Planting Done!

I hope this posts as my “add new post” section looks odd today… frowns

 

I finished planting today, I got my Tiger’s eye beans in the ground, the cucumbers, the summer squash, and three types of inedible gourds. I am hoping to make a few things if they grow well. What surprised me when I started planting my Tiger’s eye beans was that I had many more than I thought I did. I think I planted 4 rows in a 8 ft long bed.

I also had a few flowering shrubs to plant that one of the neighbor’s sent my way. My son is going to be working for her and her husband on and off this summer and she figured if she was having my son thin the bushes out she may as well send a few my way. They produce a small yellow flower, and she said they were eating her driveway. So I put them where they can grow as much as they want.

My strawberries are starting to set fruit, and I am hoping they produce a lot as I am looking forward to making jam, drying some and maybe make a few syrups with them. I’ll have to look around for a few other ways to use them, maybe some chocolate covered strawberries!

 

That is about it for now as we are still on tentative hold on house building as we need the kids out of school and a ladder to continue.

 

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be…

Planting too early?

Well this morning after cleaning up some and getting half my laundry out on the line, I noticed that my plants not in the ground were looking a bit sad.  Sad as in drooping badly, they weren’t dry, or missing sun either.  OK, well one was droopy .. three others seemed to be wilting but not drooping.

So we rushed to finish off the tomato tubs and get everybody in the ground.  Interestingly even though I only had 2 pots of basil they wound up having 7 plants in those two pots.  I am hoping they do well considering I did split them.  The mammoth Jalapeno’s are in with some of my onions and my one egg plant is with my lettuce as I’ve yet to have them grow for me and I want to keep a good eye on it.  My sweet peppers are in the box we got 2 years ago.  Which I think I said before we are retiring the box at the end of this year and we’ll move the soil to a good spot.

I still have some seeds to plant.  Three of them are three types of non-edible gourds that I am hoping to make into useful things.  My cucumbers, sunflowers, and a straight necked summer squash.  I also have to get my tiger’s eye beans in the ground once I figure out where I’m putting them.

We’ve been having net issues for almost 2 weeks and today it just got fixed, about an hour ago.  The service guy thinks it may have just been nudged loose during a high wind and only needed a quick adjustment.  We have a meeting at the kids’ school in a short while then we get to stick around as the girls have a concert tonight and we don’t want to waste gas.

Thought of something interesting while hanging the laundry today .. due to the fact that a young buck has decided he likes to eat across the street.  I’ve heard vegetarians say that you shouldn’t eat meat because the animals are beautiful.. or cute.   OK, flowers and some plants are very beautiful.. yet you eat them…  Interesting thought is it not?

 

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be…

Garden Pics

Well lookie at that two posts in one day.  This one being pictures.. sorry about the quality I defiantly need to get a new better camera.

This is one of the flowering strawberry plants we now have by my Elderberry trees.  Who by the way are trying to take over the spot here. It does not bother me that they are trying to take over there as eventually I want them to fill the space in.  Technically Elderberry is a shrub not a tree, however for a shrub it grows very large.

I believe these strawberries are ever bearing, which would be very nice as i am planning to dry half the total berries, then half of the remainder will be jammed and the rest will be eaten straight.

My wintergreen that was planted in the same area is trying desperately to come back, I hope it does as I was looking forward to harvesting some of that this year.  Considering only two of the four plants made it to winter, then the two seemed to be doing well all winter then they seem to have just given up once it warmed up.  I do not know why, I can just hope they come back.  Once it drys up out there I need to get into that “bed” and remove the unwanted plants.

This minor monstrosity is the combined planting of the Thyme,Marjoram,and mint.  As you can see it is just a mass of green right now.  I think the thyme is going to be choked out.  While the mint and Marjoram will be fighting the remaining space out between the two of them.

In a few hours I have my first batch of Marjoram to take out of my food dryer.  That does mean this picture was taken after I harvested mint and Marjoram from it.  They don’t seem to be hurting from the haircut I gave them.  Which is a good thing as I plan on keeping it up.  I have some nice amber glass jars that I need filling and I know about how much it’ll take to fill them full.

I don’t think you can see it, but the mint is trying to escape under the tire… My thought is if it does “get away” that’s more mint for me.  I do now know that at least these two plants will need to be controlled once I have my herb garden set up.

I do not know if you can see this one or not, however if you can.  That’s not onions.  That would be my first attempt at growing garlic.  They seem to be doing just fine, however they seem to grow slower than my onions.

I wish I had pictures of potato sprouts, but my potatoes seem to be taking the slow route to the surface this year.  I do know they are growing as one day the chickens escaped and thankfully they were so stuffed all they did was unbury the potatoes.  They all seemed to have roots and little sprouts working their way up.

We will be ordering some sunchokes in this next month.  We may also be buying some locally as it seems right now Craigslist is full of people trying to sell them off.  I have no problem with growing them, and letting them take over if they taste as good as I have been lead to believe.

Well that’s it on my “good” pictures as the rest did not look good enough for me to be willing to post them.  Have a great afternoon!

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be

Cattails

Fyi this is -NOT- my picture… I’m have camera issues again…

We went out this morning and gathered some cattail shoots to try. I have never eaten them before and neither has Silver. So we went over to the pond across the street, me wearing shorts. To gather some from our neighbor as the ones we have planted do not have enough of a hold in the pond to be worth harvesting from.
I am glad it is a not cold morning as the water was definitely cold and let me say unless you have a dry spot, you will be in the water to try and get your shoots. They are almost at the stage of not being small enough to eat. Granted there are tons of “baby” cattails growing there, no bigger than wild onions.
From the instructions I received on it the section I want is the white part closest to the “tuber” without cutting up the tuber. I harvested about 8 of them of different sizes. They have a pleasant aroma when they are cut semi-sweet.
After cleaning off the outer section that was a little tough and washing them thoroughly we tried them raw. They taste very good raw, slightly sweet. I have discovered that lightly frying them in olive oil ruins their flavor. Silver’s estimation of them they would be best serves sliced up on a salad raw or maybe in a stew. If anyone has an “cooking” recommendations for cattail shoots please pass them along. I love the flavor and want to find other uses for them.

BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be…

Mint Harvest

Well the mint plant I planted last year is trying to take over it’s planted… and even grow under it.  So this morning before more rain hit us I went out and gathered a bunch of it to start drying it in my dehydrator.  I have enough to fill 5 trays, and I added one tray to catch any that fall through.  However I placed it right above the tray that I filled with the small pieces.  I only have 2 mesh inserts so I have to make the best use of them that I have for them.  My thought is that the small bits use it and have one empty aside from the mesh goes above that tray to catch any fall throughs during the drying process.

I had thought the mint completely took over the planted I have it and two other herbs in it.   I was wrong, it only half takes over the planter.  The other half is filled with Marjoram, the Thyme is trying to survive with both of the other two trying to choke it out.  The mint is even growing under the planter and trying to escape.  This has told me that when I do get my full herb garden growing that I’ll need to have any mints growing by themselves… blocked off from the rest.  I knew catnip took over, I just did not realize all mints did.

I imagine that in about two days I’ll have a bunch of dried mint that I’ll have to put away for later, then I’ll be working on the Marjoram.  When that one is done we’ll see if the mint has grown back  enough to dry more of it.  I do hope we get our solar dryer done soon so I can use a non-electric dryer for everything.

 

BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed be…

Quiet Days

We have been have a few quiet days here, between the rain and the cold.  My mom has flooding up near her in the Chicago area, though where she lives it would take a great deal of water to flood them out.  All of the seeds and plants I have put in seem to be doing well so far.  The one exception is my mini pak choi and edible chrysanthemums, something seems to like eating them;maybe I just need to give up on them.

Our next set of plans on building things is to get either the well house redo, the outdoor kitchen, or the pipe and wire for the new house.  As we sat down and figured we cannot really do any work on the house itself till the kids are fully out of school so they can help as we have at least one spot that needs three people to do the work.  …and with how the weather has been I can’t guarantee we’ll have a clear day on the weekends.  So we wait on house construction till they get out and we have them around all the time.  Silly thing is we only need the “extra man” to put up the rebar for the frame the rest we can do two person.

My strawberries are starting to bloom, I’m taking that as a good sign that they like their new home.  We are going to order some huge jalapeno peppers and some sunchokes around the first and a lemon grass plant.  Seems I cannot get lemon grass to sprout at all shrugs oh well we’ll just have to do with a started plant.  We are going to have to buy a pot and keep it inside in the cold weather, but I believe it’ll be worth it.  I am considering when we get the dome built to get a laurel tree in a big pot.

I hope you are all about to work and get around in all the rain we’ve had and I alps hope you won’t be in the path of any nasty snow melt when it starts up.

 

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be…

Rain, Rain.. we need it…

We do, just hopefully not the severe stuff that is moving around.  My new day lilies are coming up and I have seen that the cattails are all sprouting nicely.  I was worried about the cattails, but seems that I did ok on the moving of the plants, a big THANK YOU to Rich and Daina who own the property kitty cornered to us for the cattails.

I got a plant/seed catalog the other day that has pond plants in it and I’m considering some of the irises.  I would not mind a few flowers there in addition to the other plants there.  My lettuce is coming up, and I believe my mini Pak Choi came up as evidanced by the “mowed down” look they have this morning.

I have found a variety of Jalapeno that is almost the size of my hand that we are considering planting this year so we can make our own “poppers”.  I had gotten some a year or two ago and we stuffed them with cheese and a beef/rice mix before breading and deep frying and they came out wonderful. I’d like to try it again.

My grape has flowers on it and the red current while it lost it’s top leaves, the lower buds are growing.  Also the Pecan tree seems to be holding it’s own.  My mother sent me an early (one week early) birthday gift off my Amazon.com wish list, it’s a large Ball brand water bath canner.  To see the wish list here’s the link:

http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/L8YKMO2HVVP9/ref=cm_wl_act_vv?_encoding=UTF8&reveal=&visitor-view=1

 

It’s so pretty I can’t wait to get a chance to use it!  However it’ll probably be a few weeks as I need more lids to do more canning.  I am planning to make a “stew mix” to dry can as the year goes on, this will be a simple pour into pot add water and heat meal.  It’ll contain:

Jerky

bouillon

dried berries (probably blue and black though if the currents produce them too)

dried potatoes

dried garlic

dried onion

dried day lily buds

dried peppers

dried potato flakes (home made hopefully)

Now why two kinds of potato?  Simple mashed potato flakes make a good thickener.  So it’ll make it into a nice thick stew.  I’m going to tinker with it as I make them, and I’ll probably not “assemble” them till later in the year when I have everything setup.  So we’ll see how it goes.

 

BE Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be…