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!

This 'n' That Garden Updates

Hello and welcome back!  With all the good weather, I'm finding it hard to spend time writing here. There's  so much to do and I absolutely enjoy every minute that I can be in the garden...with perhaps the exception of those times when Little Squirrel is taste testing the zucchini blossoms!

The business card below is from a market I've mentioned before. The owners are members of one of the "plain" sects. If you live in the Lancaster County area, it's a wonderful place to go for vegetable seedlings, hanging floral baskets, and fresh produce way below supermarket prices. (The very best time for baskets, though, is before Mothers' Day.) On a trip up there last Monday, we passed many farms. The cornfields are just coming alive. The late planting due to all the rain we've had is very evident! The plants are no more than an inch or two high. Normally, at this time of the year, I think they would be close to a foot high.

We've started picking the snap peas. Our first 1/2 pint is pictured below. There will be many more to come!  We're also still picking strawberries, but that won't last much longer.  Then we can look forward to the red raspberries!  Also, Lois is making use of many of the herbs we're growing - most recently dill, chervil, and parsley.

Little Squirrel lost a friend to one of the local cats. Recently, she has taken to climbing the utility pole a few backyards away to check the whole area for cats before making her way to our house.

You may remember that I mentioned a "blue" rose that we've had for awhile. I find it hard to see "blue" in the rose below, but that's what it claims to be!

We have an ivy wall in the courtyard area and I know how hard it is to keep ivy from literally spreading over everything in its path. Keeping it trimmed is a regular chore. It appears one of our neighbors has completely lost control of theirs. I have no doubt that the ivy will soon find its way inside that rear bedroom window!

There are hundreds of garden plots in Lancaster County Park. Below are a few of the ones near our plot, complete with gates and sheds!

Thanks again for stopping by. If you have any garden questions, I'd be glad provide answers if I have them immediately, or search the many reference books, articles and other materials I have available.

See you soon!