Here we go...!

Well, the time has finally come...tomato sauce season! Tonight is my first large batch. About 30 Heirlooms went into this one, a combination of Brandywine, True Black Brandywine, and a few Black Krims and some of our garlic, shallots, peppers, and basil. I threw the rest of the bottle of red wine that I opened last night in too. It's different every time, lol...whatever I have laying on the counter is going in there! I forgot how good this stuff smells. We left for an hour and came back and I could smell the crock pot simmering from 15 feet outside the front door!

Here are two of the Brandywines picked this morning. The shapes are always amusing, but these two weighed in at 1.1 lb and 1.26 lbs each!

That's all I got today, folks! Gotta go and get messy with sauce!

When Freezers Attack!

I spent the day defrosting my chest freezer. This means that I had to stuff everything in it into my side-by-side in the interim. The 3rd time I opened the side by side and was attacked by chuck roasts, bags of hamburger and even a pack of short ribs that landed on my big toe, I thought it was funny enough to snap a picture of! In the future, I will remember to defrost the freezer before I go pick up a share of beef, lamb etc - even if it doesn't need it! Kind of like when I demand the kids go to the bathroom before we leave the house...even if they don't think they need to! I had to stuff an entire share of beef along with other meats and all my garden produce into that side-by-side, so I guess I can say "it can be done"...although to prevent injury, I wouldn't recommend it!

Today's harvest: 4 lbs Eggplant, 14 oz beans, 2 lbs cherry tomatoes, 13 oz bell peppers, 6.1 lbs Heirloom tomatoes, 2 lbs Edamame, and 4.6 oz raspberries. I am amazed at how much more the raspberry bushes produce compared to the blackberries! Next year we should actually have enough to do something with besides snack on. I have been letting the suckers grow into new plants since the kids aren't big on veggies I think we could use more as Finn is happy to eat a bowlful of berries every night with dinner! I harvested all the remaining edamame and pulled the plants, so I really can't wait for the next crop! Into the empty bed went broccoli starts, some lettuce, and chives that I bought at the nursery, since they weren't pathetic looking like the chives I started from seed!

In the non-edible category I got my front yard shaped up finally. I pulled weeds, pruned a bit, finally took down the dead hanging baskets that the birds destroyed and even pulled all the weeds growing in the cracks of the driveway and sidewalk. I hope it inspires my neighbors to do the same! I finally stopped when I got an odd look from a driver passing by and realized that I and my stool had moved out into the street and was pulling weeds growing in the street! What's up with those damn birds anyways? It seems us gardeners love the birds and will do anything for them, including leaving up dead hanging baskets with nests & eggs inside. Nothing says "A Gardener Lives Here" like a bunch of dead plants hanging on the front porch, lol!

And finally, the Swallowtail Daycare pic of the day:

The pupa is still intact, no butterfly yet, but these guys of different ages were having a busy day filled with the parsley buffet!

Of Soybeans & Swallowtails

Apparently I have found that there is a limit to how much fresh edamame one can snack on - mine happens to be 8 oz! Over the past 2 weeks, my appetite every evening for fresh steamed edamame pods has been gaining steam until I reached critical mass last night as I sat down to snack on 1/2 lb of these yummy healthy snacks! I usually feel pretty energetic when I eat these, not so this time...I was stuffed to the brim and felt as if I had just finished a Thanksgiving dinner! As of tonight I am backing it down to 4-5 oz which was my harvest the first time. Who knew? Things like that I always thought you could eat for hours and not get full!

On the same front, my second crop of Beer Friend Edamame from Territorial Seed Co. just sprouted today. I was worried because of the extreme temps we have been having, but up they came anyways, along with some heirloom black radish, carrots, Heatwave Lettuce, pole beans, and a "mystery crop"! See photo below:

Not sure if you can see it very well, but all along the right side are hundreds of seedlings! I planted herbs in the spring that never grew, but just pulled out some dill a week ago that had gone to seed. I'm thinking dill, but you never know, lol!! I will let them stay until I figure out what they are at least!

On to the weather: wow! After 2 solid weeks of heat indexes in the 100's, last night our area got twice the amount of rain we usually get in a hurricane! Downtown received 7.25 inches in one hour!!!!! Unbelievable! What makes this even more crazy is that everything flooded and came to a standstill. Really makes me nervous to think of what will happen when, not if, we get 'the big one'...hurricane that is. Tidewater, VA is a group of 7 cities pretty much surrounded by water - the Chesapeake Bay and tributaries. The only way out if evacuated is through one of our many bridge-tunnels that take us under the water and points west and north of here. Last night they were all closed since the tunnels filled up with rainwater. Looks like investing in a good johnboat is a better preparation to take than planning on getting out by car, lol! We try and chuckle about it around here cuz, well...what else can we do?!

And this is just plain fun for all ages:

remember one of the residents of my Black Swallowtail Daycare?

Below is a Black Swallowtail in late pupa stage! There are about 15 in the 1st instar stage, a few full grown caterpillars, and this is the only pupa that I can see in the plant, but we have 10-15 adult butterflies cruising about the garden too. This is all going on in a large deck pot of peppers and parsley right outside my back door. I can see the pupa from my computer, so I am hoping I can catch a video of it emerging if I am really lucky! This plant combination seems to work well since they feed on the parsley and simply hang their "pupa strings" (lol) from the thicker pepper stems. The pic is a bit dark, but if you look closely, you can see it's markings through the case, this one is very, very ready to make an entrance soon!

I found the below images at http://www.pbase.com/rcm1840/lifecycleofblsw--- these pictures are a beautifully simple display of the lifecycle of the Black Swallowtail!

First Instar Stage	Second Instar Stage	Third Instar Stage
Full Grown Caterpillar	Pre-Pupa Stage	Early Pupa Stage
Late Pupa Stage	Recently Emerged Butterfly	Adult Butterfly with Chrysalis Shell
Black Swallowtail-Male	Black Swallowtail-Female

Hot & Steamy Weekend

I got a bit accomplished this weekend, although it was so hot outside that for the most part the kids & I stayed indoors and just read books or watched movies! Friday morning we went to go pick blueberries at a local farm. All of them went straight into the freezer Friday afternoon since I didn't have any energy to do much with them afterwards! I am contemplating whipping up some smoothies this evening for the kids after dinner, since now we have a good selection of frozen fruit in the freezer now!

Blueberries

Here are the blueberry-pickin kids...shortly before we left all sweaty and covered in mosquito bites!

If you are in need of a really good muffin recipie, try this one out for 'To Die For Blueberry Muffins'...it's my favorite and has a yummy crumb topping!

Not much in the way of harvest this weekend, thankfully, since I wanted to plant my two beds that were cleared of squash/cuke vines and strawberries. Into one bed I planted a second crop of Edamame. One bed is clearly not enough to both snack on every evening and have enough to freeze, so I am hoping the second crop will keep me in finger foods all winter. Into the other bed went a hodge-podge planting of some carrots, heirloom radishes, HeatWave Lettuces (we'll see how much heat they can stand, lol!), and a couple of pole beans. It was actually a relief to do something that didn't involve tomatoes for a change! Our heat indexes have been in the 100's daily and look to continue that way for at least the next week, so it has been hard to get motivated. I found that waking up early and going out and going out again after dinner is the only way, although to do this requires massive amounts of mosquito repellent! Saturday evening was nice, a few friends (all military spouses with absentee husbands!) came over for a few drinks. It's always nice to be able to complain out loud and be in the company of others who understand! Other than that, not much is going on here that is blog-worthy! I just looked at my temp gauge stuck at 113 in the shade...I'm going back to my stack of books! Before I go, here is a pic of my dinner the other night after digging potatoes. Not exactly well-balanced, but yummy nonetheless! I threw some tomato wedges on the plate so my plate wouldn't look so starch-laden! What can I say? - I'm an Irish girl, a plate of nothing but potatoes suits me fine!

Rose Finn Fingerling potatoes with fresh parsley, salt & pepper, butter with Brandywine wedges sprinkled with Kosher salt....yum, think I will have this again tonight!

Will the real Irish Gardeners please stand up?!

Today was potato day! With names like my family has, I was afraid to be downright embarrassed if I came up empty handed, so you can imagine my delight when we discovered there was indeed actual potatoes growing in my experimental potato-straw cages! (Although remember when my husband torched my potato cages? This was going to be my excuse if we came up empty handed today :))

Here is a photo taken before we started. I have 3 potato cages filled with straw. The vines died back a couple of weeks ago on the two cages on the left. The one on the right is still green so Sailor/Farmer/Husband will be home to experience the fun when that one is ready.

Everything else went pretty much as the way I had planned. In theory, I would simply lift the chicken wire off, and the straw would spill out revealing the potatoes. It actually worked! I wasn't even sure what to expect as far as yield since this is the first time I have grown potatoes, but I decided I would be happy if I got at least a couple of dinners worth.

Here are the kids sifting through the straw. Along with potatoes they found 1 slug, 2 toads, and a couple of worms. Nothing too scary was in there! (I have to admit I was a little freaked at what might be living in there due to the air pockets in the straw and close proximity to the compost piles!)

The yield: 4.03 lbs Rose Finn Fingerling Potatoes!

I know my husband will be reading this from afar and wondering if he won't get to taste them - don't worry...there is one more potato cage waiting just for you! I plan on steaming or boiling a few tonight with a little butter, salt & pepper and fresh parsley, yum!

Not so impressive: below are the raspberries I found after I ripped the squash vines off my berry patch!

I did get a little bit accomplished today besides the potatoes so it was a good day. Although the humidity was 80 some percent, the temps stayed in the 80's and the sun stayed behind the clouds, so I was able to rip out my strawberry bed before the thunderstorms chased me inside and now I have 2 empty raised beds! (My area is known for all types of berries, so I will leave future strawberries up to the pick-your-own farms, since they take up so much space all year for a small harvest window). Oh, the possibilities of empty beds....you gardeners know what I am talking about! I can't wait to sit down with my seeds and catalogs and plan for the next season. A planning session and fresh ideas are just what I need to lift my spirits during this oppressive heat wave.

Tomorrow morning starts with a date with friends to pick blueberries at the farm. Gotta love blueberries, they are so easy! Pick, eat, freeze whole. SIMPLE!

Garden of Life....And Death!

Last night I waited until temps dropped to 90, lol...and headed out to harvest and do some chores. The bounty was huge and every bit of it went in to work with my next door neighbor! Without hubby home to help eat eggplant, there wasn't much I could do with it, and the jalapenos and tomato processing this week would have surely turned me against gardening forever! This week has been tough, the temps alone I may be able to handle but the humidity outside has had me in a funk all week, and the next 7 days looks to be more of the same. I noticed the other day that it was so thick and hazy I had trouble making out the tomato beds at the other end of the yard! Selling at the Farmer's Market is not an option this week either, since I would have to tow the kids along and selling out of the back of the car with 2 whiny kids and 100 degree temps doesn't sound like "making good choices" to me, lol! Last night alone netted 3 lbs cherry tomatoes, 3.1 lbs jalapenos, 7 lbs eggplant, 13 oz bell peppers, 4 lbs cucumbers, & 9 lbs Heirloom tomatoes. Hopefully my neighbors' co-workers will appreciate them more than I can this week!

What did pick up my spirits a bit was the Edamame bed. Note to self: grow more of this! These plants are ready to be harvested this week and are the most well behaved little garden dwellers I have ever seen! They stay in their boundaries, can be crammed into a bed and produce tons of yummy pods per plant.

Below is a close-up of the 'Beer Friend' Edamame:

Other than the harvest, I finally got around to pulling out the dead sunflowers. They are getting a new life in my "lazy girl's birdfeeder", lol!

This evening's death and destruction took the form of bacterial wilt in my squash bed! You may remember how gorgeous the bed looked a few weeks ago...well, tonight they looked horrid and along with that were covered in cucumber beetle eggs, and they had jumped the bed and taken over my berry patch as well. I ripped out the lot of them and packed it all in the trash can. Now I have an empty bed, which I admit is exciting stuff.

Here are the 3 Hokkaido Squash that were in the bed, immature but pretty nonetheless. I was really looking forward to this since I have never grown squash and am not a big fan, but so many people rave about it that this was going to be THE YEAR I was going to choose, grow, and learn to love it! I will still try some, but will have to get it at the Farmer's Market. I ripped out the cukes from that bed too since the bugs were moving in and I already have plenty of pickles put away. I have one lone cuke vine over on my fence that will give me just enough for salads.

Now I need to research what I can put in that bed that won't be susceptible to the wilt virus that's in the soil. I will definitely grow squash again but now that I know how many bugs, etc enjoy it and how invasive it is I will plant it near the fence away from my raised beds where I can control it more effectively. The best lessons learned are from experience, right??

This made the sweaty mosquito-ridden evening bearable. Fresh picked Edamame pods cooked and chilled and sprinkled with Kosher salt and a glass of homebrew. Delicious! Now I know what I can do at night when the kids are in bed this winter instead of eating Cheese Nips and other garbage for snacking! I will be eating and freezing as much as possible and am even planting a second bed full tomorrow! Go SOYBEANS! Nature's perfect snack!

As an afterthought: I decided to add a counter to see just how much produce we are harvesting and NOT using for future planning purposes! Not that I don't love to be able to give away veggies, but it's something that would seem valuable to know!

Well, it's about TIME!

My first decent harvest of heirloom tomatoes! Of course it happens now, when I have no interest in being outside due to the heat indexes in the 100's and high humidity. Couple that with the fact that hubby is gone and I now have lawn mowing to contend with as well. Go figure! Looks like canning season has arrived:

This Brandywine weighed in at over 1 lb!

Finnegan making tomato & basil sauce

That's all for today, I just finished mowing the lawn and am covered in grass, dirt, sweat, and mosquito bites. Time to hit the shower, put kiddos to bed, and veg out for a few hours. Looks to be about 30 eggplant to deal with tomorrow, they will have to go to the farmer's market since I am tired of them and they are pretty much impossible to preserve! Good night all.