WEEDS, Weeds, weeds

Fortunately central illinois has been getting an incredible amount of rain and sunshine. This has really got the plants growing like crazy... all the plants including the WEEDS!!! This time when we (Darlene, Sean, and I; I have to give proper credit) went to the garden the sole mission was to weed. We had to weed almost every part of the garden. This was accomplished by using a good ole' fashion hoe and the rototiller. Here's some overview shots of the garden.




You can really start to see the lettuce, swiss chard, and spinach starting to go to seed. I'm going to attempt to "harvest" the seeds so that I can use them for a fall crop or for next year.





Now a quick walk through of how everything is doing starting with the corn. We tilled it so hopefully that'll help with most of the weeds.



The okra is getting bigger:



Tomatillos. There are tons of flowers on a few of the plants. I can't wait for these guys.




Hopefully this little guy will turn in to a delicious eggplant.



Here is a shot of part of the 35+ tomato plants that we have. (I need to buy a canner soon so that I can get some great pasta sauce going).





Basil for the sauce. Hopefully we'll have enough....



Here are the zucchini. I haven't seen any goldens produce yet. Here's the regular green ones.




The squash climbing away.



Here are the sunflowers. I'm hoping these guys get to be 10 feet soon.




Now time for harvest... The beets finally are ready. So we picked some of those guys. A few are starting to go to seed so I'm excited about that. We planted both golden and Chioggia. The Chioggia is a ringed beet. I'll post when I use it so you can see the inside. Next year I will definitely be getting a dark red strain.




The cucumbers. Pickling these guys is going to be wonderful.



Hot peppers are on their way.



The cabbage is coming along. I'm wondering how these will go since we didn't started them indoors.



I forgot to take a picture of the ground cherries but they seem to be doing really good. There is three of them so hopefully they'll hold up and produce.

Here's the pick of the day.

Low Hanging Fruit

So we've gotten lots and lots of rain recently. Here's an overall shots of the garden.



Look how big the zucchini is getting!!


Here's our sweet corn. You can see the cats playing around. Also don't compare our corn to the round up corn to the right. It's like three times the size, cheaters!!


Snow snow peas! They are getting close to done :)


The okra is coming along...


LOOK!!!! A tomato!!!!!! I CANNOT for this to get ripe. There are about 3 of these guys.


Eggplant for Sean.


There are a few cabbages coming up. I hope they make it.


Here are the chickens. The cornish hens are getting close...


Sean picking cherries.


Mulberries aren't for birds!!!


Until next post, it will hopefully be some tasty food pics!

The start of my red neck

I officially have started my farmers tan / red neck. Note to self: buy a large brimmed hat, but not a ten gallon hat just to be clear. So I have a lot of exciting things to post this time around. I will start with we finally got another crop! Turnips and some small beets since they needed thinning.

Here is a west and east view of the garden. In the first picture you can see the two rows of sunflowers we have growing. They are to the right of the turnips. Next to the sunflowers are popcorn and broomcorn. Yes broomcorn, derek is going to show sean and I how to make some brooms. I'm pretty excited about it. In the second photo you can see the almost done raised beds. Unfortunately we didn't get these in in time to use them for tomatoes so we'll probably use them for this fall's crop.

This last picture is a better glimpse of the raised beds. These were HEAVY to carry out.

Here is the progress of the carrots, turnips, beets, ground cherry, and zucchini.

Since we are creative and crafty, derek had an old fence he wanted to take down so he had the idea to take the steel fence and make tomato cages out of them. We made 20 cages and ran out of fencing. We thought for sure that would be enough cages, turns out we have 30 something tomato plants.... oh man that's a lot of canning of salsa and tomato sauce.

A week ago Darlene and I planted ~15,000 basil seeds. Derek had the leftovers so we decided to plant them. Here's how they look so far. I can't wait for PESTO!

I hope you were able to read to the end of this post because I have a SURPRISE!!! The next two pictures will let you know the highlight of my weekend.

YES yes yes!!! Cherries! On sunday Greg and I spent 6 hours helping out. Our payment/reward at the end of the day was a slice of derek's homemade cherry pie with a scoop of ice cream. It was delicious, unfortunately I did not get a picture. BUT here is what I decided to make with the cherries that we picked. Cherry Crumble.

What happens when you pit 5 to 6 cups of cherries with your thumbs...

The finished product: DELICIOUS