Starting To Harvest

The gardening process is an adventure to me. Bringing tiny seeds to life , nurturing them as they grow - it's my way of being a parent.

My hubs and I spent 4 days out of town this week, but one thing I couldn't wait to get home to was all the changes that happen over 4 days time. My sister, Carrie Ann, was caring for our home and cats while we were gone and sending me texts that kept me informed. She said I had a pumpkin growing! Well, it was actually another zucchini, but there were pumpkins on the vines on the other side of the yard.

Last night I harvested about 15 Northern Delight tomatoes, which I loaded into a little basket with a few zucchini and took over to my mama's house to share with my parents. They are not quite what I had hoped for this year, but that's the idea - to discover varieties that are suitable to the needs of our family. These were easy to grow, without a doubt, had nice short plants, lovely foliage and lots of fruit. The fruit are quite small though, and even with plenty of watering and nutrients, they tend to split open if left on the vine. I've been picking them just before they are fully ripe and bringing them inside to help curb the destruction. I have not decided yet if I will cultivate these again next year, but I will throw this out there to all my garden renegades, front yard gardeners and guerilla gardeners - Northern Delights are GREAT for small containers, front yards and parkways. They do not grow much taller than 3 feet and the fruits are small enough to be considered ornamental in nature.

This shot of my firstborn pink accordion tomato was taken this morning! As you can see, it's just beginning to turn pink around the folds. My mom is calling it my 'fat Mexican baby'. (The joke behind that being that I've been asking my husband when he is going to provide me with a fat Mexican baby, and he keeps telling me we will need to be more financially stable in order to start our family.) I'm telling you, this tomato is the most beautiful thing I think I've ever seen! I never realized I was going to get this much joy out of cultivating tomatoes. Will they grow in Africa I wonder.....?

All right, and now for the corn! I know you've been dying to hear about the corn - this is the Midwest for crying out loud! Start anywhere and drive for 10 minutes and you WILL invariably find yourself in a field of corn! But MY corn is white kernaled shoepeg corn, which is an heirloom variety from the south, and as I have mentioned before, it is taller than our garage! Who knew!? I'm an Indiana girl - I spent my summers as a pre-teen de-tasseling seed corn in the farm country with my cousins and grandparents. I do not remember hybrid sweet corn ever reaching these heights! The silks on the heads of the corn are also a gorgeous color of pinkish maroon that I've never seen before. So, so beautiful.

Well it IS Sunday mornin' kids and you know what that means! It's time to go praise Jesus! And He is worth praising. Even in the rough patches of life, God has been faithful and very good to us. The future stretches out before us, but I know we are going to be just fine sheltered in His presence.

Official Hayseed

I picked my first ears of shoepeg corn last evening!

Yup, it's official! I'm a hayseed!

My Grandpa Orlin would be so proud of me. :) I sure do miss him, but I know he's in Heaven and healed.

We're having corn with dinner tonight.

Tomato Queen!

Can I just say that I ADORE my heirloom tomatoes, and have thusly declared myself to be Tomato Queen. :) I'm totally in love with these heirlooms that I planted this year!

I'm not much of a researcher. I can barely remember what I did two hours ago, much less remember to write down little things that I notice while meandering through the greens. But I'm noticing some really cool things, and I'm going to try to relay them to my readers who might be remotely interested in learning about heirloom variety vegetables.

When I saw the Pink Accordion in the Territorial Seed catalogue this year, I knew I had to have them. It was love at first sight. So bumpely and awkward, so big, such a pretty color! It had a to be a good choice.

It was!

These vines are absolutely enormous! They are reaching astonishing heights (for tomatoes), coming close to 4 feet tall. I have a green fruit that is probably 4 inches in diameter already, and it isn't even close to being full size. I'm guessing it still has about 2 more weeks before being fully ripe. The picture to the left is almost a month old, I'm just too lazy to go out and get a newer one right now. So imagine this same tomato, double sized.

Some people don't like the smell of tomato vines, but I actually like it. But I also love the smell of marigolds, which I'm told is very weird and most people can't stand them. I have strange olfactory tolerances I guess. Anyway, the pink accordians seem to have a more pungeant odor than some of the smaller variety and the vines are almost.... juicy. The vines are slick to the touch and leave a distinctive green stain on my fingers.

Hope to get a few more pics up of these guys as they progress and more observations when I make them. I really, really believe strongly in growing heirloom veggies though. It may be a stupid doomsday cliche, but you can't eat bars of gold when the economy collapses. You can, however, continue to thrive with heirloom variety plants!!

A Few More Images

Obviously I love my little 'farm'. I'd love it better if I could tear the neighbor's house down and expand onto their lot, but that wouldn't be very neighborly, would it?? Anyway, I dug some new potatoes last night, pulled baby carrots, clipped lavender spears, and dug weeds until dusk and I was so happy doing it. Here are a few of the pictures I took:

Images

We Have Food!

"WE HAVE FOOD!"

That's what I hope to say when our economy goes belly-up, the America dollar plunges to worthless and no one can afford food anymore. Or maybe I was listening to a doomsday prophet again. I shouldn't do that.

Anyway, I've been working pretty hard on the pantry and emergency food storage. I'm kinda proud! I think right now, we could probably live for a week on what's in our pantry. It will be better after this growing season. Now what we really, really need is a chest freezer. Everyone in my family had one. It's a critical piece of food storage equipment and we really need to make the investment.

I cored and sliced 8 flippin' quarts of strawberries! Good Lord, when that was over, my hands were frozen, numb and stained red, but I have 2 big bags in the freezer and one in the fridge. (One that is now half empty because I used half of it to bake a pie tonight.

I bought 3 pounds of rhubarb at the market last week, and also used about half of it to bake pie tonight. The other half I sliced up and stuck in the freezer. Vegetarian Times had a 5 recipes to try with rhubarb in the May/June issue. There has to be a use for it besides pie! Alex won't touch it of course, so it will be up to me to give the ol' college try.

Tonight I choked down a pork chop, again, and decided that I am probably heading back to my vegetarian diet. It's hard to eat in my house. Alex, my sweet hubs, is deathly allergic to poultry, so we never eat chicken or turkey. Unfortunately, he is also a picky eater, so he won't touch a veggie with a ten foot pole. (Pretty sure I've mentioned this predicament once or twice before.) But he will willingly eat carrots, when prepared right, corn, potatoes, bell peppers when served with stir fry, and celery (but only raw with peanut butter). He has occasionally been willing to try other things, but by and large, he turns up his nose and frowns at my kitchen adventures when asked to taste-test. I'm not really sure if I am craving my vegetarian ways again because the garden has been so mouth watering, or if I am truly tired of eating meat, but either way, I'm collecting my vegger recipes together and getting ready to plunge into meatlessness soon.

A few updates from the garden:

The corn is almost waist high due to more excessive rainfall. (My waist, not a normal human's waist. So the corn is about 2 and a half feet tall.) I've only actually watered my garden once this year. The rest of the time, it has rained and then I have been sure to mulch with grass clippings to keep the moisture in.

I am going to go out and dig for a few new potatoes tomorrow. No, I really just cannot wait, its THAT urgent. :) I will leave the rest for a main crop, but I think since I have 7 plants and all will produce about 10 pounds of potatoes, we'll be okay this winter minus a few.

It's been chilly again all week. The summer solstice seemed to mock us here in Northern Indiana. My tomatoes, while flowering, have stalled in their growth again. I really need four or five good hot, humid days in a row to get the growth restarted and the fruiting process going.

Got the opportunity to hand-pollinate the zucchini this morning. Hooray for plant sex! (ROFLOL) 3 zucchini plants, all flowering, only one with actual fruit, but that fruit looks like they will be real winners.

I planted a new variety of cucumber a few days ago - a pickling gherkin. I have never liked dill pickles in my life, but strangely, I will eat sweet gherkins, so that's what I'm going to go with. I also planted some large-podded shelling peas, and I planted a LOT of them. I am really hoping for several pounds of shelled peas in the freezer for the winter.

The green beans are still small and weak. This is so strange to me because beans are supposed to be so simple to grow! I have successfully grown amazing things in this garden and the easiest veggie of all is giving me trouble?? Where is the justice?

The garden will eventually be completely overtaken with several kinds of squash vines. Yes, I am aware that I 'could' go and pull them out and I will do so eventually. But right now seeing the gorgeous green leaves makes me smile. I simply cannot bring myself to pulling them out. I purposely planted the zucchini and the pattypan squash. But the pumpkins and the gourds were not intentional and they are getting quite out of hand.

I am experimenting with a type of melon. I planted the seeds - quite late I might add - and I am more or less hoping for the best. If our growing season extends into October, as it sometimes does, I will probably have a few melons. But I am not wagering any money on having prize winning melons this summer. But wait until next year....

I will have a handful of ripe red raspberries in about a week.

My sunflowers are being devoured by earwigs. Time to break out the diazanon - which is a repulsive, but effective way to get rid of them.

I pulled a carrot out of the dirt two days ago. It was still a little short, but a perfect shade of orange and quite sweet, with just the right amount of bite.

The Trash Pile

There is a little section of my garden that I refer to as the trash pile. It is the area under a bradford pear tree (I hate this tree - it shades prime real estate, has stinky flowers in the spring and drops nasty little fruits all over the patio every fall) where I let the weeds grow rampant and where I pile up all the 'trash' at the end of the growing season.

It's not really a compost pile because I have a compost pile on the other side of the yard. This is just the place where I dump stuff. And I usually find treasures here when the new growing season starts. This year is no different than any other year.

The Trash Pile is currently home to 7 chamomile plants, mountains of catnip, and a few stray tomatoes. Truth be told, I have tomato plants popping up in such large quantities that I am giving them away to friends and family members. They have been showing up in such random places that I wonder why I bothered saving seeds from them at all.

I stepped on a thorn tonight and also ran another thorn into my thumb. Yes I know that there are things called shoes and gloves, but honestly, I just love to feel the dirt under my feet and in my hands. Even as I am typing this, I am still pretty well covered in mud.

I've been thinking about renting the church kitchen and having a 'canning' party later this season. Lord knows I'm going to have more tomatoes than I will know what to do with! As we get further into the year, I feel more strongly about preparing and helping others prepare for times to come. Maybe it's the fact that I cannot buy groceries for $50 a week anymore. ($87 this week - and I tried to get only sale items.) Maybe it's the dire economic predictions, the political scene and the state of our country in general. I don't know. But it's on my heart to prepapre and help others know how to prepare. Plus - canning in a group could be a LOT of fun.

Beauty of the Earth

Spring has finally arrived to northern Indiana! And those greenhouse seedlings have been thriving in the warm, humid weather. We've had some great thunderstorms in the last few weeks as well.

Today is one of my rare days off from the bank, and instead of being beautiful outside for me, it's gloomy and they're calling for severe storms. So I have made a nice long list of things to be accomplished. I am discovering that it helps me to make lists - so that I can physically see what needs to be done and worked on, and that it isn't really as much as I think, and therefore keeps me from becoming to overwhelmed.

My darling Alex bought me a new lawn mower for our anniversary, and girls out there, I know that you might be a little put off by an anniversary gift like that, but it was a gift I really appreciated. Alex and I have an agreement when it comes to caring for our home. I do the outside work (that I am physically capable of doing, since I'm only 5 feet tall and weigh 100 pounds) and he does the inside chores that I don't like to do - like vacuuming. Yuck. So I was really pleased with the new mower, which has a catch bag on it, which now means that I can finally collect the grass clippings to use for mulch around the veggie garden.

I had some gorgeous red leaf and buttercrunch lettuces growing in the back garden, and imagine my shock yesterday in the morning when I stepped out the back door and found a family of bunnies muching away on them! So much for our fresh salads! But I'm not discouraged, because Alex finally said we would stop putting off the building of the fence and it's officially on the to-do list for this weekend. Sometimes it takes a loss to get other things accomplished.

I got the corn planted this weekend, and transplated the Early Girl tomatoes into bigger pots. They're almost 6 inches tall now, with 6-8 leaves, so they made it out of that brutal cold snap and are very healthy now. Still not ready to leave the greenhouse, but soon!

Had one of my little impatient moments the other day and got frustrated over my sugar snap peas, because they haven't shown a single sign of bearing yet! So Alex said "When did you plant the seeds?" and I pulled out my journal and was reminded that I planted them on March 30, instead of March 17, like I've done in the past. They take 60-75 days to bear, so I've still got about 14 days before they will show signs of flowers and pods. Silly me, getting impatient. :) I apparently forgot that the principles of sowing and reaping are not just for my spiritual life.

There are tiny buds on the raspberries, flower heads on the onions and leeks, and lots of broccoli, carrot and beet tops pushing out of the dirt. The potatoes are simply astonishing - about two feet tall now and a gorgeous emerald green. I've been building up the mounds around the plants so they will have plenty of growing space. I'm pretty sure I'll have spuds to spare this fall, but I'm also looking ahead to winter, and anticipating quite a haul for the root cellar.

Well, there's a lot to do today, so I'll leave you with these few pictures, which I snapped quickly this morning before the storm blew in.

Anonymous

I don't like not being able to keep up with the things that I love. I love my handicrafts, my writing, my experiences in the kitchen and the garden. It's been difficult not to keep up with them. I feel as if I am losing my identity.

Sugar Snap Peas

I am happy to be working again, and I am satisfied with the job. But there are things I am not happy about. I have to push loans, credit card applications and other unnecessary things on customers every day, and yet, I have a moral gut check about it when I do. I am strongly against debt. I don't use credit cards anymore, and I am working hard to pay off all of our debts. We no longer make purchases with loans and credit - we go without if we can't afford it at that moment. I feel like many people feel this way too, and yet it is now my job to convince them otherwise. It makes me feel conflicted. I'm earning my paycheck by leading others into something I don't believe it myself.



Very healthy potatoes!!



So a few updates over the last few weeks - the weather has not improved at all. It has rained nonstop here in the midwest, although it isn't quite as bad as the south, where tornadoes have been wreaking havoc. Thunderstorms and unseasonable frosts have plagued our spring, and my seeds have struggled to come up. Few of them have actually germinated at all. I have several broccoli (which thrive in the cool weather), and a handful of carrot sprouts. The potatoes are marvelously healthy and growing taller every day.

The peas are 5 inches tall, and a perfectly delightful, shiny pale green; their little tendrils are vining around the cages and reaching toward the sun when it occasionally is so inclined to come out.



Raspberry Canes



Broccoli sprouting

 There are two strong seedlings of Early Girl tomatoes in the greenhouse and believe me, I am nursing them like sick babies. I pray for my heirlooms, since they haven't germinated yet. Even the beans and zucchini are refusing to put out any sprouts because of the temperatures.

I planted a few canes of raspberries, which will probably not fruit this year, but by next summer, it will be lovely to have fresh raspberries, and perhaps even make some raspberry jam.

I've spent my entire day off digging up weeds and nursing the greenhouse. There is so much to be done. There are new beds to be dug out and a lot of crabgrass that needs to be dug out. My lawn looks terrible - bald patches, mole hills, and lots of weeds.

Oh, and the sourdough starter was an EPIC FAIL. Shameful really. So much for that.

For The Love of Vegetables

 Cannellini Lingot - Dry Shelling Beans

These beauties are wonderful for soup. It's going to be a few months before I can harvest these, but when I do, I plan to dry them in my dehydrator and store them in a few big jars. This winter, when the snow raises hell all around us, I will have a hot ham and bean soup, flavored with thyme and oregano. I can already taste it. :)

 "Jade" green bush-type beans will grow in 2-4 foot tall bushes instead of vining around and taking over the garden. The bean pods themselves can grow up to 10 inches long and are virtually stringless. They're also tender and sweet. I plan to transplant them from the greenhouse at the same time I sow my sweet corn into the same bed together. Beans and corn are natual companions, each one providing necessary nutrients to the other that are needed for healthy and vigorous growth. Corn, beans and squash are the traditional "Three Sisters", grown together by Native Americans for hundreds of years.

I can't wait to bite into one of these Pink Accordian heirloom tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes are a very valuable piece of the garden. They are not modified in any way, not hybrids, not altered to suit some commercial farms needs - perfectly natural and the way that Mother Nature intended them to be. The seeds are savable, and can be continued on for years to come. They never look as perfect as the tomatoes in the grocery stores, but beautiful in their own way.

"Country Gentleman" shoepeg corn is also an heirloom variety. It's especially grown in the south, and is considered one of the best roasting varieties available. It's self-pollinating, and not hybridized, and will grow perfect with my green beans. I have plans to dry some for seeds, scrape the kernels off of the cobs for freezing and perhaps an ear or two on the grill with the hamburgers and bratwurst at family BBQ's this summer.




All of these pictures were borrowed from Territorial Seed Company's website, but only because I already purchased the seeds for them and they haven't turned into big beautiful vegetables yet. Do yourself a favor - start a garden. Grow a tomato or two. Put some herbs in a pot and be proud of yourself when you can add them to your cooking. Nothing is more beneficial to the soul than waiting on a seed to come forth.

Pickled Beets and Purple Eggs

I have a wonderful memory of my Grandpa Orlin, who was my greatest inspiration and hero. It's not my favorite memory, but it's a beautiful one to me just the same. We always had certain foods when I went to Grandma and Granpa's house in the country. We always had tapioca pudding, applesauce over white bread and butter, oatmeal with milk for breakfast, green beans from the garden and sweet corn from my Uncle Dwayne's farm down the road. And pickled red beets with hard boiled eggs.

I just planted 5 rows of red beets in the garden and it made me remember sitting on the patio at the glass-topped table and Grandpa came out of the garage with a big plastic bucket full of purple juice that would permanently stain anything it came in contact with and said "Who wants purple eggs?!"

And my sister and I would say "Eggs aren't purple! Eggs are white!" And he would chuckle and dish out pickled red beets and hard boiled eggs that had been stained purple with beet juice. Carrie would never touch the beets, but it was one of our 'special' foods that we only got at Grandma and Grandpa's.

So in about 9 weeks, I'm going to say "Who wants purple eggs?!" And even if there are no takers, I'll be sitting on the patio, staining my teeth and tongue with beet juice, thoroughly enjoying my pickled beets and purple eggs. :)

El Dorado Heirloom Seeds

I was clicking through some of the advertisements on my blog this morning, which I do from time to time to see what kind of companies are using my space for their marketing, and I was excited to see a company called El Dorado Heirloom Seeds. As I am a sucker for organic seed companies, and always researching and looking for the best companies to purchase my seed from, I began to research and delve into their story and their product offering. I was delighted with what I found.

This is just a small excerpt from their 'About Us' section of their website, and it has the heart and soul of this company wrapped into a few paragraphs:

We are honored to live a simple life. We lived in a chicken coup for six months while we passionately built our tiny straw bale cabin in Montana. With no electricity or running water we forced ourselves to learn how to raise our own food and live by our own efforts. Those eight years were as hard as it gets and we value them more than all other years because they molded us into what we are today. Because of the rough times and the doubts and stress then, we laugh more today.

Just six years ago, our dad started over again, this time by himself. He cut his way into a wooded five acre property he bought for almost nothing, pitched a tent and built a chicken coup, which worked as his home five days a week, while he built another small cabin, this time with wood.
This simple and somewhat humble lifestyle fits us well and if you ever gave it a try, you’d discover how much we have in common.

Our Mission at El Dorado Heirloom Seeds is simple:
To get American’s to return to growing their own healthy food and thus eliminate unhealthy GMOs and sterile hybrid vegetables grown by corporate farms.


Our Personal Philosophy is rather basic:
Accept yourself and the responsibility of making yourself a little better each day. Then no matter where you start it’s only a matter of time before you are worthy of the greatest rewards and respect. And what goes for you should go for others, meaning, all of us have the right to be wrong and broken, so don’t force your beliefs and desires upon others. Be an example! Plant a powerful idea.


The world would improve in every way if the people grew authentic and organic heirloom vegetables out the back door and down the street and on the rooftops. The next step would be to start eating our meals together.



Are you impressed yet??

Check them out for yourselves!

Reviewer Mode

I have never once regretter purchasing 'The New Self-sufficient Gardener' by John Seymour. Of all the gardening books in a very large stack that I have, this one has the honor of being my favorite.

I wrote a review on Amazon.com a couple years ago, and I think it's pretty cool that my review is the highest rated for this book right now!

Soaring oil, food, utility and energy and general cost of living prices are enough to make you wonder if there is anything you can do to make yourself more self sufficient. As someone who has always loved to play in the dirt and see the flowers grow, I knew I was going to appreciate this book immediately.

Written from the point of view of a man who grew up in England in the 50's, John Seymour is practical, friendly and unpolitical. Completely unconcerned with things like global warming and inflation, he recognized that the human condition has simply lost it roots - pun intended. Back in his day, he reminisced,  every English country home had a kitchen garden and the produce of the family diet came from that garden. There was a pig in the sty (and one in the larder), and a henhouse in the yard. And what you couldn't grow, you went without, or possibly traded with a neighbor. Why can't people live like this today?

I could argue on and on about the laziness and the commercialism of the day, but it's pretty redundant. Instead, I decided to put a little elbow grease into my garden and see how long it will take us to be as self-reliant as possible.

I think I appreciate Seymour's book simply because it is unpolitical. No references to global climate change, or carbon footprints, or wars in the Middle East.  I was recently flipping through a book on urban homesteading, which was written by some folks in Los Angeles and has won numerous awards because it gives simple advice on how to become self-sufficient while living in the city. "Do your part to reduce your carbon footprint!"  My humble and honest opinion to those on the West Coast is this - stop 'playing house' with your high rise apartment balcony container gardens and your smug "we're saving the planet" attitudes and get your asses out to the Midwest sometime. We'd be happy to show you REAL homesteading, real farming, and real self-sufficiency. Anyway, that's a tangent saved for a better day. There are NO POLITICAL AMBITIONS in The New Self-Sufficient Gardener! Hooray!

I started my gardening adventures with a couple tomato plants and some herbs. That was in 2006. This year in 2010, I more than doubled my crops and harvest. I was even able to grow pumpkins this year, and it was a lot of fun. Bell and cayenne peppers, four varieties of tomato, 10 herbs, russet potatoes, leeks, broccoli, lettuce, beets, pumpkins and 2 types of winter squash. It was a great year with a really good harvest! And I owe it all to John Seymour's great book full of practical advice!

No urging to find a way to purchase a $13000 wind turbine, no pleadings to replace your furnace with a geo-thermal heating and cooling system, no blaming the American presidents for not doing enough to stop the inevitable changing of the climate, INSTEAD when and how to plant deep beds, proper propogation of seeds, watering techniques to improve efficiency, how to raise the most out of your soil and how to avoid certain diseases and pests.

Best of all, I have come to realize that self-sufficiency is a process realized over time. Every year something new - another step closer. We live in the city. Not the big city, but the city nonetheless. Our yard is small and we are stuck with city utilities. And I still managed to decrease our grocery costs by $10 per week. I'm trying to do even better this coming year. Today we're heading out to a real butcher shop (!) and stocking the freezer for the next 3 months worth of meals. I'm excited about it. We may not have to tread inside a big chain grocery store for weeks! That's the ultimate goal.

So if you LOVE the idea of self-sufficiency, put down the books written by hippies and activists in California, and reach for the New Self-Sufficient Gardener instead. Start practically and patiently instead of hoping to stop global climate change overnight. Self-sufficiency takes time, baby steps and research!