help!!I'm being attacked by green beans!!!

and the onslaught begins!!  went out today to take pictures of Bill in his Civil War outfit, smells and all, after his big reenactment at Bull Run/ Manassas this weekend, and noticed that the green beans have come on full tilt.  I sent some lovely new ones to a friend the other day, not knowing that would be the beginning of the bean wars.  Now I'll have to keep on top of them, probably blanching and freezing, rather than canning.  It's just too darn hot to have the canner steaming up the kitchen everyday. 
Also, the tomatoes have started to turn red, I can see them peaking out from under the leaves, so lots of tomato salads, and giving to the neighbors begins...

Also sweet peppers.

Just bought an oak tree to replace one in the front yard in October.  50% off from a locally owned nursery.  He was glad for the business.  He will keep it for me until autumn, when the tree goes into hibernation. 

Here is Bill, after the battle.  The beard came off right after this!! They were posing as the 1st Minnesota Infantry, who dressed as firemen in red shirts and dark wool pants.  This was the fastest and cheapest uniform the state could get together for the first battle of the Civil War. oh, yeah, I paid about 12$ for the uniform, at my favorite store,  Goodwill. 

Now, to get out the bean buckets and start picking!!

I want to remind everyone that if you are canning, to have have all your utensils and jars squeaky clean,  your kids out of the way, and to have your timing/pressure charts at your side.  Canning is a precise job, and being distracted, or careless can get you scalded, burnt, or later, sick from botulism.  

Dianne,  sweating to the green beans

What You Can Do With Homebrew, and Organic Eggs and Goat Cheese

After your husband or friends come to brew that yummy home crafted beer, compost that leftover grain. Let the beer set and if it's a decent porter, make up these two recipes!

Presvytera's Porter Gelati

12oz mild soft chevre
24oz Porter Beer
1 C cane sugar
1 C organic cocoa
2T Vanilla Extract
1/2 strong coffee, cold
2 rennet tablets or 1t xantham gum

Over medium heat, dissolve cane sugar in 8oz of beer. crush rennet tablets (If using xanthan gum, blend into the cheese before add dissolve into heated beer mixture.
Meanwhile, blend or food process cocoa, (xantham gum, if using in place of rennet), chevre, and coffee and vanilla in that order. Slowly blend in the remaining 12 oz of beer. Finally add the sweetened beer.
Pour your mix into a ice cream freezer or a cold bowl. If hand stirring, stir frequently and often.

 The other recipe is not mine, but received excellent reviews. I did tipple a bit o' scotch and a tablespoon of butter into the caramel sauce.

Beer Bread Pudding

My front garden

Robbie needed something to do this week, so in all the heat, I let him do this....

He and Bill went to HD and bought the wood, and put this arbor together.  He was sweating like a sailor, but gave the neighbors a show with his six-pack abs he's so fond of.   I'm trying to decide what to grow up it.  It still needs side rails, but those can wait at the moment.  I may just try some pole beans right now.  With this heat, they should grow like Jack's.  I'm not a big rose gardener, but I can grow CLEM-atis like nobody's business. 

Here is some of my frantically reproducing broccoli, closely planted with green peppers, to cut down on weeds.  After the first big sprout in the middle is harvested, side shoots will continue to form, as long as the plant survives the heat.  This is the back garden, but I also have them in the front.   They get more sun, so they are about finished for the season.

Tomatoes over the top of the fence. 

Stop glaring at the weeds, I mean it.  Stop.  The patch to the right is the strawberry patch, which has been mowed after production is over, and is growing back like gangbusters.  Behind them is the broccoli , green peppers, eggplants, and a bare spot, with the compost heap in there somewhere.  A new strawberry patch has been put in behind all this.  The long row to the left is the sweet potatoes, peering out from under the weeds.  My happy friends, the hollyhocks, are raising their faces to the sun, in jubilation that it ain't snowing.

Okay, so gardening isn't always pretty, neither am I after a bout with the obnoxious weeds.  Sometimes I just ignore them, they don't care, they carry on.  I just have to decide what is my tolerance level for them.  

Happy weeding to  all my dirty-fingernailed friends.

Dianne
Dirt, weeds, and all

Dead heat of summer

And I MEAN dead heat, as in, if I go out there and weed, I'll be dead.    It was hot when I went out to get the paper this morning at 4:30. 

Indiana is at the eastern end of a huge heat dome over the continent, and the worst is yet to come.  I know this because I am a scientifical gardener, and  I watch the weather to decide if I should go out or not.

I decided not.

The tomatoes are finally starting to come in red, they are a big tease, sitting there on the vines, doing nothing but staying green.  Oh, and the black spot  leaf virus on them I can't seem to get rid of.   The one cure I read about was to bleach the ground and then put black plastic over it to kill the virus.   Oh, sure, like I have time to do that, or even want to.    I have been pulling off bottom leaves to increase air circulation, that seems to help.  Then destroy the leaves, don't compost.

My green beans have had some company, I can tell by the way they have been munched on one side that deer have been visiting the garden, along with that $#$%^^$  groundhog.

I finally succumbed and starting mowing a path between the beans and the sweet potatoes, saves a lot of cussing at the weeds.

I looked up pictures I took of my green beans two weeks ago, but they don't look anything like that now.  They are over the top of the fence and flowering.  If I get a picture on here, there is to be no criticism of the weeds that surround it,   I can't keep up right now, we had record rain in June, and now it's just $%%## hot.

 I have two fences topped with beans, with white potatoes planted in between.    I planted them under a long pile of yard and garden waste for mulch, and they seem to be thriving.  The yellow flowers at the end are "cup plant"  a prairie wildflower.  Where the leaves attach to the plant, it makes a shallow cup, hence the name.  A favorite watering hole for bees and small birds.

 I should go out and start the hunt for Colorado potato beetles.

These are nasty little fellows, they can deleaf and kill a potato plant in a short amount of time.  I know that Bill got away from me last week and sprayed with Sevin, but sometimes that is the only thing that will save a garden.   One of the summer garden jobs is to go out to the 'taters with a bucket and gather these suckers, then skvish  them, skvish them all,  mwahahahaha!!!

Here is my passion in my flower garden.  These are Asiatic lilies, both planted out of bags from Home Depot, or from the discount shelf at Lowe's.  These are about the easiest to grow, and you get a lot of bang for your buck, since they are also great cut flowers.   Pictures compliments of my talented 15 y.o. darling daughter, Alice-Ann.   These prove that she can do  more than eat and dance.

Last week at church I was chatting with a new member, Maria,(not my fellow blogger) and told her about the Sugar Creek Daylily Farm, in Darlington.  She told me this week that they drove out there after church, and as soon as she saw the flowerbeds, she took off her shoes and wandered around for a while.  Here's a picture of that wonderful place.

People, he has 1600 different KINDS, not just plants, but KINDS of daylilies.  This is a picture of just a tiny part of it.   I bought Challenger, Black Plush, Catherine Neal, and some other stuff, they went immediately into the garden, and are growing well, since I have been watering them almost daily.  I love the spider-type flower, and deep reds. He doesn't have a website, you just have to go there.  If you can't get here, I suggest finding a public garden, or a passionate gardener in your area to visit this time of year, to see how things grow at a mature stage, so you can tell how that little plant in the pot will look in two years. 

Here is a "shout out" to my friend, Donny, who has had both knees replaced, cares for his homebound wife, and yet, still gets out there and works the yard, and his neighbor's.   Keep it up, Buddy, not every hero has a t-shirt, or an action figure.........If you ever move back to Indiana, be close enough so I can come over and steal stuff out of your garden..

I also want to compliment the Weir family, for diving straight into gardening and chickening, with raised beds,  and a coop.  I have permission to "help myself" while they are gone to camp and Guatemala on a mission trip... does she know what she has done????


Things we have been eating out of the garden,,,, zucchini, beats, (duh, BEETS, I have played too many band concerts this last weekend), broccoli, finally tomatoes, the first green peppers, and cukes.   I have been pulling up brocs that have flowered, but the ones I have been harvesting, just keep growing, so we keep eating them.  Just watch for those little green cabbage moth caterpillars, they look just like broccoli.  Soaking in salt water brings them out of the stalk. 

Next on the list,,,,,,, black raspberries..........yyuuummmm......

Stay cool, hydrated, and healthy, by eating your yard...

Dianne
dirt, sweat, and all.

You Betcha! Top Five Things I'm Doing WRONG in my Garden

After a week on a missions trip, a week on vacation, and facing two more weeks of camp and missions, I'm in garden avoidance land. I excitedly grilled the first patty pan. The heirloom pasters are starting to turn and everything is flush and full, but I didn't want weed, prune, thin, train, or any other necessary action.

I blame this on July. August will be worse. This is always where I fall of the gardening train. It's the reason I wanted (and got!) raised beds this year. 

Add the 90+ degree weather this week and all the work and packing required of me, and I was just about to let it go. I can't. My husband faithfully waters the beds every night. He's working harder than me and this wasn't his project in the first place. Admittedly, he's doing more of the grunt work right now.

But did you catch that? He's watering at night. Just when I was even avoiding my favorite "You Bet Your Garden" radio show from WHYY and Mike McGrath, I felt guilty, listened to a June archived podcast and came home in full gear. I have five things we need to change cause we are doing them wrong. All this work and we'd can change just a wee bit to make it better. Here goes my list:

1. We are watering for a bit every night.
Big No-NO. We need to do a deep water, a couple times a week, at about 5am. Since I have about seven spots where I'm invested with plants, that means two hours of watering daily. Two beds. Avoid stressing plants by bedding them down in moisture that can rot and mildew. Water longer but fewer times a week.

2. We haven't mulched.
No excuses. The 4H Fair is going on next door with all sorts of cast off poopy straw. Got a couple 9-year old boys and a wheel barrel. We'll be visiting a bit for a few nights, plus picking up more poo from the horse rescue ranch. Till we do this, we're just leaking water into the atmosphere.

3.  I haven't thinned.
I planted tons of  kohlrabi, carrots, and basil. I know the rules of thumb but I have this problem. I hate losing those plants. I know the end result of thinning is greater harvest. So, I've gone out and cut and pinched the basil, trimmed down the cilantro, and, this morning, I plucked out tons of weak kohlrabi. Now, for those carrots.

4. I hadn't weeded.
The grass, dandelions, clover, and even some purslane have sprung up around my tomato plants. I had watching chunks of dirt go with the root systems of those pesky plants. (Okay, I actually like the purslane. It's tasty in the salad. So, I left a bit of that in a free space. I just have to 'watch' it.)  The raised beds make me conscious of dirt as a commodity. They weren't quite full enough to my taste when I planted. But if the hubby has slung 32 cubit feet of dirt and manure into five beds, I'm not going to whine at a certain point. They were mostly full and we can top them off with manure throughout the year, right?

5. I hadn't brought in my 'cold' boxes.
I have a window box of arugula that I reseeded for round two. That died due to heat. But the older arugula went to seed. I needed to bring that into my sunny kitchen window and let the air conditioning cool it off. I love that arugula.

So this morning, I craigslisted food grade barrels, weeded, thinned, and planned for our two weeks away. I also talked to hubby about a new watering routine. Ah, it feels good to face the truth about my bad gardening habits. It's like a long run, in spite of a hot day, which is when I listen to my gardening show incidentally.