August 24, 2013
                                                         Dog Days!

Hello again. Whew! It's late August already.  One of my early memories of the middle and late days of month of August were that they were often referred to the as the "dog days". Typically, "dog days" were those hot, humid, sultry days in mid to late summer when we slept with the windows open...those days before we had air conditioners.  The cicadas would start a loud clamor in the trees at dusk and continue until nearly dawn, or so it seemed.  I haven't seen or heard as much from them recently as I remember in the past, but I did notice this one. It seems a little confused....quietly resting in the sun on a zinnia rather than singing in a tree after sunset!  Dog days also refer to the "dog star" Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky.

My pal Cyril Cicada

 



 The garden is thriving. The second planting of six rows of green beans and peas are growing quickly. A separate row of green beans planted earlier (mid July) are already producing. We picked the first of them today.  We're also hoping for success with a zucchini that looks to be doing very well near the house. The butternuts and spaghetti squash are still in the ripening stage and look strong. The bell peppers are mature and we're bringing them in.

                                    One of the rows of green beans and peas

And even the raspberries have joined the parade.  We picked several pounds in July and we're now seeing the "late" crop getting ripe.  It wont be as productive as the early crop, but it's always nice to have some ripe fruit with breakfast or on ice cream!

                                       Round 2 of raspberries begin to ripen!

I'm not one to give up much emotion, but I have to admit that I'm pretty darned happy with the way our second plantings are thriving!  Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you again next week.

Chuck

Happy 115th Birthday J.I. ! 

 That's right!  Today (August 16) is the one hundred and fifteenth birthday of the founder of "organic" gardening, J.I Rodale. While gardening had been organic since the Garden of Eden, Rodale popularized the term "organic" and founded Rodale Institute in 1930.  The institute's stated mission is "through organic leadership we improve the health and well being of people and the planet" The Institute can be found just a few miles south of Allentown, PA.

Rodale published the Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening in 1961. It has had numerous printings, my copy being the 14th printing. It's a hefty book of 1,145 pages covering nearly any garden creature or problem you can imagine. I have referred to it on numerous occasions.  One example: you may remember in a recent post I mentioned that we have had no Japanese beetles in our garden this year.   That is due to the fact that Rodale recommended using "milky spore" to control Japanese beetle grubs.  I can attest to the fact that milky spore works!  Rodale also mentions controlling beetles using traps filled with geranium oil. As a side note, I purchased my copy at the Lancaster County Book Sale for princely sum of $2.00.

               J.I.'s book surrounded by organic spaghetti squash and green beans

It's been another good week in our garden. While some things have ended, new starts have taken hold. We have six rows of peas and green beans coming along. My scrap pile of lumber keeps the squirrel damage to a minimum. It may not be pretty but, for the most part, it works!

                                          4 of the 6 rows of peas and beans

 The butternuts and spaghetti squash are beginning to ripen. We've already brought in several of the spaghetti squash. The butternut will take a good bit longer to ripen.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by. I hope to see you again next week!

Chuck

 

New Gardening Season

                                                       New Garden Season!

That's right! A new season has begun in our garden.  The spring plantings have pretty much worn themselves out. The big producers were the Jet Star tomatoes (4 plants) at 57 pounds, zucchini at 34 pounds and cucumbers at 22 pounds. The peas, green beans, and much more also produced far more than we expected! While we've cooked down much of the excess in tomatoes for sauce and frozen many pounds of peas, green beans, strawberries, etc., we also had more than enough, along with the cucumbers and squash, to share with friends, neighbors, and even strangers passing by our front porch "Free" box.  For a small garden, we couldn't have asked for more!

And now the second act begins.  Our compost heap has yielded nearly 100 pounds of garden gold.  We're turning the soil and spreading the compost in preparation for the "fall" plantings. The number of earthworms that inhabit the compost pile is truly amazing!

No endorsement intended. It's just what we have right now.

 

We had a nice rain last night, so we will delay new planting until tomorrow.  We'll be putting in green beans and peas, as well as lettuce and spinach. The seeds we will be using are those that have a shorter "days to maturity" number (see picture above) on the package front and/or back to try to insure that we don't run into an early frost problem.  Hopefully, late summer will be as kind to us as the past several months have been.

 On the odds-and-ends side, the squirrels continue to be pests. If we turn over even one spade full of soil, a squirrel will surely stop by the next morning to dig holes in it. We recently bought some "bird netting"  which we typically use to cover berry plants, and plastic mesh. We placed it on the ground over the area where the new pea and bean seeds have been planted in hopes of discouraging the little varmints.

 

 

The corn plants are out on the ground to dry before chopping them up for the compost heap.  The butternut squash and spaghetti squash are beginning to ripen.

 

Butternut

 

The new season has begun! We can only hope it will be as good as the spring/summer season has been. 

 

Hope to see you again soon!  Your comments are always welcome.

 

Chuck