Saturday, June 30, 2012

Garden Notes Jun 30

Small but steady pea harvest -- like 20 pods every two days. 
Greek oregano dried in the attic, stripped it and chopped the leaves in the blender today, stored away.
Picked the last of the currants.  The red currant bush only yielded about 2 cups total.  The black currant bushes (3) lost a lot of the berries.  they just fell off half ripe.  Maybe a quart total.  Made some jelly though, a cup and a half from 2 cups of berries and a lot of sugar.  Used the French recipe -- equal amount of sugar and berry pulp by weight.  Took all the netting off this week.
Thinned the carrots yesterday and pulled a few 4 inch long specimens worth munching on. 
Lovely borage plant blooming.
Good lot of black raspberries ripe on the north side of the lilacs -- picked a couple of cups. 
Ate a serving of day lily pods this week.
Lots of time this week clearing the rosa rugosa patch.
Got the three New Zealand white rabbits tuesday, seem to be settling in well.  Male born April 4th, females May 6th.  Bought the 2 hutches at the Putnam farmers coop, wire with a wooden compartment on the side.  they have a bad habit of using the compartment for their litter box, particularly the male. 
Found that one of the kiwi plants had sent out runners that then rooted, tried to transplant some over to the sunny fence along the road.  We'll see if it takes.
Thinned the upper tomatoes this week to one Big Red heirloom and one Bolseno plant.  Nice oregano patch up there between them, from seeds planted this spring. 
Chestnut tree is in bloom.
Had about an inch and a half of rain early in the week, weather steadily hotter, upper 80s now.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Garden Notes

Lots of black currants and some red ones too.  White ones about picked out.  Got about 2 quarts of white.
Cabbage plants starting to get eaten.  Something likes those tender leaves in the middle.
79 at 8:30 am, muggy as can be.
Pole beans and bush beans sprouted.  Watered that patch.
Picked first 3 pea pods (English).
Set up the fertigation bucket next to the first currant bush (5 gallon bucket with small hole at the bottom, delivers a lot of water straight to the plant's base).
Stuck the stray sunflower seedling in near one of the currant bushes.
Garlic scapes are ready.
Watered the recently planted gourd/melon/etc seedlings.
Weeded the carrot patch.
Pulled a swiss chard plant to eat and to make more room around the others.
Watered the black locust seedlings, but about half way down the hill the soil becomes damp enough so not needed.  One looks great, the rest are struggling to get established.
Red runner beans are starting to flower and have made it to the fence to climb on.
Fruit trees seem happy with their recent fertigation treatment.
No rain last 8 days, when there was 1/4 inch (jun 12/13).  The week before that, about 1/2 inch.


Friday, April 6, 2012

Local food


Today the moon goes full at 3:19 pm so, according to my spring fast rules, lunch had to be locally sourced. Local potatoes have run out, so I headed out to dig up some Jerusalem artichokes.

They all have these black spots, with red fungus or something staining the flesh nearby. I cut all that off.

Then I headed down to the root cellar and got a cabbage that had been there since maybe November.

It had held up well.

I chopped some up with the sunchokes and steamed it all for a bit, which nicely filled out my meal of local chicken and winter squash.

I really just want to open a can of soup and have some bread and butter, but this definitely forces me to be more creative.