In the Garden/In the Kitchen

I'm having trouble with my Sweet Peas again this year, same as for the past couple of years.

I keep rotating them into different beds but not seeing much improvement.  New seeds this year, too.  Finally got the first couple of blossoms a day or so ago, but the vines are drying out and look as though they're gonna give up the ghost.  Darn.

The Morning Glories have been so, so slow this year.  They're hardly halfway up their teepee trellis and I've seen only one blossom.  Sigh.

There is one decent sized green pepper already on this widdle-biddie pepper plant, no less.  When I first started my pepper seeds early this spring, I thought I was getting very poor germination on them so a couple/few weeks later I started a whole new batch.  Turns out the first were just slow germinating so that batch went outside much earlier than the later batch.

This is the bed of the earliest set out.  Do they have any peppers on them yet?  Noooo.  But one of the later transplanted very small plants (above) does.

Our kohlrabis are coming in.  This is just the nice size we like for cutting into sticks and eating raw with dip.  Yum, so fresh, crisp and yet tender.

I can hardly wait for fresh slicing cucumbers to put in salads, on sandwiches and munch out of hand.  This biggest one I've found so far is a whole 4" long!

Gilligan gave me some gladioli bulbs (corms) for my birthday back in April and these are the first ones to bloom.  I think they're gorgeous and I'm enjoying seeing them in their unique color combination.  My friend in Wisconsin sent me a nice sampling last fall of the glads she grows.  (Karen, the green spears of those are up high and healthy and I'm eagerly awaiting their showy blooms soon.) 

I haven't grown any turnips for several years and I think I know why now.  They're good sized already and we've sampled them both cooked and raw with dip.  We're just not crazy about them.  Actually, Papa Pea asked me to grow a small sampling of turnips and mangels this year to try as a supplemental feed for the poultry this winter.  Both are doing well in the garden . . . and I hope the poultry like the turnips better than we do.

I just made another big batch of strawberry fruit leather.  I peel it off the parchment paper sheets . . . 

. . . and cut it into strips, fold the strips in half, wrap in wax paper and store all in glass jars tucked away in the pantry.

The peppermint has grown enough to cut again.  These eight trays of it went into the dehydrator this morning and are now dried and put away as part of the supply I'm trying to stock up on for the coming year.  I'll do another eight trays tomorrow.

AND my shell peas will finally be ready for the picking to start on them tomorrow.  Whoopee!  

The Only Option Left May Be Alcohol

On Wednesday of this week we harvested our haskap berries.  We found it hard to tell when they were ripe by depending on the taste.  (That would be sour.)  But, supposedly, they are different than other berries and ripen all at the same time and since a few were starting to fall to the ground we figured it was time.

The berries were abundant this year.  We picked 5-3/4 quarts from our three 4-year old bushes.  They're not easy to pick because the berries grow at random spots on the branches, sometimes deep within the heavily leafed bushes.  And they are squishy.  Even when they come off easily, they are soft and juicy.  And the juice stains.  Trust me.  I know.

Cleaning them is much more time consuming than cleaning blueberries.  Many had the stems still attached.  Because they're juicy, your hands get wet and sticky and leaves or any other debris ends up in the picking container.  (Isn't this fun?  Shall I go on?)  The above shows some of the berries after I cleaned them.

They're more oval than a blueberry and bigger.  Kinda funny shaped.

I decided to take one quart and make a pie.  I used my tried and true blueberry pie recipe which calls for 1/3 cup of flour as thickener.

Taking the pie out of the oven, I noticed the juice showing between the strips of lattice crust seemed quite "liquidy."

After letting the pie cool completely (hoping the filling would firm up), we sampled it.  Runny?  Oh, yeah.

The flavor?  Tart.  Not as sour as eating the raw berries, but tart.  I'm not sure I could have eaten a whole piece without ice cream on top to cut the tartness.  I can only state that the pie has not disappeared as quickly as pies usually do around our house.

Just to give the haskaps a fair trial, I made a batch of jam.

A batch of runny jam.  Too thin to put on bread, but we'll try it one of these mornings on waffles or pancakes.  You know, like syrup.  How's the flavor of the jam?  Tart.  And almost medicinal.  Huhn.  I'm not at all sure using it as a syrup is going to fly either.

Oh, I almost forgot.  We tried dehydrating a tray of them.  Hours and hours and hours (maybe it was days) later, they were still wet.  And tasted slightly bitter.  Almost as if they were burned . . . but still wet.  We tossed them.

So what is all the hype about haskap berries being the best thing since sliced bread?  Why did we plant some bushes in the first place?

Well, they have been proven to have a huge amount of antioxidants in them.

They have a tradition of medicinal (aha!) uses in Japan.  They are five times more potent in polyphenals than blueberries.  (Polyphenals are believed to protect against some common health problems and certain effects of aging.  Yay!)

Haskaps have the highest anthocyanin content of any fruit, they're high in Vitamin C, A, fiber and potassium.  (Anthocyanins have a positive effect on cardiovascular health, have anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties.  All good.)  But what good is all this if you have to force yourself to stuff them down your gullet?  Sigh.

Papa Pea and I both have a feeling they would make good wine.  It certainly would be an attractive color.  (Wonder if it would stain your teeth?  Oh, crickey.)  Dear daughter of ours has been wanting to try making a cordial from them.  I've assured her I have a nice amount squirreled away in the freezer for her to do just that.

In The Garden

I've mentioned that the couple of short rows of purple carrots I planted this year have been growing like they're on steroids.

Purple carrot and our first zucchinis.

I couldn't resist pulling one of the carrots yesterday just to see how big the root was.  The top measured a full 20" tall . . . but the carrot was still on the puny side.  Although the above doesn't give a good picture of the coloration of the carrot, looks to me as though the purple color starts at the top and works it's way down.

In slicing up the wee carrot to add to our cottage cheese salad last night, I found it curious that the center of the carrot was not yet purple either.  When mature, this variety is totally a dark purple, top to tip and all the way through.

My little pumpkin patch of full-size, jack o' lantern-type pumpkins is finally taking off.  Still no blossoms though.

Don't tell my husband, but I've got four eggplants tucked in in unobtrusive spots in the garden.  (He's not a fan.)  I started these from seeds and am hoping I get at least a few fruits for my own pleasurable consumption.  (They don't usually do well for me, and I'm beginning to wonder if Papa Pea puts a hex on them.  Just sayin'.)

Onions are easy for me to grow.  This is one bed.  I have one and a half beds of yellow onions and one and a half of reds.

Look, look, my pie pumpkins are starting to climb the arbor trellis!  Okay, they've had help from me (we all need a little help now and then) by tying up their tendrils for encouragement.

I think the new leaves of growth our little apricot tree is putting forth are quite lovely.  When they first appeared as little nubs, I thought they were going to be blossoms (and was practically beside myself with joy), but it was just new growth.  The tree was planted just last year so I was probably over-enthusiastic dreaming about succulent apricots so soon.

The shell pea vines are loaded with pods that haven't started to plump up yet.  To show how slow our season is this year, last year on yesterday's date, July 24th, I pulled the pea vines as the crop was all in and the vines had dried up.  Gulp.  Makes me wonder how our "later" maturing veggies will do this year.  Will they have time to do their thing before a killing frost?  Fingers crossed!  

We Were Invaded Yesterday . . .

. . . by a pack of cute-as-could-be strawberry pickers!

Chicken Mama has a date every Saturday with three munchkins that she wouldn't give up for the world.

A dear friend of hers was diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly after she gave birth to twins, siblings to their then four year old big sister.  It was an awful time and our whole community rallied to provide as much help and support to the family as possible.

For the first two years of the twins' lives, they were cared for by their loving aunt (who had a large family of her own) and Chicken Mama.

So you can imagine Chicken Mama has a special place in her heart for the now three year old twins and their seven year old sister.

The gang came to pick strawberries yesterday.  More berries went into their bellies (s'magine that) than baskets and a good time was had by all.

Big sister brought her own basket . . . and FILLED IT!

Hey, why are there no berries IN the baskets??

"Look at this big one!"

Little Brother was a serious picker!

She exclaimed to Chicken Mama, "Look how big this is!" and, smoosh, it went into her wee mouth.

I told Chicken Mama this picture looks as if I had hired a group of itinerant workers to pick my berries.

Red lips, red fingers, red drips down shirt fronts, full bellies . . . even a few intact strawberries went out the driveway with them.

Cauliflower (Head) Confinement

I've been talking about tying the leaves up over a growing cauliflower head to keep the sun from hitting it and causing an off-color rather than the snowy white heads that we're used to seeing.

If you want your garden to produce snowy white heads of cauliflower, you have to somehow keep sunlight from hitting the growing heads.   There are varieties of cauliflower that are touted to be "self-blanching" which means the leaves grow in a manner that they naturally curl over the top of the head to form a protective covering.

I've tried that . . . without success.  The heads were not totally covered and developed the undesirable purple-ish/brown off-color so I went back to the method used most often by home gardeners.  And that is to physically tie the leaves over the heads of cauliflower.

In correspondence, Rain over at Rain's Garden commented that she would like to see a picture of the tied up heads to better understand this method.

Here's my remaining bed of cauliflower plants.  I didn't have enough started plants to fill the whole bed so put some marigolds and geraniums at each end.  Looks pretty much a mad jumble, doesn't it. 

Looking closer, here's a shot of a single head.

A cauliflower plant will put out many leaves radiating out from the base of the plant.  The head will start to form in the center of these leaves.  When the head is about 2" across, it's time to cover it to protect direct sunlight from hitting the developing head.  In the picture, I've pulled all but the very bottom layer of leaves up over the head and tied them with string.

You may notice (dang and drat) that the leaves have holes in them.  Yep, I've been invaded by what I'm pretty sure are flea beetles who love to feast on vegetable plant leaves.  They're doing the worst damage on my brassicas with some other veggies being spared.  Papa Pea sprayed with an organic solution which left a white-ish residue on the leaves, but does no harm . . . except to the flea beetles, if all goes well.

Hoping this gives you a clearer picture, Rain, of how cauliflower leaves are tied up over the developing heads. 

As an ending note:  Death to flea beetles!

Stayin' Cool, Man, Cool - Or At Least Trying

It was very hot and humid here yesterday hitting 90 degrees in the sun.  The humidity, as always, made it more uncomfortable than the temperature.  We made the decision early in the day to save ourselves from melting into sweaty puddles (great visual, huh?) by staying inside as much as we could.

Papa Pea did all the normal morning chores while I harvested six more heads of cauliflower which were not as badly tinged with off-color as the first six.  Then I tied (securely and adequately, I hope) the leaves up around the newly forming heads in my second bed of that vegetable hoping these would remain snowy white.  I'm not even sure these will mature properly as cauliflower likes cool weather in which to grow, and we seem to finally be into real summer time around here.

When I got the processing done from the harvest and a few other daily tasks that refuse to go away unless tended to, it was 3 p.m. and I headed into my quilt room for some fabric therapy which was good.  Except I ended up with a headache that continues this morning.  (Coffee!  More coffee!)  I have a suspicion the heavy, humid air that is still with us may have something to do with that.  (And I don't think I drank enough water yesterday.)

It's a disappointment to wake to heavy, gray, overcast, uncomfortably warm weather this morning, because the forecast was for full sunshine, cooler than yesterday.  I had a big garden day planned.  Lots of weeds popping up out there, plants getting so big they need some support, old plants needing to be pulled and something else planted in the space, etc.  This weather encourages the biting insects (a pox on them!) to be bad early and late in the day so that doesn't encourage me to get out there and work in the garden before the heat of the day arrives full force.  But, hey, it's summer time!

I need to get some pictures of the menagerie in the poultry yard.  The Muscovy ducks have been quite successful in hatching out broods of ducklings, and we have wind-up toys of all sizes scooting around.  The mature birds (ducks, geese and chickens) seem to fluctuate between ignoring the wee ones or wondering what all these little creatures bumping into them and zipping through their legs are.  Happily, it's a peaceable kingdom and everyone has free range (within the fenced in poultry pasture) and their own secure, locked-down "house" to go into each night. 

I'll try to get pictures for the next update.  Hope you all have a great Friday and weekend which is coming up fast!