The chicks are a month old now, and are all getting quite large. Poor lazy confused birds. I threw an ear of fresh corn in the pen and they just stood there and looked at it. We patiently waited for them to figure out that it was food, but alas, that never happened. They laid on it, instead. Now, when we throw an ear of corn in with the hens, one will grab it and run, trying to keep it for herself. Today, they each got their own ear, and there was no chasing necessary by the others because they truly cannot grab two ears at the same time. :)
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| 1 month old Cornish cross |
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| A lazy afternoon |
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As we head into our fall planting season, we are wrapping up the harvest of beans, corn, and dill. I pick a hand full of Sungold cherry tomatoes every day and this is going to be a long harvest through September. The German tomatoes are massive. Too heavy for the plant to stand on its own. Had to put the bucket into a tub and place a cinder block next to hold it up. We are getting about one ripe Purple Cherokee Tomato per week. They are not as large as the German but there are a couple that are fairly large.
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| Large Gold German |
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| Bucket in the Tub |
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| Purple Cherokee Tomatoes |
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| SunGold Tomatoes |
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The cucumber plants (at least the older ones) are starting to die back so that was a fairly short season, but we did get a bunch of cucumbers. I am hopeful to get three more here at the end of the season that I can pickle.
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| Older Cucumber Plant going Yellow |
Crazy Carrot - I kept watching this one carrot in the center of the others that never seemed to mature - no orange top that popped up through the soil. But today, Noticed that the of the leaves was thick and very spinney looking, like a wild carrot would look. So I pulled it up, and to my surprise, it WAS a wild carrot! Crazy.
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| Wild Carrot in Garden |
The Lettuce and the Broccoli are in a battle with Slugs and Beetles. On the Broccoli, I think the tiny holes are from flea beetles, while the large chewed away sections are from slugs. For the past few nights, I have been sprinkling a layer of diatomaceous earth (DE) around the broccoli starts and I think it is helping. As for the lettuce, I wrapped Copper tape around the pots. But it only works until a leaf falls over the side and the slugs reach out and pull over over the copper! Smart Slugs!
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| Poor damaged broccoli sprouts |
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| Baby Romaine |
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We pulled 18 ears of corn today. I blanched 15 of them for frozen corn packets. That will give us five meals of corn. I found another ear with conjoined baby ears. This one actually had two baby ears attached. Some seriously weird corn this year.
We also picked a bunch of green beans. I had tried to freeze some green beans earlier this month, using an unblanched recipe, and we were not too impressed. So today, I chopped the beans in half and blanched them for three minutes before putting them into individual serving (sandwich) bags for the freezer. We will get three meals from what we picked today. When they are totally frozen, I will put the bags into large freezer bags to avoid them getting freezer burn... if they last that long.
So we are heading into our final week of August.
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