The Best Ride Ever!

Grandpa Dale with Adam on the tractor.

The last couple of weeks we have had some very hot weather in the 90's followed by some much cooler weather. I have been very busy canning that I have not done much in my own garden. However, we were able to visit the country garden last Friday. We had such a memorable day that day out on the "farm." It was so special because it was Adam's first real tractor ride. At first he wanted to sit in the trailer in back of the tractor but as soon as he saw grandpa start up the tractor he wanted to ride up front with him. Later, after the ride Adam said "That was the best ride ever!" It was so sweet to hear those words. It made me think about a lot of things and how really this life that we have really IS "the best ride ever" and we should enjoy every day and every moment!

Suburban Garden:

Although I have not had much time to get out into the yard and garden at our house, there are still many pretty flowers blooming right now. I am amazed especially at the large flower bushes that have grown in the side yard. They have come into full bloom and every day they are full of honeybees buzzing about! The bees really love these flowers! Those plants are ones that I bought at the Oregon City Farmer's Market when we used to have a booth there from a lovely lady named Alita. She grew some amazing plants. We are so sad that she passed away a while back because she was such a talented gardener. It makes me smile though to look at the flowers that she grew in my garden.

A hydrangea bloom in the front yard.


One of our honeybees on a flower in the side yard.

Country Garden:

We had an amazing visit to the country garden last week. Everything is progressing well and there should be a good harvest of tomatoes as well as other things very soon. My mom has already been preserving a lot of the vegetables from the garden and apples from the orchard. I took home another large bag of apples from the orchard as well as two quarts of blackberries that I picked to make another batch of jam. My mom has done an amazing job of canning and freezing the harvest already this season.

We realized that we have already made a lot of yummy things with all of the apples from four trees in the orchard and we still have four more trees to harvest from! Wow! We are going to eat well this winter! Here is a sampling of our apple harvest so far:

My Mom made:

11 gallons of cider ( besides the 2 we took camping, we have drunk some, and the rest is canned).

41 quarts of applesauce, canned

6 pints apple-ginger preserves, canned
Pie slices for 9 pies, frozen

I made:

1 gallon of cider (with Adam's help)
20 pints of applesauce, canned
6 quarts of apple pie filling
3 pints of ginger spice apple butter
2 pints + 7 half pints apple blackberry jam

I will write later about all of the other vegetables and other things we have preserved this season.

Here is some more news from the country garden from my mom Serena Johnston as well as some photos from our day there:

We have 8 apple trees, including two old ones that do bear well from time to time. Both old trees are very tall, and are difficult to prune or shape up, as we try to do with the other apple trees. The Baldwin is the one we have harvested any time there are apples on it, and it is a late apple, not ready yet. It is just at the edge of the orchard, next to the south-facing slope that goes down to the pond. The other tree is on the slope itself. We harvested apples from that tree this year for the first time because before, it was enveloped in shade from the fir trees that had taken over that area. In the last three years we have done a lot of brush removal there, and the tree had a wonderful harvest of apples this last week, for the first time. It just shows what a little care can do! We don't know what kind of apples they are, but they are medium size, yellow, and sweet, mild apples that are ready at just about the same time as Gravensteins. We shook the tree and picked up the apples, since it is too tall for us to pick. We made about 5 gallons of cider from this tree.

The Yellow Transparent is the first apple tree to bear, and we made cider from it as well. Last year I made applesauce from it, as it was the only tree with many apples on it, but this year the Gravensteins looked abundant, so we decided to use these apples for cider and got 6 gallons, two of which we took camping.

The Gravensteins bore very well this year. I made 41 quarts of applesauce, and froze pie slices for 9 pies, and apple-ginger preserves, about 6 pints worth.. I know you also made applesauce and pie filling, and then we even had enough to make about 1 1/2 gallons of apple cider. Oh, and I believe you were considering making apple butter with some. I made a lot of applesauce, as I have learned over the years to make more than needed since some years you don't get any. Weather or something seems to sabotage best efforts, sometimes. :-)

So, that is the harvest from 4 of our 8 apple trees. The others look like they have plenty of apples, and we intend to use them for more cider.

We have two dwarf Bartlett pear trees, and both bore heavily this year. I have got them spread out on newspapers to ripen, as of course we picked them at that delicate stage between green and ripe, so they don't turn to mush in the middle. Two large buckets are going to you to make canned pears, and I will make a lot of dried pears and maybe even some canned pears. It will be interesting to see how many we get. (We have other pear trees that we will harvest later, which are primarily fresh-eating pears, and some that last into the winter. With care, we can eat them fresh into 2012.)

In the orchard the Italian plum tree is loaded with fruit. We expect it may be ready by this weekend, or early next week. I plan to dry some, but may want to make some plum syrup, as you have done before. It is one of Dad's favorite syrups.

We also got Montmorency pie cherries and some wild cherries. I don't recall if you have written about these before, but I think I have 3 or 4 quarts of pie cherries and one of wild cherries. For the wild cherries, we harvested many more, but I got sick and wasn't able to process them. I found a recipe for extracting cherry juice from wild cherries, which I will do if I am ever that lucky again. Their flavor was delicious, so the juice should be too.

Our boysenberries did well this year, and we are trying to get some of the new vines to root-tip so we can get another row started. Besides the ones we ate fresh, we also made some jam.

As for the garden, I have been harvesting green and wax beans. The wax beans were a bush variety, and I didn't get so many. about 1 1/2 quarts. I think the quantity is party on account of the corn, as I planted it nearby and it shaded the beans. I had thought the beans would be harvested before the corn got so tall, but owing to cool weather, things did not go according to plan. The green pole beans are midway through harvest, if we continue with some decent weather. I have got approximately 4 quarts of those so far.

The broccoli almost surprised me, as it is some much earlier than the other cole crops. In fact, one head went to seed. I managed to get the rest of them, and every time I go out I find a few side shoots, which I fix and add to the latest freezer bag. Next year I hope to get more going at once, as it is so useful.

The green peppers have been producing, although if we had warmer weather the harvest would be better. Only about 6 so far, but there are small ones that a little hot weather could encourage to a larger size. They are nice to freeze, so I just put a gallon bag in the freezer, and when I harvest some I just wash them and drop them in the bag. We also planted jalapenos and red Italian sweet peppers, and some are maturing, but we haven't picked them yet.

Oh! I nearly forgot, peas. I put about 5 quarts of Amish snap peas in the freezer, and managed to save the dry ones for next year's seeds.

Tomatillos are wonders, as they grow with hardly any encouragement and bear profusely. I just put a 2 gallon bag in the freezer and after I pick some I take the husks off, wash them, and drop them in the bag.

Cucumbers have been slim pickings, largely because of where we planted them. I amended the soil with rotted chicken manure and compost, and they emerged and grew well in the wet part of the summer. Now that we are in the dry part of the year we have run ourselves ragged trying to keep them watered, and finally realized that the damaged fir tree behind the garden must be absorbing all the water and nutrients, as I have only gotten enough for three pints of pickles. Not worth the bother to do this year.

That corner of the garden has really struggled, and it took us the whole season this year to figure it out. We will decide what to do this fall, but it may mean removing that tree (the top is broken out and it is forming two tops, so it isn't a good prospect anyhow), moving the blueberries ( in the same struggle as the cucumbers, and we lost two bushes), and amending the soil there to some semblance of fertility. We also noticed that of the two grape vines there, the one nearest the tree had lots of grape clusters, but the grapes have not developed as the ones on the same type of vine, but further from the tree, have done. Just goes to show you need to consider plants/trees outside a garden for concerns other than shade, I guess. Probably most gardening areas don't have this problem, though, as I know large fir trees are not as common in other locales.

The potato vines are dying, and we have had several meals of potatoes. They have turned out well so far - large and well shaped - so we hope for the best when we do the main harvest.

As you will notice above, I do mention turnip greens, but not the turnips. They are full of little worms, so the chickens are getting those. I did some reading on the problem, and learned that turnips do not perform well for organic gardeners and can be expected to be wormy. Well, since the chickens like them we will still have some benefit. :-) Next year, though, we won't be planting any.

There are some harvests that we have yet to take. One is lima beans. I planted a bush variety, and they have lots of pods on them, but the pods are still flat. It remains to be seen, but since they are shaded by the corn and the weather has turned cloudy and much cooler, who knows.

I also planted watermelon and cantaloupe which were billed as doing well in cool weather. They do have small fruits on them, but vary in size from golf ball to child's large rubber ball. I think they are suffering the same problem as the lima beans.

I still have rutabagas, carrots, cabbage, and parsnips growing, and all are doing well. I will be harvesting some of our lovely basil soon as we will use some of it with the sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, and some for making pesto.

It is still too soon to tell on corn, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. The sprouts are still pretty small, and the cauliflower hasn't produced a head, so I am doubtful that it will. I think cool weather and shade conspired against the production we would have liked from sprouts and cauliflower, but we will know better next time. The corn grew mightily (as Adam could tell you, it looks like a forest), and the ears are beginning to fill out, but here we are halfway through September and haven't had any ripen yet. I am keeping my fingers crossed, as we are so close.

The zucchini has been good, though. Last year was so dismal we only got a few. I have put one quart of slices in the freezer, and have made 9 1/2 loaves of zucchini bread, besides enjoying it in meals and sharing some with you.

The winter squash is also remaining to be harvested, as is the pumpkin. I planted two kinds of winter squash, and so far see one Hubbard type (sweet Meat) and several of the Butternut. The Hubbard appears to be nearly mature, but the Butternuts are still green; ditto the pumpkin.

Last but not least are the tomatoes which are finally ripening. The plants are loaded, so unless the weather turns suddenly cold, we should be able to harvest a lot of them. So far we have dried some - probably 7 to 10 pounds worth, which of course doesn't amount to much once they are dried, but they'll certainly be delicious mid-winter when we can taste their real tomato flavor.

We have been eating fresh tomatoes for lunch and dinner for about a week, and I hope that next week I will have enough to do some canning. I notice that each time I go to the garden there are more and more tomatoes in various stages of ripening, but of course unless we get another burst of warm weather, they will take their time.

That's about it! Also, besides what we have frozen or canned or dried, we have enjoyed peas, green beans, greens, zucchini, tomatoes, broccoli, bell peppers, blackberries, boysenberries, apples, pears, and cherries fresh and in season. Can't get much better than that!

Photos of the Country Garden:

A sunflower in the country garden.

An ear of corn forming on the corn stalk.

A pumpkin forming on the vine.

Finally- some Tolly's Sweet Italian peppers!

Lots of large tomatoes on the vine!

A large squash blossom.

Making Apple Cider:

Adam washing the apples before we made cider.

Adam loved to put apples into the hopper of the cider press.

Adam enjoying a glass of fresh apple cider.

Here are two recipes for some preserved I made this past week. Next week I am going to work on canning some pears and maybe making some pear preserves and other things with the lovely pears that I got from the country orchard.

Ginger Spice Apple Butter:

Chopped apples cooking into apple butter.

This is a recipe that I found online but I added more spices to it.

Ingredients:

• 12 cups tart apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1-inch chunks
• 1 1/2 cups apple cider
• 1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons minced crystallized ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
  

Preparation:

1. Bring first 4 ingredients to boil in saucepan, stirring. Reduce heat to medium; simmer until apples fall apart, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes.

2. Purée in processor in batches with ginger,cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Return to pan.

3. Partially cover apple butter; simmer over medium heat (sauce tends to splatter) until reduced to 2 1/2 cups, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes.

4. Put hot apple butter into hot, sterilized jars, seal. Then, process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Blackberry Apple Jam:

A half pint of blackberry apple jam that I made.

This recipe comes from my mom's British canning book called "Home Preserving and Bottling" by Gladys Mann.

Ingredients:

6 cups of apples, pared, cored and sliced
2/3 cup water
juice of 2 lemons
4 cups blackberries
8 1/2 cups sugar

1. Simmer the apples in water in lemon juice until tender, about 15 minutes. Add the blackberries and sugar and boil quickly until setting point is reached.

2. Put hot jam into hot, sterilized jars, seal.

Enjoy every day of this life that really is "the best ride ever!"

Small Victories

Today Trista and I went out to the garden, the first time we had since last week. In fact, on Thursday of last week, September 16, I picked some lettuce to take to the beach, and that was it. The last picking before that was on Monday of that week. The weather has been difficult, which goes with the rest of the season. It was muggy and wet, and around 70 degrees. This week it will continue to be wet and even foggy, and in the 60s for highs, and 40s for low. As you know from your own experience, not much growth can be expected with weather like that.


We were pleasantly surprised to find our first zucchini (pictured above on a pile of our beans), and another small one beside it. Usually by this time we are heartily tired of that vegetable, but we count it as a small victory for this difficult season. Trista began lifting the cucumber vines, and we noticed many tiny "beginner" cukes, and a few that were pickling size. Another small victory.


Our purple-striped wax beans had a decent crop, and we noticed a few blooms still on them. So, victory number three. We're on a roll!

Next we noticed our tomatoes. Hooray! Our pet tomato, the purple calabash, had a beauty ready to pick. The Federle tomato finally gave us some partially ripe ones. The Italian Heirloom and Jaune Flamme also gave up some partially ripe tomatoes.


Next, on to the green snap beans. Yay! we have enough for each of us for dinner tonight. A tiny victory indeed.

Winter squash were surveyed, and found, well, small. For this year, that will have to count for a victory.
Two more small victories - sunflowers and grapes. The grapes are miniscule but ripening nicely, just enough for eating fresh. This is the first year, so we are okay with that. The sunflowers are blooming and pretty, but small. Enough for a bouquet, but probably no seeds, or very few anyway.
While harvesting, we talked about our expectations at the beginning of this season, and compared the harvest to last year. On both counts we came up short. At nearly 500 pounds of tomatoes on half as many plants last year, we don't think we'll get anywhere close this year. in 2009, beans were plentiful and corn grew well so we were able to freeze a lot. Cucumbers also gave us enough to make about 40 pints last year of pickles and 5 quarts of relish. The picture of the tiny pile of veggies below was our harvest for today....


This year we can count 12 pints of pickles on the shelf, and about 1 1/2 gallons of frozen wax beans. Tomatoes and green beans have only produced enough to have for fresh so far, but we should get enough to can some tomatoes, and freeze some beans.

The peppers, brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower are - as Trista says - a big pile of nothing. We'll be able to harvest beets, carrots, basil, and dry beans , though, so still some victory there. Also, potatoes produced less than expected, but we are not disappointed - it is our first effort, and we'll do better next time even if the weather conditions are as bad.

Trista had some news to share about her suburban garden, which fared a bit better. She does have Halloween pumpkins ready to be carved in time for that holiday. She had lots of rhubarb, and was able to put about half a gallon of chopped rhubarb in her freezer. Strawberries produced all season, enough to keep Adam happy finding and eating them. She also harvested some unexpected and delicious huckleberries. Trista also had some apples from her young apple tree, and combined them with a couple of apples from the farmer's market for an apple crisp.

The sweet potatoes didn't even put out a vine, and may join the above-mentioned "big pile of nothing" vegetables. We haven't dug them up to see yet, but you'll be the first to know. Her "mystery" volunteer squash may turn out to be a white pumpkin. It is round and very white, so we shall see. It is, at least, providing some entertainment, something the rest of our efforts is sorely lacking.

All the time during our disappointing harvest, we have been discussing what we might do to be successful next year. To be sure, we may not have the same difficult weather, but then again, we might. We decided to plan for the worst and hope for the best. So, we're looking for short-season tomatoes, investigating ways to make all of those "big pile of nothing" crops do better, and figuring out ways to increase the warmth of our soil for all of our crops. One idea I saw was to dig a deep trench or bed, lay in some fresh manure and cover it with soil, then plant seeds. The fresh manure will warm the soil and the seeds, so they will germinate and grow better, then as the manure decomposes, the plant's roots will have grown enough to tap into the rich nutrients it provides at that stage. It sounds good anyway, so if we can figure out how to get some fresh manure we just might do it. We are looking for other ideas too. Do you have any for us? We're listening!

Nuts to Crows

It's been a while since we updated this blog about our gardening. Since then many of our seeds have come up. Overall, our garden is off to a great start, finally!! However, the crows have cleared out a section of sunflowers, corn and beans that were adjacent to each other. That was our second planting of corn, so it looks like we won't have very much corn this year although we are hoping for a third section of corn to come up. It is too early to tell if they have eaten that too!

On the positive side, the tomatoes are starting to bloom so that is very promising. Also, one type of potato is flowering- our blue ones. We noticed some of the areas that were fertilized with the aged chicken manure are way ahead in their growth compared to the ones that have not been fertilized yet. (You can see in the photos below that the top cucumber is much smaller than the bottom one). Many of the rows of beans have come up very well and our squash plants are coming along nicely.


The weeds have really taken over because it rained so long this year that we weren't able to get in there to weed as much as usual. And, now that the weather is fairly hot the roots are hard to dig up. On the other hand, we got out there for a while in the morning and this afternoon to weed and have made a lot of progress. We concentrated on clearing the rows of Brussels sprouts, brocoli and cabbage and we also got the blackberry and thistle plants out before they can go to seed.

Projects this week are to stake the tomatoes and spread the chicken manure to fertilize more of the garden. The chicken fertilizer is decomposing nicely so it won't burn the plants- it is already growing mushrooms in it!


The weather has been pretty hot this week- in the high 80's and 90's here. The boysenberries are looking pretty promising as far as having quite a few berries on them. Their leaves are a bit spotted due to all of the rain we had in May and June. Some of the raspberries got a similar blight although there are some berries on the vines as well. Adam enjoyed picking and eating some of the raspberries as you can see in the photo above!

Quick Suburban Garden Report:

This week has been very, very hot in the suburbs as well. As a result, our garden is doing very well. I have harvest a lot of rhubarb to make pies, so new stalks are growing quickly on the plants. Also, there is a second crop of strawberries coming on to our plants.


The sharecropper pumpkin is doing great! As you can see it has very big blossoms like the one in the photo above. There will be several pumpkins to choose from this Halloween! The sweet potatoes are getting a bit of new growth on them as well and are looking healthy!

Here's to summer!

June 16, 2010: 50 degrees daytime temperature!

The day started out dreary and cold as I (Trista) noticed my car's outdoor temperature reading was 50 degrees! It rained through this morning, but we thought we should try to do some gardening. I went for a walk with Adam while my Mom tried to plant some sunflower seeds. The sunflower seed packet said that they "tolerate drought and adverse conditions" and she wondered if "adverse conditions" included the opposite of drought. If so this row should thrive. She got half a row (about 6 feet) in before deciding that the soil was too squishy and she was afraid of ruining the dirt. (Later on we planted cucumber starts like the one pictured above). So, she joined us on our walk.

Our Walkabout with Adam:


We saw many pretty native plants and other sights on our walk down the driveway and beyond with Adam as he pulled along his favorite stick. He really enjoyed splashing in the puddles with his little yellow rain boots on the way down the road.


First, we came upon a beautiful rock covered in a thick green moss with a small fern growing in it. It's hard to know how this will look once the weather dries up a bit but right now it is beautiful.

Later, we saw some salal that was blooming. The branches with their pretty and shiny leaves are used a lot in florist arrangements. The flowers turn into small dark blue berries that are edible but bland.

Further up the road we saw a nice patch of sword ferns in among the trees. They like the cool, rainy weather so right now they are a brilliant green. Some of the old fronds from last year are dying. If you have one of these in your garden you would probably cut the old fronds off in early spring to leave room for the new ones to grow and flourish.


From there we saw a dainty and pretty piggyback plant. It has a long stem of little pink bell shaped flowers on it.


Tiny Garden Report:

Later on as Adam was napping we decided to tackle the garden to see what we could possibly plant in this weather. We planted a long row of Double Yield Cucumber plants. Then we decided the only way we were going to get any heat around here was to plant a small row of Jalapeno pepper plants. One of these pepper plants is pictured above.

Our Gardening Purpose:


We've always raised a garden and we've often canned, dried and frozen the harvest as well as eating a lot of it fresh. However, we never really tried to plan to grow the majority of our fruits and vegetables for the whole year.

After I read and then loaned to my mom the book "Animal, Vegetable Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver in which the author and her family raised most of their food for the year in their large garden and supplemented it by buying only local foods, we were inspired to do something similar.

Last year I didn't participate but I watched my parents were raising a large garden and they are still using a lot of the proceeds from that garden. My mom and I talked about the book and decided to work together towards growing most of our fruits and vegetables for the year.

My mom worked really hard to preserve the bounty of the garden harvest last year and she made everything from stewed tomatoes to pickles and salsa.

Here is a complete list of what she made in the 2009 season:

Frozen Foods:

-strawberries- 12 packages
-blueberries- 7 packages
-hazelnuts- 3.5 quarts
-peas- 2 quarts
-green beans- 16 packages
-zucchini slices- 4 packages
-corn- 27 packages
-bell peppers- 4 one gallon bags
-jalapeno peppers- 3 one gallon bags
-tomatillos- 5 one gallon bags
- brussels sprouts- 2 bags
- brocoli- 2 bags

Dried Foods:

-cherries- 1 gallon bag
-pears- 2 gallon bags
- plums- 6 gallon bags
-mushrooms- 1 quart
-tomatoes- 1 quart

Canned Foods:

490 pounds of tomatoes were harvested in the 2009 season!

-tomatoes- 58 quarts
-tomato juice- 9.5 quarts
-salsa- 30.5 quarts
-tomato sauce- 22 pints
-BBQ sauce- 8 pints
-ketchup- 9 twelve ounce jars
-cider- 20 gallons

Pickled Foods:

-dill pickles- 11 pints
-sweet pickles- 23 pints
-pickle relish- 6 quarts
-pickled jalapeno peppers- 6.5 quarts

Jam:

-strawberry
-blackberry

From this list above you can see that we are very serious about producing most of our fruits and vegetables. Now that I am joining the effort we are trying to grow enough for two families. We have added a lot to our garden this year including potatoes, broccoli, cabbage and other crops that were not grown last year.