July gardens

The gardens in July.

This is the corn on May 28.

And here it is in July.

Definitely as high as an elephant's eye.

The corn is an heirloom, non-hybrid.

The strawberries are covered with fencing.

That has bird-netting over it, and it drapes into the walkways.

It is easy to trip over.

In the foreground are this year's raspberries.

Beyond the dog is another garden with beans, watermelon, amaranth, chard, kale, mangles, beets, cucumbers.

The grape arbor frames the entrance to the first garden.

The far fence has beans on it. In front of the beans are tomatoes.

Beyond the fence is the strawberry/raspberry garden.

Standing under the arbor, straight ahead are a row of peppers.

Then a row of swiss chard and kale.

Against the fence are beans.

Tomatoes are in front of the beans.

Beyond this fence is the strawberry garden.

Looking back at the arbor.

To the right are peas.

Straight on is spinach, with lettuce, and a couple of tomatoes.

This is a great year for onions.

You will see garbage pails dotted in the gardens.

They hold water pumped by hand from the well then carried to the pails.

To the left of the arbor is the asparagus garden.

The asparagus is eating the lilies

Everything is being grown organically.

Most seeds are started at home from heirloom seeds.

End of June Harvest

The summer has begun.

Parsley is lovely.

Today was the first harvest of peas.

I picked a full strainer.

which yielded a large bowl. Dinner today included

peas, rice-a-roni, chicken francaise, new potatoes.

Next to be picked was red currants.

This is the second year for the bushes.

The yield from three bushes was three cups.

Now it's time to make jelly.

After cooking them a bit, I drained them using

a coffee filter. It came to one and a half cups.

I added the same amount of sugar and cooked.

When it jelled, I had three half-cups.

Wonderful red!

Then I picked the black currants.

When cooked and strained, I had four cups.

This gave me four and one-half cups of dark purple jelly.

I guess I've had a day!

Peas and Peppers

When my brother posted his pepper pics, I had to check mine. We are much farther north, and usually two to three weeks later in the spring, but I was delighted to see flowers and peppers on the "cherry bombs".

So --- as long as I was out there with the camera, I got a couple of other garden pics.

The turnips are looking very happy. (D likes turnips in stews. And it's so easy to make a huge pot of soup or stew, and freeze 5-10 one-person servings for lunch. Right now the freezer has chicken with bowtie noodles (farfale), kale, mirepoix, barley. There is also lamb with mushroom and barley (and the ubiquitous mirepoix). And there's pork with everything. He often has soup for lunch with raisin bread.)

The peas are blossoming like mad, but no pods, yet. The peas, beans, peppers, beets, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts are all in a large garden enclosed by an 8 foot fence. The fence was buried one foot to try to deter the woodchucks. And it's that high to deter the deer.

No matter how far apart we put the rows, picking will be a pain -

I like to pick in the morning, and I'll get soaked by the dew on the plants.

And the rows grow so close together that a stool is not very useful, so it's a lot of bending.

Oh, but nothing is better than peas right out of the garden.