Two Weeks Later-- Big Difference

You can compare the pictures from a couple of weeks ago and see that the plants have really taken off.  In the foreground you can see the chives, still flowering, and the asperigus frawns.  In the background are, from left to right, French Marigolds, onions, potatos, tomatoes and snow peas.

Here is a ground level view of the same part of the garden.  Believe it or not, we have had some really bad weather and the plants have been beat up a couple of times.  If it wasn't for that, they would look even better.

This is the opposite end of the garden.  You can see the squash in front, the Boston Marrow winter squash in the upper right, and the Draggon beans from the left to top center.  You can see the yellow summer squash is already blooming.  I didn't take a picture, but there are actually little squash the size of your pinky nail already there.

This is the spinach.  I have already taken several cuttings off of them and it has been very good.  You'll notice the large Brussell Sprout plant that was in the pictures a couple of weeks ago is gone.  It went to seed, which was its job, so I pulled it.

 My son wanted to plant peppers again this year.  We really don't have room in the garden, so we put them in pots.  There are two pots, with three plants each.  He grew them from seed.  Should be good.

 This is a close-up of the asperigus frawns.

 This is the flat leaf Italian parsley going to seed.

 These are the chives going to seed.

 These are the radishes going to seed.  They will develop little seed pods.  If you pick them when they are small and imature, they are really sweet and have just a faint radish flavor.  I had never tasted it until a couple of years ago and can't get enough now.  I rarely even eat the radishes themselves any more.  I just eat the seed pods and grow them for that alone.  They are in a shady part of the garden that not much will grow in anyway, so there is really nothing lost.

 This is a potato plant.  Last year was the first year for me to grow potatos and I really liked them.  I saved some of them to plant this year and they have done very well.  They seem to be growing a lot faster and bigger than they did last year.  Maybe it's adaptation.

 This is a yellow summer squash plant.

 This is a tomatio plant.  I've never grown them before, but I've eaten them forever.  Can't wait to see how these turn out.

 One of the tomato plants.  I have seven different varieties this year.  This one is Porter.  It was actually developed not far from here, so it's very well suited to our climate.  Last year it was a real heavy producer.  It is the first to set fruit this year and looks to be doing very well.

This is a blossom forming on one of the potato plants.  Potatos actually cross breed very easily and stabalize far faster than most plants.  For the plantings last year I chose six different red skin potatos.  The meat on each is different, but they all have red skin.  I'm intentionally letting them cross breed so I can adapt a variety for my area.  We'll see how it goes.

 While I was working in the garden a friend was hunting, so I thought I would try to catch him in the act.  Didn't quite work, but he looks pretty cool anyway.

 Here he is blowing out his throat.  I didn't get a great picture of it.  It actually went out a long way and was bright orange.

I think he got tired of me after a while because he changed from the bright green to this muddy brown and looked like he was going to try to jump on me.  I left him alone.  I need him to eat bugs.

Spring 2011-- First Look

 This is last year's Brussel Sprouts going to seed.

 I planted asperigus this year.
  We won't be able to eat it for a couple of years,
 but it looks good in the garden for now.

There are onions on the left,

 potatos (from last years crop) next to them,

 then tomatos, and finaly, sweet peas on the far right.

Looking the opposite direction from the last picture,

 again, onions and potatos on the left, squash in the foreground,

 and beans on the far right.

The chives planted last year are doing very well

 and make a pretty corner of the garden.  There is parsley growing behind the chives.

In the foreground are the pickling cucumbers.

  The large plants at the end are radishes.  I will eat the radishes and the

 little imature seed pods (they are the best).  Under the radishes are carrots and beets.

  The radishes grow very quickly, so as soon as they are harvested, the carrots

 and beets get enough light to grow and I can do it all in the same spot and conserve ground.

This is the French curly leaf spinach.  It is very good.

  The first cutting is almost ready.

I'm trying something new this year-- growing my own mushrooms.

  These are oak cuttings and I drilled a bunch of holes in them and hammered

 plugs that are impregnated with mushroon spores into them.  In a few weeks,

 we should have three different types of mushrooms:

  Shiitake, Pearl Oyster, and Reishi.

This is a better picture of the holes with the plugs in them.

Pickles

Yesterday was probably the last time this year I will go to the farmers' market.  I hadn't really done any pickling this year yet and it was about too late, so I bought everything they had that would make good pickles.  I ended up with five kinds, shown here.  Left to right we have jalepenos, okra, totmates (from my garden, not the farmers' market), green beens, and brussel sprouts (which I have never pickled  before).  As you can see, I put some carrots in with the jalepenos.  They are great.

These are the tomatoes from the garden.  I had never had pickled tomatoes until about three years ago.  I tried them in a restaurant in Denver and have had to have them ever since.

This is the okra.  I put three thick jalepeno slices in each jar.  I didn't want to overpower them, but they taste good a little spicey.

Jalepenos and carrots.

Brussel sprouts.

Green beens.

Green Tomato Habanero Salsa

My brother gave me this recipe.  It makes a very good and spicey salsa and doubles as a great marinade for slow roasting meats, like pork or briskit.  I have plenty of tomatos in the garden, but didn't want to use them for this, so I bought all the fresh vegitables at the farmers' market.  The pictures show two batches of the recipe below.

15    cups chopped green tomatoes
3     habanero peppers
3     jalapeno peppers
1     med onion
4     cloves garlic
3/4  cup lemon juice
1/4  dry cilantro
2     tsp dry oregano
1     TBL salt
1     tsp pepper
1    TBL ground cumin


I chopped all the vegitables large and layered them in the jars, then put the other ingredients in individually.  Process in a water bath for 45 minutes.  Blend to a thick consistency for use.

Jam

There is a Peach orchard not far from our place in the country and we picked up fresh peaches there a week ago to make jam with.  It came out great.  I was telling a friend from work this and she said she had a plumb tree that was over flowing and would I like some of them.  Of course I would.  So I made plumb jam too.  My wife thought since I was making the rest, I might as well make strawberry jam too.  It was a long day yesterday, but I did a total of 14 pints, in half pint jars, of the three fruits.  They all turned out well.  They are not too sweet.  I used a little honey instead of sugar and no sugar needed pectin.  So, they actually taste like the fruit instead of just sugar.

If you want to try it, the recipe is the same for all three:

4 cups fruit

1 cup honey

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 packet no sugar needed pectin

Dice the fruit small and put in a high sided suace pan.  Put on medium high heat togethr with the lemon juice and honey.  Boil the mixture slowly for about 10 minutes.  Add the pectin while stirring constantly to avoid lumps.  Boil an additional 3 minutes with the pectin in.  Remove from heat and spoon into jars that have been heated in your oven for 15 minutes at 160 degrees together with the lids.  Place the lids on the jars and screw down the rings.  Let set on the counter for several hours.  The lids will pop as they cool so you know they are sealed.  

You can double the recipe if you want, but I wouldn't go any farther than that.  Recipes start to do strange things when you play with them too much.

Garden Update: Veggies

More good stuff from the garden.  These are the last of the first planting of beets.  I've gotten quite a few red tomatoes too, but the German Green Stripe look too cool.  They taste just like a yellow pear tomato or some other low acid variety.  The Purple Pod Green Beans are very good.  I eat most of them off the vines.  I've yet to cook any because they are so good raw.

Garden Update: Tomatoes

I always start with this view of the garden because it is easy to see how much things have grown.  You can go back to previous posts and compare.  Short story, the tomatoes are going crazy.

The plants are masive now and producing dozens of tomatoes.  You can also see the frame for shade screen I put up.  We are getting temperatures in the mid to high 90's already.  Tomatoes don't set fruit very well at those temps, so I'm hoping the screen will help.

Just a few shots at all the tomatoes.  I can't wait.  I've already been eating a few of the Sweet 100's and here's a shot of the German Green Zebra getting ripe.

I will actually let this one rippen completely on the vine so the seeds will mature.  I'll keep the seeds from it for next year's garden.

The squash are setting fruit now too.  I planted them quite a bit later in the year to make room for the potatoes, but it looks like even with the late start I'll be eating them in a couple of weeks.

Here are some small Purple Pod Green Beans.  I've been eating them off the vine for about two weeks now.  None have made it into the house yet.

This is a pretty poor picture of one of the onion heads in bloom.

Here you can see the spinach making it's seed heads too.  The spinach did very well this year.  I used last year's seed and was very pleased at how well it did.  I will let a few of these go to seed and continue eating the rest.

These are the Black Spanish Radishes.  I planted them just for the seed pods this year.  I had never eaten them until last year, but they were so good I decided to plant them just for the immature seed pods.  You eat them like snow peas or something and they have a very mild radish flavor that is great.