Wednesday, June 16, 2010

I Know, I Know…

I’m late on my good day/bad day squash report.  I went out of town last Friday and didn’t get back until yesterday evening.  Bro asked me to dig up a mess of potatoes so he could cook up green beans and potatoes to take to the church tomorrow because a friend of my cousin had passed away and the funeral will be tomorrow… so I got out this morning and headed out with my camera.

The first stop was to the former playhouse where we keep the garden tools.  I opened the door and I was immediately hit behind my ear by a wasp, a yellow jacket.  It still is feeling like someone hit me with a needle full of cayenne pepper but I got the wasp spray and got my revenge and because I needed to get potatoes and take photos I grabbed my cultivator and got down to business.

First off, the potatoes…

garden and g.b. squash 001 You know me… I have to give you something for a size comparison so after I washed some of the dirt off they were ready for their photo op.  My Crocs are about the equivalent of a women’s size nine shoe.

garden and g.b. squash 002  This shot I wanted to put in to show you how beautifully thin skinned these red potatoes are and all that was done was a light wash to get the dirt off.  Makes my mouth water just looking at these.

Now to the good day/bad day squash…

garden and g.b. squash 004 Good day squash is on the left and bad day squash is on the right.

g-b-squash From north looking to south now so you can see the littlest bad day squash and the bigger bad day squash on the left and the good day on the right.

garden and g.b. squash 005 This is the littlest bad day squash.  It’s hanging in there but it is way smaller than all the rest but I must tell you that even though it is tiny the leaves are looking healthy.

g-b-squash This is the bigger of the bad day squash.  You can see a couple of photos back how much bigger the good day squash is now.

first bloom on good day squash Here is the first bloom on the good day squash.  The leaves are huge and the plants, the four good day squash that came up, are so healthy looking.  The broken stem there on the right was done when the storms came rolling through Monday night. 

Just a few more general garden shots now…

garden and g.b. squash 008  The two rows in the middle, the left one is alternating okra and black eyed peas.  The right one is okra.  To the right of them are some squash and zucchini that were plants already when we planted them.  We’ve gotten several messes of yellow squash and while the zuchs were planted later and we haven’t gotten any off them yet there are a bunch of blooms and young zuchs going now.

garden and g.b. squash 012 We are going to be begging people to take tomatoes if they keep on like they are going.  We planted 15 plants of several varieties and the plants are full and big, almost growing together, and they have a bunch of blooms on them.

garden and g.b. squash 014 Here’s another shot where I tried to just shoot looking down between the rows.

garden and g.b. squash 016 Another view of the tomato jungle looking from north to the south.

garden and g.b. squash 026 This is the backyard garden. The plants in front are the broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower that are all on their way out.

garden and g.b. squash 027 Here is one of the cabbage that is still growing.  You kind of get the idea of size with Spud, the Jack Russell, standing there checking for mice.

garden and g.b. squash 031 This is the potato bed that I raided for potatoes earlier.  We also planted potatoes in the bigger front garden but we planted them about three weeks after we put these in and so these are the plants we’ve been raiding for the past week or two.

And to wind up this post I have to put in a picture of the yellow daylily that you can see at the back of the above photo.  It is one of the daylillies that I transported from the garden in Noble and I’m so glad to see them starting to bloom.

garden and g.b. squash 033 This is one of my favorites.  I love the clear buttery yellow and this daylily is just that… no golden yellow hues to it, just the very clean clear yellow.

This concludes the second good day/bad day squash report.  I’ll try not to be so long for the next post.  I had to put off the mimosa blooms and the bad hair post because I needed to show the good day/bad day squash report so I will try to get it posted in the next couple of days.

By the way, does anyone have a good home fix for wasp stings?  I still have this awful pain in my head…

14 comments:

Lonicera said...

Way hay Helen - stunning new blog!!! New beginnings perhaps? Good for you. You never mention if you like cooking any of these gorgeous looking vegetables. Do you like stir fries??

You mentioned mimosas in your last post. Have you any photos of them?

Caroline

Tatersmama said...

What a great garden! That's what I want mine to look like... that is, if I ever get off my butt and do half the things I need to do.

Wasp stings? I swear by meat tenderizer mixed with just enough water to make a thick-ish paste... and Ibuprofen. The meat tenderizer actually draws out the poison.

farmlady said...

Stupid wasp!!
Your garden looks wonderful. Isn't it nice to have enough sunshine to grow any of this. It all looks great!

Tina said...

wow-your garden is bursting. I don't know how you can get such big stuff in Oklahoma....I wonder what they have in Texas? :)...Up here in rainy Oregon my squash is still tiny small. Only the peas and potatoes are growing with any speed.

I love love love the watercolor background.

hetty said...

Super garden, Helen! Everything looks so lush and green. Wish we had a longer growing season like you have. When do you usually plant stuff? Do you have frost in Oklahoma? Sorry to sound so dumb! We had an early spring this year, but I still had to wait until the last week of May to plant anything because we had night frost the week before. So far all I have harvested in my garden is some lettuce, basil and chives. But my zucchini and tomatoes have flowers on them.

Caution/Lisa said...

That's impressive stuff, Helen. I've also heard the meat tenderizer is the best thing. Hope your ear is much better today.

Cindy said...

You are going to have a TON of tomatoes!

Twisted Fencepost said...

What a terrible place to get stung! Ouch!!
The garden looks great. My squash haven't begun to bloom yet. I'm doing the sign test again this year too.
Maybe I'll have better luck than last year.
I haven't planted any potatoes in years and I sure do miss those new potatoes. I could live on potatoes alone.

Reddirt Woman said...

Caroline this may sound a bit crazy but I rarely cook. I have had a very small amount of experience with cooking. I like stir fries but I don't think I've ever cooked any, just eaten what others have prepared. That's what happens when you have two older sisters growing up and mom scooting me and my baby brother outside, out from underfoot. Mimosas are coming up in my next post tomorrow unless something happens...

Katie I had forgotten all about meat tenderizer! It's been so many years since I've gotten stung that I forgot all about it. I did the benydryl and tylenol thin.

Connie we had a pretty wet spring but, boy, has that changed in the last 2 weeks. Lots of sunshine and awful humidity... today the heat factor (temp. + humidity) was 104 f. Outside 15 minutes and sweat was dripping.

Hi, Tina. Lots of sunshine and water, water and more water. You have the water covered... now if you can get some sunshine! I love the watercolor background, too. I'm thankful that blogspot came up with some new choices for the techno-idiots like me that can't seem to figure out how to decorate their blog...

Reddirt Woman said...

Hetty the potatoes in the back garden, the one I raided, went in the ground in mid-March. An old timer told me that the potatoes should be in the ground by St. Patrick's Day. The rest of the potatoes went in about 3 weeks later because it was kind of crazy what with going to visit my sister and brother-in-law before he got really bad. The spinach, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower went in around the first week in April from seed but I didn't put any plants out, squash or tomatoes, until after April 15th because that is our late frost date and the ground has started warming up. If we have a late frost it is usually not a killing or hard frost after mid-April. Have you tried starting out some of your plants with cold frames?

Caution my head behind my ear is no longer stinging but it feels like I've been hit by a board. Wearing glasses puts some pressure on the area and I don't want to sleep on my left side because it will wake me up like a bad bruise.

Cindy I've already thought about how I'm going to have tomato hives from eating too many of them. We are going to be giving tomatoes away so to get them eaten instead of spoiling. I don't know how to can, unfortunately, because there's gonna be a 'butt-load' of tomatoes to use an old Okie expression...

Becky, potatoes are sooo easy! I never thought that they would be easy but I learned something else this year and am getting an even better batch this year. A friend told me to cut up the seed potatoes and lay the pieces out on newspaper or somewhere where they can dry out for a couple of days and then put them in the ground. The first year, last year, that I grew them we just cut them up and stuck them in the ground. While we did get a lot of return on the amount we planted, they weren't near the size of the ones I'm getting this year. I'm glad you,too, are doing the squash by the signs with me again this year. It was sure fun for me doing the corn last year. I'll tear myself away from face(crack) book and get back to checking out my blogging buddies.

Tipper said...

Love the squash report!! Such a difference in yours-I can't wait to see how everyone elses turn out!!

Around here wasp are called waspers-and the best remedy-is tobacco juice-now you're going to have to find someone who dips : )

Reddirt Woman said...

Tipper my brother came out to the garden with some wet cigarette tobacco that my cousin told him to put on the sting. I don't know that it was as effective as chewing tobacco would have been because it didn't hold together very well. Guess I need to buy a "plug of chaw" just to keep around in case of stings. I wouldn't chew it but I could wet it and mash it up.

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