Natural irrigation, striking gold, and a bunch of pictures

Whew! 'Twas nice to see the sun today, even for a while. Haven't needed to irrigate the outside crops lately- this seems to be the wettest August I can remember in recent years. But the crops seem to be taking it in stride, except for the tomatoes, which are still waiting for summer. A few ripe ones here and there, but by and large, it's gonna be a while before they really get going. Got a trick up my sleeve, to try and get them ripening. More on that when I get it done.

We've been busy trying to keep on top of things here- it seems to always be a scramble about this time of year. But we've been continuing to plant lots of fall greens and such. Here's a picture of some new baby cutting lettuce, for our salad mix. It should start hitting the market tables in probably a week.

Here's a picture of lunch today- kale with bacon and onions, zucchini pancakes, zucchini oven fries, and beet thinnings with a yummy cilantro sauce drizzled over them. The sauce recipe is in the vegetarian cookbook sold by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. The name escapes me at the moment, and I'm too busy pecking away at the keyboard to go find the book. Nope, in case you're wondering, we're not vegetarians or vegans, but the cookbook focuses on veggies, which we love eating. So it's good. Anywho, lunch....

Yum!

Talking about fall crops, all this rain sure got the winter carrots lookin' good......we plant lots of carrots usually mid-July in this area, then mulch them to prevent freezing before the snows come, then are able to dig fresh carrots all winter. Planted lots this year for our winter veggie deliveries.

Never mind the small patch of weeds in the aisle. :)

There are beets in the middle, with some winter radishes as well, then more carrots toward the left of the picture. And some rutabagas south of the carrots. In other news, we struck gold here....well,  not the usual kind, but Yukon Gold spuds, pictured below. The potatoes are really lovin' this weather- I don't think we'll be eating store pseudo-spuds this year, and I think we'll have some for winter sales as well.

Yukon Gold potatoes

Here's a picture of one of the last zucchini plants we set out for the season. Started them about a month ago I think, then set them out in one of the (harvested) garlic beds, and off they grew! I think they will start producing early September. Am I crazy, starting them this late? Maybe so. :) But there are a few tricks to keep them producing late, and it seems after the zucchini season is over, someone or other's grandma or auntie or mama needs some to make a baking of zucchini bread, or something. I hate telling folks, no, the season is over. Sorry! Hopefully this year I can say, yup, how many you need? :)

Getting there.....

The beets we are growing out for seed are looking good- I'll post pictures some other time. Here's a picture of one of the lettuce plants that we're growing out for seed. The lettuce I mentioned earlier this spring, Kweik, sure went to seed quickly. I looked at another seed catalog, and it was recommended for fall/winter production, so we're giving it another whirl this fall. When lettuce starts running to seed (bolting), it generally acquires a revolting bitterness- certainly no good for eating. But, obviously, to get seed, it needs to bolt, so here's what it looks like when it has bolted.

Kweik Lettuce going to seed, foreground.

Here are some pictures of some of the herbs growing happily in the new herb garden location. No flooding up there on the hill, so they are lovin' it!

Lovage and elecampane

Winter savory

Calendula (the petals are used in homemade ointments and soaps).

Lemon Balm

Winter Thyme

Marjoram

Just noticed I need more color here, so I'll close with some color.

Flower garden north of the driveway.

"Long flower garden"

Fresh dug carrots.

Oh, one last thing- we've started doing the new farmer's market at G&A Garden Center on Sharon Avenue in Houghton. The market is 1-6 on Fridays and 10-3 on Saturdays. We do the Friday afternoon market, and of course the Hancock Tori on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, starting at 9. To my regular Tori customers, if it works for you, it would be great for planning purposes to keep coming to the Tori, since doing it for the past couple years we have a good feel of how much of each item to bring to market. But please tell your friends on the south side of the bridge of this new option to get our veggies. Thanks!

Well, I'm gonna run along- y'all please take care now, and eat your veggies! :)

More geese, drip irrigation, a little extra ramble on love and hate, and other pictures...............

A while back, we saw an ad for some geese for sale. Being a guy who likes geese, and realizing their practicality, I got a hold of the person right away. Ended up buying five more, bringing the goose flock here up to ten. To me, geese are eminently practical- they prefer to eat grass, which grows in abundance here, rather than corn/soy/who-knows-what-else feed, like chickens. They are cold hardy, needing of course a good tight barn or coop for winter, but having no problem with wet cool spring and fall weather. And they are a joy to look at. Here are the new geese swimming in the pond at first, then being joined by the rest of the flock later on.

And a couple more pictures of them in the pond. The first one is of the flock cruising along tranquilly, the second of them excitingly diving under the water. There must be some message that sweeps through the flock- one minute they are calmly paddling along, the next wildly and happily splashing and diving under the water.

Cruising geese

Excited splashing geese

We've been real busy at the markets, so it's been fun. I enjoy meeting and talking with all our wonderful customers, it's such a joy to actually talk with the people who are eating our veggies. We have been planting more fall greens, and anticipate continuing to do so for the next month or so. Things like baby lettuce mix, spinach, arugula, radishes, winter radishes, turnips, and such. Many crops don't mind the shortening, cooler days of fall; indeed, many actually prefer cooler weather, so we are happy to plant them when they want to grow. Some crops like arugula and mustard, are so afflicted in the summer by flea beetles on our sandy soil, I usually don't bother with them until the pest populations start declining in the fall. Kind of a pick-your-battles thing. I let the pests win the first round, but I usually win out in the end. :)

In other things, we're seeing some color other than green in the outside tomato patch........such as these ones, which according to my records were supposed to be Rose tomatoes, but most certainly are not. I think I got them mixed up with Glacier tomato, a very worthy early tomato that tastes great. I think I'll grow more of them next year...........

Yum!

And these Sungold tomatoes, hanging like grapes. For those unfamiliar with the Sungolds, they are an orange cherry type, sweet and fruity, great on top of salads, or right off the bush. We should start having them at market very soon. :)

Sungold cherry tomatoes.

The black thing laying on the soil under the plants is drip tape, which is exactly what it sounds like. A thin plastic "hose" with tiny emitters, that slowly drips water out. They run under very low pressure, and are a pure joy to work with, mostly. A hard wind can sometimes blow them around, and if you hoe too close to them, you can cut a hole in them. But the positives far outweigh the small annoyances from time to time. They save water, can be turned on while harvesting is going on since the water is slowly delivered at ground level, and they don't spray water all over the leaves, thereby allowing even late evening watering. And there is the aspect of over-head watering from an open pond- the idea of blasting pond water over fresh salad greens is revolting to me. Drip irrigation solves that problem. What's not to like about it? I could even say I "love" drip irrigation, but better not since I would be violating one of the things I try to inculcate in the youngsters. Sometimes I have to remind them that we love things that have the capability to love us back. And if we strongly dislike something we shouldn't say we hate it. We like food, we like fishing, we like going swimming, we like many inanimate objects, but we love people, and we love God. We don't hate foods we're not very fond of, or beastly hot weather, or the mosquitoes that are constantly swarming above our heads.  Hate is reserved for sin and the devil, love is reserved for God and our fellow man. So, I better just say I very strongly like drip irrigation. :)

Here's a few more pictures, before I call it quits for tonight-

Baby lettuce in the little portable greenhouse

The ones in the front need to be transplanted out Monday, the ones farther back in probably a week and a half or so. And the about 500 more that were planted on August 7, and are currently germinating down in the basement, even later than that. :) That's one nice thing about lettuce and greens- unlike a tomato or squash or cucumber, which need to reach a certain stage of maturity before being "eatable", greens are ready as soon as they're big enough to eat. If they are two inches tall, they are baby lettuce. When they are about 6 inches or so across, they are mini-heads. And when they are fully grown, they make wonderful eating as full-size heads. :)

Earlier in the season, I alluded to the practice of "potting up" mini-soil blocks to  larger ones. Here's how it's done..........

Here's a lettuce variety we are trying out, called Mottistone, from Johnny's Selected Seeds in Maine.

Still very baby stage

"Salt and Pepper" cucumbers, great for fresh eating.

A beautiful shot of the evening sky

Tranquility settles over the gardens as the moon rises.

 With that, y'all take care, and happy trails! :)

How onion seeds are made, and some pictures

One of the things that intrigues me is growing out seed. Some of the reasons for doing so are to break the stranglehold seed companies have over farmers. If they don't have the seed, neither do I. That fact was borne out this spring while trying to order Winterbor kale, which had a seed crop failure, and the seed was very hard to come by, at least in the seed houses I frequent. Ended up using Blue Scotch Curled Kale instead. Another reason is that when you grow out seed, over time it becomes acclimated to your particular area and soil type. And there is also the satisfaction of going full circle, so to speak- the plants you lovingly nurtured run to seed, either the same year of planting (annuals) or the second year (in the case of biennial plants), after which you collect the seed, and save it for next year's planting. Well, while walking by the Evergreen Bunching Onion seed patch, I noticed they were ready to collect and dry down. They started out looking something like this last fall..........

then overwintered, and avoided getting eaten by the hungry deer, or killed by our brutal winter. This spring, they started doing this..........

Then, the other day, I was walking by and noticed they were starting to look like this........

Pods starting to open, getting ready to drop seed.

I thought, time to collect them. So Joshua and I went out and collected the nice looking seed heads.

Some of next year's bunching onions.

Then laid them out to dry down on a rag on top of the old pump organ in the front porch......

After which, when the heads have dried down, I'll rub them between my hands to release the little black seeds, and put them away to be planted next spring. It's kinda neat. Here's some more pictures, in no particular order of importance....

Janice thought he was ugly, I thought he was so ugly he's was kinda cute.

Baby sparrow the kids found, and got some pics of before turning him loose again.

The new herb location.

After having them get so wet, with the ground so heavy where they used to be, they are now safe up on the hill east of the big market garden. If they get too wet in the new location, we have bigger problems than herb plants not doing well. Gonna have a swimming pool in the basement. Maybe the living room too. Not much chance of them getting too wet where they are now. So it's good. :)

Baby lettuce, safe from the grasshoppers.

We had some grasshoppers in the seed-starting greenhouse, and they were scything the  baby lettuce off at the stem. No way they can recover when that happens. So, I was thinking we would have to build a raised platform outside, with a cover over so new baby lettuce don't get beat apart by rains. Then, thought, why not put them in the little portable greenhouse? (Thanks, K.H.) Problem solved. Put dirt around the skirting, made sure there were no grasshoppers in there, closed the zippers, and the lettuces were safe. I know the grasshoppers need to eat too, but they can go eat grass. :)

Bright Lights Chard, as beautiful as it is good.

Baby Anthony, checking out something by the round flower garden.

Amiga Cucumber

Lots of lettuce and other stuff, in the area known as "C-plot".

Shasta Daisies, taking over the long flower bed (BP, RY, need starts for your places?)

 

Like their smiling faces

         

Bee on borage blossom

Blacktail Watermelons on the hugelbed

Sorry, folks for this one from last winter. Taken on my phone camera, it's evidence.

See, Kimber from Hungry Horse, Montana. I wasn't lyin'. :)

That's it for now, gotta run, y'all take care.

Update on bee swarm, pictures, kale "spaghetti"

Here's an update on the first bee swarm- they took to their new home, and are happily going about their business. We had another swarm that we were able to catch, and a third one that got away. Hopefully they are done swarming now. I dabble a bit in "bee-keeping", but sometimes for novices like me it's a bit difficult to "keep" the bees. :) Anyway, here's a picture of one of the new drawn-out frames in the top-bar hive.

Really pretty, I think.

A top bar hive is exactly that- there are only top bars, not a fully rectangle frame with a foundation that the bees draw out their comb on. Some people put a small starter strip hanging off the top bar, this type of frame I cut a groove in so the bees would have some inkling of where they should start building, and to kind of give them a toe hold, so to speak. They create their comb by hanging from the top bar, and building the comb as they are hanging there. Really amazing to me. In the center of the comb and a little toward the left, the more yellow part is drawn out and sealed off brood, which should hatch out in about 3 weeks or less.  In other "bees-ness", they found the squash blossoms.......

Bumblebee on a male squash blossom

Honeybee on a female squash blossom.

It's always a joy when the bees find the blossoms and start doing their work. For the early zucchini, we have been hand-pollinating, but it cuts down on the workload when the bees start helping out. We'll probably keep on hand-pollinating, at least for a while. There's not really a lot of bees out yet, and it's kinda discouraging if the squash don't get pollinated, and end up deformed or with the end rotted. We usually have one of the little tikes running around go "be a bumblebee" for a while, and they think it's a hoot to pretend they are bumblebees. Hand-pollinating is really not that hard to do, just pick an open male blossom (for beginning gardeners, that's the one usually on a long stem, with no tiny fruit at the base of the blossom), tear the petals off, leaving the stamen, (the part the bumblebee was curled around), and work it over and around the pistil of the open female flower, which is the part the honeybee's head is partly under. Female flowers are the ones that have a tiny fruit at the base of the blossom. The bees are lapping up the nectar, and as they fly from flower to flower, are unknowingly helping the plants produce fruit. It is really neat, how God created things to work together- the plants give the bees nectar and pollen; the bees, while collecting the products they need from the plants, are actually helping them out. Win-win for both species. :)

Here's some more pictures.......

Snap peas, almost ready to harvest.

More baby lettuce, ready for your late-August salads. :)

Happy spuds.

I've really been happy how the spuds are doing this year. Last few years, we haven't had good crops of potatoes, between lots of seed rotting last (wet, cold) spring, to another year having them in soil they obviously didn't like, and not being able to give them as much water as they would like. Have had to buy store spuds for family use even. (Yuck!) This year, I pledged to myself, I'm gonna do what I have to do to at least grow enough spuds for the kiddos to eat, so they can have real potatoes, and not have to eat psuedo-spuds from the store. With the rain and mostly cooler summer, the spuds seem to be loving it, so I'm hopeful there will be enough of them for our winter use, and some to sell for the winter veggie sales. Kinda like a present, though- you never really know until you open it. In this case, open the potato hills, and see what's under there. :) Talking about opening things, today the boys opened the last beet earth pit, we buried last October; lo and behold, beets! Some at the top had gone bad. The ones lower down, while not perfect, were still in usable condition. I had tried an experiment with this pit, only digging 10 inches or so down, heaping them up so they were partly above ground (this type of setup is commonly called a "clamp"), and putting a good layer of leaves over them, then the dirt. I'm guessing the top ones may have frozen with the brutal winter we had. In any case, beets we put in the ground last fall are gonna be on the table tonight. I love it! Could of course have fresh beets from the garden, but it's a sense of accomplishment to see how well (and how long) root crops will store underground in a "live" condition.

Zucchino Rampicante........

from the good folks at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They are sorta strange looking, but have good reviews. They can be eaten as a summer squash, left to mature and be eaten as a winter squash, and are supposed to be very prolific. What's not to love about them? We'll find out I guess, and if they ARE good, we'll grow them for market next season. If not, the goats will love 'em.

One of the old time rose bushes by the pond.

They don't look quite as fancy or uniform as the newer hybrids, but the fragrance is heavenly. I wish I could put the fragrance in this post, but I don't have the technology to do that yet. (And I guess I don't want it, for that matter.) So, if you want to smell them, you'll have to stop by for a chat. :)

Here, at long last, is the recipe for the "kale spaghetti". We're not big on fancy terms or gourmet cooking here, just plain easy down-home food. And the recipe we make is for a huge bowl, so if you have fewer eaters, cut the amounts in thirds or less.

                                                        

5 bunches of kale, torn into pieces, with the stems cut into small pieces, if you choose to use them; otherwise toss them into your (or your neighbor's) compost heap)

2 cups green onions, bulb and all, cut up

8 cloves garlic

2 oz. fresh lemon balm

2 lbs. spaghetti noodles

 Coconut oil for wilting the greens

Optional: 1 lb. (or 2) of Jimmy Dean Italian Sausage, nice flavor


Fry the meat, saving the grease for part of the oil to fry the greens in. Put the noodles on to boil; while they are cookin', put the grease from the meat and a bit of oil (we like coconut oil) in a pan, add in the greens, garlic, lemon balm, and onions, and lightly fry until they are tender. (We usually have to fry the greens in three panfuls, there's so much.) When the noodles are done to your liking,  and the greens are tender, toss the noodles, meat, and greens all together in a big bowl, mix them, load onto your plate, salt and pepper to taste, and devour. It's good for a quick (not too heavy) summer mid-day or evening meal. There, I told you it'd be easy, didn't I? :)

Well, I better run along. Y'all please take care now!