Hey, I mean Hay!

So I bought some hay. Actually it is straw, but that doesn't have a nerdy pun I can think of.

Dara and I pushed the bale out of the truck and it landed pretty much where I wanted it. Which is good because that is not going anywhere now.

This is one of the reasons I got the straw. I will pull straw from the back to put down in the garden between the raised beds. A post will be coming soon when I do that. I swear those were my first three arrows from 25 yards. 

This is project "kill a bunch of grass and plant corn".  Soon I will move this tarp that has been down for a month and a half, and plant three kinds of corn in the block where the grass was. In the background you can see the squash and beans I planted along the fence line.

The harvest recap

Hi everyone!!! So much has happened we haven't been able to post in a while. First of all,
as most everyone knows now, we are engaged (post to come on the ring)!! Yay! Second,
we have been installing our own wood floor (post to come) which is taking quite a long
time. Third, Patrick is officially a volunteer fireman, w00t! And lastly— whew—we are now
on the Paleo diet which means learning to cook lots of interesting meals (hopefully
some posts to come on that as well).

So on to the post. I realize we showed lots of pics of the garden and the work but not a lot of what we got out of it. So here's a few harvest pics from July to now and the unveiling of the potato box.

Sorry for the poor picture. Going clockwise from the bottom that's
Kale, Swiss Chard, Amaranth and Lambs Quarter. There was
enough Amaranth and Lambs Quarter to make 2 weeks worth of

dinners but we wasted most of it... you get tired of eating the same
thing (plus the Amaranth was slightly bitter) but at least we know
we COULD go that long without buying food.

Best watermelon I've ever eaten.

Dragon carrots. Still have some of these in the garden.

This was a good week. We still have lots of leeks in the yard
and we just finished off what peppers we had harvested. There
were a few bags full of them. Wasn't that interested in the ground
cherries. Need to figure out what to do with them next year.

Let me know if you have a suggestion!

The Potato Box!!! We ran out of straw early though and didn't
get more. You can see it looks low.

This looks promising though...

Wha...?

FAIL

Me thinks this is a seed potato.

You don't eat potatoes on
Paleo anyway... sometimes things just work out.

Squash vine borers!

Two months ago was the first time I had ever heard of anything called
a squash vine borer, so when I walked outside one afternoon to see
these drooping leaves I had no idea what could possibly be going on.

It took about an hour for me to figure it out, though the signs were more
than obvious. 5 plants had been invaded. The vines looked corroded and
had the "sawdust" appearance. The worms had burrowed a foot and a
half into our largest squash vine, splitting it open at the base.

My understanding is that not much can be done if you are an organic gardener.
So the first thing I did was plant 6 new squash plants elsewhere in the yard.
Then I defiantly set to work trying to help the infected plants. I slit the plants
open with a razor from the base up to where the plant was nice and healthy.

And that's where I found these guys. Now I knew without a doubt we had
borers!! Sorry there's no picture of them in the plant. I was so angry I just

flipped them out before I thought to take one. Then I smashed them.

I tied the vine back together where I cut it open because that
seemed like the thing to do. I read that you need to get the plant
to root above the damage and so I thought it would help if I could

keep the damaged part functional long enough for the rooting to
take place. After I tied it up I buried the section above in soil.

The last thing I did was sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the damaged
parts. I saw smaller brown larve looking things in the vine and I
didn't want to take any chances. I have never heard of putting DE in a
plant but we've had no problems. In fact, it's been 2 weeks since

this all happened and there's new growth on this squash plant. It
has also maintained fruit production. So far we haven't lost any plants.