Homestead Summer in Photographs

I can't believe it's August! Seems like Juneteenth was only the other day. 

Detail from my Christmas gift from my daughter-in-law

Here's our summer so far in photographs.

Summer squash blossom with pollinators

Fresh goat milk mozzarella

Hopniss vines on the hoop house

Rose of Sharon

Kudzu vines to dry for goat hay

Ricotta cheese from the mozarella whey

Cover crop for soil biomass

Mosul in his anti-mating apron (so he could stay with the girls longer)

more dill pickles

the last of this summer's blueberries

sweet potato flower

Jenny B and her 3-month-old poults

Sewing room progress: homes for weaving yarns and books

Greenhouse progress: trim for the first door

Newest additions: second batch of late July ducklings (five, total)

How's everyone else's summer coming along?

Homestead Summer in Photographs © Aug 2023

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Garden Notes: August 2022

 Rainfall

• 1st: 0.35"
• 3rd: 0.125"
• 4th: 1"
• 7th: 0.8"
• 11th: 0.9"
• 17th: 0.1"
• 19th: 0.5"
• 21st: 0.7"
• 26th: 0.1"
• Total: 4.575"

Temperature

• nighttime range: 68-75°F (20-24°C)
• daytime range: 78-94°F (25.5-34.5°C)

No complaints about August weather. We had good rainfall and generally cooler daily temperatures than July. We only saw 90s during the first and last weeks of the month. On the other hand, the higher humidity meant that it felt just as bad as the 90s! What really helps is when it gets down to below 70°F (21°C) at night because we can cool the house down, making it more tolerable during the day.

State of the garden

All I can say is, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everything is overgrown and runaway so that it looks a mess. But almost everything in it is useful!

Here we have cherry tomatoes, watermelon, mangels, horseradish,
celery, lambs quarter, sweet potatoes, raspberries, cowpeas, landrace 
brassicas, morning glory, a couple of carrots, and a potato plant or two.

Hoophouse: The living shade you see is hopniss, cherry tomatoes, and morning glories.

Also a volunteer winter squash, cultivated grape, and Chinese yams.

My largest sweet potato squash so far.

Inside the hoophouse are winter squash, Malabar spinach, violets,
strawberries (back right bed) and cultivated burdock (back left bed.)

Hugelkultur: winter squash, turtle beans, cherry tomatoes,
chicory, clover, morning glories, lambs quarter, & sunchokes.

Hugelkultur closeup featuring squash and chicory.

African keyhole garden: sweet potatoes and a survivor kale.
The porch trellis is growing green beans and cherry tomatoes.

I planted kale in the keyhole bed about a year ago. This is one of
two plants that survived both our cold winter and hot summer.

Picking and Preserving

Bucket full of cherry tomatoes, a few okra, and one lone pepper.

The cherry tomatoes are still going gangbusters. I got bored with making and canning pizza sauce, so I'm switching to tomato juice and ketchup.

The cucumbers are done, so our salads, now, are cherry tomatoes and kale.

Tomato, kale, and black olive salad
with homemade ricotta ranch dressing.

The okra hasn't been very productive. 

Okra is a member of the hibiscus family.

I don't plant a lot, just enough to have oven-fried okra a couple times a week during growing season, with a little extra to freeze for a side dish during winter. It hasn't produced that much, although it's making a better effort now that our daily highs aren't so scorching and we're getting a little more rain.

August is fig month, and these are the largest figs we've ever seen on our trees.

They aren't all this size, but it's amazing to find them. Can't take any credit, though, because the fig trees are pretty much on their own! They are next to the goat barn, so perhaps they're getting some rich rain runoff.

Breakfast: fresh figs on peanut butter granola with
kefir. Sometimes we swap the figs for diced pears.

There were lots to can.

And dessert!

Fresh fig cake with vanilla goat milk ice cream.

Pear harvest started in late July. The heaviest harvest was a couple weeks ago.

Bucket of pears.

One year, I spent days in the kitchen canning chunked pears, but Dan wasn't very enthusiastic about them. So now, I just make pear sauce. It's easier and faster to do, and we both like it.

Cinnamon pear sauce.

As pear picking slows and the pearsauce jars fill, I switch to drying them. Ditto for figs.

 

The cores and peels are being made into vinegar.

Elderberry harvest starts in late August.

First of the elderberries.

I used the first of them to flavor my canned figs and pearsauce. I also freeze them for jelly making this winter, and will make a couple batches of elderberry wine. This year I want to try an elderberry pear wine. I've experimented with adding other fruits for subtle flavor (of which some are more likable than others).

And a few parting shots.

Buckwheat planted as a cover crop in my newest swale bed.
Only a few plants came up, so this will be my seed crop.

Marigolds and a winter squash blossom.

Our first Orange Glo watermelon of the summer.

I picked the watermelon just the other day. They were planted late, and only after my cantaloupe plants all died. I'm not sure what happened to them. They were doing well until our hot dry spell. I watered them faithfully, but they weren't happy and that was that. The watermelons have done much better and we're just starting to enjoy them.

So there are the pictures to go along with my Summer Mantra blog post. I liked hearing about what you all have been up to in your gardens, so keep the comments coming. 😀

Garden Notes: August 2022 © August 2022

by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Liberating the Hoop House

My last garden project before picking and processing kicked into high gear was liberating the hoop house.

Left untended, the hoop house became an overgrown mess.

Our hoop house is one of those things that never quite lived up to my expectations. Originally, I covered it with poly sheeting in the hope of extending my fall growing season. But our winters have too many warm days which made the hoop house downright hot under the plastic. Everything bolted. Next, I tried covering it with shade cloth to extend my spring garden. That worked better, except one of our cats liked to use the fabric to climb his way to the top of the hoop house. Nice view, but he tore it with his claws.

Couldn't even tell there were raised beds in there, could you?

Eventually, I decided to use the hoop house for perennials. Some of these are reputed to become invasive, but with my raised box beds, I have a better chance of keeping them under control. To offer a little shade from our scorching summer sun, I planted vining ground nuts to cover the hoop house. That worked even better. (You can see pictures of all my experiments here.)

I used the pulled weeds as chop-and-drop mulch on bare spots in the pasture.

Neglect, however, has a way of making one wish they'd been more diligent with a project. Hence, the hoop house turned into a jungle. I've finally been able to tackle that job, and put my hoop house in order.

I only work in the garden in the morning (before it gets
too hot), so this job was spread out over several days.

Most of what I cleared out were volunteer cherry tomatoes, bindweed (unwanted morning glories) wild lettuce, lambs quarter, sheep sorrel, and wiregrass. Some of those are useful edibles, but they were out of control and shading out things that I want growing. I had to think twice before pulling the tomatoes (because I have a soft spot for volunteers) but Matt's Cherry Tomatoes are very prolific at volunteering, and I have more than I can keep up with anyway. So, with some regret, they got pulled.

After clearing out the jungle, everything got a
good watering, a dose of compost, and mulch.

I made some discoveries as I worked on this:

• I had missed quite a few strawberries that were covered.
• Last year's malabar spinach had reseeded itself and was growing under a layer of cherry tomatoes.
• The no-show bloody dock I planted on March 9th, finally decided to grow. At least some of it.
• My newly planted table grape was decimated by Japanese beetles. Hopefully, neem can save it.
• The Chinese yams were looking poorly.

Everything seems to be responding to my attention and care, except the dock, which got eaten after it was uncovered. I suspect skunks. We have a prolific population of them this year, and being omnivorous, they like to eat things like that.

As far as what's growing in it, there's not a lot to show you. But I'll close out with a few photos of what there is to see.

Hoop house reclaimed. Hopniss vines make natural shade.

Cultivated grape recovering from Japanese
beetle damage. The neem really worked!

The beetles did quite a bit of damage to the Chinese
yams too, but happily, they're recovering as well.

Fancy bindweed, aka morning glories. I didn't plant these! But they look pretty.

Cultivated burdock and volunteer winter squash.

Malabar spinach

Liberating the Hoop House © July 2022 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com