There i was looking at my onions together as a "stash"... in my head i was thinking "i really didn't get that much... i dropped the ball". I was going on about the smaller onions that got shaded and didn't do as well and i saw a few that should have been harvested earlier, or perhaps watered less... watering less would have helped them not show signs of rot i believe. You can make some mistakes in gardening and make up with them for other minor corrections, like for example not soaking the shady onion patch every day as a matter of prescribed blind master principle. It's like not watering beets or chard in the beating sun.. the leaves will brown and damage the plant's ability to master it's craft... if you know what i mean.
It was about that time somebody walked into the yard and said "holy mackerel that is one incredible pile of onions... did you actually grow all of that... that's incredible". Something about dreams and levels of achievement... me being a high yield yearning insane maniac would see a result in a different light as somebody that is awed by the wonder of growing a little food for yourself.
More Hops notes... On a hot day the hops plant towers provide a nice column of shade for our hero as he soaks his soil. It is my determination at this time that the last few spinach plants are benefiting from the shade on these hot days. Remember of course that the hops plant is a key breeding territory of our good friends the lady bug.
Here is a hot tip for all of you community gardeners... don't grow zucchini cause every time you go to the garden there is some person there who has grown too much zucchini and is trying to give you some. No need to take up space in your precious plot for that crop... just be social and share your harvests. Take it from me... you can only eat so much zucchini bread before the mere sight of a zucchini turns you a slight shade of green. It's true... put a zucchini under your throat in the sun and you will see a green shade on your neck skin... and that's about as useful as a zucchini can be. It's a confused vegetable that is actually in a botanical sense a fruit. Sure you can use it for things, but there will always be a better option if you want to dial in a nice meal. Apparently deep frying the flowers is a good tip, but i haven't tried it... it sure would help cut down on the amount of insipid zucchini's one might have to deal with. I have a summer squash plant and the trick there is to harvest them as immature while the rind is still tender and edible. Apparently they are called "summer squash" because of their short shelf life, probably due to the tender rind, as opposed to a "winter squash" that has a tough rind and stores well into winter. Kids loved them and so did the adults... good test.
This is the bulk of one of my 4 carrot patches... I have to start bringing them in as they will go woody and lose their flavor. In a perfect world you would go and harvest the carrots as you needed them.. i have made this error before. I think if that is your plan you have to plant patches a week apart, and that would be a fair bit of work and focus. When planting i tend to get into what one might call "savage attack planting"... kind of like an aggressive for check in the game of hockey. A massive blast of work in a time period that you have free on a particular day... sometimes if you get too tentative time just slips on by and it will seem like a thousand miles of space between what you did and what you wanted to do. Basically we have lots of carrots and some new space opening up in the garden. With the beets and carrots coming in i think if i got some starts i could squeeze another crop out of this season.
We were talking about this second crop idea around the dinner table as we were shelling peas:
My oldest daughter recounted a story about her and her friend being over at the house and i had just made a fine carrot, beet and ginger juice and i was going on about how delicious it was... apparently I poured them a couple of glassed and low an behold they weren't keen on it (might be a ginger thing)... as the story goes i was in such a state of triumph i wouldn't accept the idea that my offering wasn't a delectable snack that when they tried to escape without finishing it i called them back to finish up, and i guess i was so happy that they didn't want to let me down the choked it back, only near the end was i able to decipher that perhaps my version of "nectar of the gods" was a bit different then theirs. Sounds like something that could have happened.
Since we are going with the photographs this is my harvest production team braiding up the garlic... as dad always preached it's good to have a lot of hands for these types of jobs... back then it was me... tuned me into a good worker which is never a bad skill to have.
It was about that time somebody walked into the yard and said "holy mackerel that is one incredible pile of onions... did you actually grow all of that... that's incredible". Something about dreams and levels of achievement... me being a high yield yearning insane maniac would see a result in a different light as somebody that is awed by the wonder of growing a little food for yourself.
More Hops notes... On a hot day the hops plant towers provide a nice column of shade for our hero as he soaks his soil. It is my determination at this time that the last few spinach plants are benefiting from the shade on these hot days. Remember of course that the hops plant is a key breeding territory of our good friends the lady bug.
Here is a hot tip for all of you community gardeners... don't grow zucchini cause every time you go to the garden there is some person there who has grown too much zucchini and is trying to give you some. No need to take up space in your precious plot for that crop... just be social and share your harvests. Take it from me... you can only eat so much zucchini bread before the mere sight of a zucchini turns you a slight shade of green. It's true... put a zucchini under your throat in the sun and you will see a green shade on your neck skin... and that's about as useful as a zucchini can be. It's a confused vegetable that is actually in a botanical sense a fruit. Sure you can use it for things, but there will always be a better option if you want to dial in a nice meal. Apparently deep frying the flowers is a good tip, but i haven't tried it... it sure would help cut down on the amount of insipid zucchini's one might have to deal with. I have a summer squash plant and the trick there is to harvest them as immature while the rind is still tender and edible. Apparently they are called "summer squash" because of their short shelf life, probably due to the tender rind, as opposed to a "winter squash" that has a tough rind and stores well into winter. Kids loved them and so did the adults... good test.
This is the bulk of one of my 4 carrot patches... I have to start bringing them in as they will go woody and lose their flavor. In a perfect world you would go and harvest the carrots as you needed them.. i have made this error before. I think if that is your plan you have to plant patches a week apart, and that would be a fair bit of work and focus. When planting i tend to get into what one might call "savage attack planting"... kind of like an aggressive for check in the game of hockey. A massive blast of work in a time period that you have free on a particular day... sometimes if you get too tentative time just slips on by and it will seem like a thousand miles of space between what you did and what you wanted to do. Basically we have lots of carrots and some new space opening up in the garden. With the beets and carrots coming in i think if i got some starts i could squeeze another crop out of this season.
We were talking about this second crop idea around the dinner table as we were shelling peas:
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