I Have A New Television Hit Show

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What do you get when you cross a cooking show competition with surprise ingredients with a show about gardening?

You have my new hit, "Garden Chef Smack Down".

You have chefs enter the simple home gardens of commoners, such as I. They must create a scrumptious feast out of all the ingredients that are ripe that day. And you can't make condiments from them. They must actually be combined into a meal, using all the produce and leaving nothing out.

They can use any herbs they like, if they cannot find them in the garden there.

We can have all kinds of fun with this one. We can surprise them with a live chicken to butcher. How about 40 pounds of cukes, all at once? Hopefully they won't ""smack any gardeners down for planting 20 zucchini bushes.

Yesterday was my first attempt to succeed at yard sailing. I sailed over to one yard that was advertised as a "huge" yard sale, open all week, with piano, organ, keyboard, laptop, and years of household items!!!!

We got there early. 7:30 am and parked at the side of the road. Great opportunity to do schoolwork. The weather was pretty nice compared to lately.





But the promised trucks of stuff never showed, and we sat there for 2 hours, waiting for her to open up.





Turns out, no piano or keyboard for sale, the laptop was way too much money for way too little, and I ended up spending 80 cents on a couple of clothing items. I am still clueless as to this phenomenon.

However, it was great to get school work done early yesterday. It felt like old times - up early and school done by lunch! WoooHOOOO!

Michael celebrated by throwing some knives.





We have been behind on keeping the barnyard cleared, so on the way down to pick up some t-posts for today's project, we brought the mower and the weed sprayer to take care of the V.V. - Vast Vegetation.

Whoops! Our wire that holds the trailer to the hitch since we lost the pin broke as I was driving.





Aha! A bolt! Why didn't I do this before...?





The horses have been doing much better after the Endure and Freedom products, so I'm really glad for them that we got it.





Having collected up the t-posts and post driver and dropping them off at the lettuce row, we began working inside. Michael handled unrolling the 50' clothesline coil we bought for 4 dollars, so he could cut it in half.





And I began sewing this stuff. The least expensive landscaping fabric WM had; a 3 by 50 foot for $9.99.





I cut it to about 23' feet in length, and sewed two pocket hems along both edges to slide the covered wire through.





And here you can see several views of how we tied the wires to the posts, creating a shaded area for the lettuce bed. Fortunately, the bed faces exactly south, so directing the fabric could not have been easier. We can access the bed from the north side and the sun will not touch the lettuce except for the early morning and late evening time.





I do not expect this to last more than one season, but to replace what will rot will only cost 5 dollars a year. We did consider a more traditional hoop setup, but I was trying to go cheaper. We'll see how it works out.

Here's the baby lettuces. Shade growing here is an experiment, and I'm hoping to succeed in getting lettuce year 'round by the time I'm done.





We did not run the whole length of the bed, as the clothesline was only a 50' foot length, so it's 23' foot, with another 10 feet maybe to use otherwise.





And here's a good view after the the sun made an appearance. I am concerned about wind and rain. We clipped the fabric to the wire, but a good strong wind may overcome it. Rain may possible weigh it all down. We'll have to keep and eye on it. I'm wishing I'd set that more horizontally.





Yesterday's harvest: Eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.





Speaking of which, I'm not really happy with the tomatoes progress. Still, I guess they can do more growing.





Swiss chard.





I washed all of this up and Michael offered to put up a cucumber trellis.





Great job! Now if we can only get them to grow...





All I can say is that I guess the ground is not yet fertile enough. However, I hope that if we can continue mulching, we'll get a good bit of earthworms in here and the soil will improve steadily.

I'm pleased with the leeks. I hope they do well wintering over in the beds, so I can have leek soup all winter.





And it's been a wonderful year, comparatively, for the Brussels sprouts and eggplant.





The peas are done. We did not get many, what with the very warm spring temperatures.





He loves his swimming time.





We had wonderful fellowship time with friends at Bible study again last night, before we headed off for office cleaning. We are almost through Romans and I'm really glad the group has decided to do a Torah study I've done in the past. That begins in a couple of weeks.

I hear shouting.... Oh, that's the cherries and gooseberries calling.

~Faith

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Evil Maniacal Laughter Goes here.

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MWAHA MWAHA HAHAHAHAMWAHAHAHAHAHAHA









And that's pretty much the story of our lives here at home for the last half a week. We've been working in the vineyard, for the most part.

It has been stinkin' hot and muggy. Whew! We have been putting in as many hours in the morning as possible, and doing school in the afternoons and evenings instead.

We took a trip to the Ag Extension last week with our leaf, whereupon it was determined to be either downy or powdery mildew, in addition to the black rot of which we were already aware. Demons, demons, everywhere!

No problem, she says. Just scoot on down to the Co-op and buy some CAPTAN and some Immunox. The CAPTAN will get rid of all evil molds, fungi, and mildews, and the Immunox will boost the plants' health, thereby making it fit as a top notch heavy-weight to battle disease and grow big and strong. Insert whistling and skipping here.

Unfortunately, the smallest CAPTAN is 5 pounds and over $30 dollars. The Immunox was a different story. The guy at the Co-op didn't even TELL me the price, he instead made a phone call to find out if there was a generic brand for me. There was! It was much cheaper! - only $80 dollars for the smallest package....

I said skip that, thanks.

By the way. Did you hear that the price of food is expected to rise 40% over the next decade? That's why we're peddling so hard now!

I did make one purchase that I did not expect. They have apparently come out with a Sevin XLR or something like that, and the co-op recommended I get it. It has a duration of 2 weeks, even through hard rains. As it is right now, we have to run out every time it sprinkles and respray with regular Sevin. This ought to save money in the end, as well as time.

I also asked if I could mix the CAPTAN with the Sevin, and the Ag Ext office said 'Yes". That's good. Now I don't have to juggle spraying, and I am hoping the CAPTAN will last longer, mixed in with the XLR as well.

I am so far from my hopes and dreams of organic food any more. But this is war!!!





Did you know, that if you put on 3-D glasses in preparation to watch "Meet the Robinsons" on TV, and discover that it is not going to be shown in 3-D and you leave the glasses on for about 15 minutes anyway, your mind eventually adjusts your vision to begin to balance the two different colors?

Furthermore, did you know that when you take OFF those glasses, after wearing them for about 15 minutes, then you alternately close your left and right eyes, you will see more red in the eye that had the blue lens, and more blue in the eye that had the red lens?

Not that I did that or anything. I'm just sayin'...

Here is our 2/3 of the way done point in the vineyard. Each one of these rows took an hour, and there are fourteen of them.





WooHoooooo! All done! Again. Until next time....





Still shopping for disease resistant grapes!

~Faith

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A Tidy Harvest.

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We are using a combination of herbicides since our weed whacker doesn't work. This year is our first year trying out a 1-Year length chemical. We only spray this under fences where we know we are not going to want anything to grow for a long time. It can't be used under trees, or it can get into the root systems.

Here is the garden fence. We sprayed here about 4 to 6 weeks ago. We ended up moving the fence a little after we sprayed. So far the horses are keeping this part chewed, so I'm not going to worry about it.





I did a little spraying around the house with short term spray, Round-Up, to keep stray weeds from taking over, as well as along the side of the property so the electric fence doesn't short out over there.

Here the berry rows look much neater having been sprayed a couple of weeks ago. You have to be so careful not to get any leaves on your plants. I've actually gotten really good at this and can spray even in the wind and right up close to the plants. So far, so good...





The vineyard never got sprayed for weeds, so we'll try to get to that this coming week.





Michael is taking care of push mowing where ever the riding mower could not be taken. We should get a good crop of those bush cherries and bush plums this year. The frost did not get either grouping.





The hardy kiwi are looking good. I hope another mockingbird builds a nest in there again this year. We so enjoyed watching the babies.





I will really enjoy it if we ever get a crop. But wait, what's this....?





Could we be getting flowers for the first time? I hope so, and I hope that means enjoying some fruit from them this year!





Many suckers need to be cut off from the grapes before we can spray for weeds. Also, with the black rot, you want as dry an area near the vines as possible, so the closer to dirt we can make it below the vines, the better our chances of getting a grape harvest.





This vine is always laden with clusters. It's a European grape, and highly susceptible to black rot. Tasty, but after this year, I am probably going to thin out the grapes in each row to about half. This one may go.





The Doyle Thornless blackberries are getting ready to blossom out.





Getting ready to harvest some Red Sails lettuce. I believe the deep red color is likely due to the abundance of sunshine, as I have another bed in the shade, and it is almost all green.





I decide to take the outer leaves rather than cut the whole plant.





And this is what came from one. About two dollar's worth of organic lettuce. I ended up filling the basket to overflowing.





We can't eat it all, so I just take the biggest for now.









I planted Arugula to go with the lettuce...
Now what? LOL I'm thinking it is probably too far gone.





On my way up to pick strawberries, I get to enjoy the variety of herb blooms.

Chamomile.





Cilantro.





Sage.





Here's that marker stone I was mentioning before. I like them, but there were only four available. I would like to make some for all the herbs, and maybe even vegetables.





The chives are about to go to seed now. I need to build alternate year beds so I can have a cutting bed, and a bed to enjoy the blossoms.





This rhubarb's crown ended up being covered by the time heavy rains came. Once I cleared earth away from it, it got a lot happier and sent up some leaves to match it's sister plant.





The strawberry bed. I believe the sparse section is the one grouping of June bearers we planted.





They produce quite a few berries, but look awful. And, of course, I've forgotten which type we put in. Most of what we picked came from here.





The ever bearers are much healthier looking, and getting ready to gear up for production.





About 4 dollar's worth of berries, but half of them are gone. I told Michael to just eat his fruit while we picked. I like the really ripe ones. He likes the ones that are not quite, in my opinion, ripe. So we've got quite a mix here.





Washing the lettuce and hoping it will dry well enough before we have to leave for office cleaning.





Then a fun evening of barn prep!

~Faith

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