Another Praying Mantis

My husband saw this one as he was trimming the wisteria that comes over the fence from a neighbor's house. He almost bagged it, but saw it in time to let it climb onto the plant again. I like the leaf-shaped hind end.

Canning Tomatoes is Easy(ish)

1. Wash tomatoes and cut an X in the bottom end to facilitate peeling. Put them in boiling water in sets of 3 or 4 for a minute to loosen skin.

2. Remove to ice cold water to cool so you can peel them.

3. Peel, core, and slice as you like. Slicing over a bowl is a LOT LESS MESSY and saves the juice for consumption instead of getting it all over everything for you to clean up afterward when you are dead tired.

4. Make sure jars and lids are clean, hot, and ready. Add recommended 2 T lemon juice to each jar for proper pH. I forgot this (again), but I pressure canned them AND measured the pH later. pH is supposed to be below 4.6, and mine was 4.4, which is fine. Just add it for safety, but if you're including slightly under-ripe tomatoes that make your hands start peeling before the end of the evening, you're probably safe if you forget.

5. Leave 1/2 inch headspace . Water bath can for 40 min or pressure can at 10/11 psi for 25 minutes for pints. Then place on racks in a room that is not too drafty and wait for the 

"ping"! of the jar sealing. Woohoo!

Baby Plants A'Plenty

"Recycled" materials make great starter flats if you don't have lots of money or time to spend making the ones you see in the gardening books. Just lay an empty orange juice carton on its side and cut one side out, so that the juice-pouring opening faces up (you lose less dirt and water that way). Then bash several holes in the bottom with a knife for drainage. Then fill with your potting medium, wet appropriately, and you are on your way. If you're like us, and you drink a lot of OJ, or if you consume other beverages from cardboard or plastic containers, they can really come in handy- and they work. Last week-end I planted 2 kinds of carrots, a lettuce blend, Detroit red beets, marigolds, Tokyo bunching onions, and nasturtiums. I move them along with the broccoli and cauliflower starts into the garage at night to protect from slugs, and out in the daytime for sun. Everything is up now but the nasturtiums. Wow! That is MUCH faster germination than I got in the basement in late winter. The warm temperatures (mid-80s today, so the seedlings are in a place that is shaded much of the day) really help things to germinate.

Hoping to Learn To Play Before I Go

This is one of my paternal grandmother's father's brothers, Cleveland (on the right), with his uncle Frank Crawford (on the left). Cleveland played piano for silent movies and traveled around the country, until he came home one day to find his wife telling him he was not welcome. 

The Rieves family was musical. My great-grandfather could play the fiddle, and did for dances in which they pushed the scant furniture back to the wall and danced right there at home, or out in the barn. Granny said he would throw his fiddle in a pillowcase over his shoulder and go play or preach for anyone (race did not matter) who wanted to hear him. Maybe that is why I want to learn to play a stringed instrument, especially a fiddle, before I go. Just maybe when we all get to heaven I could have a jam session with the Rieves boys, playing the old hymns and telling the old, old story once again. And wouldn't that be heaven?

Where to Go When You Need Info

The cooperative extension agencies located at colleges and universities around the US are gold mines for the home gardener. They have publications about planting schedules, recommended varieties for your region, plant diseases, insects, harvesting and preserving your crops, etc. If you need to know something, they have an expert available. Google them sometime. It'll save you time looking for a book on the subject, when the extension office has a free or low-cost publication.

Tomatoes are Back

It just is not summer without a window sill full of ripening tomatoes. ours are recovering, so what I mistook for wilt was probably just the drastic over-watering from the downpours in July. production has slowed, but it is recovering. Some of the tomatoes are scarred by insect damage, but that is normal for this time of year. It is good to eat your own tomatoes.

Checking Off Goals

I set certain goals at the beginning of the year for gardening and food preservation, and it looks like I'll be reaching those. I was hoping to learn to use the new pressure canner my husband gave me for Christmas, and so far I have used it for green beans and diced tomatoes. I was hoping to learn about making jams, jellies, and preserves, and that is going well, too (strawberry, peach, and blackberry so far). I was hoping to learn how to dry herbs, and at least for thyme, oregano, and rosemary, it is very easy when the humidity is low. Just strip the leaves off the branches and leave them on racks in a well-ventilated room (which will smell fabulous at first) for a few days. Then place in an airtight container after the leaves are crunchy. I'm trying basil next, though it is more succulent, so I'll try it in the attic instead of the dining room, covered with cheesecloth to keep off the dust. 

We're also trying seed saving, with romaine lettuce, radishes, basil (it worked last year), tomatoes(ditto), dill, and corn. I'll also save seeds of the other herbs if they bloom and go to seed. Constant learning is a wonderful thing!

Squirrel Gymnastics

Our dogwood tree has berries now that the squirrels really seem to enjoy. They also usually try a stop at the bird feeder while they're shopping for food, but that often involves dangling precariously upside-down by their rear paws while grabbing seed with the front ones from a slowly spinning feeder. These creatures are truly amazing. With the air conditioner off and the windows open, we can hear the squirrel chew the berries and spit out the hard parts. A backyard is a real blessing.

Another View

This day is too absolutely stunningly gorgeous (low of 61 last night, North winds, low humidity, currently 78 degrees at 3:30 PM in AUGUST in MEMPHIS!) to waste in front of a computer. I'm going outside. Here's another view of that nymph from yesterday that makes the nymph-adult relationship more obvious.

Grasshopper Grows Up

Sometimes the juvenile form of an insect, though it resembles the adult, can temporarily confuse me as to what it is. Look at these two pictures: Does the insect on the left look like the one on the right? They are the same species, different ages. Strange.

Sun and Cooler Weather mean Food Preservation!

And hard work. Here are my plans for the fall, and the associated seeds. I'm canning this week-end. I picked oregano and thyme to dry on the racks yesterday. I'll pick up a box of canning tomatoes tomorrow and make diced tomatoes. We use a lot of those tomatoes over the winter in chili and tomato soup. I'll probably make crushed tomatoes with another box the next week-end. So much to plant, can, dry, etc.! And I spend 8ish to 5ish, Monday thru Friday, at work or traveling to and fro. These are busy times.

Radishes Growing Like Weeds

I can't bait the slugs if it rains all the time. It did not rain last night, but it did this morning. Yesterday evening, just in case, I placed the seedlings in the garage. Searching their holders, I found seven slugs!  Aargh. Must bait them this week-end.

I left several radish plants out there during the growing season for the slugs to nibble instead of eating the lettuces, and the radishes went to seed. Their offspring are coming up now. The plants look pretty nibbled, but some are surviving. It is neat to see a food crop emerge by no effort of your own past the initial planting. I guess that is one of the things permaculture is about. Fun.

We Have Germination! (and slugs)

Yesterday as I went to water the pots of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage started Saturday, I noticed something: new growth already in all 3 sets! It took weeks back in the winter in the basement for them to germinate! Guess warm soil is important, even for cool-weather crops to germinate. I put the pots in the garage yesterday evening as a storm was approaching, and I did not want them flooded. I went in this morning to find one pot denuded of cabbage seedlings- and a slug therein! I thought moving them to the garage would help avoid that. The slug, sensing the rain coming, was probably on or in the pot already, and I did not see it in the dim evening light. I replanted the pot. I'll know to look next time. If it does not rain more tonight, I may set out the beer traps.

Fall planting: Broccoli And Cauliflower Starts

Never underestimate what you can get from a neighbor's trash. Back in the spring, one of my neighbors was planting out her flower beds with annuals. I saw her throwing away flat after flat of perfectly usable plastic pots, complete with flats to hold them for easy maintenance. I salvaged two and am using them to try to start some broccoli and cauliflower for the fall. The picture shows the items I used to set everything up. I don't have much experience, so all of this is experimental. If you live in a neighborhood where people completely replant their beds on a seasonal basis, you can probably acquire large numbers of these pots, saving yourself a little time and money.

The Sound of Fear

Yesterday from an open window I looked out on a pleasant flock of sparrows, pecking around under the dogwood tree and drinking from my plant-watering bucket, looking for all the world like humans in a mall food court- eating, drinking, chattering, and looking around for their friends. Suddenly the flock was spooked by a general alarm, and all leaped into the holly bushes under the window, with several little heads peeking out from the branches. 

A hawk landed in the tree, facing the bushes like an armed terrorist arriving at the mall through the open doors, daring anyone to move. All the little heads disappeared into the bushes, and a shivering twittering sound began that I wish I could have recorded. Usually when the cats are around, the birds sit silently in the tops of the bushes until the cats lose interest and move on. The tiny birds were more terrified of the hawk than of the cats, and showed it by disappearing deeper into the bushes, and making that terrified sound.

I ran for the camera, but the hawk was gone by the time I returned. The sparrows were fleeing elsewhere as well, leaving the feeding site silent and still. 

Wild Kingdom: Predatory Wasp

This caterpillar turns into the beautiful Black Swallowtail butterfly, and we don't need much dill anyway, so I leave it alone. Not everyone else does, though. This wasp was very busy trying to skin/ behead one of the caterpillars. It was struggling to hold onto the plant and get its food. It finally flew off with about a fourth of the larva, resting on the fence before proceeding to parts unknown. I hope it likes cabbage worms, too. It's a paper wasp! Never knew they were predatory. You learn something new every day.

I Picked a Peck of Pears

OK,I don't know exactly how many, but it was a lot. I didn't need a ladder,even. With a ladder I would have been able to pick at least a few BUSHELS, and that's way more pears than we eat in a year. These are firm canning or cooking pears, not those for fresh eating. A neighbor has a beautiful pear tree in the front yard, literally dripping with them. We saw pears falling to the ground on our walks last week, so I walked down and  asked if I could harvest some, and they said, "welcome". Wow! Now to put them up... the hard part.

Saving Basil Seeds

Forget the pitiful harvest. My tomato plants are coming out (except for the Sungolds, which are still producing, tiny as they are) this week-end. Those brown things on top are the mature seed pods of the basil plants. Each pod has 4 parts, each with about 4 little black seeds in it, so you can get a huge number of seeds from even one stem of flowers. I rub them out between finger and thumb over my palm or a white piece of paper, then throw the plant waste in the bushes. I let these get away from me a bit and flower early, having harvested WAY too much basil last year. I did not learn how to make pesto until this year, because I needed a low-sodium version, and we don't have pine nuts around here. I grew basil this year from saved seed, and it worked, though I did wind up buying a few plants extra to try to deter the tomato hornworms. When the tomato plants got taller than the basil, the basil had no apparent repellent effect. However, the urge to pose at the top of the plant in the evening when I was watering DID lead to the demise of several of those nasty critters. Lord willing, the garden will be cleared and ready for fall crops by the end of the week-end.

Aphids on Corn!

Look at this! We're saving a few ears of corn for  seed (as an experiment), and these aphids and their attendant ants were on the dying leaves of a corn plant. I insecticidal-soaped them after this picture to keep them from multiplying and infesting anything else.

Tired

This is an eggplant flower. The plant has flowered, but no baby eggplants. I am sad about that. My summer plants are tired (at least the tomato and cucumber that produced magnificently earlier in the summer seem to be), and I am,  too. Spent the day scrubbing dust and grime off surfaces in the culture rooms, which should be kept painstakingly clean. Even the hood in which we store pre-autoclaved materials was filthy. No wonder I'm wheezing a bit (wore a mask for the really nasty bits). Tossed a cucumber plant into compost this afternoon. Clearing space to plant anew for fall. Hope it works.

How To Discern Science from Pseudoscience

What do you do when you see a new "scientific story" ? Do you believe it automatically if it suits your political viewpoint? Do you doubt everything, or are you trusting of Ph.D.s, or environmentalists, or your favorite group? How can you tell what is true?

I start in 2 places: Google Scholar for general scientific topics or Pubmed for medical topics.

Here's an example: someone mentioned the detrimental effects of ocean acidification with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at lunch one day. Totally convinced the ocean is set to become an acid-bath dead zone. I went to Google Scholar to check the facts. From most university campuses (and probably the big-city libraries as well), you can access all the major journals. I was surprised by what I found. Several papers came out in 2003 and 2004 on the topic of ocean acidification. Most started with some variation of the following sentence from a paper in Science, one of the top scientific journals in the English language (I am quoting from memory, so this may be a slight paraphrase):

"Due to a paucity of observational data, we are basing the following calculations on computer modeling of known ocean biochemistry and projected CO2 levels." In other words, all the projections are based not on observation (which has shown ocean pH declining by 0.1 from about 8.2 to about 8.1 in the past 100 years (no citation was available, assumed to be common knowledge in the field)), but on computer models. Other papers from the same time period showed that ocean biochemistry far from human habitation is quite different from that close to land, and some admitted that, long term, more CO2 means a more alkaline ocean, not more acidic. Only in the short term would the ocean become more neutral (7 is neutral so it is alkaline right now). Yoicks! Pays to do a little scientific reading in reputable journals rather than accepting lunch-table environmentalism as fact. 

Beautiful Storms

Storms can be scary. Dark clouds gather. Some of them rotate. Winds whip the trees around. Lightning flashes make the emerging darkness eerily light, temporarily. The rain pours down, drenching everything and flooding the streets. We pray that the hail (and the trees) will not fall.

But storms also bring a welcome coolness this time of year, and the advancing phalanx of cumulonimbus clouds can be a sight to behold. My husband and I stood outside this evening, watching the clouds swirl as birds wind-surfed and the tree branches whipped around. It was great. We pray for all the typhoon victims as we watch the clouds swirl above, knowing our storms are small by comparison.

Take the Picture, Already

This was one patient praying mantis. I had problems getting the camera to focus on it and not the wall behind. It was on a diseased plant on a section of fencing I was taking down for prep for fall planting. It sat through several shots until I got this one. 

Things are a little too wild out there for my taste right now. I saw the coon family last night. Two adolescents were eating cat food in the garage. I yelled at them. They did not move until I went outside and whacked the ground with a plastic broom. Then the mom came up the alley after I went indoors. SHE WAS HUGE. No fear of humans at all. They came up on the back stoop with the inner door open, only the security door closed, looking for food. I do not want a wild animal that size with no fear of man in my backyard. Must get a weapon, before I find Jorge or Diego torn up out back.

Putting In a Fall Garden

These are my rusty green bean vines, a few weeks ago when they were a lot greener. I was trying to capture a magnificent spider web in front of them. They are coming out in just a few minutes, to make room for fall crops.
This is the first year I've ever tried fall gardening, beyond harvesting surviving crops from summer. Upon the recommendations of the University of Arkansas School of Agriculture, I hope to plant lettuce, kale, carrots, and beets this month. Next month I will plant bok choi, new chard plants, more carrots and beets, and green onions. We'll see how they grow. Fall is coming!

Hug a Friend Today

The thing I enjoyed most about last week-end's reunion was the contact with old friends I had not seen in a long time. I got more hugs in one week-end than I remembered getting in years. I came home exhausted, but overflowing with those hugs, and ready to share. We hold back on physical affection (NOT SEX- a pat on the back, a hug, a high five, etc.) so much in this culture, linking all physical closeness to potential for improper behavior, that we wind up lonely. We don't even know why we huddle over our desks the way we do, searching for family in online social networks. The cure is simple- hug someone who needs it today. Not strangers, unless you're a nurse or a pastor or someone in the work of healing, but some single mother or new widow or college student away from home who hasn't been touched in weeks, by a friendly hand there to help. You'll improve their mental health and your own, too. Off to hug my loved one.

FDA In the Field

A group most accustomed to regulating drugs produced in clean rooms is now venturing out to the field. they have issued draft regulations (to serve as a "baseline") for the growth and processing of tomatoes, leafy greens, and melons at

http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/FruitsVegetablesJuices/FDAProduceSafetyActivities/ucm174086.htm.

Some things are common sense, like making sure workers wash their hands after using the restroom, and providing them with facilities. Wearing plastic aprons, gloves, sleeves, and hair-nets while harvesting tomatoes (I kid you not! They recommend it! ) would look a little odd, and be rather hot for the workers. Other guidelines, like making sure no wildlife (including amphibians and reptiles) wanders through the field, are rather crazy. You need toads to eat bugs, and you need snakes to minimize the rodents. Bats and birds will do as they will. Dust will blow through in dry weather, and mud will splash up in wet weather. All of these things are to be somehow minimized. I'm really glad I'm not a California lettuce grower. If a rabbit nibbles a leaf, and it poops nearby, you have to destroy part of your crop! I'm going to go weed, then pick tomatoes for our own consumption with dirty hands. No hand sanitizers and no gloves! My hair is not properly netted! I will brush off all kinds of insects and their excreta! Aargh. If Americans are really that immuno-compromised- grow food hydroponically for them. For the rest of us- let's grow as much as we can ourselves, and/or go to their site and comment over the next 90 days before they publish the final draft.

Seed Saving and Starting Resources

If you've always bought your tomato seedlings at the local mart, but this year or next you want to do something different, there are plenty of resources out there. A particularly good and pretty comprehensive one is The New Seed Starters Handbook By Nancy Bubel.  I checked it out from the library during the winter, and it was a very worthwhile read. An illustration-free PDF version is available somewhere online, but the book is in print, so it may not be available in PDF anymore. I would highly recommend it, as it is pretty comprehensive in telling you how to start seeds indoors, what containers and soil to use, how to transplant, what works and what does not, how to save seeds, etc. I'm still referring to it as I save those radish and lettuce seeds.

Seed Saving: Lettuce and Radishes

This is a picture from June showing the bed with the lettuces and radishes. I had a Romaine lettuce plant that took weeks after the weather started to heat up to bolt, so I decided to save the seeds. It was planted in the ground in March, but the seed heads were mature yesterday. They had little, feathery parachutes on them to carry them away in the wind, like little dandelion seeds, but smaller. I pulled the dead-looking plant before all of the seeds scattered and saved what I could.

The radishes are a different story. I left them outside because they were bolting and growing a lot of leaves, but somehow the slugs preferred their leaves to the other tender plants out there. I decided to let them go to seed, as the little white and purple flowers were pretty, and see what would happen. Green, pepper-like pods formed. I have harvested some to save the seeds, while others got away. Hopefully they will germinate this fall.

The Green Hills of the Home Planet

I forgot to take my camera to my 20th high-school reunion over the week-end, so I did not capture it, but it was a great time. Everyone was friendly. I chatted until I was hoarse, then got some water and kept going. It was so wonderful to go home- this cooler and wetter summer had the July hills clothed in brilliant green instead of dried-out olive and crispy brown. It was like vacationing in a warmer version of Scotland or Ireland for the week-end with 150+ of your old friends and their spouses, and I'm about as jet-lagged as I would be if we had actually done that.

For me, it was a welcome break. We hugged and talked and met children and marveled at family resemblance (she is YOU at that age! Wow!), and where everyone is now. What a life! Hope I'm more coherent tomorrow.