Welcome to Cranky Puppy Farm!

This blog belongs to two Gen X-er's smackdab in downtown Kansas City where we've been renovating and decorating two old Victorians built in the 1890's. Our life is filled with 3 demanding Pomeranians (1 of them cranky, of course), honking cars, noisy neighbors and the hustle and bustle of city life but we dream of the day when we can move to our 40-acre farm and hear nothing but the wind and the cows next door. Until then, we're chronicling our triumphs and mishaps here as we try to garden and preserve on 2 city lots, raise chickens, and learn all those things we should have learned from our grandparents. Welcome to our world - we hope you'll stay awhile!

Well, I'll Be!

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Blight and fungus on the tomatoes. 
Cucumber beetles and squash bugs.
Bunnies taking up residence and eating every leaf off the pepper and jalapeno plants.
Unbearably non-stop 100+ degree days that caused us to retreat to the cool shelter of the house.

And then a miracle. 
Just when I had written off the garden for the year as a semi-disaster, the heat broke and I ventured out to find something amazing.

Today's harvest!
 
The Roma plants were laden down with ripe fruit.  There's pasta sauce in my future this weekend, I think.  And my first ripe Sugary Baby watermelon and J.'s first cabbage.

Not only had the garden survived, but it was regenerating.

Those green beans that I had left to dry so I could harvest for seed were actually re-growing and had new blooms on them.


The cucumbers didn't succumb to the cuke beetles and were climbing like mad up the trellis.  Bees were busily flitting between the vines' flowers, their legs laden with pollen.  Will we have cukes this year after all?

Then my gaze turns to the tomatoes that I thought were dead or would be shortly.  All have a ton of new growth on them in the past few days.

Sharing their cages are the watermelon vines.  I found this little guy hanging on for dear life.  I'll have to take some old panty hose out there and build a sling for it.  I hate that the tomato cage is in the way in this picture and I have some others that are better, but I love this one the best because I actually captured an ant busy at his work.  Can you see him?

Click to biggify!

From the old comes the new.  And so it is in my garden.


If you like this post, you might also want to check out this week's Green Day, Farm Fresh Friday, Farmgirl Friday, Ole Saturday HomesteadingTrading Post and Eat. Make. Grow hops. 

14 comments:

  1. I am so glad that your garden has survived those very very high temperatures.

    I don't think I would be able to cope with that degree of heat :(

    Your harvest looks wonderful.

    Sorry I haven't been around much but I have my Mum stayin and so am spending most of my time entertaining her and haven't been blogging or visiting my favourite blogs.

    Take care of yourself and thanks for linking up.

    Have a good weekend.

    x Fiona

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  2. Que maravilhosa colheita e que maravilha a regeneração!! Lindo post! beijos,chica

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  3. Wow! Everything looks amazing, I bet they're delicious! And I love your first picture; it could be a painting hanging in my kitchen. :)

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  4. Yeah for you! Everything looks wonderful.

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  5. Your garden looks fantastic! Isn't it nice when it works out like that! Thanks so much for linking up to "The Ole' Saturday Homesteading Trading Post"!

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  6. It's great to have your own harvest, even though some plants have been destroyed. Next year you will have a better crop. I bought today 25 kilos roma tomato. I just finished the sauce. I did until today 30 vases. ... Until 100 vases , I have a lot work ...
    Have a nice Sunday
    Olympia

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  7. Great grateful. Those look very good. I found you on green day 8,isn't that super! See you next time. Mary

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  8. You all have had too much heat, and we've barely had any summer at all. My garden is suffering from not enough sunshine. The tomatoes have only started to really take off, and it's nearly the middle of August. I'm hoping we'll have a warm fall this year.

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  9. Amazing, isn't it? I'm about to have a bumper crop of squash and tomatillos. Tomatoes though, not so much.

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  10. Hi Cranky Puppy - please don't forget to link back to our blog hop! You can find a button at my blog, PocketPause.com, or you can include a text link to our hop. Thanks for linking up with us!

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  11. woops, apologies - just saw the text link!

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  12. Yee ha!!!! Good for you guys! Mine is dust!

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  13. Ein toller Beitrag zu diesem grünen Projekt...

    Lieben Gruß
    CL

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  14. Wonderful post! I just love happy endings!! Thanks so much for sharing with us for Farm Fresh Friday! Have fun making sauce (hope there will be a post on that?) We had leftover tomato juice from making salsa, I didn't know what to do with it, so we added some spices and jarred it up too! Real is always better, right?

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