Independence Days Week 9

Things are slowing down a bit... well, not really slowing down, but I felt like I could relax this week without losing the gardens in a sea of weeds thanks to all the help I received last week. We've gotten some good rain this week, though, so there will be a whole new crop of weeds waiting for me in the coming days.

Plant:

Got all my winter squash and dry beans in this week: Cinderella pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, Seminole pumpkins, sweet meat squash, winter luxury pie pumpkins, marina di chioggia pumpkins; sulfur baking bean, Taylor's dwarf horticultural bean, black valentine bean, and flagrano bean. Planted calendula, and replanted the gourdseed corn, which didn't germinate worth a darn. Hopefully all the rain we've gotten this week will give them a good start. The gourdseed corn and dry beans are already popping.



Harvest:

Lettuce, kale, chard, onions, kohlrabi, hakurei turnips, carrots, broccoli, citrus thyme, dill, oregano, rosemary, basil, raspberries, eggs, milk.


Preserve:

Almost 5 lbs butter, froze 24 oz blueberries.


Store:

Olive oil, snack crackers, pine nuts, 5 gallons drinking water.


Prep:

Saved seed from chives and green onions. Put up our pool, which also doubles as a 4,000 gallon cistern. The plan is to leave it up, covered, year round.


Manage:

Organized larder and pantry again, as I have a tendency to just dump bags and boxes in the room when they come in if I don't have time to unload and put away. I still need to get some kind of storage system going for the grains.

Weeded in the market garden: found the peppers again; tomatoes are an ongoing battle. Tied tomatoes into trellises. Pulled the remainder of the turnips to get ready for more mini onions, and pulled the peas where pole beans are already popping.

Checked on bees again. Hive #1 is so strong—plenty of honey, still mostly uncapped, both capped and uncapped brood, eggs. Hive #2 is still struggling to draw out the frames I moved into the center last week. Some eggs, some uncapped brood in center frame, but not much. I pulled one of the still mostly undrawn frames and switched it for a frame of brood in Hive #1. Hopefully that will give Hive #2 a bit of a boost.


Cook:

Nothing new this week.


Add:

CSA delivery to 10 families: lettuces, kale, chard, mini onions, kohlrabi, hakurei turnips, citrus thyme, rosemary, oregano, dill, raspberries.


Reduce:

I've used up all my yogurt containers for seedlings (they've now all been bleached and put away for use again for next year) and have just used up all my sour cream/ ricotta type containers for storing butter. So, I'm now soliciting containers from CSA members, family and friends, helping to keep their plastic out of the waste stream as well. Most of these containers are not recyclable where we live, so keeping them out of the trash is important.


Learn:

Still learning about grains in my test plot. The naked oats are doing well, but now I'm trying to figure out how the heck to harvest them, so if anyone has any experience with that, please share. In the plot here from left to right are naked oats, quinoa, gourdseed corn, burgandy amaranth, popcorn, huazontle, dry beans and winter squash.