Asparagus and Tomato Cages

I purchased some 7 ft. tomato cages this spring and the little lady thought they were a little tall.  However, as can be seen from these photos, I think the tomato plants will reach the top before long.  This is an heirloom “Abraham Lincoln”.  It is doing pretty well so far.  We are just now starting to get ripe tomatoes from it.    I also have a couple of shots of my new asparagus bed.  We planted crowns in January and hope to be eating fresh asparagus next spring.  Probably won’t get too much but should be much better another year out.  I have not grown asparagus before, so if any of you have advice for me – please send it ASAP.

New Peaches

Another canning endeavor this morning. We canned peaches from our miniature “Honey Babe” peach tree. We got seven pints. Could have eight but Sweetcheeks decided to favor me some peach cobbler instead. I certainly can’t complain about that.

 

Zucchini Relish 2014

Although I have not blogged about my garden for a long while, I do want to get started again. I thought I would start by telling you about our first canning this season. We had an excess of zucchini and yellow squash so thought we would make some relish. We have canned 14 pints total.

Muir Woods Day Trip

We have been having some pretty hot weather here lately so Leona and I decided we needed to take a “Stay Cool” day trip – what better place for that than the California North Bay. We stayed at the home of Poor Mans Whiskey  (actually my son’s house in Santa Rosa) on a Saturday night and left early Sunday morning for Muir Woods.  We took a number of good pictures.  The one I like best is the cut-away that shows the age of the tree relative to many years ago.

According to this picture, the tree would be about 1100 years old.  That’s hard to imagine.  It’s not every day that one touches something that old.

I did think it was interesting that right in the middle of huge Redwood trees, there was giant boulder showing.
After leaving Muir Woods, we traveled on up the coast to Stinson Beach.  There were quite of few folks there picnicking and playing volleyball.

After leaving Stinson Beach, we stopped in the little town of Olema for lunch.  We are at the Olema Farm House restaurant.  Leona ate Salmon and I had Fish and Chips.  They were both excellent.  We ate on the patio.  It was a gorgeous day.

We finished the day with some ice cream in the little town of Tomales and then headed home to the heat of Roseville.  Our “Stay Cool” jaunt was over.

Daily Harvest

This is what I harvested from the garden this morning in addition to 31 beets.  We are going to pickle them.  We’ll probably only get about 5 pints but they were the remnants from our beet crop this year.

The peaches are from a dwarf peach tree we have.  There were only 4 today but we have picked 42 season to date.  They are small but tasty.  They are very good with cereal.

So far this year, we have harvested about 153 lbs of fruit and veggies.  Last year, we hit 300 lbs.  I hope to have at least 350 lbs this year.  That is probably small potatoes (no pun intended) to those of you who have big gardens but for our small back yard garden, it’s pretty good.  Plus, we are only trying to feed the two of us.

Pickled Beets

Today we decided to pickle beets. We had previously canned beets but this time we were going to pickle them just using a hot water bath method

We started with 28 beets weighing about 7 lbs. and ended up with 8 pints of finished beets. We probably have enough still left in the garden to do this many more in another week or so.

Needless to say – we love pickled beets.

June Veggie Garden Update

The garden is starting to produce pretty well.    We pick  Patty Pan and Zucchini squash just about every day.  We are also starting to get cucumbers pretty regularly as well.  This first picture gives you a sense of how big our squash plants are.

We canned 12 pints of   beets the other day.  We plan to pickle some beets in the next few days.

I’ve been struggling with a couple of problems.  The leaves on my tomato plants are curling upward.  Everything I’ve read tells me that this is a regular watering issue.  I water with a drip system every two days.  That’s pretty regular.  I may be watering too much or too little but I haven’t quite figured out which yet.  I always seem to struggle with getting just the right amount of water.  Any ideas? Let me know!

I’ve also had to spray with soapy water twice to control an aphid problem.  That has helped.  We also released some lady bugs a few days ago.

My tomato plants are growing pretty well.  We are starting to see a few small tomatoes starting to form.

Spring Garden 2013

It’s been forever since I’ve posted.  One thing I have discovered about blogging.  If you don’t post regularly, it is very easy to get out of the habit and before you know it, it may have been months since the last post.

Right now, I’m playing catch up on my spring garden postings.  I am going to break it down into two separate posts.  The first will be a look shortly after I had planted (early April) and secondly, a more current status.  This spring we planted 1 bed of all beets (Early Wonder) for canning purposes, 3 Patty Pan squash, 1 zucchini, 6 Celebrity tomato plants for canning, and 5 heirloom tomato plants( Brandywine, Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Abraham, Lincoln, and Amish Paste) for eating, 3 cucumbers, and about 6 basil plants.  We are planting more tomatoes this year than normal because we want to experiment with various types.

I also have some pictures of onions and red cabbage which I planted last fall.  They really took off when it started to warm up this spring.

 In the next couple of days, I will follow-up with a current status.  There are quite a few changes.

Northern California Daytrip – Rio Vista

Road to Rio Vista

After my sister-in-law had read my last post about Granzella’s where they have many mounted heads on the wall, she told us about another restaurant/bar in Rio Vista that also has a similar theme.  So – we thought we should give it a look-see.

From the Sacramento area, we took highway 160 which basically follows the Sacramento river all the way down to Rio Vista.  We passed through many small  towns such as Freeport, Courtland, Walnut Grove, and Isleton.  Most of these places had seen better days but there was still some activity in numerous places.  In fact, Courtland is known for growing Bartlett pears in the area.  They have a pear festival each year in July.  We saw many boat docks, fields of pear trees, and passed over three or four drawbridges as Highway 160 meandered along alternatively on both sides of the river.  It was a beautiful drive.  Check out the pictures.

After we reached Rio Vista, Fosters Bighorn restaurant was pretty easy to find – “especially when you have Google maps”.  They were fairly busy and just as we were leaving, a large contingent of bikers arrived and almost completely filled up the place.

We just had sandwiches for lunch.

They were pretty tasty although most likely not very healthy.

They had lots of animal heads on the walls.  There was a huge elephant head.  Check out the tusks on the wall.  It’s kind of sad to think about all of these animals being killed just for display.

After lunch we headed home.  We took a few more pictures and got one of a new pear orchard being built.  It’s fairly interesting to see how they lay out the field.

It was a nice drive.  We saw lots of pretty country that we had not traveled before.

If anyone has suggestions for day trips in California, I’d be glad to hear from you.

1st Celery Ever

1st Celery of 2013

Here is a picture of the first celery from our garden. This season was the first time I had planted Celery, but so far so good. I’ll probably try it again.

Any other celery growers out there? I’d like to hear about your experiences. What are your tips on growing great celery?