New England, June 2015

Yeah they look wonderful.

Home-grown strawberries are so much like home-grown tomatoes, to me, in that the ones from the store are nowhere near as good. I'm reliably disappointed by store-bought to the point I'm surprised when they're any good.

Marc, I know what you mean.  Our neighbor brought us some goodies from the farm store at the college, which is a major university for aggies.  The tomatoes and corn were really good.  There is a line down the street at this time of the summer, folks lining up for the college's corn.

NHGardener wrote:

Strawberries! I've gotten about 3 of these spaghetti strainers so far:

Last night we had eggo waffles with strawberries on top and homemade whipped cream on top of that. Tomorrow I'm going to make a strawberry pie. And after that, I want to try the breadmaker's recipe of strawberry preserves.

Today for breakfast I had kale, garlic scapes, and walking onion sauteed in coconut oil.

YUM!!! How come your strawberries don't have bites out of them? Seems like two out of three of mine have bites out of them. I catch birds in there and I think that lily is catching chipmunks, all under the netting.  You make all kinds of nifty things with those strawberries. I'm so generic that I'm to the point of freezing mine now.

NHG, your breakfast makes me want the same thing this morning so I think that's exactly what I'll have.

I see on the weather  that my areas rain forecast has gone down to less than half an inch from just under 2 inches yesterday. It hasn't started yet so who knows. I'm just glad I watered yesterday.

NHG, thanks for the info. And those look yummy. I have plans to build a strawberry box in the next couple years. But the few plants I have now give me a handful every two days and the ants a few more that they nibble on. With the way my kids eat berries I would need a small farm to keep up. We pyo on wed and those two quarts are gone. I swear my two year old will turn pink with the way he eats them. I'm hoping to go picking again to make another batch of jam and to fill a few freezer bags for smoothies. 

Happy Father's Day! And hope all are getting some rain.

Yup, we're getting rain now! It started just as I was finishing up harvesting these greens, lettuce, snow peas, sugar snap, onions and strawberries.

Got the strawberries hulled and put into the freezer and now I'm thinking I should take a picture of this rain to look back on and drool over a month from now. it's coming down in sheets! with thunder and lightning! This must be what heaven is like.

It's raining (pouring) here, I hope it is where you all are too.

CC, maybe the birds aren't getting my strawberries because the patch is so thick and overgrown. They might not have a good landing spot. And I think the hawks and foxes that traipsed through here this spring have gotten almost all the chipmunks and all the squirrels. We had a big squirrel population this winter, and now there aren't any. And the hawks are gone too. 

Strawberries are so easy to grow, and they replant themselves! It's like they do all the work. I like that in a plant.

That photo looks great, CC!

We had rain throughout the nite, a total of 1.6" so far and still drizzling.  Its supposed to clear up and sunshine later.  Crossing my fingers.

I just wanted you to get a peek at my double-planted Legend (Determinate) tomatoes.  Remember, these are the twins that were growing so well in the same cellpack that I didn't want to separate them.  Then I saw a video on LoveYourLand (utube) where she plants FOUR tomatoes all together and claims they are vigorous, productive and terrific.  I had already transplanted these outdoors together when I found that video, but now after seeing that vid, I have hopes these will prosper.
So far, so good.  Looking very healthy and growing well.
I'm thinking I might have to give them organic liquid fertilizer every couple of weeks to be sure they are getting enough nutrition.

QB, interesting concept. I have a neighbor that allows the volunteer tomatoes in her compost to come up and all grow together in one bed. By the time the blight takes them at the end of the season she has enough tomatoes to let them go.

I hit the jackpot at the grocery store - organic pears for 88 cents a pound from the 'gone by' cart. I bought 10 pounds ranging from firm to extra juicy. When I got home and started unloading them, I suddenly remembered that there are two pear trees in the back yard that I had planted just last year that are bearing fruit. So I froze the juicy half and the rest went into the fridge & should be finished by the time the 18 pears out back are ready to be picked. Geesh. 

Then I blanched & froze collards & kale...then ate a ton of it[/url

CC, I can't believe your pears are already producing! Wow! My 2 peach trees from Lowes last spring are still working on trying to pump out their first peaches. Well, one of them did produce a few small, yuck ones last year. One of them had blossoms in early spring and I covered the tree with agrabon in that late frost, but after the blossoms went away, nothing appeared. Maybe they're ornamental peach.  

And what is the brown freezer wrap you're using? It sure is beautiful!

QB, that's great news for those of us who have a hard time rejecting our twin seedlings.  

I do appreciate my volunteer tomatoes. They do seem to be hardier, and like your neighbor says, when the pampered tomatoes have wilted from whatever, the volunteers seem to soldier on. I haven't seen signs of volunteer tomatoes yet, but they're usually late to show up. The volunteer potatoes tho are going strong.

My potato bed is in full leaf-out and some are blooming. I also threw some on the ground and piled old hay on top of them and they're sprouting too. I may just keep covering that thrown-together potato bed with lawn cuttings.

Everything outside appears to have appreciated the rain, which now seems to be over. I was watching a Mark Shepard youtube (Restoration Agriculture) and he was saying that vegetation can grow anywhere - even on rocks on cliffs - but the one thing it needs is water.

The rain seems to be finished here also. We ended up with 1 & a quarter inch!!!! I'm so happy!  I just came in from a walk around the yard and its like Jurassic Park out there. It seems that everything has doubled in size since yesterday including the invasives. How is that possible?

NHG, that wrap is unbleached parchment paper.  Once its frozen I can just cut off as much as I need from the end.  After being rolled in the parchment paper, the wraps go into a grocery bag which is then rolled up and rubber banded and thrown into the freezer

The sky is darkening...could we be so lucky?

CapeC.....Thanks for the tip on wrapping in unbleached parchment so you can cut off what you need and leave the rest.  Great idea in food preservation.

We got a total of 1.9" rain but no sunshine afterwards.  Maybe tomorrow.

quiltbea wrote:
I just wanted you to get a peek at my double-planted Legend (Determinate) tomatoes.  Remember, these are the twins that were growing so well in the same cellpack that I didn't want to separate them.  Then I saw a video on LoveYourLand (utube) where she plants FOUR tomatoes all together and claims they are vigorous, productive and terrific.  I had already transplanted these outdoors together when I found that video, but now after seeing that vid, I have hopes these will prosper.

My neighbor did that last year. He got plenty of tomatoes, but he did get more disease than usual. And he always gets plenty of tomatoes anyway.

He didn't do it again this year, and it's not something I would do, because we get so many bugs and diseases around here that I don't want to push my luck. I wish you luck if you try it though.

SVB resistant squash:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbita_moschata
I love that "Commercially made pumpkin pie mix is most often made from varieties of C. moschata".

Since everything was so well watered Saturday by bucket and Sunday by rain, I mulched like a crazy lady this morning:

Hahaha - I love those feet CC! Great idea on the mulching. That ought to go far in retaining moisture in there.

Marc.....Since my twin Legends are already established in the garden, I'll let them be and see what happens regarding growth, disease and harvesting.
Its been raining again but I'll try to get another updated picture of my twins today.

Heads up, New England...tornado watches & warnings have been issued. Please check your area weather and take precautions.  

Another first for the Cape...
http://www.wunderground.com/US/MA/022.html#TOW

Yes, we are watching on the news.  Expecting some high winds and t-storms and possible tornado to our west and south.  Right now its just gray out there.

Here's my double Legend between drizzles.  I think you can probably make out the two straight stems holding both up together.

Youse guys okay this morning?

Yup, all is well here. Just a branch down and not a big one at that, and a couple potted plants blew across the yard. Got about a third of an inch of rain, and a smidge of hail woke me up during the night but didn't damage anything. Nary a hole in a squash leaf.

How did everyone else do?

Thru all day yesterday we got another 1 1/2" of rain, a bit of wind but nothing knocked over except the peas were leaning.....so I tied a nylon string across from post to post to hold them upright.  Total rain in the last 5 days is 4 inches so I don't think I'll have to water for a week.

While I was out tying up tomatoes to fence posts and stringing those not near a post, I also harvested my FIRST sugar snap peas of the season.  These were the first I'd sown on 4/13 so they took 73 days to grow big enough to eat.  Yum yum.  I love these raw as I pick them.  I eat them like candy.
I hope our other gardener friends haven't had any disasters in their gardens with the recent storms.

Nothing here (except for the morning downpour) except for oppressive humidity in the evening. I think if I had a knife and fork I could've cut the air and eaten it. 

But today is crisp and clear and breezy and beautiful! So glad we had rain this past week. I'll have to take photos. The potatoes look like they're about to shoot to the sky.

CC - good news. How are the rest of you?

Nothing here.  I took the precaution of treating the garden & yard as if a hurricane were coming but thankfully it was unnecessary as we got hardly any wind at all.  Now I have to put all the pots back, etc. but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

I got a couple good bouts of rain and thunder but all is well. Gave me a day off from watering so I took the little farmers strawberry picking. Made four more jars of jam and froze a bunch of them for smoothies.

Grats on the peas, quiltbea. I love those things and it's all I can do to let any get into the house uneaten.