Welcome the jungle

This week I've been a bit under the weather and have not been able to do much of anything.  I'm not going to get into the details of my health right now because I'd rather share with you my garden.  Since so many of you enjoyed the pictures of my quilts hanging over Mr. Podunk's hand crafted garden gate, I thought today while I'm picking a few things I  might as well take some pictures.

It really could be cleaned a bit before showing it off but this is real life in Podunk.  Buckets, hoses, and tools are almost always right where we need them.

We've started something new this year.  Tons of grass clippings.  It's like walking on a cloud the clippings are so thick. If your interested in our new method by Ruth Stout you can read more about it here.

While looking through the pictures I noticed it looks like a jungle and a mess.  But what happened is we planted by the specifications on the plants.  Now I'm not bragging but our plants are much larger than the packaging said they would be.  Next year we'll need to widen our rows.  Below you I've labeled what we have planted.

  

We've already harvested a few early crops, that will give room for the cucumber vines below to fill in the empty spots.  Another experiment was the cucumber patch.  We always have planted the large variety.  This year we also chose some smaller pickling cucumbers.  It's nice not to have all those seeds in your pickles.

Outside view of the cucumber plants.  Every couple of days we find new vines trying to sneak out into the yard.  They are easy to tuck through the fence and back on the right path into the garden.

As I walked pass the cucumber vines I could hear lots of buzzing.  The vines are covered with large wood bees taking a sip from the cucumber blossoms.

I hadn't planned on doing any real work in the garden today but my sweet potato vines on the left were about to grab a hold of my green beans.

A quick pulling back with my rake and I'm ready to pick some cucumbers and head back to the house.

Not all of our plants do well in the garden.  Pepper plants seem to like the heat that comes off of the siding by the garage.  They get about 12 hrs of sun here and they love it.

All peppers love sunbathing.  We have jalapenos...

Sweet banana peppers...

And Bell Peppers of all colors.  Right now they are all still green.  But soon they turn red, yellow and orange.

The reason for going to the garden was for a cucumber to make a smoothie.  I thought about peeling that cucumber...oh what the heck lets eat the peel also, more nutrients!  The blueberries and strawberries were pulled from the freezer.  And that big glob of white stuff is coconut oil.  It has antibiotic qualities.  Remember at the beginning of this post I'm a little sicky-poo.  Of course there's a little honey(more antibiotics) and homemade probiotic yogurt for it's healing properties.

This made enough for 3 glasses.  Breakfast, lunch and supper.  In the background is the rest of my supplies for making all natural concoctions for healing.  I had to break out the garlic pills after trying to eat a garlic clove 3 times a day.  I only ate one and barely manage to swallow it down....whoa! YUK!  I love garlic in my food but eating a clove is not pleasant.  Hopefully all this self torture works.

Only time will tell, I'll let you know how it goes.

~ Lea Anne ~