Victory Garden 2012

[jmoore]

What type of vaccum sealer do you have JM?

"Food Saver" I make my own bags out of the rolls they sell. Two separate seals at each end. Sometimes the vacuumed end gets the first seal done twice or more to boil off any juices.



Stumbled across some wild roses whilst checking the blackberry crop (looks VERY promising!):





May have to bring some plants home. If they do this well wild, they may be able to survive me.

Oy, since it's been a while, here's some of the the last few weeks.






One of my least favorite plants to work around. Make me brek out in welts with intense itching for 15-30 minutes. Better than poison ivy, though!

Beans! Pods are forming. Some plants up to six feet already. Have way more than what's shown here, but this was the best photo to date. My father had one old picture that looks like a wall of green. Nothing like my uncle's plots though- Awesome they were.

[jmoore]

Blackberry time! Dang, hot work. One hour and lots of cuts and sweat later- 6 and 1/4 cups. Tiny berries iin the giant patch behind the new hangout. Need to hunt a richer patch. The best picking area got bulldozed. Another got logged and there's no access any more.

Oh, and the beans are coming in a little at a time. Earliest ever I recall picking them. Everything else is kinda stunted. Very odd.

[jmoore]

3 lbs of beans last weigh in. Not so bad. Cut some bamboo yesterday as it looks like it'll be needed. Some bean plants are climbing like crazy. Others I can't get to climb for nuttin'. Silly vines.

What kind of critter eats tomato plants, but only small ones, and not many at that?

[Jim Tarleton]

Blackberry time! Dang, hot work. One hour and lots of cuts and sweat later- 6 and 1/4 cups. Tiny berries iin the giant patch behind the new hangout. Need to hunt a richer patch. The best picking area got bulldozed. Another got logged and there's no access any more.

Oh, and the beans are coming in a little at a time. Earliest ever I recall picking them. Everything else is kinda stunted. Very odd.

We are experiencing the same weird stunted growth phenomenon around here. Plums are less than half their normal size and number, as are apples and peaches. Whatever the cause, it did not affect the pears, they are abundant and look to be normal size so far.

jt

[Aragorn243]

I stopped by my garden today and what a mess. We have been getting heavy rain on all the days I have time to work on it and sun when I don't have time so the weeds are getting an early lead on me. Plus, my sweet peas which were doing so nice all disappeared since Sunday. Seems something is eating them faster than they can grow. I hate putting fence up but it looks like I'm going to have too. The rain has been good for the corn. Two inches high after only 5 days in the ground. My first planting from three weeks ago is about 8 inches high.

[vintage hunter]

A very late frost the last week of April claimed most of the friut crop here. One thing that did escape were the dew berries. They actually came in rather early this year. Potatoes and sweet peas have done their thing already, quite good yields this year, a bit over 3 bushels of taters and a peck and a half of the peas. The sweet corn is ready, what of it survived the squirrels. Last year the little buggers waited until it was ripe before raiding it but this year they chewed the stalks down way before it put on any corn. Never had them do that before. Tomatoes and squash are late, could'nt seem to get the squash seed to germinate and the late frost got my first batch of tomatoe plants. String beans are coming along well, expect the first crop to be ready in about another week.

JM, post a photo of whats left, if anything, of the tomatoe plants that have been nibbled on.
There may some tell tale signs left behind as to what it was that worked them over.

[jmoore]

JM, post a photo of whats left, if anything, of the tomatoe plants that have been nibbled on.

Nothing at all left!

I may end up with a bunch of shelly beans if the OT keeps up. Haven't visited the tomato plants in 2-3 days.

[jmoore]

Wabbit! That's what ate the tomato plants. Big, skinny, and surprisingly ugly rabbit. Vaccuuming plants off the brickwork in the middle of the afternoon Friday. May be dead rabbit if the opporunity arises.

Finally had an easy pick Saturday. Went to the range, but spent most of my time there picking these:



Yesterday we stringed and cooked this big ole' pot of beans. Need to cook them a couple of more times before they're really good. Water, Kosher salt and RLO are the only other ingredients.


Not cooked yet!

[jmoore]

Cooked that pot of beans another 4-5 hours yesterday. They're getting quite good! The only problem is that by the time they're awesome there's very little left...

This pot is actually the first time I added the raw linseed/flaxseed oil at the beginning of the process- it has been added just at serving time previously. But this way seems better. The oil has lost it's "heaviness" in taste. it's about identical in flavor to the traditional pork fat that's generally added. Not seeing a downside here! Good for you, tasty, and does double duty as a rifle stock finish/treatment.

[jmoore]

Fig time. Which means climbing trees barefoot to get to the upper fruit. I supose i could take a camera, but I'm just happy the things still hold me up and I haven't come crashing to the ground- yet!

At any rate here's a few from yesterday's pick:




The green ones will ripen on the table. No picking today- range time and galavanting about, so some were plucked early to keep the birds and squirrels from taking them.

These are going into the freezer. Like little Pop-sicles without the stick (some very ripe ones retain the stem):