The Crafty Cultivator

Finally I have a chance to put an update on here… I also hope to get a lot of catching up blog-wise next week. Because starting on Wednesday I have an unheard of 5 days off… And I didn’t even injure myself to get it!

Things in the backyard garden are not too exciting. My grand plans during the winter were slightly crushed when I injured the shoulder… And then again with the heartbreaking hail. BUT… My zucchini is flowering! It made a comeback and sent out a male and female flower last week… So I practiced what my grandma preached (when I asked her about zucchini growing- she is my go-to resource for all things zucchini) you pick the male flower (it is the one on the long stem) and then you put it inside the female flower (zucchini sex) and then “wiggle it around good” and hope that it results in a baby zucchini.
Well, we have a single baby zucchini growing!! And another set of male and female flowers getting ready for their turn. My zucchini dreams may not be crushed after all!

Other than the zucchini, not much else food-related is going on. The kale is doing awesome and the container carrots are going much slower than the ones out at the barn. The tomato that survived the hail, has a lot of flowers, but I haven’t been very diligent with the watering, so I may not get many fresh tomatoes.

The garden at the barn REALLY needs some attention with regards to the weeding… But we are able to get a load of fresh potatoes from my boss’s dad (his potatoes put ours to shame!!) luckily for us, he is very generous and has let is raid his side of the garden.

Our carrots out there are doing fantastic… I can’t wait to see them after they are done… The ones I am thinning out are getting quite large.

Also doing amazing there are the turnips! I was under the impression that they were slightly harder to grow… But we have some very large ones now… I’ll have to remember to take a picture with some kind of reference in it, because this doesn’t do it justice! (First picture, one of the stems of the leaves is roughly the size of my pinky finger (in circumfrance/diameter whatever you want to measure with)

Also the onions are starting to bulb up finally (if you can find them in all the weeds)… Side note: 2013 marks the first time I have been successful at onion growing! Even though I don’t really like them… The boyfriend does, and I kinda love him, so I will grown onions for him.

Also, the beets out there are starting to do their thing as well… So I may get some beets after all this year (backyard ones were drowned in torrential downpours that caused the flooding here… They are alive but VERY sad, and tiny)

This year hasn’t been wildly successful, but there was a lot of things standing in its way, so I’m focusing on the successes rather than the what-could-have-been’s.

I hope everyone is having a great summer! I really do have more posts in the works, I’m just not ready to send them out into the world just yet. Thank you for sticking by me!