Belated Birthday Addition to the Garden

Even though I have tons of plant/bug stuff to post from this summer's backyard experiments, I'm pre-empting them all to introduce to you our newest member of the garden, Fred.

Fred

Fred is mini-moai.  About 3 feet tall (4 feet including hair).  We set him up in the back right corner of the backyard in the most shade.  He looks a little lonely there now, but eventually we'll find the right combination of plants and rocks to give him company.  Meanwhile, he helps balance the interest in the yard.

I don't know if I can describe how satisfied I am to have him watching over the estate. I've always been a little fascinated by the story of Easter Island. Years ago, when Mom came to visit, I dragged her to the heart of the Texas Hill Country  to visit our version of Easter Island heads.

This Hill Country moai could be Fred's big brother!

Johanna & Mom near Hunt, Texas

Which, for no apparent reason, is also the home of Stonehenge II.

But back to Fred.

So I'd seen him and his compatriots at the Natural Gardener last spring, thought he was cute and told Dan about him in passing.  Unbeknownst to me, while I was at Mom's in Florida, Dan drove down to the nursery to pick him up, but he was gone! Well, when I got home Dan presented me with a beautiful bird bath and told me the sad story.

Unwilling to give up without a good moai because of a missed clearance sale, I drove the 23 miles to the Natural Gardener to see what I could excavate. Despite the fact that these moai pottery did not create the same enthusiasm in the employees as the pottery did in me, I was able to find the stash of leftover moai hidden among the other pots. Huzzah! I got back home to Dan as soon as I could to tell him the news. We packed up the bird bath and traded it in for Fred.

Feel free to stop by and have your picture taken with him.

A Summer of Okra

As you may know, I became a fan of okra a few years ago when I started getting it fresh from the farm and cooking it myself.  Turns out, my fears of the much-touted slime factor were misguided. Same too, my expectations that it had to be deep-fried or nothing. In three years, I've gone from avoiding this vegetable in the kitchen to napping under it's shade in my backyard. Weird. But cool.

In 2008 I got my okra from Johnson's Backyard Garden CSA, and professed my ignorance as to what to do with it. I found out that okra is popular in Indian recipes, and since I wasn't a fan of deep-frying in my kitchen, I gave them a shot. They were freakin' awesome tasting. I made them with each bundle of the lady finger I got form the CSA that summer and fall. The only down side was that the recipes were more involved than I was used to making. Cooking okra took a lot time. Worth it, but not always practical. Sometimes the okra went bad in the fridge before I had a chance to use it. Boo.  I wish I'd thought about pickling then....

So by 2009, I decided okra was a pretty cool vegetable. It also had the distinction of handling our Texas summer heat, so I planted 3 okra plants in my 3x3 foot square-foot garden box. I gave each tiny seedling a whole square foot as was recommended somewhere on the internet. The results: unimpressive, but successful. The plants were plagued by aphids, but the buggers were kept in check by knocking them off daily either with water from the hose or my hand. The little pests didn't seem to hurt the okra that was produced, and we ate it when we could supplement our 'harvest' with the okra from the CSA.  The plants grew about three feet tall eventually and produced maybe 3 okra a week. (Hence, the air-quotes around harvest.) I noticed that the plants, while easily a foot wide, were pretty spindly. I resolved to plant them more densely the next time.

In 2010, I planted 16 okra seeds in my upgraded 4x8 foot square-foot garden. I planted them with corn, squash and peas in a modified, failed three-sisters garden plan. I'd heard that corn needed a lot of fertilizer to be successful, so I began fertilizing weekly with seaweed extract almost immediately. It was my first committed effort to regularly fertilizing since starting my garden experiments. Well, the corn never really produced anything edible and died half-way through the summer.  The okra plants had a different experience, which I'd like show in pictures.

2 feet tall plant, okra next to serrano pepper

4 feet tall plants

about 6 feet tall

I'm guessing 8 feet here

Long story short, I've got some okra plants that are about 8 feet tall now. In the afternoon, I can lay down on my garden storage bench by the fence and daydream through the branches. The one green okra plant has a 'trunk' now that's almost and inch and a half in diameter. The burgundy okra plants are slimmer, as are the fruit the produce, but still impressive (at least to me).

Lessons learned:

• Fertilize your plants often, at least while they're small and not yet setting fruit.
• Aphids only seem like a big problem when the plant is 2 feet tall
• Planting both green and burgundy okra can produce some odd-looking, hybrid fruit. I think I'll stick to just one color next year so I can save seeds
• Okra plants are pretty flexible, even when they're big. If a tropical storm is coming through, I should use stakes to help support them
• Even if a plant bends way over, it can still produce okra
• Plant okra towards the north so that the rest of the box can still get some sun
• Burgundy okra is too long and skinny to be a good pickling okra, as it's too tall to fit in the jars without squishing. Use the green okra from the CSA for that.

Our harvests don't require air-quotes to describe any more. We have to keep picking them every 2-3 days to keep them from getting too big and tough. We've been able to give some to friends and still have enough to enjoy ourselves (we're still getting some from the CSA as well). Our okra recipe repertoire has expanded to included tasty, yet quick side dishes. It's been a summer of okra, and it makes me kinda proud.

Unexpected Gifts from the Rain

So after getting almost 9 inches of rain this week, the grass is crazy long, the fences are still drying out, and there are a few less birds visiting the fountain.  This morning I took a Town Lake walk with M and saw remnants of the flooding there: weed-draped benches, beached docks, and long expanses of muddy muck where the trail used to be. When I got home I took the time to walk around the park in my backyard and see how things were drying out.

The okra plants that had fallen/bent way over under the force of the wind and rain had start to grow in an "s" shape back towards the sky.  I found more twine and posts to force them upright. Then I picked a plate of okra.  Those plants are hardy.

The tomato plant is draped way down over the basil and pepper plants. I have a trip to Lowe's planned today to see if I can find some better supports.  For the record, still not cool enough at night for tomatoes, but I'm not giving up early this year.  I'll keep that plant going until the first freeze before I give up!

There were also a few surprises.  This volunteer didn't look like the usual suspects when I saw it on Thursday, so I let it grow.

Turns out it was a rain lilly, and more popped up in the lawn and herb garden within the next couple days.

Funny that they don't crop up from being watered with the sprinkler.  You definitely need a good soaking before they emerge.  Not sure how they propagate but I'll leave them be where I can so that they have a chance to come again after the next big rain.

Moving on. In the back of the yard near the strawberry patch everything looked normal. Then I thought I saw  a pot of gold coins tipped over near the rosemary. Turns out, the jack o'lantern that I'd dumped by the fence to rot last year had a heck of a lot of seeds.

I doubt they'll grow into anything, but I suppose I should still clean them up.  Or maybe see if the squirrels do...
And finally there were these little surprises sprouting up from dried husks of ancient purple alien flowers.

Artichokes back from the dry dust of summer! The one on the top left is really close to the thyme (upper left corner). I hope the thyme learns to grow northwest because it's going to be fighting for sunlight in another couple months if that artichoke continues to grow. The artichoke sprout from the second plant is not looking as strong, but now that I know it's there, I'm going to make sure to water it regularly.  Hopefully these plants don't need 8 inches of water a week to grow, but it's still exciting to see them after months of nothing.

Tropical Storm Hermine

I went out to check the rain gage this morning and measured 7.92 inches.  This amount is since it started raining on Monday.  I didn't check the gage yesterday b/c I didn't want to get soaked. Lazy science! I didn't even realize we had a tropical system in the area, but I had heard in passing that it was going to rain Tuesday and Wednesday, so I shut off the automatic drip irrigation to the garden.

But 7.92 + inches in three days? I'm a little concerned about root rot in my raised bed now.  If it doesn't rain too much more today, and is able to dry out quickly, perhaps this isn't a big concern.

I hope the pecan tree in front is enjoying this good soaking, though.  It was showing signs of heat stress, according to my amateur research and opinion.  Might not be a good year for pecans (again). Bummer.

Another problem with the rain is falling down plants.  The okra plants were the worse hit.  Most of them were over five feet tall at the beginning of the week and this morning, about half were laying completely on their sides.  The main stem was still pliable and they hadn't uprooted themselves, so I bent them back up and then tied some twine around the whole lot of them.  Now they're squished together in places because it's still raining and I only hastily wrapped them together, but I hope the triage helps. Between me and the rain, a lot of okra blooms are on the ground. Might be the end of okra season for Andromeda this week, but it was a fun ride.

Catching up: Spring review of artichokes, ladybugs, and alien purple flowers

Last year I tried growing some bare root artichoke plants that I got from the Natural Gardener. Although the plants sprouted, they never got very big and died as soon as the heat hit in May. This year I tried again, but planted transplants instead of bare root subjects. Now, perhaps I also paid more attention to them, watering and fertilizing more regularly, or perhaps it was just the breed of plant, but this spring, my two artichoke plants really took off.

(ps that's a baby dill plant in the far, upper left.  More on that guy later)

Though I got the transplants at the same time from the same nursery, the one on the left decided to grow tall and the one of the right decided to grow short. The above picture shows them young and happy.  I found out later that artichoke plants can get pretty ratty as they grow, and require pruning to remove dead/dying leaves  that the roly-polys love to chomp on.

And you know what other bugs love artichoke plants? Aphids!

I sprayed some neem oil on the plants, but by the time I saw these buggers, I thought for sure the infestation would win.  But then I saw a new form of foe.

Ugh! I felt like the worse gardener ever! I was totally powerless to help my plant.  But then, I put aside my panic and did a little research.  Turns out, these guys are 2 different forms of developing ladybugs.

(Sorry. That's the best shot I have of one.)  So the ladybugs had come to munch all the aphids.  Yay! The system works!  Really.  After less then a week I never saw any more aphids on the plants.  I was amazed b/c watching the ladybugs, I never actually saw them eat anything.  In fact aphids would just walk right up to a ladybug and then walk away unscathed.  Well, at least as far as I could see.  Apparently, they were way scathed when I wasn't looking.

And then came the first hints of artichoke.

I was totally stoked. And come to find that a plant can produce more than one artichoke at a time.

In my case, the secondary artichokes were never as big as the first one. Plus, the first one wasn't that big, but it was tasty.

Dan and I had to do some research about how to prepare and eat them (read: Alton Brown cookbook from Christmas) but it was a fun experiment.

Because of the smallish size of the artichokes we were picking, we thought we'd wait longer to see if they would get bigger.  In this case, the just started to flower.  But that's okay too.  As artichoke eating by nature involves a lot of butter eating and it was probably time for us to cut back on that for the spring.  Here's a photo sequence of the flowering:

Overall we got three purple flowers, but the heat is really taking a toll on the plants.  Most of the leaves are yellow and shriveled and the flowers look like someone singed them with a lighter.  I don't know if the plants will survive until next year (it's not likely in texas) but if not, I'll be looking for transplants to grow in 2011. And this time I think I'll give them more room to grow.  They start small but become very big additions to the garden.

Experiments in Potatoes

I bought some frou-frou potatoes a couple months ago. The kind that come in the special burlap bag so that the spuds are fooled into thinking they've never left the ground. These were platinum-members-only potatoes. So I couldn't be surprised when they began to sprout before I had a chance to use them.

But instead of being annoyed at my wasteful spending and inefficient meal-planning, I decided to try to grow them.  I don't have room in the garden for the type of mounding that's recommended, but in my research I ran across the concept of potato grow bags. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures from the very beginning, but here's a shot from a couple weeks ago:

 

I started out with 2 inches of dirt and laid the cut-up sprouted potatoes on top.  Then, as the plants grew a couple inches, I mounded more dirt on them until the plant was barely showing.  The bag pretty quickly filled up. And the picture this morning looks like this:

 

(Hand is for scale and to show-off a new OPI color I found)

I think now I need to wait until the flowers die off before opening the velcro flap on the backside of the bag and checking for my bounty.  The plants look pretty happy, but who knows what's happening in the dirt?  More to come....

First try at pressure canning

So I bought a pressure canner last Fall but hadn't had the gumption to use it until this past weekend.  I had cooked a stewing chicken bought from a local farm and decided to make and can some chicken broth.  The flavor for the broth was loosely based off of a recipe by Hutson's Herb Garden cookbook (she's the author that introduced 'salad burnet' to our gin & tonic repertoire.)

The broth isn't the most perfect broth/stock I've ever had, but it's good enough to flavor rice cooking anyway.  The big leap of confidence came in canning the stock. First, the canner had to come out of the box.

Nice and shiny, isn't it? : )

So the next step is to take the broth that had been simmering with herbs and onions for about an hour and a half and strain it.  (That 's how it ended up in the glass bowl. )  Then, after cleaning the pint jars and resting them in hot water, we ladelled the broth into the canning jars, leaving about an inch of head space.

We were able to fill about 8 pints, but there was only room for 7 in the canner.  (The other went straight to the fridge.)

We filled the canner with 3 inches of water before putting in the jars, but then felt like the canner was too full. So we scooped some out so that the jars weren't completely covered.

Then we shut the canner and started it up.  I don't have any pictures of this process, because I was too nervous with that thing hissing and spitting on the stovetop to get the camera.  Dan took a video of it for a little bit, but I was too busy being crabby and worrying.  You see, this canner was different than the canner that I had seen in my canning class.  And it wasn't doing the thing I was sure (through word of mouth and reading) that a canner was supposed to do. It wasn't making a soothing 'rocking' or clicking sound.  The pressure weight was spinning furiously at first and then barely moving if we turned down heat.

Dan thought it pretty funny a the time.  I think it's funny now, but I couldn't see the humor then. That's a shame, 'cause having a live tiger spitting at you from your stove top is pretty dang funny.

But moving on.  We lasted through 20 tense minutes and then cut the heat. We let the canner cool for about 40 minutes until the safety lock allowed us to open the lid.  We move the jars to a wooden cutting board to cool.

The jars continued to boil for a while.  (Being under 10 psi for 20 minutes made the contents pretty hot.) I also noticed that the all the jars had a residue of some kind of salt/lime.  Probably because the water here in central Texas is a little on the hard side. Next time, I'll put a little vinegar in the canning water to see if that cuts this down some.

All the seals took and I now have 7 pints of broth in the pantry.  We made fish soup last night with the straight-to-refrigerator pint and it tasted alright, so I have hopes that these seven pints will be useful. I deemed this canning escapade a success. But let me also say, I understand why broth in the store is packaged in opaque boxes or cans.  Broth is not pretty in a jar.  But it's a useful pantry staple and it feels good to have made some from local fixings.