Summer finally, I think.......

I am cautiously optimistic that we are finally in a summer weather pattern. Things have been rolling along here, been taking lots of early green type vegs to market, even some cukes and zucchini. The green things have been loving the cool wet weather we had up until now, the outside fruiting crops not so much. But things are turning around now. Inside the tunnel. however, the tomatos/zucchini/cukes have been thinking it's summer for a while, as you can see below.

And, I love the look of lettuce of different texture and color, rolling up the hillside (actually down the hillside, in this case.) We had to start planting this spring in the higher areas first, while waiting for things to dry out down in the hollers. :)

Ignore the weeds, their day is coming. :)

It's nice to have lots of salad material again. We eat lots of salad this time of year, kinda like you eat with the seasons, whatever's growing at the moment. A big bowl of chili on a 90 degree day, no thanks. But salad? You betcha!

Fresh red and green leaf lettuce, cukes, green onions, home-grown pinto beans, fresh eggs from the hen coop, grated beets (these we put into earth pits last fall, they are still in great shape!!), croutons, elbow macaroni, raisins, sunflower seeds, and home made dressing. Yum!

Here's a mounded "hugelbed" in progress......

Almost there....

dug out with shovels, logs hauled in, layered with hay and grasses and such, a layer of hen coop material, then mounded up with dirt, as below.

Watermelon and cukes, more stuff to come.

'Twas a bit of a job, but it's an experiment. I noticed an interesting thing, when I was planting, you could feel the heat of the material slowly starting to break down under the dirt. The watermelon and cukes are loving it. I'm gonna plant a bunch more things, little bit of each kind of crop, and see how they like it. Maybe make some more mounded beds if it works out. But, if we make a whole bunch, gonna have to get some bigger equipment in here then making them by hand, otherwise it'll take so long I'll either be pushing daisies or too old to plant them by the time we'd be done. :)

Help! Cukes gone wild in the seed-starting tunnel.....

In a case of poor management of my part, I should've made a trellis of some sort for these vines to climb up on. I think we're gonna have to drape some mesh trellis material over the upper rails, and somehow train the vines to start climbing. Right now they seem to want to run all over the path. But, they are making cukes, so it's good.

Shrooms!

A year or so ago we bought some shiitake plugs from Fungi Perfecti in Washington state, drilled some holes in a couple maple logs, and let them start colonizing. This spring we started getting mushrooms. Kinda neat- you soak them in water for a couple days or so, take 'em out, set them somewhere, and watch what happens. Just another way to get some good eatin' off your own place. I think I'm gonna order a bunch more plugs and get a lot of logs going.


Here's a couple pictures of some crops going to seed (yes, they are supposed to, I want to collect seed). Evergreen Bunching onions in the top pic, and Lutz Green Leaf beets below. More on seed saving when there's more to talk about. :)

In closing, here's a few more pictures, and a neat paragraph about family I saw a while back, so I saved it. :)

First rose in the round flower garden

Huge cloud Sunday evening north of the place

Another awesome sky formation the same evening

Saw online, no copyright infringement intended. :)

I feel blessed and thankful to be surrounded by both blood family and family like the above. Gotta run, y'all take care now!!