June Garden Update

2011 has been a lackluster year in the garden. Things are growing, but only doing okay, not great.

First the good (of course).



The green beans have made a good showing. We have had more than enough for dinner and to share, and I have also put up about a quart into the freezer. As of June 14th, the plants are looking wilted and tired and I think the harvest is tapering off.



My potatoes did well, but I did not buy enough seed potatoes. I planted 2.5 pounds and harvested 12.5 pounds. It is a decent yield for me ~6x and right on par with my best potato harvest ever (planted 7 pounds, harvested 35 pounds in 2009). I had zero bug problems in my main potato patch this year, not so much as a bug nibbled potato in the whole harvest. This is great news, and much better than a friend of mine who reported that his potatoes got blight and he does not expect any harvest at all this year. I think one big factor was that I rotated the location of my plantings this year. One volunteer potato plant came up in the 'old' location and that plant suffered from pests and some sort of wilting disease so I pulled it early.



Sweet Potatoes. Well, I can't count this as a harvest yet, but I am so happy that this year I was able to plant over 35 sweet potato slips grown from sweet potatoes that we had bought to eat. Each time I found an eye on a sweet potato I was about to cook, I would cut off a small section of the potato containing the eye and stick it in a pan with water. After about 6 weeks of this, I had a huge crop of sweet potato slips in my kitchen window. I planted 9 plants prior to June and then planted the remaining 25 slips after I harvested the white potatoes. There are about 10 more slips that are still forming roots in the window. This was a great learning experience and very successful way to get lots of sweet potato plants (even before the harvest).

Also doing well (without photos) are: Swiss Chard, mint, oregano, basil, also pumpkins and winter squash (all very healthy and producing volunteers).

I had okay luck this year with my spinach, garden peas, summer squash. These are producing okay, but just not thriving.

And now the bads... my poor tomatoes look awful, the plants are small and anemic, there is very low fruit set (no fruit at all on most of the plants), and there is some sort of disease or pest causing a yellowing of the leaves. The "Little Porter" tomato is the only one that seems to be thriving. Brandywine has a strong plant, but no fruit. All the others look awful. Considering that Hubby judges the success of my garden by the weight of tomatoes produced... this is a dismal year.

Eggplant, cucumbers: both fell victim to the hail and never recovered.

Corn. I guess since this is the first year I have planted corn, and it got the shady side of the garden, I can't call this a true failure. I have about a dozen corn plants, waist high, and they are starting to flower (tassel?, ear?, fruit?, produce?). I am not sure what they are doing, but they are starting to form something that I hope will turn into corn. Since I have such a small patch, I am counting on having to pollinate these things by hand (with a brush) since corn is wind pollinated and you need a strong stand of corn to get good pollination.

Peppers: the seeds I planted did not germinate, so on June 10th I bought two pepper plants from the store.

Mulberries: these are not in my garden (or even in my yard) but the trees down the street had a very light harvest this year. I kept watching and waiting for the fruit fall to really kick in (last year, it stained the sidewalk and street purple from all the fruit), but this year... not much. We did not even walk down to try to harvest any, I figured with such a light harvest the birds needed them more than I did. Hubby points this out to me as proof that we should take advantage of the good years when they happen (for example, we are still eating last year mulberry jam with about 8 pints left to go). Good lesson.

Peaches: similar story to the mulberries, not my tree, but my friend's and he has reported a very small harvest this year. We do NOT have any peaches left over, so I will have to buy them to can this year.


Other milestones in the garden this year: compost! Hubby has taken over the compost area and expanded it to 4x what I had. He is diligent about turning it and even brings home other people's veggie scraps and coffee grounds from work to add to his compost bins. We have already gotten a 55 gallon drum full of finished compost which we added to the garden when we planted the sweet potatoes. It is some very pretty stuff.
Rain water: the water totes are hooked up and working great... now if we can just get some rain.
Bees: the girls are working hard and as of May we had more supers on the bee boxes than we had at harvest time last year. Hooray bees.

April Garden Update 2011

It is hard to be excited about the garden after it was smashed by hail on April 14th, but ~2 weeks later, it is nice to see how well it has recovered.



The purple heart is blooming, but the leaves are all beaten up. This used to fill the garden near the Cottonwood tree, but the chickens love to scratch in this area so most of the purple heart has been killed off. It still hangs on in the area right around the tree and I know it will refill the garden over the course of the season.



My 'Paprika Yarrow" is growing and blooming nicely. It has spread some, and I hope it will fill the whole area of the flower bed.



My Swiss Chard survived!

It is battered and beaten, but it lives on... phew. Of all of the plants, this one seemed to take the worst beating from the hail.


I planted four varieties of chard this year. The red is "Rhubarb Chard", it is the most scraggly of the bunch and has the poorest performance.

The large yellow is... umm the strongest variety... bu I will need to check my garden journal for the actual name.



The pale white stems were Fordhook Giant. It has the second best performance and seemed to withstand the hail better than the others (could be location too, it is near the mint and may have gotten some protection from that).



The small yellow stems at the front are Fantasia Chard. It is doing fairly well, probably ranks third out of four varieties.

Scattered through the gardens are German Camomile

(the ferny light green plants near the hose). I bought this as a single 4" pot from Northhaven Gardens and there were hundreds of seedlings in the pot. I was able to carefully break the cluster of seedlings apart and planted them all over the place. They seem to be doing great this year. Camomile is a medicinal herb and the flowers are harvested for a calming tea, it can also be used to lighten hair color.



This awful picture is the red amaranth I planted. Amaranth is a grain and ornamental and will grow to five feet tall according to the seed packet. I planted to varieties, but only the red seems to have germinated (no sign of the Golden Amaranth)

The amaranth is over seeded in my asparagus bed. The poor asparagus just limps along.

I saw a few spears, less than 10 and definitely did not harvest any. This is New Jersey Giant (?) planted last year from ugly dried out roots. I need to get a real start of asparagus from my mom. Her patch of asparagus is about 15 years old, and completely untended it has produced more asparagus than she could eat this spring.



The snow peas are starting to produce, it has been too hot for them to really do well. These peas are from my spring planting. The winter peas I planted all froze out in one of our ice storms this winter.



My spinach did not freeze this winter and it has been a great producer. This short little three foot row has kept us in spinach since about February. Unfortunately, due to the heat it has started to bolt. I keep pinching off the tops, but it keeps sending up new ones.



My poor tomatoes. Most of the main plants were damaged by the hail, but most have grown back from the roots.



The squash looks great. Strongest by far is the zucchini (black beauty)



Weird angle on this photo, but the first hill of squash along the fence is zucchini, then yellow crookneck squash (poorest performance), then a hill of the mixed squash (same mix I grew the last two years with excellent results).
The squash mix has already bloomed.

Last is the dead out hill of cucumbers. The four plants I had were completely obliterated by the hail and did not grow back.



Brussel sprouts... I have no idea. Is this what they are supposed to look like? When do they produce sprouts? I suspect that they already made the sprouts and they are now just getting leggy. A few weeks ago, I noticed very loose leaf clusters forming along the main stem of the plant, but they never resembled brussel sprouts to me. It may just be too hot to grow these here. Too bad.




My lovely Red Lasoda potatoes are growing great and I spotted the first few blooms a few days ago.



I only bought 2.5lbs of seed potatoes this year, I wish I had bought more to fill the whole section of garden. I waiver between wanting to try lots of varieties and also wanting to grow huge quantities of what I know will do well.



The beans are blooming. I planted three varities: Jade Bush, Black Valentine, and Blue Lake. It seems that my three bean mix from previous years did better, but it could also just be the weird weather this year that is causing them to grow so slowly.



Jerusalem Artichokes are coming up everywhere. I have replanted from this patch, taken a 5 gallon bucket full of plants to my MIL, and still they keep sprouting. Silly me for moving these spreading weeds to three different areas of my veggie garden over the years. Oh well, if I have to deal with an noxious spreading plant, I'm at least happy this is an edible noxious spreading plant... and it blooms very prettily in the fall, like little sunflowers. I kind of have a love hate relationship with this veggie, mostly I love it, but boy can it be a pain.



Speaking of noxious spreading plants, yikes my mint is going nuts. This little 4" pot purchased in 2009 now covers a huge swath of my garden. I find little mint plants popping up 10 feet away from the parent plant... all connected by a pencil thick root system. I'm happy to weed it, it smells pretty and I have been replanting it in tricky areas of the yard where nothing else seems to grow. The kids like to pick handfuls of leaves to sniff.



New to me this year is corn. I have never planted corn before, claiming I did not have the space, but hubby got me a huge variety pack of heirloom seeds this year and I did want to try something new.



Plus pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins... we had about 10 pumpkins to decorate this Halloween and after the holiday, they were carried around the yard by the kids, dog and squirrels. This spring, pumpkin seeds are popping up everywhere. In the garden,

on the path

by the garage door (where we walk all the time)



in the lawn... I'm going to try and let most of them grown (apart from where they will get mowed or stomped) in the wild areas of the garden. It would be fun to have lots of pumpkins, but I'm not counting on them to do great. Last year, I allowed a volunteer pumpkin to take over a huge area of my garden and it only produced one small pumpkin.

Overall, the spring garden is doing well, despite the cold to hot to cold weather and hail. My tendency this year was to plant lots of varieties of plants, but not huge quantities of any one kind (except tomatoes, I have a full section: 9 plants of tomatoes). I will see how it works out for me. Right now, I'm wishing I had planted more potatoes and less winter stuff (beets, broccoli, radishes, carrots--all doing poorly and taking up room). It is hard not to be distracted by all the pretty seed packet descriptions. It is all a learning experience. Like every year, late April and May are the glory days of the garden. Plenty of rain, not too hot, not too cold, everything growing great, it is hard not to be excited.

What the Hail?

Spring in Texas usually means unpredictable weather, and true to form, we got that last night...

April 14th, 2011



At about 10:30 I woke up to a big storm and the rain sounded heavier than usual.



Sure enough, it was hail that was pounding down on our roof. The black line through the yard is a full sized 1 inch garden hose.




Most of the hail was marble sized



Some was even golf ball sized (this one had melted a bit, but you can see how big it was).



In just a few minutes it had covered our yard in ice





As soon as the hail stopped (and I made sure our family, critters and house were safe) I rushed out to my garden to survey the damage.



Poor squash, poor tomatoes



my swiss chard looked more like swiss cheese


This morning, April 15th, I woke up to see that there was STILL ice on the ground.




As of 7:30 this morning when I left the house, there was still a solid covering of ice in our yard. Our whole neighborhood looked about the same with shredded leaves covering the ground, limbs down and a mess everywhere. Less than 2 miles away at the kids daycare was a completely different picture, just a nice damp 'after spring shower' glow to the gardens and trees. Sigh.



I'm thankful that it was not worse for us than it was. The storm only lasted about 10 minutes before it blew over, but those 10 minutes were spent with me running helplessly from window to window trying to see what was happening (yes, I know, standing by a glass window with giant icy projectiles hurtled toward it was not a good idea).

In the daylight, my garden looked even worse than the night before



tomatoes were snapped off,



the formerly regal looking mullein was in tatters



oddly, the potatoes looked great... I am keeping up hope that after our sunny and 70 degree day today the rest of plants will perk up and recover nicely.


Or maybe a trip to the garden center is in order



Yep, typical spring in Texas.

Peck of Pickled Patty Pan

We were given a sack full of cucumbers from a friend's garden. We ate a few and I pickled the rest. Since I had a huge batch of pickling solution mixed up I went ahead and pickled the patty pan squash from my MIL's garden too.

I first peeled, seeded and sliced the squash in 1/4 inch slices.



I found it easiest to halve them, then scoop out the seeds, then peel with a veggie peeler. The skins could possibly have stayed on, but sometimes they are thick and I did not want them to ruin the pickles.




The slices were then placed in a big bowl with 1/3 cup of canning salt, and crushed ice. The salt helps to draw out the moisture through the process of osmosis. Basic idea behind osmosis is that nature wants all solutions to be of even salinity, so the salty water pulls the not-salty water out of the veggies. After a 1 hour soak the veggies were nice and salty. I'm not sure what function the ice served except to keep the mixture very cold.

I mixed up the pickling solution (apple cider vinegar, sugar, dill seed, celery seed)according to the recipe in my cook book. The mixture was heated on the stove until the sugar melted.



The veggies were added to the pickling solution and heated through (I kept the cucs and the squash in separate batches). The pickles were then ladled into sterilized jars, then processed for ? minutes.





We have no 'real' canning equipment yet. So we used our Aggie ingenuity to make do with what we could find. I used silicon baking mit to handle the jars, a stew pot as a canner.



spaghetti tongs to lower them into the water



I put a toaster oven rack on the bottom of the pot to keep the jars from touching the bottom of the pan.




We put towels over the jars to keep them from cooling too quickly and possibly breaking. I'm not sure how anything could cool off in my kitchen, it gets very hot in there during summer evenings.



Ahh, pickles! We made a mistake and put juice and veggies in all at once for the cucumbers (on the right of the picture). The squash we used a slotted spoon and filled the jar to the brim before adding the juice. Much better.

Of the 9 jars we processed only 2 did not seal properly, which is fine by me because I have the excuse to taste the product early. I am very pleased with the squash pickles, the texture is a bit mealier than a cucumber, but overall it is a very nice texture. I"m afraid my vinegar was a little old, so they all have a strong vinegar smell to them, but I'm learning to like that. I craved vinegar during my last pregnancy. I would make up batches of pickles then eat them all before hubby even got home. The funniest part was that people teased me that I was pregnant, and I was, but I just did not know it at the time.