A Walk in the Woods
Last night we played hooky from our chores. We decided a hike was a better way to spend our evening. The evening was spent gathering sumac seed heads to make lemonade and mushrooms to identify in order to practice what we learned in class on Sunday.
It was an enjoyable way to spend a couple hours. There really is nothing better than being inspired by the natural world. There’s so much color and beauty right before our eyes, we can sometimes forget if we don’t get out to see it. Now that the mosquito population is waning, we hope to spend a lot more time out in the woods discovering what we have. I think the resident Chiots enjoyed herself as much as we did. Now that we’ve found an all natural pain killer for her, she’s back to enjoying longer hikes once again.
When was the last time you went on a hike?
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Missing
I’m really missing that extra sunlight from summer. Technically it’s still summer, but the days are getting noticeably shorter. It’s getting dark around 7:30 here and that’s just too soon for me. Even in summer there aren’t enough hours in the day to get done what I need to, but this time of year it’s a constant race against sunset.
Last night I mowed until I couldn’t see any more and I still didn’t get it all finished. With all the rain we’ve been having, yesterday was our only dry day. I was trying to mow the entire yard before the rain comes again, I almost finished the job, but not quite.
Are you noticing fewer daylight hours?
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Cabbages
Back in Ohio, my soil was much to lean and dry to grow a decent cabbage. This year, I finally have a few beautiful cabbages in the garden. I can’t wait to harvest these lovelies to make a BIG batch of sauerkraut.
I have 6 of these green cabbages in the garden that could be harvested any day. The red ones still need another month or so. They’re lagging because of the big maple tree that’s planted a little too close to the potager.
Do you struggle to grow any certain vegetable?
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Sets or Pearls
Very early this spring, I direct sowed some onion seed in the low tunnel. I added a label that said “bunching onions”. Since I had seed for red bunching onions, I wasn’t surprised when they came up with red stems. Then, they started to bulb a little, not exactly what I thought was going to happen.
Evidently, these were bulbing onions and not bunching onions. I don’t know if I planted the wrong packet of seed, or if the seed packet was mislabeled. It doesn’t really matter, I can use these onions as pearl onions or I could save them and use them as sets for next year. I don’t usually grow onions from sets because they have a tendency to flower and I don’t find that they store as well.
Of course pearl onions would be nice as well, I was thinking I might pickle them if I chose to use them in that way. Peeling all those onions will be a chore though, not something I’m looking forward to.
Would you save these and plant them or enjoy them as pearl onions?
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Welcome
This year I have a few welcome guests in the main garden out back. There’s a beautiful row of sunflowers. They are certainly very welcome, most likely deposited there from some seed that I fed to the pigs.
Hopefully in the coming years I’ll have space to plant a few rows of these beauties. They’re such happy flowers, they look especially happy in the evening with the sun setting behind them. The nice thing is that these lovelies will also provide seeds for our chickens, that is if the squirrels don’t find them first!
Do you grow sunflowers in your garden?
