Holy merde it was hot out there today.  Yeah, we could have gotten out of bed somewhat earlier but then there wouldn’t have been all that sleeping…

On the agenda today was filling the new boxes (which Husband did, and for which I worship him), feeding everything, adding support poles where needed in the beans/tomatoes, digging out and replacing the mass of soil where the poor Black Plum tomato expired, pulling weeds out of everything (because we live in the freakin’ tropics), and adding dirt to the potato bins, where the plantsies were getting a bit tall:

Skipchat has it if you allow the stems to get too much sunlight then they become actual stems and aren’t capable of producing potatoes.  How much is too much?  You got me, this is all a big experiment for us, and something like that probably depends on the variety anyway.

On the harvest side of things, today was The Day for harvesting the second pumpkin (first was 2 weeks ago, and 37 lbs).   I guessed 50 lbs, and am notoriously bad at this sort of thing, but when Husband weighed it the thing was indeed 53 1/2 lbs.

Something that big ought to have a freakin’ name.  We don’t really eat pumpkin-y things around here – we’re only growing them because #1 Son picked out these seeds at the garden center – so it is destined to become toasted pumpkin seeds and major compost enrichment.

Also harvested were 1 red bell pepper, 2 jalapenos, 4 paprika peppers, 14 Orange Paruche tomatoes, 6 Black Cherry tomatoes, and 6 ears of Country Gentleman Shoepeg corn.

The kernel development on these is MUCH better than on the last crop we tried (yay, hand pollination!), and the earworm incursions limited to two tips.  And then only because we have not sprayed Bt in the past two weeks.

These are destined for a pot of homemade chili, along with the rest of last year’s red rice beans.  *drool*

Looking forward we’ve got fruit on every one of the 20+ varieties of tomatoes, all the pepper plants (red bell, whitney, padron, ancho, tequila sunrise, jalapeno) are groaning with fruit, the Gold Baby watermelon is duking it out with the pumpkin vine over ownership of the backyard, the Swan Lake vine is finally fruiting, the second planting of edamame is blooming, the Black Valentine and Anazasi beans are podding all over the place, the Key Lime tree has eensy limes all over it, and the fig tree is finally fruiting again.

It’s a nice time to live at my house, I tell you.

Sorry about the page of code instead of my site there…a new plugin apparently had a psychotic break while I wasn’t watching.  It’s dead now, Jim.

We haven’t stepped out into the garden much this past week…90+ degree temps/humidity will do that for you, as will recovering from the gawdawful drive to deliver the kids up to Nana for the summer.  But today we’re bygad going to get those three new planting boxes filled, which means schlepping a crapload of 30lb bags around our heinously-sloped backyard, which means by sundown I’ll be crying for anything containing rum and an ice-pack.

Pictures may or may not follow.

We did a quick harvest on Thursday before heading out for the weekend, and came up with 39 lbs of goodness from the garden:

Of course the pumpkin accounts for 37 lbs of that.

We harvested again yesterday and came up with 9 lbs:

5 lbs of which is every fruit from the poor Black Plum tomato plant, which was stricken by wilt some time between Thursday and Sunday.  We’ll try to ripen the fruit inside but I’m thinking most of it is headed for the composter.

Also in that harvest was the first delice de table melon.  It’s one of the more exotic of the cantaloupes, and positively gaudy in appearance.

Husband pronounced it delicious as he stood over the sink and ate nearly half of the thing.

Yeah, I don’t do cantaloupe.

This past weekend we did the annual ferrying of the children up to Nana’s north Alabama farm for a summer of tromping about in the woods, chasing frogs and fishing.  It’s a 600 mile drive (one way) and sincerely not something you want to do all in one day – as we discovered Sunday on the return trip.  Still. Recovering.

We sensibly split it into two legs Thursday and Friday, and had enough energy left over when we arrived to help Nana finish planting her garden with all the extra seeds we brought:

How I envy her that soil.  Just enough sand for really good drainage, but still packed with good organic material.  As you can see the land has been used for hay for some time, so everything should be quite happy there.

Speaking of hay…

He wouldn’t listen when we told him of the chigger/scratch adventures that would soon be his.  Some lessons have to be learned firsthand, I suppose.

This is the second biggest reason the kiddos want to get up to the farm…they get to drive:

Though after watching the Girlchild there actually jump out of the thing when it started going too fast for her, I think we might have to review the basic principles of driving.  She gets two thumbs up for her astonishing reflexes, though…she totally stuck the landing.

That question gets asked around here every day, because every day something new is blooming.  Here are the stellar performers from the past two days:

This is “Lady Lucille”:

“Strawberry Candy”:

“Jungle Beauty”:

“Siloam Bo Peep”:

“Night Beacon”

“Celebrity Elite”:

“Double Peach”:

“Janice Brown”:

“Tuscawilla Tigress”:

“Barbary Corsair”:

I can’t believe we waited this long to try daylilies.  They’re dead easy to grow, completely un-fussy about light/water/soil, and you get new blooms every day.

New to us this year is this the Kingfisher Daisy, an electric purple/blue annual beauty that should nicely seed the crap out of the area where it is planted:

Don’t let the package fool you, 6″ tall might be the norm in temperate climates, but this thing is about a foot tall at the moment, and I suspect the imminent rainy season might inspire it to further heights.  Or, melt it where it sits.  *sigh*

My favorite part of this whole backyard farming experiment is there are no limits to what you can grow.

Giant pumpkins that are so heavy gravity causes them to sort of get all slumpy?  No problem.

Peanuts?  Actual, honest-to-Zog peanuts?  No problem.

Potatoes??  Your very own potatoes?  No problem.

You don’t need acres and acres of land to grow these things, just a willingness to slaughter most of your backyard grass, and some basic carpentry skills.  Try it, you’ll like it!

May’s playlist is so very late, so I’m turning it into June’s…

1. Mute Math – Typical
2. Honey Rivers – No Roof
3. Maroon 5 – Secret
4. The Hush Sound – Don’t Wake Me Up
5. The Raveonettes – Lust
6. Josh Kelley – Hey Katie
7. Pigeonhed – Cadillac
8. Kenna – Sun Red Sky Blue
9. The Kills – Cheap and Cheerful
10. Kevin Rudolf – Let It Rock
11. Gomez – Airstream Driver
12. Sons and Daughters – Rebel With the Ghost

The daylily bed out front is finally getting cranked up, which is mighty impressive considering most of these were planted as bare rhizomes a few months ago.

I dunno, I think we have some bare spots, ya?  *runs off to find daylily catalog*

Busy in the yard today.  The abnormal rainy-ness has stopped, leaving a multitude of tasks to accomplish.  The crazed pumpkins were top on the list, as they continue their trek up the backyard towards, well, everything:

Only two fruits thusfar but everything on that longest vine there above seems to be female, so we’ll see.

And yes, the plan is to eventually mulch everything that has been fabric-ed, but until we have on hand the GNP of a small country it’ll just have to wait.

An important task to deal with before the full onset of rainy season is trimming the low-hanging branches from the tomato plants.

Once it starts raining every day all that dirt is going to splatter around a bit and letting it sit on leaves/stems is an invitation to disaster.  Yes, technically we should be mulching under the plants but see above re: GNP of small country.

The melons received a dousing of copper spray to try and stave off the inevitable fungus/mildew.  And the red rice beans were encouraged to actually go up instead of everywhere the heck else:

Here’s a better view of the madly spreading Gold Baby watermelon:

If we get even half the melons this thing is attempting to grow we’ll be set for the summer.

More fabric was laid down on the east side of the yard, and the criss cross melon planted to run down towards the Arapaho blackberry (which we’re going to attempt to espalier on the fence).

Yes, Mom, that’s your tree in the pot there, ready for traveling.

We laid down fabric on the west side of the house for the future tobacco plants.

I’ve always wanted to mulch this entire area anyway since keeping grass out of the roses is a freaking nightmare.

We weren’t the only ones with an Agenda today…

It seems Mr and Mrs Froggie had something to, er, accomplish as well.  Like we NEED more tadpoles in the rain buckets…