Garden 2009: Okra and Sweet Potatoes

Our okra is a little slow in starting to produce this year. We've only harvested a few pods thus far. Okra is a southern crop that always seems to thrive in the heat of summer. I wonder if this summer has been too mild and pleasant for it to do well?

The sweet potato vines have filled their enclosure. I hope they are making lots of sweet potatoes underground. Our rabbits do a good job of keeping the vines pruned so they done sprawl all over the garden -- whether we really want them to prune or not.

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Garden 2009: Okra and Sweet Potatoes

Pointing The Way

Rusty may be an Australian Shepherd, but he seems to think he's a pointer. He was pointing at three rabbits at the back of our garden. I can guarantee you that every muscle in his body was tense. After a couple of more steps, he charged. He didn't come close to catching any of the rabbits, but after a shout from Jo and I, he did stay inside the garden instead of chasing the rabbits off into the woods.

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Pointing The Way

Whatever #3: Hershey's Kiss

Who's going to get the last Hershey's Kiss?

(Photo taken 12/30/05)

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Whatever #3: Hershey's Kiss

Garden 2009: Garlic Planting

In the garden over the past several days:

GARLIC:  Jo planted garlic. Her technique is to use a spacing board and lay out all the cloves. Then, she uses the trowel to plant each clove. There's only one problem with this technique: Canine garden buddies. When Jo's back was turned, the dogs kept stealing garlic cloves. The didn't eat the garlic, just carried it off and played with it.

Here in the south, garlic is planted in late summer. It sprouts and the plants grow to a modest size before winter when they go dormant. As soon as the weather warms up in the spring, the garlic begins growing again. It's dug in mid-summer.

GREEN BEANS: Jo picked more and got them into the freezer.

YELLOW SQUASH AND ZUCCHINI: Mother Hubbard's cupboard was bare; ours is full of yellow squash and zucchini. Jo has tried freezing them in the past, but when thawed they are fall-apart mushy. She read somewhere online that they remain more firm if sliced and steam blanch instead of blanching in boiling water. She experimented with freezing a couple of pints using that method. We'll see.

CUCUMBERS: Production is far surpassing what I can eat. (Jo doesn't care for cucumbers.) Jo's intending to make some quickie pickles. We have quarts of regular canned pickles still left over from years past.

BED MULCHING: I've got three of the four fallow beds heavily mulched with grass clipping. I spread a layer of compost followed by a layer of manure. Then, I cover the beds with a layer of newspaper with the grass clipping on top. Our plan is that all we'll need to do next spring is pull back the mulch and plant. The possible flaw in this plan is: Armadillos. Armadillos love the bugs and earthworms that thrive under the mulch. If an armadillo discovers the beds and goes on a overnight feeding frenzy, the beds will look as if they've been tilled. Later in the fall, I can cover the beds with chicken wire we have for that purpose, but for now the beds have to stay uncovered so I can keep the weeds and especially Bermuda grass from growing into the beds from the aisles.

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Garden 2009: Garlic Planting

Garden 2009: Cottontail Rabbit

Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), one of our little garden helpers.

Monday, 8/10/09:

The day was mostly sunny until our afternoon walk time (4:00 PM) when thunderstorms started moving through our area. Scattered thunderstorms roamed for the following twelve hours or so. No severe storm passed over us. We ended up getting only .8"/2cm of rain. After the first couple of lines passed through, no rain fell for a couple of hours. We took the dogs for a walk up to the gate and Jo picked 9 pounds/.5Kg of green beans.

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Garden 2009: Cottontail Rabbit

Whatever #2: Just A Sideline

Fayetteville, AR, 9/02/07

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Whatever #2: Just A Sideline

Garden 2009: First Picking of Green Beans

Jo picked a little less than a half bushel of green beans Thursday afternoon. We've eaten some, but most went into the freezer. We should get two or three more large picking and then production will fall way off. Eventually, we'll leave the wire covering off the beans and let the rabbits have a treat, though I don't know what they've done to deserve a reward.

Jo also harvested some yellow squash, zucchini and cucumbers.

I made a trip into town Thusday. We were just in town this past Saturday, but I decided to make a special trip to buy a new thermostat for our hot water heater. The thermostat that's currently on the heater works okay most of the times, but every so often gets the water way too hot.
While in town, I made several other stops: Mailed a package, paid bills, went by the bank and, of course, bought groceries again. With all that running around, I managed to forget about buying the thermostat. Doh!

The price of gasoline jumped a dime per gallon since Saturday, up to $2.59/gallon. I reckon gas is bound to go up with Labor Day and our fall show season approaching.

We had to send our camera back to Olympus for a rebuild. The main control knob became so stiff it could not be turned. The photo above is from our archives. It was taken by Jo on 6/17/07.

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Garden 2009: First Picking of Green Beans

Whatever #1

Paseo Festival of the Arts ... Oklahoma City, OK ... 2006.05.27.

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Whatever #1

Garden 2009: Green Beans and Climbing Rabbits

Our first picking of green beans should occur later today or maybe tomorrow.  If we want to harvest any green beans, we must grow them inside a welded wire enclosure. Otherwise, the rabbits would eat them down to the ground.

The wire hoops really aren't quite large enough for the beans, so they send stems and leaves out through the mesh. In the past, the cottontails have done a very good job of keeping the ground level protruding stems and leaves trimmed back to the wire. This year, the rabbits took their trimming duties one step farther. At least one member of our local rabbit population learned how to either climb the wire or jump up on top of it. We've seen a rabbit sitting up on top of the wire hoops several times. And you can see there are few stems and leaves left sticking outside of the wire. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt we'll ever be able to get close enough to photograph the rabbit in action.

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Garden 2009: Green Beans and Climbing Rabbits

Econoline Van Sold

We sold our old van today. After buying a replacement in May, we really needed to get shed of it. Still, after 22 years and around a quarter of a million miles together, it was kinda sad watching some stranger drive the beast away.

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Econoline Van Sold