I know, I Know!

I'm sure my posts are getting boring with only pictures of Veggies. However it excites me to go out and keep pulling in a big bucket of Veggies each time I go out. especially since Fall is starting to rear its ugly head. Okay fall isn't ugly it's beautiful but it is winters close friend and as soon as we get the first frost Tomato season is OVER! (Tear!) :'(

Anyway as soon as I get in the groove of being back to school and we have a warm enough day I'll go out and smoke the bees and grab a bunch of honey, I'll try to get that on video to give y'all something to peek at new besides garden stuff.

More Assorted Garden Scwagg

Just a picture of a bunch of garden stuff I pulled out of the garden on Thursday the 26th. I've been getting about this much or so... each week. And yes that little cantaloupe was grown in my garden as is Muy tasty!

Cornucopia... Ummm Sans the cornucopia LOL

Just a Random Sampling of stuff I pulled out of the garden today (August 11th). In the back is a pile of Anaheim and Hungarian Wax peppers. I have a Brandywine OTV Tomato, and a Pink Tie-Dye Heirloom tomato in the middle. There are two long Asian eggplants on the left, and a black beauty eggplant on the right. Summer Yellow squash on the left and yellow zucchini on the right. A cucumber and pile of Jalapeños. The two pink cherry tomatoes are Wickline (heirlooms also). The small plum is an heirloom variety called
Baselbieter Roeteli. The three purple cherry's are actually called black cherry tomatoes. And the two tiny ones are Matt's wild cherry which are heirloom also. all good tasty stuff folks!

Random Veggie Porn

Sorry to disappoint you if you ran across this blog doing a Google search for naked pictures of people with brain damage. What I have here is pure unadulterated pictures of beautiful and tasty vegetables from my garden.







The first picture above is a Brandywine OTV heirloom tomato. and all the rest are of a Pink Tie-Dye Tomato, the first tomatoes eaten out of the garden this year. And quite possibly one of the tastiest tomatoes I have ever eaten! No I'm serious!

Here is one of my ladies at work.

Aug 2nd Garden Update

Yesterday I went out and did a quick couple of garden videos. I have been pretty happy with the growth over the past couple of weeks things are just taking off. I don't have any ripe tomatoes yet but I have plenty headed that way and several of my plants are taller than me climbing up the trellises. They are a little pungent and after pruning I have green all over my fingertips but I honestly love the smell and feel of tomato plants. I would be a sad gardener if I ever became allergic. lol

Honey for nothin' and Wax for free!

As a novice beekeeper I had initially read many books that stated not to expect too much honey the first year. However we had a pretty late honey flow this year due to colder weather in the spring and early summer so when they started pullin it in boy they started pulling it in! Even with the one swarm we had this year I still have frame after frame full of Honey and Honey comb. A few weeks ago I cut out a small bit of comb to bring in and see how it tasted being a first year beekeeper and let me tell you... It was sweet! I went out today to do an inspection on my hive that swarmed earlier in the summer. About a week ago I did an inspection on the other hive. I had so many frames full of Honey in this one I checked today I decided to Borrow one from the bees. (Well we probably won't give it back.) There are a few different ways to go about getting the Honey. The most common way is to use an extractor. An extractor is basically a centrifuge that you place the frames into, and it spins the honey out. Initially you scrape or cut the protective outer coating of beeswax and this will leave open cells for the extractor. There are both hand crank and electric extractors but regardless of the power most are a little out of the price range of novice beekeepers. The second method is crush and strain. And this is the method I used today. For every beekeeper you will read or hear a different method, and or opinion about doing certain things. Some say crush and strain adds hardship to the bees since they are always having to remake new comb to replace what you crushed. Some say its good because the bees naturally make wax anyway and this way they are continually providing clean wax to raise brood and store honey and pollen in. This is said to limit some of the diseases that can spread in old wax. Regardless, for now I am going to stick to the Crush and Strain method. For one I like the idea of clean and new wax. And I don't really plan on extracting all my honey out to sell it. I will probably fill a half dozen to a dozen bottles to use personally and give away to family and friends. The rest of the Honey I will leave for the bees to make it through the winter. I have read and heard that this also will make for healthier Bees. A lot of beekeepers will take the majority of the Honey in the fall and leave the bees sugar water to store to survive on for the winter. While this has been successful, it is said that Honey provides a much better pH to keep the bees healthy through the winter. And I like healthy natural bees. The Picture above is how much Honey I got out of "1" frame. Yes "1" frame! I scraped the honey filled comb into a 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bag (that you can pick up at your local home improvement super store)and squeezed till all the honey came out and I was left with a big ball of soft beeswax. Thats Right Honey for nothing and Wax for free! All I had to do was secure it from the Sultans of Sting. And in that department I am in no Dire Straits!

Troof in Advertising!

I purchased my "Huckleberries" from a small local nursery. They were an impulse buy, I've never grown huckleberries before so when I saw the pony flat with four plants I thought it sounded pretty cool, and for a buck how could I go wrong right? Well after I got them home I planted them and let them grow. Well after awhile I started to look up "growing huckleberries" to see if there was anything I could do improve the harvest etc. And I was initially kind of surprised that most info I came across said that Huckleberries are closely related to Blueberries. And I thought to myself... boy these sure don't "look" anything like blueberry bushes. So today I started looking again and I realized that I was growing "Garden" Huckleberries. Which are not even related at all to real Huckleberries. Years ago they were cultivated as "sunberries" or Wonderberries, and just recently many home gardeners have been bringing them back. The Garden Huckleberry is a cousin to the Tomato which is part of the nightshade family. And the berries need to be cooked before they can be used and apparently they aren't near as tasty as real Huckleberries as they require a fair amount of sugar to sweeten them up. Ah well they look purty and they are growing like nobody's business.

Garden "Huckleberries", a.k.a Wonderberries, a.k.a Sunberries.


Genuine Huckleberries.


So when Doc Holliday said "I'm your Huckleberry" He meant the latter because he was a genuine article too!