First Hard Freeze

I hobbled out to the backyard to give the strawberry plants and the rest of the garden a good soaking before tonight's big freeze.  The lime tree also got a soaking and rinse, as that's what I remember the Florida farmers doing to keep the leaves of the tree at 32 degrees or more.  Hopefully, my yard's little micro-climate will stay out of the 20's tonight to give all my little plants a chance.

Time will tell!

November in the Garden

It's a drizzly day today and seemed like a perfect day to take pictures of the garden.  First, though, I had to do a little bug defending.  The squash bugs are persistent but don't seem to be taking over or causing too much damage. I knock them off with a streamed mixture of molasses/citrus oil. Not sure if it kills or just annoys them, but there are definitely not as many bugs as there were weeks ago.

Another nemesis that I met this week is some kind of caterpillar on the cabbage.  I think it's an imported cabbage worm, as they are the bugs that are often described as leaving a trail of 'poop' everywhere.

(Blech) Picked a live caterpillar off the chinese cabbage this morning, then sprinkled the plant (and the neighboring broccoli and cauliflower plants) with some BT.









And speaking of broccoli, one of the three plants I have is starting to show.

(That's the BT dust sprinkled on it.)

By the numbers, I'm having much better success with transplanted vegetables from the garden centers than plants from seeds I start.  But my biggest success from seeds has to be the Small Wonder spaghetti squash I planted from seed. This is my second year growing this variety, and I love them.  Here are the three plants I have growing up a frame. 

That's a basil plant in the foreground.  It was growing there when I first planted the seeds.  Despite the fact that the squash plants now tower over the basil, the basil still seems happy, so I haven't pulled it.

My other plants in the concurbita family aren't producing fruit. The pumpkin plants continue to bloom but only boy flowers as shown below, so no pumpkins.

Other fun stuff growing, Swiss Chard and carrots.

Now I've got to find a way to keep the squirrels from digging in the beds.  They don't seem to be eating the plants, or even burying nuts.  But they are wreaking a little havoc with some of the smaller seedlings I have started.  Sure, chicken wire around the boxes would probably do the trick, but I've been too lazy to measure and buy some. I guess I'm waiting to see if nature will just help the squirrels figure out that there's no reason to dig in the garden because I haven't stashed any peanuts there!

Pints of Pickled Peppers

I wanted to take a break from cheese-making failures, so I turned my sights on canning this weekend. Specifically, I am trying to preserve the bumper crop of hot and sweet peppers we've collected over the last few weeks from our farm box. Some of the jalapenos had already gone bad at the bottom of the veggie box, but we still had a cookie tray full of them. Too many to enjoy in omelets or salsas in the coming weeks.

Plus, ever since I bailed on canning the tomato sauce earlier this summer, I felt like a Generation X weeny. What would Mrs. Reynold's think?? So I was determined to try again before the season changed. Peppers seemed like another easy intro.

I tried 2 different recipes for pickling. One is a refrigerator recipe, so although the peppers are in jars, they'll be also kept at a safe temperature for storage. The second recipe was simpler, and is supposedly safe for storing jars at room temperature. But I have to admit, I have no confidence that I haven't just created a nursery for Clostridium botulinum. Anyway, I've got a few weeks before giving them a try. Maybe there's a botulinum home-test for home-canning?

Here's the recipe for the refrigerator recipe.
http://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/2009/03/michael-symons-pickled-chillis.html

I had to use rosemary, because I didn't have marjoram handy. And I didn't have sherry vinegar, so I used rice vinegar. That one should be ready to try by Thanksgiving.

Here's the non-refrigerator recipe.
http://www.graspr.com/videos/Pickled-Peppers-1

The question is, how much do I trust Rita Heikenfeld and the fact that she said we didn't have to boil the peppers after canning? Is a 3 to 1 vinegar to sugar ratio acidic enough?

Well, there's time to worry about that in a few weeks or maybe in January. For now I have some kinda pretty experiments happening.

Baltimore Oriole in Austin

There was quite the buzz around the house this morning when I got a couple glimpses of this guy at the feeder.

Yeah, I know. The picture quality is sasquatch-esqe, but my little, point-and-shoot telephoto was maxed out. After a little research, I found out that the Baltimore Oriole migrates through Texas in August-September. However, Austin would be on the westernmost edge of the flight path, so having this guy come visit was a real treat.
Hope he ate some squash vine borer moths on his way through....

August in the Garden

Not much big band excitement in the garden these days as we're all buckling down and surviving the hot, dry Austin summer. But there's lots of little happenings that keep me getting out into the back yard.

I Planted some Small Wonder spaghetti squash and some buttercup squash a month ago. I'm going to train the squash vines up a trellis again to save space. Amazing how the little squash tendrils find things to climb on. I saw this the other morning:
The basil plant is a leftover companion from a tomato plant that couldn't take the heat and bit it. I left the basil there because he looked happy. And now the winter squash plant has a big buddy to hold on to, at least until it's tall enough to reach the first rung of the cage.

And speaking of biting it in the heat, the buttercup squash were not doing too well in Austin's afternoon oven, so I went to the garden store yesterday and bought a random amount of 40% shade cloth. Why random? Because I didn't want to leave without shade cloth, but I hadn't really figured out how much I needed or how I would install it. But this is just a practice garden, right? So in the morning humidity, Dan and I came up with this:
The plant supports were leftover from something, hence the asymmetry. But it's getting the job done for the time being. Pretty sure the structure won't stand up to a storm or stiff wind, but with this high pressure system camped over us, I don't think I have to worry about that. Dan's picking up a few more supports at H.D. today so we can protect the other box as well. Then I'll feel better about starting up my new crop of Fall veggies in the next couple weeks.

And speaking of Fall veggies, I planted some pumpkins seeds in early July in an experimental plot in the back of the yard. None of the first seeds sprouted. I don't think they were getting enough water from the sprinklers. So I started a new batch. About half of those have sprouted and for the most part look pretty good.
Dan's not sure they'll get enough sun back there. I'm more concerned about squash vine borer (SVB) attack. Experiment or not, it was disappointing to have those little turd moths ruin my zucchini plants earlier this summer. The white tent behind the back plant is my ghetto attempt at a row cover. One woman at the nursery suggested covering the plants in the evening and at night when the SVB is more active. I'll try covering one mound and spray the other mound with a pepper-based deterrent and see what happens. I don't have row covers for the winter squash so will just try deterrents on those. Perhaps with a little more vigilance, on top of my limited but growing experience, I'll have squash a plenty this fall.

Thirty Pounds of Tomatoes

After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle last month I was inspired to try canning my own tomato sauce. I bought 30 pounds of tomatoes from my CSA farm and planned a whole day to play in the kitchen. Not to spoil the story, but I have to say, things did not go smoothly. The best I can say is that lessons were learned, and there's something in the freezer that I'll eat in December or January and remember these 100+ degree days of summer....

My first goof was thinking that I had 40 pounds of tomatoes instead of 30. I didn't realize the misstep until much later in the day. Meanwhile, I froze 10 pounds of tomatoes whole. That left 20 pounds of tomatoes for cleaning, peeling, and seeding.

Here's what 20 pounds looks like:
And cleaning, peeling, and seeding takes much more time than you think. The novelty wore off a few hours into the day, but here's a picture when I was still giggly with the spirit of adventure:

So, my next miscalculation was the size of a pot you would need to create 10 quarts of tomato sauce. Fortunately, I was only dealing with 20 lbs instead of the 30 lbs called by the recipe. My biggest pot was only six quarts, and the amount of puree from 20 lbs was barely enough to fit:

Ah well. Sometimes the Universe just helps you out. At this point, I realized that my inexperience/ineptitude in the kitchen, mixed with the threat of botulism, were probably good enough reasons to go with freezing instead of canning. Plus, another benefit of freezing meant that I could throw in leftover veggies from the bottom of my icebox so they wouldn't go bad when I went on my week-long vacation. Problem(s) solved!

So, with my kitchen ship righted and my new course charted, I was ready to create some yummy Italian-style, ad hoc marinara. The reducing started early afternoon .... and took forever.

First, I was just trying to reduce it enough to get all the puree to fit in the pot, and then I remembered that I was supposed to be adding spices! So add them I did. I tried to act quickly to make up for lost time... and ended up adding the spices in the correct proportion to the 30 lb recipe, not the 20.

Well, by 9 at night I just decided to call it. The total quantity of sauce was about 4.5 quarts, about half that being spices. But what the heck. I figure I can always 'dilute' the sauce later with store-bought, canned tomato sauce.

(Yes, indeed. When Perfection went out the door, I had to throw Pride with it.)

It's hard to remember that trees are mortal, too

My 4-story gum bumelia had to be removed this week. After half of it broke off in wind storms and another 1/4 was hacked by the power company, it was time for me to say good-bye.

I had a couple pet names for that tree: the Dr. Seuss tree, the squirrel tree, the tree-that's-going-to-fall-and-take-the-transformer-with-it tree, etc.

It costs a lot of money to have a tree removed. On top of that, I hate to see tall trees go, especially when wildlife enjoys it so much! A squirrel family of five was living out of one of the pockets in the tree last year. Of course, the tree wasn't that wide around, so I had to suspect that if 5 squirrels could fit in one hole (and actually climb through the tree out a hole on the other side!) then there probably wasn't much holding this tree up besides my hopes and prayers.

So, I decided the other day to be proactive and remove it.

Oddly enough. Now that it's gone I don't feel the sense of relief or good judgment that I thought I would. I just see a very smooth, 20-inch diameter wood platter where a 4-story squirrel motel once stood. The non-interrupted flow of energy in the yard feels disquieting.

I also think the grass is going to fry this summer with no shade.

I don't know if it's too late to plant a tree for the season, but I'm going to look this weekend for a future replacement. Now that I don't have to worry about a new tree getting squashed by falling timber, I want to start growing a new squirrel motel as soon as possible.

I grew lovely broccoli flowers....

Somehow, I missed the cue that said "Pick the broccoli and eat it" and so I just have these lovely yellow flowers for a winter's worth of watering.

I've got to do a little more research on broccoli. In the meantime, I think I'll start some carrots...

I pride myself on knowing what my readers want.

You want to know what Johanna and I had for dinner last night.

Answer: turkey stroganoff with a side of cauliflower. But not just any cauliflower. Last week, Johanna's CSA provided us with a head of purple cauliflower.


How does one cook up purple cauliflower? We had no idea. We decided to try the old South Beach Diet recipe for fake mashed potatoes, which uses cauliflower, to create purple fake mashed potatoes.

We had no idea how it would turn out: is the cauliflower purple on the inside, or was it just spray-painted by a farmer?

Turns out it was purple through-and-through, as evidenced by how the steaming liquid ended up:

And here's how our meal looked in the end:


Bon Appetit!