Gardening Day - August 13, 2010

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Finally, a day to do some catch up work outside.

Aren't these melons pretty! I wish I could remember what they are.









Picking more eggplant.





Here's a funny one.





Not my favorite kind - a lot of tough skin per inch of tender flesh, but it was all they had at the garden center when I needed to buy them; Japanese variety. They are producing really well, though, and withstanding the ferocious onslaught of flea beetles.





I just had to make sure they were about a foot tall before I planted them.





This was yet another really hot day, just like they've all been since April. I cleaned up around the back of the house, where the tree had fallen, so that looks a bit better.





We used some scrap left over from building this back porch to make more storage shelving underneath. I could not believe I didn't think of doing that for two years.





We wore our swim suits as we worked, so we could jump in whenever we couldn't stand things any more. This feels GREAT!





Time to go pick more peppers.





Bell





Jalepeno





The lettuce still bolted, despite the shade cloth. This summer was just too hot.





YAY, more Swiss chard!





Tomatoes had a really bleak year with all the heat.





The Bright Lights chard never really recovered from the grasshopper invasion, though the plain chard did. I know what I will plant from now on.





I had a terrific start on my beloved Brussel sprouts, but not keeping up on spraying allowed the moths to decimate the entire crop. This smells really bad!









Here are some beds we never got around to planting. The mulch worked well, the paths are weedy, but that can be easily taken care of. Just so long as the plants are isolated from the weeds, I'm very happy.





Here is our pepper patch. Why do these things come in packs of six?





Next year, go in with friends.

~Faith

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Green Tomatoes!

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Here's how the garden is looking lately.









So far, so good, on the the melons. Here's to hoping we'll get some this year.





A few summer squash.





A poor showing of carrots. The ground is just still too inhospitable. Mulch over winter should help a lot.





Eggplants are doing fairly well.





I've harvested a few brussel sprouts. The little heads are a bit loose. I need to look into why that might be so.





Some peppers.





Leeks.





Swiss chard.





The shady lettuce bed. Not too many of my starts survived. They should have been much more mature before I set them out.





I just love how each year is a new learning experience in gardening! This year I am learning how to deal with green tomatoes. I'm not sure why, but my tomato plants have not done well. Rebels, that's what they are.





It may be because I have them in the same spot as last year. I hoped I was going to avoid trouble in that area as last year was the very first year in that section of ground, but now I'm not so sure. Next year I will be moving things around. However, I am not the only one in this area whose tomatoes are struggling.





In any case, I did not want dessert green tomato recipes, nor a fried delectable morsel, no matter HOW much I love greasy fried things. On a search, I found quite a few savory green tomato pie recipes, however nearly every one of them called for a pound of cheese while using only about 4 green tomatoes. Not very economical.





But I did find a recipe that came from a heritage collection. I knew that would have to be economical! It ended up being very much like a baked summer squash recipe I use a lot.

What else did we do? We supported the movement to retain pioneer skills, no matter what the cost! For about 8 hours of combined work for my very dear friend who offered to come by and help us get ready for the Independence Day party and I, we got 5 quarts of tomato vegetable soup, and 3 pints of hot peppers!





Canning season keeps you busier than you remember being the year before...





Tomato art.









Ah that brings me back to the green tomato recipe.

~~~ Savory Green Tomato Pie ~~~

7 Large green tomatoes (or about 4.5 pounds of whatever size you've got)
2 TBL lemon juice
1 tube Ritz crackers (smash 'em up!)
1 cup of bread crumbs (I like Italian)
1 stick of butter (or two)
1 TBL brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Slice the tomatoes and layer in a casserole.
Sprinkle with lemon juice, then sugar, then salt and pepper.
Then you can mix the crumbs with the butter and brown it all in a pan before applying it to the top of the tomatoes, or you can do what I did, put your crumbs over the top, and then drizzle your butter all over it before baking.

325 degree oven. I'd like to say it will be done in 20 minutes like the recipe says, but it took an hour for my tomatoes. So bake 'em til they are as tender as you like.


Meanwhile, Ashlee and Michael did housework and party prep. They hung some wall decor for me.









And they put together the canopy.





This was the 40 dollar canopy I bought for myself for Mother's Day. It did not go together correctly, and we ended up having to take a hacksaw to shorten some of the pieces. But it finally got up. Whew! The heat wave was beginning to build up a fury.





We watered the grass for about a day, hoping for some green around the house where we'd be using fireworks. But it is much browner now. Sort of like wheat toast... without the health benefits. Or the taste.

Quite a change in summers since last year. Cold and wet last year, hot and dry this year. Wonder what next year will bring?





Manna?

~Faith

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I Have A New Television Hit Show

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What do you get when you cross a cooking show competition with surprise ingredients with a show about gardening?

You have my new hit, "Garden Chef Smack Down".

You have chefs enter the simple home gardens of commoners, such as I. They must create a scrumptious feast out of all the ingredients that are ripe that day. And you can't make condiments from them. They must actually be combined into a meal, using all the produce and leaving nothing out.

They can use any herbs they like, if they cannot find them in the garden there.

We can have all kinds of fun with this one. We can surprise them with a live chicken to butcher. How about 40 pounds of cukes, all at once? Hopefully they won't ""smack any gardeners down for planting 20 zucchini bushes.

Yesterday was my first attempt to succeed at yard sailing. I sailed over to one yard that was advertised as a "huge" yard sale, open all week, with piano, organ, keyboard, laptop, and years of household items!!!!

We got there early. 7:30 am and parked at the side of the road. Great opportunity to do schoolwork. The weather was pretty nice compared to lately.





But the promised trucks of stuff never showed, and we sat there for 2 hours, waiting for her to open up.





Turns out, no piano or keyboard for sale, the laptop was way too much money for way too little, and I ended up spending 80 cents on a couple of clothing items. I am still clueless as to this phenomenon.

However, it was great to get school work done early yesterday. It felt like old times - up early and school done by lunch! WoooHOOOO!

Michael celebrated by throwing some knives.





We have been behind on keeping the barnyard cleared, so on the way down to pick up some t-posts for today's project, we brought the mower and the weed sprayer to take care of the V.V. - Vast Vegetation.

Whoops! Our wire that holds the trailer to the hitch since we lost the pin broke as I was driving.





Aha! A bolt! Why didn't I do this before...?





The horses have been doing much better after the Endure and Freedom products, so I'm really glad for them that we got it.





Having collected up the t-posts and post driver and dropping them off at the lettuce row, we began working inside. Michael handled unrolling the 50' clothesline coil we bought for 4 dollars, so he could cut it in half.





And I began sewing this stuff. The least expensive landscaping fabric WM had; a 3 by 50 foot for $9.99.





I cut it to about 23' feet in length, and sewed two pocket hems along both edges to slide the covered wire through.





And here you can see several views of how we tied the wires to the posts, creating a shaded area for the lettuce bed. Fortunately, the bed faces exactly south, so directing the fabric could not have been easier. We can access the bed from the north side and the sun will not touch the lettuce except for the early morning and late evening time.





I do not expect this to last more than one season, but to replace what will rot will only cost 5 dollars a year. We did consider a more traditional hoop setup, but I was trying to go cheaper. We'll see how it works out.

Here's the baby lettuces. Shade growing here is an experiment, and I'm hoping to succeed in getting lettuce year 'round by the time I'm done.





We did not run the whole length of the bed, as the clothesline was only a 50' foot length, so it's 23' foot, with another 10 feet maybe to use otherwise.





And here's a good view after the the sun made an appearance. I am concerned about wind and rain. We clipped the fabric to the wire, but a good strong wind may overcome it. Rain may possible weigh it all down. We'll have to keep and eye on it. I'm wishing I'd set that more horizontally.





Yesterday's harvest: Eggplant, peppers and tomatoes.





Speaking of which, I'm not really happy with the tomatoes progress. Still, I guess they can do more growing.





Swiss chard.





I washed all of this up and Michael offered to put up a cucumber trellis.





Great job! Now if we can only get them to grow...





All I can say is that I guess the ground is not yet fertile enough. However, I hope that if we can continue mulching, we'll get a good bit of earthworms in here and the soil will improve steadily.

I'm pleased with the leeks. I hope they do well wintering over in the beds, so I can have leek soup all winter.





And it's been a wonderful year, comparatively, for the Brussels sprouts and eggplant.





The peas are done. We did not get many, what with the very warm spring temperatures.





He loves his swimming time.





We had wonderful fellowship time with friends at Bible study again last night, before we headed off for office cleaning. We are almost through Romans and I'm really glad the group has decided to do a Torah study I've done in the past. That begins in a couple of weeks.

I hear shouting.... Oh, that's the cherries and gooseberries calling.

~Faith

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