Category: Garden

Current Garden Project List

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We might be winding down, but I still have a few things to do before next season. This is the list of things I am planning.

  1. Squirrel Interdiction. They are getting into the back wall of my garden. I think it’s under the wall I created, so I am going to buy some hardware cloth and bricks and try sealing that area up. Then I have to see if that works. It’s an arm race between me and the squirrels.
  2. New front bed. I need to buy some soil and fill it. I used the garbage dirt I had in a pile for the bottom of the raised bed, but it still needs real honest to god good dirt. I plan to transplant my strawberries come spring, in it.
  3. New back bed. Same thing. Except I am going to plant sunflowers in it. They will be beautiful to look at, pull in pollinators, and block my neighbors Arlo house cam from pointing into my bedroom window. That’s a lot of wins.
  4. Two raised herb garden beds. I have two picked out at Amazon’s and need to buy and set them up. I want to move my herbs onto the deck so I can grab them for dinner faster. it will also open up areas for planting other vegetables and flowers.
  5. Soil. I need soil for the rest of my beds. They settled down a lot. I hadn’t realized just how much they would, so I need to top them off, with soil and some compost.
  6. New composter. I am close to being down with my first compost bin. I have filled it, and it’s been good. However, it is still cooking for next spring. I need to buy a second one. I am thinking one of those rotating composters because with my physical issues, it’s actually kind of hard to turn it otherwise.

On a sad note, for reasons that elude me, the cabbage I was going to make into saurkraut today exploded and looks half eaten. maybe too much water with the rain, and maybe squirrel action. In any event, no saurkraut from that. I have two smaller ones I am going to pull. So we will see if I get to that.

I am also trying to grow clover in the raw dirt areas in my yard, because I am tracking so much mud into the house. I probably will have to pay a landscaper to come put a walkway around the garden because I am not physically capable. That would help and I could go barefoot to grab the watering can.

Cucumbers Surprised Me

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Cucumbers and Toma Toes.

I went out to get a few tomatoes that are still going, and found four large cucumbers. I swear to god cucumbers are ninjas. They like wait, and just explode into existence on you. We had rain the last few days and that’s all it took.

I usually like to pick them about half that size or they get a little woody and more bitter. However, I made sandwiches with one, and I will make the others into refrigerator pickles. I’ll probably get another couple jars.

I love having a garden.

The Sunflower Project That Wasn’t.

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I grew sunflowers because I like them, and honestly from a pollinator standpoint watching all the pollinator bees, and the humming birds with them was fun and amazing. I did not set out to plant them for harvest, but I thought since I had them I would try it.

It came to the end of their lifespan so I thought I would pull some for harvest.

Some of the heads are starting to die, and brown up.

I cut some of the dead flower heads off, watched a couple of videos on YouTube on how to harvest sunflowers and got to work.

The not so fun harvesting process.

I rarely ever give up on a project after I start, but first I noticed you have to wear gloves because they are so sticky, and soap and water does not get it off easily. So ewww.

Second, the pattern in the heads of the sunflowers really ick out my wife, so that’s not good to have sitting in the kitchen.

Finally, it is tedious, and slow, and annoying.

All that combined, means I just gave up. It’s the first garden related project I just gave up on.

When I can get a pound of organic, shelled, sunflowers from Trader Joes for $2.99, and I can’t identify any real flavor difference, then I am not really into spending HOURS on shelling these and processing them.

I think I will keep my sunflowers to just decorative from now on.

Garden Misadventures – Yellow Jacket Apocalypse

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My compost pile is being held hostage by yellow jackets.

Stinging little bastards!

My back yard is bordered by a retaining wall made of railroad ties. Somewhere around August, a yellow jacket hive set up shop behind some of the ties, literally next to my compost bin. I am thinking the blueberry syrup waste I tossed in there made it an attractive neighborhood. I have also since learned they are aggressive little bastards in late summer by nature.

I discovered this when I tossed some compost in the pile and was going to mix it in, and I got stung. I thought, no big deal, I would call Orkin, who I had a contract with, to come deal with it. First, I learned that my Orkin contract only covers the house, and I’d have to pay a couple hundred bucks to deal with the nest, and they’d have someone call me. After a month of trying to contact them I gave up, cancelled my contract, and decided to DIY it. I don’t need to pay for a service that ghosts me.

The first time I sprayed them with a single can of spray, early in the pre-dawn light, they came flying out of there like they were shot out of a bee cannon, and I got stung on the nose, flung myself backwards, and hit the ground. I was about five feet away, but had to finish spraying from about 15 feet away after I got stung. This seemed to kill a lot of them off, but there were still bees a couple weeks later.

I hope my back neighbors got the entire event on their Arlo camera that they have pointed at my yard. Someone should get some humor out of it. I feel like it was a flappy “OMG a bee is on me” dance that probably did not showcase what little grace and dexterity I actually have.

So then I bought six cans of spray and my wife and I went out. My wife has ADHD, which might explain while I was spraying the hive area, I noticed my wife spraying down the length of the retaining wall in a loopy pattern with the bug spray. She seemed to be enjoying herself, so why not?

This is kind of a thing for her. I once asked her to help me shave my backside, you know, as one does when they transition and realize that butt hair is the fastest and thickest incoming masculine hair you are getting. I realized after getting into a fairly compromising position in the bathtub that she was shaving down my thigh, and I had to ask her why?

So I am not sure, but I think targets are a little murky for her, and I am going to say that might be ADHD related, but it could also just be a quirk my wife has.

Back to the yellow jacket eradication project, we each had three cans, and I dumped my three in the crevasse with the nest, but my plans to get super close and really get in there were ruined as a half dozen bees came out while I was spraying. They weren’t bee cannon ferocious, and I sprayed them down the foaming bee spray. I felt I got a good coverage and into the hive, though.

Now, days later, I still notice a yellow jacket, here or there, coming in and out of the hive. They are still holding my composter hostage, and I can’t mix my compost.

My plan is to buy six more cans of bee spray and try again. Eventually I have to get them all, right? I am a grown ass adult, and I can keep buying bee spray until I have killed the stinging possessive bastards. I was going to move the composter to the other side of the yard this month originally, and now I have to wait until I get rid of the bees.

So Bees 3, me 0, in the war for the composter.

Frozen Tomato Harvest

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I did some tomato sauce processing this morning. I actually had two big giant batches. I had my dutch oven and my big pot going together at one point. The pictures below is after I cleaned it mostly up and it was just simmering down with the last batch. There was tom sauce literally everywhere before I cleaned, so I’ll keep that mess as a memory snapshot.

Toma Toes sauce and jars waiting to be filled.

In hindsight, with ten 16oz jars I could have canned it up, but I think I need more research. Since I don’t eat onions or garlic because they are my mortal gastroenterology enemy, it makes finding approved and safe recipes harder. So many of them have so many onions in them.

I also don’t really want to add any acid to them, like you would do with water batch or pressure canning, because my wife has GERD already. I don’t need to throw more fuel on that fire.

Instead, I just blanched them like before, and peeled and cored out the stems. I then just cooked them down. I initially mashed them with a potato masher, and when I had cooked them down to a close to desired thickness, I used my immersion blender to blend the remaining solid toms, and some basil and green onions in from the garden. (Green onions don’t have it in for me, so I can reasonably eat those.)

Then I just filled the jars, labeled and froze them.

Tomato sauce filling 16 oz jars.

I am initially freezing them in the house freezer, but then I will take some out to the chest freezer later, as I won’t have to worry about them falling over then.

Ten jars of Toma Toes sauce waiting to freeze in the freezer. Also, so many Costco corn dogs. So so many.

My last task fo the day is reheating some of the pickle brine I had left over from last time, and doing one last 16 oz jar of pickles with the last of my cucumbers from the garden.

Brine and cucumbers slices waiting to become refrigerator pickles.

I did not get a big enough harvest of these, or enough at one time to even bother with canning pickles. Refrigerator pickles work just as well, and are just as good.

Now, that I am done, I am going down for a good long nap. I am still exhausted from surgery. It’s very true, when you get over 50, these things take longer to come back from.

Incoming Tomatoes!

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So many tomatoes.

There are only two of us in my household, and one of us had GERD and does not eat tomatoes much at all. That’s a lot for one, and maybe a half person at best.

I have a lot of toms coming up in the garden. This is after giving a big bag away two both my side neighbors. There’s more coming. It’s by far my most successful crop.

However, My experiment with freezing them was kinda sorta successful. They are so filled with juice, that a 16 oz frozen can of whole tom’s is more like an 8 oz can with another 8 oz’s of juice.

So I am going to cook it all down in a giant pot of crushed tomatoes and freeze it after I have cooked out some of the juice. It’ll take a few hours, but at last when I pull a 16 oz jar from the freezer, I will have something that will be usable like a 16 oz store-bought can without additional fussing.

I’m going to do the same boil and skin process before, but instead of tossing them directly into jars, I will toss them in a pot to cook down.

You know, once I go out and collect today’s pile, to add to this.

9/1/23 Garden Update

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I had a small surgery on the 24th of August, so I haven’t been as up and around as usual. However, my garden keeps on going.

Here’s some update thoughts on where we are at with it.

Glacier Bush Tomatoes from Botanical Interests.

The tomatoes have gone wild. Like I have more tomatoes than I can handle for two of us, especially since my wife has GERD. So it’s really like one of us, and occasional she has a bite. I got these Glacier Bush Tomato seeds from Botanical Interests, and they are a 55 day semi-determinate. They grew strong, fast, and blew up in my 8b area.

I definitely will be using some of these for next year, but less of them.

My cucumbers? Not so much. I just never got them off and running? I got a few cucumbers, but nothing to really brag about. I made a few refrigerator pickle jars, but it just was never enough to fully can them. I only got 2 or 3 at a time.

I got the Homemade Pickles Cucumber Seeds from Botanical Interests. I just don’t know if I know what to do with them much? The ones I did get, were amazing. Like I made some cucumber and tomato and feta salad with rice vinegar and olive oil and I could eat that for days.

I might have to figure it out this cucumber situation for next year. Some of my plants never really took off at all and I don’t know why.

Strawberry plants.

My strawberries also went crazy. I need to research how to manage them because they went wild. My plans for them is to transplant them into the front yard into another blue raised bed. I have the bed, but I have not put it together because my health was not super great that last couple weeks.

I am wondering if I can combine one of these raised blue beds with a raised bed situation and have the strawberries cascade down from above into the bed below? It would look cool, and remove an entire grassy area. I hate lawn grass.

Beets.

I got a misc beet mix from Botanical Interests, and planted that recently. I love beets, and I plan to make pickled refrigerator beets and some borscht with them. I should have enough for roasted veggies as well.

I’ve never grown beets, so I am just watching and waiting.

In all, for my first year here? This garden has done so damn well. I have not really ever had this kind of space and I am shocked at how easy it was, once I got the beds and green house set up.

The only downside, is I have had a squirrel incursion into my garden cage. I am not sure how they are getting in, but I plan to really go over the area once I am done for the season and patch up any holes in my perimeter.

Refrigerator Pickles

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My cucumber plants had a lot of flowers, but not so many cucumbers. They are proving more challenging than my other crops. I just am not getting enough cucumbers to be worth trying a full canning attempt at pickles.

I feel like my plants are trying to sneak cucumbers at me when I am not looking so they can die off too! I swear I will be out every day just looking, and BOOM! one day there is a big cucumber, that literally wasn’t there the day before. I have had two giant version show up out of nowhere and I am sure I didn’t miss them.

I got a few little ones and a big one today, and so I decided to make Alton Brown’s Kinda Sort of Sour refrigerator pickles.

The only alteration I made was two use dill seed instead of celery seed because that is what I had on hand. I am recovering from eye surgery, so I am not into going to the store right now.

Three jars of pickles and one of brine.

I made way too much brine, with a double batch, so I am just going to refrigerate it and save it for the next few cucumbers that come up. This three jars will add to the other two I made last week before I went into surgery.

I know my wife will be happy. She loves pickles, and I just don’t think grocery store pickles have much of a flavor at all. These do, and I am sure it’t because of the apple cider vinegar and the spices used.

I am experimenting. The first two jars I made last week, I weighed down with my sauerkraut weights, and these I am not. So I will see how it all turns out.

That’s all I am up for today. I’ll go back and nap as I let my eyes heal, but at least I will have pickles waiting for me when I am up and about again.

Air Fryer Grilled Cheese

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I wasn’t sure what to do for lunch today, but I had some garden grown red cabbage and some leftover feta cheese.

I decided to make air fryer grilled cheese sandwiches. I like doing them this way because I can toss two of them in the air fryer at a time, and they have a very crunchy exterior and soft interior that just is melty perfect. Then my wife and I get them both at the same time.

All the fixings for grilled cheese. Tally is the background judging me.

I assemble the grilled cheese right in the fryer basket. For these I did a layer of cheddar on my buttered bread than sliced up little diced cubes of feta to lay on top, before topping it with another layer of bread. This is some sort of sourdough sandwich bread.

Two assembled grilled cheese in an air fryer just waiting to be grilled.

I toss it in for 350F for 5 minutes, flip them over, and 380F for 6 minutes. Then I pull them, slice them and they are done.

The Cole slaw was super easy, too. I just made the slaw dressing as follows:

  • 3/4 Cup mayo – we use low fat.
  • 3 TBSP Apple cider vinegar – I prefer Braggs
  • 2 TBSP sugar
  • Salt and pepper to taste.

I mix that up and keep it in the fridge and just toss it in a bowl with some diced red cabbage from the garden. It’s a favorite in our house. I usually keep a container of this slaw sauce in the fridge at all times. It’s also tasty on carrot sticks.

Two plates with the grilled cheese, slaw, and sugar wafer cookies.

This literally takes me about 15 minutes to make. I keep diced cabbage in the fridge with premade slaw sauce, and that way I can toss it together on a work day, and then go back to tying out financials to source documents with a nice hot meal in front of me.

You can’t have this in an office environment! Well, I mean, you are not supposed to. We do have a forbidden panini press hidden in the closet that my coworkers and I use in the office, but this is much less likely to get me in trouble.

Change of Plans – From Canning to Freezing

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One weeks garden harvest of tomatoes. Ignore the random cucumber, it’s for a sandwich.

First issue, is this is over a week of my tomato harvest. If I wait any longer to do anything with them, I will lose them. It’s just not worth canning up 1 or 2 jars at a time. Second, I have a few dietary restrictions that make things challenging.

Somewhere around my late 40s I just stopped being able to digest garlic and onions. Like full stop, does not work. I did not know what this was until a gal that was on the FODMAP diet talked about it with me. I am not a speciality diet kind of guy so I had always assumed this was another weird fad.

Turns out, it is not. I have an issue with garlic and it has a vendetta against me that is biblical in proportions. Onions, are a close second. I just can’t eat them anymore which sucks because my favorite soup is French onion soup, and I don’t think I cooked with out garlic and onions since I was 16 years old.

Turns out the FODMAP thing has some elements that work for me, so while I do eat out and end up with garlic in my food I use Fodmate and that keeps it to a low rumble, literally. I don’t want to make my own food with garlic or onions at all though.

This is one of the reasons I really prefer to cook at home. It’s just easier to keep garlic and onions out of everything that way.

This complicates things for me when I do canning with approved recipes. A lot of the tomato based recipes are like 50% onions. It’s easy to omit the garlic, but not so much the onions. I am so new to canning I just don’t feel safe water bath canning anything not in my books, either. I just don’t want to adjust recipes.

My garden has a lot of tomatoes, but when I looked up the Ball book recipe it would take 2 and 2/3 pounds of tomatoes for each 16 oz canning jar for the crushed tomato recipe. That’s the only one that doesn’t have an overwhelming mass of onions. Canning for 1 or 2 jars just doesn’t seem worth it.

So this morning I switched gears, and looked up freezing. I have a chest freezer, and turns out you can freeze your canning jars. Everything I have searched for says they will retain flavor for 12 months, but some folks say they have used them from the freezer up to 3 years later.

All this means, is when I finally get an electrician to run power to the shed, I will be buying a much larger freezer for in there.

Processing tomatoes for freezing. Finished tomatoes on the left, a boiling pot of water, cored tomatoes on a towel, and a batch of ice water with recently boiled up tom’s, and finally a cutting board with recently cored tomatoes.

This took me like 20 minutes total to do. I cored them, boiled them for 1 minute, then tossed them in ice water, and peeled them and put them in my 16oz canning jars.

Four 16 oz wide mouth canning jars with tomatoes in there. Also seen is endless bags of breakfast sausage from Costco, and frozen leftover rhubarb for jamming. That will be made into a pie by the wife today, along with Costco corndogs, and some cool whip and ice cream. This is the house freezer, not the chest freezer in the shed.

I was a little worried about headroom. It said to give an inch so I was hoping I left enough? I crammed them all in, and it looked good. I checked this morning, and it froze beautifully. Like now when my wife makes Indian and needs a can of tomatoes, we have them. I think we use them in curries most of all, so this is exciting. I am ecstatic to have my own food that I grew ready to use.