Haha, it was a mess!
I glad you mentioned the row cover. Where did you get yours? I might end up using old sheets or some fine tulle from the fabric store, but would be willing to purchase some if it's made in America. Did yours happen to say where it was made?
Hot times on the August Homestead
Dunno where it's made, but will find out. I got it from 7 Springs, where I buy my organic amendments. I got the one that's for overwintering, Pro 34.
http://www.7springsfarm.com/catalog.html#Fabrics
oh boy i sure feel for you all in Texas . you guys sure are suffering wtih the heat you all have.
LOL i am the same way about my chickens and my rabbits LOL maybe next year i will be more brave ? ... it could happen ..... ?
got loads of produce to dry . not from my garden but our farmers markets. hope to get some white sweet corn in the next day or two. just got to lazy .
eggplant
zuccinni
beans
tomatos to go in the freezer and them can wait until jan to can.
got lots of basil
i m dehydrating more and more . i just love sweet onions dried. its like a yummy onion chip .
I saw an interesting canning recipe today... This gal cans slices of green tomatoes so she'll have some to make fried green tomatoes all winter. Easy-peasy recipe. Slice green tomatoes about 3/8" thick and stack in wide-mouth pint jars. Add 1-1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice and a pinch of salt to each pint jar, or 1 Tbs lemon juice per quart jar. Process in a water bath for 40 minutes.
Darius, for the row covers I put the hoops 3-4' apart. I don't use pipe down the center, although it would probably make it a little sturdier. I just used string on both my low and high tunnels.
I put the row covers over all of the rows I seeded for fall, keeping the sides about a foot off the ground. The rows stayed moist enough that the seeds germinated well and are growing nicely.
C_L, it's not been as bad here, weather-wise, but as much as I hate the unbearable heat, I hate freezing temps more. Glad you got the cows all taken care of. Hope the friend's hand isn't too bad.
Hey, Sue, busy as ever! LOL
good morning
darius the pot i have it does say aluminum ? i thought SS also . I am using it for watering and decoration only.
Green tomatoe's canned ? hmmmm. wouldn't they get to soft ?
i was going through some DG threads on the canning forums and found the Mock apple pie one used iwth green tomatoe's
i may try it
today i dehydrate weeeee
Sue, yes any canned tomato product would get soft so I wondered why she was canning slices... but maybe that's better than having nothing to use for fried green tomatoes in winter?
Years ago, one of my friends used slices of the neck of the winter squash tromboncino to make mock fried green tomatoes. Said they were great!
We overwintered green tomatoes wrapped in newspaper and stored in the fruit cellar. They would stay green till taken out and set on a windowsill. That would be far easier for fried green then canning would. Just a thought.
How long did they keep, Pod?
I have grown the tomato "Long Keepers" that kept until Christmas.
As I recall they would last into Jan but we always ate them ripened so Jan might be due to sitting on the windowsill that long. I also believe if we had had more to store, they would have stored longer.
I wish there was adequate cool storage here but right now I would settle for cool. lol
question fer you all
i m dipping my tomatoe's in italian dressing .. well it has romano cheese in it . SO i m wondering, safe ? i would think they won't keep as long as my plain dried tomato chips .
i tried to google but came up with no much info . or i just didn't google the right phrase ?
back to drying eggplants.
thanks
smiles
sue
Sue... are you dipping toms in Italian dressing and then dehydrating them?
Mmm, tomatoes with ranch...mmmm daydreaming here.
I make a good mustard chow-chow with green tomatoes, they're really soft when canned. I can't imagine frying them. Just as well, I shouldn't fry as much as we do. We always have so much catfish on hand. The only way I like it is fried. Anyone have a good broiled catfish recipe?
I noticed this week that we're getting low on chicken. So I ordered 50 broilers. I'm a bit nervous, we've never raised them before and don't think I'll take it very well if they look like frankenchickens. The heat and coyotes have taken their toll on our flock. Upset with myself that we didn't get the incubator fixed this year. But a new motor from a poultry place is 165.00. I ordered a book on small motors for 19.00 off of ebay and it looks like I should be able to fix/replace the motor myself for about 30.00. I hate it when companies mark stuff up sooo much!
Thanks for the link, Darius..going to go do some window shopping :0)
coco, do not know if this qualifies as a recipe - in younger days at a camp ground we went way into the evening with only one good fish to show for the effort - a nice catfish. By the time it was landed we were well underway and ready for sleep. The fish was quickly cleaned, skinned, stuffed with onions, wrapped in foil and placed in a cooler with Ice. In the morning the package was removed from the cooler, drained and placed in the hot coals of the fire. I think we let it roast there while we scrambled some eggs to go with.
Though my memory is going this was one of the best fish "breakfast" I can think of. - D
I pickled 3 gallon jars of green cherry tomatoes yesterday. I had to borrow Fanny's (Amish woman next door) big pressure canner to do it, even though they are pickles. I had nothing that would handle even a single gallon jar. I did this while waiting for the crew to come and put up my new carport. My Ladyfriend wants to pickle some greenbeans, but I've never cared for those or pickled corn, so i'm not sure we'll do it. If the sweet potatoe roots are doing as good as the top growth I am going to be inundated with sweet potatoes!! Not a problem, just have to make some SP pies!!!
Nik, my small patch with SP top growth looks amazing too. I sure hope there's something going on under it!
Ditto here with the Sweet Potatoes! I'm growing mostly Beauregard and a few Stephensons. I've been told the Stephensons have been grown every year here in my county for over 100 years. Have no idea what the potatoes look like, but the leaves are beautiful.
My yogurt was a bust. It was either I had it too hot, or the yogurt was too old. It was a new unopened container that I bought a few days ago, but when I opened it I noticed the expiration date was over a month ago. So will try again tomorrow. Chickens really enjoyed it, though.
Doesn't sound like any heat relief for our southern friends. I just can't imagine dealing with that kind of heat for such a long time.
Hmmm, what's wrong with this picture....Ladyfriend wants to can some GB and corn, but Nik doesn't like it, so probably won't be doing it. :)
the tomatoe experiment didn't work out.
came out salty , oily and nasty. i going to reread that book and see where i went wrong ?
Darius yes i dipped them then dehydrated them. sorry not very good at splain'in thangs :)
well eggplant came out good.
but with all the seeds still in there ???
next spring i grow my own
i did sweet pots but with no rain ? it was a bust. so i m going to plant my black raspberrys
i also have some grapes
guess i better make the garden bigger again.
I'm planning on making the garden bigger for next year too. Good thing I had a future expansion in mind when I staked it out last spring for plowing.
Waiting for the dew to dry up some, so I can start picking for my customers.
I'm considering making some serious changes to the front yard / garden area this fall. The Kid (my half-sister's 24 year old daughter) left Monday to spend a couple of months with the Boyfriend DeJour in Elmira, NY. I'm really hoping she won't be back. Ever. She is a fantastic con artist who always "takes" without ever "giving". However, under duress she did some of the mowing this summer (although not well even with the riding mower) but now I'll have to do it all.
So I'm thinking to turn more of the yard that needs mowing every 5 days into perennial planted areas, maybe with some fruit and nut trees and bushes. The current spot I use for veggies is really too close to the creek and it gets flooded a couple of times a year. Too bad I didn't know that area floods when I chose it to plow up for veggies! After 5 years of amending, that soil has improved, so whatever I plant there instead of veggies should do well as long as it can tolerate occasional flooding and the typical poor drainage of clay soil.
I wish I could start with sheet-composting an area of the grass that's 15' or 20' wide and 200' long this fall. That's 3,000 to 4,000 square feet, covered at least a foot deep with thick layers of green and brown compost materials, a bottom layer of cardboard, and a thinish layer of bacterial-laden soil on top. Hmmmm... 3-4 thousand cubic feet of compost materials needed, and my truck can hold maybe 150 cu.ft. per load IF it's bundled together like hay bales... Whew!!! I'm tired already.
I'm putting all my friends on alert: I shall be begging for starts of trees and bushes that bear edibles in my zone! I'm particularly interested in quince, elderberry, chinquapin, service berry, sea buckthorn, aronia (chokecherry), and old apple varieties including crab apples.
Dyson, thanks! I'm up for trying it with onions, sounds good. Just the description made me smile. Best coffee I ever had was instant coffee made in a beer bottle, warmed over some coals. Eight hours sleeping on the ground makes everything taste better.lol
Luaghing at Robin and Nik...isn't this the woman that changes the oil in your tractor and cleans fish? I think you need to can some green beans and corn, while your at it, put a bow on them ;0) Without them it could be a long cold winter.lol
That's a lot of soil, Darius!
Have some crops done better then others in the flood zone?
Lyn, hard to say about crops in the flood zone. Shallots and onions drowned, garlic bulbs were small (perhaps also from the heavy clay); potatoes (Yukon Gold) were eaten from underground. However the SP's seem to be thriving, if the amount of leaf cover is any indication. I've never grown beans or tomatoes there. Broccoli and Brussels sprouts were just okay; weeds excel, as did the buckwheat.
Darius, where are thinking of putting the new garden? Will it be well out of range of the flood waters?
C_L, forgot about the tractor, but I was remembering the fox. LOL
Nik, we've got your back...just trying to help. :)
Robin, I'm thinking parallel and adjacent to the old garden, just higher up in the yard. I think that's well out of the flood waters except maybe once in a hundred years.
I'm just wondering...could you till in hay and let it decompose over the winter, and work on adding amendments as time and money allows. It would add plenty of nitrogen. Or just covering the whole new garden space with straw like Ruth Stout did and work on small sections at a time doing it the way you want to. Just ideas to get the space started.
The thing is... I don't want to till.
Ruth Stout's approach is more along the lines of what I prefer to do.
Gotcha.
I talked with my sis tonight, and she's in agreement about lessening the amount of grass. Of course, she didn't volunteer any $$ for trees!
darius i can hook you up on some small tree's LMK. Are you sure you want to do all that soil ? wow that is a lot of dirt. !
i m also doing the no till. I m pondering the idea of doing a winter rye cover crop this year... can't ponder to much time , got to start seeding if i choose to do that.
got a hook up on manure and they guy has a bucket on a skid steer which helps out alot.
Robin i really like straw as my mulch, cheap and effective.
my garlic grew well for me this year.
I wish I COULD get decent straw... everything I see has so many seed heads in it. I fought that battle of seed heads growing several years ago when I planted stuff in straw bales. Took me 3 years to get rid of all that grassy stuff that grew.
Sue, it's not likely I will attempt all that much yard space conversion this year. I'll be 71 in a couple of months and my mental energy is far greater than what my body wants to do!
Have you considered just laying out plastic on the soil from now until next spring?
Question about your bean hoop...beans underneath grew okay without much sunlight? I grew both bush beans and pole beans this year. The pole beans came in later, but are much nicer beans, straight and long. If you think the cattle panels work well, I'll go ahead and buy them this fall. Thanks
Robin, I didn't have enough leaf cover to keep the beans from much sunlight... the Jap. beetles feasted on the leaves! I wish I had put the trellis back up and grown pole beans again this year. The bush beans were tasty but a pain to pick.
Yes, I've thought about just putting down plastic over the winter. I did that 3-4 years ago, and while it killed the grass (but NOT the dandelions) it did nothing for the compacted soil... which sheet composting over winter would help. I've been enlarging my apple guild slowly into the lawn area by putting down black plastic bags for 3 weeks or so. It's still hard work to dig out the deep johnson grass and crab grass roots, but still easier than when it's green. Doing sections 2 feet wide and maybe 8-10 feet long is somewhat manageable for me. I've learned that if I don't get all the deep grass root runners out, I might as well not do it at all.
Thanks for the bean info. Yeah, the bush beans are definitely togher on the body to pick.
Organic gardening isn't easy, is it? Wish there was a cheap and easy solution for you. That Johnson grass is a bear. I can keep most of the other weeds under control.
No, OG isn't easy. However, my accidental foray this summer into some of the food/forest gardening basics (I didn't even know that was the name for what I was doing) has been a mind-boggling eye-opener about gardening.
When winter sets in and you have "idle" time, go to the library and check out Toby Hememway's book, Gaia's Garden. (I had to get mine via inter-library loan since my small town library doesn't own a copy.) If I can only ever buy one more book, it will be this one.
I love what you are doing, I'm just not there yet. :)
Hey, I wasn't there yet either... it just happened!!
LOL!
I got to finish cleaning up the livingroom and kitchen. Al will be home in a couple of hours.