Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello again!  Well, here we are...Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2011.  Lois and I have tons of stuff to be thankful for - each other, our home, our friends, our health and so much more. Not surprisingly, we also are thankful for our garden, which gave us so much bounty over the past nearly nine months. And the bounty continues, if only in a small way, as we brought in some fresh sugar snap peas this morning from the garden. That's right...we still have peas coming in on November 24. This is the very latest, by at least three weeks, that we've ever had something fresh to pick from the garden. We've had no hard freeze yet in the city, but I would suspect that many areas out in the county probably have. The picture below was taken yesterday when we got a sudden and short lived break in the clouds at mid-morning.

                                               Sugar snap peas on 11/23/11

We froze quite a bit of what we grew and some will be served tonight - the green beans in the g. b. casserole,  and the fresh peas on the salad. We used much of the zucchini to make and freeze the "Poor Man's Crab Cakes" and have 34 pounds of tomatoes frozen for soups, sauces, and stewed tomatoes, etc. (but not on tonight's menu). The only thing we canned this year was green tomato relish. I can't say we miss canning - the vacuum freeze system we have makes life a whole lot simpler. And, of course, some of the berries went into making ice cream. And speaking of berries, the raspberries are still producing small amounts. I picked a fresh handful just a few days ago.

                                      The small freezer we use for tomatoes.

Of course, I can't neglect to be thankful for Little Squirrel who provides constant entertainment with the antics she goes through to let us know she wants more peanuts. She did everything but knock on the kitchen door yesterday and only got out of the way when I opened it. She also climbs to the kitchen window sill, sits up on her haunches, chatters a bit and stares at us. The blue jays are gorgeous to watch, but certainly aren't as social as Little Squirrel.

                                       Little Squirrel waits for a peanut

 We've already begun planning next year's garden. We'll be using spaces then that we haven't used in the past to grow vegetables. And we really have to wait to see whether the cherry tree decides to produce ripe fruit....because if it doesn't, we're going to have to do what a young George Washington did to his!

Again, Happy Thanksgiving!

The End of Our Gardening Year

I hung on as long as possible, but finally gave in to the fact that the 2011 gardening season is over. It was a long run, though. On Feb. 17, the temperature in Lancaster was 71f  which got me outside to fertilize the asparagus patch and spread black plastic in between the rows to help the ground heat up a little earlier. We started the lettuce seeds in peat pots on March 2 and bought/planted some starter lettuce plants directly in the garden on March 15. The first asparagus came in on April 20 and the first lettuce picked on April 22.  April was very wet, though, with 17 days of at least some rain. July was blistering hot which caused some loss in the blackberry production. The last of the harvest came in when we picked the broccoli on November 11. The total produce for the season came to 313 pounds with the most productive week being August 8 - 15 counting for 62 pounds.

We're planning some changes for next year. Our experiment with the county park plot was definitely a one time only effort. The soil is poor, full of weed seed, and the area attracts an incredible number of squash and stink bugs. The 5 plots closest to ours were all abandoned and overgrown by mid-July. We will change one of our backyard beds from flowers to butternut squash, grow the pole beans in a different area and so on. In 2010, we had a total of 312 pounds of produce, so the loss of the park plot wont affect total yield.

In just over 3 months, we will be starting the 2012 garden. I CAN'T wait!

A Zucchini Disaster, & Et Cetera

Hello again!  Well, it was another good gardening weather week.  Not everything was exactly perfect, however.  Some weeks ago, a squirrel got into the garden and munched on the yellow zucchini blossoms. Normally, this doesn't present a great problem.  Usually, if left alone, the flowers shrivel, rot, get icky and fall off the fruit. And, usually, when the squirrels get in there, they munch the bloom off and do not harm the fruit....so it's not a really big issue. This time, however, the little critter picked on the  heirloom plant. The flowers are a little smaller and the fruits are a little slower to develop than on the hybrids.

So, the squirrel gets to the blossoms but chews right on through and eats the tiny fruit. This set up a an unforeseen situation while the young stem was still very close to the center of the plant. It continued to grow, but with no gravitational pull from developing squash, the plant grew upright. I had been watching the situation thinking the next set of flowers/fruit would slowly pull the stem to earth. I stuffed wads of bird netting near the center of the plant to discourage the squirrel.

And then Mother Nature entered the scene. On Friday (July 8) we had a late afternoon thunderstorm...lots of rain, wind, and lightning. After the storm, I ventured out to look for any damage. The rain and wind had brought the plant very abruptly to earth. The zucchini had snapped in half near the base.  There was nothing to do but remove it and start another one. I'm now hoping for bright yellow zucchinis in September! I had already removed some of the damaged plant before I took this picture.

Below is a shot of another type of gourd in our county park plot. We're not sure if it's a Chinese Bottle gourd, or a Birdhouse gourd. It's been fun and surprising to see the gourds grow since it's our first experience with them.

The pumpkin is beginning to ripen as you can see below. A foot or so along the stem is another one that is about half that size. I'm guessing this one is in the 6 or 7 pound range.

Last week, I posted a picture of squash bug eggs which didn't show the color properly. This picture gives you a better idea what to look for on the underside of the squash plant leaves.

Below is our first picking of the pole beans. This batch is about two and a half pounds. This is our first experience with pole beans. We've picked more since then. The plants seem to be much more prolific than bush beans. We've pretty much decided that we will plant even more pole beans next year and forgo the bush variety. There are three types of beans shown - green, rattlesnake and purple. All turn green in a pot of hot water!

For those of you who don't see me on Facebook, the picture below is just another reminder to plant colorful flowers in and around your garden. The tiger swallowtail and bumble bee are just two of the many helper insects that pollinate your vegetable plants and increase your harvest.

I'll see you again soon. Thanks for stopping by. And best wishes for a bountiful July harvest!

Our County Park Plot

Hello again! This past week or 10 days the weather has been great for gardening here in Lancaster. All of our "home garden" plants are thriving....but sometimes it's hard to tell where the cucumber starts and the zucchini ends.  We don't have to pay as much attention to the Lancaster County Park garden plot due to the limited type of veggies we put in there. We do visit at least three to four times a week to water as needed, weed the areas that aren't covered with the weed mat and check for insect problems.  There have been a few surprises, though!

Hmmmm...We thought, from last year's experience, that the butternut squash plants would overrun the plot. Well, surprise!  The butternut has nothing on this ornamental gourd plant! The butternut doesn't even come close! The picture above was taken before July had even started....hmmmm. A picture of one of the fruits on this plant is shown below.

The "home grown" compost that we screened was quickly put to work last week. All of the plants in both home and county park gardens received a generous helping of our "backyard black gold". I have no doubt that all of the plants will respond well and respond quickly to this addition.

And then there were some squash bugs to deal with. They are appearing only on one plant - the acorn squash - in the county park plot. These critters look a lot like the stink bugs that we all seem to be encountering. I sprayed about a half dozen this week with homemade insect soap. That kills them. The other issue with squash bugs is the eggs they hide on the underside of the squash plant leaves. The insect soap works on them, too, especially with a little squashing with index finger and thumb. The ones shown below, were, inexplicably on the top of a leaf. Their true color is orange or bronze. If you have squash, be on the lookout for them. If the adult adult population hits critical mass, they can destroy a plant in a day or two. The eggs are above the piece of newspaper.

The delicata squash (below) is producing a good number of fruits. We've never had these before, so it's a bit of an adventure learning how they grow and what they need.

The acorn squash are growing to table size very quickly....more quickly than I thought they would.

The butternut is coming along nicely as you can see below. But I am seeing some yellowing leaves.  Too much water?  That's hard for me to believe, so I'll have to watch the plant more carefully.

One of the gourd plants is producing very large numbers of fruits. I brought this one home despite the fact that it's not "ripe" yet.  How much bigger would it get? We have plenty more of them that will instruct us on the answer to that question.

The pumpkin has reached nearly full size very quickly. There are a few other small ones developing now.

That's it for this installment! I'll hope to see you again in a few weeks as summer continues to progress and the gardens come to full maturity.

Weekend Roundup!

Hello! Good to see you again.  The past weekend came and went pretty quickly. There were just so many garden "things" to do.  After I read the Sunday newspaper, I parboiled and vacuum sealed  two 8 ounce bags of snap peas...not a lot, but it's a start. They then went immediately to the freezer. It's THE way to keep your vegetables and not have them become freezer burned. With so much beginning to come from the garden now, the "sealer" will get a serious workout.

The next chore, after watering the garden, was to pick the dill and use the microwave kit to dry it. The dill shown below (before microwave) took two minutes to dry. This method also retains the color of the herbs you dry, rather than turning brown as they do when air dried.

With that done, I headed back out to the garden and set up to screen the finished compost.  It took  awhile, but yielded three 5 gallon containers of fine material at 22 pounds each. I've already started incorporating it into beds. All of last year's vegetables responded very well to the addition of this rich amendment, so I have no doubt it will give all a nice boost again this season. What truly amazed me was the HUGE number of worms that came with every shovel full I placed into the bucket. If I lived near a body of water, I could have opened a fishing bait stand.

The raspberries were the next chore. They're very much at their peak right now. The container shown below is the full pound I picked in a matter of about twenty minutes. More raspberry ice cream???

I didn't have a chance to take a picture of this year's first eggplant after it came in. It had already been sliced for parmesan. It was absolutely delicious!

Check my two garden friends below. Attract pollinators to your garden. Plant flowers like this purple echinacia which can host a butterfly and a bumble bee for lunch. Hopefully, after they're finished here, they'll head on over to the big yellow zucchini blossoms for dessert!

 

I'll be back here later in the week. I hope to see you here, too!

Summer Bounty Begins + Container Gardening

Hello again. Glad you could take time to look me up. The summer bounty has begun! Right now we're harvesting beets, cucumbers, summer squash, snap peas, green beans, and raspberries regularly.  In addition, we've had over night rain for the past three nights which has reduced the need to spend a lot of time watering the garden. I'm so thankful. It's like having a morning off from work!

                                                           Today's haul

And since I mentioned watering, the main garden here at home and in the county park retain rain water well simply by virtue of their size and depth. On the other hand, some of the baskets and containers here at the home garden need to be watered daily due to their lack of depth and breadth. The needs of those plants for water and the faster evaporation rate demand more attention. 

The six containers pictured above from left to right are eggplant, delicata squash, echinacea, cherry tomato, yellow squash, and fennel (which can't be seen). All of the containers are approximately the same "volume" as a 5 gallon bucket. We have a total of 21 containers. Those not shown here are home to irises, strawberries, bee balm, cherry tomatoes, and more echinacea. If you're gardening in these types of containers, you need to be aware that they need water frequently.

 If you plan on going on a vacation for more than 2  days, you really need to get a "plant sitter" who can stop by daily and check your plants for water needs. You'd be amazed at the number of questions I've seen from gardeners who wonder what to do when they get back from vacation to find the plants they nurtured to now be material for the compost heap.....they usually start with something like "I really watered my container plants well before I left..."

The flowering baskets need to be watered regularly as well. Many, like the wall baskets in the picture above seem to be okay on an every other day schedule, unless the temperatures get extremely high. The flowering baskets, like the one shown below, due to it's density of plants, needs to be watered every day, sometimes even when it showers overnight. If the rain is not heavy, the plant leaves simply let the water slide over onto the deck below.

All of our herbs are in  containers of some sort - large flower pots or window boxes. Herb containers save space in the garden and also keep the herbs from spreading and becoming a nuisance. In my June 15 post regarding the herb plants we are growing, I neglected to mention two. They are fennel shown below (with water bottle collars to keep the snails from getting to the tender leaves)

and catnip (picture below) which any cat owner should grow just to save the expense of buying it. Cats love catnip fresh or dried. You can dry the catnip you grow using a microwave dryer kit.

I also mentioned mint spreading by means of runners. Our mint plant just developed a runner. If it were in a garden, each one of the leaf sprigs on the runner pictured below would become a mint plant. Oregano travels in pretty much the same way.

Thanks again for taking a look. Got questions? Use the "comments" section below.  I hope to see you again next week.

Summer Solstice

Hi! Thanks for stopping back again. A drenching downpour during the night gave me a break from the daily watering chores.  What a pleasant relief from that routine even if only for one day! And today, being the first day of summer gives us the longest day of the year....extra time to be outside!

 Last Saturday, I mentioned that the raspberries were about to begin pouring in.  Well, they have! We picked the first of them on Sunday and picked a second batch today. They'll last for about three weeks and then the blackberries will make their ripened debut. You can see one of the blackberry plants below. It's jammed with berries!

We've also begun picking the first of the beets. Lois found a recipe for "Harvard Beets". We'll be trying that tonight.

This eggplant is loaded with blossoms and has the first two fruits developing. It wont be long before we'll be making eggplant parmesan. The second eggplant was started later and hasn't begun to bloom yet.

Below is a pic of our county park ornamental gourd plant. I never expected to see it get so big so fast. The butternut and acorn squash are smaller at this point and that surprises me.

And here I am watering the butternut. All of the county park plants are doing well. And we've had no problem at all with insect pests or animals!

And don't forget to feed your pollinators! Plant flowers! Bumble bees are very helpful in

in pollinating all of your vegetable plants. They like the blue lobelia (above) and the

echinacea and then take a trip to the vegetable plot. I hope to see you again later this week!

Bits 'n' Pieces.

Hello and thanks for stopping back! This is the long view of the garden on June 18, 2011. The lower right corner of the picture does not include most of the 12 foot (4 M) bed with snap peas and green beans. The county park plot looks barren in comparison!

One of the more mundane but necessary garden chores is taking the time to "deadhead" spent flowers in the garden.  Deadheading is the tedious process of picking or snipping off the dead blooms from plants  in your flower garden or those that border your vegetable garden. Doing so tells the plant to produce more flowers, and it also gives the plant a neater, cleaner look. Dead or dying blooms should be snipped at the green stem, not just at the dead petals (see below). Also, remove yellow or brown leaves. I take a small bucket with me to do this. All the clippings go into the bucket and then to the compost heap which keeps the area neat and the plant material recycles. It's dull work, but keeps the plants fresh looking and productive.

                                         Deadheading - a dull but important task

If you had spring bulb plants, they are now probably turning yellow/brown like the ones below. Snip or pull these long leaves and compost them. Use "tulip food" or bone meal on these spots to give strength to the underground bulbs for next year. In the vegetable garden areas where I have spring bulbs,  I plant over those spots with green beans or other annual vegetables.

The early spring plantings of lettuce are done for this year. They bolted during the two day heat wave last week. But it was time for that to happen, so it came as no surprise. A few weeks earlier, I had started some new lettuce seedlings. As the old lettuce went to seed, I placed the young plants in the courtyard window (see pic below). They get some morning sun and then are shaded until late afternoon when the sun reappears on the far side of the courtyard. Just recently, I've started some romaine lettuce. I want to try that in a shaded area of the main garden. The picture shows the late afternoon sun coming from the west.

 

The strawberry season in our garden ended this week. But the red raspberries are just about ready to fill the void. As you can see in the picture below, they are just beginning to ripen.

                                                               
It's busy keeping up with all that's going on in the garden - cukes, zukes, peas, beans, peppers, and much more!  I'll back in a few days with updates. I hope to see you again then.

B.J. Loves Peanuts!

Hello again!  An update from my "Urban Backyard Wildlife" series!

This is just a short fun look at a new garden friend we've made this spring. B.J. isn't as trusting as Little Squirrel, but maybe he/she will be in the future. There are a pair of jays in the oak tree which is about fifty feet from our house. I don't know for sure which is the male and which is the female, but they both take the peanuts we set out by the window.

I was outside when I snapped this picture.  I stayed for awhile, but B.J. would not come over to the window. So...I went into the kitchen.

B.J. came over to the window and peered in to see what I was doing. There is a second peanut behind the window mullion.

And in a flash, B.J. grabbed the peanut and headed back to the oak tree! The jays place the peanut in the crotch of two tree limbs and peck the peanut shell open...something I would never have expected!

See you again soon with more gardening items.

Adding a Little Spice to Life

Hi! And thanks for stopping by.

I'm not sure if there is any clear difference betwen spices and herbs. I pretty much use the terms interchangeably. But it always seems that it's herbs I grow in the garden, but  when dried and used in cooking, they become spices!  I'll have to contact someone from the McCormick company to give me the absolute definition of the two words.

Monday night, we picked some fresh snap peas from the garden and then Lois decided to do her magic. She went back outside, just off the kitchen, and picked a small handful of herbs. Back inside, she chopped the herbs and sprinkled them in with the snap peas. She sauteed the combination for a few minutes and served them hot with our meal.  I really enjoyed the flavor of the peas and asked what herbs she had used. "Lemon balm, basil, and parsley," she replied. Tonight, she picked marjoram, chives and cilantro and mixed them in with a some baby zucchinis and snap peas we picked today.

What a joy it is to have fresh herbs at our fingertips all through late spring and into the fall. Here's a list of  the herbs we have growing right now:

Sage: Always good with poultry stuffing, herbal butters, and egg dishes. Use in potpourris, or as Native American "smudge" sticks.  Sage is a woody perennial that can be several feet tall and also spreads in width. I had some in a garden bed for a few years, but it simply began to taking up too much space. I now grow it in a container as you can see below.

Dill and chervil are shown sharing a container seen below. Dill can be used with almost any food you prepare. Aside from dill pickles, dill can be used in soups and stews, salads, dips, butters, and with vegetables. Tomorrow night, we'll have it with the fresh green beans we just picked. Chervil has a slightly licorice taste when raw, but seems to lose that flavor when cooked in any way. If you use parsley, chervil can be used in all of the same ways. Use raw, adding it at the last minute, if you want to keep the anise flavor. Some folks refer to chervil as gourmet parsley.

The cilantro plant shown below is about ready to "bolt", meaning it will soon get flowers and develop seeds. We will be cutting and drying it before that happens. Cilantro is a favorite in many Mexican dishes.

Lemon balm (below) can be used steeped as a tea, or added to hot or iced tea, or added to chicken dishes, and a wide range of other foods. Lemon balm is also best grown in a container away from garden beds. It seeds prolifically, so much so it can become much like an invasive weed. Lemon balm is an annual, but this plant was mothered by seeds left by the lemon balm plant in the container last year.

Rosemary, shown below, is much like a shrub, and I've seen them trimmed and shaped to look like a small fir tree. We've had the plant for several years now and it winters in the house. Rosemary is wonderful with roasted potatoes, vegetables, chicken pork and fish.

All members of the mint family (like lemon balm and catnip) spread rapidly, some by seed, but peppermint, spearmint, etc. spread via "runners" sent out by the main plant. I'm sure you can name many uses for mints including the Kentucky Derby infield favorite mint juleps!

Finally, we have marjoram, oregano, and thyme in a container hanging along the fence. I'm sure you're familiar with the many uses of all three of these herbal favorites!

Let me know what your doing in your garden! I hear from Mike B. occasionally with an update. How about you?  Use the "Comments" button below to leave your thoughts.  See you soon!