My Sous Chef

My daughter is a regular helper in the kitchen now. For awhile she's been getting good at scooping and measuring and counting. She put the spices in the pickles, and in the relish we made as week or so ago, and she sets up the coffee pot every night. But when she asked me this weekend if she could help me to trim the green beans, I was skeptical. Would her three-year-old hands be steady? Would her toddler knife do the trick?

She did a GREAT job! Together we got this pot ready to steam blanch and freeze.


I'm still picking beans, but I can't imagine it's going to go on for much longer. I am about wrapping up my tomatoes. The plants are on thier way out. Much as I know it's too soon, and as guilty as I feel, I have to also admit to a little bit of relief. Whew! A breather!

For now...I expect to be doing a lot of freezing this fall, and I MAY spring for a pressure canner too....

Water, Water Everywhere...

You know what I really hate? I hate it when my husband gives me advice and I ignore it, and he repeats the advice and I ignore it, and then he reminds me good-naturedly and I still ignore it…and then he turns out to be right.

I really hate that.

All of which is to say, at least one of my tomato plants is dead dead dead and I suspect that it’s my fault.

Sigh.

The advice I refer to is the perfectly serviceable water meter that he gave me, so that I could check and make sure that the plants in the garden were getting enough water. And did I use it? Um…well…not really. And come to think of it, it hasn’t been raining here much. And it’s not like I don’t have a hose. And a sprinkler. And a soaker hose. And buckets and pitchers and bottles and coffee cups…I mean, if I had known the poor thing was drying out so badly I could have gotten water out there some way. I could have done something about it and now it’s too late. But no, I was too busy canning tomatoes like they were just going to keep on coming.

Shame on me.

So yesterday morning I went out with the hose and the bag of tomato tone and I gave the still living (but possibly also on their way out) plants a few spoonfuls and a good, luxurious soak. We’ll see.

But that’s only part of our ongoing water saga.

I mentioned that I had started some broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kale seedlings in the house a few months ago, and after popping up quickly and looking initially quite happy, they all shriveled up and died. I didn’t understand this, because I had them under the grow light, and I used a really good, clean seed-starting medium, and I made sure the soil stayed moist, and they still seemed to be drying up.

Well, check out what I learned yesterday.

I also said a post or so back that I was looking for a local source for my fall transplants, and the perfect place finally came to me. There’s a nursery not too far from me where my husband and I used to buy saltwater fish back when we kept tanks. I never really bought plants from them, but I remember from our trips there to get fish that they were a pretty knowledgeable and committed group of people there, so I thought I’d check them out. And I found BEAUTIFUL transplants. I got broccoli, Brussels sprouts, red chard, kale, collard greens, cabbage and lettuce. I got a whole flat in fact, 48 individual plants, for twenty bucks. You can’t beat that. And that’s not even the best part.

I was commenting to the man who helped me that they were really beautiful little plants, and he said thanks, that he had raised them himself. I told him about my seedlings that didn’t make it, and then he imparted his secret. “You have to mist them,” he said.

Aha!

This makes sense to me, since, as I said, I kept watering them, and the leaves still shriveled up and dried out.

So now I know. Mist them. I’ll do better when I try again to start them for next spring. So yesterday when I was at Lowes for manure compost I bought a mister.

Who says I can’t be taught?

Welcome to your new home...

I mentioned on Wednesday that I'm hoping to find a local source for my fall transplants. I stopped in at a small garden center in Alexandria VA yesterday on my way home from work and as I was wandering around looking at the plants, I found the vegetable table that was covered not with the broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts that I was looking for, but with 30 or 40 peaked looking pepper plants that I guess never sold this spring. The owner (?) walked by, saw me looking, and said, "If you want any of those they're free", so I brought a couple home and repotted them. They looked like they would have been healthy and fine if they weren't so unbelievably root-bound. I actually had to cut the pots off, leaving some of the black plastic on the very bottom so as not to damage any of the roots that had grown out of it. It's two tabasco plants on the left, and one habenaro on the right. Maybe we'll get a few peppers out of them. I may go back on Monday and grab a few more!!!! She did say she was expecting to have the fall transplants next week....



With fall in mind, I moved my serrano pepper up out of the garden, where it was getting buried in weeds, and up into a pot. I am hoping I might be able to keep this alive for awhile in the house once the weather turns. It has developed some white spots on the leaves (before I moved it). Not powdery...It looks like sunburn, like my un-hardened off zucchini and cucumbers did earlier this year. I've been doing some web surfing trying to see what's up. It might be sunburn...we had a few really hot days here (101 degrees) much hotter than we usually get, so maybe that's it. I'll keep an eye on it.


And here's the eggplant this morning, getting really big! compare this picture to less than 48 hours ago in my last post. They grow so fast!!!!

Checking in.....

The eggplants are getting big - I swear once these things get going they seem to grow 1/2 inch or more a day. You can almost see them growing!

I made and processed 5 pints of salsa last night with tomatoes and peppers from the garden. This weekend I hope to try a recipe for green tomato pepper relish that I've been hanging onto. All my peppers will be ripe red and perfect at the same time - at least a dozen, maybe more, so I'm going to have to do something with them quick as I doubt we can eat them fast enough.

I planted some seed this week - red and gold beets, daikon, turnips, rutabaga, kohlrabi, carrots, spinach, kale, chard, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. I suspect I'm getting a late start. It's also been topping at about 101 degrees in the afternoons here lately, probably not ideal germination temperature for most of these things. I have been trying to keep the soil a little moist so they don't all fry out there. I'll see what's up a week or so from now and try again if I have to. I am also going to look into some transplants. I would like to find some at local small garden stores if possible, if not I'll order some. Particularly broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I'm pretty sure that I can get everything else to come up from seed, as I have done almost all of this stuff from seed before. Last fall the chard came up from seed just fine. I want to concentrate mostly on compost and straw, in hopes that my fall garden won't turn into the jungle that my spring/summer garden is now. It ain't pretty, but what the heck. It feeds me.

To the left here is a shot of today's garden beauty!

Did I say my cucumbers were dead?

Silly me. Obviously I was mistaken. I should have taken a picture of the part of this plant that isn't climbing up the fence and you'd know what I mean. That thing looks DEAD.


This is what I mean about things seeming really weird right now. Everything looks like it's dying, but it's all still pumping out a crop. (Please ignore the overgrown jungle of weeds that this thing has become.....)

I did get out some to start working those fall beds. I worked the manure compost and peat moss into the one long bed down the left of the plot. That's where I'm going to plant all of my root veggies. The large beds to the right will hold broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, chard, kale, lettuce and spinach. That might alter a little based on availability of transplants....

I pulled up some sweet potatoes this afternoon. Lovely!

And here's a few shots of the beautiful pepper-laden plants with all the peppers turning red!

Last but not least, something pretty I saw in the garden today.

I have EGGPLANT!!!!!

Woohoo! Look at the beautiful little babies!!!!!

Things are kind of a strange combination of slowing down/dying back and big production. It feels like things are slowing down, and yet this week I think I brought in my biggest basket ever, probably because the melons take up so doggone much space. I have manure and hummus compost in my car trunk, and some peat moss. I've been working in the fall garden spot and I really want to get some stuff planted this weekend, mostly the root veggies. I want to mix in a little peat moss where I'm going to put these, especially where I'm going to put the carrots. I'm trying to work up the energy to get out there and do this today. I also have beans and squash I need to blanch and freeze...

I got a new book this week from the Mother Earth News catalog: "The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home". You're probably thinking that I should have had this book at the beginning of the summer and not at the end, and you would be right! But I'll be able to make more improvements for fall. For one thing, this book talks about root cellaring and I'd really like to be able to do that effectively this winter.

I'm feeling a little weary...

Maybe it's the summer heat. Or maybe it's because all of the garden work from this year is catching up with me. Or maybe it's because the life cycle for a number of my veggies is over. My cucumbers are dead. They really put out a huge amount of fruit for a few months there.

I harvested the last of my banana fingerling potatoes this weekend. They're not really suited for long term storage, so we'll be eating our way through these in the next month or so I would imagine. Next year I'm going to plant these again, and also some suited specifically for storage.


I have been canning tomatoes like a mad-woman. We moved this operation out to the grill on the deck, since running an electric eye full of boiling water on the stove for 85+ minutes just makes the house unbearably hot. I think that the pressure of keeping up with processing all these tomatoes has worn on me a little over the last few weeks. I'm not complaining...just taking a pause.

I've pulled up a few more sweet potatoes here and there, but I don't want to pull up more than we'll eat until I have to. I think I can leave them in the ground for awhile. The bush beans took a hiaitus, and then started producing pretty well again. My yellow wax beans are getting about ready to pick. My carmen and anaheim peppers are finally getting ripe on the plants. Each one has about a dozen beautiful peppers at least. And you're not going to believe this, but I actually got a yellow bell pepper to ripen on the plant! It didn't happen until the other 6 or so on there rotted and dropped off. Sigh.

My tomato plants, while still putting out tomatoes, seem to have slowed a bit too. My orange russian has developed a bit of blossom end rot. This time I treated with bone meal. It seems to be okay today. There's tomatoes on there that aren't affected. The yellow taxi is gasping its last breath. Not sure what happened to it, but it sure put out a HUGE amount of fruit, all within about a month, and then kind of shrunk up and petered out.

I am picking up several canteloupe a day now. I finally had to start pulling them when they were slip ripe (will pop off the vine with a little pressure) rather than just picking them up when they've already fallen off the vine, because they were getting TOO ripe.

And finally, let me introduce you to the new love of my life, my beautiful, big, healthy, multiple-blooming hansel eggplant! It is really thriving in a pot on the deck. About a week or so ago I fed it some tomato tone, and shortly afterwards it began to bloom. I'll do that about once a month I think. It just looks so lovely and healthy, and when it rains its beautiful large leaves cup up to hold the water....I'll have eggplant yet if it's the last thing I do this summer!

The fall garden spot is all tilled up and ready to receive. The next thing I need to do is get the manure compost. Most of what I'm planting will go in as seed. My broccoli, kale and brussel sprouts seedlings all petered out. Just another thing around here that's feeling TIRED. Other than harvesting, I'm kind of just resting up until I get my second wind to do my fall planting this weekend or next, at the latest.