Ric and I are here at the Outer Banks we have 2 weeks. Last week we had a great Crab fest. We had approx 31 crabs from our crab pots in two days and we will do another one this week.
Darius where in the Outer Banks are you going?
Vegetable 2013, Mid-At and Friends
Holly, we are staying in Morehead City, NC, in an apartment above the new boat house of one of the ferry pilots.
Very nice area. We are a bit more Northern than that but I have visited Atlantic Beach twice and really love the area. If you were staying at Duck where we will be I would offer you our crab traps. You could catch your own. I think Atlantic Beach has the best restaurants outside of New Orleans and the prices were very reasonable.
I used to crab off my pier when I lived on the Severn River in Annapolis, don't know now that I want to catch live crabs and deal with getting them home and frozen.
I saw on sign for crabs at $60/bushel in Currituck as we were on our way up NC 158. I didn't think to check in Collington when I was there since we get our own. I wanted to get into the garden today but would rather have the rain.
Lol, I think I know what sign you are referring to. If you can get your own for free you can't beat the freshness and the price. Thankfully we have had some rain this morning.
A light drizzle just started here....Cool outside! Not welcoming to be out there...
Starting to think of sweatshirts.!!! WOW!....how quickly that sneaks up!
Wore long jeans yesterday for the first time..to the HD Crab Feast/Store meeting.
Small--but good crabs....extremely hard-shelled!!!
G.
THis rain is perfect for my spinach I just sowed on Saturday. I think they really need moist soil to sprout well. The last super germination I had was the pack of seeds I left out in the rain, then planted a day later.
Getting the last tomatoes ripening and a few plants that just fried in the last heat wave are now trashed.
What rain?????
That "gentle drizzle" lasted about 15 minutes.
Sun is out now--and sky is blue....Seems we always miss out....
G.
Finally got to the garden for some Grinin' and Pickin'! I got a 5 gal. bucket of green beans, better than a peck of peppers, some Davers' half long carrots, a couple of sweet potatoes (just to see), and a pint of usable strawberries. I had picked some tomatoes the day before and I've gotten a couple of dinners worth of potatoes so far. My potatoes are improving each year, but I can't claim bragging rights just yet. The carrots weren't great, but it's my first effort in a decade. My sweet potatoes have fissures on them that look like they put on a lot of growth in a short time and out grew their skin. They are completely skinned over now , so I don't know. I also have some nice cabbage to pick, perhaps some fresh pepper slaw before I freeze my peppers. I have so many beans of which a good many are past their prime, so I may try drying some. I also have a lot of basil to cut and dry. Too much stuff to do before we leave for Florida next Tues. or Wed.
happy harvest!
My those are some weird sweet potatoes!!
Meanwhile, it seems that me planting spinach seed is a magical signal to stop rain- I'm watering and hoping for sprouts, c'mon...
White potatoes seem easy for me however I only got about five per plant with size ranging from large to small, and never any new potatoes on the stems.
I should dig a couple of my sweet potatoes and see if they are doing any better in a raised bed. 2 years ago in the ground, some underground critter ate substantial parts of every single one, and although the harvest was big, I got none to eat.
I had a few white potatoes grow in the compost bin but not many.
darius, I have the other problem, I think our ground hog was eating the tops. I'm not sorry to say he passed this morning from acute lead poisoning, so we will see.This was my third picking of beans, so I pulled them to add to the compost. I used to feed them to the pigs we raised, along with produce from a couple of local grocery stores. We used to start our pigs around Easter and butcher the last weekend of Nov. so we had deer bones to cook in the kettle meat. You could practically watch them grow. Raised on soybean, red wheat, and scraps, they'd be 160 to 180#s. They only had enough fat for flavor. We never got a can of lard from 3-4 pigs.
I also had vole damage to sweet potatoes last year, my first year. I did have to trash a good number. those just nibbled, I let callous over and they stored well.
Mine look split like tomatoes after a good rain.
hi guys ^_^
picked more figs, a handful of tomatoes, peppers and parsley along with our largest heirloom tomato of the season today!
a nice huge, yellow, heirloom. no id?? the only tomatoes we have are from Critter and Nisi, so maybe one of them can id this one. it is yellow and weighed in at 1.2 lbs!! these beefsteak type yellows have been really delicious too.
Harry processed many batches of pesto the past week. he is done with it! the rest of our basil in the garden is for snipping as needed and to go to seed.
...Ric, you had quite a nice harvest! ...better u than me killing a groundhog. I can't even kill an insect let alone an animal that large. luckily ours didn't eat much. our fence around the garden area seems to work. and it's a fence within a chain link fence that is around the yard.
wow Diana!
It's so nice to hear from you!
Dianna--
I got a lg. yellow tomato from Jill once. The beefsteak kind...
It came in her "Carnival Mix" of her favorites...I asked her what this one is?
She thought it might be a Yellow Brandywine. Not saying yours is--but it could be...
It is an heirloom...
Gita
I really don't want to fence my garden, but may have to. I do want to have a few ducks in the garden, so...
Ducks love slugs, so I heard
That would be one of my 2 reasons to have ducks. Living on a wide creek means lots of slugs.snails in the garden
They are good bug catchers too. I remember reading somewhere they used geese in tobacco patches for bugs and weeds.
Oh, Thanks Sally, I forgot the eggs.LOL
This message was edited Sep 21, 2013 7:56 PM
Your other reason, Darius- eggs?
If I were to move the the country, I would want a creek.
Lots of seedlings in the beet/ chard patch the other day, this rain will be nice for them- If it doesn't get my spinach going, nothing will.
Reason #2 for ducks is part eggs, part duck roasts and part duck fat.
thanks G. - maybe it is yellow brandywine
much needed rain last night. sunny and beautiful today
Wind I think your tomatoe is a Yellow Brandywine, too. It's been my favorite for the last two years.
Taste, texture. long keeping are all superior. Makes dynomite BLTs. Tomatoes that taste good can be any color in my book.
The skins on Y Brandywine are a little thicker? stronger? but it keeps them from splitting like so many big tomatoes do.
Anyone growing or eating the Ghost cherry tomato? They are almost white. I like them, too. My favorite snack tomato is Sungold.
Finally popping in on this thread because I am so excited to share a pic of my French heirloom pumpkin, Rouge Vif D' Etampes. My yard space is at a premium but I can't help growing at least one pumpkin plant every year. Pinetree Seeds calls this a vigorous vine. They aren't kidding. But what a beautiful pumpkin! Oh and yeah that's me looking super awkward holding the pumpkin.... I'm only in the pic so you can get a sense of scale.
It is a loverly pumpkin!!!
Cute picture! The kids must be pleased. Remind me next year to give you Spinning Top gourds. Really cute tiny gourds.
I'm a longtime customer of Pinetree too, I've seen that variety.
Sally, that would be great, thanks! I am planning to save seeds from this pumpkin so if you or anyone else wants seeds, lemme know. Should be true to the type as I don't know of anyone else growing pumpkins in the area. August thinks we are going to carve it, I want to cook it. We'll see! It has been fun to grow with the kids. August now knows about male and female squash flowers which is more than many adults know about plants!
Yay Augie!
Also hope you haven't grown cukes or squash too- you may know some of them cross pollinate pumpkins.
The Spinning top gourds are little vines and make many fruits. Mine grew maybe four-5 feet along the light garden wire fence.
Full size birdhouse gourds are also very free ranging vines!
No squash or cukes around. I didn't even bother with summer squash this year because they get PM faster than I can say "zucchini".
Oh 5 ft sounds so much better behaved than my monster which probably went 15' in opposite directions. Beautiful, almost ornamental dinner plate sized leaves which never got PM till the very end. I'd grow it again if I lived on a homestead instead of a row home.
Oh that is so very nice. We use to grow pumpkins every year but the squash bugs became so bad that we stopped growing them for a few years.