Saturday, July 4, 2009

Hot, Humid and Stuck Inside All Day: Poor Garden

It is suppose to rain today, but I'm not holding my breath. On a good note the cucumbers and the pumpkin are doing well. The cucumbers, now gently tied to the tee-pee trellis, is climbing up the poles quickly and the pumpkin is spreading wide about its mound. As for the watermelon... it really doesn't have much of a chance of survival. It will probably last one more week if at all. My husband is very disappointed about this and wants to just ho over the watermelon mounds, but I keep hoping for a good rain to bring them back to life. He is positive it is our clay like soil and the lack of rain keeping them from growing. Since we are on a neighborhood watering restriction right now, we can only water so often. I really wish we had rain barrels. I read the other day that Terracycle sells some of their barrels at Home Depot. Their products are sometimes affordable so we will have to take go to Home Depot and take a look. We need to do a lot of things, but we have just been so busy...

The cantelope is struggling too, but may still produce something. The potted Okra is taking a while to grow, but doing great. I would love to show updated pictures of our organic garden, but my 6 month old snatched it and dropped it to the floor, before I could stop him. The camera is broken beyond repair and now I can't take a picture of him (he's learning to crawl) or of the garden. However, I'm saving money to buy a new one. It may be a while though....Oh, well.

It seems our CSA farmers are suffering from the lack of rain too. The weekly newsletter mentions it all the time and it shows during the pickup. The veggie CSA pickup is down to giving us enough produce to only fill one bag again, sometimes not even a full bag. This week our new vegetable was one bell pepper. We also had onions, tomatoes, basil, and squash. The tomatoes seem to be picked early because they aren't very sweet. We are tired of squash, too tired to even talk or write about it anymore. The basil comes in abundance. It smells great and taste great when cooked in foods like tomatoes sauce. Our own basil is doing well too. It is the best looking herb in our herb planter. Our cilantro...poor thing...looks like it has been torched and set to decay standing. We will have to try it again soon now that we have an idea of what we did wrong. We never did move the plants to the new spot in the garden. In fact since the temperatures here began to rise to the mid 90's or more we began to do less and less outside. It's too hot! We tried but would come back in burned or dehydrated despite or water intake. It's hot inside too. Our AC isn't the best and our old house isn't well insulated.

The Topsy Turvy still has two tomatoes and are just now turning red. Our neighbor's Topsy Tuvy though is filled with red tomatoes. Next time we will try the pinching technique we read about in the gardening books from the library. I love library books. It's a great way to read a lot of books about the same subject without having to spend a dime. Just don't make the mistake of turning them in late like I did this past month. Wow, the charges will add up.

The meat CSA was dropped off at our door on the 27 of June. This is what we received:
2 New York Strip
Boneless Porkchop
Pork Italian Sausage
Beef Shoulder Roast
Por Cutlet
Pork Shoulder Roast
Pork Bacon
2 Ground Beef
Hot Digity Dogs
Whole chicken

Yesterday, I used the CSA bacon and the CSA Hot Digity Dogs plus a CSA onion, CSA tomato and a jalapeno to make frijoles a la charra. I cooked the ingredients above in a pan on the stove and then added them to a pot of almost ready cooked beans. I finished cooking the beans and then served it as a side dish with our meal. It was a tasty dish, but not as spicy as my husband and I are used to. My girls loved it.

I din't forget it is the fourth of July. Happy Fourth Of July Everyone!

More Interesting Stuff to Read


Is Organic Food Worth The Cost

AIR-igator: Collects AC Water For Your Garden

Food Independence Day
http://www.foodindependenceday.org/


Green House Kits - Easy to set up - Free Shipping

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