The carrots are ready!

Just in time for my kitchen remodel, too. Fortunately, I should be able leave these in the ground until it freezes and they will keep on growing, and be just fine. I think carrot soup (in a crock pot) would be an easy meal to make without a kitchen – though that requires a food processor and I’m just not sure if I’m up for washing that in the laundry tub.

We have about one full month without a kitchen sink (or countertops). Cooking is going to get very creative now… and I think I’ll be taking some veggies over to my mom’s house to prepare for freezing!

I ordered three varieties of luffa (sponge gourds) this year. The one above, Rama F1 (hybrid), is supposed to be edible. Maybe we’ll try that next year. I wanted to grow them on our deck in pots, to see if they would vine out and cover the railing. They did a pretty good job, but our deck only gets sunshine for half of the day, and there is a large maple tree in back blocking out a chunk of sun too.

Also, I do not have the patience to water potted plants every day once the temperatures hit 90º. So, part of the reason they aren’t thriving and producing more fruit is probably my fault.

Last weekend I was getting kind of sick of our composting system (piling up compost behind the garden and blocking it off with skids so that Puck won’t eat it), and so I built this. It is made out of untreated 1×4 and 1×6 pine boards. Chris treated it with linseed oil after it was built. I picked up the boards in the standard/less than perfect pile for next to nothing at Menard’s last Saturday.

I’ve been neglecting our blog a bit because I’ve been very busy working… and also, we are planning a kitchen remodel this month! This means that during prime canning and freezing time, we won’t have a working kitchen in our house. Hmm. Not sure if that will be an issue or not.

I finally ripped out all of my zucchini plants, and planted peas where they were. Hopefully we’ll have sugar snap peas in September and October, if the frost holds off long enough!

I had some extra garden space this spring, and decided to pick up some cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon seeds when I was out running errands one afternoon. We tried a couple of melon plants last year, but they didn’t produce any sizable fruit.

These are doing really well, and are quite healthy. They don’t appear to be touched by any type of pest. We do have a woodchuck who lives under the shed though … hopefully Puck will do a good job patrolling the garden and keep him away from these!

I was just looking back on photos from last year, and these sunflowers are opening up an entire month earlier than they did last summer! We had a warm spring and everything got off to an early start. I always associate sunflowers with the end of summer, beginning of fall …. nice to see these so early this year!

These are dwarf sunflowers, about 3 feet tall with nice large single-flower heads. I planted them all along the front of the garden. I’m hoping they will all open up together soon, and make a very pretty border.

You know it’s summer when every meal looks something like this:

We fenced in our entire 1+ acre lot last summer, and we planted a lot of vines in hopes of one day having a “green fence.” I know it takes a few years, and I’m not quite sure how close you are supposed to place the vines to achieve full coverage.

I cut down all the catnip in the garden, which should give some of the other herbs a bit more room to grow. I’m sure well get a couple more good pickings from it this year.

Once it’s dried I’ll bag it and hide it away for a snowy day!

I don’t have the patience for annuals (unless you can eat them), so I figured I’d add some perennial flowers to the garden this year. This spring, I picked up about a dozen daisy-like plants at a really neat family-owned nursery that is literally two minutes down the road from my house. Terrific plants at $2 each – and they are already flowering and gorgeous, lining the entrance to my garden.

The chives have been flowering for a week. Welcome, bees!

The garden looks completely different, and green. I’ll have to post a few photos this weekend … after we do a bit of weeding!