Raised Bed Chickens
In winter we open the vegetable garden to the poultry. The chickens have already cleaned the artichoke beds and are taking a dust bath and fertilizer break before moving on.
In winter we open the vegetable garden to the poultry. The chickens have already cleaned the artichoke beds and are taking a dust bath and fertilizer break before moving on.
August's hot, dry, sunny weather is no friend of these cubanelle sweet peppers. Even with shade they burn, so we picked them all to roast, pickle and dehydrate.
Mid-spring and the veggie garden is in high gear. The zucchini (an 8-Ball / Striata di Italia cross) and the cucumber (a German heirloom) look splendid.
Gardener’s Log : Keyhole Garden day 610. Weird weather--hot days, near freezing nights--has put a squeeze on the keyhole garden's output.
Gardener's Log : Keyhole Garden date 569. Now that we're several weeks into fall, the temperatures are making their annual wobble between hot and cold. The days are still in the 80's with the occasional tip into the low 90's, but the nights are now dipping into the mid-50's and flirting with the upper 40's a couple days a week. For most of the plants here, those big temperature swings and longer nights are a signal to wrap things up [keep reading...]
Just for giggles I strung a couple of cheap solar-power light strands in the hanging gourd garden and this is the result. Sometimes I surprise even myself.
Last week's heat wave fried & dried the pole beans so fast the pods didn't have time to split. Now I've got a couple pounds of beans waiting for chili season.
After 521 days of continuous production, the early summer veggies in the keyhole garden are all played out, but the mid-summer crops--beans, squash, and pumpkins--are doing just fine. The second half of summer and most of early fall is brutally hot and dry, so I'm going to give part of the bed a couple week's rest before transplanting the late summer and early fall stuff.
The hanging gourd garden is doing well in the heat. A couple of weeks ago I wasn't sure which gourds were growing, but now I can see it's birdhouse, bowl and bottle.
We're 2/3rds of the way through summer, the heat is brutal and it hasn't rained since mid-April. The garden looks tired, but not done yet. Here's photos of how it looked on June 18th and today.