July Garden

My cousins and aunt and uncle from colorado came and visited a while back. Here is Sarah and Grace checking out the garden

This is my mom and I at this blueberry farm nearby. The bag I am holding is probably 5 pounds of blueberries and we got a lot of bags like that in our freezer now. Blackberry season is just starting now. There are a few farms with pick-your-own blackberry patches, so I hope to get a bunch of those soon.

Here is Alex showing of one of our early leeks. You can see that they have been blanched about 6 inchs up the stem. That makes them more tender and tasty. I pike straw over the leeks and they withstand the summer heat pretty well and are good eating all the way into november.

The first tomatoes of the year have been coming in this week. We already have too many cherry tomatoes. They are delicious. I want to try and dry them. You can see the very light yellow ones in this pic are actually called a "white tomato" and they are really tasty. Store bought tastes disgusting after eating these.

I was a little dissapointed in the onion crop. I grew from bulb starts. I think they do better growing from seed. I think I will start some trays of some unique varieties next year in the greenhouse or buy the starts from the community garden association. The bulbs don't seem to get as big. They do store great though. This is about 1/3 of the harvest.

The bell peppers are about to start turning. We are already eating lots of peppers, but the bells take longer to mature.

The corn field is full grown and the ear are ripening. Soon we will have more corn than we know what to do with. I plan on freezing a lot of it.

One of the ear ripening on the stalk. I pulled back the husk of one and it looked like it needed a little more time. I have not had any animal or ear-worm or stem borer problems yet. First year is always problem free and I don't think corn have been grown in this local for a long time.

The black-eyed peas on the south side of the house. They are really taking off. I have to extend their trellis to 20 ft.

A developing butternut squash. It is about ready to pick. You cure it for a while and the skin turns that nice tan color and then you know it is ready to use. It stores for about 6 months.

The "yellow currant" cerry tomatoes

One of the mammoth sunflowers. I need to find a better way to collext the seeds. I think I need to bag the heads, but I don't want to keep the polinators out.

Clemson green spinless okra. I am freezing everything that is coming off the stalk now. Good in soups in the winter and besides we have so much produce we don't know what to do with it all.

Red burgandy okra. Tastes great! Not really spinny or hard to pick.