Veggie status

Here's a quick update on the garden. Squash vine borers have just about decimated the zucchinis but I'm not too sad. We got a bunch of fruits off them and haven't eaten many of them - maybe tonight we'll grill some up. Here's a shot of them (and some peppers) in their prime:

We're actually thinking about pulling up the zukes just to clear out the dead foliage. I'm doubtful that we'll plant those next year.

Peppers seem to be doing pretty well - they're putting on tons of fruits but so far non have gotten very big or very meaty, though I remember from last year that the biggest peppers came after the initial fruiting.

Tomatoes seem to be struggling a bit this year. Several plants have just up and died while others look pretty weak and have a lot of yellow foliage. Our romas and beefsteaks appear to be doing the best. Both have several fruits on each plant. The wacky heirloom varieties are a mixed bag - some have already given up the ghost and some seem poised for a decent showing. We planted these later than our other tomatoes, so it may take them a while to catch up. We had the top of a tree come down onto a few of our plants - did a fair amount of damage but I think they should rebound.

So far our cukes are the stars of this year's garden. We have about 7-8 pounds of kirbys picked and cleaned. Now we just need to find a good dill pickle recipe and we'll be set to pickle. Our non-pickling cukes are doing well too - there'll probably be 3 or 4 more of those to pick today. Those things sure are pokey - lots of little spines all over them and the plants too. I'm always very itchy after picking them.

Beans are doing so-so. It's kinda tough to keep up with the yard longs - those things grow fast and once they get too big they get kind of mushy and not very tasty.

Looks like our first-year melon patch is going to produce. We've got several small watermelon fruits forming. I'm hopeful that our cantaloupes won't be far behind. Squash vine borers have gotten to our pumpkins, though haven't caused as much damage (yet?) as they have to the zukes, so maybe there's hope.

The blueberry plants set a lot of berries this year and a few are just starting to ripen; however, Mr. O eats them faster than we can pick them, so I'm not sure we're ever going to get enough at one time to do much with them. Here he is caught in the act and looking sheepish.

I'll close this post with a shot of Scout doing some backyard breakdancing. I snapped this right in the middle of his windmill. Yo, Scout - where's your cardboard?

Gardenaut Posts

Did you know that we're "contributing gardeners" on a blog called Gardenaut? Why yes, it's true. One can read all our Gardenaut posts at this link.

Dianne has come up with a new word to describe baby cukes: cukembryo.

Loadin' the boat

We took Mr. O on his first fishing trip on Memorial day and had a great time. How is this related to suburban homesteading you might ask - well, before going fishing we had to dig up some worms for bait and there's no better place to do that than in the garden. So dig we did you dig?




Pepper plants are looking pretty good, eh? We harvested a nice haul of worms including one that I swear was half snake - it was huge. By far the biggest worm I've seen in these parts. Take a look at this mess of worms we dug up. A neat thing I noticed while digging was how many worm castings were evident in the soil. The castings are sort of hard to describe if you haven't seen them before. Picture a piece of poop about the size a worm would produce and you'll have a pretty good idea. I keep forgetting that this is the internet - here's a nice picture of worm castings.

With more than enough bait collected we headed out to Lake Raleigh, a 90 acre lake on NC State's Centennial Campus that only allows non-motorized boats. A great thing about the lake is that it's about 5 minutes from the farm - can't beat that.

We shoved off in the canoe and headed for a nice pocket along the bank that looked like it would have lots of fish. Once we cast our worm rig close enough to the bank it was fish after fish. Mr. O was very into counting his fish. He counted up to 16 fish, then 18, then back down to 16. I'm not really sure what the final count was but of course that doesn't matter. I will note that his first official fish reeled in was a largemouth bass - didn't get a good picture of it because it was ony about 3.5 inches long. But here he is reelin' in a big one.

Of course they weren't that big, but they were real fish that he caught and got to touch and hold and let go and that was a neat thing to watch. I was surprised at how readily he touched the fish and even how he was fine with letting them go. Here he is practicing catch and release.

We even took some videos with the camera that I'll try to post here. Let's see if this works.

Well it seems to be there. Check out his laugh near the end - too funny. Obviously the trip was a success. I think we were only out for about 2 hours - just enough time to get out and have fun without overdoing it. Though it did make him a little tired. He fell sound asleep on our five minute drive back to the farm. We didn't use anywhere near all the worms we collected so we deposited all of the remaining ones, including the big boy, back into the garden.

Chicken update - we got five eggs today. The first time that all five hens laid in one day. One of the Silver Phoenix eggs was much bigger than any I'd previously seen. I was thinking that their eggs would probably start to get bigger once they reached full maturity and today's egg seems to confirm that.

Snake Battle: Chapter 4 on to victory

In this short post I am officially declaring victory in the Man vs. Rat Snake battle. I believe that we both have found happiness in this outcome. As I dropped him, the snake, my nemesis, off at his new location I was secretly thinking, "you're going to like it here dude." I'm sure he has found new eggs and new baby birds to eat - hey, just keeping it real people - and no longer feels the need to ingest our hard won eggs.

Speaking of things eating other things - last week I was walking up to my building at work and red-tailed hawk was tearing apart a freshly-killed squirrel. The hawk was all business. There were plenty of people around but he wasn't budging. A woman stood about 15 feet away snapping pictures of the carnage.

So our hens our laying steady now and we get about 3-4 eggs a day. Ok I said this was going to be a short post.