Mother Nature... Putting the "Early" in Early Blight

Do you see what I see?

How 'bout now?

Another bed looks okay, right?

Here's the backside:

On the other side of the yard we have wind damage

Please hurry, you might be the only tomatoes this year for me...

This is shaping up to be an awful year weather wise, and I guess I knew the effects would show in the garden, but I still had high hopes.  Don't we always?  Gardening in the south is not for the faint of heart.  We have had thunderstorms for close to 14 straight days now, and then comes the heat just to make double sure the insects and diseases are kept warm, wet and happy. UGH!!!!  There will be no treatment this year, I've tried them all and have the empty bank account to prove it.  Nothing truly works for blight and I could have spent all that money I spent on ridiculous treatments and put it towards finding the nearest farmer selling tomatoes by the bushel.  Hang on, I need a scream moment...  At least last year the blight came at a normal blight-ish time of year and I was actually able to put away quite a bit before the bitter end.

At least some things do spectacularly well here...the honeybees, bumbles and hummingbirds are going wild for the Butterfly Weed, Sage and Verbena that are in full bloom.

Maybe I'll take next year off to solarize the beds and just do beekeeping...

Yes, you heard right... beekeeping, yay!  Lochlann is the newest member of the 4-H Jr. Beekeepers Club!  His bee suit is on the way and he will be working in the 4-H Bee Yard progressing towards earning his own hive.  Of course we will all be joining the Beekeeper's Association and getting in on the fun.  I tried to end on a good note, did it work or are you scrolling back up to the top and getting sick to your stomach?  :)  Chin up, gardeners... it can't be this bad everywhere, right?

Oh surprise, surprise... it's thundering again.

Father/Son Campout

It has been raining, thunder storming and high winds for over a week now, so nothing much to report on the garden. Too squishy out there to do much, and I'm sure the tomatoes are now freely spreading on the ground since there has been so much wind I'm sure they are no longer secured to their trellis system.

I know we need the rain, but it's putting a damper on a lot of my plans.  I've had a "Mother's Day Marshmallow Roast" planned for my Cub Scouts for over 2 weeks now and we have to keep canceling due to the weather.  

The weather didn't stop our church's Father/Son Campout, however!  Although there were high winds, the rain stayed away for them.  They went up to the Eastern Shore of Virginia.  For those unfamiliar, it's a trip across the 13 mile engineering wonder of the world Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel  :)  It's actually only a 30 minute or so trip to the other side but it's like another world over there, very rural, seaside agriculture and fishing and not too much else.  Some may only know of the area as the spit of land where the Chincoteague Ponies swim, but that's the general geographical area.

I had to entrust the photography to hubby and sent him off with my camera with instructions to "make sure you don't just take pictures of crap, make sure there are people's faces in them!!"  Well, he gave the camera to Loch for the weekend, so we get what we get and we don't throw a fit, right?

Dads setting up tents 

One of the boys' friends, (and one of my Cub Scouts) hamming it up...

Whittling... this is why I made sure I threw a first aid kit in the car LOL

My child sent into what was probably a Water Moccasin infested field... this wouldn't happen if moms were there, ha!

Oh great, a snake hunt?  One of the dads said after returning from the trip that they were sent to look for the elusive Wheat Cobra, LOL!  But hey, I'm still stuck on the whole real, native snakes we have...yikes!

Finn surveying 

Love the bullhorn... this is on my wish list!

Lots of dads, lots of sons...

Campfire shot, I think Loch took this one

Finnegan

Breakfast time!

I love these tired morning faces! (also my Cub Scouts!)

How did this one get in here?  LOL, was too cute not to post, this is the latest instrument to take up residence in my house.  Finn is dreaming of South Pacific seas...

What was I doing all this time?  I had dreams of reading a book, gardening, etc but after getting all their stuff packed for them and sending them off, I found myself stricken by creativity and made this little cake-pop garden for one of the gals at church that needed sweets for a teen dance.  It was so fun making them but it takes so long!  After that I was so tired I just watched a chick flick LOL.

More thunderstorms today... my poor garden, I haven't been out there in a week!

Progress

So much going on the past few days, but most of it good!

Friday was set-up day for the Spring Master Gardener Plant Sale so that meant...

Yay!  I finally got to evict the dozens of basil plants that we've been tripping over!

I could harvest 1 lb of lettuces a day and not deplete the garden now which is awesome, because I still had a few more teacher gifts to put together.  I didn't have enough turnips this go-round so with the bags of mixed lettuces I tied herb bouquets each with chives, parsley, oregano and sage.  I also had plenty of scallions ready to go.  I love doing gifts from the garden since they are always different depending on the time of year and harvest.

Just enough turnips now that we can just have a few for a salad or mixed in with roasted carrots & potatoes.  I won't replant these again until late summer for a fall harvest.

Below is the pepper bed in the foreground with one of the tomato beds in the back, this one has the Brandywines.

Below are the Heirloom Virginia Romas

There are other tomato beds, but I haven't gotten photos of them yet.

Below is a close up of one of the Brandywines

The onions are bolting before "onioning" as usual so I'm picking them as green onions as fast as I can, onions never work out well here, but I can't resist their orderly appearance and keep planting them :)

New things are arriving daily!

Summer Squash is up, now where are those Squash Bugs?!

and below, Zukes...

 I have never grown them believe it or not, since they still seem to show up in my kitchen from random people LOL...  suddenly this year I have the urge so local folks beware and lock your car doors.

Finally, heirloom Lazy Wife Greasy Beans

I'm growing a few types of greasy beans to see which does best for me.  All 3 are local mountain historical varieties.  By the way, they are not "greasy" at all, rather they are so named because the pole beans have a shiny appearance. The Lazy Wife variety is named thus because it grows bunches of pods in clusters which supposedly makes for easier picking.  Hopefully I can minimize the time spent in long sleeves that way since I get horrible rashes from picking beans!

Happy Belated Mother's Day to all!  Can you believe I had to share my day this year since hubby's birthday fell on the same day, ha!

It always comes back to the kids :)

All of a sudden it seems, the garden is spewing produce!  

This came in really handy since it is Teacher Appreciation Week and I had no idea what I was going to give as gifts.  I'm terrible at remembering such things, my own anniversary and birthday included, so when the kids asked what they were giving their teachers, I had to act fast.

Worked out perfectly, walked out into the garden and was accosted with all this stuff and an hour later after weighing, washing and bagging it I was left with some pretty nice gifts.  Nice if you happen to like cheap gifts LOL!  I did include a little jar of homemade strawberry jam as well :)

You are going to love this one - a family down the street is stealthily keeping 3 goats, 2 pigs, ducks AND a peacock in their backyard.  Yeah, looks like the time is ripe for me to get started doesn't it?  Anything I do will probably pale in comparison in the eyes of city code LOL.  Anyway... I went to have lunch with Finnegan at school and the little girl in that family is in his class and she saw the turnips I had with me for the teacher and said "my pigs like your turnips" and asked if I had any extra for her pigs.  Yes, she was about the cutest thing ever haha!  I told her to come over after school.  She showed up at the door promptly at 3 pm and Finn and his buddy from next door helped her carry all those insect chewed turnip greens with some rogue misshapen ones down the street.  

How cute is this?

I sent Finnegan with my camera down the street with instructions to take pics for the blog, here's what came back, a little close-up I'd say...

Apparently they feed the pigs by dumping stuff on their backs LOL

Loch had his own project going on at his after-school Garden Club, after doing some maintenance and weeding they had time to whip up some homemade insect repellent.  I think he said it has witch hazel, citronella oil, and "some other stuff".

This sort of relates to the kids as well, since I am so busy running around lately for them that we have no time to eat decently, so I spent a solid 3 hours or so making up some freezer meals.  Seems a pain to be inside cooking when it's so nice outside, but it will be worth it for a no stress dinners.

Lasagna

Chicken Enchiladas, one of the kids' favorites!

We had to have one pan right away last night :)

P.S.:  Finn said the other day "I petted goats and played with pigs, am I in trouble?" Bahahaha, my only requirement is that he washes his hands when he comes home - jeez, what kind of mama does he think he has?  Did he really think I'd get mad for "playing with pigs"?!!

Are you kidding me?????

Surprised by Jimmy Nardello in the garden this morning!

Peppers before beans this year?  I'll be shaking my head for awhile on this one!

Honeysuckle Fix

Is it August?

It has sure felt like August the past week.  Not including today, which was low 70's and perfect, the past week has seen highs around 90º with super humidity, yuck!  There has been a heavy, damp scent of honeysuckle in the air for days and mosquitoes, exactly August conditions!

The garden is looking very August-like, almost overgrown!

I counted at least 30 butterflies just in the gravel perennial beds today.

Can't you just almost smell the honeysuckle?  It's growing all over that dark corner of the yard in the below photo.  I wish I liked it more, but that's the far end of the scale for me on what my nose can stand.  I know, I'm weird - if I smell lilacs I get an instant migraine and run for the hills :)  Thankfully they are pretty rare here, they like a colder climate.

...and a belated Happy Cinco deMayo to you!

I'm officially going to stop apologizing for being such a lazy blogger lately, I've been in the schools again and will be for the rest of the month and have had so many things on my to-do list I think I'll just have to say this is going to be "one of those years" and do my best to blog when I get the chance.

I'm officially on "bean watch" now... my seedlings are all up about an inch high and Mockers the mockingbird is doing all she can as usual to thwart my bean growing efforts.  She is quite the character, but I'm on to her after all these years.  I'm going to kill her with kindness and try to get her to eat mealworms out of my hand this week, wish me luck LOL!  Now where's my helmet and leather gloves? :)

pop, pop, POP!

That was the sound of the kitchen Saturday night.  How can I possibly narrow down these photos to just a few?  There's no way, so you will be subjected to all of them - I mean come on, they're strawberries!

Strawberry season is about 3 weeks ahead of normal this year.  The weather was great for picking, low 60's and cloudy and no mosquitoes.  I may have mentioned that I ripped my strawberry beds out about 3 years ago.  This is why...

Our immediate area is famous for strawberries, they love the beach apparently :)  Since my beds can't put out as much as we need and take up valuable space the rest of the year I leave this one to the local strawberry farmers.  In a 5 minute drive I can pick as much as I need, all organic and as fresh as they get.

Everyone could use a helping "hand" while picking berries!

Total picked: 21 lbs

The kids are getting better at picking now, aren't picking the biggest ones and are able to judge ripeness and move quicker this year.  You have to be quick to live in my house :)

Where to start?

No potato mashers or food processors to wash here, I told Finn to wash up and dive in "old skool" to get the job done quick - he loved it, but he loves anything to do with berries, he's probably take a bath in it if I told him to.

Next we were left with over a gallon of pure strawberry puree and 2 sheets of whole berries for the freezer.  

Time to jam.  If you haven't used Pomona's Pectin, you are missing out!  This is a two part mixture that uses calcium to activate the pectin, meaning you can make jam with no sugar!  If you are the type like me that just loves to pop straight berries into your mouth, then you appreciate a pure jam.  The amount of sugar in most jam recipes really freaks me out, so I love this stuff.  For those canning chemical compound nerds out there (like me?!) this is "LM" (low-methoxyl) pectin using dicalcium phosphate.  There are some other low/no sugar pectin powders out there, but they aren't quite the same, and the results aren't as reliable.  It can be hard to find, especially to have in stock this time of year but look in your local health/organic food store, and then remember next year to just order it online ahead of time - that's my lesson learned, I just got lucky as the only place in town to have it only had 2 boxes left.  The price here was $4.99, one box makes several batches.  This stuff can gel water!

I ended up with 13.5 pints of pure organic strawberry jam.  One batch was pure fruit and the other batch was made with just a touch (about 1/4 cup) organic cane sugar and drizzled with honey.

Had to come back and edit - what good is a jam post without a photo of the jam?

In all from 21 lbs of strawberries I ended up with 13.5 canned pints of jam, 2 gallon bags of frozen whole strawberries, 4 pints frozen pure strawberry puree and a tray of strawberry puree frozen into cubes and later into a freezer bag.  I find the cube size is perfect for adding into smoothies or flavoring a small batch of popsicles.  I always keep lots of puree in the freezer to add to our homemade strawberry ice cream too!

Pretty cost effective since even at the higher price this year of $1.59/lb we spent just over $33.00 on 21 pounds of berries turned into a year's worth of goodies and "fruit on a shelf"!

I hope you have all gotten your berry fix for now and can get those canning jars organized and supplies together, they will be coming soon to you if our early season is any indication!

Happy Picking!