Simply Adapting: The Green Pinky Series

It’s mid-July already! I hope all of your gardens are showing signs of life!

So far I have harvested 5 cucumbers and 3 Pickling Cucumbers!

With the regular cucumbers I’ve been trying to be creative rather then just putting them on my salads. This cucumber Salad was delicious!

Cucumber Sliced thin

Mayo

White vinegar

Salt/Pepper

Garlic Powder

I also canned pickles for the first time ever! Too bad it takes a little time before I can try them to see if it was a success. You can’t mess up pickles… Can you?

As I was watering the garden I saw that our Cherry Tomatoes are starting to turn! I have also seen flowers on my pepper plants, and mini squash are in sight! In the next two week we’ll be in full harvest/canning/figure how to use it all mode!

I really must say that I have full faith that because we mulched this year our garden is much healthier.

Why Mulch?

If applied thick enough it will smother the weeds so that you won’t need to spend all summer pulling weeds.

Weeds are not only an eye sore but they will over take all of the nutritional needs from your soil that your vegetables need!

You will not need to use herbicides in your garden… less chemical use is always nice.

Go the CHEAP route!

I spent $0 on mulch this year thanks to my husband. He wanted to test out his square hay baler to get it ready for Hay season so he cut one of our fields and since the grass had no nutritional value I got to use the bales for mulching around our property!

SCORE!

{Watermelons}

{Tomatoes}

{Cucumbers}

{Squash}

{Sweet Corn}

Even good for flower beds!

Because I mulched so thick I only have to weed a few little stinkers that come up every once in awhile. Once our garden season is over we will till all of the mulch into the soil to decompose over winter and rejuvenate our garden for 2014!

If your not from a farm come up with other cheap solutions to mulching like saving your grass clippings in a compost pile.

I also wanted to share some Hay photo’s from over the July 4th weekend. while you were all out on boats, at beaches, and picnics I was helping {G} Bale and stack 348 hay bales.

{July 3rd, 2013}