July 2013 New England

I've decided NOT to put in a fall garden.  Too much work when I have quilts lined up that have to be made before Christmas this year.  I've got to tone down my gardening efforts a bit.
Today I dumped out the soil in my potato bucket.

Remember this bucket in April after I planted 3 Red Potatoes?  

Above:  I got 10 nice edible red potatoes from the bucket today.  Not very much, but it was a fun experiment and not much effort.

We're getting ready for more rain this afternoon.  I'm sorry to hear that the Cape has a water ban on right now according to a good friend who lives in Harwich not far from CapeCoddess; no car washing or outside watering.  We aren't very far from the Cape, but we sure have different winters and rainfalls.  I understand this rain is off the coast so maybe the Cape will get lucky today.

QB, nice! aren't the reds a short season potato?

Camprn....I have no idea on the spuds.  I just took 3 from my kitchen that had eyes and buried them in a bucket  on March 21st.  The foliage has been dead and gone for a few weeks now and thought I'd check to see what was inside so I dumped out the bucket and got this:

I used a cat litter bucket.  I filled one with water before to see how much water they held and it was 3 1/2 gals.

That's so excellent that those spuds worked for you, QB. My bucket o' spuds never took hold. Also, I felt a couple drops of rain just now and have my fingers crossed. Even emptied the rain gauges of sprinkler water in case there's a measurable amount.

NHG, I covered my squash for the first time this year and it seemed to help. I uncovered it once there were so many flowers and I saw a bee trapped in there. But the PM is so nasty that I may lose them anyway.  

Molly, I put windows over the top of my sunken boxes and had greens into Feb. It doesn't take much to protect the hardy ones like kale and such.

I hit the compost jackpot a couple days ago. A neighbor brought over about 2 dzn lobster shells & bodies. I stuck em in the compost, covered them over and the next morning they had exploded all over the neighborhood.   Not only were they all over my composting area, but folks were finding them in their yards. And what a stink!   So I fixed up that little mess yesterday and buried them way deep. Gruesome. They are still buried as of today.

Heading out to plant peas and perennials. Please rain please rain please rain...

CC

How did that happen, CapeCoddess? A cat or raccoon drag 'em out?

Well, one neighbor thought the crows/ravens may have deposited hers, and one thought cayote.  I'm thinking foxes, but it could be raccoons altho I never see them around here.

Hi winds but still no rain...
http://www.wunderground.com/radar/radblast.asp?ID=BOX&lat=41.69873810&lon=-70.06314087&label=Harwich%2C+MA&type=N0R&zoommode=pan&map.x=400&map.y=240¢erx=400¢ery=240&prevzoom=zoom&num=10&delay=15&scale=1&showlabels=0&smooth=0&noclutter=1&showstorms=0&rainsnow=1&lightning=0

CC

Oh darn! I didn't realize the critters were seafood lovers. Except maybe seagulls.

edit: I don't know what your temperature is, but we're freezing today. July 25th and we're wrapped in jackets and socks. Weird!

Yup, jeans & lined windbreakers here. Never got up to 70 today.

CC

I took off my sweat shirt when it got to 64 F, tank top all day, this weather is perfection!

Ummm,

With the latest ice melt, sun spot reports, and all-time low-temperature reports, I wonder what this winter will be like....

Even Florida has been having some record low temps.

Low 60s today down here, cloudy and spitting a little. Perfect shorts, sandals and T-shirt weather for me.

We are, thankfully, not having record low temps here. The record low for the month of July was 34*F.

But some locales have been having record low temps for a particular day.

donnainzone10 wrote:But some locales have been having record low temps for a particular day.  

LOL, yes indeed, but this is the NE forum. We be good here, today's weather was a thankful sigh of relief from the past month.

CC, how much rain did you get?

You all must be polar bears, I froze yesterday.

BUT, the rain all day today is welcome! My garden really needed some soaking rain after that long, hot dry spell, so yay. What a great summer, not having to water!

camprn wrote:CC, how much rain did you get?

When I left for work this morning the front guage was at 1 inch.  It continued to drizzle for a couple more hours so I know we got a good inch or more. 

Now, if it would do that about 5 more times real soon....

CC

We ended up with 1 & 2/3 inch of rain!  Psyched!

We ate our first 'big' tomatoes today - 3 Supersonics, best tasting mater I ever ate.  I also picked some basil & walking onion leaves, then toasted it all up into some open-faced tomato sandwiches smothered with mozzarella for breakfast.   Amazing how good that was.  
I just realized that I forgot to look for leafhoppers on the basil.  Hope I didn't eat one.  

I'm throwing together a 2' x 4' box today out of some very old decrepit 1"x6" wood.  Not sure it's even worth the effort but I'm doing it anyway.   I need it for sugar snap peas & lettuce.

Sunny, breezy and humid right now, about 80...better get back out there.

CC

Hmm. What are walking onion leaves? I have some walking onions. I've been leaving them alone so they multiply.

Cooked spinach and celery from the garden in the baked ziti tonight, and made a salad of lettuce, the first cherry tomatoes that are red, peas, and celery. And a loaf of french bread in the bread machine. I am so stuffed.

Still haven't pulled the garlic. I want the cloves to get nice and big because I'm using a lot of them for seed garlic for next year.

The Egyptian Walking onions. You can eat all parts of them so I eat the tender leaves that won't amount to anything.

CC

This is todays haul not including the the mustard spinach, scallions & collards for this weeks salad greens box: carrots, beets & beet greens, onions, basil, garlic chives, chard, collards, kale. There were a lot more greens but I couldn't fit them in the picture so left them in the basket. Not bad!


The tulle over the greens is completely falling apart at the slightest touch. If I can just get it thru this season, I may go with row cover next year. Does it last longer than 1.5 yrs?

CC

Lovely CC!

Nice haul CC

Good day in the garden for me. Picked some more corn tonight for dinner and 2 of them are almost normal size.


Found my one and only zucchini so far... not sure how I missed it. Tomatoes and cucumbers are really coming in now. Canned 17 jars of Bread and Butter Pickles today.

Those pickles and veggies look awesome  

CC and Lyndee - beautiful produce and canning