Winter pruning.

I spent some time out front of the house today. I took the electric hedge shears and cut down the variegated grass around the driveway. It went into the compost bins I share with the neighbors on the property line. They have been keeping their horses on their other property here of late and I haven't gotten my fix of stable cleanings to add to the compost piles.
 I also did some pruning on the shasta viburnums out front. They had numerous water sprouts (branches that sprout twigs that shoot straight up with no branching) and crossing branches which needed to be removed.
It's important to take some time to inspect your shrubs and trees for these types of things to keep them healthy. Water sprouts to nothing for the overall appearance of the shrub and tend to block out light and air from getting to the center of the shrub. Crossing branches can cause rubbing and bark wounds, where insects and diseases can find an easy entry point to your valued shrub.
 I also took some time to remove some Muhly Grass volunteers from my beds. I love Muhly Grass in the fall when it looks like clouds of hot pink cotton candy floating just above the ground. But it has proven to be quite invasive in my gardens. It pops up everywhere in the beds. It is definitely a love/hate type plant.

Winter doldrums.

December and January are perhaps the slowest months in my gardening year. There is not really much growing in the garden these months. Perhaps a few radish, some arugula, carrots and kale, and I am 'storing' one head of cabbage in the ground. I allowed two broccoli plants to go to flower, so as to attempt to harvest some seeds from them. The brussel sprouts don't seem to want to head up, despite the stems being covered in small starts.
 I am hoping for a dry spell for a week or more to allow the ground to dry out enough to permit me to turn under the clover. I need to turn it under at least a month prior to planting out, and it will soon be approaching time to plant the spring potato crop. This year I am limiting myself to planting just Yukon Gold and Kennebec. The Yukon Gold make superior baked potatoes and boil up nicely for potato salads. The Kennebec are good all around potatoes, useful in baking, frying and mashed, and they store longer than the Yukons. Last year I planted four seeds potatoes each of Yukon Gold, Kennebec and Pontiac Red, and was rewarded with a large paper grocery sack of each at harvest time. I am thinking this year I will plant six Yukon Gold and 12 Kennebec. I have heard it said that you should plant potatoes in newly cultivated garden spot (one that not had crops grown in it the previous four years). But I rotate mine through my garden each year. I add extra organic matter and till deeper and I do not lime the area I set aside for potatoes.
 Another thing I do in December is to plan out next year's garden. For the most part it is very similar to last year's garden, rotated one bed over. I experiment with a few different varieties of tomato each year, but my main planting of them each year is dedicated to Celebrity and Mortgage lifter. This year I plan on trying out three different types of paste tomatoes. The best of these three will become part of my regular planting scheme each year. I also try our a couple new varieties of peppers each year. The regulars of my pepper planting are Jalepeno, Habenero, Anaheim and Serano hot peppers.  My wife uses these to make her jardiniere recipe. We love it on hot dogs, and italian beef sandwiches.
 I have grown Marconi green peppers the past three years, this year I am trying California Wonder instead. Last year I grew some pepprocini peppers with the intention of canning them. I tried three different recipe/preperation methods and none of them produced an acceptable canned pepper. So this year I am going to try some Ancho peppers, that are supposed quite mild with a hint of apple flavor. Perhaps I'll make them into a jelly.

The beginning of a new garden year

This is my seedling rack.

This is the golden acre cabbage seedlings.

This is the Red Danish cabbage seedling.

These are spinach seedlings.

This is the iceberg lettuce seedlings.

These are some pea seedlings I'll be planting out this coming weekend.

Well it has been awhile since my last post. I have been harvesting those cool season crops which the deer, through their benevolence, have not eaten from the garden. The deer seem most enamored of my lettuce crop, but at the same time they do not seem to care for arugula. The deer have also discovered that they can charge through the deer fencing, so it seems that I shall have to erect an electric fence before spring. Fortunately the deer don't seem to care for members of the brassica family. As such I have been enjoying cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. However, we could not eat it all, so we froze some broccoli and cauliflower and made sauerkraut with the cabbage. We found a terrific way to prepare the cauliflower, we cut it into flowerlettes, and put it and some finely chopped garlic in a ziplock baggie with about a teaspoon of olive oil, shake it up to cover the cauliflower evenly, remove it from the baggie, then bake it in the oven at 400 for ten minutes, turn it over and bake for another ten minutes and then plate it up with a topping of parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste. (This works well for new potatoes as well.)

 Now that we have harvested the last of the brassica crops, it is time to start the seedlings for the spring crop. I'll be growing golden acre and red danish cabbage, along with both Atlantic and Early purple sprouting broccoli. I have also started seedlings for both Iceberg and Great Lakes lettuce. I grew both these varieties last spring and the Great Lakes was a great success but the Iceberg was brown and mushing in the middle and turning brown by the time it had formed a head. I am hoping that getting a little earlier start can have them ready before the warmer weather arrives and does it's damage to the heads. It is fortunate that I have so much space in the garden that I am allowed the luxury of using garden space to experiment with crops that really would not justify themselves in a smaller garden.  I also started two types of spinach, a hybrid (Renegade) and an open pollinated variety (Bloomsdale). I hope to have the transplants ready to go into the garden by mid February.

Alpacas on the loose

I was making my normal afternoon rounds today, feeding and watering the chickens, checking on the garden and walking the dogs, when I spotted one of the neighbor's alpacas on the loose. Actually, it was my dog Molly that spotted it first and after a brief hesitation to determine the best path to cut it off, took off chasing it. The dog was no match for the alpaca (who knew the were so fast?) and Molly stopped the chase about the time she got to the end of our property line and the beginning of the fenced area from whence the alpaca had escaped. This is becoming a recurring happening around here as two of the alpacas have discovered how to go under the fence. About a week ago the DW came in exclaiming that there was an alpaca near the street. So I called my neighbor to tell him and then went over to herd what turned out to be two alpacas, back into the fenced area.
 The renegade alpacas were not of great concern to me until this afternoon when I discovered that the biggest part of my deer fencing around the veggie garden had been torn down. Hopefully this doesn't become a recurring problem. Up until now, we have had great relations with the neighbors. They give me stall bedding to compost and I take care of their waste problems. A true win/win for us both. I am not sure how I will react if the alpacas were to destroy one of my crops. I put a lot of effort into growing my veggies and don't take kindly to having them destroyed by an overgrown sweater.

Garlic planting season

It's time for planting garlic here in the Carolinas, so I took advantage of a beautiful day to do just that. I put in several hundred cloves each of Aja Rojo, Burgandy, and Creole Red garlic. This is in a bed that is new. Last year at this time I tilled up an area about 10'x40' and planted crimson clover. The clover will deposit nitrogen in the soil and make good organic material to help loosen the soil.  In spring I tilled that under and planted buckwheat. The buckwheat is deep rooted and helps break up the soil. It's deep roots also pull up potasium from lower soil levels to the higher strata where your plants can reach them. In mid-summer I tilled that in and planted cowpeas. The cowpeas, being of the legume family, adds more nitrogen and again, more organic materials to the soil. I just tilled that in and planted half the bed with garlic. The other side with more clover that I will till under in spring and plant corn.  When the garlic has been harvested that half of the bed will be planted in beans for the summer.
 The first head of Atlantic broccoli is reading for diner. This is from plants that we started from seed in mid-June, transplanted into the garden a month later in mid-July. Here we are 80 some odd days from transplant to diner table. I think I'll be making a bechemel sauce with some cheddar added to ladle over the steamed broccoli.

Charlie Brown's Pumpkin

The DW and I took a walk in the garden this evening to look at our pumpkin. It is coming along nicely and  I have full faith that we will have a nice sized jack o lantern for Halloween this year. I've included a couple of pictures but the pumpkin is somewhat obscured by all the foliage.
 We have a nice start of a black simpson lettuce patch (the bright foliage pictured below) going and we should be eating garden fresh salad by next week. The radishes are coming along nicely as well, and I've been planting two rows per week.

 I also have a cauliflower head starting to form. I wish I would have been able to take a picture but the batteries in my camera were dead and I wasn't able to get a picture today.  I'll try to remember to take one later this week.

That last picture is of my fat chicken.

Planting fall cool season crops

Well it's been awhile since I posted, but I mowed down all the summer plants (tomato, pepper, melon, cucs, beans, corn, et al) and tilled them under . I also expanded the garden by making the outside beds an additional 3 1/2 feet wider each. As each bed is 70' long, the additional 3.5' on two beds makes for roughly 500 sqft of additional space. I added about 4" of compost to the soil before turning it under. My neighbor has 3 horses and more alpacas than either he or I care to count and he and I make a mutually beneficial trade. I take his used barn stall bedding off his hands as he has limited space  and in return I get to compost it for my gardens. A true win win for us both.
 I have planted most of my cool season crops (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage,  kale, carrots, lettuce, beets, radishes, spinach) and I am going to try to grow some more sweet peas this fall. I have about 18 plants sprouted and will be transplanting them into the garden this weekend. This is my first attempt at growing peas in the fall, wish me luck!
 I also have one pumpkin plant growing in the garden, I planted this plant in the 2nd weekend in July, so that it would be mature around the end of October. Last year I planted too soon and my pumpkins rotted long before Halloween.
 I also made up a new raised bed for some strawberry transplants.  My current bed will be in it's second season next spring, and after some extensive reading and some past experience, I doubt I will get a third season from it. So I am in the process of expanding my strawberry plantings and incorperating them into my crop rotation plans. From what I gather, I will need at least five beds to rotate strawberries through on a 2 years in, 3 years out, rotation. When the beds are not in strawberries, I plan to plant them with cover crops like buckwheat, rye, and legumes.

Like a Furnace

Well, we had a rather cool and overcast weekend last week which made for perfect weather for planting the broccoli starts. I've put 18 plants of Atlantic Broccoli in this year. I've got 6 Golden Acre, 6 Red cabbage plants and some Cauliflower starts to go in later, around the 1st of August. I've also started my pumpkin seeds. Last year I planted my pumpkin seeds around April 15th (with everything else) and the Pumpkins ripened way to quick and were rotten well before even September arrived. So this year I've held off so that they ripen just before Halloween (with any luck). We'll see what happens.
 This is one of the things I love about gardening, trying new things. I like trying to grow different plants, and different varieties and even trying different methods and timing now and again. It is one of the better things about annuals, in that you can try something out, and see the results within that one season of growth. You don't have to wait years to see if that daylilly cross you attempted this year a) sets seed b) if the seed is viable c) if the plant blooms within 3 years d) if the flower is pretty e) if the plant is hardy. If you try a tomato variety this year and you don't like it for whatever reason, you are not chained to caring for it for several years to see if that is indeed the case.
  We lost another hen this past week as well. If has been awful hot and poor Roxie passed away. I believe it was heat exhaustion or dehydration. Roxie got her name from the boxer Rocky. Roxie was born with her bottom beak pointing to the left and her top beak pointing to the right. So eating and drinking were more difficult for her than for the average chicken. I think this caused her passing as she just couldn't keep hydrated enough in our hot summer. So we are down to one hen now. Just the big fat red I've taken to calling Cartman (from the South Park show). Cartman seems happy enough by herself, I may try to add more pullets next spring or I may not, I haven't quite made up my mind on that.
 I'll be sowing some carrot seed this weekend. I'll take some burlap I got from the local Starbucks store and wet it down to lay over the seed bed to keep the soil from crusting over. I also plant them about twice as deep in summer to get them down to where the soil stays a little moister. They should germinate in about 2-3 weeks  at which time I'll take the burlap off.

What to do with your tomato harvest!

It is prime tomato season around here. Just about every type I have is turning ripe. From Box Car Willie, Mortgage Lifter, Stupice, Juan Flamee, and Celebrity. The only one that hasn't produced a ripe mater for me is Kellogg's Breakfast. It's a really sweet, yellow, large heirloom variety that does not produce an abundant crop for me, but what it produces is terrific. So sweet it could be called a dessert tomato!
 On the 4th I picked a bucket of tomatoes and some green peppers and made up 16 1/2 pints of salsa. That will just about get me through football season this winter.  Most of my recipes for canning come from 'The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving', or the instruction manual that came with my canner. One has to use caution when canning stuff. The method and recipe must be just so, to prevent spoilage and ruining your product and endangering your health.
 Tonight I am making 4 quarts of spaghetti sauce. It is quite time consuming, but the end result of having a nice dinner made with things you grew in your own garden is worth it. The taste of homemade spaghetti sauce, made from garden fresh ingredients is something everyone should experience.
 We are starting to get fresh corn from the garden. I grew an heirloom variety named Stowell's evergreen this year. The yield on this variety is not what you will get from hybrids, but the corn is quite tasty, with fair sized ears. We have had more than our share of thunderstorms this summer and they have done a number on the corn. I would guess that 25% of the stalks in my garden are lying on the ground. And I am starting to have regular visits from the deer. They got to my soy bean, green beans and corn. And today I found what appeared to be a tomato that a deer had taken a bite from. I am considering asking Santa for an electric fence set up for Xmas this year. I went to the trouble of planting some green beans outside the fenced area of the garden this year, just as a way to satisfy the deer so they wouldn't bother the garden. No such luck!

Carrot harvest

Well, it's the start of the holiday weekend and I thought I would have been done with the carrots by now. But as it happens, today was the final harvest of the carrot crop.  I decided to pull up the last two rows, about a half a bucket's worth, for two reasons. First, I didn't want to leave them in there too much longer and have them start to get pithy and bitter. And second, I am ready to till that area of the garden and plant a cover crop before it gets too late. I need time for the cover crop, in this case cowpeas, to put on some growth before I turn it under for fall planting. I am going to be putting some onions and garlic in this area around mid September so that leaves a month for the cowpeas to grow, after which I will turn them under and wait at least two weeks before planting the onions and garlic.
 My chickens are happy about the harvest. They just love the carrot greens. And my dogs love carrots, so I give them any that may be too small to bother with canning or have any damage on them.
 The DW and I were out in the garden this evening and she spotted a couple ears of the corn that are ready for picking. We'll be having those for dinner tomorrow night.

Mortgage Lifter Tomatoes

This is my first year growing Mortgage Lifter tomatoes. I thought I'd try them based solely on the romantic notion that this particular tomato supposedly lifted one farmer's fortunes so as to save his farm. It is a large pink tomato, the third type, after Stupice and Juan Flamee, to ripen in my garden this year. The taste is just OK, but I did note that this tomato has very little juice or seeds and lots of meaty flesh. I believe it will make a fine paste/sauce tomato so I think I'll be using it for a canning tomato and save some of my better tasting 'maters for fresh slicing.

 The two larger tomatoes are Mortgage Lifter, the smaller on is a Stupice. That's my kindle in the background.

A tale of two green beans

I am growing two types of green beans this year. The first to harvest was the Kentucky Wonder Pole Bean. I planted a couple dozen plants I had started indoors back on March 14th. They went into the ground on March 25th and I had my first harvest on June 1st. They are fine beans that produce a bountiful harvest, but they get a little tough if you don't pick them young, and the beans start to show in the pods at a very early stage.
 The second type of I am growing is Blue Lake Bush Bean. I direct sowed them on May 3rd and harvested them on June 26th. Their beans are more uniform in size and do not show bean 'bulges' when they are larger. They tend to be nice straight beans and are more attractive on the plate.
 Next year I plan on trying Blue Lake Pole beans to see if the pole type Blue Lakes are as good as the bush type. I hope so, because picking pole beans is far easier than picking bush beans.

What tomato comes first?

In my garden it has always been Brown Berry cherry tomato. They are tasty little fellows that produce an abundant crop. After that comes the smallish Stupice . It's a smallish tomato, 3"-4" from Czechoslovakia, but it has 'full' tomato flavor. I just picked my first Stupice yesterday.
 So as of now we have rabbit eye blueberries, cucumbers, green beans and tomatoes ripening here. My Mrs made a wonderful blueberry and ice cream pie for us last night. Now I'm not a big fan of frozen fruit, but this is one tasty treat. I still like vanilla ice cream with fresh blueberries mixed in right before you eat it more. That is because the berries don't freeze solid and retain that fresh taste. That and I have sensitive teeth so I don't care for eating frozen stuff. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
 I've made three batches of dill pickles (only one of which was worth keeping), one batch of bread and butter pickles that turned out terrific, and a batch of sweet relish. Tonight I'm making a batch of dill slices for the Mrs and I. Hopefully within a few weeks I'll have some peppers ready and I can mix them in with some cucs and make a spicy relish.

poor Peewee

Poor Peewee, the smallest of my four chickens was attacked overnight and is no longer with us. Some sort of critter managed to pull the staples out of the chicken wire that covered the openings in the roof trusses of the chicken coop and made, what I hope, was short work of Peewee. I found her this morning when I went out to feed the girls. I spent an hour reinforcing the protective wiring around the roof trusses so hopefully this will be the last of it. I have my doubts though. Once a critter finds a food source like my chickens, they tend to keep coming back. It's a shame we aren't closer to the weekend so I could spend an evening playing sniper in waiting and remove the threat.  I think I may ask Molly to hatch a couple more chicks for me, as I know for certain that one of my 'girls' is a rooster and will have to leave this weekend. That will leave me with just two hens, and for whatever reason, I feel the need for three hens.  We'll see. If the predator gets anymore of the chickens I think I'll just give the survivors to Molly to take out to the farm and that will be the end of the great chicken experiment. Keep your fingers crossed, I have started to get rather attached to the chicks and would like to keep them around.

Daylily pics for Father's Day

Not much happening in the garden this week. I've prepped the beds for the fall crops by adding some rock phosphate and compost. I've mulched those which are getting transplants and started hardening off the brussells sprout plants I've been growing under lights.
 Yesterday I picked 14 soyo cucumbers. Last night I made 8 pints of bread and butter pickles with some of them. Today it's a big batch of sweet relish and maybe some dill slices if I have time. I have to cut the grass today (on father's day of all things!) because I got to busy yesterday drinking strawberry daquiris by  the pool and never got around to the grass.
 We had a storm cell pass through around 5pm yesterday. We lost a 70'+ willow oak out in the woods. It made a terrible racket when it split and fell. Fortunately it was in the middle of the woods away from the chickens and the fence so no real harm done other than a hole in the canopy. It won't take long for the trees around it to fill in though. On the bright side, I can go out this winter and cut up some wood for the fire pit.

 As promised in the title of this post, here are some pictures of some of my daylilies for your viewing pleasure.

What to do about the hornworms?

I found two more hornworms on my tomato plants today. For those who may not know what a horn worm is, it is a caterpillar that loves to eat the leaves and/or the fruit on your tomato plants. They are nearly impossible to avoid. Or at least that has been my experience. There are several ways to control them, the least pleasant of which is to pick them off by hand. Now being a guy, and having a rep to live up to, I hate to admit this but for what it's worth, I find picking squishy caterpillars off of my tomatoes to be repulsive. Especially when if you squeeze a horn worm the wrong way it excretes a fluid on you. Add to that the fact that I am colorblind (which makes finding these well camouflaged creatures very difficult) and you can see that even though this is the least invasive/disruptive manner to fight them off, I am not a fan of this method. The horned worm will typically be found on the undersides of the stems and leaves of your plants, and when you see one, you will immediately know why they are called horn worms. The horn is on the posterior end of the creature and is not harmful.
 My preferred method of dealing with hornworms is with an organic method. By spraying with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) you introduce a bacteria that attacks the stomach of the caterpillars. But there is a debate as to wether even this is a smart environmentally friendly method. I will leave that debate to others, but I use this stuff and it works and you can eat the fruit the same day you spray it on. This bacteria is not harmful to humans so far as anything I have read. There are many different strains of BT so be sure to read the label directions (as you should when using any product) and get the strain that is right for you.
Most seasons, however, hornworms are kept at what some folks consider acceptable levels by a wasp parasite. Parasitized hornworms are easily recognized by the small white oblong cocoons attached to their backs. Such worms should be left in the garden so the emerging wasps can parasitize other hornworms. I usually pick caterpillars which have the cocoons on them off my plants ( I can't deal with the damage they do), but rather than stomp on them I take them a good distance from the garden and release them. This way the wasps hatch and kill the caterpillar and then live on to help me fight them off next year.

 Another method is using chemicals. I do not use this method so you should contact your local agricultural extension agent for products approved for use in your area.


If I didn't say it somewhere in that lengthy post (sorry) I will be spraying BT on my plants tomorrow morning. 

Finishing the potato harvest and some distressing chicken news.

 It appears the Kennebec and Pontiac Red potatoes are ready for harvesting. The tops are starting to yellow so I will be digging them tomorrow.
 Some bad news on the chicken front. It seems as if one of the girls is a guy. Ginger has started growing the  red 'thingy' right above its' beak and the DW tells me she saw/heard it crowing the other day while she was weeding. I thought I heard it last weekend, but with the alpacas next door making all sorts of weird noises, I had hoped it was one of them, and not one the chicks. So of the four chicks Molly (a friend of our neighbor and a friend of ours come to think of it) hatched for me, it appears that only one is a rooster. Not bad if you stop to think about it. I mean, think of the families you know that have all boys, or all girls or half and half. I could have come away with as many as four roosters instead of just one. We'll probably not eat all the eggs just three hens will lay anyway (but we'll try).

The dreaded horned worm.

 Well it's that time of year again. The dreaded horned worm has made it's first appearance on my tomato plants. I was fortunate and spotted the first one before it had done too much damage. Now I am keeping a close eye out for them. I may take some pre-emptive action this weekend and spray every plant with BT. I guess it will depend on wether I see anymore between now and then.
 I've finished digging all the garlic now. Today I finished up by pulling up the Burgandy creole garlic. We had some fresh dug Yukon gold potatoes, with sliced Granex onions (also freshly dug) and creole garlic with our diner tonight. That and some carrots from the garden and some pork chops. My DW makes the world's finest fried pork chops known to man. She has an index card with a breading recipe I made for her twenty some odd years ago when I was attending culinary school. She follows it to the letter, and it always comes out delicious. I recall once when she was sick and I went to make myself some chops. I found what I thought was a baggie of pork chop breading in the fridge and went about making my diner. The chops browned up too fast and the breading blackened before I knew what hit me. Turns out the baggie was full of struessel topping (brown sugar and flour) and not pork chop breading. Dooh!
 I've made another batch of pickles today, but I don't expect much. The pickle spice mix I bought at the local market smelled alot like sweet pickle spice and I already had garlic, mustard seed and dill in the pickle jars when I poured the spice mix on the pickles. Who knows, maybe I'll discover something new that tastes good, but I am very doubtful. Thankfully, the Russian cuc plants are producing enough pickles that I'll have plenty to try again. I think this next batch I am going super simple. I'm just gonna boil some pickling salt with some vinegar, and add some dill, garlic and mustard seeds to the jars and let it go at that.
 I thought I'd also mention that my first planting of corn (Stowell's evergreen) has started to tassle. I am not sure which I am more anxious for, fresh sweet corn or fresh tomatoes.  I'm also starting to see some flowers on the bush beans as well. Won't be long before I'll be canning them up in mass.

A busy weekend

I got a lot accomplished this weekend. I harvested most of the spring carrot crop and got 8  pints canned. I put them in small containers because I am the only one around here who eats canned carrots, so a pint is plenty for a side dish.  I left a row of carrots in the garden to have for fresh salads. The chickens seem to really like carrot greens.
 I picked enough pole beans (KY wonder) to can 8 quarts of beans and still have enough left for dinner on Sunday night. There is just no comparing fresh green beans with those soft things that come from a can in the store.
 I also dug up the Yukon Gold potatoes. We had some baked with our dinner on Sunday night. This being our first time having fresh potatoes from the garden we didn't know what to expect. The fresh Yukons were so good you hardly needed butter. Soft and creamy and just delicious. I also made some potato salad from some of the taters too. Looks like I'll be having tater salad for lunch the rest of the week. No complaints from me though!
 I gave making pickles my first try Saturday night. I went down to Wallyworld and got a packet of instant pickling spices. I broke down the recipe by 1/3 as I didn't have enough pickles to make a full batch. After letting them sit for two days in the fridge, I gave them a try today. Epic fail! I think I know how Andy and Barney felt when they had to eat Aunt Bee's pickles. Uggh! Oh well, I'll try again with a different recipe next weekend. I think I'll try from scratch with fresh spices this time.
 I also cleaned out the chicken coop on Sunday and used the chips from there to mulch the soy beans. The chicken poop should go a long way towards feeding the beans, if I can keep the dogs out of there.
 Maggie brought home an animal's hind leg bone on Saturday. I took it away from her and threw it into one of the compost heaps. She showed up with what looked like the same bone on Sunday and I thought she had managed to get into the compost heap and retrieve it. It turns out she had gone out and found the second of the animal's hind legs. This morning she brought the critter's skull home. I am assuming it was a possum.  It had some big lower teeth on it.
 I spent some time tying up tomato plants this afternoon. If all goes well, I'll be having a bumper crop of tomatoes here soon. I've got well over a hundred baby tomatoes on the plants and lots of flowers as well.
 I am just now starting to get blooms on some of the pepper plants. Looks like I won't be having any fresh salsa or stuffed peppers for awhile yet.
 I also finished curing the Aja Rojo garlic this weekend and cut off the tops and roots and put them in a paper bag in the shop for storage until I use them or plant them again in the fall.

Green bean harvest starts today.

Sometimes it just amazes me how fast veggies grow. Yesterday I thought I'd be harvesting green beans by the weekend, this afternoon I go out and I've got well over a 1/2 gallon of beans picked. Dinner is just a half hour away and I can hardly wait. The difference between canned green beans and fresh is night and day, even if you canned your own.
 I'm still only getting 4 pickles a day from the Russian cucs, that makes it hard to make even a pint of pickles. Hopefully by weekend I'll be getting enough on a daily basis to make up at least a pint a day. In the meantime, they taste great in salads. No trace of bitterness and crisp as crisp can be.

 My japanese iris opened it's first bloom today. They are really spectacular. My photographic skills don't do it justice but here it is, along with some pictures of my balloon flowers and Endless Summer hydrangeas.

Fall seed starting

Looking back at Friday's post, I see that I started seeds for the fall veggie garden on that day. Today I can see I am having some germination already. Just to explain how I start my seeds, here's how it works. I take a coffee filter and moisten it. I then put seed on one section, in the shape of a slice of pie, and fold the filter over the seeds twice. Then I put the filter and seeds into a sealed ziplock baggie and prop it up against the wall like it was a letter in a letter holder. This way, when the seeds germinate, the root will work it's way down between the layers of the filter. If you were to lay the baggie flat on the counter, the root would try to work it's way through the layers of the coffee filter and you would have trouble getting them out of the filter without damaging the roots. After about a week, the seeds will start forming little 'tails' and look like small tadpoles. I typically let them go for another week and them pot them up in some potting soil mixed with worm castings. I grow them on under lights for about 4 weeks. Then I harden them off for about a week and plant them out under a row cover. I keep them under row covers for about the first month for two reasons. First because we have terribly hot summers and they will need the shade, and second because pests are also a problem during the peak summer months and the row covers will protect them from both the sun and the bugs.
 Just to switch over for a moment, I'd like to share what's going on in the flower gardens around the house. Here around the back of the house around the pool, the mophead hydrangeas are in full bloom, as are the blue balloon flowers. My hollyhocks are blooming, but they have a bad case of rust and the plants look awful. The alba lavendar is getting ready to bloom which is quite a treat for the bees. A great number of the daylillies are blooming, even some of the hostas have blooms already too. Out front the gallardadia and coneflowers are in full bloom. And the mexican hats are absolutely lovely this year. I will try to get out and take some pictures tomorrow morning so I can share them with you.

Memorial weekend

A rather uneventful weekend in the garden. Saturday morning Maggie managed to catch a small rabbit. I caught her before any damage had been done and freed the little fellow, although doing so was no in the best interest of my garden. I put the dogs back in the fenced in area of the back yard for an hour or so and thought that would be plenty of time for the rabbit to have made his escape. Well, Darwin got another victim, because when the dogs and I came back out to mow the paths, the rabbit had returned to the garden and this time both dogs were hot on it's tail. This did not come out well for the rabbit this time, as I was distracted with the mowing and by the time I saw what was going on, the dogs have critically injured the rabbit. I put it out of it's misery and disposed of the body so I wouldn't find it in the shop (where the dogs sleep) stinking up the whole basement.
 Lyle and Dawn came over to swim on Sunday with their two daughters. I took them out and let them feed the chickens and give some peppermints to the neighbor's horses and gave Lyle a tour of the garden. The soybeans I planted have started to sprout and the green beans are forming. I should have enough beans for a meal by next weekend, and by the looks of it, at least two meals a week from then on. I planted enough bush beans to do some canning (hopefully) this summer. I hope to use the pole beans for fresh eating.
 I put some basil seeds in the ground near the beans on Monday. I thought I had started some plants this winter but I guess not as I couldn't find any. I have some purple basil growing out in the flower gardens but I don't know how that might taste or look in some of the recipes.

Garlic harvest

I started the garlic harvest in earnest today. I dug all the Aja Rojo bulbs, about 100, out of the garden today. The leaves were turning yellow so I felt it was time for them. It seems a little early, but they had formed fair sized bulbs. I think I planted them a little too close together (3" apart) because the Burgandy garlic I planted at greater spacing (6") had much bigger bulbs. Lesson learned!
 I started seeds for the fall garden this evening in coffee filters and plastic bags. Tonight I did some Atlantic broccoli, some Early snowball cauliflower, and some red danish cabbage. I realized that I am all out of of golden acre cabbage seeds, so I'll have to order some soon.
 The Long Island Improved brusell sprouts I potted up are doing well.

The bulb on the left had 6" spacing, the bulb on the right 3".

changing of harvest

well strawberry season is over here at my place. This was the best season yet for our strawberries, thanks to the new variety we planted last fall, Chandler. If you are going to grow strawberries here in the central carolinas, I would highly recommend you plant this berry. They are big and delicious.
 The russian pickle cucumbers are starting to produce. I've gotten 6 in the last two days. I planted 9 plants, hopefully that will produce enough for me to can some bread and butter pickles, some dill spears and some sweet relish this year. We shall see. I also planted two Soyu cucs for the salad plates. The DW just loves these long straight slicing cucs and so do I.
 I am seeing flowers on the Ky wonder pole beans I transplanted into the garden. The beans I direct seeded a week later still haven't started flowering. I've got flowers and some small fruits on my Mortgage lifter and Box Car Willie maters, as well as on the Stupices. I can hardly wait for the first maters, I should have started some brown berry cherry maters this year. They always give me the first taste of maters every year, but I am not a big fan of cherry tomatoes, and didn't want to give up space for them.
 Some of my garlic plants are looking a little worse for the wear so I dug up 6 Red Creole plants. They had nice size bulbs on them, but I think I'll give the rest of them a couple more weeks. I usually don't dig my garlic 'til sometime after the 4th of July,  but this is my first year growing creole type garlic and the plants are starting to look haggard. I have 3 varieties of creole garlic in the garden, off the top of my head I think they are Aja Rojo, Creole Red and I can't remember. I have some soft necks that I've been growing from a grocery store bulb for several years now as well. I have no idea what variety they are, but I eat about half the bulbs and store the rest for growing the next season each year.
 I'd like to wish all my fellow veterans a happy memorial day, and ask that we all keep those who made the ultimate sacrifice in our hearts and prayers. And their families too.

Lilac festival

Well, the DW and I made our way to Rochester, NY to visit our daughter who has recently taken a job here. We came on Lilac Festival weekend and went to Highland Park to see the wonderful gardens there. Boy do they have the lilacs.....and rhododendrums and dogwoods and just about every plant imaginable. We went through the greenhouses and about 1/4 of the park and had just wonderful weather. It was in the mid 70's and sunny with a pleasant breeze most of the 3 hours we were there. My wife and daughter had fried oreos and I had fried Reeses cups, yummy! If you get the chance to come to Rochester this time of year, be sure to get to Highland park to see the wonderful gardens there.

Here are some from inside the green house located at the park.