Gardening, gardening, diddly dee. So much to learn....

I admittedly have been sort of lazy around the garden these past couple of weeks lately, not wanting to fuddle around there because of all the rain, bugs and having gotten myself caught up in a million things. Which is a pity as I like how productive I feel getting up early, walking the dog and then nearly first thing I do is check out the garden and make sure all is right in it at the morning and finding that it's still well before noon is when I feel it's a good start to the day.

I hadn't felt like that until today morning when I severely pruned back some hedges (hate 'em but they're part of the "bones" of the property and then I don't have to plant other things there). Massive prunage occurred as some branches were way out and wonky, preventing light from getting to the branches below and I also noticed that the bushes were afflicted by soft pink scale, also called strawberry scale, which took out one of the otto luyken's in my backyard last year. So, neem spraying will probably have to occur.

(thanks, www.yale.com)

I have a problem of neglecting the inedible plants at the house (unless their the groundcover ones that prevent me from having to mulch):
(love it! strawberry begonia, golden turkey vine, shade sedum and creeping jenny mix)

because I figure if they can't make it, they weren't meant to be there and if I have to put forth all this effort for something I can't eat or isn't that cool then I sort of don't care for the plant.

Example, I think my irises in the front are being affected by iris rot either the bacterial or fungal kind. The bacterial one, Erwinia carotovora, can be caused by iris borers that attach the base of the rhizome and the bacteria enter into it causing a soft nasty smell rot. This is a bacteria that is common to decomposition as compared to the fungal rot which is major problem apparently and is a dry rot officially called Sclerotium crown rot (so rotten it has 'rot' in its Latin name!), caused by Sclerotium rolfsii. The dry rot is actually brown and crumbly looking in the rhizomes and I don't think I've been messing with that because if it is there supposedly I need to do some major quarantining. (http://hyg.ipm.illinois.edu/pastpest/200507b.html)

More things I learned! How to identify ragweed:
http://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/

I planted a lot of marigolds last year and scattered their seeds around too, so if you were to see this plant, without say, the flowers in this picture... you would think it was a marigold too right???? Other than the fact too that these plants get giant, about as tall as 4 feet, which tips me off that no, it's not a marigold. Wheee... This may explain some sneezing here.

And the fun doesn't stop here!!!! Because of the rain (I've been saying that phrase so much lately) I tossed around baking soda on my damp plants, versus making a baking soda solution to spray on the plants to prevent/treat fungus because I figured it would become a solution when the baking soda landed on the damp plants, why make them more wet?

Yeah, I totally burned my tomato and bean plants... but I think the tomatoes will make it. The beans could go for a second sowing anyways I noticed, so no huge loss. So, if you ever are tempted as I was to do something incredibly stupid like that, don't.

On a happier note, I has a harvest!

The butternut squash vine was showing signs of kicking it from borer damage, so I put it out of its misery and pulled it and kept the small squash fruits. ah well. I plan to make that area a flower garden of sorts to attract pollinators as I will be moving some black eyed susans there in the fall once they have gone to seed as well as some clearance gallon salvia's from Lowe's (about a buck apiece! Go get!)

I figure at this point, the vegetable garden is mostly established, and now I need to work on making it look goooood. Other than this guy:
(Ugly siamese Brandywine tomato says hi)

Mmm, mmm, Meat.

So my husband and I are having a silent discussion about meat. Here and there, no more than a couple times I guess, about me mentioning that I was interested in getting meat that's organically and humanely produced, including eggs because chickens are raised in such terrible and unsanitary conditions it would make you cry tears for not only them, but for all future omelets you'd like to eat.

After reading Michael Pollan's books, "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food," I've become more aware of what a crappy and nasty life farm animals go through and there are sustainable, much more efficient, clean ways to eat meat.

One way I propose would be to keep my own chickens for eggs, but I am losing on that end with the husband. (Note, when I am not a happy wife, I call him "the husband" not "my husband" :P)

The temptation to "accidently" hatch some chickens in the yard is great. Just like I the time I "accidently" got a pet rat for myself for Christmas when I was 13... and didn't my inform my parents ahead. They dealt with it and didn't turn it (or me) out of the house amazingly, but I did get hell for it. I will say, rats are one of the best pets ever and I hear that chicken are great pets too. I just need to confirm that the suburb allows that sort of thing...

Another way to get healthy meat would be from local Fresh Markets or Whole Foods, but the price is always prohibitive and my husband and I have a hard time not being thrifty especially when the Kroger nearby sells ground beef and chicken for so little in comparison. My husband and I usually grocery shop together and stop by the manager special meat section, but the past few times we've just avoided it. The topic of other meat sources is at a stand still for now as we are clearing out the meat aplenty that is in the freezer.

I am starting to do research on the prices and options of local farmer produced meat. I am hoping the prices start to be right to the husband as I figure, we are mostly veg already, the meat that we do it will be so little that we might as well eat the good stuff and the price won't be such a pain.

Anyways, little rant from me. If anyone has any suggestions it would be appreciated.

UPDATE: West Wind farms is a local option, but the change from $2/lb meat to :

Split Chicken Breasts

Two split chicken breast halves, with bone, skin on. Moist and delicious. Each package weighs 1.0 to 2.0 lbs.

for $14 is frightening. Maybe I should just go completely veg....

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's..........

.... a strange object was hanging underneath the hummingbird feeder today. I only noticed it when a hummingbird seemed to zip in and out at the feeder, but did not eat and appeared to be scrutinizing something green waving it the breeze beneath the base of the feeder.

Upon squinting my eyes a little, I noticed this:

oooh! and I so I went outside to confirm, and yes indeed, it was a praying mantis!

It has been raining like a mofo lately and I think it decided to duck under the feeder for a little shelter, maybe eat a spider or other winged creatures attracted to the nectar, and hopefully not a hummingbird. I can't even imagine a praying mantis eating a hummingbird and think I would be scarred if I did see something like that happen.

I thought I had seen a tiny praying mantis once hanging about one far side of the garden in the bean/cucumber vines a month ago, and left it alone hoping for the best.

I am only hoping that this is another one and that I actually have a lot of them hidden away.

Here's a better pic:
She's givin' me the evil bulbous eye!

Going native

First, just want to mention how sneaky vegetables can be. This green on green thing: green beans on green vines/leaves surprises, non-observant me sometimes and I had a bunch of beans earlier this week to harvest because I totally missed them.

Also hidden was this cucumber:

Camouflaged amidst all the leaves as well (and all the way in the back of the trellis. Easily a one pound cucumber! Pickles... or cucumber salad...? Cucumber salad for lunch today!

(another quick update: I was able to get the asparagus that popped up randomly in time and was it sweet and delicious. Hurray for fresh asparagus in July! Literally 2 minutes from garden to my plate)

Anyways, on to my story:

As I was walking out of the place I volunteer at earlier this week, I walked to my car, hopped in, and stared out the window in slight disbelief. Approximately 6 feet away, hanging by vines in a little past the cut grass of the parking lot into the wooded area were these green egg shaped things swinging in the wind.

Wild/native kiwi? I first thought initially, except I was pretty sure kiwi weren't native. I couldn't remember what kiwi leaves looked like and then I saw this flower (bad pic, sorry):


I started nearly jumping for joy when I realized that I had discovered a native maypop, aka passionflower vine growing on the property!!! I nearly ripped the entire vine from the ground until I thought better and grabbed a flower and fruit first so that I could show the administrative staff at my volunteering place.

They were nonplussed, and sort of thought, "Wha---?" and when I asked them if I could dig up the passionflower vine they said it was ok as long as I didn't get eaten by coyotes in the woods.

Easy enough.

Being too impatient to drive the 10-15 minutes home to grab the proper tools, I decided to give the vine a yank at the bottom since it had been raining and the ground was soft. Hmm... I got some (broke off) tap root and bent up the vine a little near the base in the process. That might not be good for the vine and so I found another vine and attempted to pull that up and same thing, some tap root, but no full rootiness.

Well, just to try to have more chances of success as these becoming established I took both vines, each over 6 feet in length, with fruit and flowers on them (not smart to take the entire thing probably, lots of plant to sustain with a lot less root now) and wrapped them into my car.

I popped them straight into a bucket of water and the weather has been cool out so I am hoping that I may see some roots developing that I might find a nice place to let the maypop carry on with regular growing activity and give me delicious fruit. If not this year, maybe the next!

(UPDATE: 3 days in and there be new roots growing! Also, I'd like to note that I have been trying to grow maypops prior to this discovery, receiving little seedlings from a local gardener lady, but the damn things always get eaten by squirrels/placed in poor areas by me/I break them >_<)

Passionflowers are a fascinating looking flower with a lot of symbolism/backstory to the Passion of Christ. The parts supposedly signify:

• The pointed tips of the leaves were taken to represent the Holy Lance.
• The tendrils represent the whips used in the Flagellation of Christ.
• The ten petals and sepals represent the ten faithful apostles (less St. Peter the denier and Judas Iscariot the betrayer).
• The flower's radial filaments, which can number more than a hundred and vary from flower to flower, represent the Crown of Thorns.
• The chalice-shaped ovary with its receptacle represents a hammer or the Holy Grail
• The 3 stigmata represent the 3 nails and the 5 anthers below them the 5 wounds (four by the nails and one by the lance).
• The blue and white colors of many species' flowers represent Heaven and Purity.

(Thanks wikipedia!)

Pretty cool eh?

Passionflowers are commonly called Maypops in the southeastern part of the U.S where they are native because in May they seemingly pop out of nowhere. I have also heard from locals that they are named this because the fruits are ripe sometimes trailing on the ground, when stepped upon they "may pop." Ah, local lore.

They are a deciduous vine as compared to its South American tropical companion vine you might find in grocery stores. The tropical ones in grocery stores have an orange flesh with little black seeds and purple-black skin when ripe. Maypop fruit however have greyish-white flesh with black seeds and orange skin when ripe. This orange skin gives it is other name, apricot vine.

Interestingly enough, the parts of the plant, leaves, stem, flowers, when eaten together apparently produce a combination of chemicals, that can help with sleep and are anxiety reducer. Use of passionflower as a medicinal is unusual in the States, but popular in Europe.

Though the fruits of the maypop I have now are green and still unripe, I took one and cut it open curious to see what it looked like. Pretty drab white spongy flesh. When it ripens up I've seen pictures where the entire fruit case is filled with big cells of the fruit, like a pomegranate's, with the black seeds within each cell.

Taking pictures of the unripe fruit though was still a lovely experience as the light of my camera would allow the green skin to show through from the inside.

Enjoy!

Grow my pretties, grow!

My first year gardening I built 2 large-ish trellises using branch trimmings borrowed from neighbor's yards. They've been holding up well enough for their shoddy construction, a little rotted twine here, a broken branch there. I just attach a new branch/stick with more twine in an empty or fragile looking place and pray for the best. This year I attempted to plant Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake beans by each of the trellises, but for some reason, be it sun or a pest issue, only one trellis got covered with vines. It seems that the other trellis was not going to get covered with beans despite a second attempt on my part, so I figured I'd try the next best fast growing vine I could think of: cucumbers!

I grew cucumbers last year and was aghast as to how fast the vines grew and smothered everything in its path. This year I figured I'd have it covered, plant fewer seeds and thin, thin, thin. Yeah... that thinning thing is hard for me... it always seemed like such a waste... so once again, the cucumber is taking over. This is not a bad thing per say either; I know plenty of people who like/want cucumber and my husband and I are interested in trying to make kosher dill pickles again (he hates vinegar and the first time we made them it was failure, the jar wasn't big enough and the scum reached the pickles, ick).

It's just that... sometimes the cucumbers... they frighten me. I'll be looking one way and then I turn around and it's though it's grown a foot in front of me! One minute there's a flower and then the next, fruiting.


It's sort of good that I let the cucumbers go to town because I've been noticing some squash vine borer moths flying around the cucumber/strawberry/okra bed, and so I think they've gotten desperate and are going to make their move on the cukes. Fudge muffins. Well, this is why I've got more plant than I need... *sigh*

The irony of me being up to my chin in cucumbers is that my husband doesn't even like them with the exception of an occasional kosher dill pickle. I've found recipes that involving cooking them and he tolerates them a lot more, but it's definitely something he isn't fond of. He also doesn't like melons (cantelopes, watermelons, honeydew... he's a nut!) So, I wonder if his taste buds sense a similar distaste with cucumber as he does with those as they are all in the same family.

As you might have noticed, these cucumbers come armed. Not sure what's up with the black spikies, but my understanding is that the pickling types (this is a cheap seed pack I picked up) tend to be short, stubby and spiky fruited. The spikes come off fairly easily when they are mature enough to pick. A little more prickly when young.
Perhaps I'll go a more exotic route next year in cucumbers, if I do grow them. Maybe something like the Armenian cucumbers that are fuzzy. Gotta love a fuzzy cucumber ;)

My butternut squash seems to still be holding on, though I do note nasty fracas near the base of one of the vines, and the usual suspect is a vine borer. I've allowed another main vine to grow alongside the ground as I noticed it had started producing small white roots. If it roots up well the squash will probably survive as it has alternate routes to get water/nutrients. It's sort of a crap shoot when growing the squash up a trellis too as it might survive the borers better if it was growing fully on the ground to produce more roots where the stem touched, but ground is precious space and if you saw my husband with the spin trimmer, well...
Lookin' good though! I think it needs to turn more yellow and the stem becomes more dry and woody when it's mature enough to eat/cure for storage. Mmmm, butternut squash soup. Vegetable gardening seems sort of morbid in the sense that you grow your "babies" only in anticipation to eat them!

All this cool rainy weather has apparently confused the heck out of the asparagus and it thinks its spring again because 2 lovely looking stalks were poking out of the soil this morning. I jumped at the thought of eating some of it for dinner and reminded myself to grab it before dinner but of course forgot to. I have hopes that it might be there still tomorrow, but as the asparagus is as frightening in its speedy growth as cucumber is (potentially 7 inches in one day), I won't be surprised to see some frondy, unappetizing stalks tomorrow. *Cry* Proscuitto wrapped asparagus, thou hast thwarted my tummy!
I keep becoming paranoid about my asparagus because these were moved after their first year in one bed to another as we realized that the bed was in an unfortunate spot. While they appear to be doing well, I couldn't accurately gauge if they seemed to have suffered greatly because well, we had moved them. Upcoming spring should give me a more accurate picture. I understand too that asparagus really like to stay established too. Able to produce for 20-30, and maybe 50 years, their roots can reach as deep as 40 feet! So, when I plan on moving, as I don't think I'll be in this house that long I don't know if the asparagus will be willing to move with me.

Honestly though, I am probably more paranoid by the thought that someone might not want an asparagus bed for free when I move. Fresh asparagus with the house! That ought to be a selling point hm?

Brief garden updates

As I promised, grilled cheese tomato sandwiches with tomatoes from the garden, featuring Nebraska Wedding (an orange tomato) and Green Striped Zebra:



I've spoken about the Green Zebra striped flavor and now I have to give an opinion on the Nebraska Wedding. Meaty, balance of acid and sweet, not mind blowing, but still, better than your average tomater that you can buy at the store.

I still have yet a potential 2-3 other mystery varieties to try from my growing vines, one of which I am sure if Brandywine, so with luck I'll have something to really rave about this summer.

Either way, here's a pic of a nifty squash tendril I found in my garden:

Pepper Present

Garden log -314563.48 (For you trekkie fans out there)
Experimentation of the ornamental pepper, tricolore garda, proves in the first cream-purple phase of its 4 color phase growth that the pepper is indeed quite hot. Investigation must be done as to why there is no apparent heat for the first 5 seconds of chewing and then sudden "face slap" of heat immediately thereafter.

Jelly was deemed the appropriate fate for these peppers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had one lone ripened red bell pepper, a couple of jalapenos and MANY ornamental peppers (the purple-black calico and tricolor ones) available, so in the name of Tasty, I decided to make pepper jelly.



I didn't even know pepper jelly existed until about 2 years ago, when my husband and his mother introduced me to the stuff (with cream cheese!) Ever since then I have been obsessed, though not the point I need a jar in the house at all times, I just savor it when it is around.

I had never made jelly/jam before and while my husband and I had talked about canning last year (buying all the lids and tongs and such), we sort of got intimidated by all the steps and worries of contamination that we ended up washing all the one-time-use lids and used the jars instead for storage.

Yesterday I went out and bought some more canning jars (wide mouth ones, baby!) and powder pectin and noticed freezer jam pectin. I decided to grab some of that as well as I heard good things about it on various websites I frequent.

When I got home I did a trial run of freezer jam using some leftover cherries that I boiled in carmenere grape wine we had from our recent foray into French desserts (FLAMING CHERRY TART!) to use for acidity versus lemon juice and dumped in half the pectin because it was a small batch.

Sat around for half an hour while it set, cutting up hot peppers and such for the pepper jelly. After the half hour set time was up I tested the jelly. 'Ce magnifique! Cherries, wine, ya!

I then contemplated for 5 minutes about doing real canning with the other pectin and reread the directions for true canning on the box before I decided that this was a little too much for a small test batch of pepper jelly and decided to use the other half of the freezer pectin instead.

Boiled all the peppers in vinegar, some sugar and decided to add a dash of the carmenere for a bit o'colore and then tossed in the pectin, before pouring the entirety of simmering liquid into my shiny new Bell canning jar. Half hour of cool time, and a little tasting...
Mwahahaha! This was the best pepper jelly ever! The ornamental peppers give a great pungent spicy bite and awesome color and it isn't too sweet. I am proud of the natural additional color that the splash of wine gave.

Dang, I could make jelly all day. I still want to learn how to can For Real so that things are stable at room temperature and I don't take up additional fridge/freezer space, but for now, I am happy.

First of tomato harvest. It ain't pretty

The recent rainy weather has been a blessing and aggravation.

No having to get up early in the sweltering heat to water, but then again, potential fungal and bacterial issues cropping up (no pun intended, ok, maybe).

The jalapeno plant is in its second year but I'm not sure if it'll make it to a third because it's sort of getting blotchy and yellow, as are the other pepper plants surrounding it. Fudge nuggets. Thinking maybe in the future it would just be prudent to leave all the peppers in pots in the future so I won't have to dig them up for the winter anyway.

I knew the rain would be trouble too for my developing and soon ripening tomatoes and yesterday when I went outside to check on them, whaddayaknow! Crrrrrack'd! Lots of ugly scarred up tomatos, please, if the image of NOT immaculate tomatoes is too graphic for you, avert your eyes:

And that's with me turning the larger nasty gashes away from the camera. Above is a Nebraska Wedding tomato and 5 Green Zebra Striped tomatoes, all heirlooms. This batch comes from the Gurney's Rainbow Heirloom Tomato pack, or what I call the, "Oops, someone probably dropped 5 jars of tomato seed and now we don't know which is which," because when I bought this seed pack I assumed that the different varieties would be separately labeled but uh, no, they were all mixed together and up with the package saying, "you may get 3-5 different varieties in this pack" with no explanation as to which ones they might be.

This was a little problematic as some of the listed varieties were determinate and others indeterminate.

For the uninitiated, determinate tomatoes are bushier, grow to a specific height and have all their crop at once. The indeterminate varieties, like their names imply, grow, and grow and grow until something kills them off (frost, disease, pests, pets, inept gardeners). They're viney and keep producing fruit all season.

So, this becomes a problem if I say, I decide to plant close a bunch of unknown type varieties together, and a line of them is indeterminate, determinate, indeterminate or etc. Because not only is the question of size an issue, but if a determinate varietygets wedged between a variety that's indeterminate I will have to dig around and figure out how to safely remove the dead and done for determinate from between the still lively indeterminates.

It seems that the Green Zebra Striped seed jar at Gurney's must have been huge or the seed is really vigorous because some how I ended up accidently planting quite a few right next to each other without being able to determine their type as seedlings.

There were actually 6 GZS 'maters, but I ate one before I took the picture above. I can tell you that it's got a pretty spiffy acidic taste, acid green like it looks. But I like that. More news on the Nebraska yellow possibly tonight. I have designs to turn it into a cheddar grilled cheese sammie!

This is my first year growing heirloom tomatoes and its been a good experience thus far. I don't feel as though I've had disease issues thus far, but I keep watching. One plant was getting a little bumpy and twisty, but some new growth appeared at near the base where some stems had died off, so I'm thinking it's doing, alright, giggity.

I've never been a huge Disney World/Land fan, but here is reason for me to want to go now:
It's a FREAKING TOMATO TREE!!!!

Tomatoes are actually perennial... in the right zone (like Orlando obviously...) and apparently this ONE VINE has produced more than 32,000 tomatoes. *blink blink* I um, may need to go to Disneyland for some "research" and take some "samples" home. Oh, to have a green house....

Anyways, I leave you with a parting farewell from my one vigorous squash vine:

Well, that was a little weird....

Randomly, I finally found the time to thoroughly read the edibleMemphis that came in the mail a while ago (ignoring my article because dude, I wrote it, and as usual I felt could have done more with it. AUGH perfectionism, 'tis a CURSE!)

Anyways, it was just interesting to see Adrian Miller of the "Eau Sucre Begets Red Drink" write about the hibiscus sabdariffa when I mentioned it in my blog recently after the magazine publication... that Jonathon Devin mentioned ornamental peppers... with same weird coincidence as above... and that Ben Smith of Tsunami wrote about Asian greens and talked a bit about Malabar spinach... continuing odd coincidences.

Granted this is a food/garden magazine... but specific things like the hibiscus and spinach were a little odd.

Am I developing some sort of telepathy? If so, what other powers might manifest? Adamantium claws? ...or mutant healing...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vQ2RVqJCNM

Fer chrissakes people, MUTANT HEALING.

Garden pics

Egyptian Walking Onion
Aforementioned Sea of Shiso

Unusual grasshopper on shiso leaf, love the colors!

Another angle of the grasshopper. Click on the photos, they look a lot better blown up!

Twisty vine Diane gave me and random "borrowed" crepe myrtle branches being used to support self seeded vines.

On a random note, I am needing to steal more grass clippings from the neighbors after I dig up the garden bed paths so I keep the weeds down. I realized that I want to devote all "borrowed" grass clippings from neighbors to use in the paths and keep out of the actual garden because I obviously don't know all the crazy things they might be using on their lawns.

I can then devote all the weed seed ridden, non-treated with anything clippings from my house in compost pile for use.