Gardening, Good and Bad

When it was over 90 degrees on Monday, we didn't go outside a whole lot. Memorial Day doesn't mean a whole lot to us out here, but Phil slept on and off all day. Physically, with the scything and fencing and general work he's been doing, he had mentioned multiple times how sore he was. He really used the Sunday and Monday to rest up.

I spent the day rather unsuccessfully fighting discouragement. While there is much that continues to go well on the farm, there are challenges. A fairly humorous one: Charles the pig had escaped yesterday down to the cows. Somehow he hopped the electric line Phil had strung up especially for him. Then he walked the fence line until he found the one cattle panel that Phil had removed to work on a new pig area. He slipped through there and headed for parts unknown.

Phil and I each took a gully to search for him. Phil found him quickly, and lured him with grain right back to the pig pen. No big deal. But hiking through tick-infested woods in weather topping 100 (with the heat index), drippy, sticky. Ah, well. Not all of farming is glamorous.

Also, I submit gardening news: the Good.
Joe wanted to help me pick cucumbers. He went running off and came back proudly carrying his little blue sand pail. It held about ten cucumbers, but he was thrilled to be able to help, and I was thrilled with his ingenuity and companionship. What a great little guy!

I turned those cucumbers into sliced pickles, the lacto-fermented way: some whey, some Celtic sea salt, some mustard and some dill. When we get garlic, that will be even better.

The garlic has begun to brown on the tips. Probably a few more weeks before harvest.

My one most-perfect cabbage is just about ready to turn into sauerkraut.

The strawflowers, I'm surprised to see, actually have a texture of straw: shiny, and a bit flat. Very unusual.

Some of my potato plants are ridiculously large.

And gardening news: The Bad.
Some of my potato plans are just about nonexistent. These are plants that probably heated over 90 degrees in the greenhouse. A few are valiantly struggling up through the thin soil, but it appears the grasses are winning.

And even in the healthy plants, I was horrified to find what I assume are potato beetles. I probably should have killed them, but I took the photo, and promptly headed off to get dinner, forgetting the beetle issue entirely until I noticed these photos. Oops.

And the Asian greens, among others, are going to seed. I used a few of them. They grew beautifully, and decorated my garden nicely. But now that they are going to seed, they are about done.

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