Just a bit of snow...

For my area at least,  this predictive map was spot on:

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It was nice to stay in and watch the snow fall,  and blow around.  We were lucky like most and didn't lose power which allowed us to enjoy two days of quiet, enforced relaxation.  School was called off for Friday
When all was said and done we got around 24-28 inches of snow.  its hard to tell really because it blew and drifted so much.


Poor Molly had to go pee in this. It was still blowing and snowing when she had to go out on Saturday morning.  We had a 4 foot drift on the front steps that she and i had to plow through but the wind had blown a clear spot at the end of the drift.


Here's a couple videos of the clearout.

Front part of the house.  I took this leaning out of the living room window.


Backyard from the driveway:


We had a snow drift that covered the kitchen window entirely.


Well,  that's it for the storm update.

January Thaw

Not my favorite time of winter at all.  Things get muddy and slushy,  the snow looks dingy.  The air warms up just enough to tease of spring that is well over another month and a half away.  Our temperature right now is 53 degrees F with bright sun and cloudless skies. Pretty when you look up...icky when you look down.

 However,  the seed catalogs are coming in like mad.  I got my first one before Christmas,  Pinetree Garden Seeds.  I tend to order from them the most.  Their prices are great, lots of variety, good customer service, quick shipping and especially important- they are local here in southern Maine.  So i was happy to get the catalog so soon. Another nice surprise was that Kitazawa seeds sent their catalog early this year.  Normally they are one of the last to arrive.  By then its a little too late to order.  I know i could go online, but i like to plot my orders by catalog and go online to submit my orders.

I don't tend to order flowers anymore since my focus has been on edible landscaping in fruit or berry form.  I know there are a number of perennial herbs,  but after filling all my available space with those dwarf trees and medium shrubs, there really isn't any other spot to put them.  The only non-edible flowering plants i kept are my old fashioned bleeding heart and some stargazer lilies that hubby keeps mowing over.  If he can stop hitting the lilies long enough for me to find them, i'll probably dig them up and give them to my mom.

On another note...   i have been currently noticing a large population of robins lingering in the area.  Where i grew up- less than 15 miles away,  we didn't see robins in the winter.  It was always a big deal to see the "first robin of spring" pecking for worms in the recently thawed earth.  It was taken for granted that they all flew south for the winter.  Experience bore it out.  Since moving into a more towny area i have noted that they apparently  don't all go south. So i looked it up.  Robin Migration .  Seems what i have been seeing is not unusual. Based on what i read on that link,  things make sense.   Our town's streets are lined with trees that produce tiny crabapple-like berries,  a small park about two blocks away is lined with ornamental berry trees.  We have many ash trees as well in the neighborhood. Looks like the robins have plenty of food for the winter over here.  At my youthful home, the pickings must be slim.  Not many ash trees are usual.  Its mostly pine, oak, maple, spruces and other pine trees. The fruit is all in the summer,  blueberries, raspberries, choke cherries, etc., but nothing that lingers through the winter.  Anyway,  i thought that was interesting.

Well i'm signing out for the evening.  Most of my entries take the whole day, picked at a bit at a time.

I have a nice fantasy novel to sit back and read.  We installed new flooring this weekend and i'm sore from the effort.   I'm going to take some valerian, read and call it a night. :o)

'Tis The Season!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Updates

A little update on my summer and fall.

I got lots of elderberries this summer.  I picked about a third of them which amounted to about 2 pounds.

 I made elderberry syrup out of them.  I boiled them, added sugar and then strained them with my coffee press since i didn't have a jelly bag or muslin.

This picture is of the squashed i picked. Four Delicata and nine Butternut.  I processed all of them into dehydrated powder for easier storage.  More on that later.

The Red Russian kale did awesome again this year.  I should always grow it.  Even the dog likes it,  and our toddler does too.

My tomatoes blighted out early this year,  it was pretty sad.  I hardly got to use any of them because they rotted so quickly.  Worse thing was that it was really a bumper crop coming on.

Butterflies!

I managed to find three Monarch caterpillars at the end of summer.  They were quite large at the time and only about four days from pupating,  so we didn't have to wait long for butterflies.

My 3 year old helping me release one back into the "wild".

 Another shot.

The release spot.  It wasn't quite ready to fly,  but i didn't want to leave it in the jar too long so it would rip its wings.

A small harvest of Jerusalem Artichokes.  This all came from a spot about three feet square.  I have 10 feet of them....

 Here's a particularly large one:

Processing squash into powder:

These are the ones i used, plus one more Butternut and a pie pumpkin.

Topped and tailed for safer handling.

Seeded.

 Baked, then scooped out and mashed a bit.

My largest stainless steel bowl....   mostly full of almost all the squash and pumpkin.

  
I ran the mush through my Foley food mill to get a uniform consistency.

I spread the puree thinly on the dehydrator trays lined with plastic clingfilm.

Started up the dehydrator and went outside to look around.

I found more ripe Goji berries.

This is their first year and between the two plants i must have gotten almost 50 berries.  I'm liking that!

Playing outside for a bit.  Its getting very cold.  We've had a number of frosts by now and its been as cold as 22 degrees.

A day and a half later...   once the top was dry enough,  i peeled off the plastic and flipped the sheets of puree to continue drying.

I broke the sheets into chips which i ran through the blender until ground into powder.

End product:

Quart jar mostly full of squash/pumpkin powder.  Convenient for rehydrating to be eaten with a little butter and sugar or to be made into pies.  Such a reduction in volume is worth the time and effort!

Much easier to store this way,  especially with an oxygen absorber packet inside.


That's all for now!

Mushroom articles

http://gardentenders.com/members/Radicalfarmergal/blog/series/464

http://www.growveg.com/growblogpost.aspx?id=261

Frost advisory for tonight.

Looks like gardening season may come to a close earlier than normal this year. Its September 19,  normally we're frost free  until  within a week of  October first.  Its just an advisory, however, but it is a definite sign of the end of summer.

In a way, i'll be glad to get everything taken apart and put away. Since the tomatoes got blighted i have not weeded and things are looking pretty bad out there!

Other than the ground cherries, nothing has really been providing any longer.  Well...besides the kale.

Last night's heavy wind and rain blew the Jerusalem artichokes around quite a bit.  They are still pretty much upright, but they are leaning in all directions.  I think after a hard frost hits, i'll have hubby take the heavy duty weed whacking blade to the stalks, clear them away and start digging as needed.

We'll be weed whacking the rest of the garden too.  Hubby wants to rake all the plant trash into a pile and burn it this fall so the garden will be cleaner in the spring.  i guess its worth a try. 

Summer is almost gone.

Its been cool out these last few days. Which has been welcome. There was even a frost warning last night for northwestern Maine.

The garden did ok this year. Not great but acceptable.  My tomatoes got blighted out, but they were productive enough we ended up with plenty of good ones we were even ablevto share a few.

The kale was , as usual, spectacular.

The butternut winter squash has done well too. I managed to get 8 very niced size squashes. The delicata plant that survived gave me 4.

The cucumbers did ok. I was getting about three every other day, but then the vines just dried up.

I was not able to keep up with the green beans, but i planned on saving the seeds anyway.

The elberberries have done nicely too. I managed to pick a pound and a half and de-stem them over the course of a day.  I plan to make syrup ou
t of them if i can find the time.

The grapes were beset by Japanese
etles so they look pretty sad.  Last year i sprayed them along with the apple tree, but i abandoned my schedule for spraying... no apples this year though we are nibbling grapes off the uneven bunches.

The Carmine Jewel cherry plants are doing well,  leafing out nicely. So are the beach plums and the seaberries.
The goji surprised me and flowered.  I have even picked 6 or 7 berries and there are more yet to ripen.

I would have had lingonberries if my youngest daughter hadn't plucked the green berries off.

The prune plum is growing well despite even more Japanese beetles, the autumn olive is growing like the weed that it is. The Jerusalem artichokes are going like gangbusters despite the powdery mildew they have.

The summer squash were delicious while they lasted, which didn't seem very long.

The big thing this summer has been the Aunt Molly's ground cherries!  They are very sweet and good, tasting like non-acidic pineapple.  My youngest daughter loves them. Every day she picks a bunch and eats them on the spot.

The weeds did get away from me again this year but not as bad as last year!


Well this is my first attempt at posting a full entry from my phone, so we'll see if it posts.

test two

from my phone

A lot going on actually

I just don't know where to start.

The blueberries are almost done,  we've gotten a number of overflowing handfuls of beautiful, flavorful berries this year. That's even with my youngest daughter grabbing the unripe ones before they all started to ripen.

My tomatoes are going strong.  We have many green tomatoes growing and sizing up.  We ran out of tomato cages this Spring so only about a third are caged up,  the others are kinda growing naturally-- which i know is going to turn into a big mess, lol.  I know they can be staked,  but that takes pruning and its way too late for that.   Besides,  after all my reading i still don't get how to stake and prune tomatoes.

Out weeding and my daughter pulled up my Kai Lan Queen kales.  I guess its ok.  We haven't more than snacked from them.  If i grow them again i'll do a whole row,  they don't seem to produce enough tips for a meal all at once if you only plant 3.

Three days ago she picked our first Golden Zebra summer squash.  It was a little small (5 inches or less) but it was crisp and flavorful.  I'll plant it again.  More are on the way.

Funny thing happened to one of my beach plums and one of my cherry plants.  The main stem seems to have died,  all the leaves crumbled and dried,  but both are resprouting at the roots.  They are on opposite ends of the yard and looked like they got hit with Round-up or something.  Butthey are coming back strong anyway.

The green beans are flowering right now, looks like a good potential crop.

The weather has finally cooled down,  we'd been dry and hot for the last 2 weeks the lawn is going brown in places which has my hubby all annoyed. 


Well thats it for now.  I'm still working on getting my phone working for posting,  hopefully i'll get some pics up with it soon!

phone test

Phone thing

Well the phone thing isn't going well. For it to work,  i had to switch from my Yahoo account sign-in to my Google account.  Fair enough.
But on my phone,  Google does not recognise my password which i have reset about 5 times now.  I don't know what is going on,  but it stinks!

After a few weeks

I've been busy,  not so  much in the garden but with fun family stuff.  The garden is doing well,  things are getting huge.  I'd like to post some pictures soon.

I got a new Droid Razor phone the other week.  I've been playing with  it.  I used to have just a basic flip phone which didn't even have a camera,  but this is a really cool phone.  The camera on it is better than my actual camera.  I think there is a way i can take pictures on the phone and upload them to and post on Blogger.  I haven't figured this out yet,  though i did figure out how to get things on Facebook.  So i'll be posting pics that way if i find that it can be done and i figure out how to do it.  If not i'll go back to actual camera and cable.

Well so far summer has gone nicely.

There are a ton of grape clusters,  we've gotten some nice handfulls of blueberries and they taste wonderful.  The York and Nova elderberries are in full bloom.

The temps have been  wonderful, mid and upper 70's.  We got a lot of rain about 3 weeks ago, but its been pleasantly dry since.

Well,  i'll go play with my phone and do some weeding this evening.

Photo post

Grape patch

Autumn Olive,  growing like the weed that it is.

The healthier of the two Carmine Jewel cherry plants

Blueberries and Lingonberries

Lingonberry flowers

Blueberries in fruit

Side bed all filled up

The less impressive Carmine Jewel cherry,  i hope it survives winter

The Yard

Wild kitty in my garden,  digging in the bean row

Other end of the Yard

Autumn Olive a few weeks later-- even bigger than before

Goldbeere Elderberry

York (left) and Nova (right) Elderberries

Caerulea Blue elderberry

Grape row

Full garden shot

Photo shortly after getting most everything planted in.

I've enjoyed things so far this year.  I have managed to keep up with the weeds at this point- using my scuffle hoe.  Keeping my 3-year-old and feral kitties out of the garden has been the main challenge.  I lost a cucumber plant the other day to one of the two. At this point, its too late to do anything about it.

Next year i definitely have to get an earlier start with seeds,  i held myself too tight this time and then ran out of time.  The older my little one gets,  the easier it should be,  i'll be able to direct her away from things more easily. 

Its been a cool couple of weeks,  its been in the 60's during the day,  40-50's overnight.  We are expecting 90 degree weather in the next few days,  the cool air does not seem to have damaged anything,  but things like the beans are growing slowly.  The tomatoes are about to bloom though and the grapes are in full flush right now.  The cukes and squashes have just kind of sat there.

We'll see what a few days in the 90's can do to get things going.

Finished planting

I weeded everything with my old garden weasel, then dug the last two rows.  Then i planted the squashes and cucumbers and the three Job's tears seedlings.  I also planted a third row of green beans.  The ones i planted a week ago still haven't come up,  its been a bit cool out so hopefully its just that.

I've had not-so-good germination this year.

  None of the 3 Beit Alpha seeds sprouted,  only one of the 3 Delicata squash sprouted,  out of 4 Spacemaster cukes, only 2 came up.  The Banana Legs tomatoes sprouted 2 out of four.  Happiness came from the Golden Zebra summer squash.  Every seed came up,  i actually had to thin them.

I managed to get everything done just before some thunderstorms blew up,  so everything is being watered in naturally.

Its  supposed to be sunny and warm through next week once the storms clear out tonight.

Cats in the garden.

Not my cat,  hes a 100% indoor gentleman.  Its the neighborhood cats that get me.  They like my garden as a litter box and they scamper across the rows.  They also use it as their own fighting arena.  One night a tomato plant got broken due to a squabble.  I mounded the soil up around the broken part of the stem,  it has recovered  nicely,  but it still was annoying.

Its still better than woodchucks (which i haven't seen yet).  There's a rumor of a fisher in the area. So i think its likely that it may have been hunting them.  They also go after cats, so though the cats bother me, i hope they won't be killed like that.

Drenched

We got some good rain this weekend,  its been a steady downpour since Saturday evening.

My hubby wanted me to try those Jobe's fertilizer spikes for tomatoes since our soil is so sandy we suspect much of the fertilizers get washed away rather quickly.  I poked them in the other day,  i expect them to make a difference.

My squash and cuke seeds and seedlings are still in the flat,  they are going slow and some are not germinating at all.  I'll be lucky if i get one Delicata plant.  The butternut are large though and almost ready to go in.

I really started them too late,  but the germination  percent is quite disappointing. I planted two seeds in each pot.

The rain has overflowed the flats so i'll need to drain them...again.  So much rain,  its been steady for almost 3 days now.  I expect my green bean seeds have been well watered by now, lol

Stanley will have to be staked again,  the water on his leaves has him bending down  alarmingly once more.  I'm still not understanding this pruning thing,  i simply don't know what needs to be cut.  I let my grapes go this year,  it warmed up way too fast for me to get in and winter prune,  so i'm letting them go just to see what it "looks like" when they grow on their own.  I think i have enough of a handle on how to prune grapes that i can make repairs next spring.

I need also to make name plates for my plants.  I'm not sure how i'll do this.  They are outgrowing their nursery tags and they'll have to be removed .....  and i'm forgetful. I want to know who is who.  I am very disorganised at the same time i like to be precise.  I'll spend hours charting and graphing,  but in the end i just wing it.   Like this year.   I mapped and plotted with my Grow Veg subscription,  but when it got  down to it,  i didn't print it off,  i just dug in and planted.  This year i didn't even label varieties,  some of the tomatoes i recognise by sight this year (pruden's purple, san marzanos and aunt molly's ground cherries) and the kales (red russian and kai lan queen),  i know where the beans are.  The squashes i'll know by the time they grow and the cukes will sort themselves out.  Once the rain stops and i can start digging again,  i'll plant them out.

I did find my camera cable (yay!)   but no pics because of the rain.  I plan to do a picture post soon. Maybe i'll do one of those "Wordless Wednesday" posts i see other bloggers doing.

Beans

I planted two rows of Provider bush beans today. Time will tell if i have set myself up for inundation or not.  But then i usually plant double the seeds in the same area of row, so this may actually be the right    way to go.

Oh,  i found the first firefly on my hubby's shoulder  this evening,  i was pretty cool.  We were out having a cigar  and there it was. Brilliant!

Thunder and rain

It would have been nice to know we were going to get heavy rain overnight and today.  I would have planted bean seeds.  Last night the forecast called for 0.08 inches of rain.  My guess is about 3.0 inches of rain.  It was nice, however,  to be woken up a few times last night by flashes of lightening and rumbles of thunder.  I find it relaxing.

If i had known,  i would have finished mounding and digging the rows and planted those green bean seeds,  i don't like to manually water if i can help it.  It would have been perfect.

But the tomatoes are enjoying it and the kales and ground cherries. It has been on the dry side since i planted and the rain was really needed.

Still,  it would have been nice to know! lol

Ginger Beer

I haven't tried making it yet,  but soon...oh, soon!

From "Not Dabbling in Normal"  is a great tute on homemade ginger beer:

http://notdabblinginnormal.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/make-your-own-ginger-beer/

Kale

Got all the kales planted Sunday. At least the ones that came up...   i  know,  in reverse.  Kale should have gone in before the tomatoes.  But that's how i roll. lol

One of the Job's Tears finally sprouted.  That will be popped in when its finally recognisable so it won"t be mistaken for regular grass.

The Delicata squash are no-shows so far.  The only cukes up right now are the Specialty White and Boston Pickling.