Before and afters...

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011

Before and afters...

12/22/2011 Winter Solstace 2011 Garden Update. Growing our winter garden we have - Red Russian kale, Dino or Lacinto Kale, Swiss Chard, Beets, Lettuce, Turnips, Radish, Collard Greens, Cabbage, Egyptian Walking Onions, Garlic, Raddicio, Diakon Radish, Leeks. Night temperatures have been below freezing for over a week now, and frost is still on the ground, all the winter vegetables are holding up. This year we heavily mulched the beds in late fall before the freezes and that has helped the plants endure the cold weather better. Our total poundage for the year is 1694 pounds! Thats nearly 4x the poundage of last year and we were late to plant!

Later in summer.
Early Summer
After: We transplanted Collard Greens, Raddicio, Lettuce and Leeks.

Before: lowlands, we added a few inches of soil and mulch and made a no till garden using cardboard and tree trimming chips for the paths, and mounded soil and compost.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2011

Veggies....

Fall veggies, Dino kale, early cabbage, spinach, chard, garlic, leeks, shallots, kale.
Doing a little pile smoothing and chip trail maintenance. .

More of the dalia's in front.
The dalia's a gift from a master gardener were magnificent and the bees love them!

The last of the tomatoes for the year. Fried green tomatoes and green tomato salsa are good options.

Harvesting in the rain.

Cabbage
Beautiful ripe veggies!
Dalias make a lovely addition to the garden
Our early tomatoes. Due to previous years tomato issues, this year we focused on planting early short season tomatoes and it paid off with a great harvest!

Spaghetti Squash, kale, chard, tomatoes, squash, peppers, cucumberes,eggplant, tomatillos and

cauliflower, quite a garden harvest!
Our straw bale compost pile.
Our straw bale planter.
Planting in straw
Purple cabbage and Red Russian Kale bed

My dream season extending bed.

Made some chive vinegar

More giving gardens flowers.

Gerties Gold Tomato. A late season tomato, not very productive, but worth the real estate and worth the wait. Every time my husband eats one, he comments on how that is the best tomato!

Tastes likes melon and mango.

This year was my first for flowers. I planted this lovely dahlia.

Tomatoes ready for dehydrating

This was the prettiest bed I made, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and some red russian kale.

This bumble bee spent the night in this flower. Talk about bee crack.

Making a strawbale bed. This worked well for the plants inside, but the plants we planted on the straw bale did not grow optimum but it was a nice experiment.

A nice large zuchinni, the squash puttered out early this year with powdery mildew,but not before harvesting about 20 nice zuchinni.

This year has been excellent for beets, I staggered plantings and none bolted.

Making more sauerkruat.

It has been a good year for tomatoes! I have been harvesting several yellow and red tomatoes. One change I made was not to concentrate on Glamour tomatoes and long season tomatoes, but instead I planted dependable early season tomatoes and a few glamour tomatoes.

Mason bees started to hatch 3/23/2011

3/27 ~ It's been so cold and wet the bees are just hanging out in the box. I hope they make it.

I made coconut yogurt and fabuloso lemon pickles. They are so good I ate half the jar of lacto fermented key limes.

The coconut yogurt I make with

tapioca flour, rice flour, coconut milk, tapioca pearls and coconut yogurt. They put so many

additives in coconut yogurt and I can make a quart for much less and more healthy.

Some of my mason bees have hatched from their cocoons. The beige smudges on the box prove it. The mason bees make marks all over the box and their new clean houses are ready! I am anxious to see which kind of bee apartment house will be their favorite to use.

The worms just loved their local microbe type fermented compost. There are so many worms, the herd has increased 100 times. My hill has as many worms as my compost pile thanks to this new method. I will more post photos soon. The birds were having a feeding frenzy in the hill and now I know why. There are oddles of worms, nearly a hand full to hand full ratio to compost.

This is my continuous kombucha brew system.

I need to get those extra scobies out. But it us ready in about 3 days this way. Much cheaper than store bought kombucha. For the cost of5 bags of tea and about 3/4 cup sugar I get about a gallon compared to the store cost of 3-4 bucks a bottle. Kombucha is a great drink and economical when made at home and I believe it tastes better because you can drink it at its best.

Fermenting in my cupboard, dill pickles and sauerkraut. I finally got another batch of sauerkraut I haven't made a batch since Thanksgiving.

This is shredded cabbage, carrots, and beets for a beautiful red veggie kruat.

These were very good, carrots, black radish, turnip, caraway, cardamom, cayenne pepper.

This one is carrots, daikon, red onion, serrano peppers, cayenne, dill, caraway, juniper. Gotta wait to try it. This is my first pickle I have added onions to.