Ranting and Planting

My husband and I made a compromise at the beginning of the year: He gets to have the lawn company fertilize and apply weed-killer in the front yard so it looks nice; the backyard stays chemical-free. Not only do I NOT want to expose myself to pesticides and herbicides, which act like uber-strong estrogen in the body, feeding my cancer, but we eat things that grow in the backyard--mulberries from the trees, wild strawberries and dandelion leaves in the grass, and of course, produce from my garden. I also feed these items to my 11 hermit crabs, who are particularly sensitive to chemicals. So...no chemicals in the backyard. And that's the agreement we made with our lawn company.

[Note: We would really like to use all-natural items on the front lawn, but to do so for our size yard would be incredibly expensive.]

Yesterday, apparently our lawn company came out and applied the chemicals--to the back yard as well as the front! My husband and I are hopping mad. The guy claims he stayed at least 10 feet away from the garden, but that's not friggin' far enough away as far as I am concerned, particularly since the herbicide is sprayed into the air and can be carried by the wind. At least the fertilizer was in granule form, and he claims it is organic, but without knowing what brand it was or where it came from, I have no idea what organic means in his language.

So no more dandelion leaves for salads from the back yard this year (which probably were direct sprayed), and no more gardening barefoot for a while unless I wear my shoes out to the garden and then step out of them.

We'll be sending a check for front-yard application only to the chemical company and canceling our contract. Despite the expense, I think I'd rather not eat out for a month and save up for SAFE chemicals than risk being exposed to killer chemicals again.

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On the upside, I FINALLY got some direct seeding done today: double-yield cucumbers, bushy cucumbers, provider green beans, black beauty zucchini, and clemson spineless okra. I have more to plant, but that's all the energy I had today.

Learning from last year, I planted only THREE zucchini plants rather than 12, so hopefully I won't be overrun with them again. I still have lots of frozen zucchini to use up from last season! I planted a lot of cucumbers, and am planning on making a LOT of bread and butter pickles this year--everybody seemed to like those.

I added grass clippings over the top since the grass clippings in the burn pile had NOT been yucked up by the dufus lawn guy's chemicals, and now I just need to find the energy to go back outside, once I've cooled down, and water.

Thank you, Mother Nature, for some nice weather for gardening! Feel free to supply some more in the very near future!

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back into the Garden...

It was sunny and 70+ degrees today, so I decided it was probably time to hit the garden and yank out the sunflower, okra, and tomato stalks and throw them on the burn pile. I managed to get out the sunflower and tomato stalks, but couldn't budge the okra stalks (picture at left). I had forgotten how thick they get and how tightly they hold the ground, unlike the sunflower stalks, which are a bit easier to remove. My low back was already hurting a bit from lugging boxes of books around inside to put on the Ikea book shelves, so I didn't have much oomph to put into the okra. I'll have to see if I can talk hubby into digging them out for me.

A few days ago, I decided it was time to harvest the last of the green peppers, no matter how small they still were. I had diligently covered them with kitty litter buckets at night and on days when the temperatures were supposed to get near freezing, and they had been uncovered for several days where lows were in the 40s. But then, when I went to harvest them, they clearly had not survived the cold, wet weather (picture at right). The plants were shriveled and brown, and the peppers were a sickly green, wrinkly, and sporting black rotting spots. Only a week before they were green and healthy looking. [sigh] The moral of the story is, I guess, to plant green peppers much sooner in the season. I knew it was a crapshoot when I planted them, but I was hoping to get at least one pepper! At least I have several bags of diced green, yellow, red, and orange peppers I nabbed at the farmer's market over the summer.

Once I had all the sunflower and tomato stalks on the burn pile, I took one last quick survey of the garden. I need to rake the grass clippings and compost a bit more evenly over the garden (a job for another day, because the garden is still a bit muddy). It's a very different sight from the lush, green garden of summer.

But wait...are those onions?

Yes! They are! I couldn't believe my eyes. The cold and wet had taken out my precious pepper plants, but the white onions I couldn't find because of all the other encroaching plant cover were growing up through four inches of grass clippings, and looking pretty healthy at that! I wasn't sure at first whether they were onions or shallots (I never did find my shallots), so I dug a couple up. They were small white bulb onions. The outer couple of layers were slimy and clear--probably destroyed by the cold--but the rest of the bulb looked healthy. They were too small to do anything much with, so I left them to rot in the garden, to provide nutrients for the soil for next season. What amazed me is that they had about 12 inches of green on them from the top of the bulb to the tip of the green! They really wanted to get to that sunlight!

Warm Applesauce for a Chilly Day

Thankfully, the cloud cover once again kept the temperature from going low enough to frost. But it has been chilly and rainy off and on today, a dreary fall day.

Which made it a good day to take the Gala and Golden Supreme apples I got from Country Mist Orchard and turn them into applesauce. I started the endeavor a bit late, and finished up about midnight.

I made two batches: one with the Gala apples, using brown sugar; the other with the Golden Supreme, using granulated sugar. They both have a very nice flavor, with the Golden Supreme being slightly sweeter, yet mild. I made triple batches of the recipe for each of the two varieties, and ended up with 4 1/2 pints of each sauce. The recipe comes from the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I leave the skins on my apples for extra fiber and leave the apples somewhat chunky. I don't care for the completely smooth applesauce; it reminds me too much of baby food.

APPLESAUCE

4 med. apples
1/2 c. water
1/2 c. packed brown sugar or 1/3 to 1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

Heat apples and water to boiling over medium heat; reduce heat. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally to break up apples, until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients. Heat to boiling; boil and stir one minute. About 3 cups.

In addition to the two batches of applesauce, I sliced up most of the recently picked okra and started the dehydrator. By tomorrow, I'll have lots of dehydrated okra slices for soups and stews this winter. I already have half a jar full (shown on top of the dehydrator). And no, I don't run my dehydrator with the jar sitting on top.

I'm also baking a loaf of 9-grain bread, which should be done by 2 a.m., about the time hubby gets home from his rock band gig. The kitchen is fully of that wonderful yeasty bread smell right now and is making me quite hungry!

The Last Harvest of the Season?

It is supposed to get down to 35 degrees tonight, which is very close to frost temperatures. If it frosts, my garden is finished, so even though I didn't feel well, I got outside this evening and harvested what I could.

My tomato plants have just about stopped producing altogether, and the little bit of color you see in the picture at left comprises the remains of tomatoes that worms, grasshoppers, and other vegetarians have left me.

Still, I managed a small harvest today: 2 Best Boy, 1 Genovese Costoluto, 10 plum, 1 yellow, 3 purple, 2 Orange Banana, 1 Beefsteak (albeit with some flesh wounds from some critter), 2 Brandywine, 101 Sun Sugar, and 6 Sungold Select. The tomatoes are scarred, eaten on here and there and, in some cases, really picked a bit too soon. I'll need to place them in the windowsill to ripen, but I thought it best to bring in any that had the potential to ripen so they weren't wasted by frost.

In addition to the tomatoes, I ended up with 2 green onions (I planted these very late as seed, and although I planted an entire row, the cucumbers choked them out and only two survived), 11 okra, and a last handful of green beans.

What saddens me the most about this harvest being potentially the final harvest of the year is the fact that my pepper plants are just starting to produce peppers. I have baby peppers on each plant, some larger than others, and would like to see a few of them grow into a more edible size. Even if we don't get a frost tonight, I fear that a frost is just around the corner. I mean, look at this little guy, trying so hard to grow! But you can see that the plant itself, while green, is showing some signs of disease, probably brought on by the overabundance of chilly rains lately.

Also, I'm sad that I won't get any sunflower seeds. The heads are heavy with seeds, but the seeds won't have a chance to finish and their shells harden before a frost comes along. I was really looking forward to roasting those seeds for winter consumption.

Catching up the Harvests

It's bad enough that we have soybean aphids plaguing us outside here in Central Illinois, but worse is the fact that I have fruit flies or gnats in my house. I've harvested three times this week, and I can't keep up with the produce...which is good news for the fruit flies, because they get to feast until I get the food processed.

At left you see harvest #1 (Monday): 4 Brandywines, 1 Peach Tom, 1 Orange Banana, 2 greenish yellow, 6 purple, 8 plum, 21 Sungold Select and 53 Sun Sugar tomatoes. Oh, yeah--and 5 okra. I read that I could dehydrate okra to use in soups, so I experimented with these five. I sliced them thinly, placed them on the dehydrating tray, and--voila!--24 hours later, I had tiny little withered okra slices. The dehydrating worked well, and I stored the dehydrated okra in a canning jar.

Harvest #2 (Thursday): I didn't feel like picking sun sugar tomatoes again, so I skipped over those. We had gotten some rain we've been needing, and the tomato plants seem to be perking up again. As long as they are making fruit, I'll continue to find uses for the tomatoes! At this point, since I've been making tomato sauce and salsa, I'm just combining all the varieties together. The flavor of the finished sauce or salsa is different every time depending on the kinds of tomatoes that went into the sauce, but it's all good. This haul brought in 10 more plum tomatoes, 1 Genovese Costoluto, 3 Orange Banana, 3 Brandywine, 2 greenish-yellow, 4 Best Boy, 2 Yellow, and 6 purple. Plus, I harvested a handful of greenbeans (I'm not going to count them, sorry) that I cooked up for dinner. They were very tasty! The green beans were hiding beneath the zucchini, and now that those plants are gone, the green beans are taking off. I only have a couple of good plants (thank you, bunnies), so I'll be lucky to get a couple of meals worth.

Harvest #3 (Sunday/today): As you can see, the tomatoes keep on coming, thanks to the recent rain, and the okra is now producing well. Today's take included 2 Beefsteaks, 2 Brandywines, 3 Best Boys, 1 yellow, 1 Peach Tom, 2 Orange Bananas, 12 plum, 2 purple, 22 Sungold Select, and 74 Sun Sugar tomatoes, with a side of 20 okra.

I've got another layer of okra dehydrating (some of the larger okra), and tomorrow I'm going to fry up some okra for dinner. Meanwhile, I got all my tomatoes washed, and the ones I haven't processed yet are in the refrigerator, protected from the house gnats.

An Abundance of Tomatoes

The zucchini are definitely slowing down, and the plants look like they have a leaf mold growing on them--not surprising, given the mad rains we've had recently. I'll have to read more about the situation before I decide what to do with the zucchini plants. When I harvested today (3 zucchini), I only spied a couple of blossoms here and there, so it looks like zucchini season may be over. Wow, what a run it was!

The cucumbers are still producing heartily, and this evening I harvested 11 more. I'll definitely be making another batch of bread-and-butter pickles tonight. I gave away all but a couple of 1/2 pints that I had previously made, so I'll need to make a couple of batches this time...and I'm going to try a small batch of freezer dill pickles.

The tomatoes are coming on now. I pulled in 8 Beefsteak tomatoes, 4 Best Boys, and 57 sun sugar tomatoes. The first few Beefsteaks I harvested have been eaten in parts, but as they tomatoes begin turning more quickly now, it looks like I'll have plenty of blemish-free tomatoes soon. I had a couple in this batch already.

The okra plants are tall and should be getting okra on them soon, and the pepper plants continue to grow slowly. My fear with the okra plants is that the Japanese Beetles seem to have found them. I have to go out and knock them into a bucket of water. It seems like these bugs will never die! Every time we think we have them eliminated or reduced to a manageable amount, they come back in greater numbers than before. We'll definitely be treating with milky spore this year.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 82
Cucumbers: 88
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 1
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 228
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 10
Best Boy Tomatoes: 4
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

The Rabbits Found My Garden

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen.

The bunnies I have so delighted in watching finally realized that the fence did not yet extend all the way around the garden and helped themselves to mouthfuls of tender soup bean plants. I think we caught them in time, however; with a few leaves and the occasional blossom remaining, I think these bean plants will eventually rally. Only time will tell. I do wonder, however, why as a child I delighted in tales of Peter Rabbit outwitting Farmer McGregor. Today I have much compassion for the poor storybook farmer.

Hubby and I finished putting the rest of the garden fence up tonight in the hopes that we will be able to keep the bunnies from feasting on more beans or any of the other plants. (Especially since I need to plant my pepper seedlings.) I took a long shot of the garden while David was fixing the fence, and I have to say that even with a section not yet planted, the garden is looking amazing! And of course, the zucchini is producing like crazy. So are the tomatoes, and it won't be long before they begin to turn and I have some luscious, red, juicy tomatoes to eat! They're best straight out of the garden on a warm, sunny day, but frankly, I'll eat tomatoes just about any way I can get them!

The sunflowers and okra continue to grow. Not much to report there. The cucumbers continue to blossom and are still trying to overrun the dill and cilantro. Well, not really trying, actually, but rather succeeding. I do need to train the cucumbers up, and to that end, I purchased three large trellises at JoAnn Fabrics a few days ago. They are regularly $24.99 each, far more than I would ever consider paying; however, I happened to be endcapping in the store (searching the clearance endcaps for bargains) when I discovered that the wrought-iron trellises were 70% off, making each one just $7.49 each! Now that is my kind of deal! I'm going to try setting them up at the end of the fencing and train the cucumbers up the trellises. If it works, it should be much easier to harvest the cucumbers.

Today's zucchini harvest totaled 8, with 5 sun sugar tomatoes. The tomatoes are slow, but I suspect they will all ripen around the same time. It has cooled off again, so their growth will slow a bit. But as soon as the weather heats up and humidifies, they'll take off again. Without looking back at previous posts, I think I've harvested close to 40 zucchini already. I'm not sure what the poundage would be--maybe next year I'll invest in a scale and weigh my produce.

And finally, the bug report. David and I went out and attacked the bugs again. I added another inch of handpicked bugs to my disgusting beetle bucket, and David sprayed down the bushes and trees again. Just so you get a sense of how thick the Japanese Beetles are, here's a shot of just one leaf-worth--13 bugs. See how they have eaten the life right out of the leaf? And this is just one leaf of hundreds sporting this many bugs. How many bugs does it take to make a plague, anyway?

The One That Got Away (from Me)

Another day, another harvest. Only six zucchini yesterday (although the one in the middle is probably worth three regular-sized zucchini). I had one small sun sugar tomato (which I promptly ate after taking this photograph). The largest zucchini in this harvest is really bigger than I should let them get (it got away from me), but it will actually be perfect for my stuffed zucchini recipe! I'm also going to try a recipe I found for zucchini-pineapple bread. It sounds yummy.

With the cooler weather we had, the growing had slowed, but once the weather snapped back to hot and humid, the tomatoes grew like wildfire. I have tons of sun sugars pulling down the branches of tomato plants that are nearly as tall as I am (5' 6"), and clusters of Beefsteak tomatoes loading down another couple of plants (see picture). The heirloom tomatoes haven't blossomed yet, but they've grown so much, they look like they will bust out into blossoms any time now.

The okra is up and continues to grow, but I won't see okra for probably close to a month. The plants are still very small. The sunflower plants are growing, as are the cilantro and dill, but there's a problem--the cucumbers are taking over the far end of the garden. I put in a couple of edging fences to hold back the cucumbers, but in just a few days, they have grown over the fence and are once again smothering the dill and encroaching upon the few cilantro plants that have come up!

What I am very excited about is that the cucumbers are now blossoming! It shouldn't be long before I will be overrun with cukes and trying to keep ahead of them. I can almost taste those freezer bread-and-butter pickles now!

Head for Cover: The Zukes Have Arrived!

I am happy to report that thanks to yesterday's steady rain, which jump-started the crops again after a few coolish, dry days, about a half dozen zucchini are within just a day or two of picking. This friendly zuke is just shy of pickable size--tomorrow, I suspect, he will become part of the summer harvest.

My okra and sunflowers are just breaking through the soil and "spider mulch" (more on that in the next post). I can almost taste the fried okra (mine beats Cracker Barrell's, hands down!) and the salted, roasted sunflower seeds (assuming the birds will let me have any to roast). Of course, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, because they are only tiny seedlings right now. Sigh.

I repotted my pepper and Beefsteak tomato seedlings in bigger plants and placed them back under the grow light and on the warming tray, respectively. That was the right move; the seedlings are already sprouting additional leaves in just two days, whereas in their little pots, they had stayed at only two leaves for a week or more. I can't wait for them to get big enough to transfer to the garden, and the last area of the garden will finally be filled.

Still no sign of the cilantro/coriander or the green onions. I only have a couple of "Mammoth Dill" plants also, and they are by no means mammoth. In fact, they could be called "Wee Dill," or perhaps even "Puny Dill" right now. But no worries--they will grow.

I now have baby green beans, people! You can't tell from the photo, but these green beans are only about an inch long. They are very cute! [Ignore the onion that is trying to hog the picture--I tried to beat him back, but he was very determined to be in the photo. I finally gave in.]

And finally, a shout out to my Dad, who is racing me in the tomato department. He has one of those Topsy Turvy tomato plants--you know, the ones that grow upside down--and we're counting to see who gets the most tomatoes. Well, Dad, my Beefsteak tomato plant is about to enter the race--and I know I have some catching up to do. Here's a picture so you can see what you are up against. I have six teeny tomatoes on their way in just one segment of the plant. I didn't check out the rest of the plant yet. What's your count so far?

First Significant Tomato Harvest

Yes, I know it has been a while since I've blogged. I blame sheer laziness as the main culprit. So I'll be posting a lot in the next few days to catch everyone up.

With all the humidity and rain we've had lately, I finally was able to get a decent harvest of cherry, sugar sunsweet, and currant tomatoes (the tiny ones). They are all sweet, juicy, and delicious (a few didn't make it into the bowl.)

And yes, you see the first okra! Within a day or two, I'll have enough to coat with egg, roll in Italian seasoned bread crumbs, and fry up for some snacky deliciousness!

In fact, I'm a little tickled by the way the okra is growing--I planted them in a row, and apparently the placement of the plants is such that each one gets just a little less sun than the next, which makes it just a little smaller, which means that it will take just a little more time to produce. In sum, I should have okra plants producing for a long time to come!

I also have more green peppers coming on. I picked one pepper--along with some lettuce--last week for salads, and I have been savoring it, salad by salad. If you haven't had a home-grown green pepper, you don't know what you are missing! It is cool and crunchy--not rubbery like the ones you buy in the grocery store. The juice dribbles down your chin as you bite into its delicious, shiny green flesh. Even though the flesh of the pepper isn't waxed (like they are in some stores), it shines in the sun, a flawless mirror of natural beauty. And it even smells like a pepper! I have more peppers on the way--you can glimpse one in the picture that is very close to being picked, hiding amid the weeds--and I intend to savor each and every bite.