What’s Up On The River

We took a trip up to Philadelphia yesterday and noticed that three new buildings had been erected near the Schuylkill River since last we visited. Mostly what I feel is that more sun will be blocked out and there may be even less parking spots for people with cars, but I may be wrong on both points. At least they are very shiny 🙂

Small update on our seedlings. Here is what they are looking like now:

We started our tomatoes and here is what we have planted (each container has 4 seeds in it):

Super Sauce Tomatoes (6 pots)
Sunchocola Hybrid Tomato (1 pot)
Brandy Boy Hybrid (3 pots)
Cherokee Purple (1 pot)
Kellogg (1 pot)
Juliet (2 pots)

Today we are starting

Elephant Ear Sweet Peppers (1 pot)
Yellow Pear Tomato (1 pot)
Beefsteak Tomato (1 pot)
Roma Tomato (2 pots)
and
Brunswick Cabbages (3 pots)

That’s about it. Enjoy your weekend!

It Begins – 2017

Yesterday we finally took down our Christmas tree. Yes, it is a little late, but we like to leave them up for as long as possible. This time, maybe it was a little too long. The tree was pretty much falling apart, and we all scratched our hands on the surprisingly dry and prickly needles while taking off the ornaments. We had a large plastic bag to take the tree out of the house neatly, but the needles were so sharp that they tore the bag and it made a mess anyway. And that was the end of our Christmas tree for 2016. Now, in its place, the good old plastic table – for seedlings!

That’s right, we’re getting started on our 2017 garden. Today we planted a whole bunch of peppers:

HEIRLOOM California Wonder (4 peat pots)
Golden Giant 11 Hybrids (4 peat pots)
Heirloom Jalapeno Peppers (4 peat pots)
Sweet Banana Peppers HEIRLOOM (4 peat pots)
Jimmy Nardello HEIRLOOM (4 peat pots)
Espanola Improved Chile Pepper (2 peat pots)
Yellow Cayenne (2 peat pots)
Heirloom Chocolate Beauty Peppers (4 peat pots)

With 3 seeds in each peat pot, theoretically, we could wind up with 84 pepper plants in just this first planting. Many will not make it, though, and even if they did, everyone in our family loves peppers.

So it begins!

Still Plugging Along

… in the garden and Hapkido.

Today I had my second test in Hapkido and passed fairly easily. My belt is now a slightly alarming shade of yellow although, unfortunately, on the picture, it only registered as a dull yellow. According to my instructors, this is when things get really fun – and, for some, painful. I’m certainly looking forward to it!

Today we also spent a lot of time outdoors, both splitting wood and harvesting some of the last vegetables from the garden. Tonight we are supposed to have a frost, so we didn’t want to lose any food.

We grabbed the last of our spinach, peppers, and lettuce.

Handful of Spinach

Last of Peppers

Lettuce, Cabbage, Granny Smith

We got some gnarly carrots and fed the chickens some extra greens.

Chickens Eating Greens

Last Carrots

We filled our raised beds with leaves for the winter. The leaves will also offer protection for the garlic bed.

Garlic Bed

Good Night for the Winter

We are looking forward to our broccoli and cabbages for the next month! I would have taken a picture of our kale, but it had been harvested very recently and so the plants are just now getting their leaves back.

Lots of Broccoli

Broccoli Head

Cabbage and Collards

More Cabbages

More Cabbage

Last of all, who picked this radish? Shown also is a box of vegetables our neighbor didn’t want (he doesn’t like lettuce, broccoli, or cabbage). And a nice bowl of kale and sweet potato soup with some bread for someone’s lunch. Not mine. I don’t like this soup 🙂

Watermelon Radish

Rejected Box For Neighbor

Soup and Bread for Lunch

We have never stopped eating out of our garden, but I cannot believe that we will still be getting vegetables for at least the next month. Just today, we put some tender plants into our greenhouse and apparently will be continuing to grow them in there. It’s pretty amazing how much food one can grow on a small piece of property! You don’t need that much land, you just need to be willing to work for it.

This Summer’s Potato Harvest

Before we left for our camping trip, we harvested all of the potatoes that we grew in just two small raised beds. It actually yielded quite a lot of good-sized potatoes. We grew white potatoes, red potatoes, and a variety called Yukon Gold. In addition, we have our sweet potatoes, which we haven’t harvested yet. For us personally, the white potatoes did the best, but it may have been because they got more sun than the other plants.

Anyway, we’re very happy with the amount of potatoes we got in such a small space. It won’t last us the whole winter by any means, but it’s that many less potatoes we’ll have to buy!

Pretty Darn Good Watermelon

Today we were able to harvest an Orangeglo Watermelon. These plants, in general, did better than they did last year, and I have my suspicions as to why that is. I read last winter that you’re not supposed to plant anything like watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, etc. close to each other, because the plants can easily cross-pollinate and that will mess up the fruit. Last year, we made that mistake, but this year, all of our melon and squash plants were separated significantly and they definitely did better!

Orangeglo Watermelon

Orangeglo Watermelon

Saving A Few Seeds for 2017

This watermelon was about 14″ long and 27″ in diameter and, if you didn’t guess from the name of the watermelon or see the pictures, the inside of the melon is orange instead of red or pink. And it’s really good! Extremely juicy although not the sweetest watermelon I’ve ever eaten. It’s one of the first real watermelons we’ve gotten from the garden, and we’re hoping that there are more to come. Even if we don’t get many more this year, we have saved a few seeds so that we can grow this variety again next year.