bee creative

Garden update -July

Haven't been able to spend as much time as I'd hoped in the garden this summer, so the jungle just keeps growing.   Guess it's been a saving grace that's it's been cooler than normal.  Today was the first heavy watering for the year. I'd say that's about a month behind normal. 

Here's a summary:   

Raspberries: 34 cups and counting. I'm freezing, canning, and munching away.

Snap peas:  4 1/2 pounds plus what's still on the vine.  I'm trying to dry some of the pods for my own seed or to try as a dried pea. 

Blueberries:  Just started picking.  Probably won't measure 'cause they keep getting eaten before they make it to the kitchen!  I do have the best crop I've ever had.

Lettuce:  I'm getting closer to growing just the amount that I can eat, but still not quite there yet.

Potatoes:  Trying very hard to leave them alone so that they will store better.  What's been harvested was very good. 

Strawberries:  Just a few handfuls from the strawberry pot.  I splurged and bought a flat to make jam.  Replanting a strawberry bed next year is definitely on the "to-do" list.

Fennel:  Wish I liked eating it better.

Beans:  Found the first three  2 1/2 inch  beans.  It's a shelling variety, so not ready to eat.

Tomatoes:  Finally setting fruit!  Just teeny-tiny still.

Yellow Transparent Apples:  Not ready to harvest yet.  Usually they are ready around July 4th for an apple pie.  Maybe by August?

Quince:  The second season in the garden, the first fruit.  Just one. 

Squash:  Buds starting to form.  Maybe they will bloom this week?

Cukes:  Looking good, no blossoms yet.

Sweet Potatoes:  Well, they finally looking healthy.  Not counting on having anything though.

Cabbage:  2 plants are starting to form heads.  More starts to go in the ground for a fall/winter crop.  Also swiss chard, kale, and cauliflower.  Slugs/snails have done a lot of damage in this part of the garden.

Grapes:  Growing like mad.  Keeping fingers crossed. 

I know there's more growing out there, but that's it for now!

Watering the garden, one can at a time

My corner of the world is approaching our drought season.  About two to three months of little rain fall.  Over the last couple years I’ve been experimenting with how much water the garden really needs.  I try to reserve water for new shrubs and perennials that have been planted the current year, plants in containers, and vegetables/fruits that need water to grow. 

One thing I’ve realized is that some vegetables need a lot less water than thought.  Last year the peas produced a reasonable crop without putting water on them once (other than rain).  The year before I grew a patch of cherry tomatoes that weren’t watered after July.    Those plants produced just about as well as the ones that were watered. 

This year’s experiment is shell beans (“Dragon tongue).  They will be watered by hand and I am measuring how much water I use.  I want to see how much rainwater would have to be stored to have a crop.  I watered them for the first time yesterday-1 gallon. 

Eating from the garden: rose petals as flavoring

I've been wanting to experiment with rose petals as a flavoring for food for quite some time and finally got a chance.

The roses used were from a heirloom cabbage rose.   I've tried two different things.

My first experiment was to make a rose cream custard.  I used a recipe from an old magazine I had.  Probably any pudding type recipe would work.  The rose petals were infused in the milk mixture, strained out, and then the rest of the ingredients added.  All ingredients for this were local, except for some sugar.

The results?  Well, it's a little rich to eat much of.  That might be the results of the custard recipe (6 egg yolks). Rose flavored custard  would be nice for a tea party.   

Since I wasn't having a tea party, I did have to decide what to do with a couple servings.  Here's where I got results that I really liked-the custard went into a smoothie.  The one picture is actually a raspberry smoothie (last year's raspberries-cleaning out the freezer).  For the rose custard smoothie I used 1 cup of plain yogurt, a cup of the custard and 1 strawberry.  Very tasty.  Especially the second smoothie made.  After making the first smoothie, I froze the rest of the custard.  Freezing the custard made a better texture. 

My second rose petal experiment is steeping in the refrigerator.  I'm making rose infused white wine.  I'm going to use some of it in some type of recipe as a replacement for vanilla.  I'll probably start with a butter cookie of some sort.  It would probably have worked better if I had used vodka instead of white wine, but I wasn't going to make it to the store the night I got started on this project.   More on this experiment later.   

Garden update for the end of June

It's been one of the coldest springs on record this year and the garden is showing it. 

Picked my first couple of strawberries this week.

Starting to have tomatoes bloom, nothing is setting fruit. 

Lettuce, kale and peas are doing great.

Cucumbers, squash and beans are just getting started. 

Sweet potatoes are looking rather pathetic. 

Rugosa and old fashioned roses look great. 

Slugs are having a feast....  Especially with the winter squash and the cabbage starts. 

Potatoes are doing very well, especially the ones in the trash can.  Might go looking for some "baby"  potatoes next weekend.

And, of course, the weeds are taking over. 

The front window of my local salvage store....

I want the bath tub.

How many food crops can you find?

It's a jungle out there!  In about  a week the bronze fennel will be towering over everything else and all the sage will be in full bloom.  The roses (mostly rugosas and heirloom varieties) are just starting to blossom.  The peas are blooming.  Might have some to eat in a couple weeks.  Not much growth on the tomatoes, but they look good.  A few cabbages have been chewed on by the slugs, but mostly they are surviving.  I'm guessing in about a month I'll have enough raspberries to eat all I want, preserve all I want and still share.  Raspberries have pretty much entered weed status in the garden.  It's, well, a jungle. 

And then there is the container collection.  The potatoes in the garbage can got ahead of me.  The can is about 3/4 full of compost.  These are by far my healthiest looking potatoes.  It will be very interesting to see how many potatoes it produces. 

My cut-and-come-again lettuce is ready to cut in two places.  Salads will be featured prominently on the menu this week.  The wash tub also has some carrots and strawberries.  After the lettuce is cut a second time,  something different will be planted in this space that will give the carrots room to mature. 

The other hanging basket has cucumbers in it (these are organic starts that I bought).  My goal here is to remember to water them frequently and to keep pests out of the cucumbers.  Last year something (a mouse?) hollowed out a couple of the cucumbers completely.  The cucumbers will get plenty of sun this way too. 

One thing I want to keep track of with the cucumbers is cost effectiveness.  I'm figuring $3.50 for the start of this project (1.50 for the starts and 2.00 for the organic potting soil).  The basket is being reused from last year so I'm not going to figure that in.  I'm going to water the cucumber with water saved from waiting for the water to heat up for dishes or collected rain water, so water won't be included in expenses either.  What I want to do is compare how much my basket produces against how much it would cost to buy the equivalent amount from the farmer's market or the grocery store. 

As for the jungle, there are six crops that are visible (apples, rhubarb, potatoes, fennel, garlic, plums) plus 6 more that aren't (strawberries, beans, tomatoes, a tomatillio, raspberries and roses), and two spaces cleared in the back for where a patch of corn and a couple sunflowers are going to go and a space for the hull-less pumpkins.   

From the pantry: dried apples.

One of the most important things I think I've learned about eating local over the last year, is the importance of having food stored for the time of the year when there are less local foods to choose from. 

As the season of having so many more food choices approaches, I'm thinking a lot about what I want to preserve, how much to save and how to preserve it.  It's also shaped what food crops are being grown in the garden. 

The apple muffins are a great example of something done right.  For these muffins I used apples from my tree that I had dried last summer.   To use them for baking I soaked the apples in boiling water, diced them and then added them (and some local walnuts) to my favorite muffin recipe.  Very yummy.  The spread is locally made goat cheese.  I was told by the cheese maker that it freezes very well!   

The apples have also been very tasty in oatmeal.  I've been dicing them and then adding the apples at the beginning of the cooking time for the oats.

Drying more apples is definitely on the "To-do" list.    

Sweet Potatoes in the garden

Sweet potatoes were my plant of choice for The Growing Challenge hosted by Elements in Time.   And here they are!

I'm growing Georgia Jets that were ordered from Irish Eyes.  Not my first choice, but what was available.  Probably for the best as they are the variety with the shortest days to maturity.  They arrived as a bundle of slips and with a sheet of instructions.  The weather was still really cold at night when they came, so I decided  to soak them in a little water overnight and then planted them in 4 inch containers so that they could be easily brought in and out (like the tomatoes).    When the night time temperatures started hitting a low of at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit ( please let it stay there, please), they were planted up to 5 gallon black plastic containers.  They are going to live on the back porch- the hottest, sunniest spot in the garden.  Now I have to hope for about 90 days of warm weather.

A few pictures of the vegetable garden

Cut-and-come again lettuce in a hanging basket.

Teeny-tiny asparagus.

Potatoes in a trash can.

All victory gardens should include flowers!

I think this captures the weekend the best...glorious yellow sunshine, well, a "Lady Banks" rose. 

So much happening in the garden:

*Planted out most of the tomatoes.
*Planted my sweet potatoes in containers.  They look rather sad.
*Still hilling up the potatoes.
* Assembled one huggelkultur.  Tomorrow I'll plant the winter squash I've started indoors. 
*Weeded my asparagus bed.  I found one teeny-tiny stalk coming up.  It's the first year for this bed so it won't be harvested. 
*Figured out where  to put the lavender and two rosemary plants that need a home.
*Observed a lot of bees working in the garden.   Hoping that there are enough flowers blooming to keep them happy! 

The to-do list is even longer unfortunately.   More weeds to pull, more seeds to plant (cucumbers, beans, and summer squash), and some mulching to do.  I have a stash of cardboard I'm going to put around the blueberries. 

Something else that is making me very happy in the garden:

I've waited four years for my tree peony to bloom.  Here's the first blossom.