Lessons from the garden ....... or not!

Still no rain here at happy acres..... it's all around us and indeed some places are underwater but not on this little half acre.  The tomatoes are dusty!  The deer have tromped through the garden pretty well and looks like the snap dragons are pretty comfy and bed of choice.  The echinacea is flat but still putting on a good show.  Note to self, you may be down but keep those petals perky!  

The humidity is just stupid this year, can we get an Amen for greenhouse gasses warming the globe.  OK this just bakes my potato; the island of Tangier in Chesapeake Bay is disappearing, don't believe me, here ya go: The New Yorker.  And all we can talk about is golfing at Maralargo and entertaining Putin.  My next blog will be in Russian........  Wait back to the garden and not the scorched earth policy currently floating around D.C.  

In my humble opinion I think everybody should plant a couple beans.  Stick them in a flower pot or the edge of the flower bed.  Beans just blow my mind as they have a 120:1 ratio.  Did you read that?  One bean plant will give you 120 beans!  They don't take up much room and they grow no matter what!  How can you not love that?  Be resilient!  Seeds in general just blow my mind!  Think about one zucchini seed.  One seed will give you 8-10 pounds of food and one ounce is about 250 seeds.  There are 18,200,000 hits on google for zucchini recipes!  Can we talk about carrots?  I toss carrots in everything and can't imagine life without carrots.  

One ounce of carrots will get you 18,500 seeds! 😲  

A 100 foot row will need .5 ounce of seed.  10 feet of carrots yields approximately 8 pounds of carrots so a 100 foot row will give you 80 pounds of carrots.  Do you need a frilly border in your flower beds?  Carrots or parsley or lettuce?  And don't get me started on potatoes because they are just amazing!  I tuck those in the ground everywhere!  And then you get dinner! 

I bought the corn from the local farmer.  Current price in this part of Ohio; $6 per dozen. 

All the extra you can't eat immediately goes in the fruit cellar.

A very small row of green beans has yielded 22 jars of dilly beans. 

another gallon of refrigerator pickles too.....  that's 2 gallons of pickles from two cucumber plants! 

Oh and 12 small jars of pickle relish in the fruit cellar!  Two plants! 

I planted 4 varieties of beans this year and learned so much!!  So far, Tender Greens are winning for sheer taste and abundance.  I also planted Triomphe de Farcy....... because I really like saying the name and they were ready for harvest in 48 days and the magic garden word; "heirloom".  Heirloom is not always a good thing as they are pretty stringy, not very sweet and if picked one day late tough and chewy.  These abundant producers have been left to dry on the stalks and will be used for dry beans.  Then I planted Kentucky Wonder beans, because I needed to know what made them so wonderful.  I believe these are the magic beans Jack in the Bean Stalk planted, they are trying to grow to the moon and have overshoot the 8 foot fence!  Not crazy about the taste, kind of tough, a magnet for Japanese Beetles but provide excellent screening from the neighbor. These too will be left to dry on the trellis for winter dry beans.  Then I planted Scarlet Runner beans.  Yet another bean you might ask........ I plant these for butterflies and hummingbirds period. Oh and screening of course, they are climbers but not as aggressive as the space traveler, Kentucky Wonder Beans. The dry beans are things of beauty!  And they are super tasty! 

The Monarch, Swallowtail, Admirals and hummingbirds just love the red tubular blossoms.

Favorite morning activity; sit on the patio with hot coffee and watch the garden.  Favorite dinner activity; sit on the patio with a dinner plate and watch the garden.  Last week while leaning back on my chair after a great evening meal we had hummingbird wars in the garden.  I know they are territorial but did not know they are ruthless!  A swallowtail was busy on the Buddleia when out of nowhere BAM!  Stabbed in the back by the pointy beak of a hummingbird! I have been gardening a very long time and been in and around gardens all my life and I have never ever seen this happen! 

I ran over and scooped up the swallowtail, still alive sort of, placed it on a flower and it fell to earth quite dead.  Tonight, Nature just sucked!  Ninja hummingbird, the swallowtail never saw it coming! 

I was so upset I baked cookies ....... 

These are really good although a bit too sweet for me.  But it's a great recipe and good starting place to start tweaking.  I did replace 3/4 cup of flour with oat bran and wheat germ.  Now to cut back the sugar, way back!  But they are a good chewy cookie. 

 

And I spent a couple days taking pictures of work in the studio.  The pots going on Etsy got a lovely display of tomatoes or peaches.  I have never put food in my pictures before but I think I like it!  

And I sold a bowl!  

And on Saturday there was time to fire up the raku kilns in the early morning dew.

Now to get busy waxing and weaving!  Tomato canning starts this week too.  Summer is flying by and I'm OK with that but sooooo many lessons from this little half acre!  And there is magic on this little half acre because as the world seems to be wildly spinning out of control and there is the continuing hopeless feeling of not being able to stop it.  Taking an early morning walk through my garden which is like the United Nations of pests with Japanese Beetles, Mexican Bean Beetles, Colorado Potato beetles, the American cucumber beetle and coming on strong the Chinese stink bugs.  I hand pick all these and deposit in a glass jar with Dawn dish liquid and water.  I inspect each yellow blossom, cucumbers and squash looking for cucumber beetles.  Each morning as the giant squash blossoms begin to open I find a sleeping bee.  Good Morning my little pollinator!  They wake up very slowly and are covered in pollen.  They have slept all night kept dry and wrapped in the gentle protection of the squash blossom and the fee for a bed....... free pollination! 

A lovely symbiotic relationship and I'm in love with this Nature thing again but still on the fence over those bastard hummingbirds.