String Beans, and the first Tomato of the season

Beans, beans, and more beans, I love 'em. The Pole beans started coming in today though only the eastern end of the row so far, Yellow Wax beans are coming in very well still, I'm thinking of putting in another row or two. 

We have Pik Red tomatoes and a couple Roma Plum tomatoes that have started coming in today.  The Roma plants don't look like they are doing well (greens are dying from the bottom up), I'll talk to Tony up on the hill he has more experience with the Roma's, maybe this is normal for the plants.

The Colorado Potato beetles have slowed down I may not need to spray them, maybe I can just pick off the remaining beetles.

The July Garden - SUMMER GOLD

SUMMER GOLD

What a difference a couple of weeks of rain and heat makes in the vegetable gardens.

Here's my account of what is and isn't working out so well this year...

What's working well:

• The Silver Queen corn is over 6' tall now, tasseled with small ears.
• Zucchini is outproducing our ability to eat it.
• Kale is doing well, need to pick this week.
• Cucumbers are abundant
• Wax beans are coming in by the bucket, Green bush beans are coming in as well.

What could be better:

• Pole beans have not started producing yet.
• Peas are slow in producing.
• Colorado Potato bugs are relentlessly eating the potato plants. I am going to try Eight where Sevin failed...
• We think there's to much wood ash on one of the raised beds seems to be real slow producing this year.
• Weeds this year, ugh, timing rainstorms, life, etc. got the best of us early.

About Canning... (Picture at the top of this post is the fruit of our labor)
We're back to canning again, with the economy stalled we feel it's prudent, it makes us nervous every time the power fails worrying about the freezers. One of the benefits of canning is no refrigeration is required.

We canned (using a water bath canner) our first batch of Bread and Butter pickles. They look great, IMHO. Canning always seems to take a lot longer than you think it will.

We jumped back into pressure canning again today and put up 5 jars of wax and green beans.

Rose wants to can up some Butter next week, hmm maybe some Kale too...

Unnecessary Knowledge

Unnecessary Knowledge

California Uses More Gas than China

Amazing Stat: California Uses More Gas than China | Wired Science from Wired.com

The Garden is starting to come in.

The garden seems to be real slow in producing this year, while we have an enormous amount of growth on some plants, others appear stunted when compared to last years production.

Rose picked the following last night.

• 3 Zucchini
• 1 Cucumber
• 1 Bell Pepper

I need to take a good look at the peas today we had 2" peapods earlier in the week.

America is addicted to foreign oil.

PickensPlan: The Plan

America is addicted to foreign oil.

It's an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people.

The addiction has worsened for decades and now it's reached a point of crisis.
In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil.
Today it's nearly 70% and growing.

As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.
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Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion — it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind.

America uses a lot of oil. Every day 85 million barrels of oil are produced around the world. And 21 million of those are used here in the United States.

That's 25% of the world's oil demand. Used by just 4% of the world's population.

Move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel?

FactCheck.org: Can a freight train really move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel?

Heating and Pellet stoves

We went down to Amherst, NH to look at the new pellet stoves intending to add a second one in the dining room. Sticker shock took care of that pretty fast though. We purchased our first pellet stove a Whitfield Traditions stove about 6 years ago for ~$2,200 with the custom green enamel finish the wife wanted. The new Harmon stoves started at ~$3,150 and they cannot even take pellet orders until after August, so you could have a situation where you have a stove and no pellets to burn in it for the season.

So we decided that we'll wait on the pellet stove, get a couple cords of wood in and maybe look elsewhere for a stove, either that or we'll put in a Monitor propane heater I've been looking into, time will tell. Monitor Heaters

The wood situation in the Northeast is getting bad fast.  I've seen wood trucks almost daily delivering wood and two of the local dealers have sold out of green wood already for the season. $245 green, $365 seasoned per cord.

The situation is going to get bad fast with the pellet and wood situations.