Rainy day catching up

It has been raining here since yesterday and since I wasn’t going to be outside much I decided to get on the computer and up date the weblog. It’s been almost a year since I made an entry and we have continued to plug along on our homestead journey. So I’ll start off with the garden and then move on to the other subjects.

The Garden

We expanded the size of the garden this year and got in more then we did last year although our yields fell short. Our red potatoes came in fair. The problem was that I didn’t dig the soil deep enough to have enough soil to build up around the mature plants and so we didn’t get the yield that we should have. The corn did very well and both us really enjoyed the flavor. I planted two crops of 20 plants staggered with three weeks between and we had plenty for Beth to freeze. The cantaloupes were a happy surprise; while the flavor was very good, the size was lacking compared to store bought. I planted baby spinach and leaf lettuce. The first planting did very well, but once I got the second planting in I started to fall behind in the garden and the rest was lost. The cucumbers were a little late, but are still producing. The store bought tomatoes also got off to a slow start and haven’t done so well, but I didn’t have any blight like we did last year. I transplanted a number of tomatoes plants that grew wild in the location were we over-wintered the chickens and they did great. The summer squash and zucchini was a big failure this year compared to last; onions were so so, as were the carrots. All in all the bigger garden meant more work and I’ll have to adjust my time next year to keep up on it because we are going to increase by adding two new plots.

Fruit

We planted three pare and two apple trees, each of a different variety. Also we planted three grape vines, one seedless and two seeded Concords, which we'll use for jelly making. Our one peach tree did well this year. I cut back the tree in February and we had a nice amount. Beth was able to freeze a bit and has made some peach pies that were extremely good (she's a great cook).