Month: June 2016

Didn’t do much in the garden this weekend except kept it watered.  It has been exceptionally hot in Central Illinois.  Over the course of the past week, it has been in the 90’s – with maybe a day or two just shy of that.

The garden and cool weather crops, like the lettuce, isn’t having any part of it.  During the hot part of the day, the lettuce outside is droopy and looks sad.

The lettuce has turned bitter unfortunately.  Barely got two pickings of lettuce out of the garden this year.  However, I found a post online that you can remedy bitter lettuce.  The last batch (shown below) that was picked Sunday morning, I put it in ice water and put in some baking soda.  It seems like it did help and some of the bitterness was taken away.

After letting it sit in the baking soda and ice water for about an hour, everything was cleaned.  Sat out to dry for a couple more hours and put in three gallon bags.  We still have about two bags left from the prior harvest, so I ran up to the store to get a couple of onions, some mushrooms, more salad dressing, and olives.  Going to have some big salads this week for dinner so we can enjoy fresh lettuce before it goes bad.  Lettuce seems to stay OK in the fridge for about two weeks.

So, here is what the lettuce bed looks like now, that the plants had a hair cut.

The Parris Island lettuce plants were already pulled out (couple dead spots in the photo above).  Those really are plants that you pick the whole thing at the same time.  And, the beaver (or whatever creature it was) already enjoyed those plants before we did.

Peas – I got a small bowl of Cascadia Snap Peas – even though the creature certainly stunted the peas as well.  Usually, the peas go to the top of the chicken wire fencing, but they didn’t even get half-way up this year.  So, at least I got a small bowl of peas though.  Fresh snap peas out of the garden are fantastic on salads too.

The back garden looks awful.  The tomatoes still are pushing through all of the weeds.  Just lost my interest in the back garden with the overgrowth.  And, only about a half dozen peas came up in the back.

Back over on the driveway, the onions are beginning to bulb out now.  The days must be long enough for that to happen.  I had to buy some onions for the salads this week, but that should be the only ones needed until ours are ready to cut down.  There are a few onions in the back of the garden bed that should be cut as green onions though – as they were planted too close together.

Front garden – had a mis-hap this week.  Woke up mid-week and found one of the posts in the front knocked down (the one to the left of the picture below, not in the picture though).  Upon closer inspection, large prints in the garden and a lot of the green beans had been chewed!  What creature was it?  The darn deer!  Tell you what – I go to great lengths every year to try and protect the garden – but the deer always cause problems.  I still don’t know how they got into the garden.  The deer netting is seven feet high.

Onions in the front garden are also bulbing.  I have lost several onions in the front garden too.  Just seems like they stop growing then shrivel up.  A lot of the onions in the front garden are not nearly large enough either, so they just didn’t grow that well in the front this year.

Down the pepper row, you can see that many of the green beans are still intact and are doing OK.  Not all of them got chewed on, but some here and there are missing some leaves.  The peppers – they are doing very well.  They are loving this heat!

And a close-up look of a pepper plant – there are two small peppers starting already.  Almost all of the pepper plants have flowers on them already as well.

And down the tomato row, they are overgrowing the green beans!

And – lots of tomatoes are growing on these plants as well.  Here are a few Roma tomatoes:

Potatoes – didn’t take a photo of them.  Some of them are already turning yellow though – and the deer also gave several of them a haircut.  But, deer may not like potato plants.  I usually put netting over the top of them, but this year I didn’t.  For the most part (even though shrubs and the front garden was eaten up), the potatoes only have a few nibbles on them.

That is all for this week!

Another couple of weeks have passed since the last post.  Last week, I had to take a trip down to Florida to do some work.  But, I came back and the garden seems to be doing well.

Apparently I forgot to take a picture of the lettuce – or I didn’t unload it off the camera.  Anyways, our beaver buddy (or whatever creature it is) has stayed out of the lettuce – although he has now moved onto munching on the peas.  The lettuce plants are all doing very well.  Sort of a shame though; we have two heads of lettuce in the fridge and this abundance of fresh lettuce in the garden that has been unattended.

I took all of these pictures a couple of nights ago – just before it got really dark.  So the quality isn’t the greatest.

Here are the row of peas.  They are heavily stunted because of the creature making a feast of them.

A closer look of some pea pods on the vines.  I actually picked about four pea pods after taking the pictures for a nice, sweet treat.  I picked a handful yesterday to put in last night’s salad too.

The back garden is overgrown.  A waste this year.  The tomato plants are doing OK, but there were only four or five pea plants that came up out of the 200+ seeded.  I think that the garden behind the house is going to be converted back to it’s previous use; just a small slope towards the neighbor’s yard.  Keeping this area up for the almost no output is aggravating.  Hey, I have a lot of cinder blocks that will most likely be free for the taking by the end of the year!

Going back to the driveway, the onions are doing quite well.  This used to be the place where carrots were.  This raised bed sitting on the driveway was meticulously put together several years back – where all of the soil was sifted through a screen to ensure no big rocks or lumps – perfect for carrots.  But, no carrots this year.  Last year’s carrots were awful as well.  The bed needs to have a bit of ‘topping off’ since it is a couple inches lower than where it used to be when new.

But hey, the onions are loving it.  I just recently put a little bit of fertilizer around the onions, tomatoes, and peppers too.  But the onions in this bed are doing better than those in the front garden.

Oh, and there are a few carrots mixed in – as you probably spotted.  Those were put in by our daughter.  I guess she planted some carrots and peas in here before I put the onions in.  Unfortunately, the peas had to be taken out, but I did leave some carrots for her to watch grow.

OK – front garden.  The overall shot shows a lot of good growth:

Look at that tall onion!  That was an onion that came up by itself this year – and now it has a large seed head on the top.  I just have left it grow, but it really is useless.  Can’t really use the seeds either.

On either side of the beds, the green beans are coming up! I seeded them a couple of days before I left for Florida, and I came back to see that they sprouted very well with great germination rates.

The peppers are doing very well too.  We are having a heat wave today through this weekend – supposed to get up to 97 degrees!  Wow, and it is only the beginning of June.  That kind of weather is usually reserved for mid July.

And the tomatoes are doing good too.  Pretty fuzzy picture though.

But, look what we have here!  It looks like we already have our first Roma tomato growing on this tomato plant!

Down by the road, we have the potatoes.  They are all ‘mulched’ with leaves being put under the plants (also done before I left for Florida).  It is kind of odd, because further down the hill, the potato plants are growing very well.  Then as you come up the hill, the potato plants are smaller.  Hard to tell from the picture, but maybe the water is going downhill and providing more moisture to those at the bottom of the hill.

And we’ve come to the last picture.  Just thought I’d share some grapes with you.  Our single grape vine left on the grape arbor has completely taken over.  Woops, I didn’t cut it back this winter!  But, there are a lot of bunches of grapes!