Homegrown Herbal Tea

This year, knowing life would get hectic (but not as hectic as it got), I planned to start switching over to more herbs/perennials and less labor-intensive annual food crops. This past year was herbs in addition to other crops, this coming year most of the crops will be history, back to flowers and herbs. Trying to graduate, hopefully.

I planted lemon balm, bee balm, German chamomile, and anise hyssop for herb teas. The balms (and mint from the previous year) grew like crazy. The anise hyssop never came up, and the chamomile produced only a few flowers. So I have a cup of mint/lemon balm tea in front of me now.

What do you do? Very simple. Grow the plants. Cut off parts that grow where you don't want them to go. You can prune a mint unmercifully in this climate, and it will grow even more. Bring leaves inside and dry on a towel. The low humidity of hot, dry weather and air conditioning help the process. No dehydrator required. Put crispy leaves in a dark glass container to block deterioration from light. Store until winter.

Go for a walk in brisk winter air. Come in with your face tingling and your glasses foggy from the warm house. Warm a cup of water. Crumble about a teaspoon of leaves into a tea ball (metal ball with holes to allow essence of leaves to escape). Drop tea ball into water and let it steep until it smells good to you. It won't get dark like green or black tea, unless you add those leaves to it. Curl your cold hands around the cup and savor it. Mmm.

Harvesting, Already

Today I harvested 2 small green onions, a little over an ounce of overwintered broccoli, and some lively and fabulous-smelling kale. Sauted in butter with some baby portobellos, these will make a fine baked-potato topping. Yay!

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.

100 pounds!

We just passed the hundred pound mark this evening with a small melon and a really nice red tomato! I was hoping to get a hundred pounds out back this year, and it happened. We'll see how much more we get.

White Thai Eggplant

This should be harvested while white if grown in shade on clay soil. They will turn brown (rot-brown) instead of yellow if left on the plant too long. They do not have seeds if harvested in this way. They are the size of a large marble or a small egg, true to the name. This is a cute plant, more for looks than for edible value.

Rainbow Harvests

The picture to the left is from September 7, before the rains slowed down tomato production again. It rained again today! Anyway... I did get the last bed dug and fertilized and a few plants out. I'll start the slug hunt again to try to minimize losses.

I like rainbow chard. The stems are like celery in cooking and keep some of their bright color. The green leaves are beautiful, too. God gives us so many things to enjoy!

Okra Flowering

Okra is not the prettiest plant in the world. It grows tall and gangly, with rough pods for fruit. But oh, the flowers! They are good enough to make up for the rest of the plant. I'm growing a red variety of okra, so the plants are a bit decorative with their red stems and pods and green leaves with red veins. The flowers open during the day, so I generally do not get to see them. I'm glad the bees (see one down in there?) do.

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.

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.

Eating the Harvest

Tonight I harvested a zucchini! It survived the borers long enough to produce! Hallelujah! No picture- I was too excited about picking it. Awesome! We did eat some beets and carrots, boiled in a little water until done, with golden raisins and a bit of OJ added at the end (yum). We ate the zucchini in some potato-zucchini fritters based on a recipe from The Classic Zucchini Cookbook by Ralston, Jordan, and Chesman. I HIGHLY recommend this book for fans of squash, or the people who must be fed by them. Breads, desserts, main dishes (vegetarian or meaty), pickles, freezer recipes, every kind of recipe using the squash family seems to be represented. Lots of ways to make squash sweet, savory, or especially non-slimy. There's even a "zucchini bingo" at the end combining sauted zucchini and onion with vegetables, meats, sauces, a base like grain or spaghetti squash, and a topping like bread crumbs or cheese to form a casserole. My only complaint would be the preponderance of baked recipes. It is too hot here in the summer to bake! I can do the roasted winter squash with pleasure, though, so all is well.

The Joy of Cantaloupe

This grew out back! All 5 lb 4 oz of it. Forget my disheveled clothing- I was too excited about the amazing aroma of a ripe cantaloupe to notice an un-tucked facing. I cut it open to see an interior the color of orange sherbet, not gelatinous or mealy, but freshly ripe. I like my melons fragrant, but firm, and this one was perfect. I was too excited to remember to take a picture of the interior, but it was very good. Here also is a picture with the vine, for future reference.

Harvesting Sunflower Seeds and Fretting

Today I decided that several sunflower heads looked dried out and gross, so I took them inside. They had little sunflower seeds in them! Lots of little seeds from the small ones, and one large head of only slightly-smaller-than -normal ones from a volunteer plant near the bird feeder. Cool.

I've been fretting lately about the speed at which things are being pushed in Washington. They're spending too much too fast, in a continuation of the pattern that got us in a mess last year. I think there should be a constitutional amendment (at every level of government) that "NO LAW (regulation, etc.) shall be passed until every legislator voting on it has read it in its entirety in its final form, and said law has been published in a public forum available to all concerned citizens (Internet, newspaper, chiseled on stones in the public square, whatever) for a minimum of 10 (ten) days before the vote for every 100 pages of the law. Any legislator changing said law after the vote without consent of the governed will be expelled immediately, forfeiting all benefits of office, and demoted to the lowest-paying public position (janitor, dog catcher, whatever) in his or her voting district. They'd have to inform us of what they were doing, and stick to it. Maybe I'm too hard on them, but I get the feeling their imposed tax burden is going to be tough on all of us in years to come. Aargh.

Birthday Harvest

This was our harvest on Husband's Birthday. It added up to over 2 pounds. Our monthly total is now a little over 20 pounds. the windowsills are full of ripening maters, and life is blessed.

Harvest Report, Mid-July

We're still averaging a little over a pound a day, mostly from the tomatoes. The Poona Khiras are taking a break, which is good, because I need to eat up the ones we have. Here is a picture of yesterday's harvest. The chard are still yielding a meal every 2 weeks, which is good in this heat.

Recognizing Ripeness in an Unfamiliar Fruit

These photographs show the contrast, inside and out, between an over-mature Poona Khira cucumber and one that is "just right". The over-mature ones do not get huge (at least in my yard); they just turn yellow and hard, with an exterior texture a bit like a cantaloupe. 

The seeds

 start to mature inside, and the interior of the cucumber becomes a bit gelatinous, or "peffy", as we say 

about over-mature cucumbers and squashes. They are best picked small.

5 pounds 3 1/2 ounces!

Nope, not a premature baby, but my harvest report so far this month. With the chard for tonight's beans'n'greens, we've brought in a pound a day, on average, so far this month! I must say that the poona khira next to the borage, which gets both sunlight and pollination, is producing prolifically. Tomatoes, too, though they are slow to ripen. The green beans are blooming again with the <95 degree weather, and will hopefully produce. I put a plate under what is obviously a melon, not an acorn squash, earlier today. Delightful! I probably won't get ANY squash this year due to the borers, but Husband doesn't like it much, anyway, except for the winter variety, roasted and buttered with maple syrup. Neighbor across the street says the squirrels are eating all her tomatoes. They are not eating mine, either due to the small gauge wire at the bottom of the cages, or the claustrophobia a small animal might feel going into one, or because of the cats. I hope Spot's death does not bring back the rodent hordes. We shall see. 

Canning Green Beans

I've gotten a good harvest of green beans this week, more than even we green-bean lovers can eat fresh. What to do? Clean them, take off the ends, string as necessary, break or cut into 1-inch pieces, and blanch for 5 minutes. From there, either plunge into ice water (not yourself, though you will feel like it- the beans) to cool off quickly, then into labeled freezer containers or bags, or can them while hot with enough of their cooking water to cover and leave a head space of one inch. 

One inch? Why? Because beans are low-acid foods, we use a pressure canner to can them, and the food expands at high temperature and pressure. The increased pressure raises the temperature to kill some very interesting bacteria that thrive in low-oxygen conditions and produce deadly toxins. Go to the University of Georgia for the latest safety info from the USDA, and follow the rules exactly, and you'll have green beans this winter even if there is a power outage. It works- there are multiple safety features built into these things now, so nothing blows up, and it seems to expel less heat into the kitchen than an open water-bath canner. If you are good at following instructions, you should try it sometime.

Poona Khira

This is a traditional variety of cucumber from India, usually available only in the area around the city of Puna. The plant TOOK OFF growing when the temperatures went above 95 F for daytime highs. It is supposed to stay sweet despite the heat. If global warming is going to happen, or global cooling, or whatever changing conditions may be, it is wise to use our global communications to ask others, "what do you grow in hot,dry-yet-humid conditions? How do you plant it, fertilize it, and grow it? How do you know it is ready to eat? How do you prepare it?". Maybe the land grant institutions could catalog and maintain seed banks and information, not just for "germ plasm" as raw material for experiments, but as a rich record of the agricultural ingenuity that enables humans to live and grow food in a wide variety of conditions all over the world. It would be a lot easier to help people adapt with resistant plants that already exist than to say "Give us millions of government dollars, and we'll engineer a resistant plant- sure it'll need a ton of water and specific fertilizers to make up for the fact that the inserted vector hit an essential enzymatic pathway, but it'll be rust resistant!" Can't we just try using what God has already given? We do not have to reinvent the wheel when a very nice vehicle sits in the driveway, fueled and ready to go.

Identifying a Volunteer

This may be the leaf of an acorn squash! Look at the little squash under the leaf and to the right. If so, I have at least 2 of these vining plants growing out in the garden, from seeds I "composted" out back from store-bought squash. Freebies! If I can keep them alive past the borers and the heat, it will be good to eat our own squash this fall. I won't be able to save the seed from these, though- I have zucchini plants out there, and summer and winter squash can cross-pollinate. My yard is too small to separate them adequately, as they are pollinated by bees. With the borage out there, at least a few bees seem to be daily visitors, so I hope they keep coming, and the borage keeps blooming.

Correction: I think it may be a melon- it isn't keeping that "acorn" shape as of June 30.