Pictures July 23, 2011

I have some pictures taken today.  Its still very hot out here, my corn is still stressed and my cucumbers are very stressed.

I decided ti check the moisture level of the soil by digging some new potatoes:

The soil is quite dry, almost sandy.  We need rain badly.

Hubby bought me a new Kaffir Lime tree. I killed mine about a year ago.  He got it on eBay with his accumulated eBay Bucks.  About $35 worth.  It ended up costing us $5 all in. This is in a 1gallon pot and is quite nice!

Oh yes,  when i checked on the cukes, i found this....  Oops!  But its a Boston Pickling cuke so maybe this isn't as bad as it seems-  remember those huge deli pickles you could get from the jar at the deli for 50 cents?

Elderberry flowering now.  It smells to me like sweetgrass and fresh straw.

And more summer squash

And this is how my grapes are doing;

Marechal Foch

Reliance seedless

I also picked another small handful of blueberries. They were too yummy looking to take a picture of before we ate them.

Harvesting

Atomic Red carrots, Crosby Egyptian beets and some finoccio.

My finoccio was pretty much all bolting,  other than that it hadn't actually grown for weeks. I don't think it was getting enough water... the ferny tips were always drying out.
I planted a square maybe 4'x4' and it looks like only 2 stayed in a nice bulb, the third one i kept looks like it was in the process of getting away.  They may be too tough for roasting and being a side dish on their own, so they may end up going into the Clay Pot Cooker as an aromatic for a roasted chicken.

The carrots are looking good. I really don't eat them because of the LC thing, but they smell nice and the roots are firm, longer and straighter than i expected.  I mainly planted them for the rest of the family. I did sample a bite.

I once was brough to the farm of a family member (cousins i think, fairly far removed- i was too young to remember who and i haven't remembered to quiz my parents about it) and we were taken on a tour of the fields. I remember watching as some carrots were pulled up, wiped clean and i was given one to try.  I still remember how unlike grocery store carrots it tasted.
Mine have a similar flavor as that one did (if memory is as sharp as i hope), they are a tad bitter but the taste is stronger than store bought.

Atomic red is supposed to be higher in lycopene than regular orange carrots, but since the color is only skin deep (at least in mine) i don't know that the amount is all that critical.
I think i'd like to try another type of carrot next year.  I also have Cosmic Purple carrots out there...
I got the colored carrots more as a novelty since io had no idea if i was going to get much out of it with this being new soil.... i figured if i only got a handful of roots it would be pretty cool for them to be fun colored!

The beets.  I'll have to cook them up. I'm wondering if they will be tough....i'm always worried things will be tough.  They were planted just behind the carrots in the row so i think if the carrots were not tough, the beets shouldn't be either.
If these are good i should plan to plant a much larger row next year so i can make pickled beets without sugar.

I picked another 3# of summer squashes today,  i get an average of a pound a day though i only pick every other or 3 days.

I'm trying to decife if i should plant more SS next year but harvest them when they still have their blossoms attached (my favorite size) or just plant 2 of each again and simply dehydrate or freeze any (any?, hah!) extras.

Oh, i did make SS chips yesterday, my oldest daughter loves them! Sooooo...looks like i'll be making much more. Sweet potatoes also make great chips when dehydrated.
There is a brand of chips at my health food store, i forget the name, but its a bag of mixed veggies...taro, carrot, parsnip, red potato and beets all thinly sliced and fried up like potato chips.  I bet i could make a blend similar to that, only dehydrated instead and no taro. Its worth a try.
I want an Excalibur dehydrator now. *sniffle*

I have 2 dehydrators. One is an old Durabrand that i may have gotten for Christmas when i was in my teens (my parents also got me a juicer another Christmas, which i still have), yes i was an odd teen.  The other is a Nesco American Harvest FD-39.  It has the heat and fan at the top, which is ok because it won't get filled with juices and oils when i dry meat, but it is loud.  My Durabrand is quiet.  The NAH dries quicker but the noise makes me prefer slow over loud. The trays are also not made to stack high or compact so i can't control the airflow and once when making fruit leather with the sheets, the NAH actually melted its lower tray right in the center a bit.  So i only use it for leathers and keep the bottom tray empty for now. The NAH trays are also way more flimsy and the mesh can break while being cleaned.

Anyway, i'm glad i learned that summer  squash dries up quite nicely!


Tomatoes are all still quite green except for another Siberia which is getting orangey. In 2 more days i think it should be ready.
The first tomato harvest always begins with a smattering of readies.


Edit To Add-

I peeled and cooked the beets, they are delicious!

Its almost August?!!!

Summer is going by fast. 
The garden is good, we've gotten some nice rains in the last week.  I have blanched, vac-packed and froze 4 pounds of green beans and 2 pounds of  summer squash.

I love my new Foodsaver.  It is so easy to use compared to my old one.  Now the old one wasn't bad, but it was like driving a stick-shift compared to driving an automatic with cruise control.  They both work fine, but one is way more comfortable to drive.
My new Foodsaver has settings that the other one didn't. It has a 'gentle' setting so it won't smash things like blanched summer squash, and it has a setting for 'wet' foods- also like blanched summer squash.  This means that it won't vacuum so hard that it sucks out the water and ruins itself.  Any water remaining in the blanched foods did not become a vacuuming issue even with the heat seal- which i noticed is almost 2x as wide on this machine as my old one.
I'm sure part of the difference in the way they work is because of the brand name bags.
I had been using the generic food storage bags that i could get for about $1 less at WalMart.  It had been so long since i had used real Foodsaver bags that i didn't notice there is a difference in them.  The new Foodsaver came with a roll of bags and a whole packet of pre-cut bags.  The brand name plastic has a different texture, almost rubbery. 
I had tried using the generic bags to store things like pet food and dehydrated apple rings, but those items had sharp edges that broke the bags so the air leaked back in after a few days.  I bet the brand name bags would work better if i try that again.

The reason i tried vacuum packing cat food was because my cat eats Solid Gold brand cat food.  Its not a cheap food and we normally buy it in 5# bags.  When i worked at the same pet store we bought the food at it was easy to buy 3 bags at a time and my employee discount made it a better value anyway.  After the accident and since i don't always feel up to a trip out to get pet supplies hubby took over most of  the grocery shopping duties. He thought we'd save a few dollars and a trip or two if we bought the big bag of Solid Gold.
Problem is that we have one cat.  By the time he eats the whole bag the last half is stale.  He also likes his dry food to be cold. I have always stored his food bag in the fridge, (one main reason for that is because we had ants that were attracted to the meaty smell and the fats that are in it) so he is used to a fresh bowl of food having a different temperature.
Anyway, you can't fit a 20# bag in the fridge.  So i tried measuring out and vac-packing 2 week portions in the generic bags.  I figured i could probably clean and reuse the bags on more cat food a few times if it worked.  But it didn't because the food punctured the bags.  Since the bags were ruined and could not be reused, what we saved on the bigger bag of cat food was lost in trying to keep it fresh until it was eaten. 
I don't know if i would ever bother trying to use it for cat food again (unless i think it may have some emergency food storage applications like a Bug Out Bag for natural disaster evacuations- which are almost unheard of around here- but you never know!), but i do think i will be trying the brand name bags for foods that are dried to a crisp.
Now that i can compare the bags side by side, i don't like the generics very much at all,  I'll pay the extra for the real ones.

I'm not sure why my apple slices dried so crispy though,  the slices i get at the health food store are leathery.  In my dehydrator, the apples were either too soft and obviously not done and then they became crisp...no in between- or i missed it.  I have read books on dehydrating, but i don't remember what i read about apples...  maybe i need to borrow the book from the library again.

On to grapes...

The Frontenac has decided to wake up and show signs of life! It has just unfurled some small leaves.  Of course it would do this after i completely gave up on it and spoke to the company it came from.  They have a pending order to send me a new one in early April 2011.  So i feel weird now.  BUT both Burpee and Stark have unconditional guarantees- "if for any reason you are unsatisfied....refund or exchange will be granted".
I hate to complain,  i might do it a lot in some things but i don't enjoy it.  But i really was unsatisfied with the grapes from Burpee and this one from Stark's.  Everything else met or exceeded my expectations, so maybe i should stop feeling dishonest when i accept my refund/replacements.  Bottom line is that i don't know if these 3 grape plants will even make it through the winter considering how late they began above ground growth.  They may not have time to harden off this Summer's wood. If that is the case, i will be correct on two fronts.  I was shipped plants that not vigorous enough to grow well their first year, this could delay my years till harvest time frame.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and feeling bad for not being happy. I don't like to be ungrateful about anything, even little grape cuttings. I think i need to get off the guilt trip, stop feeling bad about being displeased and let the companies do their job and make it right.  Why is that so hard for me?
But i have decided to do it.  So i will.

My lilies bloomed a few days ago.  These were bought as Stargazers but i remember Stargazers as having more white along the edges.  Maybe its my growing conditions.  They are on the back side  of the house and you don't see them when they open, you smell them.  I planted 2 bulbs about 3 years ago, this year i got to pick them and bring them in the house before the bugs got to them too bad.  The three blooms perfume the whole house.

Yesterday my dad brought over 3 loads of topsoil for us

And then he spread it out with the big tractor.

Today he plans to stop by with the littler tractor and drag a weighted pallet over it to smooth it out better.  Hubby will put down some seed and with luck, we will have a nice lawn to enjoy next summer!

Update on the Koolickles.  They are delicious. Something like a bread and butter pickle but more tart. Not as sweet as a sweet gherkin but maybe its because i used a sugar-free mix.  I can't actually taste 'strawberry' flavor, but it has the tart/tangy/salty/sweet thing going on. I bet adding a hot pepper will make it even more interesting.  Anyway, the flavors don't clash at all like i thought they might. I plan to keep a supply of these going indefinitely. 

I need to update my harvest record on the side bar. I haven't done it in about a week, but the garden is really beginning to supply what i finally feel comfortable as calling a "harvest".  I have been able to give away some produce even.  The tomatoes are not red yet, but there are a lot of green fruit on all of the plants.  The tomatillo has even gotten a husk on it.

I have not done any further work on the flower bed, but the neighbor husband has picked out a few plants they wanted to have (my hubby told them to go ahead if they wanted or they could wait for me to save them some)  he replanted them in their back yard where it looks like they are creating a sort of pocketed terrace on the slope.  It looks like it will turn out pretty neat if they continue to enlarge the beds. I'm glad he felt free to come in and take what he wanted, that way i'm sure they can feel more in control of what they see out their window.

Hubby is now painting the door to the shed.  He has been doing the shed project gradually. It used to be a screenhouse, but we hardly ever used it. The screens let in dust and after a couple rainy summers things started to get moldy. We had a table set out there that got covered in dust and pine pollen, then in the damp it all grew mold. Took an hour to clean it up whenever we wanted to use it a few times a week.  So we stopped using it.  The screens were also disintegrating.  So we decided that we needed a shed more than a screenhouse and hubby got a few sheets of plywood and closed it in and painted it up nicely.  It was a few weeks longer before he could get the door made, but he did and now it needs a coat of paint to finish the job.  He's pretty pleased with himself since he really did it all on his own.  Its a good sort of manly ego boost. :o)

I plan to get more pictures of the garden, i have to keep a visual record so i can compare years against the others.
The pictures from this Spring compared to this Summer are always quite amazing.  I don't know why i forget every year how quickly and large the plants end up growing. Its funny.

I'm really tired today so i hope to spend much of it simply reading and picking away at small household tasks.

The plot thickens..

I know i'm going to regret wasting that title so early in the season. Ok, so maybe its not as catchy as i think it is.
But in any case, i went out and looked at my string beans.  Looks like "Provider" will turn out to be a well named bean.  My plants are covered with clusters of growing pods.  I only planted about a 4'x6' area but i'm going to be up to my ears in beans.  Which is fine because i like string beans.

I also planted those purple podded beans on July 4, and they are up now.  I planted them between the rows of corn that didn't germinate so well and are still way behind.

Tiny watermelon, this is a Pony Yellow

I think i have convinced myself that this is Swamp Milkweed and not hyssop like i was told.  That's ok because i prefer the milkweed to hyssop.

I like the idea that every plant in this year's garden came from seeds i planted.  It dawned on me last night that though i have spent plenty of time in hardware stores this year, i have not bought any vegetable seedlings. 
I think i can reasonably exclude the horseradish and JA tubers, grapes and berry plants- though i am trying to grow some of those from seed.  I'd like to start collecting my own vegetable seed and see if i can grow a totally independent garden some day, but from what i have read i don't have enough space to grow the number of plants to have a proper gene pool for each variety.  I am trying to use open pollinated types when i can, they are usually heirlooms and i am drawn to the history of these plants.  For now i can be happy to be a part of the financial support of the companies that offer these seeds.

^ Friday afternoon

Saturday morning:

So, i guess we are supposed to get some good rain today.  It has been over a week since we have had any and the heat was fierce for this time of year and area. I don't think we actually broke any records but we definitely met a number of them that had been set more than 30 years ago.

I watered the garden pretty deeply yesterday. I knew rain was in the forecast for today but where it was so warm overnight i wanted to have stuff watered deeply and early enough for the soil to warm back up.  I read in "Gardening When it Counts" that plants grow at night.  There is actually a bit of a  formula that can be used to estimate plant growth based on night time temperature.  Here is the excerpt from "Gardening When it Counts"

I don't know what i am going to do with my birdhouse gourd plant... well, i won't really be doing anything actually, but it is growing and spreading so rapidly.  It has already escaped its row and has made good headway into the next. I tried to train the vines to head out along the walkways, but the plant is so lush that its hard to walk in the paths without stepping on it.  I'm  thankful the leaves it grows are so soft and velvety.  I think if i grow it next year i will have to plant it against a trellis or i will have to put any defensive garden  fencing well away from it.  It invaded the electric fence wires about 3 days ago.  I haven't had the fence on lately anyway.  Last time i grew this plant was in my parent's garden when i was home from College.  My parent's garden is almost the size of the entire "New Yard" lot  we purchased.  A birdhouse gourd plant looks much smaller in a garden that size than it does in mine! :o)

I ordered some lawn edging from Ace Hardware yesterday. Its this stuff.  I was thinking of using landscape timbers or 4x4 posts like we did in the front flower beds. The drawback is that they need painting or staining most years. This terrace board stuff is ready to use, and its a nice brown shade. I usually only see lawn edging in black or what Thalassa Crusoe called "poison green".  I also didn't want wide edging since i will be literally standing in the mulch to do my work in the grape and berry row.  A wide board will probably get in the way and probably won't be easily secured.  The terrace board is just over 5" high and set in the ground a few inches and held with 10" spikes it should hold up pretty well.  Its also something i think i can handle installing on my own. Timbers or 4x4s would be too awkward and heavy and i'd have to borrow my dad's truck and rope hubby into helping me load and unload.  If it works out well i think we will nix the front boxes and install this stuff.
I do need to grab 4 of these so the ends won't pop up and i can get a nice neat shape.  The boards will be in next week.
I also used an Ortho product on the weeds where i will be extending the row. They are thick enough that it might be hard to get the landscape fabric to keep them at bay... even though i plan to till the area before i cover it.
Only issue with the Ortho product is that hubby bought it for me and i didn't read the label . It is a "season long" weed killer, which i guess means it is made to stick around longer. I did some research on the active ingredients to understand a little about how this works. The Glyphosate is the stuff that is a post emergent herbicide. Meaning that it damages stuff that has set its leaves.  The other ingredient is Oxyfluorfen, this is both a pre  and post emergent herbicide used mainly on annual weeds.  Glyphosate is generally used on perennials i guess.  Since it is billed as a "season long" product- the part i missed, i wasn't sure if i was even going to be able to plant there this summer!
I was kicking myself.  I always read labels.  I'm such a stickler for label reading that i get teased for it at times...  this time i didn't...  But when i did read the label it didn't answer my post treatment question, though the info on the label would have stopped me from using it there.  I emailed Scotts' customer service and they did reply with useful information:

If you used the Season Long ready to use formula:  (which i did)

TREES & SHRUBS - 2 Weeks
ANNUALS* - 4 Weeks
PERENNIALS - 2 Weeks

If you used the Season Long CONCENTRATE:
TREES & SHRUBS - 4 Weeks
ANNUALS* - 8 Weeks
PERENNIALS - 4 Weeks

*Sensitive annuals, such as be begonias and petunias, may NOT recover if transplanted into treated areas to soon.

If you wish to plant a sensitive annual, you may want to test your soil with a radish test. The radish seed is a very fast germinating seed, and when planted in a treated area, the seeds will germinate in 7 - 10 days if the area is clear of herbicide. If the radish germinates, it is safe to plant your sensitive plants. Do not eat radishes grown for these testing purposes.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact us and for your interest in Scotts. Please feel free to contact our company anytime we may be of assistance.

Using radish seeds to test the soil is a great idea.  Only thing is that by the time they emerge, the area will be ready for me to plant anyway.  I used the stuff sparingly and i'll be tilling the area under, so i'm sure that will help.  The berry plants won't be yielding anything edible for another whole season at least so i'm not really worried about contamination.

I did a short crop walk of my own this morning before the rain came and i took some pictures.  I love having a blog to record all this stuff.  I get to compare growth photos from one year to the next and the blog setup allows me to easily recall the information by date or keyword.
Ok, so here are the pics:

One of the Aurora Mix French Marigolds

.
I swear these weren't this big yesterday before i watered. I wish i had a yardstick to put in the pictures to independently gauge the daily and weekly growth.

Birdhouse gourd,  trying to take over the world. I tried to use a broken baby gate to see if i could direct its march, i think i only encouraged it.

Horseradish plants recovering in the absence of woodchucks.

I did it.... i pulled off the flowers of Marechal Foch....  here is the proof.

Here are the row-by-row pictures. Looking East

Tomato and corn (and now purple string beans) row.

Kale, cabbage, and stuff. A couple lettuces still hanging on.

Parsnips, onions, shallots, a couple swiss chard plants, fennel.

Carrots, beets, rutabagas and bush beans.

Cucumbers, winter squash, melons, watermelons and gourds.

Asparagus from seed look pretty good now.  But the weeds are totally taking over again!

Jerusalem artichokes are behind the horseradish.

From the other direction...

The corn end of the Tomato and Corn row

Peppers and eggplant at the end of the cabbage, broccoli, kale etc. row.

Burdock, globe artichokes and summer squash.  Beyond is the fennel, onions & shallots and parsnips.

Salsify, rosemary, whats left of the Brussels sprouts and purple cauliflower, then string beans, rutabagas, beets and then carrots.

I never did write down the name or company the purple string beans were from, so i remembered now.

 Rhubarb.  Never did move it to the perennial corner of the garden.

Just picked these before the rain gets them muddy.  First of the summer squash today. :o)

I did end up digging out the Suffolk Red grape and i put it in a 5 gallon bucket. I'll try it as a container plant this winter.

I think that's pretty much it for now.

Baby squash

I was so intent on looking for groundhog damage that i missed these things this morning:

I have fat fingers! ha ha

And this....can you guess?

It's a tomatillo flower!

Oh, and that last Picture Post i forgot to post these:

Germander seedlings:

and
Echinacea paradoxa seedlings:

They spend some time in the fridge...

A few posts ago i had mentioned that i had taken the Sea-Buckthorn seeds out of the fridge after they were being stratified in there, but i misspoke. It was the Echinacea that i had brought out and those are the ones sprouting above.  So if i think to, i might go back and edit that.

More planting today.

Hubby was tired of looking at the mini greenhouses in the middle of the far end of the driveway.  So, i decided that the rest of the stuff could live temporarily in the empty part of the Tomato Row.  Corn might go there later, but for now there is just a few feet of radishes,  but plenty of room leftover between the radishes and the tomatoes.
So the greenhouses are ready to be put away for a while and all the  plants are technically in the garden... heh.

But i actually did plant the summer squash seedlings and sowed the bulb fennel seeds. I also planted the burdock and globe artichoke seedlings.

Still waiting on the Banana melon seeds to sprout. They are the only melon that wasn't ready for its hill. One actually has sprouted, but i'm doing 3 per hill, so i am waiting for it to have friends.

I put a wired remote thermometer inside the hoops where the tomatoes are, and at ground level the temperature reached 85 degrees around noontime. It feels nice and humid in there too when i reached in to place the thermometer wire inside. Actual outside temps were about 72 and 40% humidity.  So it is definitely creating an early summer climate under the Reemay and i bet the soil is much warmer than it would be without it.  I bet it would be cooler on a breezy day.

Since the pepper and eggplant seedlings were going to be outside anyway i went ahead and planted them too. I imagine they will stay warmer in the garden soil, under the hoops than they would in their little pots in the greenhouses.  I got the "Fooled You" Jalapeno,, New Ace sweet pepper, Slim Jim eggplant and the Scarlet Chinese eggplant all in. The only one left out is the Zsa Zsa sweet pepper seedlings.  I managed to get 3 so far out of the last 6 seeds i sowed on a heat pad.  It looks like a couple more might come up-  but i will wait to plant them because they took so long to sprout, if i pant them too early i bet they won't grow even a smigen more at this rate.

All i have left to plant are a few more tomato seedlings that just came up a few days ago-  Siberia and Empire....
The odd cabbage and Swiss chard seedlings that i extracted from the onion flats, a few brussels sprouts, hopefully some cauliflower- i have all but given up on them...  the original wintersown sprouts are still tiny.
Then, the rutabaga, the salsify seedlings, beets, the Appaloosa beans and the string beans will go in, then the corn when it warms up more and the radishes are almost ready to come out.

Forecast overnight low tonight is 47F
Sunday its 49
Monday:54
Tuesday: 58
Wednesday:49
 No rain in sight as of now.

The grapevine still seems happy and there have been no woodchuck  raids on my garden yet.
I can see that i will have a lot of weeding to do throughout the summer. There are things popping up all over the place.

I still don't think the carrots and parsnips are even close to sprouting yet. I can't see anything happening there.  I have never had good luck with carrots.