July 17th Midsummer Bounty

Well, here we are in the thick of Summer’s abundance. I have been picking, washing, paring, trimming, simmering and canning for two weeks. I’m tired! This has been the driest and hottest June and July that I’ve seen in the 18 years I’ve lived here. I really wish we had tried corn this year. The ornamental corn plant that I put in the garden just for its foliage has a happy looking couple of ears. Here come the photos…

Here is Matt harvesting some beans. Right now the bush beans are producing a lot. Later the scarlet runner beans will start doing thier thing. I planted the bush beans earlier by about three weeks and then planted the runners in back of them beneath the trellis. Also planted somewhere in the tangle are two yellow summer squash plants. We’ll se how they do. They are a little crowded out, but hey, two of the the three sisters right?

Ah, the bounty. The long straight ones will become dilly beans, and the curly and/or short ones will be cooked up now or blanched and frozen.

pretty

A close up of the scarlet runner. This is the bean they always give to little kids to plant in kindergarden because they are such instant gratification…

I actually pickled eight quarts. If you want to make an absolutely outrageous borscht, use pickled beets mixed with regular beets. Mmmmmmmm.

One of Frank Morton’s Calendula ‘flashback’ flowers in all its glory.

Ornamental castor bean plant–this is what they use to make the toxin seren apparently, but I have no plans other than to enjoy its beauty.

So, this is a picture of the smallest egg I’ve ever found in the nesting box. Either a quail snuck in to the coop and laid this, or one of my chickens has a really good sense of humor.

We kind of wanted to crack it open and see if it has a teeny tiny yoke, but I might blow the contents out and save this one for the chicken hall of fame.

Fun with the Camera on Mothers Day

I’ve been trying to become a better garden photographer. Here  are some springtime close-ups. The pictures look a little out of focus in the thumbnails, but if you double click them they look pretty good.

Salvia starts

Some of the critters

This is either Balthazar, Vera, Chuck, or Dave.

Sketchy–the flightiest bird in town.

Moxie, our crowless hemaphroditic rooster

Chive bud

Bean trellis-the biggest one yet

Ornamental corn ‘japonica’

Ornamental grass–don’t remember the variety

No garden is complete without St. Francis of the Sissies…

Valarian; the flowers are heavenly, the root, not so much.

unoccupied–too close to the cat

My baby oak tree.

Here are more pix

These violets volunteer all over the east side of the garden.

Euphorbia fireglow

Siberian Forget-me-not

Arugula flower

Mashua–a Peruvian nasturtium-like plant. Leaves can be eaten and tubers are peppery tasting.

Crabapple blossom

Prairie Fire Tree

Potato Weekend

Saturday we planted potatoes on the easement, as well as transplanted cilantro and ‘Red Russian’ kale that was waiting out the hard frosts in the cold frame (both from Frank Morton’s catalog http://www.wildgardenseed.com). Now isn’t the best time to plant kale and we’ll plant more in July for the truely sweet over-wintered taste that it’s famous for, but it will do for stir frying and salad mixes.  Matthew direct seeded arugula in the same bed as the kale and cilantro, and my whole digestive system from taste buds on down is ready to do some dedicated grazing.

But wait I must. Matthew has to keep reminding me that it’s still early, but winter seemed really long and gray and lifeless in the yard and so to say I am restless and impatient is an understatement. If it weren’t for the chickens I would have suffered a malaise worthy of Albert Camus’ “Complete Guide To Meaningless Gardening.”

Just as we were finishing up the potato planting, the FedEx man delivered a box from Nourse Farms containing 30 some odd  ‘Purple Passion’ asparagus crowns and some new horseradish root stock. I’ll post pictures of those two crops as they come up.

Back to the potatoes. We planted  about 8 lbs. of “misc. colored potatoes,” as the bag so descriptively read when we received it from a potato farmer friend of ours. The only reason I mentions this is that when I had talked to him, he asked me for specific names of potatoes and I gave him the three or four varieties that I wanted. I took it that he was listening, but maybe I sounded like one of the adults in a Peanuts animated cartoon, “Wawawawa…”

Anyway, what was in the bag didn’t really resemble what I had asked for, but you can’t look a gift potato bag in the mouth. I’m still waiting for the ‘Russian Banana’ fingerlings that are my favorites for baking with winter roots. We’ll be planting those as soon as Matt brings them home from the office. Let’s see, is there anything else from this weekend…oh, Matt also direct sowed some asparagus kale for the chickens. They are really greens starved, and it will be nice to have fresh stuff to toss into their run soon.

Mystery purple taters about to be planted

You must wear green when planting potatoes…

Or a jaunty duffer cap.

I think the lower pile is a german butter and the top pile is a light rose colored spud…

Bed with kale, cilantro and arugula planted.

St. Pat’s Day

It already feels like months since I planted the snow peas, but finally I feel like the time is nigh and I’ve put some seeds in the ground. For three consecutive Sundays we’ve had snow, sun, cold gusts…

The three humble rows on the left are the beginning of greens this season. We have seed potatos from Irish Eyes Farm waiting to go in the ground, soon we’ll also have some from Wood Prairie Farm. These will be planted outside the fence since the deer don’t usually munch them. Below the potato/squash bed will be my test plot of horseradish. I’ve been growing it it the garden for many years and harvesting it for my own use, but now I’m going to grow a larger batch for a prepared horseradish business I want to start. This bed is where I will attempt to grow it like the commerical growers do–planting it and then about a month later “lifting” it to break off feeder roots to create one large taproot. To the right of those two beds are three artichokes and I haven’t decided what else to plant there.

Chard and parsley planted March 17th

Potato/Squash bed and Horseradish bed

Garlic, just starting to come up

What we have now.

And here is what it looked like two years ago (2007). My main focus now is on growing food including raising egg chickens. More to come as I gleefully await proper soil temperatures.

What we started with in 1993

This is  a picture taken during construction of our home in 1988. I moved in in 1993, and except for a fence, a bed of feral kale and parsley, random Shasta daisy patches and one sickly spruce tree in the back it essentially looked the same. It took a bit of time to really start the garden, but every season I would add a little something–fruit trees, pathways and raised beds lined with rocks brought from the beach and also dug out of our ground from the tens of thousands so generously deposited by some glacier that passed through a few years back.