What’s growing in the garden

This is a little update on our garden and what is growing right now.

We haven’t had a lot of success with fruit this year, only 5 quarts of canned peaches, no blueberries and no apples, apricots or plums on our trees this year, so I was thrilled that our Musk Melons actually grew to an edible size this year and thrived! We have eaten one delicious, juicy melon so far and there are several more on the way! So exciting!

Also exciting our delicious ever bearing raspberries, this variety, that I cannot remember the name of is sooooo sweet. My friend Kaite said it is one of the sweetest raspberries she has had in a long time.

We haven’t had a lot of fruit success this year, however this is the first year I have had success with melons. We have eaten one of these Musk Melons and they are sweet and yummy!

A Musk Melon on its way to becoming ripe! Whoot! So excited about these, we will see how many we get before the frost as there are quite a few coming along on the vines, soooooo exciting!

These every bearing raspberries are so sweet and tasty, unfortunately, I can’t remember what kind they are! My sister in law said they are the yummiest ones she has had in awhile!

 

Our peppers are exploding with yellow, orange, green, purple and jalapeno peppers galore! Some will get chopped and put in the freezer for stirfries and some will go in tomato sauce.

Peppers! A variety, they are arriving in a small drove, purple, orange, yellow and jalapeno!

Our basil is going like crazy even though we had some wet and humid weather. I have dried quite a bit of it for gifts and use during the winter. I have also frozen quite a bit of it with garlic, but not cheese and nuts. This is my first year with really booming basil plants. I have been very excited about this success.

 

Our weedy beets. They are growing great, even without a lot of attention.

I was trying to avoid my winter squash plants growing all over the garden this year. I managed to get help with one trellis for our squash, I needed at least 4. I love how well it seems to be working in this section. It has kept many of the pumpkins contained and I can’t wait to see how they look when they turn orange. It will be so pretty. Next year more trellis before these beautiful plants take over the garden!

What I was hoping to avoid was the squash taking over the overgrown raspberries so I could fix that bed how I wanted it this fall, hahaha. Clearly not going to happen right now!

As you can see, the squash is temporarily taking over the raspberry bed and the pathways in the garden at the moment. My trellis idea would have worked really well if I had gotten the rest of it up in time. It is at least a two person operation to get it up and it wasn’t a priority this year. It will be next year to keep me sane!

We have been eating a lot of summer squash this summer. I thought I had one zucchini plant and three summer squash. It turned out I had four summer squash plants and no zucchini. I did end up with a volunteer zucchini plant in the beans. We got one zucchini on it. Better then nothing I say!

 

I have swiss chard and kale up the wazoo, but my salad greens didn’t come up this time, too hot perhaps?

One of my favorite garden surprises was the tomatillo plant that was gorgeous, but not producing. I have it on a large trellis and thought perhaps it needed a buddy to make fruit. The other day we were in the garden and noticed that there are some fruits growing! It is just a late producer! So strange, but so exciting, I can’t wait for tomatillos to make salsa!

Our carrots, planted very late are looking good, it has been a struggle to keep the children from eating them all now!

We also have cucumbers, yummy! Number 2 likes them straight from the vine and Number 3 only likes pickled cucumbers, Number 1 doesn’t care for them at all, so it is a mixed bag around here!

Tomatoes are starting to come in like crazy, yeah for tomato sauce, ketchup and salsa!

 

Our leeks are looking well too!

Sweet potato vines are growing well, the true test will be when we dig them up to see if we have vole damage like last year. These are the vines I started this year, so I am excited to see how they produce!

Our garden this year has been late, but beautiful, some things have been disappointing and others have been exciting and unexpected.

Every year on a farm brings new challenges, we learn from them and hope we are able to improve our knowledge for the next year. We are always learning and always up for the challenge even though it can be exhausting!

Blight

Things have been really busy on the farm, it is amazing how many things need to be done at the same time! Our most recent adventure in farming involves a potato blight. My research has led to the conclusion that this blight is related to the Irish Potato Blight that led to the Irish immigrants coming to America. Potato blight is caused by a fungus called Phytophthora Infestans.  Humid weather plays a huge part in the blight taking hold of potatoes, and the last few weeks have had several days of over 90% humidity so I am not surprised that we have gotten blighted. Blight is carried through the air so unless your crop is completely surrounded and covered to keep out any breeze, you are lucky to avoid the blight. We planted 70 pounds of potatoes in a new field this year and I was hoping we could avoid the blight here since no crops had been grown recently. No such luck. We got it bad. I spent three of our hottest, humid mornings last week removing all the potato stalks from our plants and putting them in trash bags so we can hopefully preserve the potatoes in the ground.

I had noticed some brown on our plants and deluded myself into thinking it was just from the potato bugs that were showing up. No such luck, I dug some potatoes, they tasted great by the way, then I noticed a couple of rotten potatoes in our storage bin. Hmmmm. they had been perfectly good when I dug them up, then I realized that some of our stalks were looking soft and squishy, aha, the blight. Awesome.

Some people burn the stalks as they start to show signs of blight. We don’t have the equipment to do this so I cut them and threw them away. What I have read is to keep the potatoes in the ground for three weeks to try to prevent the blight from taking a hold of the actual potatoes. Cross your fingers, I am certainly crossing mine!

I have had late blight on my tomatoes for several years and I have managed to control it and still keep a crop by removing any infected leaves, keeping vines off the ground and mulching with either plastic or hay. I spent Saturday removing blighted tomato vines from the plants and throwing them away. I also trimmed back a lot of the lower vines to keep them away from splash back off the ground. My tomatoes are just starting to ripen this year so I am desperate to keep it from taking hold which means a trip to the tomatoes every day to remove anything suspicious looking.

Ahhhh, I dream of really cold weather this winter. Be gone blight and ticks!

Tomato and Bread Salad

This post contains affiliate links.

My sister in law works at a local farm and the other day she gave us some beautiful tomatoes. (Ours aren’t even close to ready yet, but they are looking good.)

I had some stale Wildflours bread (I am not even sure how that happened at our house, usually we eat it so fast it doesn’t have time to go stale) and I had some mozzarella cheese in the refrigerator.  All the foods to make a perfect tomato salad.

I used garlic scapes, beautiful tomatoes (I don’t even bother buying them at the store during the winter because they taste like cardboard, so these first tomatoes of the year are a real treat!), my stale bread, which lesson learned, I should have toasted up a bit first, mozzarella, fresh basil, a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar (see the link below for the balsamic vinegar that we use, so delicious!),  a little salt and pepper and a few minutes of waiting to let the bread soak up all the yummy flavors (only a few minutes because I was fairly impatient to try it), and viola, yummy deliciousness in just the amount of time it took to chop the food and toss in a bowl.

//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=firehousefarm-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=B00B4D0UC0&asins=B00B4D0UC0&linkId=af2c0f2668dfe364026484e4ebc35c07&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=true&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff

In hind site, adding chopped bacon would have been a good way to get some protein in here and would have made this taste like a BLT in a way. Ohhh, try that and let me know how it tastes!

We ate it right up, no leftovers with this meal.

The perfect summer treat!

What’s for Dinner? New Potatoes and Peas

‘Tis the season for new potatoes and peas. If you have never had a fresh new potato dug from the garden or a local garden, do yourself a favor and go to the farmers market to get some. There is no comparison between a freshly dug new potato where the skin is peeling off and a potato that has been saved for storage. They are fresh, they are crisp, they are amazing. Slice one and cook it up with a couple garlic scapes. You won’t believe how good it is!

 

My dad’s family is from Northern Maine, potato country, and this is a recipe that we have eaten since I was little. My grandmother used to make it every time we went to Limestone.

Step one: get the children to stop eating all the peas before they get to the house…

Everything looks so fresh and yummy!

Step two: Clean your potatoes gently, the skin is tender so you don’t need to peel it or anything. Just wash gently and chop the potatoes into bite sized pieces, better yet, get your children to help you, our five year old is a pro.

The photo is a little steamy looking…so, so good, just imagine the creamy, buttery, salty, new potato taste.

Boil potatoes gently in water until mostly cooked. Add your fresh peas and cook for about three minutes. Drain the water and add cream and butter, bring to a simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste and stir gently. At this point your potatoes will be gently cooking and should be almost done.

These are actually the left overs, they are so good, my boys even like them cold…

The best way to eat this dish is by mashing your plate of peas and potatoes together so they absorb as much of the buttery cream as possible. So delicious, if I had a photo of me eating my first bite of the year I would post it, I’m sure it would have shown a look of pure pleasure…

We had this as a side with lobster…so tasty!

What’s For Dinner? Summer Squash

Yummy!

We harvested our first summer squash today from the garden, I’m not sure how many more squash will appear from this beauty. My huge and beautiful summer squash plant, has been damaged, my guess is by a boy…they are sure it wasn’t, but you know, summer squash is in the greenhouse this year, so not so many other creatures could damage our plants…

Tonight I made a lovely dish, I put chopped up garlic scapes in some bacon grease and sauteed them while #2 sliced the squash, then I added the summer squash and sauteed until cooked adding salt and pepper. When they were fully cooked I added chopped basil and turned off the stove.

In progress

I also made a lovely salad with leaf lettuce, cilantro, basil and oregano. I added some apple (procured in the discount basket at the local market), goat cheese (I usually like to make my own, my brothers goats aren’t producing enough for me to barter with them right now), balsamic vinegar and olive oil, soooo delicious!

The finished product, so delicious!

I sauteed up a ham steak just to warm it slightly to serve on the side.

All the greens and veggies and the ham was from our farm, I love that!

Enjoy what you can produce on your land, everyone can grow