The Ugly Truth

The plain, cold truth about my end of summer garden, is simply that it becomes ugly. No longer green and lush and bordering on uninviting. Not that I get to stay out of it. It does however continue to yield massive amounts of produce for me to can or feed to the chickens. The corn patch was roughly 70x15 and gave about 450 ears of corn. A little over 200 of those we put up and the rest we shared. It was very sweet and done to perfection.

This is my sea of Roma tomatoes. The tall ones in the background are Celebrity and Better Boys. They are all doing well. I have canned loads of crushed tomatoes, made V8 juice and will try my hand at sauce tonight. Apparently many others in my area don't have red tomatoes yet. I have been harvesting mine for 4 weeks now. I am getting kind of tired of them.

I ordered some cool green tomato spirals for trellising from Gardener Supply this spring. They would have done beautifully had I not overburdened them with the tomatoes I chose to put in there. The Celebrity is such a prolific grower that these spirals would have been great save for the not big enough part. I will try some other variety in them next year.

We do have a couple of these huge pumpkins on the vine. Pumpkins are a total waste of space in my opinion but my hubby loves them so there you have it. He's the muscle behind all of these projects so pumpkins it is.

I admit the cucumbers have totally gotten away from us. They turn from usable to football sized in one day and I am not exaggerating. Those things don't mess around. I haven't been pickling like I thought I would so we give them away as fast as we can. Chickens love them too. Good thing. Doyle is slowly but surely removing the corn rows and drying some of them for the goats to chew on this winter. They like dried stuff so he hangs them in the barn to crisp up. Spoiled goats.

This photo shows just how tired the squash and zucchini end of the garden is looking. The sunflowers are doing their part to beautify the garden but the beans are tired and I have been ripping them out as they become done. I still have to can one more harvest of green beans and finish shelling the dark red kidneys for storage.

This assemblage of photos was to show that a practical garden doesn't normally look pretty all season. The reality is; as the fruits and veggies become harvestable, the plants become less attractive. I like (need) things to look nice and clean, green and healthy. When the late summer hits and things become less aesthetically appealing, I find my interest waning. Yet, there is still so much to do. Try to tell the tomatoes I don't want to play with them anymore. I think I can hear them laughing now.

Onions, Anyone?

Ok, so I have read and also found to be true from personal experience, that when your onions start to fall over; it's time to harvest. I had already started to pull my onions out when I remembered to photograph this so I promise there were more here when I started.

In this bed in the new garden, I had planted red, white and yellow onions from sets. I only pushed them into the ground 3/4 of the way and hoped this would yield a larger onion than in years past. Sets intrigue me but honestly I think I get a nicer onion from actual plants. Who knows?

I just tugged on the tops and out popped my pretty little onion. I love easy harvesting, it makes my heart sing. It makes everything..... Groovy. Sorry, I just had to. That song has been popping up for days.

This handy gadget with 1/2 metal mesh is my compost sifter but for today it doubles as my onion curer. Onions are ready to harvest when most of the tops fall over. You are supposed to leave them on the dirt to cure for at least one week but so much else still needs to be watered in the big garden that I can't water harvested onions with a clear conscience so I moved them to my garden shed to cure. Curing means they will develop that pretty papery shell on the outside that protects them for storage. After the curing stage is over you're supposed to clip the tops to within 1/2" of the top of the bulb but that seemed messy to me so I jumped ahead a week. Waiting was probably the more prudent thing to do. It's a problem I have. One can then store them in a cool, dry place for winter use.

Last year I got hold of all the old (not gross) pantyhose I could find and cut the legs out of them. I would then slip one onion into the toe and tie a knot above it. Then I would slip another onion down on top of the knot and so on. This kept the onions from sitting directly on one another and made it easy to get one for dinner time use by just cutting below a knot and taking it indoors. I did not buy an onion until January this past winter. They store quite nicely. Not the sweets, they don't store for beans but most of the others store like a dream.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Does anyone remember my Great Potato Experiment of 2009? Well it was not as successful as the Smartpot claimed it would be.

I ordered these cloth pots from Gardener's Supply this past winter. Their sales pitch sold me and it made sound, logical sense to grow in a container that would do the root pruning for me and yield 10-13 pounds of potatoes per bag. Hah!

My pototes grew beautifully and I was so sure that they were full to capacity in there.  They got so tall I was worried they would fall over before they were supposed to.

The directions say that when the greenery starts to die back they are ready to harvest. So harvest we did.

Doyle dumped the grow pots into the wheel barrow and Maecy and I dug for the potatoes I was so sure were in there. Of course like most teenagers, Maecy wasn't on board with helping but my hubby reminded her that this was just the same as Easter but the eggs were under the dirt. Reluctantly she agreed to be helpful. Sometimes my husband cracks me up. Sometimes, not so much.

I will say that we had plenty of marble sized tubers in there. It was a sad day in potato land for sure. 

We ended up harvesting 27 pounds of Yukon Golds, Red LaSodas, and Red Norlands. Not great but not a total failure. 

Next year we will plan to plant them in the ground. I can hill potatoes the old fashioned way. My lazy man's way out was not what I had hoped. Sometimes my experiments are first rate and a staple for me and sometimes they aren't quite what I had them chalked up to be. This was one of those ones. But oh well, I do live in the Potato State, I can probably find a decent potato if I have to. Better luck next time!

First Corn Harvest

This morning it rained. Yeah!!! Which, I might add, makes it the perfect day to put up corn for the freezer. This is our first year in many that we grew our own corn. We stayed pretty basic with our variety and only planted Bodacious. Next year we will try something different. Doyle picked them and shucked them outside and then brought them to me to clean the silks off and blanch.

 

Here they are ready to go in the big boiling pot of water to blanch them. The corn was really quite pretty and so far not buggy.

After blanching, we plunged them into an ice chest full of ice water and cooled them down. Then onto a towel to dry for a minute. Then Doyle used the electric fillet knife and a bundt pan to remove the kernels.

 

I bagged the corn into pint sized Foodsaver bags and vacuum sealed them. This tends to work best for us.

When it was all said and done, we put away 32 pints bags of corn and that seemed a great start to the corn harvesting season. Of course we tried it after it was taken off the cob and it was yummy. Fresh corn is so far superior to what one can buy in the supermarket. We will definitely grow this again.

Tomato Time Around Here

It's finally tomato time around here! I planted 38 tomato plants this year and I am so excited to start making stuff with them. Last night was my first official harvest and I weighed 17 pounds on the scale. Not to shabby for the first picking.

 

More than half of my plants are Roma-style tomatoes and the others are a combination of Celebrity and Better Boys. Since it was hot and I was tired I decided that I would make simple crushed tomatoes and can them. Now that I am set up again, the next batch will be salsa or juice or sauce or something interesting. But for this one time it was easy.

 

I did not season the crushed tomatoes nor did I salt them. I am sharing my harvests with my mom and they don't like salt. I tend to add it to most things I cook in the form of spices anyway so I left it out. The recipe called it optional and I took them seriously. I canned pints using the boil bath method and added 1 TBSP of lemon juice to each pint jar before I added the crushed tomatoes. This assures the proper acidity for this method of canning. Last year I used up all the jars I had canned and this year I ought to have tons of tomato products lining my shelves. And yes, I am still thinking hard about making my guest room into a pantry. No one uses it much anyhow. The guest can just sleep in an awesome pantry. That would be a novel story to tell all their friends when they leave my house.

First Harvest

Our first harvest (aside from lettuce) has been peas. We loved the shelling peas last year and realized our mistake was not planting enough. So this year we planted more and will likely plant more than that next year. I love them and especially in the cold months of winter. I honestly never knew that there was much difference in a store bought frozen pea and one I grew and froze. Big difference, try it for yourself, you will see what I mean. 

 

We picked for 30 minutes or so and this was our bounty. Not too bad for a first batch. We shelled them all while listening to the television and then blanched and froze them in Foodsaver bags. They are so sweet and hard to stop eating while you shell. This year we grew Maestro, which we knew from last season was a winner.  But in the spirit of trying new things we also added Green Arrow, which we have yet to harvest.

 

Maestro promises long pods filled with plump peas (as many as eleven) with a sweet and tender taste and I must say they deliver as promised. I love them. I am anxious to try the Green Arrow variety. Peas are a great crop for any garden but they are great in raised beds as they add nitrogen to the soil and raised beds are easily depleted of their nutrients. One must rotate the crop for the next season as they leave nitrogen in their place but use up some other valuable things. 

 

The raised bed garden has been floating in a sea of wood chips as the ark we built to get out of the rain wasn't finished yet. Just kidding. It has been raining a lot here which is great when it comes in spurts so I can go mow the lawn every couple of days. But not as great when it just won't quit. I wish mother nature could spread it out a little.

 

Everything is growing well and I am excited that the beets are responding. I had to replant the chard and also added some cilantro to that bed. We love cilantro in salads and in marinade all summer long, so I plant in succession as it is quick to grow and be done. Note to self: never allow it to go to seed near the strawberries. Lesson learned.

What To Do.....

I am in a quandry this morning. Do I murder a plant that got out of control or leave it and see if there is any way to make it look pretty again. Daisies are the problem in this equation. I love them but they can be so unruly. This one was not supposed to 'flop'. Yeah, right.

 

Not only did it flop, there are 5 of them in the island bed and they all flopped. We have had some uncharacteristic heavy rain for the last two weeks in this part of Idaho. Although I am thankful for the precipitation, I am furious with the these dang flowers. Stupid flowers. There, I feel better. I actually planted these pencil sized starts last fall and look what they did. They grew like they were on something. I think they like the soil here and the rain. But now they are all laying down and squashing some plants next to them. I just don't know what to do, so for today I will leave them. It is supposed to be 81 degrees today and we will see if they perk up at all. I am not, I repeat, not.... holding my breath. I may yard them out of here this weekend.

This bee balm is new to me too! Same thing, I ordered them as pencil sized starts on ebay and they really took off. Which really is amazing as I planted them in the heat of the summer. Silly me. It was cold this morning so everything is heavy with dew. This plant is 3+ ft. tall already and so far it doesn't look like it is slowing down yet. I can't wait to see what color it is. I ordered some double bloom varieties and I hope those survived. It will be another nice surprise.

 

This is yard art in my flower bed. This chair was being thrown out and I "borrowed" it out if the dump pile. I think it turned out to be the perfect thing to add some whimsy to this bed. The flowers in the pot loved the rain too!

As you can see the final cuff has been taken out of the potato bags and each pot is now full to the brim with compost. These things are growing like weeds. OK, like daisies, but who minces words this early in the morning? They are really going crazy and I sure hope (fingers crossed, here) that the cloth pots are chalk full of baby potatoes. I have a funny way of growing great greenery with no reward, so we will have to wait and see.

More Veggie Pictures

My potatoes are apparently on steroids this past week. I know that potatoes like it cool but this is insane. I added more compost on Monday and one other time about a week before that. I had actually covered the stems up pretty well and as you can see it is time to take the last cuff out of the bag and add even more. I sure hope there are lots of baby potatoes in these sacks.

 

This is my first year growing potatoes and I am very hopeful. I am using only soil and compost as the  bag directions stated but have read about many people using straw and layering it that way. If this does not work for me I will try something different next year.

I also have bell peppers. With the cool down of that last week and a half, I am suprised I have them but happy nonetheless. This variety is a Big Bertha, which I might add I chose because I loved the name. I have 16 of these planted. Last year I took my excess peppers and chopped them up like I would cook with them and used my foodsaver to bag and vacuum them, then froze them. I did not buy a bell pepper to cook with until March of this year. I love that since bell peppers are several dollars here in the winter. Mine were free.

 

And this is a North Atlantic Giant pumpkin plant (or three). Doyle likes to try to grow big ones for the kids every year. This year he says he is only keeping three on the vine, surely that will put some size on them. We will see, last year the cows ate every last one that crept through the fence into the pasture. They didn't even remove them from the vine, just ate the fruit. Crazy cows. Who says happy cows are from California, I am thinking they live happily ever after right here in Idaho, snacking on pumpkins.

New Row Garden

I thought I would share some progress pictures of the new garden. This garden was built in the field north of my house and was likely used to feed the previous owners dairy cows in the winter (for 65 years). Very pretty soil in this area but lot of weeds now that the earth has been disturbed. I know that if I just keep up on it for the next two years or so, it will become a breeze to take care of. It is always just the beginning that is overwhelming. We have had two weeks of cooler weather and lots of rain. I am behind on my weeding but thought you would all forgive me my weeds.

These little mountains are the hills for pattypan squash, summer crookneck squash and zucchini. I haven't grown squash type plants in several years as I have always hosted some kind of squash vine borer and they gross me out. I gave up and rely on someone else's surplus. It has always worked in the past but since we had a new location, we thought we would give it another try.

These are the bean beds and they aren't looking so hot. The tree limb teepees are for climbing pole type beans. I have yellow wax and Kentucky wonder growing on these three. The other beds are pinto, dark red kidney and green bush beans. Something is attacking my beans and I have yet to figure out what but they seem to come up without leaves and none grow on the stem. If they get past the first week they seem to be OK, it's just the first push through the soil that is problematic for them.

The corn is doing well. We spaced the first two rows to 8 inches and had to replant some bald spots so we over planted the last two rows and thinned. Thinning is hard for me because it feels so wasteful but it does save time.

These mounds are for the cucumbers. They have been replanted to fill in bald spots several times. For some reason they are having a hard time getting started this year. Hopefully they will take off next week. Beyond those are the tomatoes and pepper beds (wide rows).

These tomato spirals are new to me this season. I have always searched for prettier ways to cage my tomatoes and I hope this works, it is prettier to me. The other beds of tomatoes have some other methods going. I will let you know what I like best.

And this is a view from the other end of that area. I am basically standing in the bean bed to take this photo. I am off to a dental convention for the next two days so it will be heavy weeding when I get home. I am still finalizing the trim details on the chicken house and need to finish the new flower garden bed but I am going to get them all done, one at a time. I can't wait to start eating out of this garden.

Raised Bed Garden Update

I thought I better make my garden blog look like I have a garden instead of only a chicken house or two. Here are a few current pics of the raised bed garden.

My broccoli is so puny. The plants are beautiful and big but the florets are tiny. Does anyone know why this is? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I amended all of the beds with mass amounts of compost this year so fertility should not be an issue.

The peas are not nearly as tall this year as last year. It got hot here early and stunted their growth. There are lots of peas on though, and all they need to do now is plump up. In the right hand corner of this picture you can see a sad and weedy looking bed. There are beets growing in there, I promise. I think I weeded out some of the actual plants early on. That will teach me to wait until I am sure what they look like before I weed anything. The other bed of them is growing a little better. They aren't big yet and I don't know why but this is my first year growing beets and I will just have to wait and see.

Here is a closer picture of the lettuce bed. I thought I would get decorative with the planting this year and that may have been a bad idea. It looks kind of silly to me and now some growth is disproportionate to the others. We did have our fist salad out of the garden last night and it was very good. This is the lettuce that my daughter assured everyone that came by was the best ever grown. I am glad she likes homegrown lettuce.

And finally I have a shot of the potatoes growing in bags. These were slow to get going but they are growing great guns now. I have 3 different kinds; Red LaSoda, Yukons and Red Norlands. The Yukons were the slowest to start and I was sure they must have rotted. I added a lot more compost to each bag today and will continue to do so until the end of summer.

Last year the summer was cool and everything in the "cool weather crop" category was a major grower. I was so excited as most of it was new to me. This year the heat hit early and hard and I can see the reverse is true for my early season crops. If you don't like the weather in Idaho, I guess you just wait for the next year. They are never the same twice in a row.

Planted In the Garden So Far

 

Well, so far I have most of my cool season crops planted. A few of this years plantings are new to me. This list is as follows:

• Swiss Chard - Mixed Color
• Swiss Chard - Fordhook Giant
• Lettuce - Butter Crunch
• Lettuce - Simpson Elite
• Lettuce - Rouge d'Hiver
• Lettuce - Red Salad Bowl
• Spinach
• Beets - Detroit Dark Red
• Peas - Maestro (shelling)
• Peas - Green Arrow (shelling)
• Strawberries (already growing)
• Onion - Lisbon, White Bunching
• Onion - Red
• Onion - Yellow
• Leeks
• Asparagus
• Brocolli
• Brussel Sprouts

I only have one of the smaller raised beds left and was waiting on another type of beet for canning to show but Park Seed has failed me once again. I may plant Sugar Snap peas in that spot. Funny how we just expanded the raised beds last year and this year I am out of space. Good thing the new Intimidating Row Garden is under construction or I wouldn't have a place to put everything else I plan to grow. 

Did I Forget Anything?

I decided to post my list of plants to grow in my garden this year so you all could help me remember what I forgot. I am planning as much from seed as possible without the aid of a greenhouse and trying to buy as few actual plants as I can. Seed sowing appeals to me. Maybe after the chicken house project is done, I will begin laying hints for a greenhouse. So here it is.... THE LIST:

• Corn Bodacious, Honey 'Pearl
• Dark Red Kidney Beans
• Pinto Beans
• Kentucky Wonder Wax Pole Beans
• Kentucky Blue Pole Bean
• Top Crop Bush Bean
• Garden Pea Green Arrow, Maestro
• Onion White Bunching Lisbon
• Red, Yellow and White Onions
• Leeks
• Beets Detroit Dark Red
• Broccoli, Hybrid Premium Crop
• Cucumber National Pickling, Miss Pickler "Pioneer", Pearl Hybrid
• Swiss Chard Mixed Colors, Fordhook Giant
• Lettuce Bon Vivant, Buttercrunch, Red Sails, Rouge d'Hiver, Red Salad Bowl, Simpson Elite
• Spinach
• Squash
• Zucchini
• Cantaloupe Hybrid Alaska, Field's Sweet Gem
• Watermelon Crimson Sweet
• A few gourds on the fence for winter crafting
• Carrots (maybe)
• Strawberries
• Bell Peppers (all kinds)
• Tomatoes (all kinds)
• Potatoes
• Hot Peppers Jalapenos, Cayenne, Serrano, Green Chili kind?
• Cauliflower?

So let me know if you think I have omitted anything vital. I have a pretty good sized raised bed garden and will be adding a 100x40 row garden in our north field. Room won't be an issue. I just want to can and preserve as much as possible. My mom wants to help, this way we use my space and free well water, she helps me weed and put up the harvest. I might have got the better end of the deal there.