Category Archives: Vegetables

Bacteria Wilt

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I believe our cucumber plants have a problem.  For the past week or so they have been getting droopy leaves that seems to get worse everyday.  Eventually they crinkle up and die.

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I did a little research and found that there is a cucumber beetle (I’ve seen the yellow and black spotted variety) that can infect your cucumber plants with bacterial wilt.  Once they do this, there is really no way to save the plant.  I’m just happy that we’ve already gotten 56 cucumbers.  I’ve also seen the squash bug on our cucumbers, which apparently does damage as well.   Well, it’s been a good run.  Maybe next year we will cover our plants until they bloom to keep these guys from laying eggs on the leaves.

Posted in Diseases, Vegetables

Okra

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I just picked a few okra.  I think I let two of them get a bit too long.  Since I’ve never cooked okra before I may go ahead and freeze these to buy me some time while I figure out what to do with them and wait for more to be ready for harvest.

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Posted in Vegetables

Beans and Bounty

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Our beans went out this weekend.  I started them inside and sprinkled them with pepper after transplanting them outside hoping that will keep the vole/chipmunk/varmint from eating them like they did our corn crop.

Beans

Beans

 

I picked a bunch of cucumbers and our very first eggplant today.  Time to make a cucumber salad.

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Posted in Vegetables

Grow Light

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Back in early March, Drew threw together this grow light set up.  He built the wooden frame and we bought the light from a hardware store. It allows me to change the chain length as the plants grow.

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Now we are working on beans and squash.  The beans are doing great but only 1 out of 3 squash has sprouted.

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Posted in Vegetables

Dill Pickles

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Just a few days after making sweet pickles, I had about 10 cucumbers ready for harvest.  Looks like dill pickles it is.

I added three sprigs of dill, 2 garlic cloves, and 1/4 tsp. of red pepper flakes to each jar.  I sliced the cucumbers in rounds so that they would be perfect for hamburgers.  I made up a brine of 3 cups water, 2 cups vinegar, and 1/4 cup pickling salt.  After the jars were filled with cucumbers I added in the brine leaving 1/2 inch of head space.

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Finished them off by processing the jars for 10 minutes.

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Just have to wait 4-6 weeks to try them out!

Posted in Food Preservation, Vegetables

Sweet Pickles

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With so many cucumbers growing like crazy, I decided to try my hand at making sweet pickles.  I based my process on the Mrs. Wages recipe.

First, I soaked them in lime water most of the day and then ice water for 3 hours.

 

Lime Water

Lime Water

Then I made up the syrup, soaked the cucumbers in that overnight, and boiled them in the morning.

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I packed it all into jars and processed the jars for 10 minutes.  I had cut down the recipe since I was only working with three jars, but I ended up running out of the syrup.  I had to throw together some more.  Next time I’ll have to adjust.

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Luckily, all of the jars sealed.  I won’t know if it is a complete success until they’ve had time to soak up all the flavor.

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Posted in Food Preservation, Vegetables

Growing like Weeds

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Now here we are in late June all caught up.  Everything is growing.  The lettuce produced for us during May up until a week ago and the cucumbers are exploding.  Only three onion plants, out of 12, survived.  The hot peppers are doing well but the bell peppers seem a bit puny. In the future I would like to plant the lettuce in succession so that it isn’t all ready at once.

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Spaghetti Squash

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Cucumber

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Sungold Cherry Tomato

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Husk Cherry Tomato

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Zuta Pepper

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Eggplant

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Tomato

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Bell Pepper

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Jalapeno

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Booming garden

Posted in Vegetables

Chicken Ark and Sowing Seeds

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Drew and his dad got to building a chicken ark right away.  One that, they joke, is strong enough to keep a gorilla from escaping.  They had already built two raised beds and we had filled those with horse manure from his mom’s horses this past fall.  We were ready to go!  Well…turns out dogs like to run around in raised beds, so on a following weekend we built a fence that is also much too strong for the original purpose.

Chicken Ark Construction

Chicken Ark Construction

As far as planting, we followed the back of seed packets and this UK Ag. pdf to help us determine when to plant, transplant, and harvest.  For the cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers we started them inside under a grow light.  Onions and lettuce were sown straight into the raised bed. The thing I struggle with most is how much to water.  When I figure it out I’ll let you know.  I thought I for sure killed our tomato and cucumber plants when I didn’t water them for one day, but almost immediately after

The fence

The fence

watering them vigorously they started to raise back up, just as strong as before.  Lesson 1: plants are not as fragile as I previously thought.

Posted in Chickens, Vegetables

A surprise

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Due to joining an awesome garden group, we received a bunch of free, extra plants.  No room in the raised bed meant a trip to garden ridge and the purchase of many pots.

What we got:

Persimmon Orange Tomato

Botinecka Zuta Pepper

Money Maker Eggplant

Congo Trinidad Hot Pepper

Listada Eggplant

Purple Tomatillo

Sungold Cherry Tomato

Cossack Husk Cherry Tomato

Tomato, peppers, eggplant, squash

Tomato, peppers, eggplant, squash

Pineapple Tomato

Spaghetti Squash

Spice Globe Basil

Italian Classic Basil

Comune II Parsley

Jimmy T Okra

Cardoon

Black raspberry

Comfrey

Roselle

 

Wow, totally blew my mind.

 

Posted in Fruits, Vegetables

Seed Selection

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There is way too much information on the internet.  I get lost when researching.  Which plants should be planted next to each other, what kind of plant rotation should be set up, how do you plan the timing just right to have a spring, summer, and fall garden??  I don’t know.  I’ve researched for hours and I… just… don’t… know.  I’ve decided to jump right in and figure it out later.  We started with the fact that we wanted to try to make salsa.

 

Here is the list of the plants we decided to try this spring.

Tomato- Pink Brandywine

Pepper- California Wonder

Hot Pepper- Tam Jalapeno

Cucumber- Beit Alpha

Squash- Patisson Panache Verte Et Blanc

Bean- Cherokee Trail of Tears

Lettuce- Blonde Du Cazard

Lettuce- Rocky Top Mix

Onion- Gold Princess

Red raspberry

 

Posted in Vegetables
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