Hello, friends. I hope you've been doing well. The usual things have been happening, on the homestead. J pulled the garlic. I began harvesting the grow bag potatoes, and he joined me. We had a good garlic harvest. The potatoes, not so much. So, the final potato tally, from the long rows that should have given us 200#, gave us a little over 20#. From the 25 grow bags, which should have yielded 4-5# per bag, we got 9# total, so basically 2 grow bags worth. I've since read we could have put several plants per bag, which we didn't do. Oh well. We'll keep trying.
Shortly after my last post, I began finding squash bugs on the Ronde de Nice zucchini, along with the yellow squash. As of today, all the zucchini are dead, and two yellow squash are still hanging on, but not blooming. So, the pest resistant qualities of the Ronde de Nice didn't really pan out. The good news is, I harvested our first tromboncino, which will hopefully take the place of the other summer squash. Also, the lima and green beans have got tiny beans on them. I gathered flowers for a bouquet for the house. I was happy to see a monarch on the milkweed. I recently saw a tip to cut the milkweed down by half, after finished blooming, to allow for fresh growth of leaves, so they'd be much more tender for the caterpillars to munch on, so I did that.
From the garden, I harvested yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, basil, oregano, and tomatoes. Blueberries and blackberries were gathered, and frozen. I'm still going through my recipes, which has resulted in lots of paper to shred. Some of the shreds were used, after cleaning the chicken coop. Some went in the compost bin, and I've begun using it as mulch in our enclosed berry patch. I'm finding hornworms most days, on the tomatoes. Two of them had been visited by parasitic wasps. They remained in place, but all others have been given to the chickens. I was happy to see Food Lion again had organic black olives on sale, basically half price, so I did another stock up. I've been intending to do another skoolie post, and hope to do that soon. Take good care of yourself.
