Left the garden for a week and came back to very swollen sugar snap peas. Over the last weeks I have harvested approximately 7 large colanders full of peas. The peas I came home to were too large to eat with the pod so I spent an hour and a half shelling them. The peas inside varied in size from petite size peas to small marble sized. I place them on a cookie sheet to freeze them. It was a lot of work to shell and I think I got 4-6 cups of peas out of it. The broccoli bolted (which means it want to start going to flower) and I still cut it off and plan to use the bits and stalk pieces to make a cream of brocolli soup to freeze for later. I should have cut the heads before I left; knowing the heat was coming. I think I was getting greedy wanting them to grow a little bit bigger. Too hot now. I will have to see maybe if I’m up for a late summer planting to harvest in Fall – summer is just to hot here for broccoli.
Green beans are starting to take off and crawl up the trellis I made. The earlier planted wax beans have immature beans on them and the extra pkg I planted are sprouted and growing. This will mean that I will be able to spread the harvest out. These beans just really appear to want the heat to germinate and sprout.
The squash, zuchinni are starting to have flowers and the watermelon and catelopes are really starting to take off now too. My oldest planted pumpkin seeds and those have sprouted and are on their way (I only hope they don’t take over).
Tomatoes are growing and I have a few fruit on one of the plants. My hedgerow isn’t going exactly as I planned; I think I placed the trellis too far apart. I still think it’s a good idea; I’ll have to place the trellis closer together next year. We’ll still observe through the growing season.
I have a lot of weeds in the garden and it is overwhelming. I did spray some before I left. It seems that for each 1 I sprayed, 5 more replaced it.
Idaho Home Grown 
Naomi Pockell
July 6, 2011 at 2:17 am
oooo. don’t spray…. Have the kids go out there and run a hoe through the weeds. You should try broccoli and spinach, and maybe even cabbage in the late summer for fall/winter harvest. Do you know kolrabi? sort of radishy, but it’s a pseudobulb that grows above ground. It’s also a winter crop. Of course, I don’t know what your winters are like–are crops just buried under snow? All this garden stuff is great, but I really love your elk and deer hunting. So lucky!
Idaho Home Grown
July 8, 2011 at 2:29 pm
I haven’t had the time to spray even! Each time I go out there I just spend 5 minutes picking; it’s the best I can do for the time being. My neighbor plants kolrabi each year and to be honest I don’t know exactly how to prepare it? Do you have any good recipes? Ooo, i forgot about the spinach – I will plant more of that. Yes it snows here but earliest usually is late november and latest – well sometimes into May, but sparingly. When we get into hunting season, I will likely continue to post. Hunting season typically opens in mid-october which also coincides with canning, but earlier if using different weapons. Ron says he will be taking Andrew up in late August to hunt for a cow elk with short range weapons, which is good because we are low on meat!