pictures

 late flowers

 grain field, not ready to harvest though, grain is still not hard, so threshing it destroys the grain...

 mountain yam, they grow well here if you water them

tiny rice happily growing

 bugs have been eating my black eyed peas...

 the few parsnips that sprouted are doing well

 lettuce going to seed, lots of seeds...

 kale going to seed

 delectica winter squash, was started in a pot, and is not growing as well as the squash that was direct seeded

 my hulless squash seeds, growing well !

 sorghum and beans, should have waited to plant the beans till the sorghum got taller...

 cucumbers !

 peanuts

 basil

 chard going to seed, looks like it will be making pounds of seeds,

 tiny grapes

 more tiny grapes

my friction grain threshing setup,
yes it is a block of wood with rubber on one side,
and a bit of hardware cloth over a bucket,
just put seeds heads on it and rub them to get the seeds out,
works very very well.

sleepy

I had forgotten to post for monday,
just remembered now,
so no pictures...

I planted the tiny bunching onions everywhere,
the big onions are finally going to seed
most things are big enough to not get hurt by the birds now,
the grapes are growing and doing well,

there is smoke in the air from somewhere far,

remember that once you get your garden running and working well,
your new job is to figure out how to keep it running well,
and that means learning every variable and how they interact.

I will take and post pictures of all tonight,
sorry for not having them up here now

edit:
I am not going to post pictures today,
it would seem as if I have mostly given up on this blog,
next post will be about my grain harvesting,
I had something happen that I was not expecting 

humming bird

so a humming bird has made a nest on some coax cable I have running to an antenna,

it is just right outside my window most of the time, the bird that is, the nest is always there...

found this a while ago where it should not have been, no food around  there,

so I put it on a leaf,
but I don't think it liked it, it ate some, then moved and tried another spot, then tried to eat more, then kind of gave up, so I tried to put it somewhere better

it would not let me take off the leaf and put it somewhere else,
I still think about it...

by the way, the garden is doing fine

wind

so the wind can really mess up plants,
it drys out the leaves way faster than if the air is not moving that much,
usually it is just hard on your plants,
so where you put your garden can make a huge difference,
put your garden behind a wind break, fences, houses, or trees work just fine,
so go out on a windy day and see where the least wind is (that is still in the sun)
and that is likely a good place for a garden,

the windy locations are bad places for gardens,

it has been windy here and it reminded me of this,
there are only a few really bad spots here though,
and the current garden boxes are in one of the spots,
and I did not put them there,
maybe I can get someone to build a fence to block the wind...

an update to the gardening here,
small plants are just getting big enough to easily see,
not to far away till the time where the ground will be hard to see.

neat reminder web site

there is a neat reminder website for the timing of your garden,
http://www.gardenate.com/
it is sorted by growing zone, just pick yours from the box near the top of the page,
just thought it was fun and worth sharing

alternatives

so I really want to grow rice here,
and I want basmati rice
I know it is grown in california because I see this in the stores,

but as hard as I looked I could not find seeds for it,
now if I was importing tons of seeds from china, or india, or somewhere else, then I could likely get them,
but nothing in any regular person obtainable size,

so I formed a plan,
the plan was to get organic (so it is not irradiated) brown rice,
now white rice and brown rice start off as the same seeds,
it is just a matter of how much you mill the rice to get one or the other,
so I figured that the brown rice might have enough of the seed left to sprout,
so I bought a bag of organic basmati rice from california

and then I hand sorted through every grain in the bag,
I looked for ones that had missed the milling entirely (and there were 3 in the bag)
also looked for ones that looked like they were mostly intact,
and I put the best ones in a cup with water,
and some have sprouted ! (look for the tiny white sprout on the side of the end of the grain)

so I now hope that they are short enough growing season for me to grow here,
I will find out in the fall...
the point to this is that if you can't get something the official way,
there are alternative methods of getting seeds.

also an update on the garden coming up,
the beans and black eyed peas are up,

 the cucumbers are up

and one of the peanuts is up,
it sure is gardening time around here