Two pound tomato

We have been out of town a week and I came back to a jungle in the garden. The cucumbers and beans are trailing everywhere, vines laden with fruit. The corn that remains is eight foot tall with wild tassels hanging above our heads. The sunflowers are ten foot tall and some bright yellow faces have appeared at their tops. Peppers hang heavy, pulling branches down towards the soil.  Tomato plants are spotted red here and there with ripe fruit. One tomato catches my eye as soon as I go into the garden though. It is a monster Cherokee Purple, wrapped and warped around the branch it is clinging to. I pull it off as gently as I can and bring it into the kitchen with two hands because it is so heavy.  Onto the scale... it is almost 2 pounds!  Now that's a tomato. I have a lot of work to do to regain some order in the garden but for now I'm going to enjoy this tomato and some crisp little cucumbers. 

Dueling chicken coops

My neighbor Rita's chickens enjoying the afternoon on their perch

Our neighbors across the street are lovely people.  We share a lot of interests: gardening, cooking, local plants, tractors, chickens...  They watched as we built our coop and gave us some tips from their years of raising chickens.  When our chicken coop was near completion, Frank and Rita came over one day with their son and granddaughters.  Their son laughed and told Rita, "Mom, don't let your chickens see this.  Your coop is like Section-8 compared to theirs!"  She wrote a funny little story on her blog about our dueling chicken coops.  Read it here:  http://abouteating.com/a-tale-of-2-coops

First cucumbers make for a beautiful summer lunch

Cucumbers!

My cucumber plants are full of flowers

The first three cucumbers are Edmonson variety

A gorgeous summer lunch:
salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, basil, oil, and rice wine vinegar
paired with homemade bread topped with butter and swiss cheese

Beans are starting to flower too

I harvested my first few cucumbers this morning.  The Edmonson plants were the first to bear.  They are a light, crisp cucumber with a bumpy skin.  I brought the little cucumbers straight to the kitchen and sliced them up with some ripe tomatoes, flavorful basil from my herb garden, a little onion, and a dressing of rice wine vinegar and olive oil.  It was delightful with a few slices of my homemade bread topped with butter and swiss cheese.  I was surprised when I went out to pick some basil that it is growing huge.  This afternoon I think I'm going to pull some more and make some pesto to freeze.

A sad day for corn

I was heartbroken when I went out to work in the garden after the rains broke today.  Most of my corn was flattened, stalks broken, laying all about in the middle of the garden.  As a grower of plants, I never thought I'd say this but I wish it would stop raining!  The ground is so soggy that the plants' roots just can't hold them upright.  I had to pull several rows of corn, filling a cart with the poor tattered plants.  That'll be a nice week or so of greens for the birds.  What was salvageable I staked up as best I could.  Hopefully it will make it to produce some corn.  It has tasseled so we are getting close!

The ducks finally figured out that they are waterfowl

As we worked in the yard this afternoon my oldest stepson yelled out, "look at the ducks!"  They were finally making their way down to the pond all on their own!  How exciting to see them go, in a straight line of course, waddling across the yard down to the edge of the pond, then clumsily through the weeds and into the water.  I went to check on them a little later, and they were hanging out in the cattails, dipping their heads under to eat vegetation. Finally the water has called to them and our ducks have discovered their inner waterfowl!

So much green in the garden!

My sunflowers now stand about 1.5 feet taller than me!

Corn is looking strong.  I'm starting to see some tassels.

Cherokee Purple tomato is the biggest so far, though all the plants are loaded with green tomatoes.

I've had to stake my pepper plants because they are all falling over with the weight of their fruits and the wetness of the soil.

I planted some sweet potatoes where I pulled up carrots.  The bunnies may do these little plants in though.  They've been eating the leaves like crazy.

Cucumbers are lush and full!

My first baby cucumber

Beans, too, are full and healthy.  No beans to pick yet though.

All this rain has been good and bad for the garden.  The plants are growing fast and starting to bear fruit, but many of them are also starting to fall over!  The soil is so water-logged that they just can't stay upright.  I've been staking things right and left.  Some of the corn was not salvageable after yesterday's downpour though and had to be removed.  It didn't go to waste though - the birds had a nice snack.

Coop Innovations

A suet feeder stuffed with greens is a fun treat for the girls,
who quickly peck everything out!

Josh made this automatic feeder out of PVC, which we can fill from the outside.
Now we only have to feed them every few days.

He also made this automatic water system out of PVC.

The girls peck at little metal "nipples" to get the water to come out.

Our rooster is really starting to look the part!

"What are you doing in here??"

The hard rains we had yesterday flattened a couple of my corn plants
so I threw them in for the birds to enjoy.  They went to town eating the leaves.

The ducks happily come out of the run in the morning now.  You just have to open the door and walk away and they stroll right out and start flapping their wings and running all about.  This morning I walked them down to the pond.  They only stayed a few minutes then walked back up to the run.

We have been working to make the chicken coop more self-sufficient this past week.  We've got the feeding part down, now it's just the door to the henhouse that needs to be automated.  I'll share that with you when we get it going...