For the last few years, I’ve been letting my fruit trees and berry bushes grow as they please, not doing much maintenance other than pruning.  But most of them have been in the ground for 3+ years now and are starting to produce, so I wanted to follow a better care plan to ensure a good harvest.

I am doing a modified version of this checklist by Michael Phillips.  It looks daunting at first, but is actually pretty simple.  So far, I’ve been using a spray of neem, effective microorganisms, and fish/seaweed fertilizer.  Once the trees dropped their flower petals, I added Surround to the mixture (I’ll probably only use the surround on the fruit trees and not the berries.  The berries don’t seem to have the same bug problems as the trees.)

I’ve so excited to see how this works.  We are a fruit loving family, so the more the merrier!  (Oh, I’m also using the fertilizer spray on the strawberries and roses.)  I’ll keep you updated.

Surround on apple leaves

Addendum: I’ve noticed that the two pear trees have some black spots on them that only appeared after using the neem.  I think it may have burnt them a little.  I’ve read that you can use neem on pears, but also that new growth can be susceptible to burn from neem.  I’ll hold off on neem-ing the pears for now.

As a part of my plan to try to simplify things in my life, I am no longer weighing out all of my harvest…. Though the anal side of me really wants to know exactly how many pounds of summer squash I picked, and how many ounces of herbs, it’s just not a priority.  So, I’ve let it go.  I did, however, write down what I’ve harvested this month.

June Harvest

• Lettuce (now bolting)
• Basil
• Parsley
• Edible Flowers
• Garlic
• Onions
• Berries (Blue, Black Raspberry, and Red Raspberry)
• Peas
• Summer Squashes
• Nectarines
• 336 eggs

I also put up 11 quarts of Kale Soup  (and we still have stuff in the pantry from last year!  YAY!)

What have you harvested?

YAY!!  I’m so excited!!  I can’t wait to have fresh food from the garden.  This past weekend, we set up a straw bale cold frame to start our seeds in and seeded kale, lettuce, cabbage, and parsley!   We are using a pane from a glass door as the top.   The greenhouse in our window that we did last year got things sprouted fantastic, but after that, they got tall and scraggly.  So, we’ll see how the cold frame does this year.

Things have mostly stopped producing in the garden now.  I still have kale, chard, snap peas, a little bit of tromboncino squash, and some arugula that reseeded itself.  But, I’m not doing much harvesting.  I’m so over the kale and chard.  I haven’t felt like eating it in months!  My plans for any type of winter garden have ended.  I need a break.  I want to put the garden to bed and not think about it for a while.  I’m sure there’s something I’m supposed to be doing to it right now… adding compost or cover crops or something, but I just don’t want to be out in the garden.  I hope this will pass next year and that it’s just related to having a new baby.  I feel like my time is so stretched thin.  If I have a moment to myself, I want to do something for myself, not be out weeding.

So, the harvest is a little light this months:

• Eggs – 127 (most of the girls are now molting…. considering we now have about 25 laying hens, we should have 3 times that amount of eggs a months)
• Raspberries – ~3 quarts
• cherry tomatoes – never get weighed, they are eaten right off the vine
• Leeks – 3#
• chard – 4 oz
• peas – 1#
• Summer Squashes – 6# 9 oz.
• Winter Squashes – 11 #
• Cukes – 10# 4oz (gave it all away… couldn’t eat another cuke, and we have over 50 qt. in the pantry!!)
• potato – 16# 5 oz
• Sunflower seeds – 8 oz
• Green beans – 8 oz (these are still producing, but the trellis collapsed on itself, and I didn’t feel like picking it all back up

It was a very rainy month!! – 8.25 inches  The chickens were not happy and have been ill on and off because of all the yeast and molds.

To end on a happy note… here is Leif in one of his favorite positions (that smile looks kind of crazy upside down, doesn’t it?):

Fairy self portrait in the zucchini?

Moonflower

Potato art

Leeks

Just took 7 quarts of potato leek soup out of the canner!!  Mmmm, Mmmmm, Gooood!

Things are petering out in the garden…. well, I’m letting them peter out.  The weeds have taken over, the tomatoes gave in to blight, the green beans are collapsing.  The squashes have all succomb to mildew of some sort.  The chard and kale are still going strong.  There’s probably 10# of it out there, but we just don’t eat it much.  I have to say, we are all kind of tired of food from the garden   I need to get more recipes, but when do I have time to cook with canning all day?  And MAN, the cucumbers just won’t quit!  I finally found a recipe for a hot cucumber soup, so I will probably be putting more of that up for the winter.  So, here’s the august harvest:

• Eggs – 148 (about half of the ladies started molting)
• Cucumbers – 56# 4 oz.
• Chard 5# 2 oz
• Tomatoes – 15# 9 oz (all of the tomatoes that I have put up for the winter were from a local organic farmer who sold 30# boxes of romas for $10 a box!!!
• Dill seed – a few ounces
• green beans – 11#
• Culinary herbs – ~2#
• Winter Squash – 12#
• Summer squash – 16# 2oz.
• Potatoes 25#
• Melons – 11# 6oz
• Raspberries – a few quarts
• Cherry Tomatoes – did fantastic, but we threw all of them to the chickens as treats… many pounds worth!
• sunflower seeds ~1#
• Apples – 3# Our first harvest from our baby trees!

It rained at least 5 1/2 inches last month, although I forgot to write it down a few times.  Seems like it’s been raining every day!

The other day when I went out to harvest the zuchinni, I found this:

I swear, no one carved this!  Kaia’s explanation… Bartelby Barnes, the fairy of the garden, carved it to claim his zuchinni.  I think he was just letting us know that he has been hanging out in the garden beds.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately.  It’s hard to sit at the computer during these busy summer days.  Especially with a 5 month old banging on the keys

I have started planing my fall/winter garden already!  Seems crazy in these summer days to be thinking about what I will harvest in Jan!  But, this year, I’m going to try to keep some things going all winter long.  I’m right on the edge of zone 6b (Asheville is 7a, but I’m in a little cove that keeps us a tad bit cooler), so it’s possible to have a harvest all year long without too much work.

Last week, while the moon was in Taurus, I planted peas, broccoli and cabbage (the cabbage would do fine under a leafy sign too).  The peas will hopefully be ready to harvest before the first big frost, and the broccoli and cabbage I plan on using row covers and hope to keep them alive through the winter.

During the weekend, in Gemini, I put in some carrots and bunching onions.  These are in a raised bed that I could put some glass over and make a cold frame out of it.  That will also help keep the heat in during the winter.

Later on, I plan on putting in Kale, garlic, winter lettuce and maybe a few other things.

The garden has done well this year.  No major losses (the squash and pumpkins recovered from the vine borrer and are putting out new leaves and flowers).  Still, the garden will need to be a good bit bigger to produce what our family needs to carry us through the winter.

I just pulled one or two squash vine borers from every single winter squash, summer squash, and pumpkin in the garden!!!  The leaves have become yellow and wilted, and growth has been stunted all in the past few days!  I doubt I will get much of a harvest at all!  I’m really sad, ’cause I was looking forward to having squash throughout the winter, carving my own pumpkins, canning up lots for the pantry!  Do plants come back to health from vine borers???  I sprayed everything off with neem to protect the plants from reinfestation where I slit them open (I don’t know if neem will even do this, but I don’t fugure I have much to lose now.)

How are you supposed to keep these buggers out of the vines in the first place???

I thought it was a good time to take a look at how the garden is faring, then in the years to come I can repeat (or not) those things that worked (or didn’t):

Tomato bed – so far, they are all looking great!  No ripe ones yet, but should be soon.  The dill and parsley in this bed are doing wonderfully, the basil not so much.  It’s genovese basil, but it wanted to bolt early and hasn’t gotten as big as I would have expected.

Pea bed – they did wonderfully and are now on their way out.  Next time I will have many more and taller strings for them to climb.  Our harvest would have been much larger if they hadn’t fallen all over each other.

Summer Squash bed – The Raven Zucchini and Saffron yellow squash started out with a bang.  They still look good, but aren’t producing much… lots of flowers but not fruit.  The Tromboncino squashes seem to be doing well.  The Jarrahdale Pumpkin squash is very slow going… lots of blooms but no fruit yet. The eggplant is growing slowly and small as usually with me.  I don’t know what it is about me and eggplant, but I can never seem to get a good harvest.  The bees are loving the garden, so I know I have lots of pollination going on.

Raven Zucchini

Trombonccino squash

Cucumber bed – the cukes are booming!!  I’ve harvested over 13 pounds so far and there are many more little ones growing.  I’ve noticed some spots on some of the leaves and I don’t know what it is.  I don’t want it to take over and kill the plants!  Ugh, that would be tragic… they are looking so great!

Cucumber leaves - what is that?

Brassicas – The kale has done wonderfully and still going strong.  The beets not so much.  I planted varieties for lots of greens, but haven’t gotten much.  The spinach all did poorly.  I planted 3 different varieties and none of them grew very large or produced very much…. I’ve never had much luck with spinach.  The broccoli has gotten eaten up by some bug that I dont’ recognize.  But we’ve had almost no harvest from it.

broccoli bug

Broccoli bug (blurry close up)

Potatoes – so far so good… no major complaints

Lettuces – they all did fabulous.  We weren’t a fan of the mixed greens… there was something in there that was too bitter and too spicy.  So they ended up just bolting, but this created a nice shady spot for the lettuces to grow, and they have done great.  The chard in the bed is also doing wonderfully.

Bright lights chard

Pumpkins – doing well.  Not too much fruit yet, but there are a few.

Cinderella Pumpkins - Rouge Vif d'Etampes

Green beans – going strong.  I’ve noticed some spots on the lower leaves… trying to figure out what it is.

Green Beans

What are the spots?

Winter squash – The Zeppelin Delicatas seem to be doing great, the David’s Dakota Delight is growing, but I haven’t seen much fruit yet.  The Squisito Spaghetti squash seems to be doing ok…. I’ve not grown much squash before, so I don’t know what a good yield is from one plant.

Spaghetti squash

Yellowing spaghetti squash leaves??

Melons – so far so good.  The vines are only a few feet long but there are flowers and small fruits.

Garlic – The garlic bed has done horribly.  Partly because one of the cats is using it as a litter box, but mostly because the soil is too hard.  I need to plant it, and the onions in one of the deeper, raised beds next year.

And for Junes Harvest: (Some of it seems so piddly, especially the greens, but we really aren’t harvesting and eating it like we should… there’s a bunch out there!)

4.25 inches or rain

90 eggs (the count is down ’cause we have 3 hens either sitting on eggs or raising chicks, and the other hens seem to have slowed down a bit with hot weather)

1 ounce garlic scapes (the garlic has done poorly this year!)

1 pound kale

14 oz lettuce

4 oz. chard

~6 ounce of herbs (parsley, dill, basil…)

5 # sugar snap peas

2# 4oz potatoes

6# 6oz. summer squash

2 baby onions

12 oz broccoli

13# 9oz. cucumbers

total of ~31 pounds of produce in June   (not too bad for a new garden)

Things are growing nicely in the garden! It was early blight on the potatoes.  But, it was only on 5 of my fingerlin potatoes.  So, I pulled them up and burned the tops.  The potatoes looked fine, albeit small:

We’ve got zucchini and summer squash starting to come in, cukes the size of my pinky, snap peas galore (yum!) and still lots of greens.  I’m having to get use to eating from the garden and not from the pantry… it’s nice…. but major canning time is just around the corner.

Here are shots of the garden from the roof… lots of progress from a month ago

And a shot of some blooms on the roof:

yarrow and calendula

This is on all of my zucchini…

And this is on one of my potatoes…

And what do I do about it??

Last month I decided to start writing down all the food we harvested from our land.  In April, I only kept track of eggs, but this month I tried to remember to measure everytime we brought something in the house.  I keep a little scale on the kitchen counter for just this.

April Harvest

• 146 eggs

May Harvest-

• 110 eggs (we were down because 3 of our hens were broody and not laying)
• 5 pounds 4 ounces strawberries
• 2 pounds shiitake mushrooms
• 4 ounce rose petals
• ~2 pounds of greens (this included chickweed, kale, lettuce, pea shoots, and spinach.  I’ll try to be better about separating then next month.  Sometimes we would go grab some greens for a sandwich and forget to measure.

In May, we also had 11 inches of rain!!

Quick question…

How often do you fertilize or feed your vegetables? I’ve not done anything since they’ve been planted, and everything looks great, but I imagine they would like a little food boost every now and then.  I checked on my comfrey compost tea, but it’s not ready yet…

Kaia’s flower garden:

Looks like we will have a nice strawberry harvest this year:

Onions are doing well!

Potatoes are up and growing strong:

Lettuce and other greens are overwhelming us!

Here’s a view of the front gardens from the roof

The plants on the roof are doing well… well, the ones that survived. Almost all of the delospermas (ice plants) didn’t survive the winter. We have large dead spots on the roof. We’ll see how things grow over the summer. Hopefully the plants that are living will fill in the gaps.

Kaia and I planted 45 Gladiola bulbs this spring, and Heidi created a little heart garden around them for us!