Joshs Food Garden: July 2012

I had to harvest the broccoli over the weekend as it was starting to flower.... nice little yellow flowers... I left a few seed heads to grow, in hopes of saving some seed for next year, or maybe for the fall... apparently you can plant them in late summer and grow a winter/fall crop... I'll look into it more... but for now I'll just let it go to seed whether for this year or next year.

I figured my wife and I wouldn't be able to eat all of the broccoli, plus we had some from the farmers market the other week so I decided to blanche and freeze all of the broccoli I had harvested... Now ideally I wouldn't have frozen it on cookie sheets and then put that into bags or glass bottles... butI had nothing but glass bottles to store things in... so in they went after a little bit of blanching... Hopefully they aren't top much of a pain in the ass to remove from the bottle when I decide to use them later this year....

So the garden adventure continues...

Everything is finally starting to produce fruit and it is VERY exciting!!!

My little broccoli is starting to sprout.

My mesclun and kale are exploding... i just gave away two MASSIVE arm fulls of kale to friends... It feels great to be able to feed family and friends.

My lettuce is a little upset with the heat... i didn't realize that that spot in the garden got soo much sun... i thought that was my shady spot.... guess I better do proper sun/shade audit next time instead of just using math and guesses.... (I had used the triangle method... figuring height of object and angle of sun to the earth to determine the shadow cast.... but yea.. I obviously didn't have North quite right... so things turned out a little different... o well live and learn... That's what it's all about! I'll know for next year....

My peas are doing really great... I've got tons... so once again it means its time to share....

I'm a little concerned about my bush beans... I think that they may be short in manganese? from what I've been reading... so I think I need to get some lime.... not dolomite but Calcitic lime, because the raio of manganese to other minerals is more preferable for the plants... because too much of anything is always a bad thing....I'll continue to search and see what I can find and post whatever insightful information I do find.... I'm really wanting to get that "What's Wrong with my plant" book... but alas books cost money.... I'll most likely rationalise buying it by how much money i'll save if all of my plants are growing and producing like crazy.... but I haven't gotten to that point yet.... haha.. soon...

and then finally... last but not least... BLASTED APHIDS!!!! all over my fruit trees... who I'm not sure what's going on.... brown spots with red rings around it.... confuzzling... but I will be hunting the internetz to find out.... I sprayed them with a bit of kelp boost + Water mix this morning hopefully it helps.... Time will tell i guess... O what a learning experience it all is.... and I can only get better... just gasta keep practicing!....