New Kitties

Yesterday, our family adopted two male 5-month old cats.  We named the black one Chaos and the Grey striped one Mayhem.  They have been a lot of fun.  Lizzy and the cats seem to be getting along just fine.  Initially Lizzy was curious about them.  When the cats hissed at her because she got too close, Lizzy would just back away.

Since Lizzy has been acting totally non-threatening, the cats mostly just ignore her now.  Which is to be expected since they are cats.  Mayhem (the grey one) even drank out of her water bowl while she stood nearby.

Since they are rescued cats, they have already had most of their shots and have been neutered.  They also had microchips placed in them.  We LOVE them.

Today in the Garden

Today our family did some work out in the yard.  Benjamin and Naomi mowed the grass, removed the dog doo, and generally tidied up the back yard.  Benjamin also removed the dead tomato plants.  I dug out the carrots, and Brendon dug up the remaining blue potatoes.

Both carrots and potatoes have been hit by the bugs.  We did get about 2 large buckets full of potatoes to store in the cold storage room.  The carrots probably only filled 1 1/2 plastic wal-mart type bags.  We also found a few extra onions and brought them in as well.  This pretty much wraps up our vegetable and fruit garden, but we do still have a few things left to do in the yard before winter.

Brendon moved the Contorted Filbert tree to a better location today.  It was in a really hot spot in the yard, and prefers part shade.  He also planted a new lilac bush on the side of the house next to the garage.

Garden 2012

I am sure this post is not really of interest to anyone but me, but I am going to try to keep a garden journal to see what works and what doesn't from year to year.  This is my first entry.

This year we brought in a truckload of cow manure for the garden.  I planted heirloom vegetables, and my garden did not produce quite as well as it normally does.  The lettuce and spinach were buggy.   After spending way to much time washing a couple of bunches, I just pulled the rest and tossed them.  They were going to seed anyway.

I grew heirloom tomatoes from seed.  The plants got huge and took forever to set fruit.  For a while I worried that I wouldn't have any red ones before the end of the season.  I did get a few, but Lizzy stole the majority of the red ones and I have even caught her eating the green ones.  Since I couldn't keep her out of them, I finally dug most of the plants and tossed them.  I used the remaining wire support cages to build a barricade around the last 3 plants.  It didn't work, Lizzy is still eating them.  So, I didn't bother to cover the tomato plants before the freeze last night.

I planted both bush beans and peas, these plants seemed stunted and yellow.  Neither produced nice vegetables.

This year I tried cucumbers, they were bitter, and I only ate a few.  Eventually, I dug the plants and threw them away.  I decided not to pickle them, since I still have about half the pickles I did left from last summer.

The beets, onions, red potatoes, blue potatoes, zucchini, crookneck squash, delicata squash, butternut squash, lakota squash, and pumpkins all did well.  I canned the beets.  We haven't bought onions all summer and I still have a large bag of them in my refrigerator.

The blue potatoes and the carrots are still in the ground.  I suspect that the carrots are ok, but nothing like the bumper crop we enjoyed last year.  We have eaten a few of the blue potatoes.  They are good and seem to have produced adequately.

Yesterday, because it was going to freeze, I picked all my squash, zucchini, and pumpkins.  The squash and pumpkins have been ripe for a while, but since they haven't fallen off the vines, I was just picking them and using them as needed.  They are all stored in the cold storage room along with a bucket full of red potatoes.

 I also picked all the remaining red raspberries in the garden.  I have picked raspberries a few times in the last 3 weeks or so, and have even made a batch of cooked raspberry jam that I also canned.  I have quite a few in my freezer in the hopes that maybe the raspberry plants will survive the cold snap and I will get the rest that I need to make another batch of jam.  If not we will enjoy them in smoothies.

The Zestar apple tree produced apples and I bottled some apple jelly, apple butter, and applesauce.  (We have 4 apple trees, the Honeycrisp, Gala, and Transparent didn't produce fruit this year.)

We enjoyed a few peaches from both the White and the Elberta peach trees.  They are still relatively small, and didn't produce enough to preserve, so I bought a couple of boxes of peaches to freeze and bottle.

Our older Bartlett pear tree produced quite a few pears,  We ate a bunch and I bottled a few pints when too many ripened at once to eat.  We have two Bartlett pear trees.  We also enjoyed the fruit from the Asian pear tree.

We have two plum trees, and between the two got one plum.  They are both really young, so I wasn't expecting anything.

We have three cherry trees that didn't produce anything.

The apricot tree stayed alive, but the nectarine tree died.  (Both were planted this spring.)

We planted 6 concord grape plants.  All but one died.  We will try again next year.  I bought 2 boxes of  Concord grapes and made jelly and juice.

I am looking forward to the rest from gardening that winter provides, but I am sure I will be anxious to get started again in the spring.