Daphne's Dandelions

They're Baaack

2012-02-01T08:04:00.002-05:00

I now officially have seedlings. Whoohoo! It took them about a week, but even last years seed germinated. Not every cell is up but most of them are. Above is Copra the most vigorous of the germinating onions. I tried to put three seeds in each cell since the seed was old, but it looks like in many, there are four coming up. Now THAT is vigorous germination. Either that or I can't count.

This is my Redwing plants. They are coming up fine too. But not so many in a cell.

And my Ailsa Craig is the slow poke in the bunch. They are coming up but slowly and feebly. They are supposed to be huge onions when they finally get big but as baby onions they have a lot to be desired.

And last time I showed my set up Mark was asking if it was to help harden off the seedlings. I answered there, but figured most of you haven't read it yet. So on to the plant vocabulary lesson. Plants grow more spindly and tall inside than they do if grown outside. Plants will change how they grow if they are touched. This could be by your hand, by the wind, or by the rain. The word for it is thigmomorphogenisis. If the plants get touched enough they will grow much more stocky and branch out sideways more. For onions I always just pet them. Yes I pet my plants. I just run my hand over them every day or two. For mixed plantings I'll use a fan as the mixed heights are harder to pet. I'll turn the fan on every couple days and let it run for a bit. If you want to read more about it there is a nice article on it. I warn you there is a lot of science involved.

But to answer the Mark's question, yes it helps to harden them off. Tall spindly indoor plants don't react well to being planted outdoors. My hope is that when I harden my plants off outside all that they need is to harden against the sun and the temperature fluctuations. I'm hoping they are mostly hardened off to the wind already. With the soil blocks they don't get a lot of root disturbance. So transplanting is a lot less stressful than it otherwise would be.

Harvest Monday - January 30, 2012

2012-01-30T07:48:00.000-05:00

Again I've got no harvests. I have been eating up my stores. I finished the last of the bok choy that was picked before Christmas so it lasted a long long time in the fridge. I'm still working on the tatsoi. I expect it to last until mid February before I need to have eaten it all. I've found the best way to store such things is in a sealed container that just fits them without squishing them with a towel on the bottom. The towel keeps them from rotting and sliming out on the bottom and the container keeps the air at 100% humidity. Greens last a very long time stored this way.

I also ate some tomatoes for the first time since August when I found out I had solanine poisoning (nightshade poisoning). I made some beef stew. Well I can't eat them yet. I can have trace amounts without reacting, but not a meal that has the solanum family as a core ingredient. It did taste delicious though. I miss tomatoes so much.

So instead of me eating it my son got to eat the rest and I put some in the freezer for next time he is here. It had a lot of garden ingredients. It had tomatoes, carrots, shelling beans that I had frozen, onions, celery, and rosemary.

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

My Mother In Law is Cruel

2012-01-28T10:33:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of the month I turned 50. My MIL gave me a birthday gift. It was a check for $500 with a stipulation that it be spent on something I wouldn't already buy. Now you might not see that as cruel, but as I'm sure you could guess, my mind immediately went to the garden. I started thinking about irrigation systems. Then I started to think about whether it was really worth putting one in or not. Oh the dilemma. I've been doing calculations and debating this in my head for weeks.

Monetarily it is a bad choice. I did the math. I'm guessing that I water the garden overhead about six times a year. We get rain here. It is not a dry spot. Our average rainfall is 4" per month, with a high of 4.5" and a low of 3.5". So I have to water on occasion, but not a whole lot. A quick back of the envelope calculation says that if I water 6 times a year I pay about $46 per year in water (which I might point out has never been calculated and never put in my tally - ah well I'm not perfect). If I had an underground watering system it may (or may not) save me about half. Say $20 per year. The inexpensive systems will cost me over $200. I haven't done the math there, and it might be more like $400. The plastic only lasts for about 8 years or so left outside. Some of the items like soaker hoses and T-tape lasts much shorter. So it is cheaper not to put one in.

The additional plastic in my gardens is always a negative too. Since it has a real time limit (the T-tape especially doesn't last long) replacements would always be coming. I'll do that for row covers as row covers save me so much time in spraying Bt, but I'm not sure it is worth it for the little watering I do.

In addition it doesn't save me any time. The system requires maintenance and construction. Setting up an overhead sprinkler is so easy. It does help with watering one section more than another. Which right now I can't do unless I do it by hand. Is it worth the aggravation and upkeep? Probably not. It might be worth it to do a small section. The circle garden and the herb garden along the house might be nice. Then I don't have to water the 3' brick path all the time (which had to be done to include that in the watering). So maybe I'll be doing about 1/8 of the garden in soaker hoses of sorts. And I do want irrigation for my rock wall garden. That place is impossible to water and takes forever to do by hand. So I'll probably put a small bit into irrigation. And I'm going to buy a really expensive but highly rated sprinkler whose width can be switched. Then I'll be able to water my whole raised bed area at once (minus the circle garden and the herb garden along the wall). Cost $89. Yes a damn expensive sprinkler. But hey I'm supposed to be buying things I wouldn't already buy.

Then there is the idea of a rain barrel. I've been thinking about a pretty one. They make lovely fake terra cotta ones with planters on top. So pretty. But then I thought about my roof. My roof is an asphalt roof. Asphalt has a ton of really nasty toxic chemicals in it. Do I really want to water my garden with that? Before I bought the house, my dream was a roof that had a material that you could drink from and an underground cistern. But I'm not about to replace the roof. And even if I wanted to, I couldn't get it past my townhouse mates. It would be very costly and their dreams are hardly the same as mine. And what a waste to throw out a new roof. I would only have done it if we had renovated an old house. So anyone know the answer? Is the water coming off an asphalt roof toxic? See the problems my MIL has caused?

An easy thing to spend it on is row covers. I've been drooling over the Veggiecare ones from Australia for years. I'd love to have about three of them for half beds. So three that would cover an 8'x4' bed. Plus I'd love some clips. Price $220 to $270. Now there is really something I wouldn't buy myself. That is a ton of money. Supposedly they last longer (about 8 years). I hope so. I hate the Agribon. With our winds it rips too easily. And the heavier stuff gets too hot in the summer and blocks too much light. This one is similar to Agribon 19 in light transmission. I'll still use the Agribon I have, but I'll use it for temporary things. Things that are there for a long time I'll use the new stuff.

Oh and I'm loving the company already. I asked them which of the clips I should be using as my pipes are not 3/4" or 1". They said they would send me a sample and I should test them. So I will. That is why there are two prices. If I get the Jumbo clips it is much more expensive.

I'm still debating in my mind but for now I think I'll ignore the rain barrel since I don't trust my food to be watered from it. I'll get the sprinkler. I'll get the Veggiecare row cover (and maybe some clips). And I'll start with a small irrigation system for the hard to water rock wall garden and the herb garden by the wall. And I'll think about the circle garden.

What would you all buy if you were given such a nice gift?

The Gardening Season Has Officially Started

2012-01-26T10:40:00.000-05:00

All cleaned up

Tuesday I finally got off my derriere and started cleaning up after last year. All the trays I use to hold my soil block were still dirty. I always mean to clean them up in the summer and fall when I'm done with them, but of course that never happens. I always put it off until the last minute. I don't use chlorine. I know all the gardening experts tell you to. But I hate the stuff and I just use dish detergent and water and a lot of scrubbing.

I finally got them clean because when I was making my schedule I looked at last year's records. My onions turned out great last year. I had planted them on January 21st. It is already past that date. So I had to get a move on. I wanted more onions than I had last year. On Wednesday I planted two and a half flats of 1 1/2" soil blocks. There are 72 in a flat, so that was 180 blocks. I probably don't need that many but it can't hurt to have them. I'm pretty sure I will still have enough room under the lights.

The tops of my blocks always look a bit strange. I like to put cinnamon on the surface to help prevent damping off. I also cover the seeds with vermiculite so it will be easier for the seedling to push up. Then I cover them with plastic wrap until I see the first sign they are germinating.

There they are - the first three flats off and running. Some of the seed is a year old but it should still germinate. I didn't do a germination test. But if they don't germinate in a week, I'll reseed with newer seed. I do store my seed in an airtight container in the fridge. So onion seed usually lasts more than a year.

Just to record the varieties: 54 Copra, 54 Redwing, 36 Alicia Craig, 36 Varsity. The yellow storage onions are Copra and Varsity. I grew them last year and they are just starting to have some problems. Some are rotting; some are sprouting; but most are fine. I'm sure for not much longer since I keep seeing more with problems. The Redwing is a red storage onion. I've not lost one of them yet. They will be the last onions eaten since they store so well in my questionable storage area. I keep the braids at the top of the stairs to the basement. It is cool there, but not really cool enough. Next year I ought to store the braids at the bottom of the stairs where it is much colder.

And since I usually get questions about blocks. I'll leave you with a link to my last post on soil blocks.

Harvest Monday - January 23, 2012

2012-01-23T07:54:00.000-05:00

Yup I've got nothing again. Which isn't too surprising. The ground is frozen solid. All my tunnels are down.

And the garden is blanketed in a layer of snow.

It is pretty, and I know my spinach will be happy for the blanket, but it doesn't make for good harvests. I am using up things from the pantry. My son has been home so I've made him ham and bean soup, with dried beans, carrots, onions, celery, and herbs from the garden. He does love soups.

I think today or tomorrow I'll make some beef stew with some of my canned tomatoes. I've been eating small bits of tomatoes and peppers recently and have been OK. (For those that don't know, I've had solanine/solanum poisoning since last August.) I do have trouble if I breath in a lot of it. I made chili for my husband one day and reacted rather strongly. But a few tomatoes in some stew ought to be just fine.

Planning

2012-01-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

I go through a lot of planning stages before spring. The first thing I do is go through my seed catalogs and buy seeds. I showed you my Fedco order before. I've since placed an order from Pinetree for seeds that I don't really need, but would be fun to have. I bought the following: Summertime lettuce, Ambrosia melon, Big Red Pepper (got to love that name), Alma Paprika pepper, Early Butternut, Soloist Chinese cabbage, Tetsukabuto winter squash, epazote, Masai bean, Jersey Supreme asparagus.

The last I actually needed. Quite a few of the asparagus I planted last year died. So these are a replacement. Sadly they have changed their shipping policy. It used to be a flat fee for everything. But now it is a flat fee for seeds and another fee for live plants. So sad. The shipping costs as much as the plants.

So my seeds have all been ordered. I hope I didn't miss anything. The next planning stage is getting the list of seeds together that I'm actually going to grow. I have sheet in my garden spreadsheet that can calculate the date that they need to be planted and the date they need to go into the garden. It assumes a last frost date of May 1st. I tell it how many weeks old the transplant should be and how many weeks before or after the last frost date it should be planted. I get it all compiled on another sheet in printable format. I copied it to the web so you could see it in its current state.

The first set of plants are the ones that will be done as transplants. The later ones are ones that are direct seeded out in the garden. I might do more direct seeding of things like Asian greens and lettuce, but I haven't made up my mind yet. At least they are on the sheets. This keeps me from forgetting them if I do want to start them indoors. I find that if I don't have these sheets I never know when to plant. I do not follow the sheets perfectly, but they give me an idea.

My next chore is to lay out the garden and figure out how many transplants of each variety I need. If you notice that information has not yet been added. I usually grow more of everything just in case of seedling failure, but I don't grow many more. So it is time to get out my graph paper and start figuring out where my plants go.

Harvest Monday - January 16, 2012

2012-01-16T08:00:00.003-05:00

I checked on my tatsoi on Thursday. We were predicted to get some really cold weather for a change. Saturday and Sunday nights were predicted to be in the single digits. Brrrr. The tatsoi is pretty good at withstanding cold weather, but I found out last year that it doesn't like weather that cold and after a while the freeze/thaws would be too much for it. Last year I told myself I'd pick it all in December, but with the abnormally high temps we have been getting I picked all the Asian greens except the tatsoi in December. I was thinking it might make it until the first January thaw.

This is what the bed looked like. Very pretty for this time of year. Except if you look underneath all that there is a lot of rotting going on. Some heads were all rotted through in the middle. Some just had a few outer leaves. So I picked it all and cleaned up the bed.

It weighed in at 1.96 lbs. I'll be eating this over the next few weeks.

Harvest Monday - January 9, 2012

2012-01-09T08:12:00.000-05:00

This last week I had no harvests. I did however start having expenses for the year as I put in my first seed order.

Fedco: $55

In addition I finally got my sidebar tally caught up to 2012. If you will notice I'm in the hole by over $400. Except for the seed above, these are not things I've bought this year. When I started the garden I amortized the cost

When we moved into the house I had a lot of expenses putting in the garden. Our yard was subsoil. I elected to add expenses to my tally that would occur only because I was putting in a vegetable garden. For instance the soil to ground level and brick path were not added as I would have had to put them in anyway to put in lawn. The path itself goes from driveway all the way around the back of the house and up the other side to the road. It would have gone in even if I hadn't had a garden. It might have been placed a bit differently, but the expense would still have been there. The white picket fence with the arch was something I've always wanted. I love when I see arches with the old fashioned roses growing over the top. So I swore I'd have one when we moved. The arch is actually extremely expensive, but even without vegetables in my garden it would have gone in.

That that defined what was amortized. As to how long they are amortized, I guessed as to how long they would last. So here is a list of things that I amortized.

Fertilizers, soil amendments, 2 years, $197.26/year
Bamboo 100 8' tall and 50 4' tall, 4 years, $65.37/year
Wood and hardware for cedar beds, 5 years, $106.22/year
Composter, 10 years, $5/year
Tomato cages (really good ones), 20 years, $18/year
Soil, 30 years, $7.44/year
Concrete bricks, 30 years, $0.81/year

Now 30 years might be a stretch. The plan is to live in this house for 20-30 years. Basically until we have enough health issues and want to move into assisted living or our knees get bad enough we don't want to live in a non-ranch house (though the stairs are very wide and we could have a stair lift put in). Now the bamboo will probably outlive its four years and the cedar probably will out live 5 years, but it is hard to say. Basically I did the best I could on guessing the life span of the items bought.

The above basically adds up to $400/year. Half of that is the soil amendments and other things which will expire after this year. I placed a large order with NOFA (Northeast Organic Farmers Assoc) last year. I bought things like a general organic fertilizer, greensand, azomite, orchard netting, Fort V potting soil, bone char (our soil was really low on phosphorous), a planting mix for our fruit trees, fish emulsion, Sluggo (5lbs so enough to last a while) and worm castings. I shouldn't have to buy much of that kind of thing this year. Though I did use more than half of the potting soil, so I'll see what happens there. I'd like to see if I can do more direct seeding this year and less growing of transplants for things like greens.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

2012-01-05T09:42:00.000-05:00

Well it was tea time in my house last week. I had a cold all week long. Colds mean I drink a large amount of tea. Some is purchased, but some comes from the garden.

This is my favorite garden combo. Chamomile blossoms and Chocolate Mint. I mix them half and half. I've tried other mints with chamomile, but none are as good as Chocolate Mint.

Does anyone else drink tea from the garden? If so what are your favorites? I love lemon balm tea but lemon balm doesn't dehydrate well. That wonderful lemon scent evaporates. I'd love to find some new teas to grow.

Seeds from Fedco

2012-01-04T09:16:00.000-05:00

Usually I do my seed orders at the end of December. This year I'm slow. I was traveling a lot of December then I got a cold that just wiped me out. The last thing I want to do is to try to make up my seed order when my brain isn't working quite right. In November I went through all my seeds and made up a list of what I needed (winter squash, cantaloupe, cucumber, sweet pepper, tall choy, cabbage, late broccoli, spinach, corn, radish, onions, bush dried beans).

I ordered all that I needed from Fedco except the bush dried beans. I'll just buy some beans from the local bean farmer (Baer's Best Beans), and plant those. I've done it in the past and then I have as many as I want and lots of beans to eat. They sell a lot of different kinds of beans, like Vermont Cranberry, Soldier, Boston Roman, Jacob's Cattle, Calypso,Yellow Eye and Black Coco, along with all the "normal" beans. Now the stores (Wilson's Farm and Russo's) never have every kind they grow, but I ought to be able to pick up a couple of heirlooms.

Since I found Fedco years ago I've been a die hard fan of them. They aren't a for profit company, they are a co-op of growers and buyers. So the seeds aren't terribly expensive. In addition they are a co-op for New England farmers, so what I buy will grow here. The seeds aren't southern seeds that need a lot of hot weather to grow. They even sometimes say that the seed will grow better in the southern New England area or visa versa. They tell you where your seed comes from be it a small seed farmer all the way to a big multinational that does genetic engineering. They don't sell Monsanto seeds or seed from any of their subsidiaries. I'm guessing because of this they occasionally have trouble getting seed when things run out, or a supplier has problems. Once I ordered Varsity onion seed from them (in December mind you not late) and it ended up being back ordered. I finally got it around the end of February (too late to plant to get onions here). You can tell them to substitute, but I never do. Oh and I'll end on a positive note. If you order at least $30 of seed from then shipping is free.

My Fedco order for a total of $56 or $55 in the tally for the vegetable garden. I don't count the flower seeds.

298 - Windsor Fava Bean ( B=8oz) 1 x $4.00 = $4.00
582 - Ambrosia Bicolor Sweet Corn ( A=2oz) 2 x $2.40 = $4.80
798 - Legume Inoculant ( A=treats 8lb) 1 x $4.50 = $4.50
1049 - Hannahs Choice Muskmelon ( A=1g) 1 x $2.40 = $2.40
1232 - Calypso Pickling Cucumber ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.00 = $1.00
1234 - Cross Country Pickling Cucumber ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.40 = $1.40
2086 - Mokum Carrot ( B=3g) 1 x $4.20 = $4.20
2094 - Sugarsnax Carrot ( B=3g) 1 x $3.50 = $3.50
2248 - French Breakfast Radish ( C=1oz) 1 x $2.50 = $2.50
2488 - Varsity Onion ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $1.80 = $1.80
2491 - Redwing Onion ( A=1/16oz) 1 x $2.20 = $2.20
2510 - Space Spinach ( C=1oz) 1 x $3.50 = $3.50
2555 - Giant Winter Spinach ( B=1/2oz) 1 x $2.40 = $2.40
3273 - Joi Choi Pac Choi ( B=2g) 1 x $3.20 = $3.20
3313 - Fiesta Broccoli OG ( A=0.2g) 1 x $2.30 = $2.30
3339 - Gustus Brussels Sprouts ( A=0.5g) 1 x $2.50 = $2.50
3355 - Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage ( A=2g) 1 x $0.80 = $0.80
3392 - Gunma Cabbage ( A=0.2g) 1 x $1.70 = $1.70
3463 - Winterbor Kale ( A=0.5g) 1 x $1.80 = $1.80
3624 - Ventura Celery OG/BD ( A=0.1g) 1 x $2.20 = $2.20
4616 - Sweet Marjoram ( A=1g) 1 x $1.10 = $1.10
4674 - Winter Savory ( A=0.1g) 1 x $1.20 = $1.20
5141 - Sensation Mix Cosmos ( A=1.4g) 1 x $1.00 = $1.00

If you notice sometimes I buy a lot of seed. "A" packets are their smallest. I bought a "C" packet of French breakfast radishes. The seed will keep for years and years, so I won't buy this variety again for quite some time. I bought two "B" packets of carrot seed. Carrots keep for about 2-4 years, but I use so much of it and they always do better with seed that isn't more than 2 years old. I'll use up my old carrot seed this year (which I don't have much of) and start on the new seed. I always buy carrot seed every year.

I bought a lot of spinach seed too. I find spinach hard to germinate and keep up in the garden. I have so many rot diseases that it takes the seed down fast. So I often resow. Plus I sow a whole 4'x8' bed in the spring and one in the fall. That takes a lot of seed.

I chose two different pickling cucumbers. I didn't like Little Leaf from last year. I like to trellis my cucumbers and it wasn't much of a climber. It also had very tough skin. So my refrigerator pickles weren't as good. The canned pickles were delicious, but I like the refrigerator ones best. So I'm going to try to more picklers as see how they do. I might have to break down and buy my favorite which neither of the two places I'm ordering seed from have.

I also got two cabbages. One is a spring cabbage and one a good storage cabbage for fall. The Early Jersey Wakefield is a pointy cabbage. And the Gunma is a flat cabbage. So neither are round cabbages. I'll see if they grow. The red savoy I tried growing last year never headed up and just sat there staying tiny all spring and summer.

Last year I grew three kinds of broccoli, but they were all early types. I decided I wanted to try a later one. So I'm trying Fiesta. It is supposed to just keep producing. I hope so. I'll put these plants at the edge of the bed so when I rotate the rest of the brassicas I can cover these with a small section of remay.

And for the first time I'm hoping to get some Brussels sprouts up. I might succeed. I might not. You never know. I've never succeeded before, but I so rarely try to grow them. They take such a long time and so much space. I figure I have space though, so I'm going to give it a try.

I still have a Pinetree order to get in. It will be small as I have all the seeds I need. It is just a few seeds I want that I'm going to get from them. I probably should have crossed checked what each of the companies sold and bought from the cheapest, but I didn't think of that until I'd already placed my Fedco order.

Harvest Monday - January 2, 2012

2012-01-02T08:37:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year everyone! Another year to keep track of. I haven't started a new spreadsheet for 2012 yet, but I will. For now I'll record it all here.

The spinach was looking rather good after the warm weather we had. We are going into some bitter cold weather soon so I figured I'd better pick it. I didn't pick it all. I want it to survive the winter for spring spinach. But it was nice to take a leaf or two from all the plants.

And while I was out I noticed the cilantro. I have three beds like this that have cilantro just popping up all over. I love self seeded beds. Not that I need three beds of cilantro, but I'm calling it a cover crop.

If you notice in the harvest basket I also have some rosemary. I didn't dry nearly enough during the year. I'm just hoping the plants survive which is an iffy proposition in our zone 6 climate. I wanted to wait to trim it until it was very cold because I didn't want the plant to think it should start growing again.

Spinach 5.9 oz
Rosemary 3.7 oz
Cilantro 0.6 oz

Harvest Monday - December 26, 2011

2011-12-26T06:55:00.004-05:00

This is the last Harvest Monday of the year, which normally means posting my yearly totals. But this time I also have a harvest. I picked the rest of the Shanghai bok choy in the garden. All that is left of my Asian greens is some tatsoi. The tatsoi is pretty hardy, but the bok choy is much better quality if picked before too many deep freezes take place. The outer leaves slowly turn to slime in the cold weather. The inner ones hold for much longer. In addition I wanted to bring bok choy to the Christmas party, so it had to get picked and sorted beforehand.

The biggest of the choys was this pretty one. The outer leaves were a bit banged up but the inner ones were beautiful. It was over four inches in diameter and weighed 14 oz. I think it didn't know it was a baby bok choy and wanted to be a full sized one. All in all I harvested 4lbs and 3.3oz of bok choy. Not bad for the end of the year.

Now on to the year end round up. This was a decent year. I have about 560 sqft of raised beds and got about 590 lbs of vegetables from the space. I always hope for at least a pound per square foot. Also the solanums weren't weighed starting at the end of August. So I'm guessing I had at least 20 more pounds if not more.

Next year will be harder for me as I won't grow as many of the solanums. None if I still can't eat them by then. Right now I've eaten dips with hot peppers in them and not reacted. I'll very very slowly add more in over the winter and spring. I had a full three beds in solanums, so next year I'll need at least two beds in other things. I'm thinking more squash would be good. More corn and beans would be good. I might split up my three sisters and grow full beds of things. And I might do both. Have some mixed and some not to see what grows better.

In addition, I'm going to have to figure out a rotation for my brassicas. I my last garden I didn't have to rotate the beds during the year. So I would grow them in the spring and in the same place in the fall and then rotate them in other years. But in this garden there is more rot diseases and I lost my whole fall bed in less than a week. So the spring brassicas will have to be followed by something like carrots and the fall brassicas will have to follow the peas, favas, and carrots. This year the kale followed the onions and that worked out well. To help with the issue I'd like to get a row cover that lets the air flow better. They sell them in Australia, but sadly not here. Shipping is a b*tch. But I think it will be worth it.

Yearly totals for 2011:

Alliums 46.49
Beans 28.06
Broccoli 7.08
Carrots 42.31
Corn 11.66
Cucurbit 88.06
Eggplant 5.77
Greens 121.19
Herbs 7.45
Peas 18.82
Peppers 15.76
Potatoes 24.46
Radishes and Turnips 7.48
Tomatoes 168.30
Yearly total 592.99 lbs

Total spent $673.98
Veggies were worth $2008.98
Fruit 1.87 lbs $7.81
Net $1342.81

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

2011-12-22T11:03:00.000-05:00

The biggest problem with growing dried beans is cooking them. Before I grew my own dried beans I always had cans on hand to make things. I could whip up my winter soups so quickly that way. Now it takes planning. The best planning is the night before to soak them. But you can cheat and get them to boiling then take them off the stove to let them sit for an hour and it works about as well. The beans from my garden take about an hour to cook until they are soft. They are so quick because they are so fresh. But still I need a full two hours at the least of planning to have fully cooked beans. Some days that is fine. But some I need a quicker bean or I lose out on eating them.

I'd been drooling over a pressure canner for years. I finally broke down and bought it for myself for Christmas. As my husband says, we have a weird way of getting gifts. We tell our spouse what we want for the holidays then we go out and buy it. Hey it is quick turn around and you get to pick what you want. No one in our family has been big on surprises. Since the kids have grown we end up with very very few gifts under the tree. But I digress.

With a pressure canner I could can some of my beans. The issue I ran into is that I don't have a lot of any one type of bean. I have lots of little containers of beans. So I had four pots of beans cooking on the stove to try to get enough parboiled beans to fill up the pressure canner.

My canner is an All American. It can can 18 pints at a time which for me is an awful lot of pints. I managed to fill up 12 of them.

8 of them were successful; 3 didn't seal; and 1 was pretty questionable since it had lost a lot of its internal liquid. I put the last four in the fridge for immediate use. I'm guessing they didn't seal because beans really foam up when cooking. There could have been some leaking which can mess with the seal. If anyone out there has any tips for canning beans I'd appreciate it. 1/3 with bad seals is not a good number. I probably won't can any more beans this year as 8 jars will fill in the gaps for when I forget to start my beans early enough.

Join Robin over at The Gardener of Eden for more Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard posts.

Harvest Monday - December 19, 2011

2011-12-19T06:02:00.000-05:00

I was gone all last week. Though on last Monday I did get a harvest. While I was gone very cold temperature were predicted. I pulled out all the white stemmed bok choy. About a pound and a half. Then I covered the rest of the green stemmed bok choy and the tatsoi. They are more cold hardy. I put on some plastic. Before they just had a row cover, but while I was gone the lows were predicted to get into the teens. I'm not sure they would survive without plastic.

I also picked some Fun Jen. I didn't cover it with plastic as the plastic I was using was too small to cover both and I haven't been eating it so don't really care if it lives right now. I like it in salads, but recently salads just don't appeal. I've been eating lots of soup but not a single salad.

The whole harvest totaled just over two pounds. I sent it to my townhouse mates since I was leaving the next morning. I didn't get photos as the camera had already been packed up.

Harvest Monday - December 12, 2011

2011-12-12T07:53:00.002-05:00

I'd tell you all the wonderful things I picked, but I've got nothing. I've been away. And will be away again. My time between trips was short so I didn't go out picking. Plus with parties and going out I had only one meal at home. I did eat some frozen veggies. Carrots, chard, and corn. And some frozen soups for lunch that were made from my garden veggies.

I'm hoping some things did get picked while I was gone. I told my townhouse mates what Asian greens they could pick. But honestly I didn't see much gone. Maybe they will do better this coming week.

Harvest Monday - November 28, 2011

2011-12-05T06:00:00.006-05:00

All that I have to show you was picked earlier in the week as I'm on vacation right now. My townhouse mates have the garden for quite some time. But I will be scheduling Harvest Mondays so you all can play without me when I'm gone.

I said, "All I have to show you". But "all" is quite a lot this week even if it is only two things. The kale I picked through. I've noticed the lower leaves turning brown. So I got rid of them and picked a couple of the next leaves up. Hopefully I won't lose leaves that way. Better to have them eaten. I gave them all to my townhouse mates to eat this week as I still hadn't finished my Asian greens.

First Batch

Then came the carrot harvests. I had to pick all of them that were ready to eat as the carrot flies had hatched again and they were really starting to damage the carrots. Luckily most of the damage at this point was skin deep. None of this new damage was there before Thanksgiving so the little grubs didn't have time to dig very deep into the carrot.

Second Batch

I had over 18 lbs of carrots that I picked. Most were blanched and frozen as I didn't think the carrots would hold up as long stored. The few undamaged carrots will be eaten raw. I'm storing them in the fridge as there aren't' a lot. Any cooked carrots will now be from my froze stash. Most of the carrots I eat in the winter are cooked so it isn't a big deal that I had to process most of them.

I took a photo of some of the longer ones. It is so easy to grow good carrots in this soil. at my last house I had heavy clay and I was happy when I had my soil amended well enough to grow 8" carrots. At the start of that garden I couldn't grow carrots at all.

My favorite carrot of the bunch. I call it "The Lovers". I had one I named "Running Man" but the photos just didn't show it off well.

Carrots 18.28 lbs
Kale 2.04 lbs
Weekly Total 20.33 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 587.01 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1305.09
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

2011-12-01T06:00:00.006-05:00

I actually preserved something this week so have a post for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard over at Robin's blog. I figured with the carrot fly damage I'd better get some of my carrots frozen since I wasn't sure how long they would store. So I thinned out the patch by about half and sliced them. It filled up my big colander.

Then I blanched them for a few minutes and tossed them in a bowl with ice water. Then came the decisions. I often freeze them on a cookie sheet and then put them in a ziplock bag to freeze. That way I can pick out however much I want. But I had a lot of carrots (and will have more) and they will last quite some time in the freezer.

So I elected to freeze them in batches and vacuum seal them. I haven't used my vacuum sealer I think since my Grand Canyon rafting trip in '99. My mom (our trip leader) asked me to dehydrate a lot of things and I vacuumed sealed it all in the portions we would be using. During the move I tried to give away things that I hadn't used in over a decade. That would have qualified, but I kept it thinking it might be useful again with a huge garden. I was right. Sadly it is very old and the middle wire which cuts the bags apart is not working all the time. But scissors worked OK. Two of the bags didn't seal right. I didn't redo them. I figured I'd just mark them and eat them first. So now I have 13 bags of carrots, all a cup each.

But I'll have more. There are lots of carrots still in that bed. I was going to leave them there and pick them slowly as I had plenty of them frozen now for when the ground froze solid. But there is starting to be more carrot fly damage. I think those that were in my carrots hatched and put out a new group of flies. The new damage is extensive on the surface, but it is only on the surface right now. Just peeling the carrots with one swipe of the peeler. removes it all. If I wait any longer it will become deeper and I'll lose most of the carrots. So I'm going to get the rest of them up and process them now. Any undamaged carrots will be stored but with over eight pounds of carrots in that first batch, only two carrots didn't show signs of damage. So I need to get them out of the ground immediately.

The weird thing about processing that many carrots is that my hands got stained. It doesn't show up well in that photo but my hand is really orange. I hope it wears off soon.

Addendum: I finally got all the carrots done. I have a few saved that had no carrot fly damage. Mostly ones that were small or short and stubby. The last of the carrots made 14 cups. Two were made into three cup batches which is good for a dinner party. And 8 were made into one cup containers for me. So now I have 21 single cup pouches. I'll probably use up about one a week. That will get me through April, which isn't too bad at all.

Gifts

2011-11-29T13:06:00.000-05:00

I sent out all the seeds today. You all ought to get them in the next week or so. 36 people were sent seeds, though one bag of seed packets was just tossed over my back fence. I caused them to open a second window at the post office. Now I'm done with that for the year. Whoot! I confess to getting sick of sorting seeds and closed my offer of seeds. So that was my gift to you all.

My gift to myself was a garden shed. I had dithered all summer and fall about whether to get a wooden or plastic one. I just got the cheap plastic one. I figured it would be smaller. Small is good.

It doesn't hold much but the shed is perfectly made for a small garden. One side for tools and one side for fertilizer. My old plastic fertilizer boxes fit perfectly side by side on the shelves. Now if I just had one more of them. I really ought to label those boxes too. I had labels on them over a decade ago, but they have long since worn off. I've got to put the Sluggo in there too. The slugs are having a field day in the garden this fall. Luckily there isn't much for them to eat anymore. But I'm sure they are breeding up a storm.

Harvest Monday - November 28, 2011

2011-11-28T07:08:00.000-05:00

My weeks so far seem either to be feast or famine for my harvest Monday posts. I have so much for times that I clear the garden. And so little when I'm trying to eat it all up. I still have a ton of Asian greens in the fridge. I've been eating them in just about everything.

I did pick some carrots and fresh dill for Thanksgiving. I had pounds of carrots in the fridge, but some were small and I wanted some larger ones. They don't look big in that photo to me, but the longest was a foot long. And they were over and inch wide at the top.

I had some minimal carrot fly damage on all of my carrots. It is simple to cut out, but I'm thinking they won't last long out there with the freezes and thaws. So maybe this coming week I'll pick a lot and freeze them. I do want to try to save some of the undamaged ones for fresh storage, but many of the carrots I eat are cooked so it is simple to store them frozen.

Carrots 0.94 lbs
Dill 0.13 lbs
Weekly Total 20.15 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 566.68 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1263.82
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

2011-11-24T09:23:00.000-05:00

Ah Thanksgiving. The holiday that celebrates the harvest. I've certainly been thankful for my harvests this year. Our family goes to friends for most Thanksgivings. This year there will be somewhere around 30-40 people there with about 12 different families. In the past it was smaller, but over the years it has grown.

Trying to figure out who brings things with that many people is always hard. But we break things out into colors. My family has been assigned orange along with another person, Lori. In fact I asked for orange. I like to try to incorporate things from my garden on Thanksgiving. I knew I had lots of squash and carrots, so orange it was. I also asked to bring some cranberry ice as it is a family tradition. My son elected to make some crepes with peach sauce for dessert and Lori is bringing pumpkin pie, so I'm not making any dessert. So here is what I'm bringing:

Pumpkin beer
Maple Sugar Carrots with Dill
Daphne's Squash Casserole
Cranberry Ice

As to the pumpkin beer, I had a pumpkin beer tasting with nine beers at my house a few weeks ago. I saved all the left overs. After our friends voted it turns out that Pumking is the best of the pumpkin beers. Sadly we drank it all at the party, but I do have some of the number three beer, Shipyard Pumkinhead. And I have a lot of the lower ranked ones as well.

The Maple Sugar Carrots with Dill is a take off from an Allrecipes dish. I make mine as follows:

3 cups carrots in slices
2 T maple syrup
2 T butter
1 1/2 T chopped dill
1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper

Boil the carrots until soft. Drain. In a pan add maple syrup and butter and cook for a couple minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and toss until covered. If you look at the Allrecipes recipe you will notice that I only chance the brown sugar out for maple sugar. Really maple sugar is so much better.

Daphne's Squash Casserole

1 egg
1 c squash puree
1/2 c soy milk
1/4c maple syrup
1/2 t vanilla
1/4 c butter melted
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 c flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/8 t salt

Mix the wet and dry ingredients separately then mix together. Cook 1 hour at 350. Have you noticed a trend to liking maple syrup. I also use it when I cook squash to eat plain. Some add brown sugar and butter to the squash but I add maple syrup and butter. Yummy.

For the squash puree I put some squash halved in the oven at 350-375F. I wanted very thick puree so I didn't put any water in the pan and kept the squash upright.

This made five cups of very very thick puree. I'll double the casserole recipe when I bring it as it will actually fit a good sized casserole pan then. Usually I put it in a small one since I'm the only one eating it.

My Grandma's Cranberry Ice

12 oz cranberries
water
juice from one lemon
gelatin
3/4 c sugar
salt to taste

Pick over the berries and put in a saucepan. Just cover with water and boil until soft. While it is boiling soften the gelatin in 3/4 c of cold water. When the berries are done put through a sieve or food mill. Add the sugar and lemon juice and simmer until dissolved. Take off the heat and add the dissolved gelatin. Freeze.

Hope you all have a happy Turkey Day if this is when you celebrate! And join in on Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard with Robin.

Weird Weather

2011-11-23T13:25:00.000-05:00

This fall has had some extremely unusual weather here at the dandelion patch. Usually our ground gets and stays frozen for the winter around the middle of November. This year the ground is still unfrozen. I don't remember a Thanksgiving that I could harvest fresh dill unless it was covered. I can this year. I went out and harvested some for Dill and Maple Sugar Carrots for tomorrow.

Carrot leaves

On Monday I woke up to only our second freeze of the year. The frost was so beautiful. But as soon as the sun touched it, it was gone. So I could only photograph the plants still in the shade. By afternoon the ground was unthawed again.

Kale

I meant to write this post on Monday, but that didn't happen and then Tuesday didn't happen. Sometimes it is hard to find a minute free to blog.

Thyme

We might get one more freeze in November. Tonight. Or we might not. As usual the weather men disagree and one says it will be 26F tonight. Another says only 31F. Then they all agree it will be warm and sunny on Friday and Saturday, so the freeze won't stick. It looks like the ground won't freeze solid until sometime in December. Though I have to say I'm wondering if winter won't ever come.

And in other news, I had a cold over the last week so my husband for the first time every helped me play bag lady. We collected leaves from our neighborhood curbs. I filled up two of the bins. Some are still in the bags, but as the leaves below compress I'll add in more leaves to the bins.

Harvest Monday - November 21, 2011

2011-11-21T05:53:00.004-05:00

Last week was the week of little harvests, while this was the week of big harvests. Part of the issue is that I decided to weigh the beans and some of the squash that hasn't been weighed yet. So now all the dried beans are accounted for.

Butternut and Black Futsu Squash

And the squash is mostly counted. I have two I'm not sure that will ripen or not and two I'm pretty sure have no chance at all.

Then there were the carrots. I took all the carrots out of the main bed that were even close to big enough. I still have the circle garden area that gets some real sun in the fall and are much much bigger. If I need them, I'll use them for Thanksgiving. Otherwise I'll use these. Either way the circle garden bed that is surrounded by brick path will keep warmer as we go into winter than the main beds. The main beds just get no sun at all right now. The sun is behind the houses.

In this garden I don't get many deformed carrots so these always make me smile. They are very silly looking carrots.

And last but not least. This week I finally finished up the Asian greens, so picked some more. The white stemmed bok choy was starting to bolt so I picked all that had little flowers starting to form. I'll eat that first. The green stemmed and the tatsoi don't bolt as quickly. The tatsoi won't bolt at all this fall and will keep better during the winter than the bok choy. So that will be the last picked. Fun Jen doesn't keep well either, but I'm just picking it as needed for salads. I haven't wanted many recently. I've been eating soup every day, but very few salads.

Beans 4.06 lbs
Carrots 4.33 lbs
Cucurbits 9.42 lbs
Greens 2.34 lbs
Weekly Total 20.15 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 565.62 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1260.23
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Seed Progress

2011-11-18T11:54:00.000-05:00

I've been working to get the seeds all sorted out. I've been using Excel. I made a list of everyone's order and added them all up. Once I knew how many seeds people wanted I put them all into little labeled bags. For the record, so far there are 31 people requesting seeds and 110 little filled bags. Last year it was much smaller. It seems to grow every year. At some point I won't be able to do it anymore, but so far so good.

After I had the seeds in bags. I made up a mailer for everyone. Those that wanted beans got padded envelopes. Those that didn't got cards. In years past I might have written a little note inside wishing them well with their garden, but this year there are just so many and so little time. I'm sure you will know all the seeds are from me. The labels on the seeds clearly mark it as coming from Daphne's Dandelions.

I expect a few more requests over the next week or so, but not a lot. I tend to get the majority of requests within a couple of days of the post. Though some will trickle in even in December (though I mostly won't be here in December so don't expect any fast response). December really is the time to think about seeds. I've already gotten my Pinetree catalog. I can't wait for the Fedco one to come in. I usually order most of my seed from them as they are a very nice not for profit coop. They specialize in seed for New England. I know the seed they sell me will grow here.

Anyway back to my seeds. I think I did OK getting them right, but I think someone might have gotten some Paris Island seed instead of something else. I should have double checked them before sealing up those envelopes. I'll get the majority of them mailed out sometime next week. I want to do them all at once so I won't have to go to the post office too many times. Right now the Tarbais beans won't be out of the freezer until Monday so probably I'll go on Tuesday.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

2011-11-17T06:00:00.003-05:00

I think my time canning this fall is already over so I'm going to share a recipe for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard.

So many have been asking what I do with my dried beans. In the days that I could eat tomatoes and peppers I would make a lot of Mexican or Tex Mex dishes. Things like burritos, huevos rancheros, black bean soup, or chili. But for now I'm not eating those solanums, so I've been making soup. My favorite of the non-tomato based soups is ham and bean soup. Now I rarely measure things out for soups but I'll try to give you an estimate of how this one was made.

Daphne's Ham and Beans Soup

1 cup dried beans of your choice.
4 cups chicken of vegetable broth
2 bay leaves
T oil
1 cup chopped onions
3/4 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup wine or water
handful of chopped parsley
1/3 cubed ham
salt to taste

First I pick out my beans. You can use any type of beans for this recipe, but creamier beans would be best. Tiger's Eye beans would be my pick, but lacking those I went for some Ottawa Cranberry beans. If you don't have any interesting beans from the garden, your typical white bean is just fine. The Ottawa Cranberry beans have such history for me. They were first given to me by the Ottawa Gardener (I named them after her as they were of an unknown type of cranberry bean). I've sent them to dozens of people over the years for them to try out. Then I accidentally ate my seed beans. I had a few sad small beans, but they wouldn't have produced well the first year. So Granny came to my rescue and sent them back to me last spring so I could plant them again. I love having some history in my soup bowl.

Soak the beans in water overnight. In the morning drain off the liquid and rinse. Add the beans, broth, and bay leaves to a pot and simmer for an hour.

While the pot is starting to simmer. Chop up your onions, carrots, and celery. As you can see mine are pretty colorful, which will make the soup reddish. The carrots are Purple Haze; the celery is Redventure; and the onions are Copra and Redwing.

A colorful miropoix

Saute the onions until about half translucent then add in the carrots and celery. Saute until the onions are translucent. Deglaze the pan with some white wine or water. I use wine if I have it around and not if I don't. Then toss it into the beans. The beans do not have to be done with their hour yet. In fact it is good if they aren't as the flavors will meld better.

After the hour check if the beans beans are mostly soft and add the ham and parsley. If your beans still aren't soft yet, continue cooking until they are. The older the beans are the more dried out they get and the longer they take to cook. I don't add the ham or salt at the start. Beans can get tough if they are cooked in salt, which is why it is best to use a salt free broth. I make my own and never add anything except chicken. (Though this recipe has no acidic ingredients, beans can also get tough if cooked in acids, so save the tomatoes or lime juice until after they are soft.) Cook for an hour longer until all the flavors are melded.

This recipe can be changed around. Use vegetable broth and no ham for a vegan soup. Or use beef broth and beef for a beef soup. Sometimes I use less onion and sometimes more. If you want to make it a very very rich soup, you can add some cream. Personally I like to eat it with a bit of Greek yogurt. Mmmmmm.

On Seeds, Sex, and an Offer

2011-11-15T08:00:00.002-05:00

Lettuce seed on the stem

Every year I try to save seeds. Mostly I save seeds that are easy to save. To know which ones they are you have to know a bit about the plants. Plants tend to come in two types. Inbreeders and outbreeders.

Lettuce seed getting separated

Outbreeders (like brasscas, corn, and onions) don't like to breed with plants too closely related to them. They like to be heterozygus, which means they like to be promiscuous. They don't want to breed with themselves and they don't want to breed with a plant like them. They like a wild sex life. I think all wind pollinated plants (corn, spinach, and any of the grasses come to mind) are outbreeders. The wind can carry pollen for long distances. It is a great way to mix up the gene pool. Other outbreeders are insect pollinated. You may not get your pollen out as far as with the wind, but those bees do get around.

Outbreeders have something called inbreeding depression. If they inbreed too much the seed will become less and less viable over the years. So if you save seed from brassicas, and you don't have enough plants for them to cross, you might not get viable seed. The first year might be just fine if you only have a few plants, but as you collect in future years, you might not even get any seed. I've heard from 40-100 plants or more are necessary to maintain a diverse enough gene pool for the outbreeders.

Since letting that many go to seed is often hard. And isolating that many plants is also hard. I save seed from inbreeders. This means I don't have to maintain quite as large of a gene pool. It is good to collect from more than one plant, but you don't have to. Inbreeders have sex two ways. They use insect pollination and they can self pollinate. If they can pollinate by insects and you (or your neighbors) are growing more than one variety, you have to isolate it in some way. I've done this in the past. But this year I just used the ones that self pollinate.

Beans to be shelled

I have saved seed from beans, peas, tomatoes, and lettuce this year. All self pollinate. All have a possibility that they can cross. Tomatoes usually don't. Most modern tomatoes have short styles, but if the style sticks out past the anther cone then they can cross. With beans and peas whether they cross or not is dependent on where you live. Some insects can get into flowers and pollinate them, but if the insects aren't in your neighborhood you are safe (BTW runner beans are an exception, their flowers are open and can cross readily). Lettuce is almost always self pollinated before the flower opens. I saved both white and black seeded lettuce. The black seeded trait is dominant. So if I had any black seeds in my white seeded varieties, I would know that crossing occurred. It didn't.

Now for the offer. Some people trade seeds every year, but I much prefer just to give them away. Some years I ask for things. Like last year I asked people to send me seeds to trial for dried pole beans if they had ones they liked. But there is no quid pro quo here. And this year I have nothing I can think of that I want to trial. So as long as I don't run out if you ask for them I'll mail them to you. I'll mail the smaller seeds worldwide, but the larger seeds are more expensive to ship so I only mail them to the US or Canada. I tend to put in enough so you can try them, but not enough so you can grow a whole garden's worth of them.

So if you are interested, don't make a comment here. Email me at daphne@alum.mit.edu. Include the following things:

your name
your address
which seeds you want

I'll mail them all at once, and a few varieties of bean seeds haven't been frozen (to kill pests) yet so it might be a week or two.

Please note that I'm not taking any more requests.

Pole Beans

I've been offering Cherokee Trail of Tears bean for a few years now. The Cherokees carried this bean on their long march that the bean was named for. Personally I first got this bean from the Ottawa Gardener and have grown it every year since. This bean has world domination on its mind when it grows. It can probably grow 12' high with ease if given something that high to grow on. This summer it was one of the more productive beans at 0.37 pounds per sqft of garden space. The bean is a fairly early bean and can produce every year here even in a bad year.

The Ottawa Cranberry bean was also given to me by the Ottawa Gardener. It is also a very productive bean at 0.33 lbs/sqft. It however stays in bounds. It will grow to 6' but not much more. It is a fairly early bean.

The Tarbais Alaric bean came to me through the Seed Savers Exchange yearbook. It is the classic French bean. It is usually picked as a shelling bean. Sadly the productivity I can't tell. I have in my hand 0.37 lbs/sqft, but some were given away as shelling beans and not dried beans and those are not in the total. So this was my most prolific bean. Like Trail of Tears the vines could grow very tall if given a chance. However it is a later bean than the proceeding beans. By August 5th only two pods had set so far. It really ramped up later on though. Since it is usually picked as a shelling bean, the lateness wouldn't be an issue for eating. But it might not be long enough to save seed every year.

Mexican Pinto was offered through the SSE yearbook by SSE (SSE BEAN 1025). They keep a large variety of seed in storage and occasionally grow it out. This was seven year old seed. They asked that anyone that grew it offer it up. So I'm doing that. The vines were fairly in control. So maybe 6'-7' tall at the most. About half the plants died early on. It was still fairly productive at 0.30 lbs/sqft even with the missing plants.

Rattlesnake was given to me by Mike H. Early on it looked like it would produce well. But what happened was that it produced one quick flush than stopped. So it was early enough but only came in at 0.28 lbs/sqft. Which isn't bad. And all the beans were early which is good in a bad year. The vines got to the top of the trellis, but didn't start taking over its neighbors. So it plays well with others.

Turkey Craw came to me from Michelle. It is a really beautiful bean. It is however later than most of the other beans I grew. Not late enough to keep it from producing though as I got 0.33 lbs/sqft. The vines were the most aggressive in the garden. They will take over their neighbors. So be warned.

Apache Red came from the SSE Yearbook. It is a very vigorous vine and the pods set very late. I could see this not producing in my area in bad years. I don't have the yield figures because not all the beans have been removed from their pods. I still have a bag left to do. I find the beans a little ugly. They are not in the least a smooth color. They have a lot of bumps and ridges and a lot of not bred out weirdness to them. I would love to know their history.

Tomatoes

Market Miracle (70) is a tomato that seems to be able to handle some adversity. I gave a plant to a friend who put it in a spot with about 5 hours of sunlight a day. It still produced about 20 tomatoes. I've found it produces better in shade than other tomatoes I've grown. It makes 6-8oz perfectly round red tomatoes. The tomatoes do have a tendency to fall of the vine prematurely.

Cherokee Purple (80) is a delicious tomato. Black, round, beefsteak type.

Not quite ripe Amish on left, Heinz on right

Amish Paste (75) is a very good tasting paste tomato, but is one of the few pastes that is good raw. It is heart shaped and red.

Heinz 2653 (68) is a very early determinant paste type with an elongated shape. It produces a lot over a 2-3 week period then it succumbs to disease.

Lettuce

Redsails and Paris Island

I have three types of lettuce seed to offer. I have Red Sails, a red leaf lettuce. Paris Island is the typical romaine. And Little Gem is a mini romaine.

Others

I have a few other seeds left that don't fit a category:

Caribe cilantro - slow bolter
Borage
Ground Control Marigold (2010 seed)

Harvest Monday - November 14, 2011

2011-11-14T06:03:00.000-05:00

You are expecting a big harvest from me aren't you? Well not this week. Above is my one and only harvest. I don't even have to tell you the weight as the scale shows you. It isn't even enough to make me update my sidebar tally. The parsley was picked for ham and bean soup.

I've eaten a lot from the garden, but it was all picked on previous weeks or from storage. I had so many Asian greens, chard and carrots I never got through them all. I still have some in the fridge. With the CSA over and my townhouse mates away on vacation last week, finishing up my greens is all on me. And really how many pounds can I eat in a week?

Asian Greens

2011-11-11T11:07:00.000-05:00

I was very disappointed when my main Asian greens bed all died from some kind of disease back in late August. Brassicas were planted in this bed for spring and fall which is usually a bad idea. Crops should be rotated But I got away with it at my last garden. Soil born diseases were fairly uncommon there. Here I lose a lot of plants. Next year I'll have to make a new rotation where the brassicas move from spring to fall. Maybe I'll put some bush beans in where the spring brassicas come out. Or maybe that is where the fall carrots will go. Or maybe some late zucchini.

Rock wall garden

At least I have my last minute Asian greens bed. It was put in at the beginning of September to replace the lost bed and started picking the bed by thinning at the end of September. All the greens here are fast growing greens. This section of the rock wall garden is 9' long by 2.5' deep. It provides more greens that I could possibly eat.

One of my favorites growing in the rock wall garden is the Shanghai bok choy. I love it grilled with a bit of oil, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper sprinkled on it before cooking. I have a white stemmed bok choy that I like too. It is milder and bolts faster than the green stemmed one. I tend to use that one in stir fries.

Then I have my tatsoi. I eat it in soups and stir fries. One of my favorites and certainly the easiest way is to just season some chicken broth with a bit of soy sauce. I get it boiling. Put the leaves in your soup bowl and pour the broth over the leaves. This cooks the leaves perfectly. They really don't need a lot of cooking.

The last of the greens in my rock wall garden is the Fun Jen. The slugs love it since it is so mild, but it makes a great Asian salad. The last one I made had carrots, red onions, Fun Jen, and apples in it. It was dressed with a mustard and soy sauce dressing. No recipe, but use a basic vinaigrette recipe and add a bit of Dijon mustard, some soy sauce, and a little honey.

Harvest Monday - November 7, 2011

2011-11-07T06:37:00.000-05:00

I've been picking carrots in bunches and them using them up over a week or two. I had run out so I picked another batch. These really aren't quite full sized, but I don't think this bed will ever get there this year. So I've been picking out the ones that seem big enough. I'm leaving the really good carrot bed for Thanksgiving dinner and winter storage.

Earlier this week I wrote about my dried beans. Well when they are dry enough and ready to be stored I weigh that variety. So far I have three all weighed up. I don't store them in bag, but in glass airtight canisters.

The chard was looking worse for the wear after all the frosts and freezes we have been having. I figured it was just going to go downhill from here, so picked it. I only kept about a quarter of the leaves as the others were wilting and dying. I should have picked earlier. I'll have to remember for next year to keep it covered or pick it earlier.

Yesterday for lunch I wanted a salad. So I went out and picked a full sized Fun Jen head. I paired it with some carrots and onions from the garden, and an apple from the farmers market.

Beans 3.80 lbs
Carrots 1.38 lbs
Greens 2.08 lbs
Weekly Total 7.26 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 545.44 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1204.31
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Dried Beans

2011-11-02T09:43:00.000-04:00

Dried beans have got to be one of my favorite things in the winter. I love bean soups. I love hummus made from any kind of bean. I love beans done in any Mexican fashion. Now as a garden crop they are really easy. I plant them and then just let them grow all season long until the pods are dry on the vine. But they aren't very productive. They take the bed for all season and the pounds per square foot is pretty small.

Green beans are different. I had a 5.5'x1' section of Kentucky Wonder green beans. They yielded just over two pounds of beans per square foot. Which for any gardening crop is fantastic. But my dried beans do well if they yield a third of a pound per square foot. And since I was trialing so many kinds, I don't expect to get that yield from much.

I don't start to weigh the beans until they are fully dried. Then I take a hammer out and smash a few of the beans. If they shatter they are done. If they smoosh they need more time. Then I stick them in my deep freeze for a few days. Drying them will make sure that the seed doesn't die while frozen. And freezing them makes sure any pest eggs that are on them die so my beans don't get eaten in storage.

So far I have three types that are dry enough to weigh. Cherokee Trail of Tears, Ottawa Cranberry, and Mexican Pinto. The first two yielded the expected third of a pound per square foot. They are my tried and true beans (originally from the Ottawa Gardener years ago). The Mexican pinto was just under half that. Since half of the vines died unexpectedly early on, it was to be expected. I'll keep them, but I thought the Ga Ga Hut pintos yielded more. I can't really tell though as only one Ga Ga Hut bean plant survived the unexpected cold spell in late May. I had enough Mexican Pinto beans to replant, but I had no extra Ga Ga Huts. In addition the beans of Ga Ga Hut are larger. I might do the same trial again next year. We will see. I might try a bush pinto instead.

Harvest Monday - October 31, 2011

2011-10-31T07:12:00.001-04:00

As you have probably read about on so many blogs in the eastern US, we got snow. But it wasn't as much as Robin who lives in Pennsylvania or Thomas who lives in eastern Massachusetts. We are so urban, and the city holds a lot of heat. We only got about two inches. And as you can see on the brick path, much of the snow melted as it hit. The plows didn't even come out in our town.

Last week was the last of my CSA so this week I was just picking enough for myself. I brushed the snow off the Asian greens row cover and picked a few plants. Some tatsoi, white stemmed bok choy and some Shanghai bok choy. I like to pick for the week when it is so cold outside. In the morning especially I won't go out in the cold. If I make eggs and there are greens in the fridge, I"ll use them. If not I'll eat them plain. So I have to make sure the fridge is stocked.

The Asian green patch is now in a new mode. In the last few weeks I thinned it out, making sure I picked enough from every row that the other plants had room to grow. I sent the extras to my CSA and to my townhousemates. This week I tried to pick what I would eat for the week. It has become cold and in a couple of weeks the ground will freeze. Recently this has been happening around mid November. Last night was a freeze (as I write the temp is 27.8F). It will unthaw during the week, but I'll soon have to get the plastic hoop up. The cold weather means the plants will stop growing. They will hold in the ground just fine for a month or two. At least that is the hope.

Last week was also clean up week. I got all the bean trellises taken down. There were two varieties that had some beans that hadn't dried on them. So they were shelled to be eaten fresh. These were runner beans and Cherokee Trail of Tears beans. The smaller green ones are the same varieties, but the beans just hadn't matured yet.

Beans 1.31 lbs
Greens 1.70 lbs
Weekly Total 3.01 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 538.19 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1178.81
Fruit 1.87 lbs

What's Growing in the Fall Garden

2011-10-28T11:17:00.002-04:00

Though I've ripped out most of my plants in the garden, I still have a few producing. Or in the case of carrots I have tons. Above is a spot about 2'x8' section of my circle garden filled with carrots ready to pick. Since the circle garden is surrounded by bricks and brick path and close to the kitchen door I want to save these and cover them when the ground starts to freeze. I want to bring carrots to Thanksgiving. BTW the netting on this bed is for the almost gone lettuce. The birds would eat it down to the stubs if I didn't do this.

Then there is the main part of the garden that is lower in sun. These carrots were planted earlier than the ones in the circle garden, but with the lack of sun they are small and many aren't even big enough to pick. Over the next few weeks I'll be eating the ones that are large enough. I'll leave the rest and see if they make it to spring. This area is a massive area of carrots. I've probably got over 30 sqft of carrots in this bed, but only if they can mature in time.

The Argentata chard did so much better than the Ruby chard. There seems to be some disease maybe that is distorting the leaves of the Ruby chard, but the Argentata is fairly immune to it. I never knew anything could affect them besides leaf miners. Live and learn. I'll grow the Argentata exclusively next year or at least as long as Fedco offers the seeds.

Also in the Chenepodium family is my spinach. It has been struggling this fall. The leaf miners did a number on it earlier and rotted out their leaves. So I picked all the dying rotting leaves and they have recovered somewhat, but at this point it will be spring spinach and not fall spinach. I'm sure it will overwinter just fine.

My kale is growing so fabulously. I used to have a row cover on it, but in the last couple of days I haven't seen any of those white butterflies. So I'm guessing it is safe to uncover. Which is good since I wanted to stake them for fall and they were getting too tall of the cover. I'll leave them unprotected this winter and harvest the leaves in January maybe. I want to see which ones survive the winter. These are a mixed batch. I'm not sure which ones they are, but hopefully I'll be able to narrow it down. If they all survive, well then I want to find the tastiest and best growing for next year.

And last but not least are my herbs. I so love fresh herbs. I chop them up in the mornings for my eggs. I toss them on a slice of bread and melted cheese. They have finally filled out their circle. Now my chore will be to keep the English thyme from invading the French thyme. I like the French better, but the English seems to survive better. I also have some Rosemary in this bed. It is supposed to be hardy to zone 6 or 7. I'm hoping it survives. I also have two along the foundation of the house. One that is a hardy one like the above and one that is Tuscan Blue, which is one of the best tasting. I don't have high hopes for the survival of Tuscan Blue, but I had to try.

I also have my Asian greens bed producing, but I'll take photos of that another day.

Planting Garlic

2011-10-27T10:37:00.004-04:00

Tuesday I got my garlic planted. I like to plant it in the last week of October, which is usually about the time of our first frost. Most years I plan ahead and prepare the garlic cloves, but this year I just picked the largest bulbs, took them apart and used them as is. I'm being such a lazy gardener this fall.

I like to plant my garlic six inches apart in a grid. I plant them four inches deep, then mulch with an inch of compost. In past years I've mulched deeper, but our city climate seems pretty mild. I think that will be sufficient.

Cleaning Up

2011-10-26T10:37:00.000-04:00

I know over the last two months I've been not blogging except to keep Harvest Monday going. All my extra energy has been spent trying to keep the garden up. But I've been feeling much better over the last week and figured I ought to get back into the swing of things. Or maybe I want to start again because my townhouse mates took down all the solanum crops for me. Seeing them every time I went out into the garden was pretty depressing. They offered to take them down as soon as I got sick from them, but I figured they ought to be enjoyed even if I couldn't. Now that they are gone, I'm much happier.

I've been working over the last couple of weeks to take all my trellises down and get all the beans into the compost. Yesterday the last of them came down. The overhead view shows that there isn't much left in the garden anymore. I'll show you all that is still producing in another post, but for now it about taking them down.

My compost is over flowing. I had to get the finished compost taken out of that almost empty bin. I've spread it over parts of the garden that have been cleaned up. Now I finally have room to turn it. I'll probably get to it during the next non rainy day. But today is raining and tomorrow it might even snow. Wow. Snow. We have had such a warm fall it is hard to imagine weather that cold. But Thursday night we might get our first frost and snow. Maybe.

It is pretty empty. I put the tomato trellises on the surface of the cleaned beds because otherwise the cats leave me unwanted gifts. We have about 5-7 cats that regularly visit the yard. So any empty soil is always kept covered. But I do provide for the cats. I have a spot that they can use when they want. I clean it every month. It is under the chimney to my gas fireplace so it is even a dry spot for them. I'm hoping with all the cats I won't get too many mice and voles.

Harvest Monday - October 24, 2011

2011-10-24T06:47:00.000-04:00

The cold weather really has moved in. We haven't had a frost yet, but as I write this our temperature is at 37F. So I was out removing things from the garden. My townhouse mates were too. They removed the eggplants, picking as they went. And they removed all the pepper plants and harvested a huge amount of them. They were going to make some hot pepper sauce with the spicy ones. None of these were weighed, but they picked a couple of huge bags of peppers and quite a few eggplants.

I was out picking the last of the celery. This doesn't look very big, but trust me it is. I had to cut them in thirds just to fit them in my fridge. There are six pounds of celery in that pile. What I kept I'll clean and chop up and freeze. I'll keep a little fresh as it is truly soup season now. I made two different soups last week.

I picked the last of the leeks. If you see the one on the bottom is is perfect. I don't think I've ever grown one that has been as huge as the ones you find in the supermarkets. Mine tend to be an inch wide or less. Also in there is probably the last zucchini. I never pulled them even though they stopped producing and lo and behold, the strongest of them put one more out. A tiny one, but still a zucchini toward the end of October here is really unusual. I picked more carrots. These were smaller than last weeks. I picked them over in the shadier part of the garden. Some have sized up OK, but not great. I figure I'll pick all the ones big enough at all over there first. When it gets colder the carrots outside my kitchen door will be easier to get to and have a tendency to freeze less as they are surrounded by bricks and not wood.

Every week I pick Asian Greens. I thin out the largest of the baby boc choy (both white and green stemmed) and the tatsoi. Every week they fill in the gaps and get bigger. I tipped one up in the corner so you can see how big they are getting. The biggest are just under half a pound which is huge for a baby choy. Every week before harvesting they look so beautiful in their beds (I really need to take a photo) and every week they look so sad after harvesting. But the holes left in the bed give me a chance to put down some sluggo. There are slugs in this bed and I pull some off the greens every week, but with the sluggo the leaves aren't shredded at least.

The slugs like the Fun Jen the best. I think it is because it is such a mild Asian green, but they are still doing well. Only some heads have tattered tops. I think this plant really acts as a trap crop for the rest of the bed. Most are looking pretty good though. So I'm pretty happy with them. I pick the largest of these each week too. Almost everyone thinks these are lettuce when they see them, and in fact that is how I use them. They make very good salads.

Alliums 1.49 lbs
Carrots 1.23 lbs
Cucurbits 0.21 lbs
Eggplant unknown
Greens 11.39 lbs
Herbs 0.18
Pepper unknown
Raspberries unknown
Weekly Total 20.50 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 535.17 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1164.01
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Harvest Monday - October 17, 2011

2011-10-17T07:36:00.001-04:00

I was gone all week long to visit my parents in Colorado (last Harvest Monday was scheduled). When I got back the Asian greens had filled in the spaces that I had thinned out. So they needed to be thinned again. The Fun Jen will get a lot larger, but the bok choy is pretty much at its adult size. There are a few little ones hiding though. I cut the larger ones out to give them a chance to grow up.

Yet more Asian greens from my little 2.5 x 8 foot patch. Along with carrots hiding under the tatsoi and some huge bunching onions. The fall garden by the kitchen - my circle garden - is growing well this fall as is the rock wall garden. But the main garden where my spinach is is stagnating. It just doesn't get enough sun to let things grow well. I have a huge patch of spinach there, but I won't get anything this fall. I'll have to wait until spring when all the leaves are off my neighbor's tree and the sun comes out from behind his house. I get lots of sun in the spring, but not enough in the fall. The carrots show this too. The carrots in the circle garden are already being picked, but the carrots in the main bed are still very small and struggling. I hope they have time to bulk up, but I'm not counting on it. I should have planted peas there since at least the peas are tall and can reach for the sun. I'll remember that for future years and make sure to have the shorter fall crops in the circle bed and any tall fall crops in the main bed.

My dill has self seeded everywhere as has my cilantro. The cilantro is just an inch tall (again it is in the main bed with little sun and the bad part of the main bed at that), but the dill is growing well and I have lots to pick. Last night I made carrots and dill for a dinner. They were very good.

Alliums 0.86 lbs
Carrots 1.99 lbs
Greens 3.60 lbs
Herbs 0.34
Lettuce unknown
Pepper unknown
Raspberries unknown
Weekly Total 6.79 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 514.67 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1101.49
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Harvest Monday - October 10, 2011

2011-10-10T07:17:00.006-04:00

This week I broke 500lbs of produce. I'm sure I broke the number earlier, but since none of the tomatoes and peppers have been weighed since the end of August I can't count them. I did a better job of photographing what I picked, but still am falling down on the job. This week the Asian greens really started to come in. Everything I'm picking in that category is just thinning out the patch.

The August sowing of carrots is starting to produce. The Mokums and Purple Haze are huge now. The Sugar Snax need more time and may or may not size up totally. But this basket really features the leeks. It is time for leek and potato soup. Well not for me since I'm still not allowed to eat potatoes, but my CSA friends got leeks and potatoes. Maybe they will eat soup.

The potatoes are about two thirds picked right now. The yields have been about half what I would like. I planted about five pounds of seed potato. I'd love to pull out ten times that or 50 lbs, but I think the total will end up being about 25 lbs. Pretty sad. It is hard to get worked up over it though since I don't get to eat them. But I'm saving a few Kennebecs for my husband. When we bake chicken I'll bake him one and me a sweet potato. Hmm maybe I should try growing sweet potatoes next year. My husband won't touch them, but I will.

I've also been picking my beans and pulling out the plants over time. These are the Borlotto beans. I was growing them as a dried bean, but they just took too long. So I picked a lot as shelling beans. The dried beans I've been picking aren't in the harvest totals yet as they are drying in paper bags. I've shelled all that I've picked already. Since it has been so wet over the last couple of weeks I like to get the bean out of the shell as quickly as possible so they don't mold out. I've lost a bit to mold, but not as much as I feared.

Alliums 1.83 lbs
Shelling beans 0.66 lbs
Carrots 1.21 lbs
Cucurbits 16.36 lbs
Eggplant unknown
Greens 2.74 lbs
Herbs unknown
Lettuce unknown
Pepper unknown
Potatoes 5.64 lbs
Raspberries unknown
Weekly Total 12.09 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 507.89 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1069.62
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Harvest Monday - October 3, 2011

2011-10-03T07:49:00.000-04:00

Though this was harvested ages ago, I finally had it all dried and weighed this week. I had enough to send to my CSA and my townhouse mates. I still had plenty for myself to use as a spice and for seed. Though the odds of me needing seed are slim. I put the chaff which had a ton of seed all over the place in the garden. I'm sure I'll get a lot coming up next spring. Cilantro (same plant as coriander but called a different name when grown as a leafy herb) really is best self planted. Or sort of self planted like I did. Just toss the seed heads where ever you want them when the seeds ripen. The only flaw is that you do have to plan ahead.

The squirrels have been tasting things this week. I was afraid to leave the butternut squash out any longer. Though the skin is hard to get through if they get desperate enough they will succeed. For now I've got a couple with little teeth marks that tried to get through. I'm sure they will scar over just fine, but they will be the first used. None are terribly large. They average just over two pounds each. I didn't pick any of the Black Futsu. It isn't quite ripe. I have one starting to turn orange, but the others are quite dark green. The squirrels haven't touched them. I have to be honest. With the weird warty black skin and the strange grey cast they get as they ripen, they don't look very edible to me either. I hope they do ripen up though. I really want to try them.

It is raspberry season. Though most of the raspberries are picked and eaten out of hand, I finally took a photo of one day's harvest. This variety is Jaclyn. At my old house I grew Heritage which I loved. These taste just as good and the berries are huge which makes for easier picking. Our Alpine strawberries are getting picked and eaten out of hand too. A photo of them is elusive. The Yellow Wonder are so tasty. I wish I had only planted that one variety. Our red variety Ruegen just doesn't hold up.

Then came the chard. I had to clean it out. I hadn't looked under the row cover and some moth had gotten under. They looked like cutworms - those grey worms that curl up, but unlike cutworms they didn't hide in the dirt. They hid at the base of the plants. Some were out foraging during the day. I had to cut out a lot of too damaged leaves. Boy they did a lot of damage. As I was cleaning the place up I harvested three pounds of the leaves. The chard didn't do as well this year as previous years. I think they do better when I harvest them more regularly. Either every week or every other week. I just let them go this year. And the carrots and onions look so small in this photo, but don't be fooled. That is a pound and a half of green onions there. And almost that amount of carrots. Those chard leaves are huge. I've been really impressed with the Argentata chard this year. The Ruby chard just isn't pulling its weight. I love the red color, but I like the taste of the Argentata and it is way more productive.

Alliums 1.57 lbs
Carrots 1.32 lbs
Cucurbits 16.36 lbs
Eggplant unknown
Greens 3.00 lbs
Herbs 0.19lbs + lots unweighed
Lettuce unknown
Pepper unknown
Raspberries 0.18 lbs
Tomato unknown
Weekly Total 22.44 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 495.80 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $1037.69
Fruit 1.87 lbs

Harvest Monday - September 26 2011

2011-09-26T07:41:00.000-04:00

This was Sunday's harvest. The only harvest that got photographed and weighed this week. I love how the zucchini are still pretending to produce. They never get big. If I don't pick them right away they rot out. They just don't have the energy this time of year to make a big zucchini. But little ones are well loved. One is perfect for me as an addition to a stirfry.

This week also features the first Fun Jen, which is the light green leaves at the top. These were just thinnings from the Asian green patch. Fun Jen makes great Asian salads. I never cook with it though as the leaves don't hold up well to heat.

The kale is also the first harvest of the year. I pretty much transplanted them and put them under a cover and ignored them until now. They really needed a weeding, but just so a few of the weeds didn't go to seed. Soon they will outgrow their cover. They are getting very tall. I think I want to stake them before winter hits. The snows really knock them over and I'd rather they stay upright. The kale is a mix from Fedco. Some varieties I can tell what they are, but most I don't know. They dinosaur kale isn't doing well here, but the red one is probably growing the best of all. If it can survive our winters unprotected I'll have to try to identify it. Last year I only had some dwarf curly kale. It went into the winter tiny and they all survived and produced in early spring. If I could get one that would produce in the fall and the spring I'd be really happy. But it might take two patches for that. The mature ones might not make it through the winter as well as the small plants.

I also have lettuce, herbs, a few beans (mostly they have stopped producing), peppers and tomatoes being picked. They don't get weighed or photographed. The weather is really starting to fluctuate a lot and it is getting colder. I'm hoping one of my friends wants the huge piles of basil in the garden right now. They won't last much longer. They die long before the first frost. Personally I have plenty frozen already and don't need more except for a few leaves here and there.

Cucurbits 0.33 lbs
Greens 2.87 lbs
Herbs unknown
Lettuce unknown
Pepper unknown
Tomato unknown
Weekly Total 3.19 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 473.36 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $981.88
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Harvest Monday - September19 2011

2011-09-19T05:49:00.004-04:00

I'm still not gardening much at all, but it still is producing some things. Above are my townhousemates harvests from Thursday. They weren't weighed. But I was told it was delicious.

Then Sunday I picked some things for my CSA. She picked some tomatoes too. She could have picked a lot more peppers, but she still had tons of chili peppers from last week. In this was a few pounds of some shelling beans. These are Tabais beans which are traditional for cassoulet. I should have enough for me too. I can't make a regular cassoulet since I can't have tomatoes, but I can fudge it up enough to get something yummy I'm sure.

While I was watering my new Asian greens bed I found some alpine strawberries were ripe and one everbearer regular strawberry. The yellow ones are divine. The red ones were just OK. I think if they self seed (which I'm told they do. I'll be replacing the red ones with yellow. I hope so. But I think most of them are red right now.

I picked a few other things during the week, but they were neither photographed nor weighed. Mostly I've been eating a really bland diet, but I am starting to feel a bit better. I've been out for walks a couple times recently. I get really tired, but I'm on the mend. It turns out I'm not allergic to tomatoes at all. I have solanine poisoning. This is the poisoning you get when you eat green potatoes (which I didn't). But my doctor says it is absorbed through the skin. I'd hug my tomato plants for long periods during picking and pruning. I typically wear short sleeveless dresses in the summer and as Granny noticed I go barefoot. So I'm totally exposed to all the plant. And I don't take showers as soon as I get inside. This year was worse with the contact because of the narrow paths and the double row of tomatoes instead of single.

He thinks I just absorbed too much. I've got all the typical symptoms of solanine poisoning (fatigue, headaches, dizziness, nausea). It is a neurotoxin that does a lot of nasty things to your body. It typically has a 1-2 month half life so it takes a while to get out of the system. I've now cut all solanum crops out of my diet, and not just tomatoes. This is what has been getting me better. The small quantity that was still in my diet was enough to keep my levels too high. The last time I had a little bit of pepper I got very sick again that night. I won't be eating any of those again for months. Usually the little bits of it that you eat are easy enough for your body to handle. I just got too overloaded with it. But the good news is the odds are I can eat them again in 4-8 months since it isn't an allergy. But in the future I'll have to be careful since I'm obviously more sensitive to this poison that most folks are.

Beans 2.73 lbs.
Cucurbits 0.30 lbs
Eggplant unknown
Greens 3.02 lbs
Pepper unknown
Tomato unknown
Weekly Total 6.04 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 470.36 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $975.10
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Harvest Monday - September12 2011

2011-09-12T06:25:00.001-04:00

Monday's two harvests. It was definitely the week of the cherry tomato. They had been lagging around for a while, but they really ripened up this week.

Sunday's harvest was for my CSA. I only picked some. I let my CSA folks pick any tomatoes they wanted and peppers. I'm currently not eating them so they have become a free for all for them and my townhouse mates. The ones they pick are not getting weighed. And any lettuce my townhouse mates pick.

Beans 0.12 lbs.
Carrot 4.74 lbs lbs
Cucurbits 2.14 lbs
Eggplant 1.10 lbs
Greens 1.16 lbs
Pepper 3.24 lbs
Beet 0.31 lbs
Tomato 4.81 lbs
Weekly Total 17.64 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 464.31 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $955.11
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Harvest Monday - September 5, 2011

2011-09-05T07:35:00.001-04:00

This is the one and only large harvest I had. The rest of the harvests were just going out to pick what I needed for dinner. I had very small harvests this week. I'm recovering from my allergy induced asthma and I'm staying inside. I have a feeling I might be allergic to tomato plants so I've been avoiding the cherry tomatoes (though I'll pick them for my CSA this morning). The beans take too long to pick so I've been ignoring them. I go outside as little as possible.

So life is depressing here. In addition all my plants in the brassica bed (which should be my big harvests right now) had some disease go through while I was on vacation and they are all dead now. The broccoli is the sole survivor, but even it is slowly succumbing. So I've got no Asian greens anymore. I'm so sad to lose my Chinese cabbage. I wanted more of the Michihili. The kale bed is fine so far. So between that and my chard which I haven't picked yet, I'll have greens to eat.

I ripped out the flowers in front of my house and planted a new bed of quick maturing Asian greens, but I don't know if they will mature in time. If the fall is warm and long they will be fine. I could have ripped out some of my cucurbits but the main beds right now don't get a lot of sun due to the low arc this time of year and the neighbor's house and tree. So the rock wall garden by the driveway is the best bet for growing in the fall. And the only place without perennials in that bed is the first part you see when you drive in. My flower bed. So the beautiful zinnias that used to greet my guests are now gone. I did get a good laugh this week though. I pulled out all those beautiful flowers. My husband asked that evening what I did that day. I told him he saw when he drove in. He didn't even notice the ugly row cover over them.

This is the first year I've been chased inside into filtered air due to allergies. I've always had my windows wide open this time of year doing things outside. Yeah I had a few sniffles and had to take some meds, but I've never been really sick due to them before. I was out two hours at a BBQ on Saturday and was sick as a dog afterwards. So I'll be starting shots very soon. I have an appointment with the allergy specialist this week. Next year I ought to be a lot better. But this fall gardening season will be done with a mask and very little will happen. It is the reason I really haven't been blogging. And I've been avoiding a lot of other blogs too. Too depressing to think about. But don't worry about me, I'll get over it. And as I always say when something bad happens in the garden, there is always next year.

Alliums 0.86 lbs
Broccoli 0.26 lbs lbs
Carrot 0.38 lbs lbs
Cucurbits 2.00 lbs
Greens 1.16 lbs lbs
Weekly Total 4.66 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 446.67 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $898.07
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Harvest Monday - August 29 2011

2011-08-29T07:11:00.000-04:00

My first harvest was the harvest I found when I got back from vacation. I had beans in the fridge and tomatoes on the counter.

Tuesday's Harvest

Since Tuesday was my first pickings since being away, it was pretty large. It featured a huge zucchini and lots and lots of peppers, both hot and sweet.

Friday's Harvest

Friday's harvest also had a huge zucchini, but not as large as the first one. And the first of the butternut squash. This one set early. The others have all set in the last month. I hope they have time to ripe.

Saturday's Harvest

Saturday's harvest was about bringing things in before Irene hit. I probably would have left the eggplants up for a few more days, but better safe than sorry. I picked any of the Lemon Queen sunflower heads that had gotten heavy with seed. I figured the weight alone swinging back and forth would bring them down. Those boards are about 4" wide so that large head was 8" across. I picked a lot of these bags of dried beans. These were the cranberry beans. I'll be adding to them over time as the pods dry out. Neither the sunflowers or dried beans have been weighed the seed has to be separated first.

And Irene? Well she did a bit of damage, but it wasn't too bad. She bent down one of my dwarf fruit trees as you can see above. That tree is now upright and staked. My beans were leaning over I have them temporarily propped up. But they will need a better job probably tomorrow. I'm busy all today and they aren't about to fall over if they didn't yesterday. I lost one sunflower, but the rest are leaning crazily into the path. I hope I can pull them back. We lost one branch of our maple tree. It didn't seem to hit anything. And ripped one of the row covers off my bed. So all in all not too bad. The beans were fixed in the middle of the storm. Yes I'm a crazy gardener that went out into the storm to deal with her bean towers. The eye had passed when I got out to fix my peach tree though. I got about three inches of rain according to my weather station. But the output said it was raining cats and dogs (yes it literally said that, made me laugh) and at the maximum rate. So I think was it raining too hard for the gauge. If I get a chance I'll deal with my other rain gauge and see if it said three inches too.

Beans 3.32 lbs
Cucurbits 7.01 lbs
Eggplant 1.70 lbs
Pepper 9.10 lbs
Potato 6.03 lbs
Tomato 7.66 lbs
Weekly Total 34.82 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 442.01 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $886.09
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Batten Down the Hatches

2011-08-27T07:10:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I spent a little time in the garden in hopes of keeping my plants upright during Irene. Irene will probably not be a hurricane when it hits (there still is a chance), but the forecasters think maybe we will get 50-60 mph winds. That is enough to damage the garden.

There isn't a lot I can do with my walls of green. The beans are seven feet tall and a fairly solid mass. I've found that toward the path they have been starting to lean into the bed. This is because the pole inside the bed tends to work its way farther down into the soil as the soil is fairly loose, but the soil outside of the bed is the path and gets compacted. So that pole can't work down. So slowly over time the trellis has started leaning into the bed at the end. The other end doesn't get walked on as much and seems to be fine.

So I put up a few more supports at that part of the trellis. As you can see I put two metal t-posts to hold it up here. I put one on another trellis that wasn't as bad. This one is the worst. The beans here are very very heavy. The runner beans really put on a huge amount of mass over time. I hope the trellises can survive the winds. I'm not too optimistic however. So I did a good picking of the dry beans. Any that had started drying came off, but there are a lot of very green beans in there. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Then I tied up the peppers and the eggplants. They all have bamboo stakes near them and some have a lot of heavy fruit still hanging on them. The winds could tear the branches right off even with the ties I put in, but it is the best I can do.

Wish me luck. Irene hits on Sunday and will be all gone by Monday.

How To Braid Onions

2011-08-24T10:06:00.001-04:00

When I showed my onion braids a couple weeks ago, I was asked how I did it. I had one kind of onion left to be braided so I took photos as best I could while I did it.

The first step is to dry the onion tops. Make sure when you dry them that they are dried straight up. You don't want them kinked or going all over. They tend to break more that way. Also you don't want them totally dry. Above is probably a touch dry, but OK. I would have done it several days earlier, but since I was on vacation I did it as soon as I got home. The drier the leaves are the less they will shrink and the tighter your onion braid will be. The less dry they are the easier they are to braid since they are still pliable.

The second step is to sort them. You want the largest onions in the middle of the braid. So count the onions and divide by three. I had eighteen in this group so I took the six largest onions. And sorted them (lower onions left to right) by how big they were. Then I took the rest and put then next biggest two with the largest onion (on my left). Then the next biggest with the next large onion down the row. So you have a bunch of groups of three. In each is one larger onion and two that are smaller but about the same size as each other. The photo above shows them all sorted.

The braid starts with the largest of the groups of three (one on the left) and it works its way to the smallest of the groups of three. You are making a braid. I'm going to assume you know how to braid. But this is more like a French braid. So as you go along you will add to your braid. To help with the structure I cut a long piece of string that should be a couple feet longer than twice the length that your braid will be at the end. Say about 5-6 feet, but it really depends upon how many onions you are using and how large the onions are.

Take the first three with the largest one in the middle and tie them together toward the bulb. You should make the knot in the middle of the string. The string will be part of your braid. Put one end of the string with one onion and one with another. It doesn't matter which ones get it, but make sure the strings are in different parts of the braid.

Get the next set of three onions. Take the largest and put the bulb in the middle and the tops in the middle. The tops will ALWAYS be put in the middle, but the bulbs will be put to make the braid look nice. So the large one in the middle and the small ones to either side. Right now only put the large one in the middle.

Then fold the right side leaves over so it is now in the middle (if it has a string make sure the string comes with it).

Now put one of the smaller onions on the right side, but with the tops in the middle. Then fold over the left side, so it is in the middle.

Next put the other small onion on the left side with the tops in the middle. Then fold over the right side into the middle. Keep going like this. When adding a new onion always go large one in the middle first, small one on the right second, and small one on the left last. And always alternate folding over right, left, right, left...

When you are done add in a few more braids, so you can see the braid coming out from underneath the onions. Then take the two strings - one on the left and one on the right and tie them together in the front. Then loop them around very tightly several times in opposite directions and tie them off in the back. To make a loop to hold them tie the two strings together in the back a few inches from the knot going around the stems.

Loop to hang onions

When you are all done cut off the tops evenly about four inches above the knot (you need a lot if your onions were fairly green when you braided because the leaves will shrink as they dry and the string will loosen, but not too much if your onions were very dry).

Harvest Monday - August 22 2011

2011-08-22T08:00:00.003-04:00

Monday Harvest

I was gone most of last week so I just had harvests on Monday and Tuesday. I had Allie take care of the garden, but I didn't ask her to weigh all the produce or photograph it. So I have no clue as to what else came out of my garden this week.

Tuesday Harvest

Beans 0.81 lbs
Cucurbits 1.25 lbs
Tomato 18.06 lbs
Weekly Total 20.13 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 407.19 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $776.34
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Random Photos

2011-08-16T07:43:00.005-04:00

I had a bunch of photos I had taken, but never got on the blog. Since I'm stuck inside I figured I'd post those. The above is a bee that I had never seen before. It is totally black except for two yellow stripes, one on either side of its hind end, right near the tip. It loves the corn pollen as you can see. It helped pollinate the squash below it while the corn was putting out pollen, but afterwards it disappeared. Anyone know what kind of bee it is?

And speaking of corn. I'm sure it was saying, "Help save me before the murdering gardener chops me up and buries me in the compost."

I might point out I did not plant a beet here. I was planting beets on the other side of the brick path. I must have dropped a seed and it washed over here. Tenacious isn't it?

I don't see many of these. The soil was totally devoid of these when it was brought in. It will be a few years before I dig multiple up with every shovelful. My compost used to crawl with them. I really miss them, but I suppose the worms attract mice, and I don't miss the mice.

A typical summer lunch being made.

Harvest Monday - August 15 2011

2011-08-15T07:42:00.000-04:00

The beginning of the week had some nice harvests. Monday was raining hard. We had three inches of rain over three days. This caused my melons to split. But just because they split doesn't mean they don't get eaten. Some of the melons were divine. Some just OK. And don't think these are big melons. They aren't. For me they ran about two pounds each which is a perfect size if you don't have a family eating them.

Tuesday was my big harvest day. The first harvest wasn't even photographed. I totally forgot. It had peppers, broccoli, and kohlrabi. The second was a nice diversified basket.

Then I pulled out most of my tomato plants as they had finished producing. But first was the harvest of the tomatoes.

And weirdly of the carrots too. I had a line of carrots in the middle of the tomato plants. I had to pull them all as the spinach was getting planted there. They had good sun early in the spring but were still small when the tomatoes were planted. After that the tomatoes took over and they had no sun at all. But they still put on some roots. I was surprised they did as well as they did.

Wednesday had a nice little harvest. Very little.

But Wednesday didn't stop there. Most of my onions were dry enough to braid. They they are finally weighed.

Then my garlic was taken out of the shed as it was dry. I cleaned it up and weighed it.

Thursday my asthma really kicked in. I quit gardening except for the real necessity of what needed to be picked. Which was basically beans and cukes on Friday. I even gave away the tomatoes you see in the above basket as I didn't have the energy to can any more. And yes I am getting better now. Filtered air, lots of drugs, and lots of rest. I miss my garden.

And again on Sunday. I should have picked my tomatoes on Sunday too as today the rain is again pouring. I wonder how many will crack with all this rain. Most of the tomatoes left in the garden are Market Miracle and Amish Paste and both aren't big crackers. The one Cherokee Purple sadly is. I'll have to cut parts out before I weigh this week.

And speaking of this week. I'll be traveling and may or may not have internet service. I might be able to get to all your posts, but probably not. I'll pre-schedule next Monday's post so you all can have fun without me. My garden will be taken care of. My townhouse mates will be here. I'll see if I can get them to harvest it all and weigh it. I hope so. But next Monday won't have many photos.

Alliums 24.11 lbs
Beans 1.66 lbs
Broccoli 0.80 lbs
Corn 2.61 lbs
Cucurbits 17.77 lbs
Pepper 0.64 lbs
Tomato 20.47 lbs
Weekly Total 70.04 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 387.07 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $699.58
Fruit 1.69 lbs

I Feel Like an Ant

2011-08-10T16:08:00.000-04:00

Surely you all know the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. Well I'm the ant busily storing up for the winter. Yesterday I made paneer (an Indian cheese) for the first time. I just love Shahi Paneer and can't seem to find the paneer locally. And since it really is just a home made cheese, I could make it easily.

It is probably the easiest of cheeses to make. It only requires milk and an acid (lemon juice is traditional, but I used buttermilk) to curdle it. So heat the milk; throw in the acid; watch it curdle; pour through a cheese cloth; let hang for a while; kneed until smooth; refrigerate. It takes no aging, no enzyme, and no trying to get a clean break. So simple. It makes a cheese that doesn't melt like other cheeses do. So you can simmer it in the sauce and let it absorb the flavors.

Today I make the sauce and put them together and froze five servings and ate one. The sauce uses up a lot of things form the garden like tomatoes (whoohoo more tomatoes gone), onions, garlic, and coriander. Remember that pile of coriander I got this year. Well two teaspoons have been used up. Boy do I have a long way to go.

Onions being sorted

Oh and speaking of using up onions and garlic. The garlic was dried and removed from the shed. The onion tops from the Copra onions had dried enough to make braids. So they have been braided and hung (four hanging in the photo above). I made some different sizes of braids. I really like the one long one the best. I'll see how it holds up over time. I also made one braid for my CSA friend. I put in all three kinds of onions on that one. I've got three Alisa Craig that are on the bottom. Then I put Redwings up the middle all the way up and the Copras along the side. The first is a sweet onion that needs to be used up first, but the last two are storage onions and can be kept for a long time.

The last thing I did today was make some pickles. I made one jar of dill pickle spears. Yes just one jar. I made it at the same time as the bread and butter pickles so I didn't have to boil all that water bath water twice. The last time I made dills I didn't like them. I had kept the spices in the jar and they got way too seasoned. So I tried a very simple recipe. The only seasonings are dill and mustard seed. Very simple. I didn't even use onions, though that might be a mistake. I love onions in my pickles. These will be the only pickles I make this year that are canned. Any others I make will all be refrigerator pickles since I like those best.

So this ant has put away a lot of things for the winter in the last few days. Though unlike the ant in the story, I do share if entertained. But not if you sing like a cricket. That cricket that got in the house has been serenading me when I go into the basement is not welcome. The other day the sound was getting higher. It had better not crawl up the walls into my bedroom. Then I'll become an insane murderous fire ant and no one wants to see that.

Tomatoes and Spinach

2011-08-09T17:25:00.000-04:00

As you saw in Harvest Monday my tomatoes gave me a lot. So on Monday I canned. And canned. And canned. 18 pints. My back hurt after that. I did both sauce and chopped tomatoes. I should have done the chopped tomatoes today, but I really wanted to get them off my counter.

I was thinking the tomatoes are out gassing something that irritates my lungs. I have asthma and was doing fine before the massive line of tomatoes on my counter. Though it is probably the ragweed starting to bloom. But for now I'm keeping the mass of my tomatoes down.

And what I do have is being kept in air tight containers. I let them breath once a day outside. It has helped a lot, but not totally gotten rid of the issue. So I'm guessing ragweed and tomatoes were an issue. Interestingly enough the cooking tomatoes don't bother me. It is whatever they put out when they ripen that is irritating.

This morning I picked some more tomatoes. Many were cracking due to the rain. I picked all that were in the section closest to the path. Most were turning already. Just a couple were still green. And I got rid of all of the Heinz no matter what bed it was in. They had mostly all turned. So I ripped out 12 plants and have 5 left in this bed and 4 (mostly cherries) in another bed. This bed will be my spinach bed this fall. I planted up the empty section. I may or may not plant up the rest this fall. I may wait for it to be the spring spinach. But then again I may just make it some overwintered spinach. I'll figure it out later.

I put in three types. Gigante D'Inverno (2 rows), Olympia (three rows), and Space (two rows). I'm hoping they can all produce this fall and over winter. Especially the first one since it has winter in its name.

Harvest Monday - August 8 2011

2011-08-08T07:30:00.000-04:00

Monday's two harvests were full of tomatoes.

Tuesday's harvest was just corn and cukes.
There was no harvest on Wednesday.

Thursday's five harvests had tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, onions, corn and peppers.

Friday had no tomatoes, but potaotes, two melons, and the first onion braid.

Can you say tomatoes?. I picked massive quantities of tomatoes before the first big rain storm in the last month - 1 3/4". I didn't want them to crack. I should have picked more. I'm afraid to go out and check the ones that are left. I've got my work cut out for me today canning.

Sunday had no harvest, but above was the biggest tomato in the garden so far. It is an Amish Paste which makes it more amazing. Paste tomatoes don't have as much water as slicing tomatoes. And yes that is a dinner plate, not one of my little salad plates.

Obviously at over 80lbs, last week was the big tomato harvest of the year. In a week I think I'll be pulling some plants. Most of the black tomatoes have no little tomatoes on them. They have a couple almost ripe, but sadly the heat wave a while back stopped them dead in their tracks. They don't have time to grow and set more so once the ones currently on the vine are ripe, which will be soon, there is no reason to leave them in anymore. The Heinz will all get pulled. They are a paste that produces all at once so that is to be expected. All that will be left is one Cherokee Purple (maybe) and the Amish Paste and Market Miracles. The last two are later tomatoes and weren't as affected by the heat especially the Market Miracles. So they at least will give me tomatoes into September.

I did buy a stool for the garden last week. It was a total of $20. I also rearranged some of my amortized costs. I am going though my fertilizer faster than expected. I've had a lot of successions of things and each time I do that I put down more compost and fertilizer. So I amortized over two years and not three.

Alliums 5.64 lbs
Beans 0.07 lbs
Carrot 0.18 lbs
Corn 6.66 lbs
Cucurbits 4.83 lbs
Herbs 0.37 lbs
Pepper 1.61 lbs
Potato 3.13 lbs
Tomato 81.87 lbs
Weekly Total 104.36 lbs
Weekly Spent $20
Yearly Total 317.03 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $489.48
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Preserving

2011-08-07T08:53:00.000-04:00

I've been busy all week getting things preserved this week. I canned tomatoes Monday and Friday. So I have 13 1/2 pints of sauce already.

I made a very small amount of plum jam. Hmm too lemony. Next time less lemon juice.

I dehydrated all the parsley I'll need. I even had extra so I'm sending it along to my CSA friends.

And I froze eight large Alicia Craig onions. The above is half of them. I cried all the way down to the freezer. And these are supposed to be sweet onions.

Oh and I rescued one head of Lemon Queen sunflower seeds from the birds. Mostly I just let the birds eat them, but I'll eat a few.

Onions and Kale

2011-08-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

I ought to give my onions more time to mature, but I really need the spot for my kale. So a week ago after a wind storm knocked down a large section of them, I went out and knocked down the rest.

Then on Friday I pulled them all out to dry for a day. I wanted to get them out then because there was possible rain all weekend long. Just what the onions didn't need. I just loved how they looked lying out on Friday.

Redwing and Copra on the sheet, Alisa Craig in the corner

But they couldn't stay there. I had to bring them in out of the rain to finish curing. I'm guessing my husband isn't all the pleased about me keeping them in the dining room to dry. But I lack a garage and the shed is too small.

In past years I've always had bad onion harvests. I was lucky to get an onion that was 2" in diameter. This year I'm very happy with my harvest. I wonder how long those onions will last.

Now I removed those onions for a reason. The kale in their newspaper pots was getting really big and had to get planted.

So this morning before work I was busily trying to get it all done and watered. Then I tossed the row cover over it. Time for work. Thank goodness I finished.

Bean Progress

2011-08-05T14:35:00.000-04:00

Bed 8 contains two fifths of the beans planted

I planted a lot of beans this year. Most of them are dried beans. This is the first year growing many of them so I figured it was time to see how they were doing.

Bed 8 starts with 1 1/2' of Painted Lady, a runner bean. The seed was from Mike H. Some of the flowers are plain scarlet runners and some are Painted Lady so the seed is not true. Runners do outcross rather easily unlike other beans. Not that it really matters. I planted this one at the edge of the bed so I could see its flowers. I don't grow them for their beans, but for how pretty they are. Which is good since they haven't set any beans yet. They have been flowering forever and still no beans have set at all. Runner beans don't like to set in hot weather. They like cooler temps. And now that our temperatures are back into the high 70s and low 80s they have a chance.

Bean 2 is my old friend Kentucky Wonder. It has the next 5 1/2 feet. It is the sole green bean in the garden. It has green pods that turn yellow as they age. Its flowers are white. It put out a nice flush of flowers to start and now we are in a lull, but I see more flowers starting to bloom. I think next week I'll get to eat beans again.

Mexican Pinto

Bean 3 is 4' of Mexican Pinto. It flowers white and has a green pod that gets a few streaks of red in it when mature. It is hard to tell how this plant will really do. The seed I had was ancient. It was from SSE. I seeded this early and some of them lived through our weather swings. Some didn't so I had to reseed. Then some of the plants died as they were setting beans. The early ones? Too stressed out to handle it? So I'll save seed from the best few plants left and try again next year. And speaking of saving seed. Mexican Pinto has dried pods already. So they were picked.

Bean 4 is 2' of Turkey Craw from Michelle. It has white flowers but so far hasn't set any pods. It is probably the most vigorous vine in the garden. It would be over 12' tall if it could, but the trellis is only 7' tall. It is aggressive and trying to take over its neighbors.

Bean 5 is 2 1/2' of Rattlesnake from Mike H. Is a fabulous bean. It easily reaches the top of the trellis, but isn't too aggressive. It has purple flowers and pretty red striped pods when mature. The plants are loaded with pods. If I like the taste of the bean it will be a real winner in production.

Left to right. Ga Ga Hut, Unknown black bean, Mexican Pinto

Bean 6 (and 6 1/2) are supposed to be Ga Ga Hut. It died in the early spring except for two plants. I didn't have the seed to replant. The two plants left are different. One looks a lot like Trail of Tears except that its pods don't get that beautiful dark maroon color when mature. And the beans are black too. So it isn't Ga Ga Hut which is a pinto bean. But it isn't really Trail of Tears either. The other is a pinto so is indeed Ga Ga Hut. Since there is only one plant I'll save all the seeds to plant next year. It looks like both the pintos I planted will have to wait until next year.

Bed 5 is just half a bed so only 8' long.

Bean 1 is 3 1/2' of Apache Red. Of all the beans this one survived the weird weather swings we had in the spring the best. Almost all of the plants lived. It took quite a while for it to climb to the top though. Early on it seemed more like a bush bean but climb it did. Now it is trying to take over the melon trellis. I keep trying to beat it back. So far there are no flowers. Which isn't a good sign. I was hoping it would produce well so I could use it as a kidney bean substitute.

Bean 2 is 1 1/2' feet of something. It says Norridgewock, but that seed never germinated so I put in something else. I have of course forgotten what it is. It was put in late and is flowering white.

Bean 3 is 2' of Tabais. It is a very aggressive vine with large leaves. It flowers white and has set a total of two small pods. So far I'm totally unimpressed.

Bed 2 was all planted a bit late since it had my spring spinach and radishes.

Bean 1 is 5' of Trail of Tears. It has purple flowers and green pods that turn purple/maroon when they mature. There are pods set all up and down the plant. Trail of Tears if very productive.

Bean 2 is 4' of Ottawa Cranberry. This plant plays well with others. It reaches the top of the trellis, but don't get bigger. It has lavender flowers and its pod turns yellow with red streaks when it matures. It has set a good amount of pods but not nearly the quantity of Trail of Tears or Rattlesnake.

Bean 3 is 2' of Aunt Jean's Pole. It is a very sick bean. I hadn't even noticed it before. I tend to pretty much ignore the dried beans until their pods start to dry. I always get a little bit of disease, but if I just stay out of the patch it doesn't spread much. It has short pods that turn yellow when mature. I probably won't save these, but just toss it all because it is so sick.

Bean 4 is 1' of Lazy Housewife from Jane. It doesn't have numerous pods, but those that set are very long.

Bean 5 is 2' of Petaluma Gold Rush from Michelle. The plant is aggressive and has huge leaves. Sadly no flowers yet. Why is it always the aggressive plants that have no flowers? Well it had better get cracking if it ever wants to be planted again.

Bean 6 is 1' of Borlotto beans from Jane. It has very small light lavender flowers and poor pod set. The pods turn splotchy pink when mature.

To round up, my tried and true Trail of Tears and Ottawa Cranberry are doing well. Rattlesnake is looking very promising. Both pintos will have to wait until next year to be eaten since not enough seed will be produced due to the weather and old seed. Lazy Housewife might work out if it is productive enough. But I have a lot of beans that are creating foliage but no beans. They might be varieties that are just too long for my season. Around here it is best if the beans are drying in August since September can be drizzly. Not always, but some years. I was hoping for more successes, but so far I only have one - Rattlesnake. I'd rather have a whole bunch of beans to pick from so I can pick the ones I like in the kitchen best. I might be trying yet more beans next year.

I'm Losing It

2011-08-04T12:06:00.000-04:00

My counter that is. Tomato season is in full swing here. Right now the tomatoes own half of my counter. I've got Cherokee Purple, Purple Calibash, Market Miracle, Amish Paste, Sungold, Black Cherry, and the massive pile of Heinz in the bowls.

Cherokee Purple left, Purple Calibash right

Cherokee Purple continues to be my favorite of the large tomatoes. Purple Calibash isn't bad, but it isn't as prolific, not quite as good tasting, and a lot more weirdly shaped. It may be fun seeing weirdly shaped tomatoes, but using them is much more of a pain. Smooth more normal shaped tomatoes are easier. This year the Cherokee Purples in the back row just aren't growing as well as they did last year. The plants just stopped growing at about four feet. Last year you couldn't stop the vines. I don't know if it was being behind another row of tomatoes and not getting enough sun (which I won't do next year). Or if it is the weather. But I hacked back one that was accidentally put in the front to keep it in bounds and it just can't be stopped. It wants to keep growing. It just doesn't have the cage for it. So for next year I'll keep Cherokee Purple and give the boot to Purple Calibash.

Usually Market Miracle is 8oz and more perfectly round

My Market Miracle tomato is my one red tomato in the garden that isn't a paste. It isn't particularly early. Cherokee Purple tends to produce before it does. But it seems to always produce for me no matter the weather. No matter if it is hidden behind other foliage or in the shade of the neighbor's fence, or getting rained on all year. Unlike the Cherokee Purple, it is still growing strong and setting new fruit. It is right up against the fence and in the back row of tomatoes. Yet still it produces. I've found it tolerates partial shade better than any other tomato I've grown. It grew well this year during the heat. It grew well during the summer of '09 when we had constant cool weather and rain (that year it was the best producer). So it continues to have a place in the garden. It tastes good, but isn't up to the standards in taste of a tomato like Cherokee Purple. I have a neighbor I gave one transplant to. He planted it in a place which I'm guessing gets about four hours of sun. It is setting tomatoes. Not quite like mine, but still he will have home grown tomatoes this year. Then again Laura is growing it and it hasn't set yet for her. But for me it works.

Not quite ripe Amish Paste left, Heinz right

The two paste tomatoes I'm growing are Amish Paste and Heinz 2653. The Amish Paste tastes fabulous just like last year and is just now getting started as it is a pretty late producing paste. As you can see it is a huge paste tomato where Heinz is a very small one. Amish Paste just tastes too good to get rid of even though it is such a late tomato. I'll grow a couple plants again next year.

The Heinz I'm not happy with this year. The taste is just so-so even though last year it was one of the best tasting tomatoes. If I had another paste tomato that acted like it, I would replace it in a heartbeat. But I keep it because of what you see above. The plants are almost finished producing and it is still early August. It is a super early determinate paste. Here that is good. All we need is a bad year and getting the tomatoes to ripen would be challenging. In a good year I have time for succession planting or at the very least a cover crop. I worry about it though. It seems very susceptible to the leaf spot we have around here (I'm guessing septoria leaf spot, but who knows, tomato spot diseases are numerous and hard to distinguish). So would it really survive in a bad year? It is always the sickest tomato plant in the patch. Anyone know of a really good early determinate paste? It actually isn't the determinate that matters. It matters if it sets its fruits all at once. For instance Bellstar is an early determinate paste, but it ripens fruit over a long period, which isn't what I want when I can. I might try Grandma Mary's since at least it is early. I think I need yet another paste tomato trial next year. I'll probably put in Heinz again next year, but not so many. I'll give it another chance.

Bacterial Spot

2011-08-03T11:56:00.011-04:00

I've been struggling with bacterial spot on my peppers since I was stupid enough to bring in an infected six-pack from the garden center. I always hate finding a new disease because I don't know yet how to fight it. Or if it is even possible to fight. Everything I read about the disease says my yields would be severely reduced. And the pepper fruit could be affected by the disease.

One control strategy was to pick off all the leaves that I saw that had any sign of the spot. I was doing this once a week, but it seemed that I was doing the plant more harm than good. It is hard to tell if the disease spread to new leaves is fast enough to warrant defoliating the plants once a week.

I would often get pepper drop after picking the leaves off and often not small little ones just setting, but half sized ones. So this week I left them on. I think next week if I haven't seen any massive spread, I'll pick out only the ones that are severely infected, but leave the rest.

Wednesday is always spray day provided it doesn't rain, which is my main line of defense against bacterial or fungal diseases. The typical spray that people would use for such things is copper sprays. Constantly using copper sprays in the garden can upset the micro nutrient balance of the soil. I tend to stay away from them. In addition the research that I've been doing says that bacterial spot is no longer controlled much at all by copper sprays. The bacteria has developed a resistance to it. I use Serenade. It is a bacteria that fights off other bacteria and fungi. I like it because it is non toxic. You will notice however that I use a respirator when applying it. And a full body covering that gets washed afterwards. And safety glasses (after spraying myself in the eye once, I always use eye wear when I spray). Though the spray itself isn't toxic, anytime you are exposed to large amounts of protein, especially inhaled, you can develop allergies to it. The last thing I need is another sensitivity. So I'm a good girl and spray safely. Though I always wonder what my neighbors think as they watch me in this get up.

Scotch bonnet with perfect leaves

Interestingly enough this bacteria is species dependent. Most of my peppers are Capsicum annuum - sweet and chili peppers. All of them have spots. But I also have scotch bonnet peppers which are Capsicum chinense. These are not affected at all. I have not one little spot on them. And I don't even spray them any more. They are immune. The Tabasco peppers on the other hand are Capsicum frutescens and are affected. In addition some peppers are just plain more resistant. The serrano peppers are growing well. The early jalapenos are having more problems.

Tabasco peppers, spot can be seen at the bottom left leaf

I also discovered that spraying with fish emulsion seems to help them out. It could just be because they grow faster that way and outgrow the disease a bit. But it could provide a bit of assistance. So I went to the internet to see if there have been studies on it. And lo and behold, someone did a study with neem oil and fish emulsion. Fish emulsion helps just a little, but neem oil is more helpful. Now I don't have any neem, and buying a lot of sprays to put on my peppers is not all that worth it. The peppers just aren't worth tons of money to deal with. And I like to keep my life simple. Though I am interested to see what Regalia might be like. It seems like a very interesting spray. It turns on disease fighting genes in the plants and works on all the things I have problems with. It is an extract of the giant knotweed. Hey knotweed is good for something! But like the aspirin I spray on my tomatoes early in the season, it is a better preventative than a cure. Maybe I'll get this next year to deal with my fungal issues. I like the idea of making the plant fight its own battles. And I don't have to spray every single week.

So the peppers are doing OK. They sure do look pretty, but so much foliage has been removed already. Many midsized peppers have been lost. I see some peppers starting to get bacterial spot on them. I don't like green bell peppers. I like red peppers. Though some are starting to turn, that process can take weeks and weeks. Do they have weeks? I don't know.

And now they have a new threat. The leaves of the Anaheims (mostly) have started to show signs of something. Mosaic virus? The neighbor that shares that side of the house with me does smoke, but I usually think of mosaic virus as mottling the leaves too not just puckering them. He also sprayed Roundup along the fence. But I didn't notice any of the leaves near the fence with any issues. I think he was pretty careful about spraying. And these are in the middle of the patch not near the fence. What else can cause this type of puckering? Well soon it might be time to rip them out.

And just to put the icing on the cake last night it hailed on us. At least we got almost an inch of rain to go with it. Of course it was after I had already watered the garden. The hail wasn't that bad as it didn't last long. The sunflower leaves seemed to get the worst of it. The poor peppers got a few shredded leaves. My first thought when I saw the hail start was, "what can I throw over the garden?" I really wanted to protect everything. I should look at the bright side of it all. The lettuce usually gets it worst and the lettuce was all dead from the heat already. Some days you just have to laugh.

Let The Canning Season Commence

2011-08-02T14:00:00.000-04:00

OK so I've already canned some jam. It really didn't count as they weren't my peaches and they weren't my blueberries. I had to buy them at the farmers market. But yesterday I canned my first tomatoes of the season. I had piles of Heinz on my counter and since I'd just picked piles more, they had to go. Last year Heinz was my favorite paste tomato. It was so delicious. This year they are just OK. Nothing special. The Amish Paste this year has them beat by a mile. At least to me. I had some neighbors over last night for dinner and their little girl kept eating the Heinz. I was saying they weren't the best and not quite ripe (I'd used all the ripe ones for sauce making). But she disagreed with me. I'll have to bring over some real tomatoes for her this coming week.

So at 9:30am I started washing tomatoes. Then I quartered them and tossed them in my huge stock pot. I only cooked them enough to soften them. To sweeten up the pot since the Heinz weren't so good this year, I put in some Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, Purple Calibash, and some cherry tomatoes too. The cherries especially can sweeten up a sauce. I don't want to use too many since it would take forever to boil them down. They are very moist compared to a paste tomato.

Then I ran them through my Victorio strainer. The gadget is ancient and the screens tend to rust. I would really like a new one that doesn't leak all over and make me clean the rust off of it before I use it. I'm sure someone makes one with a screen with good stainless steel.

I had a nice photo of the sauce boiling down on the stove, but almost every photo I took of that area was blurry. That corner of the kitchen tends to be dark. I used two pots to start with. I could have fit it all into my 12 quart pot. I think I had about eight to nine quarts total, but they boil off and thicken faster if I use more surface area. I boiled until the sauce started to get thick. Sadly the jars weren't ready yet. I had the canning water boiling; the lids boiling; the sauce ready. But the dang dishwasher needed 15 more minutes to finish up. It is how I sterilize and heat up my jars.

But when they got out I started filling them up. You might notice some white powder in the bottom of the jars. That is citric acid that I use. A lot of people use lemon juice but I never have. So this time I tried it with one jar. I added it to the bottom of the jar. Then ladled in the hot sauce. With a sterile spoon I mixed it up and tasted it. Well it tasted like lemon juice to me so the rest were made as usual with citric acid. And it will be interesting when I get that jar randomly. I don't know which one it is. So something is going to taste a bit like lemon juice.

Then they were canned. They were put in at about 12:15 as you can see on my clock. 35 minutes later they were done. I always wondered how long it took me to do a batch. Now I know. If I time the dishwasher right it takes just over three hours.

It is a lot of time, though I'm not really working except for the washing and straining. But an hour's worth of real work for seven little jars. Sometimes I think I'm a crazy person. Sometimes it is better not to look at the numbers. I've got a lot more tomatoes to can yet this year.

Harvest Monday - August 1 2011

2011-08-01T08:11:00.000-04:00

Monday I took a photo of the harvest, but the basil leaves were covering all the pretty parts.

So I had to take another.

I also had strawberries on Monday. I always forget to take them with my other produce. I usually remember to pick them right before breakfast, so they don't get their photo taken until later.

Tuesday Harvest x 2. Tuesday had the first harvest of potatoes. They are Yukon Golds.

Wednesday Harvest x 2

Thursday Harvest x 2

Friday I took all the lovely photos of my harvest, but I didn't have the flash card in the camera. Doh! So I retook the photo of all the tomatoes I had harvested. It was a big tomato day. And again by the time I had harvested my strawberries. I'd already figured out my error.

But corn was picked the first time and not photographed. I didn't want you to miss the first of the corn photos. And really they are better with the husks removed. Dinner was a grilled burger from Chestnut Farms on a homemade bun, home made refrigerator pickles, salsa made with garden produce, grilled peas (these were mine from a couple of weeks ago, they were the last of the peas in the fridge), and of course grilled corn. The corn was two different varieties. Spring Treat and Shasta.

Saturday Harvest

Sunday Harvest

Sunday started the harvest of the dill seeds. As they ripen I put them into a bag to finish up when they are about as ripe as above. If I rub the seeds with my fingers they will fall off, but most of the head is still intact. I'll continue to harvest them for weeks as the different heads ripen. They won't get weighed until then. I use dill seed not for planting. The plants will put enough self sown seed into the soil for that. But I use them for pickles.

Sunday was also the big coriander harvest. It took me an hour to separate all the seeds from the heads. Usually such long processing would be done inside in front of the TV, but these are really really messy. So I took my muslin that used to shade my lettuces and used it to make sure I didn't lose any seeds. I can't get all the seeds off and be quick about it, but the plants and other refuse after partially cleaning the seed got dumped under the sunflowers where I want my coriander next year. There is plenty of seed in there to start a good stand.

I'm guessing I'll have about half a pound of coriander seed once it is dry. I won't weigh it until then. I've never had a harvest this large before. These put out an amazing amount of seed. What will I do with it all? I'll obviously have to start using coriander more than before. Which will be good for me, because coriander seed is an herb rich in phytonutients.

Alliums 2.23 lbs
Beans 1.24 lbs
Broccoli 0.61 lbs
Carrot 0.25 lbs
Corn 2.39 lbs
Cucurbits 7.16 lbs
Eggplant 1.81 lbs
Greens 0.94 lbs
Herbs 0.58 lbs
Pepper 0.10 lbs
Potato 3.65 lbs
Tomato 27.27 lbs
Weekly Total 48.23 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 212.67 lbs
Veggie Garden was worth $239.03
Fruit 1.69 lbs

Seeing Yellow

2011-07-31T06:46:00.000-04:00

Let me just tell you now. Yellow is not good. I don't like yellow in the garden unless it is in a flower or maybe in the root crops. But sadly I have had just one winter squash set. Because the females all turn yellow and die before they bloom. Last year by this time I had eight squash set. I didn't get to eat them since the groundhog stole them all. This time Mother Nature is making sure I don't have that problem.

Do the plants look unhealthy to you? They look beautiful to me. So today I figured I'd just dose them with some fish emulsion to see if that would get them to keep their blossoms. I can only hope since I haven't a clue what is wrong.

So I found another yellow object in my garden.

Actually I saw one before, but when this second one came, I figure I'd better look it up. It turns out is a slime mold. It is often called the Dog Vomit Slime Mold. When it dries. . .

it looks like this. This one came out on Wednesday and has now shriveled up and put out its spores. It does look a bit like dog vomit doesn't it. In both its forms. I looked it up because I wanted to know if it was toxic or not since I walk barefoot along my paths. It turns out it isn't, but can cause allergic reactions and asthma flareups. Sadly I am indeed allergic to mold spores and have asthma. Ah well. Maybe I'll wear shoes in the garden and leave them outside so I don't track any in. And if I'm lucky I won't have any nightmares about slime molds following me into the house and eating me in my sleep. Slime molds are mobile and if you ask me, kinda freaky.

Jammin'

2011-07-30T07:19:00.001-04:00

This year I put in my two peach trees and my blueberry bushes. Sadly putting in fruit is a long term investment and I won't see fruit on the blueberries or peaches for a while. So while I was at the farmers market I bought some of both. Though I love to eat them fresh too these were for jam. Last year my sister-in-law made the yummiest blueberry peach jam. So I wanted to try one too. But I wanted one that was pectin free. So I looked one up.

I found one at A Thinking Stomach. It seemed like a nice one. Not too much sugar and no added pectin. It even leaves the peels in. I did it a bit differently. I didn't let it sit overnight in the fridge, which I figured was for getting the juice to start coming out of the peaches. So instead I used my trusty food processor to make juice. This meant there wouldn't be large peach parts in it or any whole blueberries left, but I was OK with that.

I boiled it up. I think my candy thermometer is wrong by about 4 degrees. I'd suspected this since I bought it last winter and made some English toffee. Luckily I don't rely on a thermometer. My jam sense is pretty good by now. But even with that temperature adjustment of 4 degrees, the jam jelled much earlier than the stated 221F. I took it out at a reading of 210 (in reality probably 214) and if anything I think it is a bit over jelled. I like my jams pretty soft. Maybe the thermometer is off by more?

At any rate the jam turned out very good. It wasn't too sticky sweet like a lot of jams. But I think it was a little too much blueberry and a little too little peach. Next time I'll have to up weight of the peaches. Though it makes a really good blueberry jam if that is what you are going for. Much better than the blueberry jam I made last winter.

Aftermath of the Heat

2011-07-29T07:53:00.000-04:00

This photo that I showed you earlier in the week had my bolting lettuce in it. It was filled with heat resistant lettuce. But I guess no lettuce can stand 103F. Even what wasn't bolting was bitter. So I pulled it all out and dumped it into the compost pile. It was a sad loss of three to four pounds of lettuce. What I want to know is how the farms keep producing lettuce all summer long. I had a batch of lettuce that was in the coolest part of the garden in almost full shade. It bolted too.

But the compost pile is really filling up. As you can see I pulled some of the borage too. I might turn it in a couple of weeks.

I didn't have any lettuce replacements ready to put in its place. So I direct sowed some Red Sails, Little Gem, Deer Tongue, and Tom Thumb.

I had slightly too large replacements for my boc choy. I should have pulled it a week ago before the heat, but once the heat hit I didn't want to pull it. I figured I'd let it have a few days of relative coolness to recover. But it all got pulled and its replacements seem happy enough. If a tad big when transplanting. At least Asian greens can still be enjoyed after the heat. They do get more mustardy, but they are still very tasty. I sent most of them over to my townhouse mates along with a big pile of cukes. I kept a couple for myself.

Food

2011-07-27T21:00:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week my son was visiting me. We have always had a tradition to go out to lunch and have Shahi Paneer. It is one of my son's favorite dishes. We used to go to a restaurant near my old house, but in the new house I hadn't yet found a spot. I figured we might try the local restaurant, but maybe he would like to help me make it. I'd never cooked it before, but both my son and I lvoe to cook. So I looked up recipes. I settled on one from Allrecipes.

So we went out to our local Indian grocery store that was just a half mile from the house. They had the red chili powder and ghee (which I used instead of vegetable oil), but sadly no paneer. So we made Shahi Mozzeralla instead. Now paneer doesn't melt and you can cook it in the sauce, but mozzerella does so you have to add it at the last minute. If we had had time we might have made paneer ourselves as it isn't that hard, but it was 11am already and we were making lunch.

It really made a good garden lunch. It used garlic, onion, tomatoes, and coriander from the garden. Mozzeralla tasted very good with the sauce, but it as a bit too rubbery. Maybe I'll make paneer before he comes next time. He promised to come again in a month.

And as every mother does I had to make dinner for him with one of his favorites. Ham. I paired it with applesauce that I made last fall. I dug the first of the new potatoes out of the garden in the afternoon to make scalloped potatoes. I usually don't have cream in the house, but since I bought it for the Shahi Paneer I figured I'd use it up. And I cut up some carrots for him. Sadly this is my plate and my son doesn't like green beans.

Saving Seed

2011-07-27T14:03:00.000-04:00

I collect seed here and there around the garden. I like to collect lettuce seed because it is so easy. You are suppose to have 12' or more between plants so they don't cross, but the reality is that they rarely cross anyway. Most of the time the flowers set before they even open. I'll know though if I have an issue.

I have three lettuce plants flowering. I have Little Gem, Paris Island, and Red Sails. The first two are Romaines and have white seed. The last one is a leaf lettuce with black seeds. Black seeds are a dominant trait. So if I have black seeds in my romaines, I know I have crossing.

I love borage. The flowers are pretty and very different and it pulls in a lot of bees very early in the season. The seed is also very easy to collect. I just pick it off the ground. I had pulled the plant because it was getting weedy looking (common with borage in mid to late summer).

And underneath the plant I found tons of seed on the path. I also have tons in the dirt, but I'll ignore them. I might them them grow there again next year or I might weed out the volunteers. And boy will there be volunteers next year. I've already got some coming up.

Cilantro and coriander are the same plant. I planted these for the cilantro, but I never pull them all and let them go to seed. Frankly I'd do it just for the flowers. It isn't that the flowers themselves are so interesting but they attract all sorts of beneficials to the garden.

But I get the bonus of letting them go to seed and collecting the coriander. The above are just covered in ripening seeds. I started collecting the dry ones today, but I'll be out there everyday picking off more. In about a week I'll probably just upend the plants and comb through it all.

And last but not least of the seeds I worked on today are the pea seeds. I hadn't shelled all of the Cascadia. I figured I'd just get it done so the seed can dry well and then be processed. I always freeze my legume seeds after the seed is totally dry (if not totally dry it will kill the seed when frozen). Freezing for a few days (0F or lower) kills weevil eggs. You won't know if your crop has them until the peas are destroyed, so it is always better just to be on the safe side and kill off the eggs.

Though it has nothing to do with seeds, I was pleasantly surprised to see this today. Two more melons have set. I planted eight cantaloupe plants. Eight melons set early on. Then all the female blossoms have fallen off since. I figured I'd get one per plant. I was pretty happy about that. Eight melons would be more than I've ever gotten before, even if these are small melons. But I'll dance if I can have melons in the double digits. That would just be too awesome.

Preparing for Fall

2011-07-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

Trying to get the fall garden started in the heat has been a challenge. The carrots have come up. In areas they are spotty. I seeded over a couple of weeks, weirdly the ones that came up in the blazing heat of last week are doing very well (photo above). Some were seeded last Thursday and a few are just barely breaking the surface now. Today I reseeded any gaps I saw.

I've also put chicken wire down. The neighborhood cats love to dig in my soil. I actually have a spot in the garden just for them to do their business. I figured I'd better or they would dig where I didn't want them too. But such a wide expanse of bare soil is just too tempting. Usually I see them test it out and not use it though. The seedbed is kept wet and they hate wet soil. But a few swipes in the dirt can dislodge a lot of carrot seedlings. Also in photo are my lettuces that I should be picking about now. But they have mostly started to bolt even with the shade cloth. A few plants have survived and I might pick them tomorrow to taste.

I've put out more seedlings. I wish I had more, but a lot of the seed that I was trying didn't germinate. Only the Red Sails, Deer Tongue and a couple of Little Gem did. So it might be a few weeks before lettuce again, unless I find some non bitter lettuce in there.

This is the broccoli that was put in about a week ago. It has grown by leaps and bounds. I thought the heat would kill it. I'm hoping it will be big enough to produce. This area does get fall shade so it had better get growing fast.

I also have seedlings in the nursery. Yesterday I potted up my kale. I have 21 plants potted up. I'm hoping that is enough to fill the bed. If not I'll seed some beets to make up. The bed is the bed that my onions are currently in. A handful of the onions have fallen over and been pulled. Most still seem to be growing. But I've noticed that the outside wrappers are starting to form on all of them. It shouldn't be long before they all fall over. They have to be out in two weeks though one would be better for the kale.

Harvest Monday - July 25 2011

2011-07-25T08:17:00.001-04:00

Can you believe this post is a little late because I forgot about Harvest Monday? I always write the post as soon as I get up in the morning. I never forget about it. When I travel I even schedule them so you can all have fun without me. But no. It was cool this morning and the garden just took me in. I didn't even think about the post. After all the heat, I was just loving being outside in the cool breeze. I was out until 7:30am when I harvesting. Yes harvesting the crop made me remember. So it isn't out by 8am EST which is usually my self imposed deadline. But I was still close.

Monday's harvest

This week the harvest was a little repetitive as all seasonal harvests are. This is probably the best bean week since it was the first full week of bean harvesting from the Kentucky Wonder beans. But who needs three pounds of beans every week? Well OK VeggiePAK obviously needs more, but I'm not a fan of preserved beans of any kind. I won't even eat fresh beans from the market. If it isn't fresh from the garden and Kentucky Wonder, I'm not a fan. So if I just get one pound a week from here on in I'll be set. I'll even have enough to share.

Tuesday's harvest

Wednesday's harvest x 3

Then there is also the cucurbits. The cucumbers ought to give me enough for a long long time. But sadly this is the last good week of zucchini I think. The vine borers are killing the vines. I hope to nurse them to enough health to give me something in future months, but I don't know.

Thursday's harvest

Friday's harvest

Saturday's harvest

Then of course there are the tomatoes. I've got Cherokee Purple, Heinz, Sungold, and Chocolate Cherry coming in. I also have Gabby which is my Sungold F4. So far its fruit are larger and more elongated and more prolific. Sadly it doesn't have the fabulous Sungold taste. It is OK, but not great. I'm thinking of having one of my temporary townhouse mates do a back cross with Sungold. She is a college student studying biology. And yes her love is plants.

Sunday's harvest x 2

Also a Sunday harvest. I needed onions for my breakfast so I weighed one of the ones that had been drying. Not bad for an onion. But then again it is one of my larger Alisia Craig onions. It is a Scottish heirloom that was introduced in the 1800s. Supposedly these normally get to 2-5lbs depending upon which seed company you listen too. Obviously my onions are runts if they are supposed to get that big. Runts or not, I'm happy with them. Maybe next year I should grow them side by side with Walla Walla to see which one grows better here.

Alliums 3.24 lbs
Beans 3.39 lbs
Broccoli 0.16 lbs
Carrot 0.74 lbs
Cucurbits 6.31 lbs
Eggplant 0.61 lbs
Greens 3.14 lbs
Herbs 0.38 lbs
Pepper 0.36 lbs
Tomato 6.82 lbs
Weekly Total 25.16 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 163.45 lbs
Garden was worth $82.04

Gardening? What's That?

2011-07-24T08:26:00.000-04:00

I feel like a slug of a gardener this last week. The heat was so bad that I just didn't do anything in the garden but what I needed to. We topped out on Friday at 103F. Triple digit heat in our area is very very rare. We get into the 90s on average 13 times a year, but usually it is the low 90s.

Sadly the pests have still been around. The cabbage butterflies love my garden with a passion. They dance in the air all the time. Thank goodness for row covers. I did get one stuck under the row cover one day. I found they wake up at 7am and if the cover isn't closed up by then I'll look like a crazy person trying to get the mob out.

The yellowish frass is a sign of vine borers

Sadly the vine borers found the zukes. This photo was from last Sunday. I tried two things to keep them off this year. I used the aluminum foil that supposedly confuses them. And I put netting over one of the plants as a test. One gardener said she had good results. The moths can get through, but they don't bother. Well mine bother to get through. All four zukes have multiple frass zones. Which means multiple borers. I think they aren't long for this world, but still I'm hoping. Last year the Costata Romenesca plants lived, but they couldn't set fruit really. I still got a lot of baby zukes. So I'll wait and see. Right now the Raven squash have dropped all their female fruit before it has gotten big enough for the flower to open. One CR zuke is doing the same, but the other is setting fruit still. We will see.

The only real gardening I've been doing has been planting my fall broccoli and trying to get the carrots germinated. The broccoli looks wonderful which shocks me. I planted it early in the week and it grew a lot over the last five days even in this heat. Go broccoli.

The carrots are interesting. I could get them to germinate OK in the heat using burlap and frequent watering, but once they were up they fell over and died. But I found that this only happened if I left the burlap on too long. When I took it off when I only saw one barely coming up under the whole burlap, I could get most of the stand up and stay up. I had to water them three times a day in the heat, but that is OK. Right now it is raining, and I'm busy the rest of the day, but hopefully tomorrow I can fill in the gaps from the spots I pulled the burlap off too late.

And maybe this coming week I can be a real gardener again and stay out later than 7am in the morning.

Preserving the Harvest

2011-07-24T08:11:00.002-04:00

I got a lot of preserving done in the heat last week. I was working on getting my herbs dried. So far I've dried chamomile, mint, rosemary, thyme, and sage. I need to get to the parsley, basil and some more mint. Do you see where I put my dehydrator so I don't add to the heat of the house? I have that on my front porch. There is an outlet by my front door.

I was also busy freezing things this week. I froze some beans. I blanch them for 3 minutes and then toss the into ice water before freezing. I like to freeze everything on cookie sheets and them put them into bags so I can just grab however much I need.

And some celery. And some onions. I have a lot more freezing to do next week too. I really oughtn't dry out most of the Alicia Craig onions. I should just freeze them. I don't blanch onions or celery. They just get chopped and frozen. They loose some of their structure in freezing, but I'll only use them to cook with anyway so it doesn't matter.

A Tour of the Summer Garden

2011-07-21T11:27:00.000-04:00

I haven't given a full tour of the vegetable garden since spring. So it is long overdue. I have eight beds that are 4'x16' and the circle garden that has two beds eight feet long by variable widths.

Bed 1 is the tomato bed. The front row of tomatoes are mostly Heinz 2653. They were supposed to be all Heinz, but some of the seedlings obviously got mixed up. I have one Heinz where a Cherokee Purple is supposed to be and one CP where a Heinz is supposed to be. The one on the front corner is actually a Market Miracle. I didn't have enough germination form the Heinz and I redid the sowing of the MMs so I had extra. The Heinz plants are all starting to die as the tomatoes ripen. They are paste tomatoes and the plant doesn't live long. But puts out a lot of tomatoes relatively quickly. Supposedly it does well in cool weather, but this is the second year in a row we are getting unusual heat.

Bed 2 is a modified Three Sisters Bed. It was planted later than my other TSB. The earlier corn is Spring Treat and is already setting ears. The later corn is Shasta and has tasseled, but not set any ears yet. The beans are all dried beans of various types.

Bed 3 is what used to be my pea bed. I'm now trying to get carrots up, but with triple digit temps possible it is going to be hard. I'll be watering them several times a day for the next couple of days.

Bed 4 is a mixed solanum bed. It has potatoes in one 8' section.

And eggplant, basil, and tomatoes in the next 8' section.

Bed 5 is more of a two sisters bed. It has cucumbers, melons, zucchini, and beans. The cukes I'm growing in the front of the bed are annoying. They don't want to climb my support. The Diamant I used to grow were more prolific and could climb better. If only Diamant seed didn't cost 0.50-0.80 for each seed. I may just buy a large packet of them like I did years ago and use them for several years.

I didn't take a photo of bed 6. It has a floating row cover over it and the butterflies were already out. I got one under the cover last time I opened it up and oh it was a pain to get out. I'm hoping it didn't lay any eggs during that time. But this is where all my brassicas and chard are.

Bed 7 is my pepper bed. I'm getting a few peppers, but it is struggling with bacterial spot. I spray every week with Serenade and it helps a lot, but I don't think it will be a good year for peppers.

Bed 8 is the other Three Sisters Bed. It was planted a lot earlier than the other bed and is sadly in more shade. So the early corn is struggling. It has only set a handful of ears. The later corn which is closer in the photo has more sun and is doing fairly well. Some of the stalks are setting a second ear, but some haven't set one. There are two kinds of squash in my TSBs. I have Waltham Butternut and Black Futsu. The butternut has set just one fruit so far in this bed. The other TSB hasn't had any female blossoms yet. I have some dried beans in this bed, but the first section is mostly my green beans, Kentucky Wonder. I've been picking every day in this heat because if I don't they get too large and tough. Usually they take longer to grow.

One side of the circle garden has my lettuce bed. I don't think that lettuce will be any good after this heat wave, but I'll give it a chance. Last weekend I ripped out the other side when I saw the forecast. In the front is where the garlic used to be and now has carrots seeded.

The other side of the circle garden is my onion patch.

A few of the onions were already starting to fall over, so they got pulled and are drying.

Sunflowers line the other side of the path down the garden. These things are just huge.

Food

2011-07-19T15:19:00.006-04:00

I keep taking photos of my food, but never post them. So I figured I'd post just one day - Sunday.

Breakfast was pretty typical for the last week or so. I'm getting a few strawberries from the garden. I pick them before breakfast. If I'm late to eat the berries are sun warmed. Notice the first of the alpine strawberries was eaten on Sunday. The bread is zucchini bread. I made and froze a whole bunch but I'm getting to the last. I had to use up the last of last year's zucchini before I started freezing this year's. Now that I'm getting some nice veggies, my eggs are scrambled with onions, chili peppers, zucchini, and tomatoes. It rivals the spring eggs, where I mixed in spinach.

After breakfast I made up two jars of pickle juice for refrigerator pickles. I usually keep it in the fridge so whenever there are too many cukes, I can just toss them in. Well on Monday one jar was already filled.

Lunches are sometimes cooked but it has been so hot recently I don't feel a lot like cooking. So it was just some raw veggies and a cucumber salad.

Now on Sunday my husband left for London and Paris for the week. When he leaves for long business trips I tend to spoil myself one day. To me this is going down the Franchesca's and getting a slice of their pizza and a cannoli. They make the best cannolis. Oh so good. So I walked down and sadly they weren't opened. They don't open on Sundays. Sigh.

So instead I decided to spoil myself at home. I made nachos and a mojito for dinner. Yum.

The Storm That Wasn't

2011-07-19T10:06:00.003-04:00

Yesterday the weathermen were all about the storm that was coming in during the afternoon and evening. They claimed heavy winds with scattered thundershowers and possible heavy downpours. So of course I put off watering. And with the wind I was worried. So I tied up my pepper and eggplants to the stakes that were put in ages ago.

Watering the garden, sunflowers on the left

Then I decided heavy wind and rain would knock down my sunflowers. They are huge. Maybe eight feet tall. Maybe even nine. They are much taller than my trellises that are seven feet plus the six inches of the bed. I figured I'd stake them with the bamboo. It would be tall enough for them. But the bamboo wouldn't go into the ground. So I took my three foot T-posts and pounded them in. Then used string corral the sunflowers. They are only three feet high, but it does support the bottom part of their stems. Now they are much more upright than before.

And since it was going to rain I held off of watering the plants. What a mistake. We got zero rain - and little wind. OK maybe a couple of drops, but the rain gauge still says zero. So this morning I had to get out and water the whole garden and our new landscaping. We really need some rain. Today at least is a break from the heat. We ought to be only a few degrees above normal, but by Thursday it is back into the 90Fs again. I could have sworn I lived in the north.

Harvest Monday - July 18 2011

2011-07-18T07:33:00.006-04:00

It was a huge harvest week. There were several firsts of the year. I had the first green beans, the first chili peppers, and the first big tomato, Cherokee Purple. This week featured a lot of preserving. I blanched and froze chard. I grated and froze zucchini. And I dried a lot of herbs. I broke even this week on produce versus expenses. I'll let the photos speak for themselves, but just so you know, the garlic wasn't weighed and tallied yet. That will happen once it is dried and trimmed.

Alliums 2.91 lbs
Beans 1.06 lbs
Broccoli 0.41 lbs
Carrot 2.87 lbs
Cucurbits 8.29 lbs
Greens 9.59 lbs
Herbs 1.88 lbs
Peas 2.16 lbs
Pepper 0.70 lbs
Other roots 1.01 lbs
Tomato 1.21 lbs
Weekly Total 32.09 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 139.29 lbs
Out of the hole! $2.83

Revamping The Lettuce Bed

2011-07-17T13:29:00.006-04:00

Gratuitous flower photo

Once the garlic had been pulled out of the bed it shared with the lettuce. It looked pretty crappy. The dill shared space with the garlic, but after pulling it couldn't stand up anymore. I decided it all needed to get pulled. Much of it wasn't harvested since I had plenty. It was compost fodder.

Lettuce bed with dill falling all over

The problem with pulling all the garlic and dill is that it was shading my lettuce bed. Without it the lettuce was going to die a horrible death. We had a two day cool spell (hovering around 80F both days). I say cool spell but the reality is in a normal year it would be a normal temp. July's average high in our area is 82F. Not 90F even if it feels like that has become our norm. Saturday was the start of another heat wave, so I pulled half of the lettuce from the bed. The other half will have to try to survive the nasty heat that is predicted for us.

I did help the lettuce out by putting up some shade for it in the form of some old muslin. I was trying to shade it in the afternoon, but it turns out I had the above misplaced. I rearranged it this morning and I think it will now provide shade in the hottest part of the day. Poor lettuce. There were some little seedlings that I had direct seeded a while ago. Most of them gave up the ghost after Saturday's heat. The carrots that came up are struggling too. Many have succumbed and keeled over. I'm hoping I can get a good enough stand to survive, but it will be hard. I can get them to germinate, but that doesn't mean I can get them to live.

Pulled Peas

2011-07-15T11:40:00.000-04:00

This morning I did one major chore. I picked the last of the snap peas (Cascadia) and pulled the plants. Now the section of garden looks so open. I'm sure the corn and squash behind the peas were happy to see them go. Now they have more sun.

I did leave a small patch of peas near the fence. I let these set seed.

Cascadia, Golden Sweet, Blizzard

Some were dry already so they were taken off and brought in to be put with the rest of the seed to dry out. This may be my first successful year saving pea seed. Usually it gets so moldy I can't save it, but we haven't had too much rain so the pods are drying just fine.

Oh and did you notice that first photo? The burlap was taken off the first seeded part of the carrot bed. And yesterday morning I got some more carrots seeded in the old snow pea area and have burlap covering that portion.

T minus 7 days and counting. T minus 6 days, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. We have liftoff. Yes it took just a week for my carrots to germinate. I see most of the rows up, but spotty so far. I'm sure more will come up soon. I'm so happy. OK maybe it wasn't quite as thrilling as Apollo 11, but a gardener gets really excited about such things.

Now I've got to seed the rest of the pea bed and the garlic bed in carrots. Do you think that will be too many carrots? I'm still debating in my mind what should go where for the fall. The main brassica bed will stay the main brassica bed. I'm putting kale where the onions are right now and it will get a row cover. I think I want mache where the potatoes are growing right now. I've yet to successfully grow that, but I'm going to try again with some seed that Emily sent me. I'm going to put spinach where the Heinz tomatoes are now. I'm going to plant carrots where the garlic, peas, and spring carrots were. That is almost a whole bed of carrots which is probably too much. Or is it? I do want to store some for winter. Hmm should I try for fall peas? Fall peas really don't work well here. It is too hot over the summer to get them going well and then they don't have time before it starts freezing to produce. But I might get a little and variety is nice. Decisions, decisions.

And I have one other question for you all. I broke my posts out into three smaller posts. Sometimes I think very long posts get to ungainly and disconnected. And sometimes hard to read all at once. What do you all think. Huge massive post. Or more smaller ones?

Seeing Red - And Purple

2011-07-15T11:33:00.000-04:00

The first of the Heinz tomatoes are starting to ripen. These should get bigger, but I think they set too many fruit and the plant just can't handle it.

The first Cherokee Purple tomato is starting to ripen. So the tomatoes have liked the heat even if I've hated it.

I'm Loving The Cool Weather

2011-07-15T11:11:00.000-04:00

Weird garlic

The cool weather is only lasting two days, yesterday and today. But yesterday was fabulous. I came home from work and went out into the garden. I hadn't intended to pull my garlic then, but it needed to come out and it was only in the high 70Fs. So nice. I figured I'd get a few done and finish the next day, but nope. I just kept going and pulled it all out. I just wanted to stay outside in the nice weather.

Rotting

The German Extra Hardy all looked good, but the unknown artichoke variety that I've been growing for the last few years had some issues. I have rot in some of the bulbs. I wouldn't have noticed, but this year I decided to braid theses softnecks before the leaves dried. In the past I'd tried the other way, but they get too brittle. So I was peeling the outer layer off to get to clean skin and I could see the bulbs were yellowish underneath. That's not good. I hope I got all the rotting ones out as I wouldn't want them to spoil the others.

I've never had a bulb rot like this on me before and here I was with a small handful of bad bulbs. The soil I have is very rich and grows things well, but it has some really bad fungal diseases in it. I had issues with some of my onions rotting out. I've had half my spinach damp off in the spring. I had some of my carrot damp off. I'm not used to things rotting on me. So far it is the one bad thing about the soil here. I hope the garlic stores well. Last year's garlic went all the way to harvest time this year. I'm used to being able to store it all year long. I might not be able to if there is a lot of bad disease inside the bulbs. But time will tell.

At any rate, I wiped off the hardnecks and bundled them into five sections of six and hung them and the softneck braid up to dry in the bike shed. I'm now well protected from vampires. Or at last my bike is. I have a few cloves in my kitchen that broke off when I was harvesting them and a couple weird ones. I'll use those up first. The rest will dry and I'll weigh them up once they are ready for storage.

It was really nice to be able to work in the garden in the late afternoon. I don't remember the last time I could do that comfortably. I like the pleasant weather. I so want more of it.

A Very Dilly Day

2011-07-14T06:58:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was all about the dill. OK maybe not ALL about the dill. I had three dill plants in the rock wall garden. Though I didn't mind having them this year. I don't want to have the dill come up there in future years. I want it in the main garden. If you let dill go to seed it is the biggest weed. For years it has been the biggest weed in my garden. I encourage it so it is only my own fault.

Since I didn't want it there and it was flowering, I figured I'd better pull it up now. These plants were huge. They had no competition at all early on. Now I have strawberries and my baby fig trees there, but early in the spring they grew all alone. So they grew better than usual. Usually my dill has 1/4" stems maybe as large as 1/2" if they are given a good spot. But these were almost 1" wide. The biggest plant had over 30 flower heads on it.

I trimmed off all the stems and just left the ferny leaves. I got 10.7 oz. The flower heads weighed in at over half a pound. I froze all the flower heads for pickles. I may not have any dill in bloom when I want to make them, so freezing them works fine. And I dehydrated half the dill leaves. That was enough to fill up a spice jar totally packed. Now I have way too much dill in my fridge. Anyone need any dill? I'm going to have even more when I dig up my garlic. I'd let them go to seed there, but I doubt I can dig up the garlic and not destroy the dill in the process. I think I have about 20 dill plants that came up in there and were never weeded out. I'm drowning in dill.

And I haven't even talked about the dill I planted on purpose because I thought I would need it. You would think the self sown dill wouldn't come up in a garden with new soil, but you would be wrong. Where the garlic and the circular herb garden is, I used my old compost from the last house that was in buckets for a whole year. Dill seed can last through anything.

Melons climbing the trellis

In other news, our heat has broken . Right now in the early morning it is 61F. Whoohoo! Sadly our break won't last. It looks like we will get another heat wave on Sunday. If so we will already be at our number of normal 90F+ days for the summer by Tuesday. And it is only mid July. It has been a really hot summer so far. I'm thinking it was a really good year for me to try to grow melons again. I had 9 melons set, but then over the last week two of them died while they were still smallish. But I still have 7 that are doing well. Even if I get no more, that would make me a really happy gardener.

Storing Up For The Winter

2011-07-12T16:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I really tried to harvest some greens under my row cover. But did you know those nasty white butterflies really wake up early in the morning? I had to wait until today to do it. So I was out this morning at 6am. My chore was to get the mass of chard harvested so I could process it.

I chopped off the stems and cut the leaves up. Then boiled it for a few minutes before plunging it in ice. Now it is in the freezer. I freeze it in chunks that are about 3/4c. Though I use those plastic containers to form the chard ice cube, they don't stay in there long. Once they are frozen, they are demolded and put into ziploc bags. The plastic boxes take way too much space in the freezer.

Then I grated all the zucchini I had in the house and froze that too for my winter soups and zucchini bread. I was on a kick to save things for the winter because I had let a little mizuna and a little komatsuna get too old. I really try not to. Any excess ought to be preserved or given away.

As I was preserving today, I cut the oregano back hard and dehydrated it. Finally I have my own oregano again.

And can you believe I had the first harvest of beans today and didn't take a photo? OK there are only about four. I think by the end of the week beans will start piling up. I'm seeing more little beans and there are just tons of flowers on those plants.

Then I was faced with this. The dying peas. The snap peas still seem to be alive and producing, but both snap peas have seen better days. So they got pulled out and composted. I collected some dry pods for seed next year. Not enough, but some.

The space was seeded with carrot tapes that I made yesterday afternoon. They are now nicely under burlap. I hope they sprout well. Some years I can get carrots to sprout easily in the summer and sometimes it seems impossible.

Harvest Monday - July 11 2011

2011-07-11T07:48:00.000-04:00

Monday's Harvest

Chamomile right before harvest on Tuesday

Tuesday's herbs

I think this week was more about how many little photos I could take. Usually I harvest in the morning knowing what I want to pick and eat. This week not so much. I'd harvest. Then I'd remember and come back and harvest again. And sometimes again.

Tuesday's lettuce

Tuesday's main harvest

This week was also about firsts which you will see scattered through the photos. I had my first carrots above. Mokum was the first to get big enough to pick. Though there is one little Purple Haze. I sent the Purple Haze to my CSA. They have kids and I thought the kids would get a kick out of purple carrots. Though the purple doesn't go all the way through.

Wednesday's beans

Wednesday's peas

Thursday's Komatsuna

Thursday's Chocolate Mint

Friday's harvest and the first cucumber harvested

Another Friday harvest and the first tomato

Sunday's carrots. Isn't that top one freaky. It had no outer part on one side, just the inner core.

Sunday's peas and zukes, and yes more tomtoes

And I had my first strawberry, Seascape. The strawberry was photographed, but not weighed. And promptly eaten for dessert. They aren't as good as a Sparkle strawberry, which I have planted but it is a June bearer so will have to wait for next year. At least this strawberry got photographed. The tiny handful of raspberries I've been picking don't even get their photo taken. I see it and eat it. Gone with no record.

Alliums 0.29 lbs
Beans 3.31 lbs
Broccoli 0.71 lbs
Carrot 1.33 lbs
Cucurbits 2.37 lbs
Greens 2.01 lbs
Herbs 0.82 lbs
Peas 1.63 lbs
Other roots 0.53 lbs
Tomato 0.13 lbs
Weekly Total 13.17 lbs
Weekly Spent $0
Yearly Total 107.21 lbs
Still in the hole $-115.53

Random Photos

2011-07-10T09:26:00.000-04:00

I finally did it. I got my peppers sprayed. The damage in the last two days was pretty high. More so than the whole last week and a half. Next time I'll just have to spray them when I have to. I'll leave the tomatoes out of the picture so I don't lose so many leaves to bacterial spot.

Grilled peas, zucchini, boc choy, and fingerling potatoes (the last from the farmers market)

First sunflower starting to open.

But mostly I'm doing this post because I have a few random photos and nothing to say today (shocking isn't it). So I'll just put them up.

Ladybug pupa all over the garden.

For Ribbit

Working in the Rain

2011-07-09T16:34:00.001-04:00

Yesterday it was raining on and off and I figured I'd been out in the garden enough so I wrote yesterday's blog post. Well somehow I got outside again. OK I know how it happened. I knew the day before I needed to pick the broccoli, but I had forgotten. So out I went. As I was walking by I noticed this.

The first cucumber of the year. So yesterday had the first cucumber and the first tomato. Finally my cucumbers are setting and sizing up. It took them forever. I hope I'm inundated in a week. Maybe.

Then for some reason I decided to check on the front yard and saw this. The first strawberry on my Seascape everbearing strawberries was ripening up.

I think I'll pick it tomorrow. But since I was starting to get ripe strawberries I had to put on some protection for it. I covered the row with bird netting. It isn't firmly attached, but I hope it is enough to keep the pests away.

Back in the back yard I decided I had to deal with the compost pile finally. It was getting a bit out of control after taking the favas down earlier in the week. I keep the compost behind the reed fencing. It is a pallet compost and has four compartments. The working compost didn't have a pallet in front of it since I'm still missing one. So I moved the pallet from one of the leaf compartments. I could pile most of the leaves in that section into the other leaf compartment. So we haven't quite gone through half the leaves I collected last fall, but we are getting there. The interesting thing is the leaf pile itself is warm. Not hot like a real compost pile, but it is breaking down quickly enough to generate some heat.

Then today I finally got around to finishing the tomatoes. The bottom leaves have all been removed. It was way too windy to spray (with Serenade) and way too hot to be covered head to foot and wear a mask so I'll do that tomorrow morning. I wonder how many times I've said that so far this week. It is always hard to find the perfect time to spray. But I'll have to whether it is windy or not tomorrow. The bacterial spot on the peppers is picking up again. They really need to be sprayed once a week and not once every two weeks.

I had one more chore that I did today and that was tying up my melons. I put them in slings of netting. I hope it works. I didn't have any pantyhose like EG uses, but I have lots of netting and string.

Rain, Rain, Rain

2011-07-08T10:26:00.000-04:00

We are finally getting a good rain today. So far only a third of an inch, but I'm hoping for at least another third. So once again I put off spraying. Not good. But we do need the rain. Tomorrow sometime I have to get to it especially with the rain spreading disease around.

But there was one thing I could do in the break in the rain. I could get my carrots planted. Yesterday I made carrot tapes to plant out. I was asked how I make them so I'll show you.

I take some toilet paper and cut it into four strips the long way. Then I put on dots of glue every inch and put one seed on each dot. I hang them up to dry on my laundry lines in the nursery. Granny likes seed mats that are made from paper towels, but I like doing them in rows better as I find them easier to plant.

I measure out rows four inches apart and put down the tapes. Then I make sure they are barely covered with fine soil. The covering is why tapes are easier for me. I have trouble covering a whole area evenly with fine soil. But a narrow row is simple. If you leave part of the paper out of the soil it will act as a wick and dry everything out. Especially in the heat we have been having. After they are covered I tamp them down.

Then I cover them with burlap. Usually I'd water well after this, but with the rain before and after there was no need. In fact I had to hurry to finish as I was getting rained on at the end. Everyday I'll water the burlap a couple of times at least if it is hot and sunny out. And I'll check every day after Tuesday to see if there is any sign of germination. If there is I'll take the burlap off. But until then the burlap will shade and protect the soil and help them to get up. I ought to use boards at this time of the year, but my soil has a lot of damping off issues, so I'm going to stick with the burlap if I can.

And while I was out I saw this little gem. My first Sungold tomato is ripe. No other plants are showing any sign of ripening. Last year I harvested my first tomato about 10 days later than this, but the plants were put in about three weeks later than I planted this year. And last year I had many of the varieties come ripe at once. I think last year's heat really drove them to produce quickly.

Oh and yes I ate it right after its photo was taken. It was yummy. Not as good as later ones will be, but still quite good. I can't wait until I have so many I can't eat them all. I'm hoping that won't take too long.