Tiny Preview

I counted 8 Blazing Orange Bell Peppers on this plant! That is the most I have ever had on one plant I think. 😊

 I guess these tomatoes will be a surprise. I thought I had planted Great White, but it would never produce this many tomatoes in a set. It's too large of a variety and there are many more than this. So, surprise tomato!

 This is a Brandymaster Pink. There are two large ones right now.

 White Currant tomatoes are getting very close! These are a very tiny tomato similar in size to the Matt's Wild Cherry.

 Lipstick Red Pepper, growing strait up. There are 3 so far.

 Marconi Peppers

 I know this bed is a little full. I had a lot of volunteer flowers pop up and I just love all the colors together with the vegetables so I let them stay. There are peppers and cosmos and chard and beetroot and salvia and more.

Chard and celery

What's growing in your garden?
If you're interested, my garden is now on Instagram

The week of Beans-Harvest Monday 6/25/18

I'm picking beans every day now. I have had 2 full gallon size zipper bags full already!

It's Harvest Monday at Our Happy Acres.

 Join the conversation (below and at Our Happy Acres) and share your harvests!

I'm still getting cucumbers every day as well. I have had to pawn them off on neighbors and come up with more creative ideas to use them.

 Below are the last of the shelling peas. I pulled both the shelling and the snap peas this week. Too hot and they weren't producing well.

  Lots of raspberries and blueberries are coming in. Gonna have to bribe the kids to help me pick them all. (They are not big helpers, I may need to seek neighbor kids who enjoy it cause they don't have gardens!)

 How do you like my swan cucumber? :) What does it look like to you?

 Trying something different with the cucumbers. Cucumber and cream cheese tea sandwiches. Both the older two loved them, the younger would not even try! I picked some fresh dill for the filling. It was all a bit bland to me so yesterday I cut some green onions to add to it. I haven't tried it just yet so we will see. Next on the list to try is a Cashew Tuna Salad Cucumber bites recipe I found on pinterest!

 Scallions and zucchini were used for taco zucchini boats. The rest of the scallions were used in the cucumber filling above. This was the first tomato. Amazingly it wasn't a cherry size tomato, it was a Cherokee purple. Sadly it had a little bit of end rot, but I used the rest on the taco zucchini boats.

 Beans, beans, more beans! I tried to get my daughter to help as she ate them raw strait out of the garden, but she sat there and barely picked a handful. She couldn't even find any of the green ones!

 Pollinator photos! Just because I love them and love practicing taking photos!

My garden is just full of all kinds of fun flyers. And then some not so fun (Japanese Beetles-grrrrrr) They meet their soapy water demise!

 I had to go after a couple of wasps as they chased the humming birds right out of the garden! 😡They seem to be happily enjoying their nectar and hummingbird sage now!

In Running news, I ran with my Daughter and younger son on Saturday at the Louisville Parkrun. My other son was sick. But my 8 year old and I both beat our own times! This was the third week in a row for me! Yay! And I didn't feel quite as bad as I have been the past several Saturdays. With my MS, the runs and the heat really take it out of me. I'm hoping my body will continue to adjust and I won't throw myself into a relapse.

I gave my 8 year old an incentive to beat his time by 5 minutes ( I had a buy one get one free nintendo game hidden away). He beat his time by 7 minutes and 20 seconds! I knew he could he is just never motivated! Plus one of his XC coaches showed up to be a coarse monitor and cheered us on! That was so great of her!

I hope you're having an amazing Gardening week! 

 Please feel free to leave a comment! I love to hear from you!

Harvest Monday June 18, 2018

It's Harvest Monday at Our Happy Acres. 

It is a hot hot start to our week here in Kentucky Zone 6. So much has been going on in the garden this week! I'll start with the garden harvests.

Oregano, Dill and cucumbers...soooo many cucumbers this week!

Kale, Cilantro, cucumbers and shelling peas, and the first purple bush bean! My daughter ate it raw! She loves them! When she was little she use to steal them off my counter when I wasn't looking.

First raspberries of the season. Since they have been transplanted twice from the old house to church and then this new house they have not been super happy. They look better this year but still not as good as they use too. Maybe next year will be even better.

Chard, cucumbers, peas and berries!

Cucumbers, peas, berries and snap peas. These cucumbers are called Sweet Success and I am quite happy with them. They have resisted the mildew that is taking over the rest of the bed and they are so long! I thought maybe I didn't get them in time but they are mature around 10-12 inches! These 4 snap peas may be the end of those for the season. They will probably get pulled this week and make room for other stuff in the bed that is getting ready to take over!

More Sweet Success cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, zucchini, shelling peas, raspberries and the second purple bush bean, which my daughter also ate!

Cucumber, zucchini and shelling peas.

A large bounty of cucumbers, the first green and yellow bush beans, parsley, zucchini, berries, greens, and shelling peas.

Look at the size of that blueberry! It is a Chandelier. A very large plump but not super productive berry. Productive enough just not as much as the other 4 bushes. This is the first one of the season off that bush. My 8 year old was salivating over it as I was washing everything up!

He told me to put it ON TOP of the quarter! He thinks it's pretty cool too. He devoured that whole pile of berries without sharing in about 2 minutes!

This is what I used up my zucchini with this week! It was so amazingly delicious! Spinach and Artichoke Zucchini Boats. I linked the recipe, check it out! I used some of my chard and leftover spinach in it and I also added gluten free italian bread crumbs to the top! OH MY GOODNESS! AMAZING!!!! You must try it if you have an abundance of zucchini and like spinach and artichoke dip!

On to the wildlife.

In case you missed it, we found a bunny nest in my bush bean bed this week. My daughter went looking for her little turtle in the garden and this is what we found. We started off with 5. I was a little worried about that but nature seems to be taking care of itself, sadly.

On Friday there were 2 left. One died after a rain. It was away from the nest and cold and wet and shivering. I returned it to the nest with the warm cozy ones, but he quickly died. Two disappeared and I don't know what happened to them. They are very young, probably less than 2 weeks. And then one of the last two met with a neighborhood cat.

She is a lovely cat, just doing what cats do. I enjoy her greatly. Here she is keeping close to the nest, hanging out under the sweet potato vines keeping me company while I work in the garden. She's sweet.

This is the last bunny. I am doing what I can to protect it and as soon as I can I will transplant it to a safer place. For now he is hiding quite well up under all the weeds. Bunny's are very cute but super destructive in the garden. I do hope he survives though. (Edited to add: this poor bunny did not make it either. We are sad. We had really hoped to transplant him to the nature preserve :( 

And our swallowtail has emerged this morning. It's wings are still wet and flimsy. He should be ready to go soon!

Can you see the three in the tree? Finches that is! Love them! So pretty and bright in the garden!

This is becoming one of my favorite coneflowers.  Double Scoop Orangeberry. Isn't it lovely? It is even prettier now than when I took this photo. It gets prettier every day! LOVE!

Denver Daisy Rudbeckia

Teddy Bear Sunflower. This one here is not even a foot tall! Super small, but they can get up to 3 feet. Cute, isn't it?

I hope everyone is having a fabulous gardening week! 

Please leave a comment and share with me! I Love the garden talk!

What are you harvesting this week! Share with us at Our Happy Acres!

Look Whats Growing In my Garden!

Found this nest in my raised bed of bush beans!

Now to come up with a plan.... *sigh*

Good morning. It's rainy and 67 here in KY this morning. I'm so glad, the garden needed it.
It's Harvest Monday at Our Happy Acres. Join in and share your harvests with us!

Picked my first potatoes! I saw one poking out of the ground last week while watering so decided to check for some.

I used some of the potatoes and greens fresh from the garden for my favorite breakfast! ;)

I finished pulling out most of the lettuce and spinach. It was beginning to change flavor.

Pruning back the basil again to get it bushier.

Dill, cucumbers, snap peas, shelling peas on right, strawberries, first blueberries and first raspberries of the season.

 We found this tiny baby box turtle on our running path on Saturday. My older two did excellent, both of them beating their best 5K time (not their best mile pace, but their school meets are much shorter distances). Twelve year old daughter did it in 23.53 coming in 2nd out of 30, 12 year old son did it in 25:31 coming in 6th. My youngest, 8, and I came in last with 39:05 and 39:48. I beat my best but he came close. I'm probably holding him back but he has to stay with an adult :(

The caterpillar we had last week has gone into it's cocoon. Can't wait to see what kind of swallowtail emerges! We do this every year, probably multiple times. It's so fun with the kids. They feed it and take care of it and then we release it when it emerges as a butterfly. One year we found the egg and took care of it from egg to butterfly and kept track of its stages and days it took from egg to butterfly! So fun!

Peas are still happy, for now. I love the contrast of the purple peas. It is so darn hard to find all the green ones, they just blend in!

The sweet potato bed has cosmos in the middle of it. I figured they'd get tall enough that the sweet potatoes wouldn't shade them out. Looks pretty nice.

Red Nasturtium and some powdery mildew on my zucchini :(

These snacking peppers are good size, maybe they will start to change colors soon!

Borage after the rain.

The beans are coming! :)