Rain and the garden wait for no man

I took a walk in the garden before work this morning in between rain storms.  We have been hit pretty hard with wind and rain.  There has been plenty of storm damage keeping my co-workers in the district offices busy in to the wee hours of the morning.  The rain has kept us out of the fields.  We are so close to finishing the tree planting that this is an unwelcome roadblock to that completion.  The walk this morning was a welcome diversion.  I found my garlic forming scapes (seed heads) which were ripe for the picking.  These saute up well in dishes and are best picked early to continue good garlic bulb formation.  Seed formation tends to diminish the rest of your plants in general.
I took another gander around the yard on my return from work and found a bountiful crop of those beautiful Alpine strawberries.  So packed with flavor in their marble size miniature form.

They will be a tasty addition to a spinach salad for supper.  I made up some bacon to make it an official spinach salad.  The cool weather has produced the best crop of spinach I have had in my garden in years.  I have taken note that planting on the north side of my raised beds helps to keep it from bolting early.  This will be the first spring I have had success with this crop.  I planted in square foot fashion and popped about 3 seeds per dibble hole to ensure success.  The first round was thinning out the extras and now I take out the largest of the plants.  Lettuce has also been a terrific crop this year.
If you are experiencing rain, take the time to see how truly beautiful the garden is with the moisture brightening all the colors.  It's worth the damp feet.

Lots more watering without the rain

We finally got some rain yesterday, it came down in buckets so there was a lot of run-off rather than a good soaking.  I will not complain about it, though, as we had gone a long time without any rain.  The rain barrels are filled up again.  I wish I had a larger storage system so I could use even more.  A cistern with a pump would be sweet.

I can see that the pak choy that I planted just days ago has already germinated.  We had some heat this past week with more on the way next week.  We have a nice cool weekend with mild temperatures in store.  

I am hoping to have enough tomatoes to start canning over the long Labor Day weekend coming up.  I think I am going to have to stick with sauces and salsa as I still have tomatoes from last year in jars.  It was so nice to be able to grab a jar of spaghetti sauce already made for a quick meal.  Homemade is always better.  I ran across a recipe from my grandmother's files for homemade chili sauce.  I also have a ketchup recipe shared by one of my cousins.  So many ways to use tomatoes.

We are celebrating the upcoming wedding with a shower for my daughter this weekend.  I am going to use whatever blooms are ready in the garden to decorate the tables and to share afterwards.  Flowers that are given away are the prettiest in the garden.  I will have to take pictures and share later.

Beans have been rather slow this year.  I think the cooler temps overall have really affected their output.  I hope this run helps put some more on the plants.

Flowers in just before the rain...and other things

My husband finished the flower planter which extends my growing another 24 feet.  Good thing as there is NO way I would have fit every annual flower in the existing beds that I have.  I also tucked them in tighter than I have ever planted by using minimum spacing requirements.  This bed is going to be filled by the Fourth of July.  There is a long list of things that I put in here for cut flowers which I have published here before.  Most everything was prime for transplanting with my later start date on most of them.  I worked continually to finish before my 5 o'clock deadline last night and did it.  There were a few packs left over which are going to be tucked into the other bed of reseeded annuals.  I watered everything in to settle the soil with the hose from my rain barrel nearly emptying both with watering.

It rained last night.  I wasn't expecting it as I hadn't followed the weather.  Most of the night storms rolled in and poured out.  Several times I was aware of a new round coming through.  I awoke at 4 am and decided to get dressed and watch the sun come up.  The rain drops on everything was just beautiful!  I walked through the yard with a cup of hot coffee and was pleased to see that everything was standing up and well settled with all the rain that fell around the new plantings.  The rain gauge red 2.1 inches.  The rain barrels are both full again.

A good drenching means something else to me.  Weeding.  With the ground so moist they pull right out.  I went through the oldest beds and pulled weeds for half an hour.  It is a meditative activity for me.  Most jobs need to be re-framed to remove the unpleasant aspect that makes me want to just scream.  For instance, I really do not enjoy driving around for my job.  This is a big part of my job, going from address to address rechecking violations and work.  I had to re-frame that activity in my mind.  Now I enjoy seeing changes in the neighborhoods, new businesses opening, kids playing in the park, parents walking their babies.  I don't think about the driving, if I do, I fall into the old habit of exhaustion.  I digress.

So much soaking rain also meant that I could break out the Weed Dragon and zap the dandelions and other weeds coming up in the wood mulch.  When it is dry, you start the mulch on fire.  When the mulch is this wet, only the weeds wilt at the hand of the propane flame.

It was also time to bring the dehydrator upstairs for frequent use.  I have found that drying herbs in spring is the best time.  They are fresh and perfect, not beaten or chewed up by the summer elements and bugs.  A quick cleaning and a spin in the salad spinner makes them ready for drying.  It may also be time to salvage the last of the chopped peppers and such that slowly have fallen to the bottom of the freezer.  Time to use them or dry them if there is too much left.  I also found a couple of sad looking jars of apple pie slices (canning is not kind to them but I ran out of freezer space).  I put those in the trays and came up with some delicious apple candy instead.  Bananas are turning fast and I can't use them up in smoothies fast enough.  I dried the last batch and took them to work.  They did not make it through the day. 

I picked up a book at the library on dehydrating that has some different ideas in it.  See if you can get your hands on a copy of Food Drying With an Attitude by Mary T Bell.  It has been good reading so far.  I also picked up Mel Bartholomew's New Square Foot Gardening.  I would highly recommend this book also, especially for beginners.  He has revamped his way of square foot gardening to make it easy and appealing to more people. 

It is time to take a cold beer out to the back yard and read a little bit, nap a little bit.  I am going to use up this Sunday as much as I possibly can.

Tomato countdown, seeding day

My journal entries have been less than regular of late.  I have a dental procedure and bad weather to thank for my hiatus from gardening.  Milwaukee has seen nothing but rain day after day.  Rivers are over-flowing their banks and gardens are reduced to mud.  We have been soaking up a slow seepage of water in one corner of our home due to the saturated soil around us.  And, it has been cold.  40's are no temperature to garden in.

Today is T-day.  The day that tomatoes need to be seeded in hopes that the weekend following our Memorial Day the soil will be ready to have them take root.  I have some flowers to seed also.  I am doing a second round of hollyhocks this year in the hope that these biennials will provide me with blooms every year from alternate year crops.Asters, Statice, and Thithonia are also on my seeding calendar to be done 6 weeks before last frost.  Some seeds could be direct sown, but I want to have some plants to have a head start this year.

The onion crop is still in a seed tray.  I started hardening them off and then the cold came with the ceaseless rain.  I gave up and will trim them back, again, in hopes that next week will be warm enough to set them out during the day.  Maybe next weekend I will get them in the ground.

That is the thing about gardeners.  We always have hope for the future to be just a little bit better.  We look forward while learning from the past.  Sometimes plants die and plans go awry, but there is always tomorrow to start again.

A Whole Day of Rain

We got 1.5" of rain in the rain gauge during the last 24 hour period!  It was a nice slow rain that took to the dry ground.  It is (amazingly) still dry out there even with all that moisture.  I loved being woke up by a rain storm outside the window.

We had cloudy skies this morning which brought the sunshine in by mid-morning.  With it came wind.  I stopped at the lake front during lunch and watch the waves crash over the breakwater at South Shore Marina.  The air show is this weekend, so we had a little overhead entertainment as well.  There were a handful of people who chose this little spot to enjoy some water watching as well as enjoy the company of strangers.

I bagged up my onions tonight and hung them in the basement.  I weighed them and found that I have 30 pounds of onions! I thought I was being optimistic saving so many mesh bags, but I filled three large orange bags quite easily.  I will be able to share my bounty this year.  I sliced up one with eggplant and zucchini and fried the whole slices dipped in egg and flour on the griddle with butter.  The results were like having a lower fat, less batter onion disc.

Tomorrow, I will have to pick green beans and soy.  I had a handful of soy which I cooked up and put in a tomato salad for lunch.  Edamame is a nice addition to salads or just eating with a bit of salt.  (August 3, 2011) http://gardeninggwen.blogspot.com/2011/08/soybeans-aka-edamame.html I grew half of my soy beans from new seed and half from seed that I ripened on the plants and harvested dry last fall.  Both plots germinated and grew equally well, so I think that seed saving was successful with this crop.

My neighbor has shared his early tomatoes with me as well as enough to share with the other neighbors.  His garden is quite large even after shortening it 20' or so this past year.  He grew a row of beans the full length of the garden which is well over 40' long.  They have already canned and frozen all they will use.  I passed the word on to others and offered the suggestion to donate to Harvest for the Hungry as they were opting to rip out the plants to stop the harvest.  Several soup kitchens and food pantries are also nearby, so I think they have abandoned the thoughts of pulling the plants.  They also have several cherry type tomato plants which are producing heavily.  I took a bag to work and put them on the basket on the corner of my desk.  My coworkers did a good job of eating them all.

I am thankful for some cool weather as it is time to can some French beans this weekend.  I will eagerly share the results of that job.

A Red Letter Day in the Garden

The heat has paid off in the first summer crop.  The beans have been growing like crazy in the heat with the supplemental watering they have been getting.  I had two full quarts in my bucket on the first picking.  We like them small and tender so this was a good amount.  Nothing beats fresh produce from garden that goes right to the stove.

 I got a little distracted with other household stuff so I cooked them longer than I liked.  I made up for that with summer butter that I picked up from a small creamery over the weekend.  Some kosher salt and fresh ground pepper topped it all off for a simple supper.

My youngest enjoyed them without cooking.  She just snapped and ate right from the towel.
I did feel a bit of melancholy with the first picking as Jake was not there to enjoy it with me.  He enjoyed the beans just as much as the rest of us.  He would wait outside the garden gate waiting for me to toss a few over the fence for him.  I will always think of him and my mom while picking beans.  
The beans made yesterday pretty good, but it got better about 7 PM last night.  I saw the clouds coming when I was driving home at 6:30 but didn't hope for much.  When the wind came with the sound of water hitting the windows we were all relieved that we were finally getting some needed rain.  The storm was a good long one that left the streets still wet in the morning.  I was happy to see my rain gauge in the morning.

Glory be!  We have a real rain and the rain barrel confirmed the rain gauge with 55 gals of fresh water in it.  It was a red letter day.