Beginning of August Garden Update 2022

 I haven't posted a beginning of August garden update yet. By no means am I proud of every aspect of my garden. Quite to the contrary. There are parts of it that I'd rather just be done with, but the plants are alive and we will continue to care for them. I had some zucchini going, but the deer got them. I have a few little cucumbers. These are things that will be going into my new greenhouse next year. We just purchased a 20 foot long one. I'm more than doubling my greenhouse space. I have to. The critters got my cucurbits, my peppers, my corn and they would have my pole beans stripped if it weren't for Bob covering them with bird netting.
So this is what's going on now.

We have all sorts of tomatoes on the plants. None have ripened yet. I also included a photo of that volunteer er..tomato, too.

These are my rhubarb plants and my tomato bin.

The rhubarb are shaping up nicely. I've gotten around a quart or so from the 2 plants.

These are Scarlet Runner beans on the trellis. They are just starting to bloom.

Another shot of my rhubarb bushes. I want to add around 5 or so more.

This is a Cannellini bean. I'm growing these out for someone although I don't think I'm going to be able to send back the agreed amount of beans to that person this year. I may have to just save these and try again next year. That soil sure put me behind the 8-ball.

This is another bean variety that I'm growing for someone. These are called Senate Navy Soup beans. Again, horrible soil. 

My eggplant look completely and utterly pathetic. I bought these all as starter plants and planted them over where the carrots didn't come up. I have 4 plants and I have 3 eggplant between all 4. This is the Ichiban variety.

This is the Casper variety. I've never eaten a white eggplant before.

This is an eggplant bloom. This is on my Black Beauty eggplant.

We harvested the biggest cabbage. We're letting these go for a bit longer. These will get harvested soon. We are going to be going through our freezers and making up a care package of raw meat for a dog, so I'll have room to freeze these. One of them is going to my sister.

I'm letting a few of the Walla Walla Sweet onions go to seed. I don't know if any of you have priced seeds for this variety, but they are holy cow expensive, if you can even find them!

The broccoli is about done. I will be growing some more this fall, along with cauliflower.

 I bought 3 clematis bushes. 2 have survived.

I harvested all of the garlic. All of that poor, traumatized garlic that got uprooted and moved up here and replanted. I'm surprised that I even got any at all, if the truth be told.

I'm curing it in the greenhouse. It's a good place for it to do that. I ordered another half pound of seed garlic. It should arrive next month some time.

Baby cucamelons!! I think I just may see a little bit of a harvest on these!

These are my Tigger melon vines. They are loaded with blooms, but I don't know if I will be able to get them to fruit.

This is the row of pots that I have growing in the greenhouse. I can't wait to get that other one up here and put together. We're thinking about how we can really stabilize this one so that I can grow through the winter.

Another baby cucamelon. I really enjoyed the 4 I got last year when I grew them.

Baby okra starting out. I've harvest a dozen or so pods already. Okra will always have a place in my greenhouse from now on.
I ordered a couple of new varieties to try next year.

These Jing Orange okra are stunning looking plants.

This is an Okinawa Pink okra. I contemplated ordering these seeds from Baker Creek, but I ultimately decided not to. The Jing Orange had many more positive reviews and they weren't anywhere near as expensive.

This is my Siamese bitter melon. I ordered seeds so that I could grow this again next year. I obtained the seeds I planted this year from a trade.

I left the cups in the pots because they help me to keep the vines separated.

I hope you enjoyed the garden tour!

Grow Bag Potato Harvest

 We had planted out 9 grow bags of potatoes last year. We wound up not harvesting 3 of them. They were the ones that I planted out with Yukon Golds. I can't remember exactly why we didn't, I just know that we didn't. Those potatoes went through quite a bit. Floods, rains, snow, being moved, etc. We figured we'd leave them alone and just see what they would do this year. We didn't feed them or anything. All I did was put a bit of straw on the top to cover up the green leaves.

Today, we decided to harvest.

I grow potatoes in a very loose medium. It consists mostly of junk I got from under trees out in the woods. I've been using the same medium for the past 3 years or so. I get decent results. I wasn't expecting much from these bags, but they did surprise me.

When I went outside, Bob had already dumped the first bag. This was the result. Keep in mind that these were not fed and were leftover from last year.

Then he emptied the second bag. We are saving the growing medium to use again next year. It works quite well. I'll actually feed them next year.

I don't know what it is about digging the potatoes but it's like digging for buried treasure.

Here's more of the second grow bag results.

And even more. Bob has a great system in place for growing through and gleaning the potatoes.

Once he's completely gone through the growing medium and he's put the potatoes in the box, he funnels the growing medium back into the grow bags.

Results. That's all I can say. I'm impressed with the results.

The final grow bag is revealing it's Yukon Gold treasures.

Unearthing the final grow bag's results.

Come out, little potatoes! We know you're hiding in there!

I think we got the highest number of potatoes from the third bag.

More little Yukon Gold treasures.

Rose wanted to help. She's a good farm helper.
Once everything was said and done, we wound up with about 4-5 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes that we don't have to buy from the store at 99 cents per pound.
Not too shabby.

Marionberry Cobbler Baked On The Grill

 It's marionberry season here in the Pacific Northwest. Marionberries were created at Oregon State University and they are a cross between two blackberry varieties. They have notes of raspberry in the taste and I look forward to getting them every summer. I make jam, BBQ sauce and, one of our favorites, cobbler.

I do not use my propane oven in the summer. Even with 2 air conditioners going, it would just get too hot. Years ago, I figured out how to bake using the upper rack of a gas BBQ grill.

The batter is sweet. The berries are tart. This just hits the spot when you want something sweet.

I start out by spraying my glass 8x8-inch with non-stick spray.

Then I mix up the batter. The batter is super simple. It only has 6 ingredients.

Then I sprinkle the marionberries over the top of the batter and I sprinkle sugar on the top of those. Not too much sugar over the top, just 1/4-1/3 cup is all you need. The majority of the sugar goes into the batter.

Then we put the baking dish on top of a baking sheet and we put that on the top rack of the gas grill. I can't give you a definite baking time because it's all subjective. I start checking mine around 45 minutes in.

Delicious!

Marionberry Cobbler

4 cups fresh marionberries (or blackberries)
1 cup flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
1 cup milk (or half & half)

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt with 1 cup of the sugar. Reserve the rest of the sugar.
Mix in the milk and the melted butter and whisk until no lumps remain in the batter and the butter is incorporated into the batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle marionberries evenly over the top of the batter. Top the berries with the reserved sugar.
**NOTE! Before you put the berries on the batter, taste one. If you think they will need more than 1/4 cup of sugar, add it in. This is purely to taste.

You can either slide this onto the top rack of your gas grill and bake it until it's gold and bubbly (that reminds me of that movie Steel Magnolias where Truvy is giving Clairie that fruit cocktail recipe) or you could put it into a 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes.

Enjoy!

SW Washington State Gardening In August

 I imagine that you guys are getting rather sick and tired of garden posts, but I keep posting them because, having moved up here to this property in January, this is my learning year as far as gardening goes.
I've learned that I can buy the most highly recommended soil out there but if it's deficient, it's not going to work for my garden.
I've learned that daily watering is making my bush beans' leaves turn yellow and I have to give them some epsom salts in hopes of having them green up.
I've learned that I am very capable of growing tomatoes from seed and it really isn't that hard. They are thriving and I can post photos that I take from back in my garden area. I refuse to walk over there without Bob going through first to scare off the snakes. He put some of the metal components to our canopy (the one that goes over the trailer) by there and the snakes hang out and absorb the heat. Nasty. Yuck. I do not like snakes. Where there are snakes, I'm not going there. Period. LOL.
Sue me.

I've learned that I love to grow in a greenhouse! I'm on the hunt for a used high tunnel.

Here are some harvest photos as of late.

This is some Persian basil. It's one of my three heaviest producers out of the nine basil varieties that I planted this year.

I'm going to order some pine nuts from Amazon in the next few days because I really need to make some basil. I'm also going to dehydrate a whole bunch of it to use through the winter.

This was part of today's meager harvest. We're phasing out of the greens/lettuces and peas. They are at the end of their production. I pulled the last few green leaf lettuce plants out and tossed them out where the deer and rabbits could snack on them. Next, I'll be getting the spent pea vines cut out and gone. I do plan on a fall crop of peas, for sure.

I didn't plant all that many beets this year. I just tucked them into my Pride & Joy bed here and there and let them grow. They liked being neighbors with the onions, broccoli, peas, lettuce and cabbage. I'll be planting some cauliflower, kale and different cabbages into that bed this fall. I may seed in some carrots just to see what they will do because they didn't work out too hot where I initially wanted to plant them. I think I'll put in some celery.

We went ahead and harvested our biggest cabbage. It weighs between 7-10 pounds. I have 3 other good sized ones out there still. I'm going to give one to my sister and I'll turn the other 2 into more sauerkraut.

Beans and peas. These beans were from those packs of Dollar Tree beans that I picked up. They were 4 for $1.

The livestock came around yesterday. We will not harm these guys. They can come up here and have a safe place to stay during hunting season. We will not allow hunting on our property. Anyhow, Bob tossed some carrots and old lettuce leaves out for the rabbits and these guys thought they would get in on the snack, too.
I want to make it abundantly clear that neither Bob or I are fans of venison.

This is the view of the greenhouse as you pull into the driveway up here. I, realistically, would like to get 2 more of these if I'm not able to find a used high tunnel somewhere.

This is our strawberry bed. We pulled a few gallons of berries out of there this year. We are going to revamp how we net it next year.

The blackberries that grow wild all over this property are starting to turn ripe. I'd like to get 5 gallons put into the freezer. That would be plenty for jam, pies, BBQ sauce and syrup for the next year.

These are the remaining cabbages in my largest raised bed. One is for my sister and the other 2 are for sauerkraut.

Cabbages in the front and broccoli behind them. Behind the broccoli is a mixture of different things.

Some of the Walla Walla Sweet onions are going to seed, which is fine with me because, that way, I won't have to buy any.

I put these 3 cabbages into pots. I'm going plant them where the peas are growing in a few weeks.

The broccoli is still sending out little side shoots. I catch some of them in time to eat them and others go to flower and I toss them out for the deer and rabbits.

This is one of the beets that I picked today. It's a Golden beet and the seeds came from Baker Creek.

The guy that lived up here before us grew tomatoes in this raised bed. We have some volunteers coming up. I doubt we get anything off of them, but it's still cool to watch them grow. I'll leave them be. They aren't hurting anything. If push comes to shove, I'll carefully dig them out and put them into the greenhouse. 

The view of that largest bed from the back. All that greenery will be coming out within the next couple of weeks.

My cucurbits are growing by leaps and bounds. I'm pretty impressed with these. We've left the doors on the greenhouse rolled up so that there is a breeze that goes through. I think we should open the screen doors, too, so that we can get pollinator insects in there, as well.

Every day, I go in there and I keep winding the vines around their respective stakes. They want to reach out and touch their neighbors. I don't really want them to do that, however.

This my Loofah gourd vine. It's so healthy looking!
Again, I don't know if I will have enough time to get it to produce anything, but I'm certainly going to try!

In this pot, I have a Okinawa Pink okra in the back (I was wrong in my last blog post about having 7 okra plants. I don't. I have 9.) I have a Minnesota Midget cantaloupe in the front of it. 

I've never seen okra grow before. This process is utterly fascinating to me. 

Each bloom turns into an okra pod. I've gotten 6 so far.

They aren't very tall but they are producing. I can't ask for more than that.

This is the Siamese bitter melon plant. I'm crossing my fingers that it will produce a fruit!

The cantaloupe is starting to crawl out of the pot.

This is the Kajari and Tigger melon pot. They are thriving.

I have baby cucamelons! I would love to have a bumper crop of these! I bought a starter plant last year and I only was able to harvest 4 off of it. I have several blooms on this one. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to put a pint of cucamelon pickles up this year. That would be awesome!

Thanks for touring the garden with me. Tonight, we're harvesting the grow bags of potatoes. I can't wait to see what we get.
I'm off to clean up beans for dinner.