As Spring Shifts Into Summer

Hello, friends.  This year, J is trying something new with the tomatoes.  All the large plants have had soiled mounded up around the stem, before mulching them, and placing a cage around them.  Many of them seem to have curled leaf ends, which is concerning.  Not as bad as plants we've seen with RoundUp effects, but something.  We've only used organic fertilizer and organic straw on them, so should be safe, but these days, one can never be too sure unless it all comes from your homestead.  I harvested lettuce, chard, thyme, oregano, rosemary, lambs quarter and peas.  A new recipe for GF pizza dough was tried.  I also tried a new vegan mozzarella, which wasn't bad, but I'm not sure it added enough to justify the cost.  It's been a while since I did any baking with yeast, and both jars expired in '22.  The oldest jar was pretty wimpy, when I tested it, so I added it to the compost bin.  The other did fine, but I added yeast to my grocery list, so I'll have newer on hand.

I read one of the free books on my Kindle, and went by the library to pick up three more, one of which is a children's book.  Water from rinsing vegetables was used to water plants and fill bird baths.  Shower warm up water was used to flush the toilet.  Plastic bags were washed and reused, and laundry was dried on the line.  I finished the last of setting up my sewing room, and mended a pile of items.  Joseph harvested our garlic, and it's drying under the carport.  He planted melon seeds, lima beans, and another round of tromboncino.  The squash bugs have hurt some of the squash, though we're both trying to monitor and squish any we see.  One thing that does seem to be better this year are Japanese beetles.  I hope I'm not jinxing myself, and instead they're just running late, but they have been far fewer in number so far.  I went through the last of the '22 garlic, kept five heads aside, dehydrated the remainder, and ground it into garlic powder.

One of the things that has been on our to do list for months is moving the fall leaves to the pond garden.  J had raked them up into piles, but we hadn't gotten to mulching them yet.  His son came to work on them, and after several attempts to get the mulcher running, J gave up, and had him pile them onto a tarp, and pull them with the lawnmower.  It's nice to have that crossed off the list.  It's gotten very dry here, so I've held off planting all the little seedlings.  This coming week, there looks to be a good chance of rain several days, so I hope to plant lots of them between showers.  There are zinnias, calendula, tomatoes, dill, a marigold, basil and wood betony.  I hope you enjoy this week, as spring shifts into summer!