Blooming!

Pineapple Sage, edible blossoms

When I was buying some plants last month I picked up a couple of Pineapple Sage and a Lemon Verbena plant. Our winters are too cold for them so they are living in my bedroom, in front of the big window that looks into the greenhouse. The Pineapple Sage is blooming. I love the bright lipstick red flowers; they are edible and taste delicious. A fruity, flower, pineapple flavor. I picked a stem of them today and tossed them on my salad, yum!

Pineapple Sage blooming

Here's a shot of the herb plants in my bedroom. You can see into the greenhouse and the window box planted with purple pansies out there. The other herb plant in the bedroom is a basil. There are actually several plants in the pot, the original one that grew all summer and a couple of babies that sprouted up last month. While I was gone on vacation the basil had bloomed and made some seed before I got home and pruned it back. I doubt they will manage to live all winter, but it's fun to have them for a bit longer than just outdoors.

Sugar Snap Pea blooms

Outdoors the Sugar Snap Peas have put out their first blossoms. I don't know how well they are going to do, our first winter storm is trying to roll in and we could get a little snow.

Don't forget to check back for Seedy Saturday! I've got a really great free seed giveaway for you!

Today's Harvest

Yellow Marble & Princepe Borghese tomatoes

Several tomato plants volunteered in this pot, mostly Yellow Marbles, but surprise, also a Princepe Borghese, an Italian drying tomato. I picked about two ounces of them today.

Lettuce mix, baby carrots, Hopi Purple Pod Beans

Since the days are getting shorter and the nights cooler I know it's just a matter of time until ol' Jack Frost runs by and wipes out the bean plants. So today I picked all the beans and pulled the vines out. I need to get more peas planted. Besides tomatoes today's harvest was 6 ounces of baby lettuce, 2 ounces of baby carrots (roots only) and 5 pounds, 14 ounces of beans in their pods. I don't have time to shell them before I go to work but suspect the shelled weight will be somewhere around 2 1/2 pounds.

Each Monday Daphne's Dandelions has a Harvest Monday post, so I'll add my link over there. Happy Growing! 

Pea Planting

Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea

In 2009 I planted 6 varieties of peas. I am a fool for peas and between me and the grand kids we ate all the garden could give.

I wrote an article comparing them for Associated Content. I could probably plant peas now, but I'm not going to since I will be leaving soon on my vacation. The weather should be a lot cooler when I get home, so I will plant peas in mid-September instead.

Here are a few photos of the peas from 2009. Enjoy. (Unfortunately I didn't label the photos with the variety, and I don't remember now what some of them looked like!)

Bleushokker, a soup pea

I'm not sure which one this is, either Sweet Magnolia or Bleushokker

Maxi Golt, a shelling pea

Planting Beans, Potatoes, & the Great Garden Cleanup June 19, 2011

Planting Beans, Potatoes, & the Great Garden Cleanup

June 19, 2011 at 1:52 pm

Well I have been working on the yard and garden at least 15 minutes every day. Some days it’s mostly watering things and pulling a few weeds. At other times I’ve actually spent the whole time on pulling weeds and picking up trash. I worked in and around the greenhouse the other day. You can see before pictures in my post on May 30, 2011 
This photo is after just a couple of 15 minute sessions. I have a piece of black shade cloth over the green house frame to help shade my bedroom window until the morning glories take over the job.


The potatoes planted recently have mostly sprouted so I have begun mulching the open spaces between them. Not every piece planted has sprouted yet, which is ok, they should all make an appearance eventually.
I just try not to put a lot of mulch over the ones that haven’t come up yet.
Since I’m going on vacation in August & September I’m trying hard not to plant too much stuff that will need a lot of attention. But I did decided to plant some Apache Purple Pod beans. These make nice green beans, shelly beans and dried beans.
First I dug a good size trench next to the trellis and watered it well. The ground is very very dry and I’m trying to get moisture to the root zone.
After the water soaked in I made the trench even deeper and set out the bean seeds.
I then watered them in and covered them with about an inch of soil by directing the water to the side of the trench so the soil would wash down over the seeds. I then used  old screens to cover them to try and protect them as best I can from the birds. Right now the desert is very dry and the birds will dig up and eat any little green sprout they can find. June is a very difficult month to start any kind of seeds directly in the garden for that reason.

You Will Love These Folks! June 18, 2011

You Will Love These Folks!

June 18, 2011 at 2:12 am

Imagine a space one fifth of an acre in size, about the average city lot, 66×132 feet. Now of course on that space is a little house, a garage, driveway, paths et.  So when you subtract all of those you end up with one tenth of an acre. Gosh doesn’t sound like a very big space does it? And you are right, it isn’t a very big space.
But with a great deal of effort and determination that small space has done something really really amazing. In 2010 that ONE TENTH of an acre,( just .1) produced 7,030 pounds of fruits and vegetables! WOW! NO GMO crop could possibly do that! NO Chemical Company can produce those kinds of yields in modern American Agriculture in any way shape or form! They do not even come close!
BECAUSE in PER ACRE amounts it totals: 70,300 pounds. No current big farm agriculture can possibly produce 35 TONS of fruits and veggies on an acre of land!
NOW, imagine if every person that could possibly do this, would do it. Where ever they live. Even if they didn’t manage these ginormous yields, but just think if every one grew their own salad, potatoes and green beans?
Think of how beautiful our cities would become with all that green. Think of how much pollution of all sorts would be reduced. How about whole city blocks of people getting together and landscaping the whole neighborhood together, with everyone sharing the produce of the different trees? That alone would be priceless.
One of the things America has surely lost in most places: a sense of place, of belonging, a local food system, a sense of caring and community. This is a way of beginning to get it back.
The Dervaes family have a number of websites, all of which you can access from this link.
Now around here, it is hotter than blazes and half the state of AZ seems like it is burning up with no rain or let up in sight. So I will dream of fall and winter and early next spring….hopefully the next pea crop will be as good as this ones was:

In the Garden October 21, 2009

In the Garden

October 21, 2009 at 3:39 am

The garden continues to produce, though at a slower rate than before. The summer crops are winding down, but the fall and winter crops are a little slow taking off. It doesn’t help that a flock of quail helped themselves to the radishes and lettuce seedlings.
Here are the King of the Garden Limas, finally! I picked 1 1/2 pounds the other day, which shelled out to about a quart of beans, cooked them up with bacon & onion, delish! Even Liberty liked them.
Here a Trombocino squash {seeds available from www.freedomseeds.com} hides in the Red Currant tomato
The bed at the bottom of the picture has baby carrots, the one farther away, Golden Globe turnips and parsnips. The bigger green plants are hollyhocks.
Broccoli and cauliflower seedlings wait in the wings.
Kabocha squash volunteers have run over quite a bit of the garden. The one in the front isn’t quite ready to pick. The ones in the back weighed 7 & 10 pounds each. The other one is twice as big, can’t wait to see how much it weighs.
Lovely Hopi purple pod beans. These are yummy as fresh or dried shellies.

HOME GROWN FOOD SECURITY October 3, 2009

HOME GROWN FOOD SECURITY

October 3, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Some of my family & friends do not understand my passion for my garden and canning and preserving the food I grow. To me this is my own form of  Social Security. If things go to pot me and mine will be provided for. If, when I retire, the system doesn’t give me enough money to live on, I will be fine, because I have taken on the responsibility of providing for myself.  Some object that it is cheaper to buy things at the store. That could be, in some cases, modern agriculture and mass production have given us cheap food and goods. However, cheaper is not necessarily better. Some of these systems are actually making us sick! Look at Mad Cow disease, swine flu, bird flu. There is evidence that genetically modified foods are very bad for us [and, if given a choice between natural and GM grain, animals will eat the first and refuse the second! Lets be as smart as the animals!] Besides all these reasons, I enjoy what I do. It gives me a great sense of pride and accomplishment to look at the shelves in my kitchen, bursting with food I put there myself. Besides which, there are many things I can make at home that you cannot possibly buy at any price.
Bean soup, potatoe soup, dilly beans, green beans, pickled peppers, tomato sauce, pickled eggs… there’s more you can’t see, blueberries, apple sauce, jams, jellies, pickles, sauces, marinades. This year not everything was grown at home. I took advantage of terrific sales and the farmer’s market. But next year most of the cupboards will be filled with home grown goodness.  Also not in this picture are the things that I’ve dried, plums, apples, raisins, tomatoes, jerky, herbs for seasoning and tea.

It’s a Jungle Out There September 6, 2009

It’s a Jungle Out There

September 6, 2009 at 3:48 pm

Well, here’s a few pics from around the yard to catch up since I missed so much of August.
Heavenly Blue morning glories cover an arch by the front gate.
The small sunflowers are still blooming. They attract a lot of butterflies and bees of all kinds.
One of the surviving Heritage raspberries has put on a few fruits.
The Moon & Stars watermelon is going strong, tho no fruit yet.
Elephant Ears & Canna lily
The Jicama are going strong, just hope they are making nice big roots!
Can’t hardly walk beside the house for all the plants out there.
Delicata squash almost ready to pick.
The eggplants in pots on the patio are doing very well.
A couple of Rio Grande pepper plants loaded with fruit.
The back garden. The two empy beds in the middle are for carrots and parsnips.
Kentucky Wonder green beans cover a 5′ wire cage. So far it’s been so hot they haven’t set any beans, but I found one yesterday so we should have lots of them soon.
Apache Purple pod beans cover part of the greenhouse. They are just beginning to bloom.
Cucumbers & beans. I don’t think we’ll get many more cukes tho, they are severly infested with aphids. I think I should probably just pull them out.
Four o’clocks bloom by the front gate.
16 baby artichoke plants in their pots. Just not sure where I’m going to plant them!
The 11′ Lima beans, which still have yeilded no beans.

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Tally HO!

September 5, 2009 at 4:05 pm (corn, cucumber, food, freedom, gardening, grow your own food, self sufficiency) · Edit

All right, I’ve gotten a bit behind posting here, just soooo much going on in Aug! The grand kids went back to school and so did their mom, so we have children 7 days a week now. But the numbers are in for August; 100 eggs and 79.5 pounds of produce.
Heavenly Blue morning glories cover part of the greenhouse. You can just see one of the Kabocha squash in the leaves at the lower left.
Here  you can see that corner of the greenhouse on the right, then the baby corn, the row of paste tomatoes and on the left some cucumbers and an apple tree still in it’s pot.
Yesterday and again today it is raining. Actually when I took this pic through the front door it was also hailing. We got .4″ of rain yesterday and it is very dark and rainy again today. We were going to go to the lizard walk at the arboretum today, but don’t think that is going to happen. This rain looks like it might hang out all day. It is 9 AM and it is as dark outside as if the sun were nearly down! And I’m loving it and so it the garden.

Tally HO! And in the Kitchen August 1, 2009

Tally HO! And in the Kitchen

August 1, 2009 at 2:20 pm

WOWSERS! The tally for July is in and a big surprise!
Eggs, 102, which is down a bit from previous months. That isn’t really a surprise, since it has been so hot, the hens have been in a bit of a moult, which always lowers production.
alfalfa & comfrey, which I grow for the rabbits and chickens: 4.8 pounds
Produce: 101.75 That is the big surprise. The bulk of the poundage has been potatoes, tomatoes and onions, but includes strawberries, several kinds of beans, swiss chard, tomatillos, peppers, cucumbers, Tromboccino squash, eggplant, basil, apples, watermelon, mesquite beans [which will be ground into a flour when really crispy dry,  high in protien with a sweet lemon taste] and baby corn.
And there is more to come. It has been too hot for the lima beans to set pods, but as soon as it cools off a bit I think we’ll have lots, the cukes and yard long beans are just now hitting their stride. The baby corn is just coming in, to the girls delight [they've been waiting all summer for baby corn and are eating it raw!] The Kabocha squash will probably tote up a lot of poundage, there’s the yellow Moon & Stars and the Jubilee watermelons, the cantaloupes, a couple of kinds of pole beans, peppers and eggplants, to say nothing of the fact that there are still potatoes in their pots.  While it’s been too hot for the large paste tomatoes to set new fruit, once the daytime temps stay under 90, they should set a lot.
So it is quite possible for Aug and Sept to show even more poundage than July.
Each time I go to the grocery store my list gets shorter and shorter, partly due to the produce coming in from the garden. Part of it is because I am making more and more things from scratch at home. For instance milk was very cheap when I went shopping yesterday so I picked up an extra gallon and it is ‘ripening’ right now to make cottage cheese. I have found a really delicious brand of yogurt and while I am also going to begin making my own, especially when milk is cheap, it was on sale too so I got extra. The extra carton is now draining to make ‘yogurt cheese’. This is a soft and creamy spreadable ‘cheese’ to which I will add fresh herbs and eat on crackers.
Peelings, cores and bruised bits of apples sit in a gallon jar becoming vinegar. The cucumber crop is in various jars becoming fermented dill pickles. Scott eats tons of mayo so that is another one I’ll start making at home. He also loves garlic and I have a garlic mayo recipe to try out on him.
I’ve really been disappointed with BBQ sauce and salad dressings since I started really reading labels. Also with ketchup. They all have tons of corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup in them along with chemicals I can’t pronounce.  This makes most of them way too sweet and of course any non organic corn product is likely to be genetically modified, something I don’t want to eat. So I have been experimenting with making my own sauces. One really good one has been garlic & ginger. When I get it tweaked just right I’ll post it here.

Too Darn Hot! July 29, 2009

Too Darn Hot!

July 29, 2009 at 3:16 am

whew! It has been about 105 for several days, last night at 9:00 it was still 93.  I don’t do well in the heat and would much rather lay around in the shade drinking icy mint tea, but no rest for the wicked as they say. So in the garden I am busy trying to keep everything watered so it won’t die and it repays me with abundance. [I looked at the tally sheet for July and I think we are pushing 100 pounds of produce for the month ]
Here’s the big corn patch, most of what you can see here is the Bloody Butcher beginning to tassel. Also the patch of small seeded sunflowers. Close up is a part of an old greeting card rack, which has become a trellis for a couple of luffa plants.
I love the color of this small seeded sunflower!
Compare this shot of the yellow Moon & Stars watermelon plants with the one from July 4th and realize that is only 24 days of growth!
The Elephant Ears are getting huge and the canna isn’t doing too shabby either!
A tomato forest. After I took this pic I actually pruned these back a bit. With it being over 100 degrees every day I know that none of the current blossoms are going to set, so I took out some of the excess suckers and branches. That way the plants will stay shorter and are less likely to break later when they do start setting fruit again.
Here you see Miracle’s triple header sunflower is falling down on the baby corn. Her giant 8 & 1/2 foot one is in the background.
If you look closely where the leaves clasp the stalks you can see the little ear shoots coming out on our baby corn. The girls haven’t seen it yet, but they will be excited when they do-they have been waiting for the baby corn all summer.
The yard long beans are growing like crazy in the heat. The yellow blossoms are the Double Yield cukes from www.freedomseeds.com
Pickles on the vine.
The Kabocha squash by the greenhouse is turning orange already.