Ground Garden Goings-on

I have about 5 blog posts swirling around my brain right now, the last few weeks have been so full. The last few days I actually felt as if I had been neglecting my blog. In reality it has only been about 3 weeks or so since my last post.

When things get busy, I escape to my garden, and so because life has been so busy ,the one post out of five that I am choosing to talk about right now ... the garden.


I decided to try growing things this season that would not require a lot of watering. I kinda thought, lets plant a summer crop where I can just stick some seeds in the ground, water them until they sprout, and then forget about them. And that is what we did. I never watered them again. So what did we grow?

Peanuts! Last year we grew only 1 plant as a trial and it did great but it wasn't enough to do much with. So this year we grew an entire 4'x8' bed. I think there are 12 plants or so in there. The picture below is about the beginning of July

August

 

Close up

September

We have not harvested the peanuts yet, but will in the next few weeks. I think we are going to have a great crop!


We also decided to try black eyed peas. I heard they will grow all year long in Florida. I also heard they were low maintenance....and they are!!!

Apparently I did not get any pictures of the first week or so but these are about a month old

2 months old...

3 months old

Another shot of the 3 month time frame, I wish I could find a picture of when they began to "paper" The pods start to yellow and dry up on the plant. Once they have done that they are ready to harvest.

Here they are after being shelled. 

And here they are in soup.....YUM! Not the prettiest picture.. I was mid -bowl when I thought, oh, I should take a picture. 

I would post a recipe but honestly it's not much of a recipe, soak your beans, saute some onion and red pepper in olive oil, add the beans to the pot with some vegetable broth, add salt and pepper to taste and cook over medium till soft ( about an hour). I am a simple girl.   

Two weeks ago I seeded the bed where the black eyed peas were with broccoli. They are tiny now but come December they will be perfect. Hopefully!!! Sorry for the fuzzy picture-eek!

We are also growing  watermelons! Up until about 2 weeks ago I thought they weren't doing anything, apparently I just hadn't been looking closely enough.  

When I found them 2 weeks ago there were 5 lovelies just hanging out..... now we are down to two. A little sad but that's o.k.I only ever get a few each year. But look at that guy below. He's not too shabby.

We also put in an  8'x4' bed of sweet potatoes. Look at those flowers! I had no idea they would be so pretty! They are still in the ground doing their thing but by November we will have sweet potatoes. Thanksgiving dinner maybe?

This..... This is a picture of my silly monkeys pulling the dried kernels off of corn husks. One of my kids happens to be severely allergic to corn so that is why she is not in the photo. We grew popcorn earlier in the year, left them to dry after harvesting, and then forgot to eat them.....

Two days ago I found a note taped to my bedroom wall from my little guy and it said " mom can you please make the popcorn now?"  Poor guy I had totally forgot, has he been waiting for months?! Yikes!

Pure joy! Homegrown, freshly popped popcorn.

Well, that is all for now, but I will  have more, VERY exciting  garden news to share with you in about a week. In the mean time, I will try to crank out those other blog posts I have been thinking about.

Thanks for reading, and come back soon!