The Harvests Are Getting Smaller

As the summertime enters into August we have noticed that our harvests are not as big as they were through out the month of July.  This post will be a little update on what is going on in the Orchard.  We have been so fortunate so far with most of the crops that were planted.  This is the second year of having a  garden and we are still in learning process.  This year we have seen the effort that George put in at the garden during the winter treating the beds with horse manure.  Fertilizing the beds all winter was huge and one of the reasons the crops did well.  We did have some failures and we had some battles to fight, still at war with the raccoons, but all in all the orchard has produced for us.  Our successes are definitely cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, green beans, peas, okra, cantaloupe, watermelon, eggplant and grapes.  We did have some success with zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, leaf lettuce, beets, blueberries and corn.  We are still waiting for results on the sweet potatoes, red potatoes and Yukon potatoes as we have not dug them up yet.  Unfortunately we did have some plants that just never either grew or were attacked by bugs.  We just lost our pumpkins.  We had some great looking ones but a grub got into the vine and started eating it's way out.  This also happened to all of our acorn, butternut and buttercrisp squash and is the thing that killed off our zucchini and yellow squash.  The onions, head lettuce and a few other items never even grew.  We are still learning as we go and we have to learn and we are.  I know next year's orchard will be toned down and we will cut back or even give up on growing some veggies but that is part of the process.  Even though it is work we have enjoyed it and it is good for us to get dirty and sweaty sometimes.  To quote a line from the movie "God's Not Dead" and " God's Not Dead 2", " all the time God is good and God is good all the time".  So true!