Garden Log --- May 10, 2018

It's been a while since I posted, but it's been so busy around here, I'm just now finding a minute.  
I spent a couple of days processing about 12 pounds of spinach - the first cutting from all of the varieties I'm growing this year.  Spinach takes a bit of work, it takes three washes to be sure it's clean, and then I cut all of the stems off before freezing it in 1/2 pound containers.  I use a lot of it in egg casseroles and some Italian dishes during the year.

 This is the Viroflay spinach - one of the plants has variegated leaves. Very pretty!

 Bloomsdale spinach

 I think this is the Black Magic spinach

One of the batches ready for the freezer!

The mulberry trees have been keeping us pretty busy too. It seems like we'll pick the two trees thoroughly one day, and by the next morning they're full of ripe berries again! Like magic...ha! Over 10 pounds so far, and I used 5-1/2 pounds of those to make wine (post  about the wine soon!) 

We pulled up all of the snow peas and snap peas since its getting hot and they were starting to fade.  

Pea plants starting to show stress from the bottom up.

I ended up with a little over 4 pounds of peas - which I froze in 5 oz. portions to be used in stir fry recipes. We ate a good portion of those fresh in salads and with Ranch dip, too!  

 The turkeys and chickens enjoyed the pea plant treats!

A few of the pepper plants have started flowering.  This one is the Sweet Red Cheese pepper.  They have some growing to do, but do much better once it starts really heating up here.

Here's a bean on the Cranberry Fielder Bean plants.  The plants seem stressed, and I think it's the manure we used in the garden this year.  I'm still learning, it seems. Sigh...

 All of the tomato plants have shown some stress, also, but they're slowing growing out of it.  I'm happy with their progress so far.  This is a new one for me called Brad's Atomic Grape.  Purple stripes, ya'll!! 

This is the last picture of the squash that I took, but I've already brought in about 1-1/2 pounds of this Zephyr squash.  It's unique, yellow with green neck and bottom.  Very pretty. 

We're keeping our eyes on the green beans in the orchard field, too. They're doing fine, although we had quite the gully-washer rain the other day and I was afraid they might get washed out.  We're starting to see some blossoms!

I took a photo of each of the main garden beds at the end of April.  Everything is looking pretty good! 

 Bed A

 Bed B

Bed C

The peach's are starting to ripen and we've been bringing them in to finish ripening at the house, since the birds and squirrels like to beat us to them.  We've had a few strawberries already, too. And the berries are coming along.  Here are the Chester blackberries....

and the Black Raspberries...

We picked all of the nectarines for this year from the two trees that we have in the orchard.  They look like hammered hell, so we're going to have to do some research in to how we'll need to treat these trees next year to have more success.  Birds and bees seemed to have really enjoyed these! 

 John found this little apple at the base of the Pink Lady apple tree.  I'm just happy one seemed to have developed, since we've never gotten this far in the 6 years we've had these Pink Lady and Gala apple trees.  In fact, this is the first year that they both blossomed at the same time.  Progress!  We can't find any more on either tree, so I guess this was it.

I've been eyeing these agarita bushes around our property - they are loaded this year.  If I get the energy (and some heavy duty gloves), I'll try to harvest some of these for wine, but I'm not committing to anything.  It seems I always have plenty to keep me busy.