Gardens – Page 55 – Cabin Crafted

Canning has commenced

and putting by continues. The garlic is ready to braid. I can braid hair, surely I can figure out how to braid garlic. The onions are nearly ready to relocate to the cooler, drier basement out of the hot humid garage. The potato tops are nearly all brown. I dug one plant to have new potatoes with fresh green beans, cucumbers and vinaigrette, and sauteed Chinese cabbage and onion with last night pork loin roast. I will give the potatoes about a week more to toughen the skins, then dig them and put on the wire shelves in the basement as well. The cucumbers are producing prolifically. We have been enjoying the first of them in salads and with onions in vinaigrette, but there were finally enough to make the first batch of pickles today. Son 1’s family, especially DIL and grandson 1 really like a recipe that I modified several years ago. Food in Jars by Melissa McClellan has a Bread and Butter pickle recipe in it. I substituted about 1/2 c of sliced Jalapenos for some of the sweet red pepper that it called for and it make a sweet and spicy pickle. I had red, yellow, and orange peppers sliced in the freezer and a pint bag of sliced jalapenos, a huge yellow sweet onion and all the spices I needed. The veggies were cut, tossed with the pickling salt, covered and put in the refrigerator this morning early.

My giant pottery bread bowl was called into service. After dinner tonight, the water bath canner was hauled down off the high shelf, filled with pint jars and water and set on the stove to heat up. The veggies were rinsed, the brine made, the veggies cooked in the brine until hot and packed in the jars. I had put an extra 12 ounce jar in the canner because the recipe says it makes 5 pints. I have had it make more and less, so I want to be prepared. It made 5 3/4 pints this time.

I need to put a note in the recipe that it take almost twice the amount of brine that she calls for and every year I end up in the middle of loading the jars, making more brine. The jars are cooling on the counter. At lunch today, I opened one of the last jars from last year’s batch. They are put out at family meals, I use them in tuna salad, but otherwise I am stingy with the ones I keep for me. Most of them will go to Son 1’s family. The next big batch of cucumbers will be made into dill spears, or whole dills if I can catch enough small ones at the same time.

While the pickles were processing, I shredded a cabbage and salted it. The salt is massaged in until the liquid begins to weep out. It will sit for an hour and then be packed tightly into a sterile quart jar and set up to ferment for sauerkraut. The dilly beans from a few days ago are perfect and I have already enjoyed a few of them.

The versatile big bowl in service for the second time today. The refrigerator style pickles and ferments were made in greater quantity when there was a second old refrigerator in the basement, but it gave up two years ago, so the ferments are more limited now. If the second or third planting of bush beans are as prolific as the first planting was, I will made some canned dilly beans that will keep on the shelves.

Between rain storms this afternoon, I planted a third planting of bush green beans. I had used all of my seed, but Southern Exposure Seed company where I get most of my seed still have the one I plant in stock, so I ordered a packet when I ordered my fall vegetable seed and they came yesterday. The first planting of beans are spent, the plants will be pulled soon and the cucumbers can run in that direction too. Their leaf cover will help hold down weed growth in that end of the bed. I thought the cucumbers were semi bush variety, but they have vines 6 or 8 feet long already. Last year the only thing planted in the same bed were sunflowers so I guess they just climbed them. The fence I placed for them is way too short.

Soon there will be tomatoes and pepper to process and in about a month, the fall veggies planted. I thought the Chinese Cabbage second planting was a failure, but they must just be very slow to germinate as it appears that there may be a dozen or so plants coming up. They will be thinned out to give them space. The one I cooked is more like Napa cabbage than head cabbage, the leaves are bright green.

That is the one I picked yesterday on the left of the picture. I don’t know how well they will keep. I don’t think they will freeze well, but maybe there will be some Kimchee in the future, or Napa style sauerkraut.

It is nice to be adding to the larder instead of just using from it. It was exciting to do an entire meal except for the protein from the garden last night. When I planted the beans today, I also planted a short season ground cherry. I have never planted them before and want to try to make some jam from them if they are successful. I hope we get a decent thunderstorm, the earlier one rained only about 15 minutes and it didn’t even wet the soil in the garden. I may have to set up the sprinkler.

In my post day before yesterday, I showed the results of the Tour de Fleece spinning. Today I took the ply balls and plied them on the wheel. The lighter teal ended up 334.5 yards, less than 2.5 ounces, 16 WPI (light fingering weight) yarn. The darker shiny blue is still on the bobbin as it didn’t fill the bobbin and I have more to spin which I will add before measuring it off.

There is still about an ounce and a half of that fiber, but no more would fit on the bobbin. I don’t know if I will put it in the shop or knit something for the shop. The fiber is from Three Waters Farm and is Merino, Superwash Merino, and Silk, so very soft and drapey.

Time to return to making sauerkraut.

Stay safe. Wear your mask, it isn’t a political statement, it is a health and safety issue.

The New Garden

A hot, sweaty week of work has greatly improved the view from the back deck. After laying cardboard until it ran out, then weed blocking mat and forking rotting, molding hay over the top, we made three separate trips to the Garden Center and came back with 44 one cubic foot bags of Black Kow composted manure. It was spread over the hay, deep enough to plant in some places, a thin cover layer in others. The upper edge, nearest where the patio is being constructed from thick flat stones from our land was under the old deck and had tons of rock on it, so it is very compacted with still buried stone. Until the patio is completed, that part of the garden will be too thin to plant.

The Hummingbird feed was shifted and three of the half barrels that have annual and perennial plants in bloom were arranged around the pole. The Hummingbirds fly back there, but I haven’t seen any of them feeding from it yet. The Finches finally accepted the new hopper feeder, so I am seeing birds around the garden now.

Some plants have been transplanted to the deeper areas of the new garden, the potted perennial herbs moved to what I hope will be their permanent location, some Calendula plants and the volunteer Comfrey plants in their new location, a few Dutch and Bearded Iris nearer the shallow part as they have shallow roots. The sprinkler is running every day to help the new plants establish root systems and not just wilt and die.

There was a large stone up under a cedar tree on the edge of the driveway that looked like a good potential patio stone. It was flat on both side and thick. The tractor was able to pull it out from under the tree, but it was too heavy for me to flip into the bucket, so I shoved it down the driveway hill with the tractor until I could wedge it against the hill at the bottom near the house and used gravity to ease it into the bucket. The tractor bucket gently set it in the patio area where it is going to take “Charles Atlas” to move it again. It may become a fixed point that is built up around it.

It is almost large enough for the grill to sit on, but I really want it up against the wall that is 14″ away from it’s current location. I may enlist the help of the two younger hay men to shift it over for me.

There are many more nice large, flat stones that Son 1 unearthed when he dug the trench for the yard hydrant line that have been hauled to the edges of some of the rock piles, but until the stickweed dies back this fall, I am unwilling to try to get them. It might be wiser to wait until the temperatures cool some before doing any more heavy work like that. I am still shifting some stone to even out the top of the garden wall. The lower spots are more visible now that there is soil in there.

Here is the result of the week of hot, heavy work.

I am pleased.

Stay safe. Wear a mask, it isn’t a political statement, it is a health and safely issue.

Each year, each project

My memory on Facebook this morning from one year ago was a harvest of red ripe tomatoes and tomatillos. This year the tomatoes are all still green, there are tomatillos forming, but not ready to harvest, but the cucumbers are coming in quickly now and there are dozens of blossoms on the spreading vines. I fight them every morning to keep them from taking over the other half of the bed where some of the peppers are planted and sending the vines away from the beans and out into the corn and the path in the other direction.

Yesterday after hubby’s appointment, we did our feed run for the critters and I purchased a new feeder to replace the one that was broken and added a second Hummingbird feeder. I couldn’t get the three tines of the double shepherd’s crook through the weedmat, soil, and underlying gravel, it was barely stuck in the ground before and mostly propped up with rocks. It can’t be put between stones in the retaining wall for obvious safety and structural reasons and I was at a loss. I finally grabbed a half barrel that was in the front by the garage door with one puny plant in it, transplanted the plant and repurposed the half barrel with soil and many rocks to stabilize it and the pole and set it on the retaining wall edge. The birds fly to the crook, look at the feeder, and fly off. So far they haven’t braved trying to eat from the hopper style feeder. The Hummingbird feeder is too far from the flowers, so the single crook will be moved to a flower bed and the feeder hung there until there are flowers in the new large walled garden.

Once evening was dimming and the temperature was falling, the bags of compost that were just tossed over the wall onto the hay a few days ago, were opened and spread. So far, we have purchased 28 bags and it hasn’t even covered the entire area with a layer. It will probably take at least that many more, then topped with shredded leaves this fall and a layer of some sort of mulch.

The 9 hens aren’t pulling their weight. Feed is too expensive if they aren’t going to provide food in return. Ms. Broody finally gave up sitting after 9 weeks of broodiness, but she hasn’t resumed laying. None of the Olive eggers are laying. I don’t know if it is the heat or that they are aging out. Day before yesterday, there were 3 eggs and one of them the shell was so fragile that it had been cracked in the nest by the weight of the next hen to lay. It went straight into the compost pile. Last night there were 3 and a marble with no yolk.

I should get new chicks before it gets cold and introduce them to the layer coop and move the old ladies to the Chicken palace and give them free range during the day. There are nesting boxes in there, but past hens have been reluctant to use them.

Yesterday, I posted that it was the beginning of fermenting season with green beans and cucumbers. Today was the beginning of a non edible, non potable ferment. The long stalks of Comfrey that fall over mid summer were cut and chopped, loaded into a couple of lidded buckets and filled with water set in the sun. It will make a stinky slimy mess that is the best garden fertilizer ever. The Comfrey that didn’t fit in the buckets is put in the compost pile or spread as mulch in the garden.

In cutting back the stalks, I see several Comfrey volunteers that will be dug and moved over to the walled garden in the herbal medicine area. As the edible herb and medicinal herbs will be on the south and west of the retaining wall, that area is already filled deeply with the composted soil and after adding another couple bags this evening, it will begin to be planted so the plants can establish good root systems before cold weather. The Rosemary and Thyme are in pots on the deck steps and they will be moved. Calendula plants in pots will be moved as it self seeds nicely, but seed will be gathered from the bed where Calendula is growing now to use if the transplants don’t provide seedling in spring. There are a few Echinacea plants that I started from seed this spring that can be added where the new bed has soil deep enough to plant in and some Rudbecia that has established by the garage will be divided and some of it added to the new bed. The upper flat area of the walled garden was under the old deck, it has had tons of rock piled on it for 15 years and is hard and compacted. Once the patio is finished and there is a solid edge to work against, I will work to deepen and enrich the soil there enough for planting. Until then, the half barrels of flowers that are currently not in the best locations will be settled in and kept planted with annuals for color. It is going to be an area to enjoy, an area to attract birds, eventually a place to prepare and enjoy outdoor meals.

I will end today’s missive with a picture of the most gorgeous sky last evening as the preview always uses the last photo in my blog. It was beautiful to look at as I worked in the new garden and tended the evening chores, but enough cloud coverage to obscure any view of the comet later.

Stay safe everyone. Wear a mask, it isn’t a political statement, it is a health and safely statement.