nature, garden and stuff

Here's the Green Zebra tomato I posted about earlier. I guess I didn't know when it was ripe - it split open before I figured it out! I've got another one on the vine, so I'm checking it more frequently. It's a pretty tomato, but I wasn't sure what to expect as for taste.

The tomato was soft, like any ripe tomato, and it was green on the inside. It tasted really good! Certainly like a ripe tomato, but a little different from a red one. Can't put my finger on the difference, but it was very good. Alpine wouldn't eat it until I tried it first - he'll usually try anything. Luckily, he was pleasantly surprised!

This is the first bunch of lettuce I got from the garden. I'll use it for as long as possible, but I also want to let some go to seed, so I have seed for next year. This lettuce was grown from last year's seed, so I know it's possible!

Once again, we're overrun with zucchini, and the squash has started coming in, too. The two on the left are our first cucumbers... the skin was a little bitter due to the dry weather, but they were generally very tasty. I'm trying to be creative with the squash and zucchini, but help would be appreciated. I've steamed it with different seasonings, baked it in olive oil with onion and salt and pepper (which is very good, by the way), and put it in soup. I have a squash casserole recipe, and of course have been baking zucchini bread at every opportunity. =)

We had some friends here recently, and while this didn't come out of the garden, it was a a nice compliment to the baked squash and zucchini. If you've never had Beer Can Chicken, you should try it. You don't have to use beer - I've tried wine and perfer it the least, but you can also use pop. I try to stick with Mountain Dew or Sprite, but I think any will work. I do think beer is my favorite, though I'm not sure why. Just has a good flavor. You can find a rub recipe online, or I'll give you mine. Good stuff - probably the best chicken I've ever eaten.

While our buddies were here, we also picked blackberries. We picked about a gallon of them (and I need to go back!), which was enough berries for me to make 4 cobblers. I made one while they were here, along with some homemade ice cream, and I froze the other 3 batches. Put in some sugar, freeze, and they're ready to thaw and make a quick cobbler. Have I mentioned how much I love my chest freezer? I'm not sure how I ever did without it.

Sunset on the farm...

Pretty bird clinging to the storm window!

An awesome lightning storm a few weeks ago... and some lucky shots:

garden update

FYI: seeds + soil + rain = rapid growth (and it doesn't matter who put what seeds where!)

So, I should have my garden looking much better in a matter of days, so there is no overall picture just yet... but here are some select pictures showing our progress:

pumpkins starting to bloom

cilantro (which tastes quite good, by the way!) and Cherokee Purple tomato plant, which is also starting to bloom


Green Zebra tomato (I hope I'll be able to tell when it's ripe!)

Black Seeded Simpson leaf lettuce ready for eating! (and in need of weeding)

Gray Mammoth Sunflower and Mancha, hoping for another chance to dig in the mud

zucchini, already growing, with many more blooms

oregano

parsley (which also tastes very good!) in front of white popcorn

I've already chopped up some parsley and baked it with some fish... fresh herbs really do make a big difference. I can't wait to use some cilantro in pico de gallo, and both parsley and cilantro in this wonderful chimichurri sauce.

Mortgage Lifter tomato

squash blooms


Gardening is not easy, and neither is harvesting (at the right time, with enough time) or "putting up" as we say (time, time, time!), but enjoying the fruits of my own garden is much more rewarding than trying to select produce from the store. It is very cool to see something go from seed to plant to fruit to your table... very cool, indeed!

a tale of two potatoes

So, Alpine suggested that we try to grow potatoes this year in the garden, so we did. I've got red ones and white ones growing. Not very many... just enough to see if we could grow them and then store them well. I planted about 11 plants of each color, and I have no idea how many potatoes will come from each plant. You are supposed to "hill" the plants every so often so the potatoes aren't exposed to the sun. If they do see the sun, they turn green - you've probably seen green potatoes in the store. My great-grandmother used to say that green potatoes are poison! Needless to say, I want to keep mine hidden from the sun. =) Anyway, I was looking them over yesterday, when i saw a tiny bit of red in the soil. Curiosity got the best of me - and it's hard to be patient when you can't see the progress of how your potatoes are doing! - so I dug around the potato just a bit... you know, just to look at it. Sure enough, it was a potato! It was quite small, though, so i planned to leave it. While digging around that one, though, I came across a fairly big one. My excitement got the better of me, so I dug it up to taste it. I covered the little one back up and headed for the house. I turned to call for Mancha and noticed that she had something in her mouth. I told her to "drop it," and she did... she must have decided that if I could dig up a potato, then she could, too! She got the little potato that I hoped would grow into a bigger one! Silly dog. Alpine and I cooked and ate the big potato, and Mancha got to eat her small one. Now, I just hope that she doesn't make a habit of this!

garden and nature

Fields of gold? This was a full rainbow... I was too close to get the entire thing in one picture! It sure was pretty...



This baby cardinal was stuck in the garage behind some plexiglass. I cleared the way for it's escape, and mama was quite concerned about it. I monitored its progress throughout the night, and it made it about halfway across the yard by nightfall. A storm was coming, and it was just out in the grass, so I tried to move it to shelter... however, by morning it was dead. At least I tried!

I love to see the fields dotted with hay bales after mowing time! We didn't get our "rolled up man" out this time, but maybe next time.

And... the garden. I finally got it planted several weeks ago, after it dried up a little... and now we've been a litte too dry! My weeds were under control, but nothing was growing well (even with a few manual waterings)... but some big storms have moved through this week and got everything growing well. Even the weeds. Time to get out there and tend to the garden!

My popcorn is looking pretty good... can't say the same for the sweet corn. It's about time for a second planting, so i'll restart the sweet corn and see if that helps.

This is either squash or zucchini... I can't remember which one I took a picture of. This plant grows like a weed... it gets "true leaves" far more quickly than most plants, and when it starts bearing fruit, you'd better check it twice a day... unless you don't mind baseball bat sized fruit!

I've not had much luck wth growing onions from seed, so my dad gave me some onion sets. Here they are... looking pretty good! I've got red and yellow onions... I'm eager to see how long they keep.

These are my potatoes. The red ones are in back and blooming, and the white ones are catching up to the size of the red ones. The red ones were planted first and had lots of rain. I'm also eager to see how long these keep once harvested. This is our first time growing potatoes (and was James's request), so I hope we're successful. Supposedly they are ready for harvest after the leaves die back.

Ahhh... tomatoes. I planted about 10-12 tomato plants that I grew from seed, and rabbits or some other wild creature ate about half of them. My dad gave me some odd varieties also, and one of those already has fruit! This one is called "Mortgage Lifter" and is an heirloom tomato (which basically means it's not hybrid... and it's been around for a while). Other varieties given to me by my pop are Mr. Stripey, Cherokee Purple and a pink one... I can't remember its name.

I've also planted cucumbers, beans, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloup, peanuts (which i don't think are coming up), carrots, lettuce, strawberries, sunflowers, dill, oregano, parsley and cilantro. I've got a lot of plants in my small garden... I try to plant an appropriate amount for two people, or enough for me to can/freeze/dry, but I'm afraid I might need a larger garden soon. If I can manage this one well enough...

gerber daisy

I have had most of my grandmother's plants now for about a year... and most of them are doing ok. I had to let the fuschia go, but I took some cuttings and have been successful (so far) in getting them to grow. I'm just loving the gerber daisy, though... the flowers are so beautiful! I'm not sure it's supposed to last over winter, but it died back last winter and came back this spring, so maybe I can do it again this year.

latest canning experience

So, here are those Cinnamon Cucumber Rings I mentioned in a previous post. I've tasted them, and they are ok... they do taste like a cinnamon apple ring. They are crisp, and sweet! I can't eat a whole one by itself... I'm going to see if people will actually try them at Thanksgiving. I had another run of these in large cucumbers, but they are so time consuming, I just didn't take the time to do another one this year. Maybe next year, when I'm finished with school!!

more canning

This...

...turns into this, with a little work. (Except that the beans don't miraculously come from tomatoes! Those were grown separately.)

That's probably the last of my beans, but I hope I've got more tomatoes coming before the season's through. More later!

garden update

I canned those Bread and Butter pickles I talked about, and I've started the process for the cinnamon cucumber pickles. I've got 5 pints of beans canning as we speak, will probably have enough over-ripe cukes for more cinnamon cucumber pickles, and I have a watermelon to dry. Oh yeah, and my tomatoes are coming in... I'm not sure I have enough to can, but they've got to be canned anyway! Things are slowing down... pumpkins will be next, and with any luck, some of our watermelons will actually be edible. Then we'll harvest the popcorn and sunflower seeds, and that'll be about it.

I'm getting a chest freezer at the end of the week. My freezer is jam-packed, and I'll need some more space for my pumpkins, when they're ready. Muchless anything else I might buy that needs to be frozen! Garden season is winding down, but there is still much to be done. Not to mention, we'll need to break up the ground again before winter comes, and whatever else we can do to make next spring easier. I'd love to have more of most everything, but I'm not sure that's very manageable. We'll see.

preserving the garden

As much as fresh garden veggies rock, having garden veggies throughout the year that you raised rocks more. And it keeps you from having to buy more veggies, which also rocks. This isn't a complete pictoral essay, but it's close enough. We've diversified a little in our preservation techniques, and so far, that has proven successful in terms of less wasted (ie, rotting) vegetables.

Here is a portion of my shredded zucchini. This is really only about 4 or 5 large zucchinis, but I have about 20 2-cup bags... ready to thaw and make zucchini bread with. I like convenience, and it doesn't get any better than custom-packaged garden veggies!

My corn never does well... I have no idea why. Maybe I plant to few plants? I've tried planting in rows and blocks, and neither seem to do well. Everybody can grow corn... except for me! Here are the first two ears of the year... believe it or not, their appearance is far superior to most of our other ears of corn in past years! These didn't get preserved... but went straight to the plate... yum!

Here's some more of that zucchini. Alpine bought a food dehydrator to try since we had so much zucchini, in the hopes that we would waste less with rot. He should have bought that dehydrator a long time ago... it's the best thing since sliced bread! We sliced the zucchini and gave it a very quick steam blanching...

...then placed the slices on the dehydrator trays, set the temp, and turned it on.

This particular model came with 4 trays, but can be expanded to 30 trays! It does really well... depending on how thick you slice it, the zucchini is fully dried in about 5 to 12 hours.

Alpine has helped me pick smaller cucmbers this year, but we've still got a lot of large ones. So far, I've canned 14 pints of dill pickles with the smaller ones. I need just a handful more to make some bread and butter pickles next. Then I'm going to try some Cinnamon Cucumber Pickles (yeah, yeah... sounds gross, I know!), but I've got cucumbers that will otherwise go to waste!

I've gotten 16 pints out of my beans so far... I'm hoping I can get more out of the garden before they stop producing. At the very least, I'm sure I'll get a few more servings to string up and dry, making "leather britches."

Tomatoes are yet to come... but once they come in, there will be plenty of canning to do!

garden news

I planted my garden late this year because of my trip to Alaska. Normally, my garden should "come in" during that time frame, and I didn't want to lose it all! Alpine helped me a lot this year, and our garden looked really good because of it! Everything that grew has grown huge... some of it is starting to die back now, so it's not as pretty and green, but nevertheless, here's a sampling of our wonderful garden:



It started with a broadfork and a hoe...











... and ended with some good fruit!

beans

pumpkins

zucchini


tomatoes

cucumbers

popcorn and sweet corn

sunflowers

pretty morning glory weeds