Why is Iris (the dog) growling?

This is my first iris of the season.  It finally managed to open up that lovely bloom.  
Yesterday evening I saw on the news that there were frost warnings for my area.  My poor flower!
When I went out with Iris (the dog) this morning, she went into the defensive mode:

Growling, hair on her back standing up.  And why?  

Because I had put Walmart bags over any iris (flower) that was even the tiniest bit opened up.  There was a stiff breeze blowing, which made the bags move.  Iris (the dog) thought we were surrounded by aliens.  Of course, the fact that the wind is blowing means there will be no frost, but I'm not removing the bags until the temperature starts going up.  It's thirty-seven degrees as I type this.  

Iris backed off a little, continuing to growl.  

My green beans are up, so Cliff lent me some old blankets from his shop to lay over them.  

I only have one tomato plant out, so I covered it with a milk jug.  My daughter has saved several of them for me; I'll use them in various ways to protect my tomato plants (when I get more) from frost and stupid robins.  Last year robins literally ate the leaves off my tiny tomato plants.  
Most of the vegetables in my garden are able to stand a frost, or even a freeze.  
In another hour or so I'll remove all the protective devices from my flowers and garden.  

Gardening

Last year I planted parsley, oregano, and basil next to my porch where it would be handy.  I was surprised to find that parsley winters just fine.  Today I cleared a spot near it to plant dill and basil; as I was clearing weeds, I made a delightful discovery:

The oregano came back!  I almost pulled it for a weed, but it looked familiar to me so I smelled a leaf.  Now I'm wondering if last year's basil will do the same.  

The grass had invaded the four-year-old strawberry patch to such an extent that I told Cliff to just mow it all; I started a new patch elsewhere.  He was going to mow it, but when he saw a few blooms he just didn't have the heart to do it.  So I pulled up a lawn chair the other day and pulled grass for about a half-hour.  I suppose we will get a few small berries from it.  

It's looking more like a garden out there!

Out of the weeds

I went out to my weedpatch garden in hopes of finding a tomato or two.  No luck; the vines are healthy and vigorous, but the tomatoes have rotted before they ripened.  Very depressing.  I might have known something new would come along to stifle my tomato-canning plans.
I glanced over the rest of the crabgrass and saw something red gleaming there.  Hmmm.  That's not the tomato patch.
Lo and behold, it was a beautiful, big sweet pepper turned red.  Then I saw a yellow one and a couple of green ones.  I went to get a basket because my hands were pretty full by this point.  The basket says "eight quarts" on the end, but is what I usually call a peck basket.

I'd almost be willing to bet there are that many more out there; you just can't see much for the weeds.  There are hundreds of jalapenos, too, for which I really have little use.  When I ordered a packet of mixed peppers seeds, they were in the mix.  Maybe my daughter would like some of these pretty peppers to grill with their next meal.
I had a little trouble navigating through the pepper plants because the twelve sweet potato slips Cliff planted right after I got home from the hospital have sent out treacherous vines.  Directions said to allow them six feet on each side of the row, which we did.  Those vines must be on steroids, because they've stretched out twice that far!
My cousin who visited last week brought us some huge sweet potatoes which we wasted no time in consuming.  One was so big we had to quarter it to get it to bake in the microwave.  Of course, sweet potatoes continue to grow until frost, but I decided to dig just one hill up and see what I had.  I wasn't expecting much.

Ok, so the huge one my cousin brought us probably weighed more than all these together.  Still, these are some nice sweet potatoes.   Again, it's an eight-quart basket. 
So although I've done nothing but complain about my garden of weeds, we got at least a dozen cabbages, a nice early crop of corn, better radishes than I have raised in years, beets, carrots, and now peppers and sweet potatoes.  I won't go into detail explaining the things that did not do well, since they probably made up 2/3 of the garden.  But hey, I got something.  I'm still undecided about whether to even put forth the effort next year.  But you know, when spring starts beckoning we all go a little crazy.  If only there were a guarantee that I'd get some tomatoes...

What was I thinking?

Perhaps spring fever was the cause, but after successfully dealing with a garden that was small by my old standards for three years, this year I had Cliff plow up another sector in addition to the old plot.  

The weeds, of course, got ahead of me.  The weeds defeated me, and by biting off more than I could chew, I took all the joy out of what had been, for the past three years, a pleasure.  

Next year I'm downsizing.  

Never mind the weeds, I'm also having my usual problems with tomato blight and squash bugs.  

 You can see the blighted plants in this picture.  The melon vines on the right are looking good so far, but they take up so much room!  More room means more places for crabgrass to grow.  

On the left of the tomatoes, I had Cliff plant sweet potatoes the day I got home from the hospital.  I checked to see how much space they should need and instructed Cliff.  I don't know if you can tell it, but they are now growing up the tomato cages, and I can't pick tomatoes without stomping sweet potato vines.  

This is the damage done to my earliest tomatoes by a hailstorm a few weeks ago.  

If you think the weeds and grass in the above garden pictures are bad, it's worse in the other plot.  Yes, I am ashamed and discouraged.  I was so stupid to take on that much.  

Next year will be different, that I will promise.  I want it to be fun again.  I may not even plan on canning or freezing anything, but hopefully I will enjoy my garden and not feel guilt and shame every time I look at it.  

On the plus side, we're having BLT's today.

In the garden

Because of the timing of my surgery four weeks ago, weeds got ahead of me in some areas of the garden.  

For instance, look at the grass and weeds between these two rows of peas.  It hasn't been a total loss; we had a big mess of creamed peas and new potatoes once, and I've frozen a couple of packages of peas.  

Also here, between the two rows of corn.  You can't tell by the picture, but I did hoe the area on the right of these rows this morning.  I hope to get the rest of the grass hoed before rain moves in; it's predicted to hit around noon, and we may get an inch or two.  If it rains and I don't get these rows hoed, those grassy weeds will double in size overnight.  

I had been home from the hospital about two days when we received the dozen sweet potato plants I had ordered in April, so Cliff got stuck with the job of setting them out.  They seem to be doing well, but we won't know how they fare until this fall when frost threatens.  

Little by little, I'm getting the straw mulch on the tomatoes.  

The Asiatic lilies are showing off; the hibiscus and day lilies will soon have their time to bloom.  

Coneflowers will do their thing all summer.  They are such a simple, undemanding posie.  
We're getting plenty of cabbage from the garden, and it won't be long until there are enough zucchini to do something with.  

The state of the garden

This is the new garden, which exists mainly because my tomato plants needed fresh soil to keep the blight in check.  The posts you see are there to hold up cages for the tomatoes.  There are only two rows of tomatoes, and the farthest row doesn't have posts and cages yet.  In the foreground, although they don't show up, I have some cantaloupes and sugar baby watermelons just coming up.   Cliff graciously agreed to till this garden for me today, since grass was taking over.

Here's my first tomato, a little larger than a golf ball.  

My stubborn pea vines haven't been very cooperative at hanging on to the wire I placed there for support.  Behind the peas you can see potato vines; today I dug up four potato plants just so we could have some little new potatoes browned in butter to go along with the catfish we had for lunch.  

We'll be eating cabbage before long; you can see the little holes eaten by cabbage moths, and you can also see the powdery Sevin dust I applied to get rid of them.  

The red cabbage is a little behind the other kind, but it's looking good.  

Beets are looking good; I planted a type that is cylindrical, rather than round.  I'm ready for some borscht.  It's been too long!

The largest carrots are about as big around as my pinkie finger, so it won't be long before we're using them.  

Here's the strawberry patch, where I've been spending time every day.  Cliff's sister also has access to the berries.  We're having strawberries on our cereal every morning, and strawberry shortcake for dessert daily.  I've also put several bags in the freezer.  


I'll be glad when I have more energy, and am able to maneuver around the garden without my knee swelling and aching.  

Swap meets, broken purchases, and gardening

That's about the extent of my life at present.  Yesterday we wanted a destination for our motorcycle ride, and there was a swap meet sponsored by an antique tractor club at Platte City; seemed like a good idea.  
Friends, if your husband messes around with old tractors and is going to a swap meet sixty-five miles from home, do not ride your motorcycle.  There were all kinds of "man toys" there, most of them pretty big and heavy.  
Cliff bought an older drill motor, which was no big deal; it fit in the trunk of the motorcycle.  And then he found a big electric hoist and started salivating.  
"How much do you think it would cost?" I asked.  
"Oh, around $500 at least."  
About that time the owner of this particular batch of junk approached, and Cliff said, "How much for that hoist?"  
"Well, there's a story about that," the guy said.  And he went on to explain that it didn't quite work right, and said he'd take a hundred bucks for it.  
This is the sort of challenge Cliff loves because he might be able to get it working; although at $100, it's somewhat of a risk.  Of course there was no way of getting it home on the Gold Wing.  So Cliff gave the man some money to hold it and we'll go after it today in the car.; you know, because gas is so cheap and all.  
I'm not griping; stuff like that comes out of his tractor fund, so it's neither here nor there to me.    
I've put up fence for the peas to grow on, and I risked planting two short rows of corn, mainly because Cliff noticed some farmers already planting corn.  It's early yet, but it might not get killed by frost.  I'm going to risk setting out a couple of tomato plants in a few days, too.  
Yesterday I ate seven grapefruits, all by myself; I'm not even a bit ashamed about it.  I've already had two today, and I plan to try and surpass yesterday's record.  
Trees are getting leaves, flowers are blooming, and birds are singing.  I now await the arrival of my first hummingbirds of the year.  

Here comes winter

It's harder for me to come up with subjects for my blog, this time of year, because there's less going on around here.  The garden is a thing of the past, although we're still eating tomatoes I brought in before the frost.
  

They aren't pretty.  In fact, I didn't have a pretty tomato all year.  They all developed splits.  However, they taste fine, even the ones I brought in green that are gradually ripening.  We don't subscribe to a newspaper any more, so I didn't have enough paper to wrap all the green ones; that's what you're supposed to do with them. They're still better than store-bought tomatoes.    
Cliff plowed up a new spot for me, and that's where I'll put all the vegetables that are susceptible to blight next year.  The experts suggest a three-year rotation, and I believe I have my rotation figured out.  
Cliff wasn't happy with the performance of the plow, which he bought to use with the 550 Oliver.  He adjusted it every which way and it still wasn't turning over the soil as well as it should have.  He thinks it needs new shares; I believe the main problem was that the ground is hard as a rock from no rainfall for a month.  Perhaps it's a combination of both factors.  

I hate goodbyes

Yesterday, with the threat of frost looming, I said goodbye to my garden.  I found a few decent-sized green tomatoes to wrap in newspaper for later ripening; I brought half a dozen sweet peppers in, and I pulled up some turnips that were big enough to use.  
Because we haven't had much rain in the past month, the turnips didn't get as big as they should have, but the ones that are usable are sweet and good.  Cliff hates turnips, so I shared them with a friend, not knowing that would make her day.  I thought my mother was the only person ever to get that excited about turnips.  
I pulled up the last of the green bean plants and picked the usable beans off the vines.  
It was a bad year for tomatoes and potatoes, and yet the garden has kept us supplied with all we needed or wanted in the way of vegetables, ever since sometime in July.  A neighbor informed me that nobody around here had a good potato crop this year, which made me feel somewhat better about the situation.  We don't have good storage facilities for them anyhow; it's just that it's more fun to harvest and peel big potatoes than small, goose-egg-sized ones.  I'll be using my last few of them today, so I need to add potatoes to my grocery list.  Of course, it's just me and Cliff, so we don't use a lot of them.
Never before have I had such an emotional attachment to a garden as I have this year.  I'd wake up in the morning wishing daylight would come so I could go outside and see what had transpired overnight:  new blooms, seeds germinating and popping out of the ground, something new to harvest.  Oh, and for the first time ever, I managed to keep a zucchini plant alive until fall; little victories like that are hard to find out in the big, cruel world, but I found them daily in the garden.  So yesterday, knowing the season is over, I was sad; it was like saying goodbye to a dear friend.  
And the Lord knows how I hate goodbyes.

We're still eating free food

When I was young, I would plant a couple of hundred-foot-long rows of green beans, then pick and can them like crazy.  Once I had enough of them canned, that was the end of my green bean planting for the year. This year, I've had four tiny plantings and canned none.  

This is the row I'm picking from now; it's about eight feet long.  Today I picked from it for the fourth time.   

 This row of green beans is just about to start blooming.  

The beans I picked filled this two-quart pan; the onions are store-bought.  Behind the beans is some smothered okra, otherwise known as okra and tomatoes.  It's slim pickin's around here with the tomatoes, but I was able to get two cups chopped to put with the okra.   I like to cook these dishes for the same meal because two slices of crisp, crumbled bacon is really good in the smothered okra, and the resulting bacon grease flavors up the beans.  No waste.  Bacon, of course, is neither healthy or diet-friendly.  But I figure two slices aren't going to do much harm.    

This head of cabbage ought to be ready to eat in a week or so.  

I'm still bringing in bell peppers.  These are from this morning.  


There are tiny cabbage plants up that probably won't mature before frost, although cabbage can take a certain amount of frost.  Carrots are up, too, and some lettuce.  I know that lettuce can germinate, then go dormant for the winter, and start growing again in spring.  I don't know if this is true for cabbage and carrots, but I'm about to find out.  


So, that's how my garden grows today.   

This and that

Cliff got our pasture seeded Sunday and Monday; it was mighty wet for him to be working the soil, but our sandy soil drains quickly and he got the job done.  Grass of any kind needs, ideally, to be sown by September 15, so he got it in just under the wire.  Tuesday the rains came, over 2 1/2 inches.  The pasture ground is not level, and we both figured half the field was washing away.  As it turns out, the rain came slowly, and there was only minor erosion.  
Yesterday it rained again, almost an inch in the course of the day.  

Again, the rain came slowly.  So far, so good.  All this rain should have that seed germinating in record time; once the grass and clover is up and growing, the danger of erosion will be reduced.  
Cliff has been having a lot of back pain lately.  He has a history of back pain, ever since he worked at the butcher shop and was the only person big and strong enough to move beef quarters from one rail to another.  But he's been able to manage the pain.  Now he has a hip bothering him too, and it sometimes pops when he's walking.  I'm pretty sure what that means, but I'm no doctor.  I do have experience with osteoarthritis, though.  
Anyhow.  We've never been ones to go to a chiropractor, but Cliff decided to try one while we still have good insurance coverage.  We'll see how that goes.  His first visit was yesterday. He experienced some relief immediately following the treatment, and he goes again today.  
It seems as though it takes forever for daylight to arrive now.  I was in the habit of going outside with my coffee and checking the garden and flowerbeds to see what little miracles had occurred while I was sleeping.  These days the coffee is long gone before it gets light enough to see.  
On the garden front, I'm feuding and fussing with a mole who insists on making his run right under my row of fall beets.  The miracle zucchini is producing better than ever, and I am celebrating the fact that the squash bugs have not bothered it.  
I'm only getting a couple of tomatoes each day, and they aren't very pretty.  But they still taste better than store-bought.  
We're getting garden-fresh green beans, and these recent rains have given the eggplants new life.  I've blanched a couple of gallon freezer-bags of sweet peppers to use in stuffed peppers this winter.  
My little garden is giving us lots of free food, and I'm thankful for every bite.  

From the garden

A big bucket full of Bodacious sweet corn, which is what I'll be planting in the future; it stays crisp and sweet longer than any kind I've tried.  This was enough to fill the big canner, where the corn will blanch for at least five minutes.  There's still more in the garden, and at this point it's going to have to be dealt with.  We've been eating corn from those two rows for ten days now.  
I also froze a quart bag of okra and brought in several sweet peppers.  
Cliff took the last of the ratatouille to work with him yesterday; looks like the only way I'm going to get as much as I want is to sneak around and make it, then hide it.  There are two medium-sized eggplants out there ready to use, but I can't decide whether to make ratatouille or eggplant salsa.  I don't have any tortilla chips around at present, though.  
Ah, the decisions one must make when she has a garden.

garden report

First of all, let me tell you that I cannot raise decent onions.  I've studied the situation, googled like crazy, and found very few hints as to what I'm doing wrong.  Perhaps I'm planting them too deep, says one source.  I intended to start with onion plants rather than sets this year, but when we went to buy seeds and such, they hadn't yet received the plants.  So I planted sets as always.  
Each of my onions splits into two halves as it grows and then proceeds to rot.  Sometimes the outside rots, sometimes part of the inside.  Because I hate waste, I butcher the poor onions, rescue the good parts, dice them, and freeze them for future use.  It's an unpleasant task that wouldn't be necessary if I only knew how to raise proper onions.  

You can see the brown portions of my tomato plants (on the right).  At the beginning of the season, I didn't think I would have any tomatoes to eat, let alone can; but these blighty plants are still producing.  I gave my sister some last week and sent quite a few home with Cliff's sister yesterday.  To the left of the tomatoes is a cucumber plant I started from seed about a month ago; it's now started to produce.    

I picked these this morning and canned them, seven quarts worth.  Oh, and here's the big announcement:  

I have finally managed to get a zucchini plant to produce something besides squash bugs.  I don't know it it's because of the late planting, or the fact that I didn't put straw around it to conserve moisture; I'm come to the conclusion that the straw has been a place for squash bugs to hide.  I had enough zucchini to make two double-batches of ratatouille over the weekend.  Two batches, because Cliff's sister, who's on a very strict diet and can't eat much of what I cook, took a special liking to ratatouille.  
I have a new problem with zucchini:  The little squashes get about two inches long and rot.  My Googled sources tell me it's called blossom end rot, and that it's due to lack of calcium.  Just my luck; I get rid of one problem and another one shows up.  

No, that isn't a green potato amongst those spuds I dug this morning.  Iris wanted me to throw the ball for her to chase; I was ignoring her.  I guess she figured I'd take the hint if she dropped it on top of my potato pile.  The potatoes are pretty puny this year.  Thank you, Mr. Blight.  
If I'm going to have potatoes and tomatoes next year, I'll have to move them to a new location.  I have two spots in mind.  

Just in front of where Iris is standing there's plenty of open space Cliff could plow up for me.  The downside of this area is that if things get weedy and unsightly (as my gardens tend to do), I'll be looking out my front door at it.    

There's room enough beside and behind our garage that I'm considering, too.  
We'll see what next year brings, and what sort of shape I'm in.  My knees haven't bothered me nearly as much this year as last, for some reason.   I'm very thankful for that.  
It just hit me... maybe my knees are glad I'm not riding a horse any more.  

Around the place

I have some tomatoes, fairly large ones.  They aren't pretty, but at least I have some for now  The splits are caused by all the excess rain we've had.  I expect to have no tomatoes at all, a week from now, because the blight is spreading fast.  Several plants are already dead, having given me no tomatoes larger than walnuts.  There are two local places where, hopefully, I can buy decent tomatoes after mine are gone:  Frye Farms at Buckner (no website) and Fahrmeier Farms (a lousy website); they also have a winery.  

The late zucchini I planted is doing well so far, with no sign of a squash bug.  Look closely and you'll see two tiny zucchinis, the largest about an inch-and-a-half long.  I'm that close to the ratatouille I am longing to make.    
I used the last eggplant off my counter last night to make Meesha's eggplant salsa/caviar.  This time I added 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper; one of my better ideas.  

That pathetic little plant is an acorn squash I probably planted too late; we'll see.  

Not only are the cows spending all their free time at my cabin, pooping everywhere; they are now getting ON my porch and knocking the dwarfs over and shoving my camping chair off into the woods.  

But how can I be angry at someone who provides me with meat and milk, and is due to have a baby in three weeks?  Just look at that face.

Garden stuff

I have had some outstanding successes in the garden this year.  I shouldn't let my life be ruined by the fact that my favorite vegetable, the tomato, has broken my heart by running off with Mr. Blight.  

The Bodacious sweet corn, for instance; this is my second planting; I'd say we'll be eating corn-on-the-cob again in a week or so.  Corn planted later in the season tends to be awfully wormy, so I went out this morning to use a trick my daddy told me about.  

As soon as the silks appear, I put a pinch of Sevin dust on each ear.  If it were to rain in the next day or two, I'd probably go out and re-apply the Sevin.  

Remember the zucchini plant that was ruined by squash bugs?  It tried to resurrect itself, but the new incarnation isn't doing much.   

My recently planted zucchini, on the other hand, looks great and is forming blooms.  I'm not getting my hopes up, though.  I may even put up a sign saying, "Welcome, squash bugs; enjoy your new digs."  

Because I laugh at pain.  

I have eggplants galore.  

As long as I occasionally apply a little Sevin dust, green beans have never let me down.  

This one hill of cucumbers is producing far more cukes than we'll ever eat.  

And now, we'll talk about those tomatoes.  

These tomatoes are ripening prematurely because blight has almost killed the mother plant.  I may can a few of them, although I really don't have the heart.  They are pathetic little things, misshapen and splitting. 

 

Some plants aren't as "blighty" as others, and I have hopes of getting a few larger, prettier tomatoes for the table from these before blight overtakes them completely.  

So there you have it.  And how does your garden grow?