Next Years Goal

Our main gardening goal for next year is improving food quality.  To accomplish this we will be focusing on improving soil quality, which should in turn improve the health value in our produce.

We have taken some brix readings as a base point this year so we can see if there is improvement or not year to year.  For an idea on how to take brix readings, and what that is all about, check out the following you tube video by John Kohler.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXRNHGJK1bY

Some of the things we have purchased this year and plan to implement next year are:

• Water filter for our garden house to help protect soil microbes from the chlorine.
• Making compost tea from Boogie Brew
• Adding Sea-90 as a folier spray and possibly fertilizer.
• Adding more compost we made last year to each bed.

Our goal is to improve the soil to make healthier, more disease and bug resistant plants that are better tasting and more nutritious.  If we are going to spend our time, money, and energy in gardening.  Why not continue to improve and make it better?

Apple Tree Blessing

There is a small Jonathan apple tree that the previous owners planted in our front yard.  It usually produces apples each year, but they tend to be scarce and pretty buggy.  Last year, we had early warm weather then a hard frost which caused the tree to loose all it's blossoms.  There was only one apple that survived last year.

This year, because of the extra energy from not making apples last year, the tree was loaded with blossoms, which turned into lots of apples!  Also, because there were very few apples last year, the apple pest population was way down, which means a very good year for our apples because we don't spray.  We collected eight 5 gallon pales full!

This was surely our biggest blessing this year, and we didn't do anything but harvest.  Once harvested, we turned the apples into apple sauce so we could preserve them.  It sure takes a long time as we spent probably 16 hours over 2 days processing all the apples.  Thank you God for blessing us with the apples this year!

Funny Men

Shannon likes making things.  She made the "pot man" who sat by the front pond this year.

She also made the "tomato man".

Fruits of our Labors

Below are some pictures of our fresh harvests this year.  Enjoy!

White onion, Detroit Dark red beet and a Little Finger carrot

Mid-season bounty

Salsa batch #1

Blueberries and blackberries added to the harvest

Goji berries and black raspberries, green and purple pole beans

Lots of tomato varieties

Find the smiley tomato

We planted four varieties of onions this year

Salsa batch #2

Floral Beauties

Below are some select flowers taken around our yard this year.  Enjoy!

Gift from a friend.

Asiatic Lilies

Water lily in large pond

Asiatic Lily

Volunteer Sunflower from the bird feeder

Lessons Learned

This year has been much cooler over all than last year in our area.  Because of this, tomatoes and peppers did not fare nearly as well as last year which was much hotter.

One of the lessons learned this year was that mulch can bring extra issues to the garden.  Our biggest pest explosion was pill bugs, followed by slugs, and a few ear wigs.  Many of our peppers, among other crops, were damaged by them.

Another lesson learned is that it is best to add "hardware cloth" when making a raised bed, not afterwards.  Mole(s) and voles have been reeking havoc in our beds, disturbing or destroying plant root systems and eating valuable earth worms.  I have tried a mole trap with no success.  There are a lot of ways people try to get rid of moles, but many times the mole simply moves on, regardless of the method used.

I have only done one bed so far.  It is a lot of extra work to add the hardware cloth, which in my case is a 1/2 inch wire mesh, to the beds after they are finished.  Anyway, we have enough mesh for 6 of our 10 beds.  From the pictures below you can see snow accumulation.  It won't stick yet but it is showing up early this year. (10-24-2013)

A Little Visitor

On September 12 of 2013 we had a little visitor in our house.  We will frequently leave the slider door open during the summer days for our dogs who like to go in and out of the house.  A humming bird come in for a visit.  It wasn't too much fun for the poor bird as she frantically tried to escape bumping and bopping into the white ceiling.  The little hummer was getting tired and we couldn't coax her back out the slider.  Finally she tried to fly out our picture window and knocked herself silly.  She then rested on the ledge and was still.

That's when Shannon was able to grab the hummer with her hand.  It was very light and delicate feeling.  She took her outside and held her hand open next to our Rose of Sharon bush to let her escape to freedom.  Because of the tiring ordeal, she sat in her hand for about 30 seconds and Timothy was able to take some very good close up pictures of the humming bird just resting in Shannon's hands.  After the brief rest, she was happy to be able to zoom away to safety!