June 17, 2010: The Mid-June Garden (part 1)

This weather is unbelievable! Our normal temperature for June 16 is 83F. Yesterday it only got up to 69F. Our low temperature should be around 55F, or even higher, and it dropped to 49F. The past two mornings the furnace has been running when I awakened, where normally I'd have my windows open at night to cool the house. My tomatoes will never ripen in this weather.

Speaking of tomatoes, look what I discovered smack dab in the middle of my sugar snap peas yesterday.



I've no doubt it's a Juliet tomato, as that was the only one growing in that area last year, and I've been hoeing out the volunteers for weeks. This one escaped me, and she's over two feet high, so I think I'll let her live.



Here is another volunteer that will get a chance for life this year. I'm hoping it is the child of Interpretive Dance. Please, do click on that link to read about Interpretive Dance. She was such a valiant and brave little Green Grape tomato, who overcame great odds to survive. When I left for Arizona last October, she hadn't yet given me any tomatoes, and she was suffering from a lot of frost damage, but I was too busy to bother ripping her out and disposing of her. When I returned home this March, there was Interpretive Dance, still clinging to the fence in death. I said a final farewell, and ripped her out by her roots. As I tore her free from the land, three little squishy tomatoes fell to the ground from her dead body. Interpretive Dance had lived, and she had given birth to fruit! Now a volunteer has grown in her place, and I am protecting it with my life. Well, I'm actually protecting it with a tomato cage and a loop of the garden hose, but I am protecting it, non the less. Please, let this be her child and not the offspring of the nearby cherry tomato that was healthy and productive and absolutely tasteless.


Elsewhere in the garden......

The Little Marvel peas are loving the cool weather.
I still haven't picked any, but they're getting close.


I've recently shown you my two main lettuce beds, with their lattice shade structures, but I haven't shown much of this lettuce patch that grows in the shade of my indeterminate tomatoes. Most of the front row has been harvested, and a triple row of carrots has been seeded in their place. This is why I grow my tomatoes in buckets. If they were planted directly into the bed, there wouldn't be room to grow crops on either side of them. This 4' wide bed has a double row of bush beans on the other side of the tomato buckets, so I'm getting a lot of food from a small space. Lettuce varieties in this bed are Buttercrunch and Austrian Red in the back row, and Anuenue in the front row, next to the carrots.


A closer look at Austrian Red and Anuenue. Except now that I look at the photo, I think just the one on the left is Anuenue and the next two are Buttercrunch. This bed was attacked by birds early on, and some of the lettuces had to be replaced with new seedlings. Only three of my Anuenue seeds germinated, and I vaguely remember only one surviving. I'll have to make sure I harvest that one head for a taste test, before it bolts. I was hoping I could leave some in the garden to see how long it would grow before bolting.


On the other side of the indeterminate tomato bed, the Contender bush beans are blossoming, and tiny beans are forming. All four tomato plants have blossoms, and I noticed a small tomato on the Cherokee Purple yesterday. The ugly green buckets, that the tomatoes are growing in, aren't even visible any more. If we'd get a few days of warm weather, the entire tomato structure would probably be hidden by foliage. In the background, one of the three barrel containers of corn is growing taller.


These indeterminate tomatoes, growing behind the garden shed, are also doing very well. They don't get quite as much sun as the ones in the raised bed, so they are just a little bit behind in maturity. This area was unplanted last year, except for a volunteer cherry tomato, and enriched with leaves, pine needles and grass clippings. The compost barrel also sat back here, and that's where the volunteer squash in the foreground came from. I'm hoping it's a yellow crookneck. I think that was the only kind of squash that got composted.

Here's "Tomato Row", with its five pots of tomatoes, four of which are dwarf varieties. This area of the garden was fenced last year, but I removed the fencing for easier access this year. I was going to pull the fence posts, but decided they'd be good for securing these bottomless pots of tomatoes. Mr. Granny has managed to hit only one of the pots with his lawn mower so far. Minor damage to the pot, none to the plant. The dwarf plants are so pretty! They are stocky, with really thick dark green leaves, unlike the plant in the front pot, which is a determinate tomato, but not a dwarf variety.

Again, the dwarf varieties seem to take very well to pots, even these that have their bottoms intact. Soon this ugly green bucket should be hidden by the leaves of the nearby zucchini plants.


The Black Beauty zucchini is growing well and blossoming, although all the blossoms are male. Already I've detected a bit of powdery mildew on these leaves, so I gave them a good spray of diluted milk yesterday.


This Grey Zucchini is definitely under performing, and already covered with powdery mildew. It was terribly susceptible to it last year also. I gave it a good spray of the diluted milk too, but I'm thinking I'll probably just pull it and plant another Black Beauty here. You can see the large leaf of the other plant to the right for a size comparison.

June 16, 2010: Danger In the Garden

Sometimes it's scary to go into the garden!

See the big tree in Pat's Yard? That is one of her English walnut trees, and this one happens to hang over the "seating" area in my garden. At my request, she had two very large dead branches removed a couple of weeks ago, but there is still a huge area of dead wood right above the kennel. It's not only dead branches I find in the garden......

Unfortunately, on almost a daily basis, I find something like this. This large branch was laying atop the park bench. I'm sure glad I wasn't sitting on it at the time it fell! The red handled clippers are in the photo for size comparison. It wasn't windy, and the branch was definitely broken (not cut), so I can only assume the squirrels were getting too frisky and snapped it off. Gardening can be dangerous, I tell ya!

Last night's garden dinner was so good. We just had a large stir fry of pork, garden veggies and noodles, served with a lettuce salad with ranch dressing and a bit of crumbled bacon.

All the veggies were fresh from the garden, except the red peppers, which were frozen from last year's garden.

The finished dish.

June 15, 2010: Goodbye *sniffle*

Oh, I'm not going anywhere! I'm just saying goodbye to my dear 1999 Chrysler Intrepid, the car I've driven and loved dearly for eleven years. Mr. Granny finally broke me down, and I bought a new car yesterday. New to me, that is. It's actually lightly used, because I'm too cheap....er, frugal to take that big hit for the first year's depreciation.

I've been trying out cars for the past month. I had my heart set on a Hyundai Elantra Touring, but the only used one I could find didn't handle well on the highway at all. It was a 2010, just 6 months old, and already needed a front end alignment. After a month of trying to deal with the Hyundai salesman, who wasn't the brightest star in the sky, I gave up and started looking elsewhere. Nothing drove as well, or was as comfortable as my old car, and nobody (meaning Mr. Granny) could convince me to part with good $$$ for something worse than what I had! Then I drove the Chevy Malibu, and I budged.

So goodbye to.....

The Intrepid

And hello to ......

The Malibu

Kelly was asking if Annie and Otto were digging the new car. They haven't ridden in it yet. I'm going to buy a couple of comfy throws for the back seat before they get a ride. Annie tends to barf every time she gets in a car, but she loves to go bye-bye!

Now, back to gardening. Look at what I just harvested for tonight's stir fry! I'll add some of my frozen red bell peppers and the meat from a couple of pork chops, and toss it with noodles.

Tuesday's stir-fry ingredients, fresh from the garden.

June 14, 2010: Harvest Monday

For the week of June 7-13

Harvested:

6 oz. strawberries
18 oz. raspberries
12 oz. spinach
2 oz. shallots
2-1/2 oz. sugar snap peas
122 oz. lettuce
43 oz. onions
24 oz. carrots
sprig of dill

229.5 oz = 14.3475 lb. for the week

49.218 lb. year to date

*Daphne's Dandelions is our host for Harvest Monday*

This week I harvested lettuce.

And more lettuce.

Onions, carrots and shallots.

And more lettuce.

Raspberries.

Carrots and the first three sugar snap peas.

More carrots and more sugar snap peas.

And more lettuce. A lot more lettuce.

One head of Summer Crisp completely filled the laundry basket, and weighed nearly 1-1/2 pounds. It was still sweet and crisp, but I lost some of the large outer leaves to slug damage.

The Red Sails is also getting huge, but showing no signs of bolting or bitterness.

Along with the Summer Crisp and the Red Sails, I had two bunches of Red Romaine and two of another (unknown) variety. This made for an overflowing basket full of lettuce!

Some of the smaller onions. They are too large to call "salad onions", but too small for drying. They're a really good size for just about any way I want to use them.

The onions would be so perfect if it weren't for the wire worms in the soil. Four of these six onions had some damage. It's just one tiny hole in each, and it doesn't go deep, but it takes away from the perfection.



Consumed

sweet pickle relish (2009)
dill pickle relish (2009)
baby spinach
sweet red peppers (freezer, 2009),
home canned pizza sauce (2009).
home made ketchup (2009)
raspberries
radishes
lettuce
strawberries
carrots
shallots
sugar snap peas
onions
home canned pickles (2009)
home canned pickled beets (2009)
peach jam (2009)
dill


The last of the spinach made a delicious spinach and strawberry salad with a
balsamic vinegar/oil/sugar dressing.


Home made pizza used pizza sauce (home made 2009), sweet pepper strips from the freezer (2009) and onions from this year's garden.


Observations:

Taste test of Chantenay Organic and Ingot carrots: both were crisp and sweet, Chantenay maybe a bit sweeter than Ingot, but needed to be scraped due to so many "hairy" roots. Short 'n Sweet carrots didn't live up to their name. They aren't terribly short, and not nearly as sweet as the other two varieties.
.
6/12 Summer is here, it's 91.3F in the shade. I should have put something on the west side of the lettuce beds for late afternoon shade.

The Black Beauty zucchini is blossoming, but all are male blossoms.


General Gardening:

6/8 Constructed shade tops for lettuce beds.

6/8 Mowed with push mower, to collect grass clippings for garden.

6/8 Tied on horizontal supports for peppers.

6/8 Fertilized garden peppers with 10-10-10, then added a 1" layer of grass clippings. Even with all the rain we've had, the raised beds dry out very quickly.

6/9 Pulled bolting spinach and planted bush beans in its place. Hesitated to do so, as that area of the bed is surrounded on three sides by onions, which are supposed to be bad for the beans.

6/11 Moved large pot of blossoming cilantro, but roots had grown through the bottom of the pot and the plant died.


Poor, wilted cilantro.


Other

While trying to show Mr. Granny the first tiny Sungold tomato, I broke it off :-(

Neighbor, Pat, bought me a motion sensor owl for the garden, so I hung it over the peas to deter birds and squirrels. It goes "hoo-hoo-hoo" when something passes near it, but today its hoo-hoo got stuck, so I had to turn it off.


You really haven't lived until your hoo-hoo gets stuck!

June 12, 2010: Humor Me

About once a year, I just have to do a "humor me" post. It has nothing to do with gardens, nothing to do with cooking, it's very long and might be really boring to many of you...but humor me.

My last "Humor Me" post was about my dog, Otto, and his obsession with a bone. This one is about my granddaughter, Alicia. Alicia was born in 1994, and between the ages of three and five she was such a character, I started keeping a journal of some of the things she said. Last night I was looking through the journal, and I hope you will laugh as hard as I did when you read a few excerpts.

July 14, 1997

* Hoppa=Grandpa

Alicia was in the bedroom watching TV yesterday, when she yelled at Amy (in the kitchen)...
"MOM! Hoppa has little balls just like the guy on TV!!"
Amy, in a panic, ran into the bedroom. Alicia was watching golf!


September 1997

Shayna: "My name is NOT Shane...it's SHAYna" (pregnant pause)
Alicia: "My name is NOT Weeshie...it's uhWEEsha!"

"Gwandma, my bottom hurts."
" Where does it hurt, sweetheart?"
(A look like "How stupid can you be?") " In my butt cwack, Gwandma."


October 5 1997

Her Mom and Dad were fighting. Daddy asked Alicia if she was mad at him too. Alicia replied "I don't like it when you get on my Mom's nerds".


Oct 31. 1997

Alicia told Amy "Hoppa knocked out Grandma’s teeth, but she put them back in with toothpicks."

What she didn’t tell Amy was that Hoppa and Grandma were carving a pumpkin, and Hoppa slipped and cut the teeth out of the Jack-O-Lantern, but Grandma stuck them back in with toothpicks.


Nov 18, 1997

Tonight Amy said "Alicia...I don't like the way you're acting!"
Alicia replied "I'm not acting. This is me".


November 22, 1997

You wait with anticipation, wondering when...if...the day will come. And it comes, at last. That beautiful, wonderful child looks at you, her eyes gleaming with pride, a lovely smile on her glorious face, she says.....

"Grandma.............................................................. I ate my boogers!"



April 25, 1998

I think next week I'll plant an antelope on the compost pile in Alicia's secret garden. She just LOVES antelope! It's her favorite kind of melon.



May 28, 1998

Alicia has a cold...she asked me for nose papers (Kleenex). That's almost as good as her definition for tampons (toilet sticks) and sanitary napkins (big-girl diapers).



July 30, 1998

Grandpa was checking out the battery on the motor home. He had it running, and was standing in front of it, when Alicia got in, crawled up into the driver's seat and proceeded to turn the steering wheel. The tires came off the leveling boards with a "thunk", and Grandpa panicked and sliced his finger on the door trying to get to Alicia. Alicia screamed for an hour because Grampy was bleeding and she thought she had run over him...nothing would convince her otherwise. Good thing she didn't put it in gear or she WOULD have run over Grampy and right into the living room.


August 8, 1998 (After a week on the Oregon coast, in the motor home, with Alicia and her 8-year-old cousin, Shayna)

Shayna was very good (if you don't count the time she shut the bedroom door and changed the TV from Disney to HBO and naked people). Alicia was...well, Alicia. She is either extremely good or extremely bad, nothing in between. To start with, she really doesn't like Shayna. Add that to not really wanting to share her grandparents with ANYONE.

For instance: we stood in front of the viewing window for nearly an hour waiting for Keiko to appear. The girls were up at the front railing, I was a couple rows behind. Suddenly I hear Alicia yelling at Shayna, I look...Alicia has her arms and legs spread across the railing so Shayna can't stand there. I ask why, she tells me "I don't want Shayna to look at Keiko". She is insistent and persistent, I am mad. I try to drag her off the rail, she throws herself on the ground and has a tantrum. I cannot spank in front of 200 people, so I pinch her in the side (no one can scream "child abuse" 'cause they saw NOTHING). I pinch and mutter threats to her under my breath until she finally behaves.

All goes well until it is time to leave. I had taught the girls that if they didn't duck down and weave their way through the legs of the big people to get up front, they would see nothing at the aquarium. Alicia got so good at it she'd be hanging over the front railings before you could say "fish". Unfortunately, it also worked for getting OUT of the crowds. As we left the Keiko viewing area, Alicia ducked down and headed for the doorway...the ENTRANCE. I was trying to drag Shayna behind me and go the wrong way into the crowd to catch her, but a worker stopped me and made me turn around. I told him he'd better catch that kid up there then, or there would be hell to pay...he headed out that direction, I went out the exit, and he finally caught up to her and brought her back to me.

Alicia was quite docile the rest of the day, but kept bringing up the fact that Grandma lost her at Free Willy.


Alicia stomped up the aisle of the motor home, glaring at Shayna who was sitting up front. I asked Alicia what she was doing. Alicia replied "I'm going to cut off her tail with a carving knife". I have no doubt she would have done just that if she'd had the carving knife.


When asked "Who wants to go to the Zoo?"....Shayna says "Me!" Alicia says "I'm not going." "I don't want to." "Because I'm a brat."

We didn't go.

It's nice to be home.

Letters from Alicia to Grandma and Grandpa, who were spending the winter in Arizona:

February 1999

Dear Grammy,
I miss you a lot. Have a great time, but actually I want to see you much, and I want you to meet my new friend Austin.

I wish you could come home now...right now...sooner. I wish you could come soon to my house. I miss you dear Grandma.

I never sent you a letter, but I am now, so I miss you very, very, very much, so much. And I would like to see everyone I know today like my Grandma and Grandpa, but I can’t because my Mom doesn’t want to go that far, but I love you.

Alicia



Dear Grampy,

I love you much, but I want you to bring Grandma home, and when it’s Christmas again I’ll send you a present, but I really can’t tell you because it’s a surprise. I miss you very good, and I want you to send me a letter, but I also want you to send me a picture of a girl deer, and her name should be "Felice".

Hey, Grandpa, when I grow up I’m going to buy you a pretty table, and it’ll be dark pink. I love you dear Grandpa.
The end.


And a second letter......

Dear Grammy,
I love you so much, but I want you to come back today...for real I do. And I want to sing this song to you. (She’s singing the Barney "I Love You" song...Amy)

I miss you very good. And I’m happy you went over there, but I didn’t want you to stay that long, but I still love you anyways.

I got my hair cut real short, but don’t get mad, because my Mom did it on accident, but I still think you should like it.

I love you Grandma...you’re so pretty, but I miss you.

I ate basgetti today...it was very good...you should try it. When you come back from Arizonia you should come to my house and I’ll tell my Mom to make some for you. OK.

My voice is getting tired, but I love you.

The very end.
I love you dear Grandma.


Dear Grampy,

I love you! Bring Grammy home. I’m moving to a different place, but please don’t be mad. I’ll tell you where it is, OK? I can even ride my bike there. (OK Mommy, you write the rest.)


March 1999

Amy: "Alicia, let's go to the dam to see the fish."
Alicia: "I can't. I can't say that."
Amy: "Alicia, it's alright to say 'dam' when you're talking about the place to watch fish."
Alicia: "No, I can't go because I'm not supposed to say that."
Amy: "Alicia, I said it's OK to say 'dam' as long as you're talking about the fish place."
Alicia (long pause): "Oh, all right then...let's go to the damn fish place!."


Amy was reading Alicia a story from "Bugs Life". One section was a page from a diary. Amy asked "You know what a diary is, don't you?" Alicia, giggling and blushing replied "Ye-e-e-s....it's when you poop a lot."


May 1999

Alicia and Amy were playing in the park when Alicia suddenly had an attack of diarrhea. Amy grabbed her and ran across the street to a service station restroom, where Alicia announced "I don't have to go now, Mom....I just have to wipe."


Last night Alicia was sitting on my lap in the rocking chair. We were watching TV and she was in such a lovey mood..kept hugging my head and telling me how much she loved me. After a while she had to go to the bathroom, so she got up and left the room. A minute later I hear ....

"Grandma...come here and give me a kiss."
"What?" I reply.
"Come here and give me a kiss", she says.
"On the toilet?" I ask.
"Nooo......on the LIPS."


June 7, 1999

Well, I just ate the last applesauce bar. They were delicious, but I had to eat the entire panful by myself (I hate it when that happens). Alicia was very excited that I was going to make applesauce bars from some of the applesauce that she won at her school picnic. She came over the day I baked them and I asked her if she wanted one...she said "Yes", so I cut her a good sized square. She just sat and looked at it. I finally said "Alicia, why don't you take a bite?" and she replied "I wanted an applesauce bar." I said "That IS an applesauce bar." She gave my that 'how-dumb-can-you-be' look and replied "But Grandma, it's not cold, and where's the stick?" She had expected applesauce bars to be like ice cream bars!


Alicia went for a long bicycle ride with her mother today. After a while she yelled "Hey, Mom...can you feel your fat getting skinnier? Because I sure can!"


July 6, 1999

Grandpa took Alicia to the park while I ran around all day. They took their bikes, rode by the river, threw rocks into the water, fed bread to the gulls and scavenged for bird feathers to put on the blow-away-soon.

Did I tell you about Blow Away Soon? It's a book I got at the library last week, and she loves it. It's about an Indian girl who lives with her grandmother. They walk up the hill and build a blow-away-soon so "the wind she can take what she wants, but she leaves the very important things behind", so the grandmother will be here for a good long time. Well...the story just moves Alicia to tears. By the end of it she's clinging to me all misty eyed, so we had to round up some rocks and build a blow-away-soon in the back yard.

We haven't had a lick of wind here all week, but yesterday Alicia put rose petals on the blow-away-soon and just as she stepped back, she said "Here she comes, Grandma" and sure enough, a little gust of wind blew the rose petals away. Today she took out the bird feathers to give to the wind. She placed them carefully on the blow-away-soon and stepped back. Yep...a little puff of wind appeared just at that moment. Hey...who am I to doubt??? I guess it just takes faith.


And my very favorite line in the entire journal....................

"When I get old I’m gonna look like Grandma....some people are still alive when they get that old!"

June 11, 2010: It's a "B" Day

It was a Beautiful morning, and I was out picking a Bowl full of Berries.....

A soup Bowl nearly full, a whole 8 ounces!

....when I heard Baby Bird chirps coming from the Birdhouse in the Berry patch.

You can't see them, they're in too deep, but just listen to these little guys!

As I left the garden, I heard Annie and Otto Barking loudly. I looked to see what all the ruckus was about, and they had "treed" a squirrel up the utility pole.

That little fellow was really Bickering with those pups!

Before I came Back to the house, I checked on the Broccoli.

It's getting pretty Big now, so it won't Be long!

Oh, yeah. I spotted the first Lady Bug of the year.

She was just Basking in the warm sun.

OK, that was silly. I'll just stop now.

June 10, 2010: Erin Showed Me Hers!

Yes, Erin showed me her composter, so I'll show her (and you) mine.

Pitiful, isn't it? I've never hidden the fact that I'm a failure at composting. When we moved to town, and my garden went from about a quarter acre down to maybe 15' x 25', and I no longer had a nice neighbor who raised horses and brought me pickup loads of straw and poop when she cleaned out her stalls, I bought this black monster from the county. They were selling them for something like $5 to get more people interested in composting. So it's had over twenty years of use, and has made exactly one good load of compost for me in all that time. That was last year, when I filled it with chopped leaves from my neighbor's yard mixed with my grass clippings. The top half broke several years ago, so Mr. Granny drilled a few holes on either side of the break and wired it together. It was warped enough that the top and bottom wouldn't fit together, but the lid fit so tightly I had to break it off with a hammer last fall.

I told Erin I'd thrown the top away, but I lied. Well, I didn't exactly lie, but I forgot. The top is sitting inside the bottom. I think the idea was that I could slip the bottom off of the top, then turn the contents into it. Of course, it may be a while before anything needs turning, as this is the only dry spot in my yard and I've neglected to remove the lid so the rain could saturate the pile. And my hose doesn't reach.

So there ya go, Erin. ;-)

It's a good thing I'm a better gardener than I am a composter. I had just pulled all the bolting spinach and was planting bush beans in its place this morning, when my neighbor's yard man came to the fence and told me I had a very lovely garden. That made my day, so when he left I ran for my camera and went over to Pat's yard to take a new photo from her perspective.

You can click on the photo for a larger version.

While I was at Pat's, she hollered out at me, asking if we'd had a bad windstorm last night. I said no, but we'd had lots of rain, with some thunder and lightning. She said "Look at the tree out back"....so I looked.

Sure enough, her old mulberry tree was down.

It wasn't the wind, it was the rot. There wasn't a bit of fresh wood showing where it was broken, just old black rot. It's probably a good thing it went down in the night, as her great-grandchildren play back there a lot, and it could have fallen on somebody.

Back in my garden, I checked on the peppers.

I had given them a bit of fertilizer, then wove a few little bamboo stakes horizontally, for extra support when they get larger. Then I watered them deeply, and put about an inch of grass clippings mulch around them. These raised beds dry out so quickly, you'd never have known we had a rainstorm the previous night.

Then I checked on the snap peas, which have finally begun to bloom.

It doesn't look like I'll get a huge harvest of these Sugar Lace peas, the germination was probably just over 50%, but I will get some! This variety bears the pods way up on top of the vine, so they will be easier to see and pick.

Of course, it wouldn't be a trip to the garden if I didn't bring back some more lettuce. I'm trying to harvest one of the rows behind my tomatoes in the north garden, so I can replace it with carrots.


One huge head and one smaller one came out, and made enough room for carrot planting tomorrow.


After it was all trimmed, washed and spun dry, I had another 14 ounces of lettuce to put in the refrigerator. But not in the same crisper as......


The four one-gallon bags of washed, trimmed and spun dry lettuce that were already jammed in there.

Back out to the garden to find something else for dinner.


I pulled some of the "small" Walla Walla sweet onions, a few carrots, and the first of the shallots. I didn't think I was going to get shallots this year. When I checked them last March, they looked all mushy and slimy, but I dug them up and moved them to another part of the garden, and they really took off. This bunch was about half of what came from one small bulb, so it looks like I'm going to get a really good harvest from them after all!


Everything got washed, trimmed, weighed and bagged for tonight's dinner. So what did we do? We went out for 12" Subway sandwiches this afternoon, so we just had a snack (with a large salad) this evening. This harvest will feed us at our next dinner, and I'm salivating for a big pan of sauteed onions.