Life on Fluke Ln

Summery peppers

2010-08-15T16:14:00.001-04:00

The 5-color peppers are living up to their name in August. Nice and summery!

Pesto change-o

2010-08-15T16:12:00.002-04:00

We tried making almond pesto last week. Different flavor from pine nuts, pretty tasty.

We hardly had any cheese and it still came out great. I freeze the pesto in ice cube trays then put the blocks into containers in the fridge. Makes it easy to take out a little at a time; add some to tomato soup to give it zing.

Feeling inadequate?

2010-08-15T16:09:00.001-04:00

These Yamoto cucumbers won't help:

Don't know if I will grow them again. Grow very fast, get out of control, aren't too crispy. Will intimidate your friends and neighbors.

Corn??

2010-08-15T16:07:00.002-04:00

Could I possibly get a few popcorn cobs this summer? Talk about a haphazard attempt (planted seeds between tomatoes and beans right before I left for a month)

Lots o tomatoes

2010-08-15T15:59:00.003-04:00

I've been slowly working on processing tomatoes. I made some tomato soup, almost by accident. Been drying cherry tomatoes and made a batch of salsa to store in the freezer. The tomato plants are starting to look scraggly, but this has been a really great tomato year so I'm pretty happy.

Can't even tell ya how many buckets of tomatoes I've hauled in this summer.

Roasting tomatoes for soup:

Dried tomatoes and soup in freezer:

Even more (with a few pickling cukes):

Update on peppers and eggplants

2010-08-01T12:30:00.002-04:00

These were also taken before we left for the trip, in the third week of July:
The Jalapenos are going crazy:

And... hoooray! I actually got an eggplant:

The heirloom Peter Peppers are finally starting to make peppers:

They will turn red and look like little weiners, hence their name.

Harvest pictures

2010-08-01T12:26:00.002-04:00

These were taken in the 2nd and 3rd weeks of July. I started getting ripe tomatoes almost a month earlier than last year.
First batch of big ripe tomatoes:

Some tomatoes, asparagus beans, and the first Yamoto cucumber - these guys are almost 2 feet long but only an inch across:

Pizza!

2010-08-01T12:22:00.000-04:00

Some homemade pizza using pesto and tomatoes from the garden:

It's hot

2010-07-14T13:38:00.002-04:00

It's so hard to be a cat:

Some days it's so hot the cats can't even bother to go outside even if the door's open.

Sushi and Katsu kissing, right before they decided to have a 2-day fight:

Sushi is probably just checking out the competition. What good cats :)

More progress

2010-07-14T13:36:00.002-04:00

For the first time ever, my eggplant plants have made it far enough to produce beautiful, uneaten flowers:

It would be great to actually get an eggplant this year.

The peppers are going strong. I have lots of the super-hot 5-color peppers. The Jalapenos just started producing:

I'd like to try smoking some to make chipotles.

First Tomato!

2010-07-14T13:35:00.002-04:00

While I was gone last week, the first ripe tomato arrived:

It's one of the sweet 100s cherry tomatoes. A few of the large heirloom tomatoes are looking slightly less green also. Can't wait!

Comparison of tomato plants 2008-2010

2010-07-02T16:17:00.002-04:00

This was the status of my tomato plants in late June in 2008:

And late June 2009:

And late June 2010:

The ring stakes are all the same in the three pictures. Late spring/early summer was relatively cool and wet for both 2008 and 2009. This spring and early summer were really hot, and in my particular area, also quite rainy. What a difference heat makes!

July Update

2010-07-02T15:59:00.003-04:00

Everything I've posted since I got back was from mid-late June. Here's a more recent update:
The cucumbers are getting ready to produce. I have a Japanese slicing cucumber variety this year. Those plants have been climbing the mesh fence trellis really well:

A random insect hangs out on a cucumber blossom on an Arkansas picking cucumber plant:

These plants have physically smaller leaves and flowers, don't grow super fast, but seem pretty tough for cucumbers. I transplanted some in the middle of boiling hot weather, and every single plant survived, even though some leaves died.

Boy, the tomatoes are going nuts. Most of them are already above their cages. Compare this picture even to that from late June:

And some of the heirloom tomatoes are getting downright chunky. Here are some of the Black Sea Man tomatoes:

Beans are also climbing now. The front row are heirloom lima beans, back row are Chinese long beans (asparagus beans). They have been slower to vine out and climb.

Wild Raspberries!

2010-07-02T15:54:00.003-04:00

The wild raspberry bushes found everywhere along roadsides, on hillslopes, and in my case along the driveway, are going nuts with berries. 20 minutes of effort produced more than 2 cups of berries:

And I made some sort of cupcake-like dessert (supposed to be heart-shaped) from the raspberries and local blueberries:

Tasted pretty good.

For some reason I have the Prince song "Raspberry Beret" stuck in my head every time I eat some.

Amazing! Actual eggplant plants

2010-07-02T15:47:00.002-04:00

Unlike every other year I've tried to grow eggplants in Virginia, this time I succeeded in beating the flea beetles (at least so far):

This was taken right when I got back. The plants on the deck are about to flower now.
I also have several plants in the garden. I did a little experiment in pest control. A few plants were left completely uncovered in the garden while I was gone. I kept a few others in the garden completely covered in row cover material (in the center of a row) until I got back in late June, then took off the row cover. The ones on the deck were never covered.

Results: The ones on the deck, 10+ feet off of the ground, did great without being covered at all. The ones in the garden under the row cover, then exposed, are doing OK. They have some flea beetle damage, but I don't think it's terminal. The ones that had no protection look stunted and punctured with thousands of holes in the leaves.

So there ya go- the easiest thing to do is to get the eggplants way up off the ground in pots.

Peas

2010-07-02T15:44:00.002-04:00

Oh yeah, and some of the pea plants on the porch reached 8 feet tall before drying up:

I had pulled all the other pea plants out when I took this picture. Saved some of the dried peas to try to plant in the fall.

Back from Ireland!

2010-07-02T15:38:00.002-04:00

Here's what the garden looked like when I got back:

Not too bad really. The size of the tomato plants was shocking. And seeds I had planted at the last second before leaving seemed to do very well. Seems like almost all of the bean seeds came up:

Most cucumbers sprouted:

Even the random pumpkins made it:

There was a LOT of rain, even though it was VERY warm while I was gone. I had the automatic drip irrigation system set up to run half an hour a day, but that was very extraneous in late May and most of June.
It's interesting because even the town of Harrisonburg, only 7 miles away, had very little rain. I was just on the edge of the thunderstorms that were hitting the western mountains.

Planting tomatoes

2010-05-14T22:13:00.002-04:00

Pretty sure our frost days are over for the spring. I planted 20 tomatoes this afternoon, along with some little basils and marigolds :)

Have sweet 100s, romas, Cherokee, Brandywine, and the colorful Black Sea Man.

First lettuce

2010-05-14T22:11:00.001-04:00

Cosmo lettuce and my favorite, drunken woman lettuce (with red spots).

Peas Pleeze!

2010-05-14T21:24:00.002-04:00

Here's what the pea plants looked like at the end of April:

Now they're more than twice as high. I have the usual sugar snap and snow peas. I'm also trying shelling peas this year.
Had the first pea blossoms bloom on the snow peas on May 5:

Building a new garden

2010-05-14T21:02:00.004-04:00

I moved to a new house last summer! So I've almost finished building a terraced garden.
It's next to the shed. I figure the closer to the house, the better. The deer are a little less hesitant to come near the buildings.

Using regular landscaping logs and rebar rods.

The soil is a hard clay with, um, a LOT of rocks. Spent a large amount of time hacking rocks with a pickaxe. Added about 2 inches of compost across the garden. I wasn't sure the water pressure from the one spigot on the house would be high enough to push water up the hill, but is seems to be working fine:

The highest terrace is still not finished, but I started putting some plants in the lower levels anyway.

I'm trying Michihili cabbage this year (in the picture above). It's growing really well in pots on the porch and in the garden.

New home

2009-08-23T19:52:00.002-04:00

I may post a few more garden pics here, but I've moved on to my own house, not a rental. I will miss some things at the old schoolhouse (views) and I am happy to leave others (mouse and insect-infested walls). Here are some new views of plants at the new place. Everything is on the very long deck right now- it will take some time to make a real garden plot here.

My sunflowers finally bloomed. These are some cherry-colored ones, only a few feet tall.

The 5-color pepper finally decided to move on from mono-purple coloration. These are great plants- pretty tough, and very colorful. They say the peppers are quite HOT- I may dry some and try them in stir-fry.

Basil mania- I have regular basil and fancy purple ruffle basil, grown from seed. Some of the purple basil is sort of green and flecked with purple, and not that ruffly at all. But it all seems to taste the same.

Tomato, tomato!

2009-08-23T19:42:00.002-04:00

I have too many tomatoes to keep count. I expected this year to be like last year- there were many storms last year in July and August, and most of my tomatoes and plants were destroyed by hail and wind. So, expecting this to happen again this year, I planted more tomato plants. But the storms and hail haven't shown up. So instead, I've ended up with this:

And this:

And today, THIS:

Yes, something like 20 pounds of tomatoes ripening in 4 days. I already made like 12 cups of tomato sauce and dried hundreds of cherry tomatoes; I'm going to have to find more tomato products to create.

Zucchini experiment

2009-07-27T13:56:00.002-04:00

I tried dehydrating zucchini slices using various flavorings: salt and vinegar, miso dressing, and soy sauce.

They still taste like zucchini. However, I think dehydration is a good method of storage, and it would be easy to throw some of these into soup or a stir fry.

Red tomatoes!

2009-07-27T13:53:00.001-04:00

Two of the cherry tomato plants now have ripening tomatoes:

Amazingly enough, I actually have a few little pickling cucumbers growing from the vines that were almost completely eaten to the ground when I got back from Ireland:

Visions of green...

2009-07-06T21:27:00.002-04:00

..tomatoes. I planted four varieties this year, and all have tomatoes growing on them now. They are:
Brandywine:

Sweet 100's cherry tomatoes:

Classic romas:

And the potentially bizarre-looking Black Sea Man, which is supposed to end up black on the outside and vibrant pink and green on the inside. Right now, just a normal green color:

Scary, awesome things

2009-06-26T20:57:00.002-04:00

First, a cool picture of a nuclear-explosion-looking thunderhead forming on the other side of the Valley:

So, not to alarm anyone, but I found this in the "back plot" - my equivalent of a garden junkyard:

Yes, that is a ZUCCHINI. Already. Still small, only 3 inches long, but come back tomorrow and see how big it's grown....
I actually have 5 zucchini plants in the back plot. I don't even remember leaving that many behind when I left in May. They are thriving on total neglect- I left them, unwatered and unweeded, for a month, and they are going crazy. This just supports my hypothesis that in the event of an apocalypse we (at least in Virginia) could survive on zucchini alone. Of course, we may not want to- I only enjoy eating zucchini if it is disguised in other food (bread, deep fried, even cookies?).

Rollin Hay

2009-06-26T20:52:00.002-04:00

Hay is being rolled up in fields everywhere around here- it was already cut and drying when I get back. This week the guys rolled it and immediately moved it. This was taken the one day they left it sitting in the field. No messing around this year.

It seemed like the hay is ready earlier this year. I went back and checked the blog for 08- my hay-making post was at the beginning of July. So, indeed, the grass is growing a little faster this year, probably because of all the rain.

Back from Ireland

2009-06-26T20:43:00.002-04:00

So, I am finally back from my travels to Ireland and elsewhere. I have been gone for almost a month, and was pretty convinced that my groundhog and bunny neighbors would have eaten the entire garden by now. But, actually, most things were relatively fine (except for the lettuce, which looks like everyone insect and mammal had their fill- which is ok, because it must be bitter by now anyway).

The plants on the porch made it through just fine, even without an irrigation system. It apparently rained almost every day for several weeks. But, unlike last year, it was warm enough to keep the tomatoes from getting seriously messed up from blight and mildew.

The bean and pea side of the garden looks like a field of grass. There are actually beans in there. The peas never made it very far, because it got too warm and also because they are tasty to animals.

The tomatoes and onions are doing pretty well.

I have been slowly pulling the weeds and grass out of the garden. The "back plot" tomatoes and zukes also made it through the absence. Other, less durable plants back there (cukes, eggplant, extra peppers) did not.

Waterlogged

2009-05-06T22:12:00.002-04:00

It's been raining. A lot. I put the seedlings out over the weekend, thinking they would be better off outside, where it might rain and keep the peat pots from drying out. They sure didn't dry out:

This is supposed to be a tray of basil plants. The tray was completely full of water when I got home. This is after the next shower, later in the afternoon. Then more rain came along and filled up the trays again, so I had to drain them out a second time.
The grass and weeds are going insane. Can't cut them until it dries up and warms up!
The good news is that three broccoli plants survived, and actually seem to enjoy the soggy conditions.

Veggies are growing

2009-04-26T17:21:00.002-04:00

I actually started growing cabbage, broccoli (another disastrous attempt- all eaten), garlic, lettuce, radishes, and spinach outside before the garden was even completely put together.

Garlic from Ron got planted in the new bed next to the cinderblock shed:

Some cabbage, spinach, the three remaining broccoli plants, and tiny, tiny radishes on the back porch:

Other things are doing well inside. I have a good number of tomatoes and peppers going right now. My experience last year was that many of these aren't going to make it because of disease, insects, and hail, so I'm trying to grow at least as twice as many as I think I actually want.

Garden Progress

2009-04-26T17:10:00.003-04:00

So, the garden is finally "constructed"- or at least the main section of the garden is now mulched, irrigated, and fenced.

I merged two of the six planting squares in the hopes that it will be easier to grow peas and beans:

Newspaper goes under the cinderblock walls to keep some of the grass from encroaching into the garden:

The garden today, with the fence almost done. I put deer netting up again, but only at half height. Seems like the rabbits are much more of a problem than deer!

Here's what it looked like in February:

Changing seasons

2009-04-26T17:00:00.005-04:00

It's been a while since I posted anything here, so I figure I'll just do a compare and contrast between winter and spring. Actually, there always seems to be very little middle ground here- we swing back and forth between hot and cold in the spring.

For example, here's the thermometer today, just before noon:

And here's the thermometer about a month ago (note that I did not care to go outside to take the picture!):

Here's a view from March:

And from February:

And here's what the view looked like in early April:

Of course, we are still getting occasional frosts at night. Here are some super-cool ice crystals which appeared overnight on the trunk of my car last week:

Maple Festival in March

2009-03-14T16:39:00.002-04:00

Every March, Highland County, VA, has a maple festival.
http://www.highlandcounty.org/maple.htm
Who knew you could make maple syrup this far south? Apparently, Highland County is at a high enough elevation that sugar maples do just fine there.

At one place we visited, syrup is made the old-fashioned way by boiling in pans. The steam from the boiling process exits through vents in the roof:

Other places use more modern methods (reverse osmosis).

Here's the old-fashioned way of collecting sap from the sugar maples:

And the modern way (looks much less appealing to me):

A view of a grove of the maple trees. The big box at the bottom of the hill is where they collect the sap using the modern method of tubes- the whole systems is gravity-fed.

Garden clean-up

2008-11-29T23:32:00.003-05:00

I finally got around to cleaning up the main part of the garden this week. The peas finally gave up after nights in the teens and a whole week of snow flurries, so I pulled them up and removed the trellises. I hacked the weeds out of the two remaining garden squares that hadn't been cleaned up, threw some fertilizer and pea vines over them and covered everything with hay:

Walnuts, again

2008-11-29T23:01:00.003-05:00

So, the black walnuts have been sitting around drying for almost 2 months, and I decided it was time to start the final stage of processing.

Step 1: smash the shell with a small sledgehammer. No, normal nutcrackers can't break the ultra-thick, super hard, spiky black walnut shells.

Step 2: sort into empty shell pieces, nut pieces, and chunks of shell with nut pieces still in them.

Step 3: try to get the remaining nut pieces out of the shell with more smashing or by pulling them out with a dental pick.

I got about 1.5-2 cups from maybe 100 walnuts? I'm still not sure I really like black walnuts! They taste sort of cheesy-fruity, bitter, and smoky all at once.

Thanksgiving pie

2008-11-29T22:55:00.002-05:00

The jack o'lantern from Halloween turned into a pumpkin pie:

I used the standard pumpkin pie recipe, and added the walnut topping from this recipe.
It successfully tasted like pumpkin pie, and the walnut-brown sugar chunks tasted good, although some of them sank into the pie instead of staying on top.

Four cups of frozen pumpkin puree turned into 2 cups of pumpkin paste after defrosting and letting the excess water drip out through a towel for an hour or two. It's definitely necessary to extract that extra water- I think the pie would have been a soup otherwise.

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T19:22:00.003-04:00

This picture is from earlier this month, but is appropriately creepy:

Sushi posing next to my home-grown pumpkin:

The inside guts of the pumpkin were much drier and spongier than the jack o' lantern pumpkins you get at the store:

Cleaned out and ready to carve:

I'm cooking the pumpkin seeds with a butter, salt, and Worcester sauce coating.

Angry vampire? Or goofy cross-eyed creature? The white spots are hail pits.

Sitting in the front window:

Final produce tally

2008-10-29T20:44:00.003-04:00

Here are some nerdy graphs of my cumulative tomato, zucchini, and cucumber counts for this summer:

From garden pictures

I hope this will help me plan the garden next year. I accidentally staggered tomato plantings for the sweet 100's this year, which gave a good crop of the little tomatoes until the first frost despite tornadoes, hail, and an unusually wet and cool summer. So, maybe next year I will intentionally make several tomato plantings to hedge my bets in a more systematic way.

Pass the sushi, peas

2008-10-29T19:43:00.003-04:00

This is the first time I've made sushi using peas. They are a decent substitute for cucumber.

Yum!

First frost

2008-10-29T19:39:00.002-04:00

The first frost was on Oct 18. Here's the tomato plant before it thawed and died:

A marigold covered in frost:

Last tomatoes

2008-10-29T19:34:00.002-04:00

Here's the last harvest of tomatoes before the first frost a couple of weeks ago:

Some tasty dried cherry tomatoes:

I got more than 6 cups of dried tomatoes out of the last few weeks of cherry tomato production- not bad!

Leaves are starting to turn.. and random scenery

2008-10-12T21:29:00.004-04:00

You can see the leaves starting to turn at higher elevation on Linden's knob:

We've been having cool nights with some fog in the morning. The dew on the weeds in the field is blindingly reflective as the sun comes up over the hills:

Sushi enjoying the morning? Sniffing the air? Trying to avoid getting her feet wet?

At the other end of the day, an excellent sunset:

Which bathed everything in pink and orange light for a few minutes:

Peas!

2008-10-12T21:24:00.001-04:00

Hooray, the snow peas are producing pods.

I made stir-fry with the first batch. They are very tasty, and it is exciting to get peas this year after my spring attempt was killed off by a heat wave while I was in Ireland.

Some pictures of black walnuts

2008-10-12T21:15:00.003-04:00

Here's what the walnuts look like with their husks on. Ripe ones are yellowish and can be indented with your (glove-covered!) finger. Once they sit around on the ground or the hulls get smashed, they turn brown:

I smash the hulls off by grinding them into the gravel driveway with my boots, or running over them with the car. Sushi cat for scale:

As you may be able to see in this picture, the hull juices stain everything, including the plastic bucket and gloves. These are heavy-duty gloves. I made the mistake of wearing flimsy dishwashing gloves earlier, and ended up with stained hands for a week.

The walnuts dry outside for a while, then they sit on a window screen to "cure" for several weeks.

Right now the nut meats are kinda rubbery. I tasted one and was blown away by its bitterness and fruity, almost apple-like, flavor. They say the flavor develops as the nuts cure. We'll see.

Black walnuts making a big mess

2008-10-07T13:47:00.002-04:00

Last week, I started picking up ripe black walnuts from 5 producing trees on the property. Black walnuts have a different, stronger flavor than "normal" English walnuts, and sell for $14 a pound in local stores.
Here's a blog site with pictures of the walnuts and the process to extract the nutmeat:
http://www.bigredcouch.com/journal/archives/2007/10/black_walnuts.html

The reason they're so expensive is because it is a BIG PAIN to process them. The outside hull stains your hands, shoes, floor, everything else. The shells are super thick, and at least for my trees, painfully spiky in some places.

I have about 200 nuts drying on an old window screen right now. We will see how many I end up trying to process. I've been gone for several days so they may have all fallen from the trees and started to rot by now.

Drying tomatoes

2008-09-28T23:37:00.001-04:00

I think I am going to try drying some of my cherry tomatoes. Here's a nice post on how to dry tomatoes:
http://straightfromthefarm.wordpress.com/2007/09/19/squirreling-it-away/

A view restored

2008-09-21T22:07:00.002-04:00

Last week, the corn across the street was harvested:

It's nice to have a clear view of the other side of the valley again. The field itself looks a little.. dead now. I've seen deer picking over the leftover husks and stalks almost every evening.

Mid-Sept garden update

2008-09-21T21:46:00.003-04:00

The garden is still producing tomatoes and zucchini at a good rate, but over the last few days as nighttime temperatures have dropped to 50 or below, things have started to droop a little. The cucumber, cantaloupe, and the oldest zucchini vines have shriveled up due to a combination of temperature and powdery mildew (the mildew problem started after the hail storm in August that shredded the leaves). I had a crazy crop of zucchini from the "throwaway" plants in the back plot:

I walked into the garden this morning and found that someone had clawed and chewed a chunk out of my biggest of two cantaloupes:

It seemed fairly ripe inside- the taste was very mild and basically like one from the supermarket.

The pea plants are coming along fairly nicely. Someone is biting the tops and tender tendrils off of some of the plants, but because I planted so many seeds, loss of a few here and there to nibblers isn't a big deal.

I had to start over with the cabbage and broccoli. Last Sunday was brutally hot and the little seedlings fried under the hot sun and the black mulch sheet.

Visit to Monticello

2008-09-21T21:40:00.002-04:00

I went to Monticello this weekend. The flower and vegetable gardens were still growing in full force. Here's a picture of the 2 acre kitchen garden. It's on a terrace created along the side of the little mountain:

Here's a way to make my garden more authentically old-school Virginia- make a teepee-type structure by leaning poles against each other and binding them together at the top:

Lots of the beans were growing on this type of structure.

Smooshy pickles

2008-09-21T19:57:00.004-04:00

Opened a can of pickles today. They tasted like pickles, but were quite smooshy. Why?
From http://www.mrswages.com/faq.asp#10:

What causes soft or shriveled pickles?
A number of things, including:

* Holding cucumbers too long after harvesting. They must be processed within one day of picking.
* Growing conditions ... either too wet or too dry.
* Overprocessing. Begin your pickling immediately ... don't leave cucumbers sitting in water.
* Cucumber varieties not suitable for pickling. Those varieties include burpless and slicing cucumbers.
* Using cucumbers from poorly nourished or diseased plants.

Perhaps a combo of 1, 2, and 5 lead to the demise of my pickles.

Mysterious eggs

2008-09-10T21:51:00.003-04:00

Someone has been laying their (tiny) eggs on the fence netting surrounding the garden.

The random pea supports are up. Various unused metal cages, some twine, and stakes.

I've put down ground cover on one of the garden sections. I'm going to try to grow cabbage and broccoli in a covered environment. Sure didn't work without cover this spring.

Early September

2008-09-10T21:26:00.003-04:00

Finally... some sunflowers. I planted them really late, but a lot of them also got eaten by various critters.

The marigolds are going strong- sort of taking over the tomatoes in some places. here's a fancy frilly one. I have four types of blossoms- dark red, two kinds of yellow starburst, and this type:

The pumpkin is still looking as good as it can with all of the hail pits:

There's a second canteloupe that's coming along pretty well.

Visitors to the garden

2008-08-26T21:33:00.002-04:00

Oh no! The groundhog is back. The medium-large bunny is also regularly visiting the garden. And...

Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast now resides in my tomatoes:

Late August

2008-08-26T21:16:00.003-04:00

Ok, I'm finally caught up with posts for August. Here's some progress:
The pumpkin is maybe looking more like a Cinderella pumpkin (compare to earlier post)

I think I'm about to be completely swamped with zucchini. I now have three big plants flowering like crazy. Can't even leave them alone for 12 hours- the zukes will grow to enormous, inedible zeppelins if they are left unattended for a day.

The cantaloupe is coming along. Today I found two more hidden under vines.

The "extra" tomato plants I planted behind the second shed are making lots of green tomatoes. One of them seems to have mutated and is producing something that looks more like beefsteak or radiator tomatoes instead of the roma-esque Amish paste tomatoes:

And finally... in the spirit of the cool, overcast, damp weather we've been having this week, the peas have started coming up:

I decided I would try to get some fall peas, because the spring peas died while I was in Ireland.

Catnip anyone?

2008-08-26T21:10:00.002-04:00

Sushi cat and the tasty catnip:

I have a few cukes still growing on the struggling, shredded cucumber plants.
Here's a tasty cucumber sandwich:

The view from a nearby hill. My house is in the center of the picture (one story, brick). The neighborhood looked very different from up there.

Garden Update from Aug 13

2008-08-26T21:00:00.002-04:00

The tomatoes finally are starting to go ripe in earnest:

Giant sweet gypsy pepper starting to turn yellow:

The watermelon is no more. The hail holes encouraged critters to bore holes into it. It was pretty rotten.

On the other hand, I have a couple of potential cantaloupes!

The pumpkin is doing fairly well, but it looks nothing like it is supposed to look. It is a Rouge Vif D'Étampes- supposed to look like this.

Aw hail

2008-08-12T20:54:00.002-04:00

There was a hailstorm here on Sunday. It tore up leafy plants, especially the cucumbers.

Hail piled up next to the gutter:

Shredded cucumber leaves:

Many unripe tomatoes fell off the vines. All the cucumbers, zukes, the pumpkin, even the tomatoes themselves are covered in hail "craters."

Tornado?

2008-08-03T21:43:00.002-04:00

There was a very local, very strong storm here on Saturday. The wind direction changed rapidly several times. The winds were strong enough to knock over 5 trees on the property, split a couple more in half, and tore huge pieces off of all of the rest of them. The phone line to the house was ripped off the telephone pole, the telephone pole was broken, the pots on my front porch were thrown about 30 feet into the next field.

Here's the storm headed my way (I am standing behind the house). Does it look like a tornado to you?

The garden, flattened by winds, smashed by a huge tree branch, fence collapsed. Most of the plants were knocked over, uprooted, or squashed, but amazingly enough everything seems to be fairly OK after straightening it back out.

A couple of the trees that were snapped by the winds. The landlord had already come by with a chainsaw and removed the trees off of the telephone line.

Pickles!!!

2008-08-03T21:38:00.002-04:00

I pickled cucumbers today! I used about 10 cucumbers to make 12 pint jars of pickles (not all of the jars are shown below).

I used a recipe from allrecipes.com for kosher dill pickles:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Dill-Pickles/Detail.aspx

You are supposed to wait 8 weeks before opening the first jar!!! It might be hard to wait that long.

Pumpkin and cuke

2008-08-03T21:32:00.003-04:00

I have one pumpkin right now. It's about the size of a magic 8 ball:

A nice shot of a cucumber on the vine:

Hornworm!!!

2008-08-03T21:30:00.001-04:00

I found one giant tobacco hornworm chowing down on an Amish paste tomato plant on Saturday morning. It had already taken out 4-5 leaf stems.

Haven't seen any others since the storm.

Chickpeas

2008-08-03T21:24:00.003-04:00

The chickpea experiment continues. This week I found that you should wait to pick the chickpea pods until they turn yellow. Green pods produce weird green peas when they are dried. Yellow pods produce pale tan peas like those found in cans or bags in the store. I am getting one pea per pod.
From left to right: a green chickpea, tan chickpea, a dried commercial chickpea from Walmart:

Here's a closeup of an open pod:

The chickpea pods are fuzzy and tough! They pop open like little balloons when you open them.

Cukes, zukes, tomatoes

2008-08-03T20:34:00.003-04:00

Here's an update on veggies coming out of the garden:
Lots of cucumbers. I have about 4 times as many tomatoes now as shown in the picture. These are sweet 100's and a variety of Roma tomato called Amish paste tomato.

Zucchini plants in the garden:

Random extra zucchini and tomato plants I planted out back:

Zucchini 2, Cucumbers 9

2008-07-25T14:22:00.002-04:00

So I came back from my week-long trip to find nine cucumbers on two of the three vines, and two zucchini, one of them absolutely enormous:

This just shows how dangerous zucchini can be.

I think there are about nine more cucumbers that may be ready to go when I get back from this trip.

Vegetable Update

2008-07-25T14:13:00.003-04:00

As of mid-July:
Watermelon is no longer tiny:

The chickpeas have pods (they are still fairly empty pods, though):

The cucumber and zucchini vines have made good progress:

The tomatoes are coming! These are Sweet 100's.

Hey! Hay! Hooray!

2008-07-01T22:00:00.003-04:00

The hay in the back 10 acres was finally cut last week. Here's what they did:

1. Cut the grass and let it dry for a day:

2. Push the hay into long rows:

3. Use the special hay-rolling machine to roll up the hay like a newspaper:

4. The machine binds the hay with twine, and then opens up and lets it roll onto the ground like a giant cylindrical egg:

They made about 35 of these giant hayrolls. The hay and some of the equipment is still sitting in the field. But, I can get to the barn now much more easily.

ooh no... bunny invasion

2008-07-01T21:55:00.002-04:00

Baby bunny outside the lettuce patch.

Four types of lettuce

2008-06-25T23:02:00.005-04:00

I'm growing four types of lettuce. These are all from the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange:

Sweet Valentine Lettuce. The seedlings were pale green until I put them out in the garden. They quickly turned a deep red color in the sun. Took a while to get started, but they are looking good. I am sorry to say that the groundhog seems to especially like this variety :(

Oakleaf Lettuce. According to the Southern Exposure website, this variety was introduced about 1771! I was skeptical about what lettuce shaped like oak leaves would taste like, but it does seem to be resistant to bitterness and shows no sign of bolting. Great in salads.

Anuenue Lettuce. Developed in Hawaii. Also drought-resistant and bolt-resistant. Seeds are said to be able to germinate above 80F. I just started some in the sunroom, with temperatures up to 78F during the day.

And finally the cuteTom Thumb Lettuce. Little crumply leaves are tasty, but it's a little difficult to get all of the dirt out of the crinkles. Starting to bolt a little.

No gold here

2008-06-25T22:54:00.003-04:00

But a full rainbow over the house after the storm on Sunday:

I haven't had to water the garden in at least a week because of the storms every other day.

Tiny watermelon, etc.

2008-06-22T18:48:00.002-04:00

This is the tiniest watermelon I've ever seen:

I am hopeful my viney plants (watermelon, muskmelon, pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber) will get a boost from the nice warm weather we've been having since my return. The ones planted outside in May suffered from mildewy stuntedness. I had some growing in little pots on the porch while I was gone, and at least the watermelon and muskmelon seemed to do well there.

The eggplant suffered from small black beetles boring holes in the leaves, but the store-bought one now has a nice purple blossom.

I find the chickpeas hard to photograph. The ones I planted in April are starting to flower:

They seem impervious to just about everything. I bought a $1 bag of garbanzo beans at Walmart and just stuck them in the ground, and they haven't had any pests and survived the cold, wet spring and the sudden 100-degree heat wave with no problem.

Tomatoes!!!

2008-06-22T18:38:00.003-04:00

My tomato plants may not look beautiful but at least some of them are already putting out (tomatoes):

These are Amish paste tomatoes, Roma-esque. I also have two better boy tomatoes and several tiny sweet 100's. Not all of the tomatoes are producing blooms yet. Bloom production seems random- some tomatoes in pots on the porch are flowering nicely, others have no buds at all. Same in the garden. Not correlated to tomato type, either. Almost all were grown from seed rather than bought as seedlings, which might have something to do with it.

Ominous

2008-06-22T18:15:00.002-04:00

When you look east and see this, it's time to go inside:

Actually, this one went just north of us. We got some pretty strong winds, but that's all. The weather radio alerted me to this storm about 5 minutes after it blew through. At least the radio seems to be working.

Sushi cat was sort of freaking out for a while during the storm, but then she settled down to a long nap. Action shot of a wake-up yawn (looks like she's eating the garden shed):

Back from Ireland

2008-06-19T11:35:00.003-04:00

So what happens when you leave your garden for 2.5 weeks? Lots of weeds and grass in the garden. The fence was falling over in a couple of places. I caught a rabbit and a groundhog inside the garden over the last two days. I did some fence repair yesterday- reinforced the posts and added metal stakes to the bottom of the netting. I also added some metal screening to the corner of the garden next to the shed- I suspect the groundhog was sneaking through there.

The peas did not do well. The vegetation in this picture is mostly weeds.

A view of the tomatoes, random peppers, etc., and chickpeas. I already cleaned out the weeds and grass from the tomato bed by the time I took this picture. I lost two tomato plants to Colorado potato beetle larvae, but I had extras on the porch so I replanted after digging out all of the larvae from the soil. They look like bright orange-red lumps of ooze.

The lettuce did pretty well. It tastes sort of bitter though- no surprise since we had near 100-degree temperatures and alternating dry spells and torrents of rain, apparently.

Rain and disease

2008-06-19T11:30:00.004-04:00

I took these pictures in late May before I left for Ireland. We had cool, cloudy, rainy weather for weeks. It took a toll on the tomato plants- the vegetable grower next door diagnosed early blight and said their tomatoes had the same problem:

The lettuce didn't seem to mind. Finger for scale. Check out how much they grew in the next post. The pollen is from the black walnut tree on the other side of the shed.

The grass in the field was tall when I left. And even taller now- somewhere in between knee and thigh high.

The barn by moonlight

2008-05-20T22:25:00.001-04:00

Here's the moon over the hay field. Same landscape as the header picture above.

Crazy clouds and irises

2008-05-16T22:19:00.002-04:00

Rainbow clouds

Seems like everyone plants irises along the country roads here. These are across the "street" from my house.

Fence is up

2008-05-04T22:01:00.002-04:00

The garden has an 8-foot tall fence and a little stone/ cinderblock wall. The metal shed acts as one side of the fence. Hopefully this will deter some little critters and the deer!

Groundhog and more progress digging

2008-04-23T16:44:00.003-04:00

Almost done digging up the sod for the garden.

The groundhog hole under the garden shed.

Melon and chickpea seedlings.

Sunroom and new table arrangement.

garden progress from April 15

2008-04-22T18:02:00.002-04:00

Still trying to catch up with posting...
1. Digging progress as of April 15.
2. Seedlings thru the window- much larger (again, as of April 15)
3. and 4. Pictures of the stormy weather last evening (April 22)

baby bunny from the old townhouse

2008-04-22T17:58:00.002-04:00

Way too cute- I can almost forget how allergic I am to rabbits.

Some pictures from April 12

2008-04-21T18:38:00.010-04:00

I'm running behind posting material, of course. These are from April 12.
Here's:

Sushi the cat blurrily blending into the floor (wouldn't hold still).
Peas just coming up
Progress on digging sod
These are cucumbers and lettuce (getting all spindly because of lack of sun. The windows get a LOT of sun, but only if it comes out from behind the dark gloomy clouds).

Since then, I replanted the lettuce and it's working better. The cukes now have 3-4 leaves.

Starting Seeds part 2

2008-04-04T23:06:00.002-04:00

4/4/08

Flat 3:
Lettuce Anuenue 3 rows
Lettuce Oakleaf 3 rows
Rosemary 1 row
Cilantro & Mint mix- whoops! 1 row
Mint only 3 squares
Cilantro only 3 squares

4/5/08

Flat 4:
large round peat pots
Super Snappy Pea 5 pots
Super Sugar Snap pea 6 pots
Oregon Sugar Pod II 6 pots
Store-bought rosemary plant

Flat 5:
Square peat pots, med size (32 per flat; 4 per row)
Pumpkin Cinderella 1 row
Eggplant Black Beauty 1 row
Watermelon Black Tail 1 row
Muskmelon Pike 1 row
Zucchini Sweet Zuke 1 row
Chickpeas from Walmart grocery 3 rows

Planted mesclun mix in large white pots

Starting Seeds part 1

2008-04-02T22:43:00.002-04:00

I'm sort of moved into my new house. So, time to start planting seeds:

I used two different seed starting mixes: one from Walmart, and Ferry Morse "Quick n' Easy" from Lowes.

Dampened mix; left the last row of each seedling flat open for easier watering.

Flat 1:
Broccoli DeCicco 4 rows
Lettuce Tom Thumb 3 rows
Lettuce Sweet Valentine 3 rows
Cucumber Space Master 1 row

Flat 2:
Tomato Sweet 100 2 rows
Tomato Amish Paste 2 rows
Marigold French Taskent 3 rows
Marigold Chameleon 3 rows
Basil 1 row