Well, the Summer ticks on, and the garden is beginning to show its maturity. I'm seeding in what will become the Winter Garden: lots of greens, turnips, and beets, mainly.

The Pole Beans are producing ten meals worth of beans every two days, and I'm close to having my winter needs met. The Romas are getting to the end of their Determinate production time, and are finally petering out. I have, between canned jars and freezer bags, forty quarts of tomatoes set up for winter. Plus another 15 pints of roasted tomatoes, and 18 pints of salsa (that salsa won't make it til Christmas).

Today, I am roasting what looks like the last ten pounds of Romas that I'll get en masse. I have been spending a LOT of time picking and drying Basil, Oregano, Sage, Rosemary and Parsley in the dehydrator. It'll be nice having that on hand without paying money at the store.

While the tomatoes roast, I went out and picked an assortment of Yellow and Green Bell Peppers, some Sweet Banana Peppers, and a mess of Jalapenos, and am going to roast, skin, can, and pack them away for Winter, too.

I found this recipe for easily-canned roasted peppers at CopyKat Chat Forum. I think it replicates the type you might buy at a grocery store, so I'm going to try it, today. Recipe follows after the break.

Wow, does this place need to open the windows, and get a breath of fresh air. Lucky for us, I have just the thing-- a fantastic way of preserving your Summer tomato harvest...

This week, I came across this wonderful recipe for preserved roasted tomatoes. As I already have 15 quarts of tomatoes put up, and had a mountain more on the counter (perhaps 25 pounds, or more), and the plants are still loaded with ripening Romas, I thought that I'd give it a try. Yesterday, we had an administrative day off due to a big change of leadership ceremony well-done, and so, I decided to give it a try. Let me tell you-- the results are spectacular, and my house smelled wonderful all day!

via Grist

Roasted Heirloom Tomatoes

Makes about 3 pint jars

10 pounds heirloom tomatoes
1 head of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled
A couple of shallots, halved, but not peeled, optional
A handful of thyme sprigs
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
2-3 teaspoons kosher or sea salt
Your favorite fresh herbs for tomatoes—basil, marjoram, or oregano
A few dried red chili peppers, optional

Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper or foil. Preheat your oven to 250 degrees F.

Why, in the garden section, of course!

A reporter's morning walk through the lovely Manhattan flower market on West 28th street finishes up with a suggestion for a visit to a very special local bookstore:

I'm reposting and updating this from last year, for the top of the gardening season for most folks.

Our good friend MadSat, is still in Iraq, and still safe, and thankfully, he still has access to blogs.

MadSat is a rather remarkable beekeeper and bee remover (among a host of other amazing skills and talents). He sent along a great recipe to encourage and feed bees in a very healthful way.

It was so good ( posted my experiences with it last year), I want to share it here, with better measurements from MadSat:

I'm looking out on my eight garden beds in the back yard. The strawberry and asparagus bed is wintering-over just fine. I cut the asparagus ferns down a week ago, when they finally turned brown, and fell over. Now, they are ready for sending up new stalks, which I will be able to harvest this year. This past year, each crown sent up at least twelve stalks, so, I expect this year to be a real good year for them. I just pulled and started dehydrating the parsley that I had growing with the asparagus. The strawberries seem to not realize that it is winter. I picked a good, hardy variety, and they are green, and still sending out new shoots, which I need to snip back every few weeks.

Just a little reminder, because I've got the snow-covered 5b Blues, and missing my blooms: the Seed Exchange is coming soon. I've got zillions, and I hope at least a few intrepid garden bloggers are interested in doing some exchanging as I would like to. I've got a few links in my gardenblog bookmarks that do exchanges, but I'd like to at the very least tie into that with something a little more separate and Corrente-specific. So consider this a heads up post, and if you know any good exchanges, or have participated in them before, share your links and thoughts here. Here are some I left for the birds to eat.

A veritable shitpile of photos to follow, dial up folks.

So there's a great deal going on today in the garden, color-speaking, and I guess I just went overboard. But that's the spirit of the age, isn't it? Say, I wonder what I could get for these beans...

Anyhoo, this is likely the last of the jewel weather, sunny and warm. It seemed a good day to break out the camera to get full effect.

Hello there, Miss Thing.   Read more…

I'm not really joking. The banking crisis is rapidly getting, how do they say? "Out of hand." These idiots in charge have long since proven they aren't capable of dealing with Reality, when it gets ugly (cf Katrina, Iraq, Georgia, etc.) So: what are you doing to prepare?

I've put down ~75 quarts of homegrown, so far. There's more I know I should do. Ideas? I'm not the only one asking.

So The Exorcist III was a horrible movie, but I liked it anyway. Especially for Brad Dourif's portrayal of a madman inhabiting the priest's body; they morphed his voice and it was tres creepy. My favorite line is when he gets going in his glorious evil, and finishes with "and it will.not.end!!1! That's sort of how I feel about having all this blooming color so late in the season. You can feel fall in the air here, but my flowers are denying it. And I'm glad. Food and blooms to follow, with the usual warning for dial-up peeples.

Glory! I've got a bunch. I totally grok why people grow them; when almost everything else is finished blooming, they are coming on, and just go and go and go.   Read more…

Well, I said I would and here you go. Food and Fleur this time. Usual Warning to those on dial-up, this is a motherlode of pics. And, I'm going to share some failures as well as successes with you. What a funky growing year it's been for us here- too wet, too dark, too dry, to hot. Proving that farming in MI is as hard as it is to be an honest Republican in today's rethug party. Anyway...

Is there anything better to view and smell in high summer than phlox? Perhaps, but I'll enjoy the torment of trying to decide which of mine I love best.

  Read more…

Votre response, Lambert?

  Read more…

My flood-delayed garden is limping along, and the tomatoes are finally at the point where they need some support. I’ve used commercial cages in the past but had found them wanting, especially the inverted cone baskets you commonly see. A vigorous and productive tomato plant will overwhelm and take those wimpy things to the ground. A more heavy-duty solution was in order.

These are homemade cages made from concrete reinforcing wire. They’re cheap and easy to make and are sturdy enough to stand up to the toughest tomato plant.

Electric fence. Dab some peanut butter on the fence.

I had one last garden box left to prepare, and I figured that it would make a great tutorial. This method of gardening is foolproof, and hugely productive. Here Is A Quick And Easy Step-By-Step Guide With Pictures.

I have no idea how to post pictures to this blog, so I can only link to my place. Sorry Lambert, I'm honestly not trying to push up my traffic.

Every garden needs European Honey Bees to pollinate the flowers to produce fruits and veggies.

I was having a very tough time attracting the l'il fellers to my yard, even though I've seeded the entire yard with Dutch White Clover to attract them, and crowd out this damned Bermuda Grass that refuses to die.

A good friend of mine, a Beekeeper, gave me this recipe to attract them:

In a Mason jar, to a bit more than half a quart of hot water, add 1/8 tsp of lecithin. Add seven drops of oil of lemongrass, seven drops of oil of spearmint and fill with sugar (I used two cups). Shake until all the sugar is dissolved. The lecithin emulsifies the oils, so they spread evenly.

In response to requests for pictures and more information in FeralLib's most recent gardening post, I've posted a bunch of pics to my place. You can find them HERE.

Every vining plant that you can grow vertically will save you at least a square yard, of space that you can use to plant something else, AND you're simplifying the process of caring for those plants. Squash Beetles are VERY easy to catch and kill, and you don't have to worry about treading on foliage to harvest. No ground rot, no missing that one Cuke that goes to seed, and ends the vine's setting fruit early.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, this series has been on hiatus for a while. The flooding in the Midwest included the river behind my house, and while fortunately, I had no major water problems in my home, my backyard was a soggy mess. Even after the water receded and a week of dry weather, the ground was still too wet to work. The maple seeds however, found the environment much to their liking.

(Click here for previous posts in this series)

This is what my garden normally looks like by this time of year.

No pics and just a short one from me today, as it's too durn pretty outside to stay on the machine for long. But: in case you don't know, many vegetable plants only require 30-90 days of growth before harvest. And many are very easy to grow; lettuce and chard and potatoes and even tomatoes. There are many foods that freeze well, or can be stored dry.

Why am I reminding you of this? Because the flooding in the Midwest is going to utterly ruin a lot of our corporate farms, the farms that we still rely upon for our system of cheap and readily available food. No, I don't predict starvation and food shortages, but yes, I do predict a rise in the price of food starting this fall or sooner, an even more dramatic rise than is already coming due to inflation and energy prices.

Spade up some grass. Fill a couple of pots. Head over to a community plot, or just create one on some unused land in your 'hood. It's not too late.

It’s been a cold, wet spring in Wisconsin and I’ve been busy with my land in Missouri, so my garden planting is far from finished. But that’s given the plants started indoors ample time for hardening off in preparation for setting into their final destination.

In the Spring, your skin needs time to acclimate to being exposed to bright sunlight, and your plants do too. Getting plants accustomed to outdoor conditions is called hardening off, and it’s very important to follow this step or all of your efforts getting your plants started will be for naught.

(Click here for previous posts in this series)

Our good friend Bruce D was teasing me about being such a flower-oriented poster, so I'm very happy to finally include some of the early performing veggies in today's garden post. Lots of pics, slow for dial up, and damn! Just try to make me slide into a bad mood today, nah. gunna. happen. Not with this much blooming and sunshine.

Today's Mystery Bloom! I'm so sorry I can't seem to do it photojustice. Seriously, it's so delicate and lovely, and after waiting all last year with no results, it's esp satisfying to see it turn on now.   Read more…

Good Morning! It's a beautiful day here, sunny and bright, sunrise was wonderful to see this morning. I thought I'd make up for the prolonged lack of blogging with some photos. Warning: big pics, so this will likely load slowly for you dial up folks.

  Read more…

As your seedlings sprout in your flats, the first greens to appear are the “seed leaves” or cotyledons. They produce food for the plant as it begins to grow true leaves and are usually distinctly different in appearance from the plant’s leaves. If you are starting your seeds in flats, once the second set of true leaves start to appear it’s time to begin potting up – transplanting your seedlings from the flats into individual containers or cells of multi-packs.

Once you have a place to start your seeds you of course will need a growing medium and some type of container to put them in. Containers of all kinds are available, and just about anything can be used from milk cartons to egg cartons to purpose-made seeding flats as long as they meet a few criteria. They must be deep enough and sturdy enough to hold 2-3” of growing medium, they must be able to hold up to being wet, and they must provide adequate drainage. I use commercially made plastic seed flats as they are inexpensive, a convenient size, and easy to use and keep clean. Another option is peat pots, which can hold the plant until it’s ready to be set out, eliminating the need for intermediate transplanting, but they aren’t as flexible as using flats and can get costly for large numbers of plants.

The first thing you’ll need when starting seeds is a suitable place to do it. In order to start seed successfully, you must meet the environmental requirements for initial germination and subsequent growth of the plants until they reach the stage when they are ready for transplanting. A well designed rack or other area will meet the needs of correct temperature to start germination, and sufficient light and space to stimulate healthy growth.

Those of you who have read my previous posts know that in addition to an avid winemaker, I am a lifelong gardener. In Wisconsin, like many parts of the country, the only way to grow many types of vegetables and flowers is by setting out plants started earlier in the season from cuttings or seeds. I start most of my own plants in a seed starting rack I’ve built in my basement. This series will step you through the basics of starting plants from seed and setting them out into your garden.