Fruits of the Farm

We have two raspberry rows about 30 feet long. I started in 2003 with some plants we brought to the Island from our home in Poulsbo from plants Pam received from a friend.  They have done well and we would freeze about five or six gallons of them for use during the year, usually put on my morning oatmeal.  I tried growing boysenberries in a row next to the raspberries but that was a disaster - it was like planting wild blackberries - except the birds loved them and would start eating the berries just before they were ripe.  I dug them out, potted them up and gave them away.  We then bought more raspberries and planted a second row.  We did well again last year with some berries from the new row, but this year they really took off.  We had a warm and wet May and the berries loved it.  We have been picking for two weeks now, about five gallons of berries every two day - I estimate that we have frozen over 40 lbs so far this year!  We had to fence the area from our chickens as they discovered they could walk down the top of the canes and eat the berries, then when the berries were gone they would eat the new canes (next year's fruiting canes) just as they were coming up.  We are about 2/3'rds of the way through our crop but with the wet July we are having, some of the berries are molding.  Most of the berries are so large they look like strawberries.

Our Raspberry Patch in 2011 has really matured

Harvested the garlic these past few days.  My favorite is Pink Music, a variety few have heard of.  I love it because the heads are the size of a baseball, have about six cloves which are very large, is easy to peel and has a very good garlic favor.  This year's crop of Pink Music was excellent and I planted four times as much as the other four varieties I grew.  The others were okay in size, what I would call "average".  I'm not willing to grow only one variety though.

This Years Garlic hanging on our front deck to cure

We are picking sugar snap peas and because we start late and do two planting we should have them until late summer.  New potatoes are being dug, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage are mature.  Our onions have developed purple blotch due to the cool and very wet July we are having.  When I first saw it two days ago I sprayed with Neem Oil, a natural fungicide, then the next day with Lime/Sulfur, also an organic fungicide.  We are hopeful that they will recover.  I never recall having a July like this one, with nearly two inches of rain this month already.  We in the Pacific Northwest are use to wet winters and springs, but summer is usually dry, even though sometimes cool.  We have had two weeks of thunder storms with on-and-off heavy showers.

Onions with Purple Bloch

The Corn Bed

Our early corn with the beginnings of tassels

I opened the bee hives the other day and in our best hive we have half of a honey supper filled - so far about 20 lbs of honey that I can harvest when I return from a camping trip next week.  This is good as the wild blackberry is blooming - so we might get another 20 lbs before the summer is over.  The wild goldenrod is about ready to bloom and the bees also love that flower.  We now have three bee hives, one really strong and two no so.  I'll re-queen later this summer so we'll be going into winter with three strong hives.