The Home Garden Mid-July

The Home Garden is starting to look much better the past couple of days since our nice rain on Sunday evening. It's still not up to par...but, all in all it is doing surprisingly well.

This is the Left Cold Frame Bed

It is filled mostly with dry beans now. There are a couple of Celery plants hiding in the back and some bare spots in the front. I'm going to sow some lettuce in the empty spaces soon.

This is the Right Cold Frame Bed

I pulled almost all of the Spring Carrots from this bed on Monday. There are still a few tiny ones left around the edges. There is also some huge Lacinto Kale in this bed still going strong.

This Kale was planted out last September!

This is Bed #1

There are a couple of cabbages left in this bed. I sure wish they would head up so I can harvest them. I sowed some Little Marvel Peas in this bed a couple of days ago. Hopefully, we will get a nice fall crop as I was not happy with my Spring Shelling Peas.

At the other end of Bed 1 there are a few Celery Plants, a couple of Dry beans and some newly planted Pepper Plants. "The Italian" brought me home 7 pepper plants last night. He got them for free and are varieties that he wants. I guess, it's better late then never for him to decide he wants a particular variety of anything besides tomatoes in the garden! Most of this bed will be sown with Spinach at the end of the season to overwinter. That's the only way I have been successful with spinach.

Bed #2 

There are 4 tomatoes planted in this bed.

3 known varieties and 1 unknown variety. There is a lot of that going on with my tomatoes this year! 

This is what is left of the carrots that were growing in between the tomatoes. Some bunny thought it was a Bunny Buffet!

The Sungold tomatoes are coming on like gangbusters! Boy, they are a wonderfully sweet tomato! Thanks Dave!

These are Paul Robeson tomatoes. Seed compliments of Jeff. These babies are huge and boy are they great tasting! Come on and get ripe already!

Bed #3

This is where most of the garlic was planted. Now there are dry beans and slicing cucumbers growing for "The Italian". 

These cucs are finally putting out a few a day. As you can see, the earlier leaves dried up and were spotted. The plants looks great now!

The Fall Broccoli, Cauliflower & Cabbage starts are undercover on the back porch. They are about 2-3 weeks old. Something was nibbling on them, so they were given a good dusting of DE and covered with a shade cloth. I hope this works.

My Dwarf Carmine Jewel Cherry Tree is growing very very well. Truthfully, I'm very surprised how much it has grown.

The Herb Garden is not looking great. It's usually overgrown and nice and green. The drought has been a bit tough on it.

The back part of the Herb Garden is very sparse too. The Spaghetti Squash are starting to take off and  

climb along the fence in both directions.

The Sage Bush is the only thing in the Herb Garden that is looking great.

We also have one some what pretty flower pot right now.

My flower pots are not nearly as nice as they have been in the past.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard..........06/28/2012

My grandfather used to have this really big Sour Cherry tree at his house. I don't know what variety it was. But, I do remember as a child sitting in the tree eating the cherries when they were ripe. Then it would be harvest and freezing time for the cherries. They would be picked by the buckets full. Then we all sat at the picnic table behind the wash-house at the farm and removed the stems and pits. They would then be put in these plastic bags that were put  in square plastic containers. The containers were put in the freezer. Once they were frozen, the bags were removed. They were much easier to stack in the freezer then since they were nice squares. There were quart and pint sizes.

One thing I always remembered was that the old people got to use the easy pitters. Us youngsters had to use pitters that were really slow. I have no idea what happened to those great pitters. I did not find them when we cleaned out my grandfather's house a few years ago. They sure were great and I sure could have used one this week.

Saturday, I received an e-mail from a local orchard stating that the Sour Cherries were ready and would be available in limited quantities on Monday morning. I missed them last year and I wasn't missing them this year! Sour Cherry Pie with crumb topping is my absolute favorite pie in the whole wide world! I arrived 10 minutes before they opened and there were already 2 women waiting in line. I guess that I'm not the only cherry lover around these parts!

Aren't they just Beautiful???

I purchased 3 quarts of the darker cherries and 4 quarts of the lighter cherries. I really like the lighter variety much better. Don't ask me the names....because I don't remember.

A couple of hours later they were are de-stemmed and pitted. Boy, I really need to find one of those old pitters. This one took forever and could give you carpal tunnel!

I froze 2 quarts and 4 pints of Cherries. Then I made some Sour Cherry Jam. Boy, that stuff is good......it tastes just like Cherry Pie!

Not the best pic. I waited a little too late in the day for their photo op.

Today I'm going to surprise "The Italian" and make a Cherry Strudel or Cherry Cobbler with some homemade Vanilla Ice Cream for dessert! Yum!

I also froze Cauliflower, Broccoli and a portion of Fava Beans. "The Italian's" family loves to have fava beans on Christmas. Boy, those beans are time consuming! I bet somebody out there knows an easy way to peel them. 

What's been going in or out of your Kitchen Cupboard lately???? Anything good???