welcome to spring

our area got a whole lot of rain at the beginning of april.  which finally allowed our horrible looking yard to turn a rich shade of green.  and to grow at an alarming rate.  so the rain, plus a few other little distractions, made it hard for ross to get out and mow it for several weeks.

so then it looked like this:

but last weekend he finally got out to mow (and even got to “cheat” by borrowing our neighbor’s riding lawn mower – ours is a push mower, aka “would’ve taken 6 hours to mow”)

left: unmowed grass,  right: mowed grass

and voila, the after.  much better.

and now for a casual stroll around our yard.  i love when our yard finally starts to come back to life.

grape hyacinths.  we have them everywhere.

our one lone yellow tulip in the back mulch bed…

and the one lone daffodil right beside it.  must plant more bulbs back there this fall so these two don’t seem so random.  which right now, they are.

seedum, transplanted from the mother-in-law’s house a few years ago and growing really well.

more seedum.  this stuff is so pretty for not having any flowers.

gratuitous puppy pic!

and in the front yard:

on either side of our front porch we have tulips, more grape hyacinths, and creeping phlox – since they’re all in bloom at the same time it really jazzes up the front of the house without me having to do any work.  love me some perennials.

and tah-dahhhh!  garden 2k11 has begun!

ross had a work thing up in roanoke earlier this week and was kind enough to buy me some pepper seedlings at the roanoke farmer’s market.  these seedlings (red, yellow, and orange bell peppers) look soo much better than what i can usually get my pepper seedlings to look like and i’m A-OK with not growing them from seed this year.

all we did was transplant them from their plastic 4-pack into larger pots, where they’ll await their final transplant into the garden sometime in mid may.  can’t wait.

and finally, i started my tomato seeds – the only seeds i’ll be growing under lights this year.  everything else will get direct-seeded into the garden in may along with the peppers.

this year’s tomatoes:  amish paste (like a roma), black cherry (a purpleish cherry), carbon (purple beefsteak), german red strawberry (red beefsteak), and moneymaker (small, very round red tomato).

gratuitous baby pic!  our little future farmer (i told him we’d call him a farmer and not a gardener so he could sound more masculine – think that will convince him to help mom in the garden?)

trip to the cannery

Two years ago I was in one of our local grocery stores in town and happened to see a brochure at the register for the Riner Cannery.  I was intrigued, so I slipped the brochure into my grocery bag to check it out later.  Then I proceeded to put it on my to-do list – for two years.

Part of my delay was the goal (what I now see as an unattainable goal) to produce enough of my own vegetables to warrant going to the cannery.  But I just had to face the facts that I don’t have a big enough garden to grow that much at one time.  For example, to put up just 7 quarts of tomato sauce, one would need to arrive at the cannery with 42 POUNDS of tomatoes.  Not gonna happen, my friend.  So as soon as I got over that and hit up the farmer’s market for my tomatoes, we were in business.  well, sort of.  you’ll see.

So let’s begin the tour:  Welcome to the Riner Cannery.  Riner is a small community within Montgomery County (the county where I live).  This cannery first originated during WWII, when Victory Gardens were the norm and everyone was doing their part to help in the war effort.  The cannery was, until a few years ago, a part of Auburn High School, since it was built by the very hands of some industrious Auburn highschoolers back in the 40′s.

Today, the purpose of the cannery is to accommodate families or non-profits who would like to can and either need a little guidance, or don’t have their own equipment.  Ross and I fell into both categories.

I’ve already mentioned that our mission that day was tomato sauce.  The first step was to flash steam them so that their skins would easily slip off.  This is the contraption that does that.

Then the tomatoes go under the sprayer to get cooled off before we peel them.

We decided that since we were making sauce, popping all the tomatoes through the food mill would help break them down and make a smooth sauce.  This is me and our volunteer teacher extraordinaire, Kelly, giving the food mill a test run.

Let the food milling begin.  The tomatoes get loaded in from the top, and then seeds and any extra skins come out one hole, and wonderful tomato juice/pulp comes out another.

We ran the tomatoes through twice to make sure we got all the juice we could.

Then it was ready to add whatever other ingredients we wanted.  Our recipe called for garlic, onion,  basil, salt, and pepper.

Next the whole thing goes into this large pot that is rapidly heated with steaming water underneath.  This was both the slowest and most heartbreaking part of the process:  as the sauce thickens, it also reduces. and reduces.  and reduces.  until you just about wonder why you even came because there’s like one tablespoon of sauce left.  We never weighed them, but I think we only showed up with 10 or so pounds of tomatoes, which seemed like a lot to me at the time.  Final yield:  2.5 quarts of sauce.

oh well, you live and you learn.

Finally, after lots of waiting and stirring, the sauce goes straight into our clean glass quart jars.

This ancient guy is an industrial version of a pressure canner.  It works its magic to seal the lids, heat up everything, and make it ready to be stored on a shelf until we use it.

so that was our first experience at the cannery.  i think that i could potentially take on a small project like this on my own now, but it was definitely nice to have some guidance and some really efficient machinery for our first time.  it seems like canneries aren’t that common anymore, so i’m so glad we got a chance to use ours.

and look, they even have their own little promo video on youtube:

on the brain

because it’s so far away…

and because it’s right around the corner…

roll call

the tomatoes are really coming in now, and as the next couple weeks may be their last hurrah (more on that below), i thought i’d introduce the cast .

Sungold.  My first tomato to come in (on july 23rd) and now they’re coming out of my ears.  An orange cherry that is very very sweet and easy to pop into salads or salsas.

Yellow Pear.  Still a small tomato – more like a cherry tomato with a pear-like stem and a super bright yellow color.

Carbon – A purple beefsteak variety, and probably my most prolific grower (aside from the sungolds)  Mine turned out a dusky red, with a little green at the top.

German Red Strawberry – At least, I think this is a German Red Strawberry.  The labels I had in the ground got washed off before I could write down what I had planted where.  It doesn’t fit the seed catalog description perfectly, but it’s the only large red variety i grew this year.

Roman Candle -  Even though these look like yellow Roma tomatoes, I don’t think they’re related to the Roma.  Romas are considered paste tomatoes, meaning they don’t have as much juice inside, making them better for tomato paste and tomato sauce.  These are pretty juicy, but I love their shape and color.

Green Zebra – The tomatoes are actually meant to stay green.  As they ripen, they get greenish yellow zig zag stripes.

Moneymaker -  This was a variety I grew last year and I enjoyed them a lot.  They’re not huge slicing tomatoes (only about the size of a ping pong ball) but they’re bright red and almost perfectly round.

Now for the bad news…  my tomato plants have Late Blight.  I would never have known what this was if I hadn’t been reading a few other garden blogs this season.  basically, its a fungus that can spread from long distances through the wind and thrives in cool, wet conditions – our summer has been unseasonably wet (which i have never complained about until now) and presents as small brown patches on plant leaves and stems.  if it infects the fruit, the fruit turn dark brown and shrivel up.  there isn’t a cure, only uprooting the entire plant, wrapping it in plastic and throwing it away keeps the fungus from spreading.  the fungus isn’t harmful to humans, so that’s the one upside – if i can keep it under control by cutting away bad parts, i can continue harvesting any unaffected fruit.  since our tomato season can easily extend into october barring any big frosts, i’m pretty bummed at the thought of losing everything only 1 month into harvesting tomatoes.  but everything else is looking good and i can always try again next year.

gettin into the groove

what we’ve collected over a week

what we collected just this morning

sungold cherry tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes

yellow beans:  Pencil Pod

green beans:  Contender

horn of plenty yellow squash

the tomato harvest has finally arrived

what’s growing – and what’s just teasing me

what’s growing: 

lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce.  it just keeps coming, and honestly my new recommendation for anyone who wants to grow something and either thinks they have no room or thinks they’re an idiot in the garden:  grow lettuce.  it will give your ego a boost.  all you need to do is sprinkle lettuce seeds on the soil, top with a miniscule amount of additional soil, water regularly and wait about 30 days.  then, eat the lettuce and keep eating it for eternity.

bush beans. i have a green variety and a yellow variety.  both have produced well.  i planted two rounds of these, which has worked out well.  when one round tuckers out, the other is just kicking into gear.  we’ve eaten them grilled (way tastier than i thought they’d be) and steamed.

basil.  note to self for next year:  grow lots more, grow more varieties (just bought some deep purple basil at the farmer’s market yesterday), and label the varieties!

dill. chives.  these are perrenials and have done really well this year.

strawberries.  next year’s crop (and all the years after) will be even better.

cherry tomatoes.  sungolds are the sweetest things i’ve ever tasted!

my pumpkin.  it’s already spewed out of the bed, and has decided to sprawl over the ground and nearby fence.  this year, i’m letting it.  note for next year:  go back to the drawing board on growing pumpkin vines vertically.

what’s teasing me:

the rest of the tomatoes.  just turn ripe already, you’re breaking my heart

bell peppers.  see above.

squash, zucchini, cucumbers.  i’ve harvested only one squash (i have two varieties) and only two zucchinis. no cucumbers at all yet.  very frustrating.

harvest is complete on:  shallots, garlic, and most of the potatoes

garden update – early july

shots snapped in the garden last weekend.

garden update: june 13

this is a garden auger.  feel the power.

as you can tell from the four bamboo posts already in, we drilled a small but deep hole at an 65ish degree angle.  this helps the poles to lean in

then its time to use your muscles and jam the pole firmly into place.  many blisters and sore muscles will ensue.

in general, we aimed to sink the poles about 12 inches into the ground

if you make a really intense face, the pole will go in easier

even i had to bring out the guns and help

finally! all eight poles are in.  we designed this system using 1 pole every 2 feet – the boxes are 8 feet long, so that comes out to 4 poles on each side.  is this the best design?  not sure – this will be a year of trial and error

a few shots of the (nearly) finished product from a couple different angles.  (later we secured all the post tops together by mounting a horizontal pole across the top and lashing them together)

the first two boxes hold the tomatoes, basil, and squash/zucchini/cukes/pumpkins/watermelon (both boxes eventually had trellises installed over them).  the last box, the potatoes and onions

the lettuce has really started to fill in

this box has really started to take off – thankfully it won’t need trellises like the other two.

a closer look…

strawberries

pepper buds

a pot of parsley, oregano, and basil i bought last weekend at the farmer’s market

the rest of the tomato seedling stragglers.  these guys will hopefully catch up in the growth department

what jackson has in his mouth 95% of the time

keeping up

right now i have a folder of garden pictures opened in photoshop.  they’re all ready to go, just waiting for me to touch them up, resize them, and post them for your viewing pleasure.  i took these pictures on saturday, the 13th.  just 3 days ago.  but i’m realizing that they’re already outdated because the garden is changing constantly.   daily.

some of that is our doing (the trellises are finally up!) and some of that is the rain’s doing.  literally, i can see growth from one day to the next.  our bush beans, potatoes, peppers, and some tomatoes are flowering.  everything is growing taller, fuller, lusher.  the strawberries are getting bigger and more plentiful.  and the truth of the matter is:  i can’t keep up!

so all of this is to say:  i have some pictures, explanations, garden how-to’s (and how not to-do’s) coming up, but in the meantime, this is what we’ve been up to:

- have started mini harvests of spinach, garlic and shallot shoots, onion chives, and dill

- finally transplanted the rest of the tomato seedlings to their forever homes

- searched everywhere in town for a garden auger (basically the biggest drill bit you’ve ever seen, to drill postholes for our bamboo trellises)

- gave up and ordered one online.  crossed fingers it would come in before the weekend.  it did!

- prior to this, we coated all of the bamboo poles in a clear poly in the hopes of extending their shelf life

- rigged up an interesting trellis system for boxes holding tomatoes and squash/zucchini/cukes, etc. (more explanation and pictures to come) after much trial and error

- started encouraging plants to become friends with trellis system in hopes of taking the garden up and not out.  crossed fingers that it will work

- weeded everywhere.  the plants aren’t the only ones that are enjoying this rain.

so that’s about it for the garden.  like i said, its been hard to keep track of all the progress, but at least there is progress.  in other news, our hydrangeas and strawflowers will probably be in bloom sometime this week or next.  can’t wait to see what colors will show up.  i should probably also snap a few pictures of the front yard too.  lots of color and growth going on up there too.

what’s growin on: june 3

i hate blog posts with no pictures, so i promise i’ll add some when i finally get them on my computer. i mean, honestly, it’s june already and i still haven’t posted any pictures that actually show the trees with leaves!  this will all be remedied.  6/4 UPDATE: pics below!!

in the meantime, this is what’s going on in a nutshell:

- i bought an entire flat of strawflowers  (here’s what they’ll eventually look like) from the farmer’s market and planted them in a small bed next to our garage.  i hope to fill it in more with some zinnias.  both are annuals, but are prone to reseeding themselves.  let’s hope.

- all of the boxes have been constructed, filled with soil, and marked into square foot grids.

- ross and i have done a lot of weeding – in the front, in the back mulch bed, and in the garden.  we’re not all there yet, but much better.

- our peonies are blooming!  i have two different types: one light pink that had it’s biggest blooms yet, and one dark pink that bloomed for the first time this year.

- we’ve been wracking our brains to figure out a system to make all of my climbing veggies happy and not sprawling all over the ground – aka some sort of trellis system.  we’ll be putting that little experiment to the test this weekend.  more to follow.

- everything but the basil survived a random frost we had two weeks ago.  i’ve reseeded some of it, but this year i may just have to give in and buy basil seedlings.

- already growing: garlic, shallots, strawberries (tribute), red and yellow onions, two rosemary bushes, and potatoes (yukon gold and banana fingerling)

- now planted: 4 red peppers from the farmer’s market (carmen), 2 of each of the 3 peppers i grew from seed (Orange Bell, Red Belgian, Golden Treasure), two types of bush beans (one green variety and one yellow), spinach (bloomsdale longstanding), dill, oregano, cilantro (not sure if that will make it), a couple types of lettuce that may or may not make it, 2-3 of each variety of tomato i grew from seed (Roman Candle, Green Zebra, Moneymaker, Carbon, German Red Strawberry, Wes, Yellow Pear, and Sungold), squash (horn of plenty and white bush scallop), zucchini (costada romanesco), pie pumpkins (winter luxury pie), cucumbers (diva), and watermelon (white sugar lump).  i know it sounds like a lot, but there really isn’t that much of any one plant.  just small amounts of a lot of varieties.  so we’ll see how they do.

- nabbed some free oregano off of freecycle, so should have a nice crop of that this year.  also nabbed two types of sedum from the mother-in-law and planted them in front of the garage.  our clematis (planted last year) is blooming in front of the garage as well.

- i’m sure there’s more, but those are the highlights.  the most important task right now is a trellising system to keep everything growing up and not everywhere like some sort of plant vomit.

p.s. this is my 100th post on almost eden!