Garden? What garden?

Yes, I planted a few things this year.  I even spent a few hours out there pulling weeds and trying to clean things up.  Little good that did me.

When people ask me how my garden is doing this year I just tell them that the weeds are growing great!  I will give credit where credit is due… the guineas and chickens have done an incredible job on the bugs this year!  Last year I had ONE summer squash because the squash beetles killed the plant before it had much of a chance to do anything.  The same thing happened to the winter squash and cucumbers.  The eggplants last year were killed early on by flea beetles because I never got them covered with Remay. 

This year is a different story!  The eggplants were covered early with Remay, then it was blown off but the plants were large and healthy enough to withstand the flea beetle onslaught and they’re still going strong.  I’ve got some small eggplants growing happily and can’t wait for the first eggplant parmesan of the summer!  I have seen only ONE lonely Japanese beetle this year!!!  The two winter squash plants are growing like crazy and taking over everything in their path.  The summer squash plants are also going nuts and are covered in flowers.  I’ve picked a few squash already and tried something a little new last night.  Cut the squash in half, spoon out the seeds, fill with pepper jack cheese, italian bread crumbs, and chopped tomato.  Sprinkle with garlic salt and drizzle with olive oil.  Put in the toaster oven at 350.  YUM!

I cut way back on the tomatoes this year and only planted a few of each variety that were tried and true in my garden in years past.  I didn’t get the cages planted well enough and they keep blowing over in storms.  I’ve given up on them since I rarely get out to the garden more than once or twice a week (remember when it used to be every day, sometimes more than once?  Those were the good ol’ days!).

At least my Donkey crop is doing well this year.

Signs of Spring

Everyone else can watch for Robins in their yards, but I have a whole different set of signs that indicate Spring is on it’s way.

Like the Bronze Fennel,

 

garlic,

 

bee balm,

 

and Oregano that’s starting to grow.

 

And Stormy, preferring to bask in the sun, rather than snooze on the couch. Please note the fat rolls.  This dog has been a complete couch potato for months.  I’m hoping with the warm weather she’ll be a little more motivated to watch her girlish figure.

 

 

But the surest sign that Spring is near?

 

Being able to go barefoot all day. :)

Salsify

I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how I was really uninterested in gardening this year.  How the seed catalogs with their beautiful pictures have been calling my name, but I haven’t even looked through them yet.

That all changed today.  Glenn called this morning to say he’d be home this afternoon after over a month on the road, and how he’d really like a home cooked meal tonight.   I mean, really.   Like if I didn’t have something cooked up for him when he got home, he’d get back in his truck and go to Anne’s house.  Or Elizabeth’s.  Until he found someone willing to cook for him. 

How rude.   Doesn’t he know that after that snow we got last night and all the slipping and sliding (and falling) I did while feeding this morning, the absolute last thing in the world I wanted to do today was cook?

I dusted off the crock pot, grabbed a meat bird that we had raised here on the farm this past summer, some onions, potatoes, a can of cream of mushroom soup, and some onion soup mix, then got to chopping.   As I was peeling the onions I was wondering what else I could throw in the mix.   I had some canned carrots from the garden, but wanted to save those as side dishes for other meals.  Then it hit me.  I had grown Salsify for the first time ever this year and had completely forgotten that it was still out in the garden.

Oops.

It’s 35 degrees out there, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing my hand shovel and heading out to the garden in a t-shirt to dig up Salsify.  I left the dogs napping peacefully in the house, but Major Tom and the guineas provided plenty of moral support while I was digging.  More than enough.  If those guineas ever shut up, I’ll probably think they’re dead.

Salsify roots are not much to look at, even after they’re cleaned.  They are much like small white carrots and you need to peel them to get rid of all those hairy roots.  Once they are cut or peeled, they brown quickly, so I didn’t get any pictures of the peeled roots.  I cleaned, peeled, and sliced one root at a time, then threw it in the pot.

 

 

Dinner is done.

I have never eaten Salsify before today, but I saved a few of the roots to slice and fry in a little butter and garlic for my lunch.  It was DELISH!   And how cool is it that I was eating fresh veggies from my Garden on December 31st??  I am now exited about gardening again!

Now where did I put those seed catalogs??

The Fall Garden

I had to break out the sweatshirts today.   And that’s all I’m saying about the incredible unfairness of Summer ending already.

Things are winding down in the garden now, too.  The butterfly weeds are going to seed and I foresee a jungle of pink flowers next year if even one tenth of the seeds germinate.

 

 

The butterfly weeds are also hosts to all sorts of bugs that I don’t want, but I’m happy to see them on the flowers instead of the veggies.

 

  

 

They also host some insects that I do want to encourage in my garden.

 

I would highly recommend planting butterfly weed in your own garden to encourage the beautiful Monarch butterfly to visit.  My plants are covered in these caterpillars, but not one is on the cabbage!

 

 

This is the Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge tomato that I planted for the first time this year.  It will probably also be the last year.  The plant is prolific, covered in standard-sized orange tomatoes, but the flavor isn’t anything to write home about and there’s just nothing exceptional about it.  Oh well, that leaves me more room for trying something new next year!

 

 

I’m sorry baby watermelon, but I really don’t think you have a chance in hell of growing to delicious maturity before frost hits.

 

 

I end this post with a happy Zinnia.

 

And an even happier butterfly.

Mater Madness

While most everyone else on the East coast has been hit by late blight, I have had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year.  I’ve been throwing them in ziplocs then into the freezer in hopes that I’ll get around to canning them sometime before 2010.   My basket last night was so heavy with tomatoes I barely managed to carry it into the house and my back thanked me for it most the night.

 

While I’m bragging about my tomato success and the rest of you are ready to beat me senseless, let me tell you about all the failures I’ve also had this year. 

My sweet bell pepper plants are beautiful!  Full, tall, luscious… and not one pepper or flower on the bunch.  Anyone need some nitrogen?  I seem to have more than enough.

My zucchinis and summer squash died shortly after flowering thanks to squash bugs. 

My cucumber plants didn’t make it three days after transplant.

My eggplants were swarmed by flea beetles before I got them covered with Remay and I’ll be lucky to get any fruits this year.

I’ve had three Pony Yellow watermelons so far, but the rest of my watermelon and melon plants are barely even flowering. 

My beautiful and plentiful garlic harvest was peed on by a senile Woogie as it was drying on the kitchen table.  I dare any of you to combine garlic and cat pee and take a nice deep whiff.   Hopefully, the bulbs aren’t ruined and I can plant them all next month without them still smelling like cat pee at harvest time.

I had planted the winter squash in a new garden this year and then never had time to keep it weeded.   Much to my dismay, there will not be any winter squash baked with maple syrup and brown sugar this year.

Glenn’s collards look like yellow lace thanks to all the bugs that the guineas are ignoring.  But hey, the chard and Tyfon Holland greens still look great and have a third crop ready for canning/freezing already.

The sweet corn did really well this year and I have never had such nice looking ears that have also been completely untouched by bugs.   The Litchi tomatoes and Pineapple tomatillos are also doing great, as are all the flowers I planted.  Except the Cosmos, which all decided to grow 7’ tall before flowering.  Again with the nitrogen!  You’d think I’d learn.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

Of course, I said that last year and a lot of good it did me.

Distraction

 

I love Monarda and hummingbird moths.  Put the two together and I can easily snap 100 pictures and not realize how much time has gone by and how many chores I’m not doing.

 

 

It was so worth it. :)

Companion Planting

 

What’s in there, you ask?  Beats me.  Bachelor buttons, fennel, baby corn, red chinese beans, lima beans, salsify, cosmos… and I really can’t remember what else I may have planted in there.  Nor can I find anything.  But since it all looks lush and green something must be going right.  Right?

The fun part of companion planting your garden is that there’s a surprise in every bed!  Just today I found a watermelon plant growing happily where I don’t remember planting one.  There’s a melon quickly filling in where the garlic was up until a few days ago, and my winter squash are merrily rambling their way up my sweet corn.

Do you use companion planting in your garden?  I started it years ago and have been playing around with different ideas about which plants are companions and which are antagonists.  Up until this year I knew one companion combination that absolutely rocked:  basil and tomatoes.   If you surround your maters with enough basil you will not have one single horn worm all season (and you’ll have enough pesto for a small army).  This year, I’ve found a new companion combo that seems to work:  potatoes and bush beans.    All the books that suggest this combination say not to interplant the beans with potatoes, but to surround the potato bed with the beans, or plant the two crops side by side. 

Since I knew I’d never get around to hilling my potatoes anyway, I just went ahead and planted the beans between the potato rows.  I had never planted potatoes before, but each year I have issues with these little furry yellow caterpillar beasts chowing down on my beans.  Not this year!  I had very few Colorado Potato beetles on my potatoes and I have yet to see any of those little yellow bean eaters! 

 

I’ve tried planting my corn and beans together, but have just not had much success.  The corn seemed stunted and it was a big pain to harvest the beans.

Time to share:  which plant combinations do you have experience with and which ones do you love?

Just a few of my favorite things

What are your favorite plants in your garden?  I’m not talking about tomato plants because let’s face it, we all love tomatoes.  If you don’t love tomatoes, you’re just weird.   I’m talking about the flower or herb that really floats your boat.  The one you can’t help but stop and admire or rub a leaf and inhale the fragrance.

I was trying to think of my favorites, but there are just way too many, especially when it comes to olfactory experience!  I love all my herbs equally and couldn’t live without any of them.  Walking through the garden and smelling the rosemary, thyme, basil, lemon balm, oregano, lavender, chocolate mint… it’s like a mini vacation from the day.

But just for you, I tried to narrow the list down a bit.

Basil has got to be my favorite herb.  Not only do the flowers entice bees to my garden, but the smell is heavenly and it’s awesome in the kitchen.  For sweet flavor I prefer the lime mint.  I could shove some leaves up my nose all day and be happy, but the plants themselves are boring.  They’re just a light colored green from stem to leaf to flower.  How much fun is that?  For a more savory flavor, my favorite has got to be the Siam Queen Thai basil.  Green leaves, purple stems and flowers, spicy basil flavor to die for.   And this is one basil where you don’t need to pinch back flowers.  Let it bloom, the flavor stays the same and the plant just keeps going. 

 

Then there’s the Opal basil.  Normal basil flavor, but man, what a  pretty package! 

 

Zinnias –  I love all the bright colors and the easy maintenance of the plants.  Not to mention they’re annuals, so won’t take over my garden beds like the catnip and lemon balm.

 

Nasturtiums – can’t live without them!  The peppery flavor of their leaves go great in salads, the different colored flowers are nice in small bouquets, and they are even said to repel some insects so make good companion plants for things like squash and cucumbers.  This year I planted a mixed variety called Alaska, which has variegated leaves and flowers ranging from pale salmon to this one, which is my favorite of the Nasturtium colors.

 

So those are my favorites, at least today.  How about you? 

Time to do a rain dance

It’s been so incredibly dry here the past two weeks.  My garden and pastures need rain so badly, but all we keep getting are hours of lightening and thunder followed by two drops of rain.  Everyone around us is getting rain, in fact my hay guy still hasn’t gotten all his hay cut because it’s been so wet at his place – 15 minutes away.  So when I had water left over from filling up the horse troughs today I backed the truck down to the garden and used a watering can to water everything.    It only took two hours.  Only.

Ack.

I looked back at the garden tour post from July 9th of last year, and now I’m terribly depressed.  My garden is so far behind this year, it just isn’t funny.   I haven’t had much time to weedeat around the beds, pull weeds, cover things with remay to protect from bugs, or fertilize with manure tea.  I’m lucky I got everything planted!

Oh wait… I didn’t get everything planted.  I have a flat of strawflowers and four more tomato plants that need a home. 

I say again, ACK.

I wanted to share with you my depressing garden so that you can all look at your own gardens and feel better about them.   I’m just selfless like that.

 

Just look at my poor pathetic corn and summer squash.  The squash bugs have already taken their toll and killed a few of the plants, the rest are starting to show the telltale wilt.

 

My sweet bell peppers were three times this size this time last year.

 

I sowed the fennel late, then the chickens were accidentally let into the garden by a visitor and they scratched up half the crop.

 

My potatoes are doing surprisingly well considering I have not hilled them up or covered them with remay and the potato beetles are having a grand time at the buffet.  I’m not expecting a big potato harvest, that’s for sure.

 

I will say one thing for this year’s garden – the soil must be ideal because I had so many thousands of volunteer plants that they were overwhelming the weeds in numbers.  Tomatoes, Pineapple Tomatillos, Litchi Tomatoes, Chamomile, lettuce, Shoofly plant, dill, melons, and Calendula have all made appearances throughout the garden, even in beds where they weren’t planted last year.  Even outside of the beds, where they will be whipped into submission by the weedeater.  Eventually. 

 

This is it for the carrots.  I actually sowed about 1,000 seeds before the garden fence went up, but the chickens took care of that crop for me.

 

Same with the kohlrabi and beets.  I think I may have four kohlrabi seedlings slowly growing somewhere, and only a few more golden beets.

The good news, is that this is the first year I’ve ever grown cabbage and so far, so good.

 

Out of the billion or so Litchi tomato seedlings that came up this year, I left three.  The potato beetles and flea beetles are doing their best, but it just isn’t enough to stop these thorny beasts. 

 

 

Oh, and more bad news.  It’s time to break out the canner already.  The collards and chard are calling to me.   I’m really not ready to start canning yet.  Honestly, I’m not.

 

 

Oh well.  As depressing as the garden is, at least I always have my little buddy to cheer me up and keep me company.

 

That’s a face only a mother could love!

More Garden Porn

Glenn came home from the road late Monday night and has been home all week.  It’s been nice having him home, but he hasn’t accomplished much of his honey-do list during the week, so I have to put him to work this weekend.  We started by trimming more feet after morning feed today, then hauled Genesis to Anastasia’s for pony training.  

Anastasia then forced us to sacrifice part of our day to mosey through her gardens while munching on handfuls of sugar snap peas fresh from the vine.

It was torture.  Honest.

 

 

 

Anastasia will be writing about training Genesis over on Training the Unwanted again this year, so be sure check it out.  Believe it or not, Genesis is even more laid back than Hunter.  Her training should be fairly uneventful, but fun nonetheless!

Garden Porn

 

 

 

 

New Camera Fun

I have been busier than a puppy with two peters this weekend.  I feel like most of my time has been spent running hither and thither picking up this, buying more of that.  Fence posts, feed, straw for the garden, lumber to build the feed bin I’ve been wanting for months, square bales for my old fogies, more hay rolls for the rest of the herd, etc.  Of course, all of those errands are in separate directions, so combining a trip isn’t always efficient.  Poor Bessie has been getting quite the workout this weekend!  By the time I get home at night and take the hour and a half necessary to feed all the horses, I’ve been falling into bed around 10:30.  Forget dinner, who needs to eat? 

Today I actually got home early and had a couple of hours to walk around the yard after the thunderstorm and play with the new camera.  So here I am, sharing again.  Please don’t hate me if you have dial-up.

I love the macro feature on this camera.

 

This is a forgotten onion from last year.  Yay for seeds!

 

 

I really don’t know what it is, but I could spend all day taking pictures of chickens.   They look so fluffy and soft and they’re so photogenic.

 

Especially the baby ones.

 

 

 

I’m pretty sure Megalia, like most women, would not appreciate me putting this picture on the blog.   Butt shot on a bad hair day with her tongue sticking out.. enough said? 

 

 

Have a great week ya’ll!