Disappointed

There were some brown spots developing on my potato patch. I tried researching the spots to see what was causing them but couldn't find anything. Take a look at this picture, do you know what this is?



Since I didn't know the cause I decided that it was time to just harvest all of the spuds. It was kind of a disappointing harvest, but I do love fresh spuds. I know that most people just leave this as a vegetable to buy at the grocery store because of the space and cost. I bought one pound of seed potatoes from Territorial for around 4 bucks and harvested about 2 1/2 pounds. The way I look at it is that I couldn't have gotten this amount of fresh spuds for the same price. I do have to say that I have usually had great results just using organic potatoes that sat on the counter too long.




The big dissapointment is from the pea patch. I harvested all of the snap peas from my son's bed and the shelling Dakota peas from another bed. The snap peas were still flowering but I don't have a ton of recipes to use them with and my husband will surely love the carrots that I am going to plant in their place. The Dakota peas are super yummy, but they just didn't put out like I had hoped and they weren't flowering anymore. Some plants had 6-8 pods and others only had one or two on them. For the amount of peas I planted I only ended up getting 2.25 pounds. A success in that I love just going out to the garden and picking a few for a snack, but I have realized that if I want any to make it into the freezer that I would really need to devote a lot more space that I just don't have. I will try and plant some in early August and see if I can get another crop before the rains arrive.

When I first put the garden beds in I told my husband that I had a goal of harvesting two hundred pounds from the garden. At this point it doesn't look like I will hit that goal, but I have come to the conclusion that anything we harvest is better than getting it at the store or the farmer's market. A story about the Farmer's Market to come later.

We Took To The Woods

I just finished reading We Took To The Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has a desire to live the simple life. The book was written 70 years ago, but I would live this way in a heartbeat if I ever had the chance.

I would love to have a small house in the woods without all of the major conveniences that living in the city allow for. My husband on the other hand could probably only go a couple of days living like this. I will eventually get my little farm in the country, but there will be compromises to ensure that both of us are happy.

Would you want to live this way, or do you prefer the conveniences of city life?

It Must Be Summer

Everything in the garden is loving the warm weather we have been having. I was finally able to pick an entire bowl of strawberries, something that has never happened before. The strawberry plants that we brought from California are producing some very large sweet berries, yummy!!

I also picked a bunch of snap peas from my son's garden. I think I will remove the pea plants from his garden later this week and add some grean beans, something everyone in the family loves.

We are off to go pick some blueberries and take Ethan to his first movie at the theater, it should be a great day.

Slim Pickings

The weather is finally warming up enough around here that things are really starting to take off in the garden.





The strawberries and peas only lasted long enough to get photographed and weighed. The lettuce became big salads for dinner, super yummy with fresh picked lettuce.

Totals so far for June:

Lettuce: 1 lb, 4 ounces
Strawberries: 6
Peas: 2 Ounces

We should have a quite a few peas ready for picking later this week. There is a ton of lettuce ready so we will need to start eating salads everyday or giving some away to the neighbors. Everything else is growing pretty slowly in the cool temperatures that we have been having.

The Kitchen

I am making my father in-law a calendar for his birthday. As I was going through my camera card this morning I looked at all of the pictures from our going away party that we had before we left.



Why is the kitchen always the place to congregate? Boy do I miss my old kitchen. Hopefully I will get the chance to do it again some day.

Finally!

We have our first Pea!! We have harvested a few things so far, but I always look forward to the first harvest of peas. The peas that we planted last year never made it into the house. My husband and I would just stand by the bush plucking them off and straight into our mouths. I put in quite a large crop so hopefully some will make it into the freezer this year.

What harvest do you look forward to?

Home

It is so good to be home. I had a fabulous time at my cousin's wedding in my hometown and at the river visiting with family and friends, but I have no desire to return to Southern California. Now that I am back I am ready to make this house of ours into a home. I know that this is not a permanent location, but we will be here until we figure out what the rest of the future holds for us. People are very friendly and we are starting to make some good friendships with some of the neighbors, enough that we have had a few of them over for dinner.

With all that being said, I think my husband is a little homesick. He has never lived anywhere but Orange County and that is where he built his life. Leaving him here alone for three weeks after only being here for a month in a half was probably not the right thing to do. The weather sucked the entire time I was gone, which made him sort of depressed and he was also without anyone that he really knows around. If I had left that long back home it wouldn't have been a big deal because he would have had familiar faces around. I'm hoping that now that we are home and the weather is nice that maybe things will change. If not, I have already told him that I do not want to go back. Maybe he will go to Vermont and change the rain to snow, although that would mean giving up the Lakers and Angels on TV and I don't know if he will ever let that happen.

Now to the garden update.








As you can see everything seems to be doing pretty well. It has been so rainy here that everything is about three weeks behind schedule. It is sad that my peas were bigger in CA in March then they are here in June. I am currently growing popcorn but would love to put in some sweet corn. Does anyone know if they were planted close would they cross pollinate? I picked my first garlic today and it is small, but smells delicious. We have had a few salads with our greens and they were both delicious, I can't wait to be able to have a salad with toppings from the yard. I have been pulling a few of the onions from the yard for my salads, but they are really starting to bulb out so now I will just have to wait until they are ready to harvest. I like my green onions to be pretty skinny and feel that once they get any bigger it is worth the wait to see them as big onions, I love them and use about 15 pounds a month.

So far the totals for June:

Lettuce (Spinach, Looseleaf and Butterhead): 1 Pound
Garlic: 1/4 pound
Alisa Craig Onions: 1/8 pound
Strawberries: 2

Yesterday was supposed to be sunny and it was, but then we got almost an inch of rain. The forecast had only stated a 10% chance of any rain. Hopefully this week we should have some better weather so my garden can start producing. In my next life I am going to be a meteorologist. It is the only profession where you can be wrong 90% of the time and still have a job :)