I am 5'8" and the corn is way above my head.
It is even above my outstretched arm. It may actually be a hazard to air craft.
Showing posts with label Yummy stuff that grows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yummy stuff that grows. Show all posts
Friday, July 18, 2014
The tallest corn in the *world*
My county fair is happening this week and there is a contest for the tallest corn stalk. If this corn weren't part of my Three Sisters garden and supporting pole beans with roots intertwined with pumpkins, I would totally enter it. It is an heirloom, multi-colored dent which will hopefully be tortillas one day.
It is even above my outstretched arm. It may actually be a hazard to air craft.
It is even above my outstretched arm. It may actually be a hazard to air craft.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
In the event that gardening is possible this year...
So? It's like snowing right now? And sticking? I'm trying not to be upset by this, but I would like to remind you we live in Indiana, and not Central New York.
A few weeks ago as we were enjoying a fire in the wood stove after many days of not having any wood (because we ran out, for the third time), just before we had our propane tank filled for the second time this year, Bill suggested we really, really enjoy the fire because we would be missing it come July when it was still cold and there was no wood left in the world. And then we started talking about Ice Ages and how the last one may have popped into being in just six months, rather than over the course of years. Comforting.
In the event that we actually do have a summer again in our lifetime, I have started some seeds: tomato, pepper, eggplant and herbs. I'm using a soil blocker that we purchased for about $30 from Johnny's Seeds. It was easy to use, is a one-time purchase and there is nothing to throw away. It did take a little more time than filling peat pots, but not much. It was also dirtier, but I consider that a plus.
I used Pro-Mix potting soil, which I purchased at a home improvement store. I mixed the soil with a lot of water (much more than the "recipe" that came with the soil blocker suggested), until it was like peanut butter. Then, I made a big mud pie and pressed the soil blocker down over it until I could see water - dirt water! - seeping through the top of the blocker. I then moved to the tray and pushed on the handle allowing the blocks to gently drop out. Ta da!
The blocks have held up well so far. I mostly water by misting with a spray bottle, but also by pouring water on top. I've even had to transfer some blocks from one tray to another and they did fine. There was a little bit of crumbling, but nothing tragic.
The lights are a broad spectrum LED, which the plants seem to enjoy.
We bought very few seeds this year. All of our tomatoes and peppers are from seeds that were either left over from last year or seeds that we saved ourselves from plants we grew. Some of the seeds are now on their third generation, meaning we bought the seeds in 2012, grew the plants and saved the seeds, grew plants from those saved seeds in 2013 and saved new seed from them in the fall and have planted them for use this year. So far, the seeds I've saved have grown the fastest and biggest. It's my own version of natural selection - the stuff that grows well in our soil under my management practices gets saved and will hopefully continue to get better. I LOVE IT!
A few weeks ago as we were enjoying a fire in the wood stove after many days of not having any wood (because we ran out, for the third time), just before we had our propane tank filled for the second time this year, Bill suggested we really, really enjoy the fire because we would be missing it come July when it was still cold and there was no wood left in the world. And then we started talking about Ice Ages and how the last one may have popped into being in just six months, rather than over the course of years. Comforting.
In the event that we actually do have a summer again in our lifetime, I have started some seeds: tomato, pepper, eggplant and herbs. I'm using a soil blocker that we purchased for about $30 from Johnny's Seeds. It was easy to use, is a one-time purchase and there is nothing to throw away. It did take a little more time than filling peat pots, but not much. It was also dirtier, but I consider that a plus.
I used Pro-Mix potting soil, which I purchased at a home improvement store. I mixed the soil with a lot of water (much more than the "recipe" that came with the soil blocker suggested), until it was like peanut butter. Then, I made a big mud pie and pressed the soil blocker down over it until I could see water - dirt water! - seeping through the top of the blocker. I then moved to the tray and pushed on the handle allowing the blocks to gently drop out. Ta da!
The blocks have held up well so far. I mostly water by misting with a spray bottle, but also by pouring water on top. I've even had to transfer some blocks from one tray to another and they did fine. There was a little bit of crumbling, but nothing tragic.
The lights are a broad spectrum LED, which the plants seem to enjoy.
We bought very few seeds this year. All of our tomatoes and peppers are from seeds that were either left over from last year or seeds that we saved ourselves from plants we grew. Some of the seeds are now on their third generation, meaning we bought the seeds in 2012, grew the plants and saved the seeds, grew plants from those saved seeds in 2013 and saved new seed from them in the fall and have planted them for use this year. So far, the seeds I've saved have grown the fastest and biggest. It's my own version of natural selection - the stuff that grows well in our soil under my management practices gets saved and will hopefully continue to get better. I LOVE IT!
Friday, August 30, 2013
Red, Yellow, Green
We've been eating lots of red and yellow meals lately. Wanna see?
Delicata squash soup and tomatoes on garlic bread with NY wine.
Two pots of tomato sauce for canning. Bill was pretty insistent that the yellow pot stay purely yellow. There were two separate spoons for stirring, and the immersion blender had to go into the yellow sauce first, lest some red bits contaminate it.
Not being eaten are these yellow pickling cucumbers. Bill has trepidation about them, and I rightfully know that all cucumbers are vile. So, I've been picking them and they sit on our counter...destined to become chicken food.
Finally, here's what the goats and sheep have been eating. That "grass is greener" thing is apparently not to be taken lightly, as I noticed when we moved some fences around this weekend. The old paddock where the ruminants had been confined is on the left. There is a clear line where the fence was with the "other side" of the fence on the right. Makes you think that maybe we've been using that saying incorrectly for all these years.
Delicata squash soup and tomatoes on garlic bread with NY wine.
Two pots of tomato sauce for canning. Bill was pretty insistent that the yellow pot stay purely yellow. There were two separate spoons for stirring, and the immersion blender had to go into the yellow sauce first, lest some red bits contaminate it.
Not being eaten are these yellow pickling cucumbers. Bill has trepidation about them, and I rightfully know that all cucumbers are vile. So, I've been picking them and they sit on our counter...destined to become chicken food.
Finally, here's what the goats and sheep have been eating. That "grass is greener" thing is apparently not to be taken lightly, as I noticed when we moved some fences around this weekend. The old paddock where the ruminants had been confined is on the left. There is a clear line where the fence was with the "other side" of the fence on the right. Makes you think that maybe we've been using that saying incorrectly for all these years.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Solstice Salad
Friday was the winter solstice, which is my favorite day of the year. We burned a Yule log and ate a lovely meal.
The Yule log was decorated with offerings for prosperity and health in the new year, including a pepper for a good garden, an egg shell for our poultry, and part of an envelope from a holiday card with wishes for the health and happiness of our friends and family.
We soaked that envelope bit in scotch, because it's nice to have whiskey around too.
Tradition (according to the internet) says to light this year's Yule log with bits of last year's. So, we threw in the charred remains of the last log.
And, once it caught, added our new log - part of a peach tree that blew down in a storm this summer.
For dinner we had a mostly homegrown meal. This made us feel especially powerful and mighty to be able to eat food we grew even on the darkest day of the year. Sausage from our chickens, potatoes from our garden and a salad of lettuce and two types of radishes harvested that day from our cold frame.
I hope you all had a lovely solstice and are enjoying the returning light!
The Yule log was decorated with offerings for prosperity and health in the new year, including a pepper for a good garden, an egg shell for our poultry, and part of an envelope from a holiday card with wishes for the health and happiness of our friends and family.
We soaked that envelope bit in scotch, because it's nice to have whiskey around too.
Tradition (according to the internet) says to light this year's Yule log with bits of last year's. So, we threw in the charred remains of the last log.
And, once it caught, added our new log - part of a peach tree that blew down in a storm this summer.
For dinner we had a mostly homegrown meal. This made us feel especially powerful and mighty to be able to eat food we grew even on the darkest day of the year. Sausage from our chickens, potatoes from our garden and a salad of lettuce and two types of radishes harvested that day from our cold frame.
I hope you all had a lovely solstice and are enjoying the returning light!
Monday, December 17, 2012
Socks and Sausage
Or "Blurry photos of cats."
This post really has very little to do with sausage and nothing at all to do with socks. It's just an odd title for a blog post that is funny to exactly three people. Here is some sausage, however, so the title can be somewhat relevant.
A few weeks ago, Bill made 4 types of sausage - three pork sausages (2 links and 1 patty) and a chicken, apple, Riesling sausage from our own birds which is the stuff of dreams. Nom. The pork was mostly from a local farm market, but now that it's winter it is harder to get so it was subsidized with some Whole Foods pork.
In other news of local meat, Bill made rabbit cacciatore this weekend. We have a very sustainable population of bunnies on our property (though, when they become dinner we apparently refer to them as "rabbits" and not "bunnies"). I was rather afraid of this - my first rabbit - dinner, but it was pretty yum. I was surprised that rabbit meat is practically white and the caccitore recipe is mostly veggies (including some kitchen-ripened tomatoes I canned in late October). It was eaten on homemade pasta.
Coop and Corrie have achieved a milestone in living with us - their first lunch of eggs!
It makes me feel irrationally happy to give our Humane Society / Animal Care and Control animals freshly scrambled eggs near a warm fire. (Sugar Pie got some too - don't worry! She had her own bowl and the leftovers from the kittens.) Just a few weeks ago (or a few years in Sugar's case), these animals lived in cages and had an uncertain future. Spoiling them a little just feels right.
This post really has very little to do with sausage and nothing at all to do with socks. It's just an odd title for a blog post that is funny to exactly three people. Here is some sausage, however, so the title can be somewhat relevant.
A few weeks ago, Bill made 4 types of sausage - three pork sausages (2 links and 1 patty) and a chicken, apple, Riesling sausage from our own birds which is the stuff of dreams. Nom. The pork was mostly from a local farm market, but now that it's winter it is harder to get so it was subsidized with some Whole Foods pork.
In other news of local meat, Bill made rabbit cacciatore this weekend. We have a very sustainable population of bunnies on our property (though, when they become dinner we apparently refer to them as "rabbits" and not "bunnies"). I was rather afraid of this - my first rabbit - dinner, but it was pretty yum. I was surprised that rabbit meat is practically white and the caccitore recipe is mostly veggies (including some kitchen-ripened tomatoes I canned in late October). It was eaten on homemade pasta.
Coop and Corrie have achieved a milestone in living with us - their first lunch of eggs!
It makes me feel irrationally happy to give our Humane Society / Animal Care and Control animals freshly scrambled eggs near a warm fire. (Sugar Pie got some too - don't worry! She had her own bowl and the leftovers from the kittens.) Just a few weeks ago (or a few years in Sugar's case), these animals lived in cages and had an uncertain future. Spoiling them a little just feels right.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Pumpkin Soda
Recipe. Make it. Yum.
Radishes, recently harvested from our little cold frame greenhouse. In November.
Radishes, recently harvested from our little cold frame greenhouse. In November.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
A whole month!!
Here's what we've been up to since I last posted (in September! Sorry...)
We tore down the bookshelf/door between our living room and the front room. I did most of the crowbar work and then Bill kicked a hole in the sheet rock.
I've been painting the room purple with some random stenciling throughout. It will be my craft room very soon!
We picked a wheel-barrel full of pumpkins.
And stuccoed the top portion of Bill's oven. The bottom will get a brick facade some day.
We've also been canning ripe tomatoes. What?? Wasn't there a frost in Indiana weeks ago? Aren't all your tomato plants dead? Yes, they are. But we picked 10 gallons of green tomatoes just before the frost and have been ripening them in a basket (previously two baskets) in our kitchen.
Last week we canned 6 quarts of tomatoes in their own juices and will likely do so again in a few days. Every 5 days or so, I go through the basket and pull out the tomatoes that are turning red (or yellow or purple as the case may be) and put them in a bowl where we can keep a closer eye on them. When they are ripe, they go into a pot of progressive tomato sauce (that is, we start it when it needs to be started and add tomatoes as they get ripe. It's usually 2-3 sessions of cutting and boiling over the course of one week). When we fill up the pot, we can them up.
We've only lost a 5-6 tomatoes to mold or fruit flies and it only affects individual fruits, not their neighbors in the basket. We read about this "method" on a favorite blog (How To Ripen Green Tomatoes Indoors the Really Easy Way) and highly endorse it. The cans we get from these 10 gallons will represent about 20-25% of the tomatoes we preserve this year, so it's well worth it.
We tore down the bookshelf/door between our living room and the front room. I did most of the crowbar work and then Bill kicked a hole in the sheet rock.
I've been painting the room purple with some random stenciling throughout. It will be my craft room very soon!
We picked a wheel-barrel full of pumpkins.
And stuccoed the top portion of Bill's oven. The bottom will get a brick facade some day.
We've also been canning ripe tomatoes. What?? Wasn't there a frost in Indiana weeks ago? Aren't all your tomato plants dead? Yes, they are. But we picked 10 gallons of green tomatoes just before the frost and have been ripening them in a basket (previously two baskets) in our kitchen.
Last week we canned 6 quarts of tomatoes in their own juices and will likely do so again in a few days. Every 5 days or so, I go through the basket and pull out the tomatoes that are turning red (or yellow or purple as the case may be) and put them in a bowl where we can keep a closer eye on them. When they are ripe, they go into a pot of progressive tomato sauce (that is, we start it when it needs to be started and add tomatoes as they get ripe. It's usually 2-3 sessions of cutting and boiling over the course of one week). When we fill up the pot, we can them up.
We've only lost a 5-6 tomatoes to mold or fruit flies and it only affects individual fruits, not their neighbors in the basket. We read about this "method" on a favorite blog (How To Ripen Green Tomatoes Indoors the Really Easy Way) and highly endorse it. The cans we get from these 10 gallons will represent about 20-25% of the tomatoes we preserve this year, so it's well worth it.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Growin' growin' growin'
"Halloo!" say the chickens.
Would you like a tour of our garden? And by "our" we mean the garden that the humans so evilly will not let us get into?
This is the area from a previous post that was weed free. It is no longer as such. The bean teepees are just starting to produce fruit now that it is cooler.
The winter squash are coming along. Butternut:
Sweet Lightning pumpkin. They are individual serving pumpkins. About 3-5 inches.
We've got 7-8 cantaloupe nearly ripe. This is the sweet passion variety and legend says if you eat them in the field in moonlight, much passion ensues.
Our sweet corn is taller than the weeds:
Some Thai hot peppers. This plant is so tall it reaches my mid-thigh. The little peppers will turn red and Bill has designs on stringing them up and drying them for winter stir-fry.
The fall beds have been planted. Lettuce, spinach, beets, and fall radishes, which can apparently be stored.
A pumpkin turning orange!
These are gold peppers. None have turned gold yet, and they start to rot when they touch the ground. We picked 15 or so and made tamale stuffed peppers with local pork.
The tomato zone... please notice the drip irrigation line. It took me a full week to install it throughout the garden and as soon as I was done, it rained. It's been raining about every 3 days since then.
The tomatoes have cracked under the pressure. I'll be making some tomato basil jam with them tomorrow.
This was Sunday morning's harvest. The beans have been dillied. The cantaloupe will be eaten tomorrow (Bill says the internet says to let them sit for three days after picking). The jalapenos will be stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. That's right.
We have a million jalapenos. This is one branch of one plant. We have 6 jalapeno plants. !!!! We've got some pickling and want to leave a bunch to turn red, but we've been eating a lot of spicy meals lately.
Shelly says, "that's enough. Time for a nap." Bye!
Would you like a tour of our garden? And by "our" we mean the garden that the humans so evilly will not let us get into?
This is the area from a previous post that was weed free. It is no longer as such. The bean teepees are just starting to produce fruit now that it is cooler.
The winter squash are coming along. Butternut:
Sweet Lightning pumpkin. They are individual serving pumpkins. About 3-5 inches.
We've got 7-8 cantaloupe nearly ripe. This is the sweet passion variety and legend says if you eat them in the field in moonlight, much passion ensues.
Our sweet corn is taller than the weeds:
Some Thai hot peppers. This plant is so tall it reaches my mid-thigh. The little peppers will turn red and Bill has designs on stringing them up and drying them for winter stir-fry.
The fall beds have been planted. Lettuce, spinach, beets, and fall radishes, which can apparently be stored.
A pumpkin turning orange!
These are gold peppers. None have turned gold yet, and they start to rot when they touch the ground. We picked 15 or so and made tamale stuffed peppers with local pork.
The tomato zone... please notice the drip irrigation line. It took me a full week to install it throughout the garden and as soon as I was done, it rained. It's been raining about every 3 days since then.
The tomatoes have cracked under the pressure. I'll be making some tomato basil jam with them tomorrow.
This was Sunday morning's harvest. The beans have been dillied. The cantaloupe will be eaten tomorrow (Bill says the internet says to let them sit for three days after picking). The jalapenos will be stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. That's right.
We have a million jalapenos. This is one branch of one plant. We have 6 jalapeno plants. !!!! We've got some pickling and want to leave a bunch to turn red, but we've been eating a lot of spicy meals lately.
Shelly says, "that's enough. Time for a nap." Bye!
Saturday, July 21, 2012
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