Bounty and Love

So much wonderful stuff going on here around the farmstead. Dinner tonight was homegrown, just-harvested roasted potatoes with homegrown rosemary, wild caught Ahi tuna with a lemon-lime basil and French sorrel pesto sauce, and soup of homegrown chard, kale, purple cabbage, jalapeno peppers and potatoes - only ingredients not homegrown were olive oil, onions, garlic and ginger. Lots more lemon-lime basil drying in pretty bunches hung in the kitchen.  The Genovese basil and mystery basil from seed-swap seeds are producing like mad! Pesto galore! I'm thinking pesto could be a great cottage industry - especially when we are growing our own garlic and pine nuts in the future too! The plants produce so reliably and since they repel insects, they are practically invincible!

We finally got rain today, after weeks of scorching dry weather. Rose and I lay on the grass in the front yard watching the dark clouds roll in, and when the rain started to fall, she stood with arms outstretched and face upturned, drinking it in like the Earth itself. The we sat on the porch and just watched it fall. Such a special time. We got a tenth of an inch - I know because I finally stuck the rain gauge I picked up years ago at a yard sale in the ground. Wow, that was easy!

Tons more potatoes ready to harvest. Cabbage forming nice dense firm heads. Broccoli produced one tiny head so far, may be too hot/too late. Same with cauliflower. If we don't get vegetables out of those two crops, we will have tons of green organic matter to build the soil. Jalapenos bursting forth, many fruits per plant, eggplants and red bell peppers flowering, tomatoes looking gorgeous with lots of little fruits starting. Peter found a hornworm - see video of me squishing it before it could defoliate the tomato plants! Green beans flowering, tiny watermelons like pretty striped marbles starting, cukes flowering, kale still producing like crazy. Corn is coming up well, as are sunflowers and melons. I hope to plant more corn - it can be planted until early August here.

The other day Peter harvested a carrot that looked really yellow (although nice and straight), and we thought it was a bad sign, poor soil, etc. Today he pulled up 3 purple carrots and we remembered that those are a mix called Kaleidoscope - multi-colored carrots in Atomic Red, Bambino, Cosmic Purple, Lunar White and Solar Yellow! Planted in the same bed with bright lights rainbow chard - a totally rainbow bed!

Delicata squash, acorn squash, zucchini, butternut and saffron yellow summer squash all coming along. I tried an experiment with those - I wanted to plant them in areas without fencing (to keep chickens out), so I planted each 3 seeds in the center of a plastic ring formed from a juice bottle with top and bottom cut off. This kept the chickens from scratching up the seeds, and so far they don't seem to want to eat the plants. We have a lot of invasive Bermuda grass, and I read recently that shade is more effective at suppressing it than mulch (it just sends tough runners with  pointed tips like talons under the mulch to pop up in new spots with no competition!) Squash family plants provide lots of shade when they are in full leaf, so I planted the squash in various spots where we have been trying to suppress Bermuda with cardboard, leaves and chickens. So far the plan seems like a good one.

Plants we bought of Munstead lavender and Arpa rosemary are thriving in the trampoline bed, and sage and chocolate mint are in the former pea beds. I cut down the pea plants and used the vines for mulch in place. The pea teepees were easily pulled up as-is and folded up to store for the next crop. They are made of bamboo poles and short decorative fencing with twine running between the two. Feverfew is blooming, St. John's Wort is about to flower, marigolds and borage seedlings just poking up. I still haven't gotten some herbs in - I planted some seeds but not sure if they have gotten dry too many times to germinate - nettles, chamomile, calendula, shiso (also known as beefsteak leaf, the herb used to pickle umeboshi plums and available on rare occasions in sushi restaurants) and holy basil. I still have seeds left so I may try restarting those indoors to get them established before putting them outside in this heat.

Gilfeather turnips looking small, maybe some water will do the trick.

We've probably snacked on a hundred or so blueberries, which are just winding down. Will be adding sulfur soon to lower pH. Raspberries fruiting a tiny bit although we didn't expect any until next year. Fruit trees thriving except one pomegranate which sent up a side shoot with leaves that one day suddenly turned brown, shriveled up and fell off.

A friend helped us dump the rest of the leaf bags we got from a neighbor inside the garden to compost in place and keep down encroaching grass. Grass is a constant battle, one in which we have enlisted some new allies - more chickens, and ducks! We now have 4 roosters, none of whom attack me like the ones we had a couple years ago. There are at least 2 blue-egg-layer hens, several drakes, a duck with a broken wing (she came that way from the previous owner, a friend who was moving back to town after a few years in the country), 4 ducklings (we had 5 but lost one to drowning in the kiddie pool - it can happen when they are small, they get waterlogged and if they can't climb out easily they drown - sad, but a learning experience), a "magpie" duck, and 6 Ameraucana pullets. Duck eggs are wonderful - waxy hard shells, big and beautiful. And the ducks are a joy to watch. Maybe we will dig them a proper pond one day! P.S. Ignore the duck tent city in the backgrouund - their new awesome coop is almost done - stay tuned!

And now for pictures: