Back Online

Sorry no posts in forever. A stressful life event erased my password from my memory and completely reset my priorities. I did grow a garden this year, but it survived among weeds and with much less care than usual. It was hot and dry, but with daily watering I still got 20 pounds of sweet potatoes this year! Otherwise the overall harvest was about the same as last year. And I tried growing luffa, or vegetable sponge. It grows a lot like kudzu if you let it, so I have a few fruit hanging from a telephone wire. Post forthcoming. I'm back.

Semi-Local Dinner

There's a good probability of frost tonight, so I went out and collected tomatoes (2 lb 9 oz worth!), lettuce, radishes, and lima beans tonight by the light of the full moon, and the neighbor's motion sensors.

We had a completely backyard salad of radishes, lettuce, and a window-sill-ripened tomato. The grocery-store baked potato was topped with onion, mushrooms, and greens from the radishes sauteed in butter. The sweet-potato-pear salad contained our sweet potatoes and home-canned pears from a neighbor's yard, and pecans from the farmer's market (recipe: Peel and cube a few cups of sweet potatoes. Microwave in the sugar syrup from the canned pears until soft. Add the pears (cubed) and cook 2 more minutes. Add chopped pecans and dried cranberries or golden raisins. Pour off the syrup and sauce with unsweetened plain yogurt. MMM). The catfish was American, and probably from Mississippi, where much of it is grown in ponds near the river. The corn was from a grocery-store frozen bag. So dinner was as semi-local as I could make it.

It is fun to try and figure out how much you can do with what you have. I'm really glad I do not have to live on what I can grow, but it is fun to grow it.

Sweet Potatoes, Baby!

Here is last year's crop of sweet potatoes. I was pleased to find that planting the slips sprouting from a store-bought sweet potato gone too long in the pantry actually produced potatoes in our clay soil!

Here is this year's crop (plus a few more dug this afternoon). It is now

drying/curing in the attic. This is a little over 10 pounds of sweet potatoes. Why so many more? I dug 2 or 3 bags of store-bought "garden soil" into the main bed this year, along with compost and lots of leaves. Also and more critically, I buried the roots of each slip in a large clump of potting soil, so the roots could push through. Even so, I found some larger narrow ones growing in the clay, so the soil is gradually improving. It would take years of patient soil amendment to really get this right. I planted these in the shade, in the wettest part of the bed in a very wet year, and it has been quite cool, so I did not expect much. I only dug up 2 rotten ones! God blesses us in many ways.

Quiet Days

We've had our first frost, but it was light here in the city and hit very few of my plants. It seemed to knock back the cabbage worms a little, though. We actually had a full week of sun this past week for the first time in ages! Gorgeous weather. I've only harvested a few ounces of tomatoes so far this month. I wanted to bring in the sweet potatoes today, but it probably will not happen.

Husband and I are both sick. No, it is not the over-hyped swine flu, though I'm sure every sniffle at the doctors' offices is being reported as swine flu. This is a sinus infection, without fever or GI involvement. We're sleeping it off, and using lots of tissues, and hoping to get back out in the sun soon.

Kids These Days

Imagine! November first, and the jack o'lanterns escaped unscathed! Gorgeous day. We went to the park again to watch happy dogs chase balls and humans chase frisbees. People were reading and napping in the warm sunshine. Costumed percussionists grooved up at the edge of the war memorial. A fire breather was there, spitting fire for the masses. The ice cream truck was available in case of emergency. What fun!

Clearing Brush

This is the first time I have ever lived in a place with alleys. In some of the wealthier neighborhoods, the driveways face the alleys, so they are kept clear. In other places they are only for running utilities, so it is easy to let them fill with weeds and young trees. Our alley is becoming overgrown, so Husband and I went out and did some rather cathartic tree whacking this afternoon. It was a beautiful crisp fall day, great for such activities, but cool in the shade if you slowed down. When husband got out the power equipment and chips were flying, I came on in to Technu myself and start dinner. It was a good day.

Blue-sky Sun

Beautiful Day! A cool fall day of sun is a gift from God. The trees are starting to blush with color, and soon the Great Dig Out will begin in earnest. Bags of leaves by the dozen pile up in front of houses in our neighborhood like sand bags in a flood zone. I piled several on the garden last year as a mulch, which helped with early weeding, but caused a drastic over-population of slugs. If slugs were a fine cuisine, we would have been in good shape. I captured over 8000 this past spring! I'll enjoy the beautiful fall while it lasts, before the grays and browns of winter take over. And the inner debate about throwing away all that good organic material vs spending my spring evenings out back picking up slimers will continue.

Lost and Gained

We lost the game of furnace chicken last night., but we gained 11 pints of green beans. A good bargain, in my estimation. There was light frost on the pumpkin this morning, but the back looks fine. Going out for a detailed look in a few minutes.

Furnace Chicken and Canning Green Beans

Furnace Chicken is not a new delicacy. It is the annual game my husband and I play as the night-time lows flirt with freezing outside and the indoor temperature coasts slowly downward. "I'm not cold. Are you cold?"

"I'm fine (putting on another layer), but you can turn it on if you are cold."

"Oh, no. I was just concerned about you."

And so it goes, with sly grins, until we both look at each other, no longer smiling, and say, "It's TIME."

I'm upping the ante (and the kitchen temperature) by canning several pounds of green beans from the farmer's market, and a mixture of sweet and hot peppers, hot pack of course. The pressure canner will be hot tonight- and so will the kitchen. Muuahaha.

Lessons Learned: Broccoli and Cauliflower

This picture is from a few weeks ago. The plants are a little bigger now, but very chewed. Cabbage worms. I do not like them.They are pernicious little beasts, attacking even when the plants are too small to feed them to maturity. I do not want to spray for them, and indeed cannot when it rains almost every day, as it has in the spring and fall this year.

That makes hand-picking the only option, and there again hand picking in the rain is not fun or very efficient. I probably will not grow any more broccoli or cauliflower for that reason. The stores and farmer's market can supply me with those. I'll go for chard and beets and carrots, with maybe some bok choy and kale, and snow peas, as my spring crops.

Heat, Rain, and Tiny Slugs

the past few weeks, I've been Slimer Hunting at night for slugs and predatory planarians. Mostly catching really huge ones, including a couple suspended from a string of slime, mating on the front steps a few nights ago (gross, man!).  My first thought was, "get the camera!" to capture their swirling bodies. I decided not to risk their getting away and killed them instead. Last night I saw the first itty, bitty slugs on a plant in some time. The eggs must be hatching. Oy. Hope my fall crops can make it.

Onward and Upward

I like the looks of baby bok choi plants. They are so very green, at a time when all the summer produce plants are starting to fade! That living green is a deeply cheering thing for me, especially on a hard or painful day. Today was a bit of both. I can grow stuff out back, but not at work. Oy.

Seeing Growth

When you transplant things, especially when you are not very good at it yet, you see variable results. Some plants (like carrots and other root plants) do not do well. Others (the ones for which you harvest above-ground parts) tend to do better. I'm seeing the broccoli and cauliflower starting to grow now. I had to leave them in pots for a month because of the rain, and was surprised that they stayed small in the pots. They are growing at last. I hope they can get big enough to produce before frost.

Dying with Its Boots On

This bee was on one of my lima bean flowers, so I decided to take pictures of it. Then I noticed that it was not moving. The weather was not cool enough outside yet to preclude flight, so the bee must have died on the flower. Many people wish to go this way- doing work they like to do, and going quickly. May God grant us a good death and a Home with Him.

My Fall Garden

Here is a lot of it, though not all. In the foreground are the sweet potatoes, looking to engulf the chard entirely and probably hiding a whole host of slugs and creeping things. In the middle (messy) bed are the melon plants, volunteers, and also a volunteer milo plant from the birdseed. At the back of the main bed is the cauliflower/ broccoli/ beet/ onion/ radish bed for fall. In the rear bed, across the front there is rosemary, Indian mint, oregano, and thyme. In the middle is one straggling amaranth plant (the others already died) and weeds. Across the back, the tall spindly red things are okra plants. Under the crape myrtles is an experimental spinach and kale bed- no germination noted since last week so far. On the right in front of the crape myrtles ( and growing into them) are my tomato and basil plants, with one volunteer melon in the mess of vines. Then the limas are down the fence row with  carrots, onions, bok choy, lettuces, and eggplant, and a little poke salad and Malabar spinach volunteered from last year. Whew! 

Radishes and Beets

I sowed some seeds among the transplants last week for beets, radishes, carrots, green onions, and lettuces- all cool weather plants that should thrive as the trees lose their leaves and more sun hits the garden, at least until frost. The radishes and some of the other plants are already up! This fall gardening may work out well. We are due to fall into the low 50s at night, with highs in the 70s during the day this week. The dogwood that shades the garden from the south is losing leaves slowly now, with the rest so wilted that a lot of dappled sun gets through the branches. The oaks to the west are still thick with leaves from all the rain, so we'll see if we get enough sun to keep going. 

Calm Times in the Garden

It is hard to be patient sometimes. The lima beans will start coming in soon, but the pods have not completely filled out yet. The cole family and other starts I put out there earlier this week are starting to grow. I caught a cutworm at work out there last night and dispatched it, but the plants are still small and vulnerable. I have three small melons developing, but with no sun and cooler temps, they are not ripening. At least they have plenty of water!

These times come, and we have to wait in patience. The Thai yellow eggplants are finally producing! They're just not yellow- they are white. Maybe that means they are under-ripe, and I should leave them on the plant longer. Patience again. 

Must go look again, and watch the beets grow. Slow work, but fun.

Broccoli and Cauliflower

This is my broccoli and cauliflower bed. Two of the plants have been shorn off an inch above ground, with no slime trail. One had the leaves nearby, and looked like it had been cut. I discovered the second today, leaves gone. Both broccoli plants. I am sad, but I hope the rest survive. When I find suspicious looking grubs as I dig the bed, I try to kill them so they will not eat my plants. Did one of them (that I missed) do this?  I don't know. This is my first attempt at fall gardening beyond nursing the summer plants through cooler weather to frost, so it is all experimental. 

Fortunately the slug count is a LOT lower than in the spring, with a few big ones instead of multitudes of small-to-medium ones. I'm still going out every night to observe and to minimize damage, as a big one could theoretically eat lots of baby plants in a night. Hunting with disposable gloves on actually works, and really cuts down on the "I'm-actually-picking-up-a-huge-slug-ICK!" factor. Highly recommended for the small-scale "organic" gardener.

Magnolias are Strange Trees

We have lots of magnolias in Memphis. DO NOT plant them expecting them to be bushes. They grow up into huge trees in our mild climate. They have huge white flowers with a heavy, over-ripe fruit aroma. After the flowers, they produce these odd seed pods. And look!

 Seeds like those little square pieces of candy-coated gum! I did not try one, but it looks like some pre-historic gum dispenser. God had fun making this tree.

Finally In the Ground!

I finally got my fall crops out of the flats and in the ground this evening, mostly. A few more plants remain for tomorrow afternoon, Lord willing. Must slug-hunt. Pictures forthcoming.