Garden and Heritage Days

Yesterday morning I managed to get straw put out on my garden after the chicken coop got a good layer of straw. I'm going to be replanting a good portion of what did not sprout this week maybe even today.


Of course these are the squashes, the pumpkins in here (just past the bottom a bit) are now vining so much that putting the straw down now was a very good thing. Also this is only a 3rd of the plants in this bed past the top is melons and cukes, below the bottom is pumpkins and more squashes.

I am still only getting male flowers on my squashes, I hope they start getting female flowers soon, I want summer squash stir fry! I now have some Amaranth seeds and am considering planting a few here and there in this bed to see if they grow together. If I get some seed off them this year good, if not at least I will know a bit about how they grow before next year. Which is when I want to grow them as a crop standard.

I am wondering if I didn't get much in melons as it was too early when I planted them. I will be replanting melons and hoping they come up, I do have some; but sadly the only one I remember which type I planted did not come up. Those Tigger melons I want so badly to grow didn't


This of course is my bean bed for this year, we are thinking of doing peas in the fall here after the beans die off. The standard pole beans are growing more vigorously that the long beans on the back side. Also you don't see the "rice" beans to the left of the picture. I have my Tiger's Eye bush beans in the center between the two types of the pole beans. They have all grown so well so far and I have little beans growing on all but the long beans so far.

If someone knows why the lower leaves are turning yellow please let me know. I am hoping the straw will help these plants as well. I am going to replant some rice beans now that I know they are a bush type so I will get more than what is produced on 2 plants. It still amazes me that only 2 seeds out of 18 grew, again it might have not been hot enough for them. As it was a different type of bean than I am use too.

I am waiting on those long beans as when we did our squash stir fry last year our one neighbor gave us some of her long beans to try and we had them in it and WOW they were so good. So I do like long beans and I hope we like one or both of these types of them. I'd be willing to grow both of them if we like them as one is a green and one is a red one.


Half of my tomatoes are in the ground and half are in that box in front of my home. These ones interestingly enough has aside from a very small amount of aphids has no "bugs" at all. While the ones in the box have tons of aphids and I've been pulling lots of tomato worms.

My chickens are very happy about the "worms" though, (laughs) my son was worried that the big one we got yesterday would bite him. Also the one we got yesterday my son said that one of our turkey's got and inhaled it.

Sounds about right as I've noticed that turkeys are just eating machines, at least these 2 bronzes we have are. All the tomatoes all have little tomatoes on them, and again I might be wrong on again on the "types". As one plant the three largest tomatoes are starting to get color on the bottoms that are dark. Those might be the purple smudge as they get orange "shoulders".

As my mother had come out for a visit, and she was looking for something to do; and also that Baker Creek had a "Heritage Day" going on we went.


Here is the funny thing, as aside from a couple of seeds all my seeds have come from Baker Creek's store. Which is also the only building in there we have been in, until yesterday. This picture is where they do music and shows during their events.

They were doing a trivia contest, and dang it I missed the answer to the final question. "What plant is eggplant closest relative?" I did know it was a non-edible plant, I guessed Nightshade and got it wrong. So, because no one had guessed it he gave a hint so big I blurted out the answer. My daughter (I had thought she had heard me) tried next and said "pillow weed", which was wrong. The answer is, "cotton" . If she had guessed correctly we would have gone home with a basket of goodies worth $60, which from what I saw included seeds and a T-shirt.


It was the kids' first trip to Baker Creek as we generally go when they are in school so we don't have to keep saying "don't touch". Thankfully there was so much going on they we too busy looking around.

We did try out some Sumac tea at one of the booths and I can happily say that Sumac does not cause allergic reactions in us. YEAH! This means I can harvest our Red Sumac's and make tea or lemon aid. My mother even liked the tea and found it refreshing, so I imagine if I get some dehydrated this year she will want some sent her way.

We found a vendor of local goat's milk who also does cheese and ice cream, and I liked the cheese and ice cream. The kids liked the ice cream and tried the fudge she had as well. I think aside from my son my kids would like goat's milk. I'd still have to see if I'd like to drink it as last time I tried to was store bought and I could not get it past my nose. Silver says it should be very different tasting to me considering I did like the ice cream and cheese. We have to woman's card and will be contacting her about her milk products. Now this does not mean I's prefer goat's milk over cow's as I still want butter and I'm a heavy milk/cream drinker/user. So I want my Dexter cows still.

I'd like to say Hi to Juli from Wild Moon Cottage:

http://wildmooncottage.blogspot.com/

I saw her at her booth at Baker Creek and bought some herbs, which I have to say are -very- fresh! Nice to finally have met you in person Juli, I hope we get a chance to see you again!

I am going to continue my pics from Baker Creek tomorrow with the "seed museum", I am hoping to get a chance to head over there on the next heritage day and get more pics. My mom has MS so she couldn't manage the whole place in the heat, but she still liked it. She even liked the seed store even though she only does flowers at her house. She was happy to see they carry flower seeds and I put her down for one of the catalog's for next year.

BE Well, Be Safe and Blessed Be...