The Flood of June 2010

This is the most western third of the back yard. It rained for 2 days, about 6 inches of rain.

This is just south of the above photo. This flood water goes from the property line on the west almost to the concrete pad by the back door. This is the worst flood in the 8 years .

The water is so deep by the propane tank, that Milo was SWIMMING!! Full dog paddle because she could not touch the bottom!!
The dark brown color on the right is the driveway.
The smell was HORRIFYING when it started to dry......gross.
It took about 6 days for all the standing water to go.....but man, the smell!!

Dehydrating Onions

With my new Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator, I am going to take about 75 onions, dehydrate and store them. I have my onions. I have a cutting board. A OOBER cheap mandolin (gets the job done) .
This is one of 9 trays I will load today.
Oh yeah, and my scale!
About 6 lbs of onions.
Ok, now we are outside. I can't hack that much onion smell in the house!! I also set the dehydrator outside, on the front porch. It was cool, mild, no humidity. I sliced the onions pretty thin.
I did 'crowd' a little. The first load, no onion touched his neighbor. Everything was right, just could have done more had I 'crowded' a bit more.
This is my 9 tray Excalibur fully loaded.....Again, outside or the whole house would STILL smell.
145 Degrees for 12 hours
Yep, that's the same tray as above. SIMPLY amazing how much water is in an onion. Now they smell like funions. They are not rank, but they almost have a sweet smell.....for an onion. Oh yeah, they were Texas Super Sweet onions. Bought the onions in sets at a local hardware store. Super hardy. No bugs or diseases.
This is my mini food saver. Got it for a song. It was on super sale, I had a coupon, and it had a rebate. All in all it cost me about 5.00.
Again, super simple to amuse here. When it sucked all the air out....I was amazed!!
The one on the left shows you how thin it is. The one in front shows you how flat they get!!
Each bag contains about 2 onions worth of onions!! 35 bags later (All fit in a plastic grocery sack) I will have fresh, organic, home raised onions......all winter this winter!!!

Can I just say this is addictive. I wanted to shrink wrap the dogs!! This is just so much fun!!

June 29 2010 Garden Photo's Part I

CAN I JUST SAY: I wanna be a Jack Russell Terrier when I grow up!!


FINALLY! I planted the bulbs 2 years ago......this is the first time they have popped through the soil AND bloomed! They are so pretty.


Rutgers Heirloom tomatoes. 24 or 28 of them. Slow growing, but growing all the same. Didn't want to spend the money on flowers to make the bed pretty, but didn't want to waste the space. SO I planted the extra tomato plants here.


Weeded and trimmed suckers yesterday (after the photo, of course!)


My purple potato box. Few blooms......but the leaves are starting to lose their color. Aug 1 is about the time to dig!!


Close up of potato box.


Black beans. They plants are FULL of beans!!!
This is the box where I planted carrots, and forgot, and then planted beans on top. You can see the carrots intermixed with the beans!



Red bean box, and my FREE trellis (thank you freebie on Craigs List) They are full of beans too!!



My blue corn will be "knee high by the 4th of July"......totally excited about the corn!


You can see the 'blue' in the corn leaves.


San Marzono tomatoes, crook neck squash, basil, oregano, sage.


LOOK AT THOSE BEAUTIES!!!
San Marzono's

Herbs and squash.


Look at this lovely little thing!!!

As I sit right now typing I can hear the crop duster. MAN is that a sight. This guy is entertaining to watch....up up up, down down down, up up up........the kids and I sit out in the yard and just watch him do his thing!!
Man, I love the country!!!

June 29 2010 Garden Photo's part II

The cucumber and pepper box.
Pepper plants have peppers, cucumbers are off the chain. Every year I say "I am only going to plant 2 plants, it's all we need". Then I plant 6 plants, and give cukes away to strangers in the street!

Here's a close up of one of the ZILLION cukes. Look at the flowers.......each one of those will be a cucumber!!

This is a tomato from my Rutgers Heirloom box. I just went out yesterday and trimmed the suckers off.......

This is the Amish Paste box. These are the plants I grew from seed.....

This is where my Texas Super Sweets WERE!! I am dehydrating them today in my new dehydrator. We'll see how that works out for me!!


This is my black bean box. I had planted carrots here, and nothing was coming up so I loaded it with black beans......



My herbs.
The pot bottom right is my sage from seed.
To it's left, thyme from last year.
To the thyme's left, Basil from seed.
Right of the basil is jalapeno's, and so is the pot to it's right.
Top left in black pot.....peppermint!
And to it's right, Pineapple Sage.
I can't wait to make chicken saltnbooka with the pineapple sage..........

I LOVE FREECYCLE!!!

OH MY GOSH do I love free cycle. Posted a notice that I was looking for "river stone". Small stones that people use in their flower beds. I want to do something prettyful with my downspouts on my gutters......and people get sick of their rock gardens, and post "free if you remove it". I am not afraid to do a little work to get some goodies. WELL I posted a notice that I was looking for this 'river stone', and a lady emailed me and said "hey got some landscape rocks if you want them". I said HECK YEAH! Jake and I loaded up in the truck and picked them up. Took me about 15 min to get them in the truck. ((OK the big grey rock.......that's the Mother's Day rock. It's my favorite rock ever. We were at my mom and dad's house in Spencer on Mother's Day. Jake found a rock in the creek, that he could NOT live without. My mom, dad, the kids, chris, and the dog (cheyenne) all walked down the hill to the creek, dug it out of the creek bed, loaded it onto a cart, and hauled it up the hill. That rock weighs 70-80 pounds. Anyway, this rock has an amazing memory attached to it, so it's my favorite rock ever))
I took the FREE rocks, and laid them around my newly mulched beds.
This is similiar to the way I did my gardens at the old house. I LOVED that garden. It was so pretty. It looks like crap now........the woman that bought the house did not take care of the garden.....
Not bad for FREE!!!!
I am so pleased with the way this looks and how far I got. I had almost enough to do the whole bed.

There's only about 10 feet to fill. I will be patient and see if anyone else wants to get rid of their rocks!!
I am totally digging on the freecycle / craigs list.
Picked up 3 huge trellis', a 100 year old door, and two pieces of lumber. Free.
The door is made of solid solid wood. Not like the welfare junk of today. I think I am going to turn it into a garden table!

Moving Box REDO!! June 14 2010

These are my 'flower beds'. Wow, huh. I have a few roses in there, and some volunteer sunflowers.....I read about lasagna gardening, and thought, "Huh, that sounds like it might work". See there is no grass up here. Only field weeds that will last through the end of time. So I got to thinking "where am I gonna get that many boxes?". Craigs list of course! People are always giving away moving boxes! HERE'S A BIG NOTE TO SELF: When seeing out moving boxes, ask if the giver has pets. My boxes wreaked of cat urine. SO I left them outside through a couple of rain storms to help get rid of the smell.....
WAY overgrown. This should have been taken care of last fall, not now in the middle of June! Lazy gardener!
This is where the sunflowers will grow. Last year the whole south side of the deck was covered in sunflowers. It was so neat to look out the window and see their "smiling" heads full of beautiful flowers waving in the breeze!!
OK Part 1. OPEN box, lay on ground where you want to cover the weeds.
PART 2. Apply mulch or topsoil to the box.
I put down about a 4-6 inch layer of mulch. The mulch was the 'basic' mulch for 25.00 a yard. That was about a full beds worth of mulch.
Looks a little sketchy right now, but it will look better. Note to self. Sunscreen (from Whole Foods that doesn't have all the cancer chemicals in it) is in order. I FRIED myself today. It was hotter than hades too......
This is the south west side of the garden. TA DA. The big pots are Kel's peppers. SEE this looks SO much better and you can tell I DO have roses!
AND volunteer sunflowers. I need to get some rocks around the bed then use the round up to kill the grass 6 inches our to there is no weed wacking to be done, just a buzz by with the push mower.
View from the deck, looking over. This took about 3/4 of a yard of mulch, and about 2 hours of time. I will finish the rest today (as much as I can with the mulch I have left), and then see how much more mulch I need. Not sure where I am going to get the stone.......but it needs to be cheap or free!!!