Mother Nature Hates Me

It was the 20th of May (last Monday) and we were two thirds of the way through May. I checked the weather forecast and it said we would have three days of 80F weather with a few 70s in the middle before it turned hotter again on the weekend. It certainly looked like summer had arrived. I planted my first two beds of beans. The first one was my beloved Cherokee Trail of Tears and the second my Tiger Eye Beans.

I knew something was wrong on Tuesday night. Tuesday was one of those hot and humid days. But I went outside Tuesday night and it was cold. It was supposed to stay in the 60Fs all night long. It was not in the 60Fs anymore. On Wednesday a day the was destined to be 82F never got out of the 60s. My weekend that was supposed to have a warming trend is now predicted to be in the low 50Fs. My poor beans. Beans won't germinate unless the soil is 60F. It did make it to that on sunny days. We won't see the sun until Monday. It is rainy. I think my beans might all rot in the ground. Mother Nature hates me. It's either that or the weathermen are playing tricks on us gardeners. But I'm going with Mother Nature because even with all the wet weather we still haven't gotten much rain at all. When it rains we get like a tenth of an inch. We still have gotten less than a third of our normal May rainfall.

I was going to make some flavored vinegar out of my chive blossoms. But they are were damp yesterday morning and are damp again this morning. Maybe tomorrow morning they will finally dry out enough to pick. I can't wait too long to pick them. The English thyme is ready to preserve too if it ever dries out.

Yesterday's chore was ripping out the old winter spinach bed. I had lot of volunteers in the bed - chamomile, cilantro, romaine lettuce, and dill. Oh and lots of Johnny-jump-ups. I swear they would take over the garden if I let them. I figured all the leaves would be horribly disfigured by now as the leaf miners are out and this bed isn't protected. But many of the leaves were fine. So I picked a small basket before ripping them up. My townhouse mates have taken in some stray college kids (including their own son) for the summer. They are vegetarian so are looking forward to veggies from the garden. I sent the spinach over with some salad greens, radishes, and turnips. One said he would work for food. My townhouse mates thought I'd put them to work in my vegetable garden. But I love taking care of it, so I just showed them weeds that need to come out in the other part of the yard.

I've noticed I took a few photos of food, but never put them on as I don't need the extra photos for Harvest Monday anymore. I'm getting enough harvests as it is. This is my typical lunch. I made a squash and black bean salad to add to my typical green salads. I sent half the black bean salad over to the college kids. The rest I'll eat over a few days.

When I cleaned out my pantry I noticed that I had some strawberry syrup still. So I made myself some blueberry pancakes and used up one of the small jars of syrup.

The first grilled burger of the year. With homemade mustard and relish and freshly picked lettuce. The sides are a garden salad and grilled bok choy.

I Have Condoms on my Apples

I've never done this before, but the books all say to thin your apples when they are 1/2"-3/4" in size. Most of mine had reached that size. Each spur had set about 3-5 apples and there are a lot of spurs on that tree. Some just a few inches away from another. The tree was just covered in little tiny apples. I picked the largest apple from each bunch and kept that one. Then trimmed off any that were closer than 6" apart. The books say 6"-8" apart. I tried for that.

Then I put on protection for the apple. I swear they look like condoms hanging off my tree though they are really footies. Not the nicest look, but I suppose they would be a conversation piece at a bbq. The little nylon footies expand well and breath. They also keep those nasty insects out. I used a twist tie to keep them on. I'm not going to spray poison on my apples if I can help it. I've also read that ziploc baggies work well if you cut the corners off of them. I don't like the look of them, but I did cover three of the apples with ziplocks. I'll see which makes the better fruit, but it would take a lot of difference for me to resort to the ziplocks on all those apples. Now it is a waiting game. Will I get good insect free apples this year? I've got my fingers crossed.

The apple that got protection is the Ginger Gold. The other apple tree in its third year is the Honeycrisp, but it has barely grown. It really struggles compared to the other. It had set two bunches of apples. I just took them off the tree. The tree really needs to get bigger. It is still only about three feet high. Then I went on to my three year old peach trees. One peach tree had set peaches already. I thinned the fruit, but the fruit is still a bit small to bag. I'll wait a few days. Like the Ginger Gold apple, the tree is covered in peaches. I had to take a lot of little peaches off. The other peach tree is still blooming. It was very late this year. It is right by the driveway and after the 2' snow storm we shoveled all the snow on around it. So the ground defrosted much later even though they are only a few yard apart. That one will need a lot more time before they get bagged.

I did get a couple of other chores done today. I got my Tigers Eye beans planted. I planted a whole 4'x8' bed up with them. I planted in rows 6" apart. But one side had the beans 6" apart in the row, and one had them 4" apart in the row. I want to see if there is a difference in production with them closer together. If not it uses a heck of a lot less seed which otherwise I could be eating.

The last chore was to cut back the French thyme and dehydrate it. I got a cup of dried thyme. Tomorrow I ought to do the English thyme.

Planting Some Beans and Picking Some Spinach

I didn't add strings to my trellis before because my hands were too sore from tying all the jute when I made the thing. But yesterday I finally got it done. I also did the typical soil preparation for planting. Fertilizing (with a low nitrogen fertilizer), loosening the soil, and adding compost to the top. I must say that I did it totally wrong. Do you know how hard it is to get your garden fork in to loosen the soil once you have a big honking trellis in the way? Well it is pretty hard. It makes all the spreading of things hard too. Live and learn.

In the morning I had started to soak my beans. I don't always do this. And sometimes I don't just soak them, I let them sprout a bit first. But they soaked for a good 4-5 hours before they were planted. As always for beans I sprinkled them with an innoculant to help them grow. Today's planting was some Cherokee Trail of Tears beans. I decided that I never grow enough. I'm not sure why I think that. I still have some left from last year's planting. But regardless, I'm planting a whole 4'x 8' bed of them. I've also never done a trellis with two sides before. I've always put the bean trellis on the northwest side of the bed. This time I have twice the trellis and they are on both sides of the bed. I guess I'm still experimenting with the best way to grow my beans. I hope both sides can get enough sun.

Someone asked me how I make my trellises. I have one more still to put up this week, so I'll try to do a post then.

My other big chore was to get my spring spinach picked. I picked off all the good looking leaves. I tend to leave the oldest leaves on and let the younger ones grow. But those middle leaves are perfect. This patch will have one more big picking next week before I have to pull it. I want to get the melons in this bed by June 1st. So far the spring spinach hasn't started to bolt. We have had really wonderful spring weather in the 60Fs and 70Fs. It is just recently that some 80Fs have started to show up. So I'm sure by next week they will be starting their bolt. Though I'm still surprised to not see them bolting now. Spinach bolts not just by heat but by day length. I figured out ages ago that that was May 15th at my latitude.

Since I got not quite four pounds of spinach and I didn't want to freeze this batch, I sent out an email to my extras list. I got two responses. So they got a quarter of the harvest each. I think I'm left with enough for this week. Maybe still too much, I'm just one person. But I think I can eat all that is left before my next picking. Then of course I made myself a salad for lunch and forgot to add spinach. I swear I'll remember today to have it for lunch. And I think I'll have some for dinner too. Maybe a spinach pizza. And my husband will be on a business trip starting on Thursday. That would be a good day for some spinach and mushroom quiche. Yeah I think I can use it up if I work on it.

Harvest Monday, May 20th, 2013

The big spinach harvest was early last week (above is only half). Four pounds of winter spinach was picked, washed, blanched, and frozen. I still have the spring spinach to go. I'm contemplating giving lots of it away.

I filled my harvest basket with greens for salads. I had the first radishes of the season. I also picked some kale blossoms. Kale blossoms have been a mainstay vegetable this last week. I seem not to be able to keep up with them. But their season is really short.

I picked the first of the bok choy. I found the purple kind (on the left) not quite as good as the green kind. It is just slightly more bitter and also a bit tougher. Not much. They are pretty close. But enough so that I probably won't grow it again as it also grows more slowly.

I forgot to take photos of the kale harvest. But I chopped the last of the kale down to make way for beans. I blanched and froze all two pounds of it. I actually find frozen kale as good as fresh. I never eat it raw so having it precooked saves time.

I was going to a evening around the firepit with some friends. I gave our hostess some freshly picked spring spinach. So the giving away of the spinach has started. Last year I just preserved all the spring spinach too. And then I didn't need to preserve any chard. But I figure this year I ought to mix it up and freeze both. I have a whole bed of spinach. I'll work on eating it this week, but it won't last long as the weather warms up and there is just so much of it.

A nice big basket of oregano. I put some in a quart jar to make flavored vinegar, but still got a cup of dried oregano from the rest.

• Alliums 0.13lbs
• Greens 7.73 lbs
• Greens Asian 2.69 lbs
• Herbs 0.44 lbs
• Radish 0.37 lbs
• Weekly Tally 11.37 lbs
• Yearly Tally 18.15 lbs, -$317.43

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.

Preserving and Supports

Friday morning I spent watering the garden. I didn't know really what to do with my rock wall garden. I didn't have time to hold the hose on them and my soaker hoses hadn't come. So I put on the oscillating sprinkler on its narrowest setting and moved it down the row. Then that afternoon, wouldn't you know it, the first of the soaker hoses came. I put it in and it wasn't quite long enough. I ordered one 75' hose(the one the came) and one 50' one. Since I knew it was too short I went back online and canceled the 50' one and ordered another 75' one. I think they may overlap just a touch, but otherwise I'd be watering a 10' section by hand when we don't get rain. I'll also bring the hose out to the end of the bed more which will use up a little bit more length.

Then it was on to my supports. I got the fava beans supported. I only put the first layer of string up. When they get past that rung I'll do the top.

Saturday I only did some picking in the morning. I picked what was still good in the kale patch as I needed to rip it out. It all got frozen. Then I went hiking instead of gardening for the rest of the day. It was a beautiful day. I was so exhausted when I got back I couldn't bring myself to go out to do anything. Well I did pick a bit of spinach to bring to a friend's house in the evening, but nothing else.

Today was a morning work day. I had to rip out what was left of the kale plants.

And put up the trellis for the beans (it still needs some twine lines for the beans to climb). It is the start of the warm weather planting season. I'm going to be planting some beans this week. Putting up a trellis is hard work. And it is very hard on the hands as the twine I use to tie the poles together really rips them up. But I got this double sided bean trellis up. I've got one more to build in the future. But that will be later.

When I was coming in I noticed the lovely oregano. It really needed to be picked and dehydrated. So out came the scissors. The house smells wonderful now. I had so much that I decided to make some Italian seasonings vinegar. I'll put other herbs in the jar later, but for now it is just oregano covered by cider vinegar. Tomorrow I ought to pick the thyme.

What Makes a Gardener Excited?

You would think it would only be things in the garden, but nope. My order for glass jars showed up. Above is a non-quilted jelly jar. I'm not a fan of the quilted kind so I decided I needed more and would order them online. Now I have nice smooth jars with places to put on a label if I want to. Or I can forgo the label as I can actually see what is inside. I got a case (12 jars) of both the 8oz size and the 4oz size. I hope they hold up as well as the quilted jelly jars do.

Canning trivia fact: Ball put out a line of blue jars this year as a 100th anniversary tribute to to its original jars which were blue. I'm staying away from them. Blue isn't a color I want to see my food through. I prefer the original coloring. Original color of the food that is not of the jars.

I also learned that these bottles are called woozy bottles. Well these are 5oz wide mouth woozy bottles. Anyone have a clue as to why they are called a woozy bottle? I bought them so I could make some infused vinegars as gifts. It is just about herb season around here.

So this morning I was thinking about my bottles and what I would fill them with. I needed to clean the bathroom, but somehow that didn't get done in the morning. I cleaned out my pantry instead. I got rid of the failed experiments from last year, so I can have new experiments in food this year. It is always fun to make new things. Do you see that middle shelf in the above photo? Well that is two jars of jam (one peach/blueberry and one plum) and three jars of strawberry syrup. I need more jam on my shelf. I really don't eat that much jam, but the strawberry jam was SO good. I need more. My favorite use for it is to make thumbprint cookies. Pure butter shortbread with a drop of jam in the middle. Just heaven. And it is almost strawberry season.

The lower part of my pantry has some pickled onions, beans, sweet potatoes, and applesauce. And just a few jars of tomato sauce left. I gave most of it away when I found I couldn't eat tomatoes anymore, but I'm going to make chili and pizza sauce for my husband until it runs out. Cleaning the pantry is so much more fun than cleaning the bathroom. I get to dream about all the things that might get put in here over the year.

Getting Behind in the Garden

Last week I didn't get too much work done in the garden. I did get a few things, but the garden needed (and still needs) attention. Above is my spring spinach that still hasn't been picked. I need to pick about half of it and freeze it. Or at least give it away. What you see is just the end of an 8.5' long bed.

At least I got to the winter spinach on Monday. Don't you just love how large Winter Giant grows? I think next year it will be my only winter spinach as it is so easy to pick and clean up in the spring. And there was a bit more cleaning needed than normal. Usually I would have done this a week ago, but with company I put it off. The leaf miners show up in mid May. I don't cover my overwintered spinach because by the time the miners show up my protected spring spinach is ready. But the final picking for the winter spinach was a week late so I had to scrape off a few eggs on the back of the leaves. Luckily they are very very easy to spot. The bright white on the back of the dark green leaves are so easy to find.

My SIL who was visiting asked if I washed the spinach before I freeze it. Yes I do. It gets well washed before blanching. Then I vacuum seal it. They do keep a lot better if I vacuum seal them. These have to keep for almost a year. I harvest in May, but I eat them mostly from December until April. There is no way they would keep in your normal freezer that long, but my chest freezer downstairs is very cold and doesn't have an automatic defrost. I now have 16 little packets. All I have to do is heat and serve. All the work has already been done. By the end of summer I will have about 40 1/2 cup packets of spinach and chard (about 10 pounds). I use them in the same way so almost consider them the same.

Next up Monday afternoon was putting in the trellis for the espaliered apple and pear trees. I put in four horizontal wires down the 24' length of the fence. I kept debating on how high they should be and how far apart they should be. In the end I think I put them just a touch too high. Now it will be hard to trip the top wire.

This morning I went out to pick some more harvests. But the biggest harvests are still salad greens. Above is a tuna pasta salad made with cooked kale, raw mizuna, and pickle relish from last year. Then there is the nice mixed green salad. Which finally has something not green from the garden. Radishes! The first of them. This year I covered them since the root maggots got in them last year and destroyed most of them. And I couldn't tell if it was good or not until I cut into it. But so far this year they seem to be all good. My love hate relationship with my row covers continues.

This afternoon it was on to using string. Above is my mache going to seed that was shading out the parsley and getting into the peas. I tied it all up with some bamboo sticks and string. Now hopefully it will stay in its spot.

Then it was onto the peas. I put metal stakes in when I plant the peas, but the strings don't go up until they need them. And I was a bit late. They could have used that first string to grab onto. But at least it is done. I also strung up the cilantro that is going to seed. I have two different ages of cilantro in the garden. What overwintered and is going to seed right now. And what germinated this spring. Currently that is what I'm picking and eating. But the ones in bloom fall over easily and shade out the new ones. So they had to be controlled.

The front yard also needed attention. First on the list was pruning and putting the 16' long trellis for the two figs. These are done in a candelabra or vertical cordon shape. I have two main branchs that follows a pipe a foot off the ground. Each branch going in a different direction. I didn't have the wires up from the pipe to the top of the fence. So I added some small eye screws to the fence cross bar and put them up a foot apart.

Yesterday I was at the nursery and bought a few pots of flowers and 6 packs. I planted the flowers in front of the apple and pear trees to be espaliered. I need to get some more as I want to put a few more flowers in front of the peach trees and maybe at the end of the driveway. I wish the nursery that was close enough to walk to had a larger selection of plants. I suppose I'll just have to experiment with what they have.

The rain chased me in. I'm not sure I needed to go inside yet. The rain didn't last. It keeps threatening but nothing is really falling. I'm going to have to water the garden again this coming week. I'm not happy about that. But I really shouldn't complain about such beautiful weather. We have just had so much beautiful weather. And I have been enjoying it.

Harvest Monday, May 13th, 2013

This week I had relatives in and we went out to eat almost every meal. Not many of my vegetables were eaten, but I did harvest a nice basket of them. And we had fresh salads with our leftovers. I also picked rhubarb for dessert. I made them a strawberry rhubarb crisp.

As to gardening very little got done except planting the fruit trees that showed up last week. Those could not be put off. So this week I'll have to go out and pick and process my overwintered spinach and the kale. I have some seeds to sow and I need to catch up with my weeding.

Last week was wonderful as we finally got some very much needed rain. Sadly we only got just over an inch but it is something. Tonight Mother Nature is scaring me. The weather forecast says 34F tonight and 35F tomorrow night. I don't have most of my summer plants in yet, but I did plant my basil early and it is in the garden. I should probably go out and cover them. They are struggling enough as it is. They don't even really like weather in the 40Fs.

• Alliums 0.14lbs
• Greens 1.06 lbs
• Greens Asian 0.55 lbs
• Herbs 0.08 lbs
• Weekly Tally 1.83 lbs
• Yearly Tally 6.78 lbs
• Fruit
• Rhubarb 0.60 lbs

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.

Fruit Trees

I ordered three more fruit trees to put in my old asparagus bed that died. Thursday the first of the packages showed up. It as from Miller and it was Liberty and Macfree apples. Both are disease resistant apples. I planted them up on Friday. I'm going to espalier them against the fence. I'm hoping it works.

I have three other trees along that fence that I'm doing as espaliers. The first is a plum tree. It has been struggling with aphids every year, but it seems to be doing a bit better this year. I'll have to cut the neighbor's lilac bush back to the fence line though as it is coming over and starting to shade the tree. The other two are figs. Figs aren't really hardy here. They will die back to the soil if you don't insulate them. So last year I dumped leaves on them and as you can see I got some of the branches to survive and those early figs are already starting to form. I'll have to get more serious about insulation next year now that I know it can work. The shape I want to do is a vertial cordon shape for these. I want to cut each vertical branch off every other year. Figs can produce fruit on new and year old branches. And the new branch fruit will probably never really ripen in our climate. But the ones from the year old branches can. So if I cut out every other branch I'll have year old branches every year to get fruit from. It still remains to be seen if it will work or not, but I have high hopes.

The other tree on order, a pear tree, came on Friday, so it got planted up this morning. If you notice the plum was in a fan, the figs were in a vertical cordon shape, but the apples produce best in a horizontal cordon shape. They like when their branches are parallel to the ground. So the apples and pear will be done that way.

I do have other trees in my yard that I put in a couple years ago. I have two more dwarf apples (Ginger Gold and Honey Crisp), and two dwarf peaches (Reliance and New Red Haven). I'm hoping to get fruit from two of those trees and maybe three. The Honey Crisp has hardly grown though so if it does produce then I'll take all the fruit off. But I think since the trees are in their third year now, I can let them produce. I hope. I really want some home grown peaches and apples.

I really know very little about fruit trees. I've certainly read about them, but have no real experience. So everything I do is taken on faith. A lot of how I garden is to try things out and see for myself. But with trees they just take so long so you have to do what others tell you to.

What's Growing in May

You can blame Granny for this post as she was showing what was growing in the different sections of her garden and it reminded me I hadn't done that in a long time. Or maybe never this year. Recently I've just focused on what I've done in the garden and not how the plants are doing. I used to do overhead views of the garden too that I haven't done in ages. You won't get that today, but I will go through what is in each bed. Just for reference each bed is 4'x16' and each is divided into two. Often different things are growing in different ends of the beds.

The first bed finally got weeded yesterday. It has peas growing all long the right edge. Much of the closer area is in carrots (the part with all the sticks to try to keep the cats out) and I hadn't weeded them since they came up. There were a lot of dill seeds in the soil and they came up at the same time so I had to wait until I could tell the two apart easily. The rest of the bed is in lettuce (both close and at the other end), celery, parsley, mache going to seed, basil, and marjoram. I think of this bed as my miscellaneous greens bed. If I do it right I'll keep reseeding lettuce in the far end all summer long, but the odds are I'll get lazy and quit. Or get tired of lettuce.

Bed 2 is my allium bed. It does have a small patch of four different lettuces growing at the more shaded end (close to the camera). I'll let those four go to seed and they won't get in the way. I have three kinds of onions and at the very far end that sticks up more is my garlic.

Bed 3 has a small section of radishes and nothing else. This bed and bed 4 will be my two sisters garden when summer finally hits. I'm sure this patch of radishes will be gone by then as they are just starting to root up.

This half of bed 5 is my Asian greens bed and is by far the prettiest one if you peek under the covers. I love all the different textures. And though I call it my Asian greens bed it also had kohlrabi in there. I ought to think of it as my quick maturing brassica bed, as everything in here will have to be out by June 1st when I plant up this bed in sweet potatoes (if the slips ever get big enough - but that is another story). The unseen section of bed 5 is my broccoli and chard bed. It is also covered to keep out the insects. So far it is growing well.

Bed 6 is my fava bed. I have half the bed done in fava beans. I need to get some bamboo poles and string out to make sure they don't blow over some day. They aren't nearly tall enough to need it yet, but they grow quickly.

Bed 7 is half planted in my cabbages. I currently have Michihili cabbage, Napa cabbage, and Early Jersey cabbage growing there. In addition there are some undersown turnips. Soon I'm going to seed some Brussels sprouts which I have yet to succeed in growing but hope spring eternal. The cabbages are covered so the caterpillars can't get to them. I still see a few signs of the plants getting chewed on. I'll have to put some Sluggo out soon to control the slugs. I'm shocked there are any slugs out there right now. We didn't get rain for weeks. Luckily now we have had a small bit of rain and are in for more of the next few days.

Bed 8 is half planted in kale. Well was half planted in kale. Not many are left now. The other half of the bed is asparagus which I put in yesterday. I really hope the newly planted asparagus grows.

What I think of as bed 9 really isn't a bed, but three beds. It is what I call my circle garden which is raised by bricks. In the middle is the herb circle pictured above. It also has two beds that I photographed last week which are planted in spinach. Together those two beds have close to the same area as my regular beds even if their shapes are a little strange.

I do have more garden area, but that is all my raised area. Most of the rest of the yard and garden either has fruits, herbs, or decorative plants. I don't grow vegetables anywhere but in the raised portions anymore. There is one patch of perennial onions in the front yard, but those are my townhouse mates' onions. They were brought up I think from Alabama from a relative of theirs. So I don't tend to harvest any. I can. I've been told to if I need any, but I've had lots of self sown bunching onions this spring, so there has been no need.

Harvest Monday, May 6th, 2013

My big harvest this week was kale. It was starting to bolt, so I got the tasty flowers and the leaves. Most of the leaves were blanched, frozen, and vacuum sealed for later.

The kale flowers were eaten as a spring treat. Kale doesn't give much in the way of flowers, but what they give is tasty. I still have a handful of plants out there in bloom. I'll have to cut some down again.

I've been picking cilantro regularly. Not much all at once but some here and there. I used this in a recipe that called for cilantro and coriander. Two different tastes from the same plant. Though the coriander was harvested last year.

And they were put in a dish of curried sweet potatoes. Though I used this recipe as a starting point, I made it an easier one. I swear that one would have taken forever to make and it was asking for three pans. I used one pan and it took about 20 minutes. Vegetable dishes shouldn't take forever to make or I just won't make them on a regular basis. I also don't have whole Indian spices in my spice drawers only ground. Yes it would probably be better with whole spices, but corners have to be cut to use what is on hand. Either way it was delicious.

The fruit tally changed last week, as I added the additional fruit trees on order. A pear tree is coming from Stark Bros and was $35.94. Two apple trees are coming from Miller and they are $63.65.

• Greens 3.63 lbs
• Herbs 0.03 lbs
• Weekly Tally 3.66 lbs
• Yearly Tally 4.95 lbs

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.

Making Granola

I blame this on Dave. He posted about his Muesli that he made and it got me to remembering when I used to make granola. I had kids then and it was a lot of work since they would eat it all up so quickly. But homemade granola is delicious. And fun since you get to pick your own flavors.

The basic recipe that I use is not an exact recipe. It is a set of proportions that I like and have found works over time. The flavors can change based on your whim or what is available. I don't like most commercial granolas as they are too sweet for me. So this recipe is for granola with just a touch of sweetness. If you like sweet add brown sugar. You can add however much you want to make it sweet enough maybe 1/2 - 1 cup. I also don't add vegetable oil. Coconut milk has a lot of oils in it and adds flavor. The recipe makes about three quarts.

Daphne's Granola Recipe

Dry Ingredients

• 4 cups oats
• 1 1/2 c oat flour or extras
• 2 c chopped raw nuts (they get roasted as the granola cooks)
• t salt
• spices

Wet Ingredients

• 3/4 c light coconut milk
• 1/2 c juice concentrate
• 1/2 c liquid sugar
• extracts

Other

• 1 1/4 c dried fruit

The basic idea is to mix the dry ingredients together. Then mix the wet ingredients together. Then mix them both together to totally moisten the oat mixture.

Spread the mixture out on two cookie sheets lined with parchment paper and bake. I bake at 300F for about 40-50 minutes. After the first 10 minutes I switch the top for the bottom cookie sheet. Then every 10 minutes after I stir the mixture well. It works best on a jelly roll pan as they have sides, but I don't own any now. Keep a close eye on them and remove when they start to lightly brown (but not just the little tiny edges, mix those into the middle so they don't burn). The mixture will harden up when it cools. Don't expect it to be crunchy right from the oven. If it doesn't harden up once it is cooled, you didn't cook it long enough. Just put it back in and do it some more. Once it is cool mix in the dried fruit and pack into airtight jars. If you like flax seed in your mix, this would be the time to add it too. Cooking flax seed isn't a good idea.

As you can see I cooked the one on the right more. The one on the left is just barely done. I made three types. The first on the left was a typical cinnamon (1 T) flavored one. The nuts were a mix of almonds and pecans. The fruit was blueberries. The juice concentrate was apple. The liquid sugar was maple and I added a tablespoon of vanilla extract. The one on the right had sunflower seeds, pistachios, dried Montgomery cherries, cloves (1/2 t), almond extract (1/2 t), orange juice concentrate, and honey. The third type which isn't shown was a gingerbread flavored one. It had almonds, pecans, sunflower seeds, golden raisins, molasses, dried ginger (1 T), allspice and nutmeg (1/2 t), cinnamon (1 T), and apple and orange juice concentrate.

As you can see the recipe is very flexible and only limited by your imagination. You can make all sorts of interesting flavors. I'm wondering if I can switch it up when I start getting strawberries and use fruit puree instead of concentrated fruit juice. I may have to use more, which would make the mixture too moist. But I suppose that just means it has to cook longer. I'll see when the season hits. And I ought to note the "extras" part. I used oat flour all the time (oatmeal ground in the food processor). But you can use other flours. You could be healthy and use ground quinoa or amaranth - Dave pops his amaranth. Or you could add some chopped coconut flakes, sesame seeds or any kind of bran.

Anyone Know of a Good Rain Dance?

My husband keeps telling me how good the solar has been on our house so far. And indeed it has. It shouldn't be. It is spring time in Boston. It should be raining, cloudy, drizzly. Anything but wonderful sunny days in the high 60Fs and low 70Fs for days on end. And there is no end in sight to this gorgeous weather. I'm not complaining, but the garden is. I noticed I had lost two of my spring spinach plants.

The overwintered spinach is doing fine, but not growing as quickly as it ought to. I was afraid all my carrot seedlings with just seed leaves would fall over and die. So I watered the garden today. I just can't believe I had to water on May 1st.

I had to join Granny in dealing with my squash. It wouldn't last much longer. So half of the butternut squash got baked and pureed. Unlike Granny I puree mine in the blender. It is very smooth that way.

The other half got peeled and chopped. I lightly steamed it. It is cooked enough that you could eat it now, but not enough that it would mush down when vacuum sealing it.

I have two Tetsukabuto squash left. I didn't do anything with them as my hands were getting tired and sore. I'll wait until tomorrow. I'll probably not even peel or cook these. I'll chop them into big cubes. They will be for soup later on. I'm not going to grow this kind of squash again. I think I'm going to stick to butternuts as they are so tasty and productive.

Getting Behind

In posting not in doing the work. Since my last update on Thursday I've done a lot of things. I finished turning the other compost pile over (about a cubic yard). My townhousemates, husband, and I weeded the whole yard and spread 2cuyds of mulch.

The herb circle had its bricks redone so the newly planted sage would have some space. Also in the last year I layered some new plants off of the rosemary. I just pulled some branches down in spring and covered them with soil and a rock to keep it from coming out. This spring those branches had roots on them. I moved them to other spots in the garden. This way if one dies another might live. This year all the ones by the foundation died. Maybe next year it will be somewhere else. Even hardy rosemary is barely hardy here.

I planted up all my zinnias and cosmos. I have two beds they go into. One is my rock wall garden which is where the road enters our property. Technically the rock wall garden is not "our" land. It belongs to the private road which dead ends at our house. Since it is a private road I am required to keep up the land as the abutter of the land. Which means I use it to grow fruit mostly, but I do add in flowers. The other spot is a small spot along my garden fence near the driveway. I mixed the cosmos and zinnia together. Two zinnias for every cosmos planted. You might also notice the basil in that flat. I planted them too. It is a bit early for basil, but it has been so nice recently. Hopefully they will survive. That was the last of my seedlings I had grown. I'm thinking of direct seeding anything else I need. But I may change my mind on that.

I noticed my kale was starting to bloom. I picked all the blooms off for a spring treat. But I also chopped down all the Blue Curly Kale. I left the bottom parts of the stem which will hopefully try to grow out again.

I froze most of it. Yup I just get finished eating my frozen greens from last year and I start packing them in again. Most of my kale that I freeze comes from my kale in the spring and not in the fall. I'd love to have at least 30 packets frozen. Each packet is about 1/4lb of kale or one serving. I do have some more kale out there that I didn't chop down. I'll probably process that variety once the chopped down stubs start to show some green on them. I still want to be able to eat a lot of fresh kale this spring. If I'm lucky I'll get a lot more greens. If I'm not the plants will just try to send out scraggly flowers.

I decided that I would move the asparagus bed. I'm going to kill the plants in the existing bed. There are only 3 out of 22 still growing so it won't be hard. I don't know if it is a virus or water issues or something else. I'm going to put the new asparagus plants that I ordered where I had planted my blueberries. I moved the blueberries to one section of the rock wall garden where the asparagus had been.

I still have a lot of linear feet along the fence as the old asparagus plot was rather long. Caroline, one of my townhouse mates, requested it be a green wall. So I'm going to espallier some fruit trees. There are three 8' sections to fill so I did some research and picked out three trees. The pear is a Honeysweet which is self pollinating which is required as I'm only planting one. There are other pear trees in the neighborhood, but they really aren't that close. Then I picked out two apples. I wanted easy care ones for this section as they will be along the fence and won't get as much airflow as ones I have planted in the yard. I wanted a Macintosh for applesauce so got a Macfree. The other is a Liberty. I tried a Liberty at the farmer's market last year as I was thinking about one. Both are Macintosh type apples. Both are resistant to scab, cedar apple rust, mildew, and fire blight. Hopefully they will do well here.