans for this week. They weighed in at 2 3/4 pounds.<br />
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This was our second picking this week, just five days later. These weighed 3 1/4 pounds, for a total weight of 6 pounds of snap beans this week alone! <br />
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Our raspberries are coming in great! I picked these on Thursday and they weighed 6 ounces.</div>
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I picked these on Saturday and they weighed 2 1/2 ounces. </div>
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I picked these on Sunday and they weighed 1 3/4 ounces.</div>
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So the total harvest of raspberries for this week is 10 1/4 ounces. Fortunately, one time when I went out I caught two robins making off with raspberries from the canes. Now I'll have to cover them with netting somehow.</div>
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We got two sweet banana peppers that weighed 2 1/4 ounces.</div>
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Here is the prize for the week... one 9 ounce Park's Whopper tomato!</div>
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I canned 8 pints of Dilly Beans using the recipe from the Ball Blue Book. I like the <em>zip</em> that the Cayenne pepper puts in them!<br />
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And last but not least...<br />
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These aren't veggies, but I wanted to share how many blooms that are on our Chuck Hayes Gardenia bush out front. The scent is heavenly when you're downwind from it.<br />
<br />Be sure to visit <a href="http://daphnesdandelions/"><span style="color: #3366cc;">DaphnesDandelions</span></a> for more wonderful garden information and pictures of delicious meals.<br />
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Thanks to everyone for visiting, and I hope you all are having great luck with your gardens! If you don't have one, why not start one today? You can even do it in containers if you don't have the yard space!<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day! <br />
Veggie PAK<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-74282312443086726982012-06-06T09:49:00.001-04:002012-06-06T09:49:29.538-04:00How I Protect My Blueberries From Birds.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For the last two years I have been pondering what the best protection for my blueberries would be. In the past, I have draped bird netting over them, only to have the birds go underneath it to get the berries. I considered various forms of white PVC pipe with bird netting over it, but I couldn't decide on the style of framework because it seemed to me that the white pipe would glare out at you and be unsightly. Eventually they would deteriorate from UV damage as well.<br />
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This year, the solution came to me while I was picking beans. I had a surplus of galvanized field fencing that I had purchased this year for fabricating the rest of the tomato cages that I needed, and for putting up the cucumber fencing/trellis. The rigid construction of the field fencing was exactly what I needed all along.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil03dHqszSXMTI5vZ1XvFnLiO3X5RoNzvf9LGunNSXDjVK5OBXwSgY_LNvobJ6_moRv_ZEhzYzRDAMPQIv5-0WxSDoWFtuj0aJBm6IwSfUUT43r3yH6vjDvFXdam-OoPqoOyj7Ty9LCLk/s1600/001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil03dHqszSXMTI5vZ1XvFnLiO3X5RoNzvf9LGunNSXDjVK5OBXwSgY_LNvobJ6_moRv_ZEhzYzRDAMPQIv5-0WxSDoWFtuj0aJBm6IwSfUUT43r3yH6vjDvFXdam-OoPqoOyj7Ty9LCLk/s320/001.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />This was the remainder of the 330 foot long roll of field fencing that I had purchased a few weeks ago for $174, which equates to $0.53 per linear foot of fence. I thought it would be better to use the fence material than to have to keep storing it somewhere, so I did. I measured the largest three blueberry bushes that I have had for about four years now, and made my calculations so they would be protected from the birds with room to spare. <br />
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<br />I measured the circumference that I would need to adequately enclose the bushes, and measured off that distance on the roll of field fencing and cut the fencing in the center of the next rectangle <em>after</em> the required length. That allowed me to use the raw end of each horizontal layer of fence strand to twist onto the adjoining end in order to complete the coil of fence material. <br />
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I bought a package of bird netting for $36. After cutting it I had two pieces 7 feet wide by 75 feet long. That broke down to a cost of $0.24 per linear foot. I needed bird netting 7 feet wide, and the piece in the package unfolded to a 12 inch wide rolled up flat strip that was 14 feet long. My son Jonathan helped me and we simply cut the rolled up strip across the middle of the length, and had two sections that were each 7 feet long. At that point we took a prepared coil of fence and put it on its side on a work table. We held the bird netting to the bottom section of the fence and tied it off with nylon string that had its ends singed so it wouldn't unravel. Then I took a piece of the nylon string that was long enough to reach past the top of the fence coil and interlaced it with the bird netting and the fence material openings all the way to the top of the fence roll and tied it off. We rolled the fencing slowly and applied the bird netting to it tieing it here and there, and overlapped it by six inches or so at the end to be sure of a complete bird seal. Then we interlaced another nylon string tieing that end of the netting down to the fencing. Since the netting is 84 inches high and the fence is 48 inches high, this left 36 inches of loose bird netting at the top that would be folded over and tied in some simple undetermined manner in order to keep the birds from gaining access at the top of the enclosure.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkJVj93qNQHGgP_pU1j2O4GMCTrMfZBTF5yfrrDouibGei9mwqqBSnil74U2Mn6OmoGeKqMXRe7ziMVZVR1YXZ_loMMiW3EycNnXdzJRK6lpPGUCxFSysNjV7e0WfmUy5Zua013VGGh1c/s1600/MVC-175S.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkJVj93qNQHGgP_pU1j2O4GMCTrMfZBTF5yfrrDouibGei9mwqqBSnil74U2Mn6OmoGeKqMXRe7ziMVZVR1YXZ_loMMiW3EycNnXdzJRK6lpPGUCxFSysNjV7e0WfmUy5Zua013VGGh1c/s320/MVC-175S.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />I had to use a heavy pair of sliplock pliers in order to bend the fence wires, especially the thicker top and bottom strands. After making U-shapes in the wires, I hooked them together and then squeezed down on them seperately to crimp them together. I did the top and bottom strands first, because they held the other strands in a somewhat close proximity to where the "U" had to be formed. Then I just repeated the process at each intersection of wire and it was done.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPlXpwVfHwbYLeWXDD313bbGusx2DzK0fEaNsDC6QAasTC3PY-SYX-elHfH18dBp_CzwsauhtgqLkueEosC5OQt83HYV7mtOR_eLMgqWnywciw81_-nqtgaanPqsj1s1X-lBFocFGdCc/s1600/003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPlXpwVfHwbYLeWXDD313bbGusx2DzK0fEaNsDC6QAasTC3PY-SYX-elHfH18dBp_CzwsauhtgqLkueEosC5OQt83HYV7mtOR_eLMgqWnywciw81_-nqtgaanPqsj1s1X-lBFocFGdCc/s320/003.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />In order to provide support and make sure the birds couldn't get in through loose bird netting, I cut 4 foot lengths of fence and laid them across the top of the prepared coils. I took bolt cutters and cut the material into a circle slightly larger that the coil, then I formed the ends around the top course of wire and crimped them down so that it became a rigid unit of fence material. After this round piece was attached, I took the bird netting and brought it up and over it towards the center of the round piece of fence. I tried to simply gather the bird netting in the center of the round piece of fence and tie it closed like an old sack. That didn't appeal to me so I layed the bird netting down going from the edge in towards the center so it was basically all laying down flat on the top. Then I took the prepared nylon string and tied one end off while wrapped around the netting and the fence fabric. Then I simply interlaced it onto the round top in long sections, then tied that end off.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi32cNsmj4-IxMKXvfkwGrcuEedmmWn8MpEeKTFZ_gT1oRYpUWZR3al8fT-DXgyn8VhjbDEOsPnMzfFFpIh3ze16qA0pKsdzaN7-zrZgTojtj6zc1Lxe8cD4_N1TpxApamxF5VUko8njg/s1600/004.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi32cNsmj4-IxMKXvfkwGrcuEedmmWn8MpEeKTFZ_gT1oRYpUWZR3al8fT-DXgyn8VhjbDEOsPnMzfFFpIh3ze16qA0pKsdzaN7-zrZgTojtj6zc1Lxe8cD4_N1TpxApamxF5VUko8njg/s320/004.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />Here is a finished section of blueberry protector fence. They turned out very well!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXoNx6YTMR4rb8I-igb0yo39NbUIn8vKfNsuNL-ngGVm9aVS57HZJZpETH9BgTbrKuRu994fDf2EI6lr6Wp8kbTMiKcrOqdvzAvIPu6_zIkhDzDArVzAiPP_SE4ef00yzon9CGc7rZC3Y/s1600/005.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXoNx6YTMR4rb8I-igb0yo39NbUIn8vKfNsuNL-ngGVm9aVS57HZJZpETH9BgTbrKuRu994fDf2EI6lr6Wp8kbTMiKcrOqdvzAvIPu6_zIkhDzDArVzAiPP_SE4ef00yzon9CGc7rZC3Y/s320/005.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />They look pretty good, if I do say so myself. This fence material will outlast me!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOKpLWM149BXyyCRe1SsiUrfZn7rKarP-OBxTkZP2pIWvzd04a_M0sy2WtSfbZFhJpMF5T07slTWbLsxsYkhtVGFsqclq04-VUoIUPC0ayC_VxD3aZXYn9IYZRGTCDR403NSG591Tk7UE/s1600/006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOKpLWM149BXyyCRe1SsiUrfZn7rKarP-OBxTkZP2pIWvzd04a_M0sy2WtSfbZFhJpMF5T07slTWbLsxsYkhtVGFsqclq04-VUoIUPC0ayC_VxD3aZXYn9IYZRGTCDR403NSG591Tk7UE/s320/006.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />The bird protection looks nice when in place. The beauty of these units is that to pick the blueberries, you simply lift off a lightweight enclosure, pick the berries, then replace the enclosure!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAsU5xXqhJhRjzBHmMjz_X_N9vWf7hfzTeY-APOxElOyHxVPLyiCLAip2NXzurys3F2RTlPSO6L6jSTdRu5MCFoIstSx21vw6s-Z3Ts0qYoD555q-ZgiShnYNxzozprEuP5HrKJs-KoE/s1600/007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAsU5xXqhJhRjzBHmMjz_X_N9vWf7hfzTeY-APOxElOyHxVPLyiCLAip2NXzurys3F2RTlPSO6L6jSTdRu5MCFoIstSx21vw6s-Z3Ts0qYoD555q-ZgiShnYNxzozprEuP5HrKJs-KoE/s320/007.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />As you can see in the pics, even if the birds land on top of the protector, the blueberries are far enough away so they can't reach them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9fIJvf-hHxpZqjBKLrkVgi5zJZmE2Ye0pJk1xc-JTTvERbSB2YNq2Q6sglzJcFJTBmIHBs-2ziR5_xOstB2-iziCkx49Kr0W2YwMUhieQ8PNE6KyJkD5Rn-JXYClVjbcXlswCi5VujAI/s1600/008.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9fIJvf-hHxpZqjBKLrkVgi5zJZmE2Ye0pJk1xc-JTTvERbSB2YNq2Q6sglzJcFJTBmIHBs-2ziR5_xOstB2-iziCkx49Kr0W2YwMUhieQ8PNE6KyJkD5Rn-JXYClVjbcXlswCi5VujAI/s320/008.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />The side clearance is just right too.</div>
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<br />I'm very satisfied with these protectors. I think they'll do a fine job for years to come.</div>
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The breakdown for the cost of one of these units is as follows:<br />
<br /> 11 feet of fence for sides @ $0.53 per foot is $5.83<br />
4 feet of fence for the top @ $0.53 per foot is $2.12<br />
12 feet of bird netting @ $0.24 per foot is <u>$2.88</u><br />
Total Cost Per Unit is $10.83<br />
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That completes my blueberry protection blog post. I hope this might give someone an idea on how they can protect their berries.<br />
<br />Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-32291129793341398402012-06-04T08:40:00.000-04:002012-06-04T08:40:55.748-04:00Our Harvest For June 4th, 2012.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This week things are starting to pick up for us in the harvest department. We are enjoying nice harvests although all the plants are not in full swing yet.<br />
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Here are eight tomatoberries that weighed in at two ounces. They burst with flavor in a salad!<br />
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Here is our first Roma tomato for this year. It weighed in at two and a half ounces.<br />
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Our heritage raspberries are producing well, although half of the length of the row seems to be in distress. This first photo is of the four ounces that granddaughter Celie helped her Poppa pick on Saturday. <br />
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On Sunday, I went out and picked another four and a half ounces. We love raspberries!<br />
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<br />On Friday I went out and picked three pounds of organically grown Fortex green beans.<br />
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On Sunday, I went out and picked <em>five more pounds</em> of green beans from our garden! That's a total of thirteen pounds of green beans for this year so far.<br /><br />I hope everyone is having a great time in their gardens this year, with plenty of bountiful harvests!<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-90889867284522973742012-05-29T23:12:00.000-04:002012-05-29T23:12:30.242-04:00Our Garden Harvest for May 29th, 2012.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Our garden is coming along very well in it's vegetable and berry growth. The raspberry canes are loaded with berries in various stages of maturity. I anticipate a much better raspberry harvest than the one we had last year, although it wasn't bad. The blueberries have almost all turned from green to a reddish blue hue. It's time to get the bird netting in place in order to protect the berries.<br />
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We picked another three tomatoberries this week. Soon there will be more since many of the small tomatoes are already greenish orange and will soon be red.<br />
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We picked our first sweet banana peppers this week. These three weighed two and a quarter ounces.<br />
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Now we come to one of my favorites, the Fortex green beans. This was the first picking for this year and we were fortunate enough to get five pounds of them! We'll cook some of these and also make some pickled dilly beans.<br />
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This week I'll be planting some bouregard sweet potatoes as an experiment. Currently I have them suspended in jars of water so the slips will grow, but they aren't doing as well as I had hoped. While there is no dramatic growth of the slips, seven of the eight potato halves have wonderfully healthy roots growing into the water. The one that isn't doing well is in the one jar that when I was changing the water using bottled spring water, I ran out, so I used tap water in that last jar. Now <em>that</em> potato is very soft and appears to be rotting. I also noted that the water in all the other jars is crystal clear, and the bad jar's water is so murky that you cannot see through it at all. Kind of makes you wonder about the tap water. Anyway, I'm going to plant the seven good halves of sweet potato right into the garden soil, and not just the slips alone. We'll see how they do.<br />
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As I walk through the garden, I can see what appears to be dozens and dozens of beautiful rich green tomatoes. However, in with these beautiful plants are four or five that are having some problems. Surprisingly, three of those plants are Celebrities. I chose Celebrity because of their disease resistance. Three plants being stricken by disease isn't a good ratio seeing that I only have fourteen of the Celebrity variety. I don't know that I'll select that as one of my favorites for next year's planting.<br />
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The miniature yellow pear tomato plants in the half-barrel are <em>loaded</em> with blossoms. I can hardly wait until we can start picking those tasty treats!<br />
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That takes care of this week's gardening information from our back yard organic vegetable garden.<br />
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I hope everyone is doing well with their gardens!<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-54869461408239178982012-05-21T16:00:00.001-04:002012-05-21T16:00:44.656-04:00Harvest Monday for May 21st, 2012.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We have a harvest for today's post! Although it is small, it is a harvest nonetheless and we're grateful for it.<br />
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Our tomatoberry plant has provided two pretty little tomatoes weighing a total of 3/4 of an ounce. More are on the way for next week.<br />
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Our Swiss chard is still producing some leaves from plants that aren't going to seed. I picked 12 ounces of it for this week's harvest.<br />
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For those folks that have been following my attempt to overwinter giant marconi pepper plants, the trial is over. The plants weren't doing anything even though the roots and interior of the stalks of the ones I inspected earlier in the year were a healthy green. I pulled another test plant this week, and it came out without any effort. The roots had rotted. So I'm tilling up the soil there and planting a fresh batch of marconi pepper plants in their place. <br />
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That concludes the harvest report for this week. I would like to share with you that I am very happy with the number and size of green tomatoes coming along, as well as the green bean and lima bean blossoms all over the vines! I hope everyone is having great progress with their crops this year!<br />
<br />Be sure to visit <a href="http://daphnesdandelions/"><span style="color: #3366cc;">DaphnesDandelions</span></a> for more exciting gardening experiences in a northern growing zone.<br />
<br />Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-7192733203066045342012-05-18T11:05:00.000-04:002012-05-18T11:05:28.307-04:00The Vegetables Are Growing Well In Our Garden.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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With the warm days but cool nights, our garden continues to do well for us. The continuous warmth that we need to get the plants growing steadily hasn't quite gotten here yet. Nevertheless, things are growing nicely for us.<br />
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The tomatoberry plant is doing well. That one is almost ripe enough to pick! I can't wait for our first tomato of the year!<br />
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Half of the heritage red raspberries are growing very nicely. The other half has some type of issue and isn't growing nearly as fast, so I'm sending off a soil sample to the Cooperative Extension for an analysis to see what we need to do to get them going properly. Yesterday, our granddaughter Celie picked the first four red raspberries for this year from our garden. She really enjoyed them and we enjoyed watching her eat them up.<br />
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The yellow pear tomato plants are doing very well with good growth and many blossoms.<br />
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The sweet golden bell pepper seeds that my mom gave me from her seed collection from last year are very healthy looking. I was considering that I may have too many plants in this half-barrel, but I'm not sure if I want to disturb them to transplant a few. I'm thinking about that for awhile.<br />
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These are some of the feverfew flowers that grew from a root that mom gave me last year. The bees and butterflies really like them, so I hope they spread like wildfire! <br />
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The following are some pictures of some of my blueberry plants. All are doing very well, and it won't be long before I'll have to put up the bird netting to protect them.<br />
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Here are a couple of shots of the onion flowers in the process of developing seeds. </div>
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They sure are beautiful and look quite exotic.</div>
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The glenora seedless grapes continue to fill out even with the cool evenings. There are hardly many leaves on the vines, but these grapes sure seem to want to grow!<br />
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These are the black beauty eggplants we're growing this year. The plants aren't even a foot tall, but the development of the eggplants has begun.<br />
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The ruby red Swiss chard is still growing to produce seed for us. This particular stalk is five feet tall!<br />
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This is our asparagus bed. I just spread four inches of compost on top of it to keep the weeds down. The crowns were two years old already, so with this being their third year of existence, I'm hoping to have some asparagus next year. I admit that it is hard to plant something that takes so long to produce, but I know it will be worth the wait!<br />
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<strong><span style="color: #38761d; font-size: large;"><em>Beans, beans, beans...</em></span></strong></div>
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We have nine rows of beans this year. Six rows of Fortex green beans, and three rows of willow leaf Lima beans, or baby butter beans. <br />
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This is my first attempt to grow willow leaf pole Lima beans. In the past years, I grew Henderson Baby Butter Beans, but each year I lost the majority of the crops to rot and bugs. This year I decided to try the pole version so the beans will stay off the ground and I'll be able to find them more easily.<br />
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Both types of bean are growing pretty good right now. I did have to resow about a third of the rows because the chilly night air returned, and I think that did them in. Thankfully, we're past that point now.<br />
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You can see all the blossoms on these Fortex bean vines. We'll have a good harvest this year. Last year I canned 94 quarts of green beans from my garden. Just think... that used to just be lawn that I mowed. I like using the area this way much, much better!<br />
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You can see that the vines for both the Fortex beans and the willow leaf pole beans are steadily reaching for the sky. Tomorrow morning I'll take the long vines and braid them into the fence material.<br />
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<em><strong><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">TOMATOES!</span></strong></em></div>
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The tomato plants this year have quite an abundance of blossoms on them! I hope they all develop into beautiful tomatoes.<br />
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We're keeping our fingers crossed for a good crop.</div>
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I wanted to share some pictures of the tomatoes that are forming on the vines we have. They're really looking good!<br />
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This year we have plenty of tomato plants. We have 27 La Romas, 9 Park's Whoppers, 14 Celebrities and one tomatoberry. Fifty-one tomato plants in all.<br />
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Last but not least, in addition to the garden growing, Molly is also growing... quickly! She now weighs 39 pounds at just three and a half months old! What a smart, sweet puppy and great addition to our family! She chased her first squirrel the day before yesterday. <em>YAY!</em><br />
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<strong><em><span style="color: magenta; font-size: large;">Molly</span></em></strong></div>
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That finishes up this garden update from our back yard organic vegetable garden. I hope you found it interesting, and I hope it encourages someone to start or expand their garden. Why not do it this year?<br />
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Have a wonderful vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-39818533720143292012-05-06T23:15:00.001-04:002012-05-06T23:15:42.711-04:00Here's How Our Garden is Doing Today.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sorry that I haven't posted for a little while, but we had a family crisis come up and it needed to get resolved. This time of year we aren't having many harvests, but there's plenty of activity in our garden just the same. <br />
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Remember those shallow "diggings" we had a problem with a few posts ago? We're attributing that to raccoons. A couple of nights after those holes appeared, our puppy Molly brought it to our attention that there were three raccoons raising a ruckus in our neighbor's tree, having probably climbed over the intertwined branches of the maple tree in our back yard to their pecan tree. It was apparently a raccoon love triangle. The way reality shows are popping up, it may be made into a new series!<br />
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No additional holes have appeared since then.<br />
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A big change in our garden is the addition of our <em>Jersey Giant asparagus bed</em> on April 29th in the west plot. I put it in the area I used to use as a turn around space for my large tiller. Since I have the small Mantis tiller I don't need to use that area for turning the big tiller around. It's twenty feet long with sixteen healthy asparagus roots properly positioned in a trench and covered up. I have enough space so that the row can expand to be five feet wide. As hoped for, the new shoots soon popped out and I covered them with soil blended with cured compost, filling the trench completely and then some, in order to have it shed some of the rain water they will get in order to prevent rotting. <br />
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Here are some pics of our Fortex green bean vines. Even with the alternating chilly nights and warm days, these seem to be doing well!<br />
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The tops of some of the vines are already reaching for the sky... a welcome sight! <br />
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Here are a couple of Park's Whopper tomatoes hidden in the vines. <br />
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Here are a couple of La Roma paste tomatoes shaping up nicely. Actually there are three now that the picture is larger.<br />
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Here is a shot looking down into one of the tomato cages I made from "field fencing". As you can see in the area surrounding the cage, with the family issue that came up I haven't had time to mini-till. That's going to take place this week!<br />
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Here are some absolutely delicious Tomatoberries. We grew these in a container in 2010 and from one plant, we harvested 342 tomatoes weighing in at 5.42 pounds. We bought what was supposed to be a Tomatoberry plant from a nursery center this past year, but it didn't even come close in appearance, taste or production. What a disappointment that was! <br />
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Here are six little Yellow Pear tomato plants in a half-barrel. They are delicious and contain lower acid than regular small tomatoes.<br />
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Here is a look at the heritage raspberries we have growing between the house and the concrete driveway. They're doing great!<br />
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Here are some sorrel plants my mom gave me three years ago. Winter or summer, they still produce.<br />
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This is some two year old horseradish growing in a half-barrel. It spread so much when it was in the ground that I put it in a barrel to control it!<br />
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<em><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Blueberries!</span></strong></em></div>
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Here are some pictures showing the anticipated yield from our blueberries.</div>
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<em><strong>I can hardly wait!</strong></em></div>
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Here are the seeds still on the butter crunch lettuce plants. They resemble dandelion seeds that blow away in a puff.<br />
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The grapes are forming even after the chilly nights! See the cold damage on the leaf below the center of the picture?<br />
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<strong><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Seeds!</em></span></strong></div>
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Here is a picture of the Swiss chard that has gone to seed and you can see the butter crunch lettuce plants in the left top corner. The green Swiss chard plant at the far right in the picture is fifty-three inches tall!<br />
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Here is a close-up of the celery plant that is flowering in preparation for developing its seeds.<br />
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<em><strong>Green Onions.</strong></em></div>
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These are the green onions I bought at WalMart last year. After using the green scallions I planted the bulbs last spring. I picked scallions all year and this year it went to seed.<br />
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<em><strong>Beauregard Sweet Potato Slips</strong></em></div>
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I read up on how to produce sweet potato slips and I decided to give this a try. These sweet potatoes came from North Carolina, and I found them here at a local family farm stand less than six miles from our house.<br />
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I must have just bought them at the right time. Ten hours after I put them in the water this growth appeared. It hasn't continued at that rate, however. <br />
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That does it for catching up on current garden activities at our house. I hope the warm weather continues to stick around and not confuse the vegetables with these cold snaps.<br />
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Thanks for visiting and I hope everyone is having great success with their gardens this year!<br />
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Have a wonderful vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-64795280379493792412012-04-16T23:04:00.000-04:002012-04-16T23:04:59.123-04:00Harvest Monday for April 16th, 2012.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
We had no harvests this week, but we were taking care of items like putting up the fencing for the beans to grow on and a few other things. <br />
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It seems like this is the time for a lot of vegetables to start bolting. I took a few pics to share with you on how things are growing for us.<br />
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The buttercrunch lettuce is well on it's way to producing some seed for next year's crop. <br />
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The Swiss chard surprised me when it started bolting. I hadn't seen it do that before since we usually pulled out the old plants to make room for the new ones..<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">They really get tall compared to what they usually look like.</div><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">They still have that pretty red stalk to brighten up the garden.</div><br />
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Even the green onions have begun to develop seed heads. They look like long green candles with green flames on them. <br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">My Glenora grapes have clusters on them already. They don't even have many leaves right now, but that isn't stopping the grapes.</div><br />
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That concludes this short post on our garden's status. I hope everyone is having a wonderful time preparing their garden!<br />
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Have a wonderful vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-34308642462272476152012-04-09T22:54:00.000-04:002012-04-09T22:54:41.506-04:00Harvest Monday for April 9th, 2012.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
It was slim pickin's for this week's harvest, but we were able to pick one and three quarter pounds of Swiss Chard!<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><em>Now for an unusual problem I'm having this year.</em></div><br />
It would appear that some type of critter is wreaking havoc in my garden. I have dozens of holes dug into the soil all over the garden!<br />
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Some are elongated like this one...<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">...and some are just round like ALL OF THESE!</div><br />
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The crazy thing is... there are no footprints in the soft soil surrounding the main holes! No trails through the garden from one hole to another. Nothing! The other thing that stumps me is that these are dug during the night.<br />
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Does anyone have any thoughts on this situation? I'm getting ready to set out my traps to catch this midnight marauder, so any info on what may be causing it would be greatly appreciated. I'm thinking raccoon or opossum, but these are so large they would have to leave some type of trail through the soft soil. The same goes for a skunk. We live in a large metropolitan city, so I'm really at a loss for what is causing this. If it were rats, there would be other evidence of their presence. I wonder if toads would be this extreme while digging their homes? Also, all the holes are approximately the same depth.<br />
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Any thoughts you would like to share on this matter would be appreciated.<br />
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P.S. It isn't Molly either!<br />
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Be sure to visit <a href="http://daphnesdandelions/"><span style="color: #3366cc;">DaphnesDandelions</span></a> for more exciting gardening experiences in a northern growing zone<br />
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Thanks for visiting, and have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-74507992670387091112012-04-02T23:30:00.000-04:002012-04-02T23:30:27.973-04:00Harvest Monday for April 2nd, 2012.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
Happy Harvest Monday to everyone! <br />
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I'm still working on getting our garden to the point of where it is all set with the summer vegetables. This week I was able to prepare the bed for the Jersey Giant asparagus that I had been wanting for quite a while. Now I have sixteen crowns planted in the trench, and I'm just waiting for them to sprout through so I can cover them each time until the trench is filled. The crowns are two years old, so I have to wait until next year to be able to harvest a few of them. The year after next is when they should begin being very productive.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">This week we were able to pick some more scallions that grew from the bulbs of the store-bought green onions that I planted last fall. These weighed in at two ounces.</div><br />
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I picked twelve ounces of sorrel from the plants that I have growing in a half-barrel. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk30IvSwSRhCMs6iflnlrYsLCMu87aGANgqfvQQo23jxphmeA8oJmZrbzZL_CxEdg4NG7NLgr8GrxIDAZJiuppP5KEiZmCMaRjSgLQqFyP479NzIYBE98VQxvV5LYYebELKrWSSAe3ahk/s1600/DSC06086.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk30IvSwSRhCMs6iflnlrYsLCMu87aGANgqfvQQo23jxphmeA8oJmZrbzZL_CxEdg4NG7NLgr8GrxIDAZJiuppP5KEiZmCMaRjSgLQqFyP479NzIYBE98VQxvV5LYYebELKrWSSAe3ahk/s320/DSC06086.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The biggest harvest for us this week was two pounds five ounces of Rainbow Swiss chard. <br />
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Squirrels have been a real problem so far this year. I needed some way to help reduce the damage they do to my garden. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><em>My solution is...</em></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw3ofZ4IwdmGKlUvqiPfJr3FH1-PAwTxs3ZJdnLvr9WuosDPXHASHVEE6cV9W5lKRW2tqq0jja4HmC3WSNangam3rg39yeiBIaoP0OUpkF_xkuFYElQ3mok0l3y_jbrlynnRtKS3kmPkI/s1600/DSC06091.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw3ofZ4IwdmGKlUvqiPfJr3FH1-PAwTxs3ZJdnLvr9WuosDPXHASHVEE6cV9W5lKRW2tqq0jja4HmC3WSNangam3rg39yeiBIaoP0OUpkF_xkuFYElQ3mok0l3y_jbrlynnRtKS3kmPkI/s320/DSC06091.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><span style="color: magenta; font-size: large;">MOLLY!</span></strong></em></div><br />
She is a nine week old labrador and golden retriever mix. The grandkids and all of us love her already, which isn't hard to do! Hopefully she will serve as a deterrent for the squirrel problem.<br />
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By the way, I'm still waiting for the giant marconi peppers to show some green on the stalks. In the meantime, I bought fifteen fresh plants so I'll have my peppers either way. <br />
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Be sure to visit <a href="http://daphnesdandelions/"><span style="color: #3366cc;">DaphnesDandelions</span></a> for more exciting vegetable gardening experiences in a northern growing zone.<br />
That completes this week's report.<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
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Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3712291801064010036.post-281463040136696542012-03-26T23:08:00.001-04:002012-03-27T09:54:49.809-04:00Our Garden is Almost Ready...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
I have no harvest for this Monday, but let me share with you what we have been doing in our garden so far this year. We've been working to get our spring crops planted in time for them to take advantage of the warm weather, and we've just about got it done. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Here is a picture of our East Plot...</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwFeBBtwiQipNvRXJG1poDX1TRl_Egv11Y1kiu6bWvmXQzIV7htN5sfts5lQ5a8Z4dzm6JutvNsfDDYz42NaG7SWrRIXOaIvPV5NI2nuFWj-xXwc5Tn1Ax6RXGWhYvLPES_DVLs8lHk38/s1600/DSC06014.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwFeBBtwiQipNvRXJG1poDX1TRl_Egv11Y1kiu6bWvmXQzIV7htN5sfts5lQ5a8Z4dzm6JutvNsfDDYz42NaG7SWrRIXOaIvPV5NI2nuFWj-xXwc5Tn1Ax6RXGWhYvLPES_DVLs8lHk38/s320/DSC06014.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
On the far left I have planted five rows of Fortex green beans. To the right of those there are three rows of Willow Leaf Pole Lima Beans, then two rows of Celebrity tomatoes. Then a row with six black beauty eggplants and three sweet banana pepper plants finishing it up. Next to that is the Swiss chard and then the buttercrunch lettuce that is going to seed. When the lettuce is finished, I'll plant something else in that space.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">...and now the West Plot.</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZm8o9KvXFbH5wskSdleHZiJD9LhVaHkLmxjPVzeA5ap7vCc5zN7auGuWEmzI9Ljt3API9ddrBiHVXalaYhOznAuNI04UeYYrBkyhrQ3xfvHMy07HK9Dj8vfPYs4WuYXnQzi90pPq70UE/s1600/DSC06032.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZm8o9KvXFbH5wskSdleHZiJD9LhVaHkLmxjPVzeA5ap7vCc5zN7auGuWEmzI9Ljt3API9ddrBiHVXalaYhOznAuNI04UeYYrBkyhrQ3xfvHMy07HK9Dj8vfPYs4WuYXnQzi90pPq70UE/s320/DSC06032.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I finally fertilized and mulched the marconi peppers. Now they just need to show some green on those stalks! To the right of the peppers I planted three rows of La Roma tomatoes. To the left is a row of cucumbers, along with a row of Park's Whopper tomatoes. At the far end of the pepper row you can see bare soil. That is where I have decided to plant my two rows of asparagus, which will be going from left to right in the plot. It will be a very long wait until the first harvest, but it will be worth it. I still have to sow some Detroit Dark Red beets in a row along the far left edge of the cultivated area. Hopefully they will produce this year.<br />
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That's all that's new in the garden this week. Within the next two days I'll be planting the asparagus crowns.<br />
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I hope everyone is having a great time succumbing to their spring fever!<br />
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Have a great vegetable gardening day!<br />
Veggie PAK</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8