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.