Sandy Miller Pottery & Garden: August 2018

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Sundays, posting from the frontlines.......

Another week and I am just ticking down those August days. I gotta say this is not my favorite month. February gets a little brutal around here but August is the waiting month. Waiting for northern breezes to start blowing, humidity to drop, rain to start falling, seeds to sprout, shows to start up and the wait sometimes seems eternal.

The late summer gardens are pretty, especially in the evenings.

Hydrangea Unique

Nicoctiana for the moths and make the yard smell of vanilla.

Lobelia and Fairy Roses

The bean screen is working remarkably well this year.

My van is behind that green wall.

The full blown garden bounty is coming in and I am pretty careful about what happens on which weather day. I could never punch a time clock! Yesterday my list was pretty full but then mid-afternoon the humidity dropped, the wind shifted, I stopped weaving and ran out to get garden chores done. The back 40 got my attention. Seeds once again were tossed in the ground. Carrots, Swiss chard, red Russian Kale, Toscano Kale, Romaine and Butter crunch lettuces. Still to toss are radishes and beets. Might be late for beans but will give it shot as I have the seeds.

This has been a learning year. There were so many things that got crossed off the master list and then seeds and plants were unceremoniously slammed in the ground. I said the garden prayer over the whole lot; GROW DAMMIT! and moved onto other stuff on the list. In past years I spent hours pouring over companion planting charts, moon planting charts, researching what seeds were resilient to pests, wilts and blights, heirloom or hybrid but not this year. And a HUGE mistake was made!

I let volunteer potato sprouts grow where they wanted, ala Ruth Stout no till, no work gardening method.
If you don't know Ruth Stout check her out here: Ruth Stout video

One big problem, tomato blight winters over on potato tubers left in the ground. Guess who got tomato blight for the first time ever! So many lessons...... not from Ruth Stout this time!

My blighted tomatoes but the nasturtiums are doing great!

As luck would have it there is a terrific farmer up the road and I can get tomatoes for $20 a bushel. I am using the tomatoes I have for eating and soups and buying a bushel or two from my local farmer who thankfully, is pretty pesticide and herbicide free. And can I just rant for a minute? I am so over the boutique farm stands! I have been going to a local farm stand for 35 years. This year I had sticker shock! 5 peaches were $7.00. A watermelon was $9.00. I can't even remember what the "heirloom tomatoes" were going for as I stumbled around wondering where my old farm stand went. There were custom jams, pickles, jellies. Custom paring knives. Honey was crazy expensive! I am so grateful for my honey lady who lives a stones throw away. I bought a dozen ears of corn for $6.00, which I thought was very fair. As I walked out I noticed the cars in the parking lot; an Audi SUV, a Mercedes, a huge Suburban and my cute little work van. Yikes, when did this happen? and why did this happen? My favorite orchard where I got Molly Red apples is closed this year. Are farm markets being gentrified like everything else? Ok I got the boutique corn home and half of ears were not filled out so I only got half an ear of corn or 6 ears. I get you have to put your kids through college, and need equipment and and and ...... we are all in this together. I guess this gets shelved with the $100 mug dilemma and I sure need time to ponder all this! Phew February is coming!

My few tomatoes have been roasted and turned into soup. I wish you could smell my house right now! Almost better than Christmas!!

This is the easiest and best tomato soup recipe ever! No need to skin or seed the tomatoes just core, cut and roast. Toss in a head of garlic, some fresh basil, thyme, onions and roast at 375F until slightly charred. Blend in blender or food processor adding stock as needed. At this point I can put it in the freezer or add a bit of almond milk or half and half and make a nice bisque for dinner. If you choose not to add stock it makes a super fab spread for crusty bread or crackers.

This works for squash too! In the hollow put sage and garlic, roasting upside down to seal in the flavors.

Let it cool, peel, toss squash, garlic and sage in a big heavy bottomed pot and start adding stock or water to thin out. I use my stick blender. This freezes super duper too!

The birds won on the elderberries this year....

The white raspberries are doing OK this year. These were a pass along from neighbor Joan H. and best gift ever!

Last year they were stupendous. This year between the Japanese beetles and drought not as well. The gardener fell down in her duties.

The studio is humming along too. Those raku pots from last Sunday have been polished up or hammered. Weaving is taking way too much time but still love weaving!

I'm also on the learning curve for terra stigillata. Just when you think you've nailed it you open the kiln to find it peeled right off the bottom half of the pot. Not sure if the pots can be fixed or worth the effort of fixing so I will sit and look at them for a week and then decide. Nothing to loose at this point so time to play!!

When all else fails back to pots you know and love :)

So I must say just about the time you plod along through the week opening less then stellar kiln loads and trimming blighted leaves of tomato plants or spending a morning killing bean beetles, squash beetles, potato beetles, cucumber beetles.

Then out of the blue this pops up.

And you can't believe it and it makes you a bit teary because you realize you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Planting seeds, making pots, plodding along through life and then one day you pop that sun warmed cherry tomato in your mouth and the explosion happens. For a moment in time all is right in my little world on this tiny half acre and you can't stop smiling and you know you will always be planting those seeds.

Hoping everyone a sun warmed cherry tomato week!

Sunday, August 12, 2018

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!