Quick Thursday PIcking!

We are still getting a lot of the afternoon and evening thunderstorms this week so our visits to the farm are limited and usually very short before the rain drives us away. But, we did make it to pick on Thursday night before the large drops came and sent us running!

Just a couple of highlights...

The big pumpkin patch is coming in pretty quick.

The older planting of pumpkins is stretching way outside of the garden... just trying to keep them from taking over the blueberry bushes!

The ears of corn are getting larger too!

Thursday's harvest... Nice!

Gearing Up for the Next Project

So if you're wondering why we are borrowing a friends planter attachment, we have a new project brewing on the horizon! We are only a couple of days from cutting in another garden spot... As you can see we spent a little time earlier this week staking it out.

Carefully making sure all the sides line up parallel to the driveway... More later on this project!

Onto the garden update: The pole beans now have beautiful little flower blooms.

The peas now have pretty little white flower blooms.

Another one of those nasty big ol' beetles was found. Yuck!

And we give many thanks for today's bountiful harvest. Amen.

Great Weekend!

The weekend was spent doing our weekly cutting of the front 40 (a.k.a. our front yard/field of 3+ acres of field grass) plus weed-eating, bush-hogging, etc. Of course, we spent some time in the garden... little bit of weeding, little bit of watering, a lot of watching and planning for next year...

Some of the progress around the garden over the weekend:

The corn is THIS high now.

The peas are growing their blooms now.

Sooooo many peas now! They are so full and big that their runners and blooms are going everywhere!

The cabbages are growing their center heads now.

Event the honey bees were getting in on the garden food supply! They were all over the cilantro on Saturday.

And they were all over the cucumber blooms on Sunday.

Other fun farm work over the weekend included cutting down two old stumps in the front 40. Hubby enjoyed using his chainsaw and then the tractor to haul them to the burn pile back near the barn. The first stump was from a tree that rotted and broke off a couple of years ago.

The next stump proved to be a much larger task... This massive two trunk pecan tree was struck by lightening twice over the past 3 or so years. The first time it dropped onto the old shack barn on the front of our land. The second time, it fell onto it again. It was long overdue to cut the high stump. Hubby had no problem taking care of business.

Time to push it off... Awesome work!

Cutting the ends off to be able to haul it to the burn pile...

FINALLY!! What a job!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

As I am sure you all are tired of only seeing our harvest photos.... time for a real update I guess.

Earlier in the week we did a few things in between rain storms... Needless to say the garden was pretty muddy. So anything more than just checking plants for veggies large enough to pick and training running plants to run the right direction happened outside the garden.

We put mulch all around the fruit bushes to help with weed control. 6 bags of mulch for 12 blueberry bushes and 2 apple trees.

And then I found another one of these under the large leaves of one of the zucchini plants when I was looking for large zucchini to pick. Yuck!

I had to get Hubby to remove him... Those things are huge and nasty!!

Lots of veggies coming in now...

Lots of peppers!

Grow Grow Grow!

With Hubby being under the weather most of the weekend we did not get much done around the farm on Saturday. But, with the rain we had on Thursday night, the garden is a bustling!

Would you look at how big that one zucchini plant is???!!



Squash are getting bigger!



Finally saw our first zucchini piece...



You can see how high the corn is with Hubby standing in it.



I did a little weeding down around the new corn sprouts before I got too hot in the blazing sun. But, check out how high the peas are next to me!



Here are the corn sprouts once the weeds are pulled.



I did have a little episode later in the evening on Saturday after I went back to lock up... I went into the garden just to look around in the evening light and came across a strange insect inside of a hole in the ground about 2 feet from the cucumber row.



And then 10 feet from this over near the raised beds I found this.



Of course, this one is dead and the one in the hole was not. And I then, of course, freaked out thinking that these are some kind of garden beetle that is going to eat my entire garden in one swoop overnight being that these are about the size of a chicken egg. Further research has informed me that these are commonly referred to as a "Hercules beetle" and like decaying wood and plant sap. Supposedly they should not be threat to our garden...but, would you look at the size of those things? And those two horn claws on the front of them would scare anybody! Very scary stuff. They better stay far, far away. Period.

How Does The Garden Grow?

Just a few photos of the garden from Thursday night before another hellacious storm came in and dumped even more precious rain water on the garden!

Look how high the beans are reaching up!



The blue berry bushes have a few berries...



Baby corn sprouting up from the seeds planted just last Saturday!



The sweet potatoes are spreading like crazy!



And even though we had so much rain up until last week, the garden was dry as a bone on Thursday... so watering from the well helped.



All the while Hubby has been diligently working on his man cave work bench...

Watching the Garden Grow

We have not spent a lot of time actually working in the garden these past couple of nights due to lack of time, still waiting on the soil to dry out, etc. Here are a few progress photos though:

The green beans are really running up the twine!

More baby squash!

The cucumbers have really grown and grabbed onto the twine since stringing it on Saturday!

The peas and tomatoes are getting big quick!

The pepper plants are busting out!

Meanwhile, back at the house, the jalapenos are popping!

And Hubby has been busy each night after work installing the wood on his work bench. Lots of sawing and hammering going on in the barn this week!

Oh and last but not least, my sidekick discovered the folding chairs last night. She really digs them versus the hard concrete slab floor. Ha!