Pumpkins everywhere

We are now in the teens for our pumpkin harvest.  Some are on the front porch, some are on the hearth, some are on the bookshelves in the living room.  I placed a 12 oz glass in the first photo so you could see how tall the one in the back is.  Pretty nice for a Spirit Bush pumpkin.  There are 4 or 5 more that will be ready soon.  

I better get back to making preparations for the Gingerbread Haunted House.  I just mixed up the dough (I haven't found a gluten free gingerbread recipe that holds up for long and makes sturdy enough walls so I made a regular white flour recipe and my hands are itchy - time to break out my steroid cream)

Royal icing is next! I make the gates, railing, and decorative edging before hand and let it dry on wax paper.  Then it's easy to apply it to the house with a little more icing.

My son carried all of these pumpkins down the hill and into the kitchen and onto the cabinet all on his own.  Amazing!

Garden Harvest and getting there...

These are some of the Cherokee Purple I've harvested.  They are delicious and are my second favorite for flavor and the plant produces a lot of tomatoes that are especially large.  This one weighed 1.2 lbs and the one to the right that you can sort of see was 1 lb.

I took photos tonight because it's Sunday and I don't work in my garden on Sunday.  I did walk around and look at it. 

Bell Peppers starting to get big.

 Cayenne Peppers

Cherokee Purple on the vine - splitting because I changed the water schedule again.

 Early Elberta peach tree

Small Early Girls

 Jalapeno

Melon

Big Daddy onions drying

Red Beef Steak

 My garden tonight

 Spirit Bush Pumpkin

Harvest Monday- Tilling up the Garden

It looks like the warmer temperatures this year mean that my drip line timer can go outside already.  It will crack if it freezes. I have it on every other day.  Best product I even purchased for my garden! I could attach another hose to it but that side is manual only and I mostly only use it to mix the fertilizer with water in a pail.

So as you can see I spent the morning tilling up my row garden.  I love my Honda mini-tiller.  A friend said she has a Mantis and can only use it part of the season and then it's too hard too use.  While I admit even my Honda has a hard time with rock hard soil baked by the sun, it has no problem with weeds or grass and when there is a little moisture in the soil.  The tines are bent inward in an L shape and this allows them to cut off the roots and dig down deeper.  Love that little tool.  

So last year I started doing these trenches around the drip line. The emitters are 12" apart.  And some plants don't have to be spaced that far apart.  This allows the water to get where it needs to be without watering everything.  And that helps control weeds.  The last thing I want is more to do than I have the strength for.  With the ground all tilled up it was super easy to rake in place.  Only a few drip lines are on right now thanks to the new ball valves.  Even more weed control! I'll be adding the rest of the seeds soon. It looks like tomorrow is the last cool day.  It's 87 today and tomorrow it will be 60 and windy.  After that I'll be able to plant anything I want.

I dumped the water out of the walls of water so they don't burn up my tomatoes.  After the wind tomorrow I will remove them all together.

I need 4 more tomato cages. 

I love how pretty and full they are starting to look.

This is the Cherokee Purple that I started from seed.

And I really must start my Early Girls earlier next year.  I don't know why I had such a hard time with them this year.  

The ball valve on OFF.

My garlic is looking good.  It will be ready the end of July. 

The green bunching onions on the side of the house are going to seed.  And there is a little ant visitor on it.  If you want some seeds in a few months, please let me know.  There will be plenty to share. 

My basil had a rough start but most of it survived and it will eventually be planted between the tomatoes.  I hear that it wards off tomato horn worms.  Last year I only had 1 surviving basil plant and it was right next to my heirloom tomatoes which had no pest problems while my romas on the other side of the yard with no basil plants had the biggest horn worm ever.  Yuck.

I need to get this square foot garden filled up.  My mom and dad gave it to me last year and it's 4x16 feet.  The voles have already been underneath the weed mat.  I may still put wire mesh down. Chicken wire isn't strong enough for voles. Hopefully this coming weekend will be a chance to get all that done.

The snow peas are looking okay.  I need to get the other trellis back over here but right now it's protecting my new Gala apple tree from the deer. I need about 8 feet of fence to finish it all off around that tree.

And this cattle panel piece is for my lemon cucumbers.  I'll be planting those seeds today and taking my kids to the lake.

My spirit bush pumpkins have all sprouted now.  I really need to get the rest of my pumpkin seeds planted out front.

And the strawberries are looking good.  We have a tiny patch.  And something has already eaten a few and left parts of them in the grass.  

And finally my grape vines are starting to grow.  I was seriously starting to wonder. I have 3 seedless red grapes next to my propane tank.  It looks like maybe this year we'll be able to trellis them. Which means I need to get two 8 foot 4x4s and watch this video again. They've been in the ground 3 years - this will be their 4th summer here.  They were bare root as well.  

Check out all the other garden links at Daphne's Dandelions!

Harvest - uhm not quite monday

I didn't quite get this done for harvest Monday.  But my neighbor said I could go get as many peppers and tomatillos as I wanted because they were out of jars.  They grow over 80 tomato plants.  I didn't even count the pepper plants.  The left 3 bags are Serrano chilies. The front red is chopped salsa peppers that he didn't know the name of.  The right two bags are jalapenos.  The far right bags are tomatillos.  He said to just throw them in the freezer and pull them out as I want to make salsa this winter.  Yum! He also have me the gourds.  One of his pumpkins crossed with the gourds and is all warty and about 4x's the size of the other pumpkins.  It's going to look cool on their porch.  

I bout that tall metal bucket for $1.  It was blue.  I spray painted it black and it works perfectly with my harvest decor.  

Pumpkins

I decided to pick the pumpkins before the pest control guy arrived just incase. Good news - I walked up to the garden and only got hit by a few grasshoppers rather than hundreds. I really want to freeze a little pumpkin this year.  Gluten free cake tastes so much better when it includes more flavorful items such as pumpkin and the spices that make it so delicious. As you can see I have 6 more Spirit Bush Pumpkins than I did the other day and one new Pump-Ke-Mon pumpkin (picked 3 more today).  And yes, I made that banner on the mantle.  I love Adobe Illustrator because it enhances my ability to make all sorts of crafts.  Of course, if you have a handy tool that makes making those rosettes easier I'd love to know.  Wow! That took a while.  

My pumpkins are a little early this year...

And I'm not sure why but my children are excited about it.  I've only picked one.  I am going to leave the rest until September 15th - unless the deer arrive first.  Last year they knocked one of the bush and took a few big nibbles out of another.  This is a Spirit Bush pumpkin and yes it grows on a bush instead of a vine and does much better in my soil than the vine type.  (And that's a Napoleon fireplace - the glass keeps the wasps from entering the house)

My friend Barbara was over the other day right after I picked this and it was dripping wet from a little wash.  She saw my pumpkin bushes out back and was so excited to hear about a bush type pumpkin plant.  I told her this one was a Spirit Bush pumpkin and she said she thought it was one of those pumpkins you can get at the craft store it was so perfect.  Looking at this photo I can see the imperfections in the pumpkin but I love it.

And my youngest is heading off to school.  It's the end of an era.  For 9 years I've been a happy stay at home mom 24/7.  I guess we'll see how this goes.  I made a cute scrapbook page for his teacher to display in the hall (all the kids bring one).  I changed all of the wording because you really don't need all the info about him.  I'm sure you're thinking it's an okay page but here's the kicker:  I made everything.  I made the background paper and drew the monkey plus the little frames and textured the circles.  I love Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.  I'm a digital scrapbooker for good. 

Now I better get back to cleaning the kids closets and choosing outfits. And finding something to replace chocolate. I have been breaking out in hives again and think that's what caused it.  I'm sad because I'm already allergic to wheat, soy, melons, nuts, and berries.  Of course maybe it's soy in the chocolate.  Either way most chocolate contains soy as an additive. 

Pumpkins

This is a Spirit Bush pumpkin.  It's a bush type of course, which means they take up less space.  And it seems to produce two perfect looking pumpkins per bush.  They were pretty small the week before.  And now they are bigger than a softball.  Of course I took these photos on the 24th of July.  I just took a lot of photos and its taking me this long to share.

You can see the 5 spirit bushes here and one little pumpkin enjoying some sun.

Here is the east pumpkin patch next to the green onions on the back upper tier.

And here is one sugar pie pumpkin.  We'll see if I get any pumpkins on the vine type this year.  Last year they started about September.  Too late.  They didn't even reach baseball size before the frost hit.

And here is a small Spirit Bush pumpkin hiding away in the leaves.  I just really liked the way the shadows fell across it.

And here is the West side pumpkin patch.  I planted these a little late and they just don't want to grow. Even with fertilizer! I tilled around them the other day.  I need to take the herbicide to that mess at the end.  I hate bind weed.  It looks like morning glory.  Only it's worse and it's roots can take up to 50 years to kill. I grew two yellow crook neck squash this year and they are just starting to grow squash.  I'm thinking kabobs would be great - someday.