Gardening.

The garden is in!!!!!

I use the pepper to make salsa and dry the extras for chili powder. The Thai chili peppers I have a asian store that will give me store credit for them.
 
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Worked to day on training the grapes, removing dead wood and mulching the ground. The grapes are budding a lot earlier this year.
 
Well I have the grapes trained and the wild blackberry plants I have been fighting with the last three years have been removed well past the crown roots. The new twine is strung and I will cut and singe the ends when I get the rest of the bark mulch in place.

The corn is starting to sprout in the garden, and so is the weeds. So much for the natural stress practice of turning the soil 4 times too kill the weed seedlings.
 
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I'm envious of your garden. It sounds really large. My dad had a grape barber when I was very young, though I remember it quite well. He also raised a number of vegetables such as cucumbers and tomatoes. In the summer we would have a meal of fresh vegetables, especially when it was too hot to cook with the oven. No one had air conditioning in my neighborhood when I was a kid as everyone was poor.

Behind my parents house was a real operating farm, and this was in southerns New Jersey. At one time it really was the garden state.
 
I did the first picking of two of my "crops". Got about 2 cups of Blueberries and a good big hand full of snow peas so for.

Not going to count the 8 totes of weeds I have also pulled.
 
It sounds like the weeds greatly outnumbered the blueberries but hey, you've got fresh blueberries! When I was a little kid living on the outskirts of the Jersey Pine Barrens, my parents went to this sandy place where you bought cheap baskets and you could then pick blueberries and huckleberries until the baskets were full. We picked enough for my mom to make two blueberry pies and one huckleberry pie with blueberries left over for breakfast, etc. This was back in the days when she made the crusts from scratch using Crisco lard. I miss those days with my parents and I definitely miss eating those wonderful pies.
 
Picked another big bowl of snow peas tonight. These plants are just about done so I will think about planting a second crop.
 
Do the snow peas taste good? How do they differ from regular peas?
 
They are also called sugar pod peas.

You eat them from very young pea pods (shell and all) to older peas in a pod and the shell is still edible, but the peas may get a little hard and dry if they go to far.
 
I think I may have eaten some. Often the young ones taste sweeter.
 
dogboy said:
I think I may have eaten some. Often the young ones taste sweeter.
Most of the time you see them in Asian dishes. Either snow peas or sugar snap peas. Both have edible shells. Regular English peas (contrary to my brother belief ) are not tasty or edible.
 
my garden isn’t anything special but I got some more tomatoes ready to be plucked! This heat has been killer on my cantaloupe and my cucumbers are turning yellow when I don’t overwater them 🙃
 
You're right. I've eaten them in Asian food, sadly, mostly microwaveable quick dinners.
 
Boy get busy on other projects for 3 weeks and it does not take long for the tomato plants to go crazy and grow everywhere so that you cant walk down the rows. Plus the ony other thing to grow faster then them is the damn crab grass.
 
We've had a lot of rain this summer here in Virginia. In fact, we may break some records. Have you had a lot of rain as well? That will really make things grow wild.
 
dogboy said:
We've had a lot of rain this summer here in Virginia. In fact, we may break some records. Have you had a lot of rain as well? That will really make things grow wild.
We are actually behind on our annul rain fall and have been for well over 5 years now. However we are technically having a mild summer so temp have not been as hot as they could. That will make things grow even faster without the heat stress.
 
I think all your rainy weather has shifted over to the east coast. I've wondered if it's because of global warming?
 
dogboy said:
I think all your rainy weather has shifted over to the east coast. I've wondered if it's because of global warming?
Lets not get into that arguement, but there is a possibility. Based on what some of my college professors said in the mid 80's.
 
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Well I have picked two large bowls of green hemrod grapes and put most of them into the dehydrator for raisins. I now remember why I liked raising meat instead of plant crops.

I figured I was going to have a lot of grapes and be able to give the extra to a friend to make wine. Instead I have picked almost 3/4 of the crop and all that i will have to show for it is three pint jars of raisins and about 15 pounds of stems. The concord grapes are looking like they are not going to do much better but at least with them I will have three batches of jam and maybe enough large size grapes to do 1/2 of a batch of raisins.

I am greatful for what i will get, but for two years now i have tended the grapes according to the books. However 3 years ago when I was flat on my back during the spring when they should have been tended too, I did nothing and that year I had over 100 lbs of grapes and my neighbors where complaining because the vines where taking over their yards.
 
I remember as a little kid, my dad had a grape barbor and I think we had grapes to eat but I was very young.
 
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