a few more greenhouse pictures

One of my greenhouse goals for 2014 is to set up three more pairs of chains to hang gutter planters in.  I set three more as a goal because of the number of rafters that I have available to use to hang the chains.  Right now I have only enough planters planted for one more pair of chains.  So, yesterday when I was in town I picked up two lengths of chain and today I was able to get them hung and the planters in place.  So one more goal partially accomplished.  Before I need to buy more chains I need to get more planters filled and growing. 

While I was out installing the chains and gutters I took a couple more pictures of greens that are growing in the greenhouse.

spinach

red romaine 

claytonia

all star mix

arugula

The arugula is hanging in the new set of chains, along with the claytonia and all star mix. 

Other updates: the tomatoes continue to do well.  This paste tomato has twelve leaves

And look at the roots in the cup.

Yesterday when I changed the water on the sweet potatoes that I am trying to root, I think I may have seen a few baby roots starting to form.  And today I think that there might be one asparagus seedling starting to poke thru from the first batch that was planted. 

I watched a gardening video today that was about starting grape vines from hardwood cuttings and I was inspired to tromp through the knee deep snow to the arbor in order to prune away a couple of vines from the our established grapes and see if I could get them to root.  It sounds like it might be a long process taking up to a year or more to have transplantable plants.  We have used our grapes for jelly and i have a couple gallon freezer bags of frozen grapes in the freezer (thinking wine someday) Ours are all seeded versions and so far our grapes have been tiny so not too easy to eat.  I have not done much for pruning so the small size might be my fault.  I hope to do more pruning to see if it makes a difference in the size of the bunches.  If these cuttings root I am considering training them on wire to see if they are easier to manage. 

late grape harvest

These are my late grapes.  This is the first year that I have had late grapes.  The grape arbor on the farm has four posts and each has a grape vine planted near it and the vines go up on to the pergola.  One grape vine has been planted longer than the others so it has been producing more grapes than the others.  The grapes on that vine ripened a while back and I harvested those and posted about it here. 

Last year the birds pretty much took the entire harvest as they discovered they were ripe before I did.  That was bad planning on my part.  This year something has changed.  We had lots of birds this spring but now I hardly notice any in our yard. Not being much of a bird watcher i don't know if this is normal or unusual for this time of year.  I do know that a few days ago there was a large raptor type bird circling over our yard and perhaps he or she has driven off the small birds.  We have seen fewer snakes this year as well.

In prior years we have had very few grapes on the three younger vines.  This year there was quite a few.  The grapes pictures are what i could reach from the ground.  There are more that are growing over the pergola that can be reached with a ladder.  The two bowls above hold about ten pounds of purple grapes and six pounds of green grapes.  I made juice out of about half of the purple grapes and that will be for  more jelly. 

The remaining purples and the greens are washed, destemmed and sitting in the freezer.  I am hoping at some point in time to try to make a few bottles of wine from them.  I have a sister-in-law Patty who moved to a house with grapes growing in the yard and she is planning to make wine so i am eager to hear about her experiences and whether she likes the equipment that she purchased.  I think that having the grapes in the freeze allows me some time to do some research and make wine when i am ready.

my weekend to do list drifted into monday

I started out with ambitious outdoor goals for the weekend and did manage to accomplish a few of the things on my list.  I spent a good part of Saturday finishing the mowing of the yard.  At this point it is all mowed and has started in regrowing. 

The raspberry row

On Sunday I gave the raspberry transplants some attention.  They were sprawling in both directions which kept me from being able to mow close to the row.  I didn't take a before picture but here is an after.

I added another wire at the top of the wood end posts and added a fiberglass post in the center to help support the middle of the wire.  Then I tied all of the canes that were sprawling to the new wire.  The raspberries have thorns so I have pincushion hands.  I have so many volunteer raspberry plants that could be transplanted so I am giving some consideration to adding some to the cornfield perhaps dividing the front half from the back half. 

The orchard

Since it was mowed I could move the hoses back and I watered the fruit trees in the orchard.  I had trimmed up the suckers on the one plum tree.  It still needs a little work with a chainsaw as the lopper was not able to get all of the branches but it is looking better.  The east apple tree still needs a bigger circle around it. 

While I was moving the hose from tree to tree I worked on weeding along the white fence and then watered that.  I got about half of it done so it will look kind of silly until I get the rest done.

The grapes

The earliest grapes were ready for harvesting.  A few of the earliest ones had been eaten by birds and a few of the latter ones were not fully blue yet but I learned my lesson last year that if I wait too long the birds don't leave any for me.  Although I love the look of my grape arbor it does not make for easy picking now that the vines are getting bigger and I have not been diligent about pruning them.  There were quite a few grapes that could only be reached with a ladder from the top.

There are four vines on the arbor. This one is the oldest of the vines and it has a small purple grape.  Here you can see several bunches of the grapes.

 
And this bunch is on a 6 inch appetizer plate along side of a teaspoon to give an idea of the size of the bunches.

Here is a shot of my big silver bowl with the grape harvest from the one vine.

The sun has kind of washed out the color in this picture.  After washing and plucking the grapes from the stems there was five pounds of grapes which is just the right amount for one batch of jelly!

Making Jelly

Last time I made jelly i made a freezer jelly.  You prepare the fruit as juice and then mix it with sugar and pectin and put it in the freezer.  This year I decided to try a packet of sure jell for less sugar recipes.  This recipe is a cooked type of jelly and is put into jars for storage on the shelf instead of frozen. 

This is the washed grapes that have been removed from the stems.  A potato masher was used to crusth the grapes and then water is added and they are brought to a boil and then the heat is reduces and then they are simmered.  After simmering they juice is strained to remove the seeds and peelings.

 Then the strained juice which has been mixed with a little bit of sugar and the pectin is brought to a boil and the once boiling the remaining sugar is added and it is cooked for one minute once it returns to a boil.  The foam is skimmed off.

The clean jars are held in hot water.

The jelly is ladled into the hot jars.  A funnel is used to keep the mess to a minimum but it is still messy.  Or maybe that is just me.

Then the tops of the jars are wiped clean.

And a lid is applied.

Once the screw band is applied the jars are tipped upside down for five minutes to help with the sealing process.  My box directions said that they could be tipped over to seal or water bath canned.  I decided to to tip them and if they didn't seal then water bath can them but all of mine sealed.

The little bit of extra that didn't fit in the jars is cooling more quickly than the jars and seems to be thickening up nicely as it cools.  Hopefully that means that the jarred jelly will be nice and thick as well.

The cucumber pickles

I am starting to get cucumbers in my cornfield garden and I had this small bowl of random cucumbers.  They were different sizes and different varieties.  I had found this recipe for a copy cat of a Klaussen dill that was a refrigerator pickle.  No canning needed.  I was missing a couple of the spices called for in the recipe but they still turned out good.

These cukes are washed and cut into wedges and then a brine is poured over them and they go into the refrigerator. 

The summer squash pickles

I also have been getting  quite a few zucchini and yellow squash so I decided to try making pickles of these as well.  The recipe i used is for a canned pickle but i decided to do it as a refrigerator pickle.  I didn't want to spend a lot of time doing the canning only to open a jar down the road and find out that it was not a great pickle.  If we like them I will make more and can them so that they keep longer.  If we don't like them i will keep looking at recipes.

These zucchini and yellow squashes are cut into slices along with some onion and then placed in a bowl with salt and water to cover.

After they have soaked they are drained and a brine is poured over them.  This brine is apple cider vinegar and sugar and spices. 

I like the combination of yellow and green on the pickles.  I like the taste and if the rest of the family does as well it will be a good way to use surplus summer squashes.
 
And lastly some pictures that Caitlin took a few days ago with some produce that we picked from our garden.

a garden update--where to start

So I worked outside a lot this weekend and took a bunch of pictures tonight before i came in the house and now the question is how to pull it together into a post that makes sense.   One of the reasons I write about the garden is to create a garden journal of sorts.  My photos are more to document than decorate.  Maybe someday I will take pictures that are just beautiful.

So where to start?  Maybe with the lawn.  We had some rain and then we had some hot weather and the lawn grew like crazy.  It was hard to keep up. I didn't keep up.  So, part of it had to be mowed twice, once with the deck up and then again with the deck down.  There was all those grass clippings to pick up.  So I have been using the lawn sweeper to collect the clippings and I am using them as mulch to keep down the weeds in the garden and it has been working so I decided that with the abundance of clippings that I could use them a few more places.

Here is the blueberry bed after I weeded it, added a soil amendment to help acidify the soil, threw on some old pine needles to also acidify the soil, watered it well and then covered the soil with a nice thick layer of grass clippings.

And here is a picture of my few berries just starting to turn blue.

And here is a shot of my black raspberries.  They turn red before they turn black and I have been checking them every day or two.  They have not started to turn black yet but there are many that are missing so i think the birds are not waiting for them to get ripe.  I am going to have to come up with a way to cover them with bird net next year.

red berries

no more berries

I have been pleased with how they are doing and I think that there will be more berries next year.  We still have lots of volunteer canes around the yard so I think i am going to start another row in the cornfield.

Here is my apple project that I worked on Saturday.  I noticed that when I mow I cannot get close enough with the mower so I dug up the sod to make the circle larger and mulched with grass clippings to help keep the weeds down.

Can you see the apples?  They are getting bigger!

 And here is the other apple tree.  It is next in line for a bigger mulched circle.  These apples are getting bigger as well.

And as long as we are talking about fruit, here is a shot of the developing grape crop.  We have four grapevines and here are pictures of the fruit of two of them.  One of these will turn dark purple when ripe.  They are a small grape with seeds, not easy to eat like a table grape but great for jelly.  This year I think it might be fun to try making a few bottles of wine.  I think a little research is needed.

Here is the Johnny corn.  The tallest stalks are as tall as me or taller. 

And they are getting tassels.

No ears started yet.  Here is the other variety we planted, the Perry corn.  It was planted several weeks later and is half as tall but the stand seems to be more consistent probably because the weather conditions were better--warmer and drier soil.

Here is Cody standing between the yellow squash plant and the Perry corn.  As usual she is trying to hide from the camera but it gives an idea of the height of the corn.

While I have been mowing I have not been weeding so you will see a few (I wish it was only a few) weeds in these pictures.  Here is our dill.

Here is a yellow squash plant...

And a peek at a yellow squash...

These are acorn squashes...flowering but no fruits yet.

And butternut squashes in the front and pumpkins in the back...

Zucchini on the right...

cantaloupes and yellow watermelon...

gourds on the left and a double row of bush beans on the right...

The vine crops are starting to move so it is time to begin evaluating the spacing of the plants for next year and to consider which would benefit from trellising of some sort to grow vertically.  At this point in time the zucchini and yellow squashes are just starting to set fruit, the butternuts, acorns and pumpkins are flowering and the melons are not flowering yet.  The melon plants are also smaller, lower to the ground with smaller leaves.

This is the row of cucumbers green ones on the left side of the fence and lemon cukes on the right side of the fence. 

This is looking like it could be a challenge.  The cucumbers are all over the place, I will need to look at plant spacing and better trellising.  The plants are planted in a double row and the plants are only 5-6 inches apart in the row.  The trellis is looking like it is not going to be up to the task.

Pole beans climbing the fence...

Next post--tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, potager




 

watering the cornfield

Well, we didn't get the rain that was predicted on Friday so on Saturday I hauled water to the cornfield to water.  The little green wagon that pulls behind the lawn mower holds 8 cat litter boxes and I think that I made six trips.  I got all of the south half and the melon patch done and half of the Johnny's sweet corn.  I am still considering laying a hose through the grove to allow for easier watering.  I may have to get some measurements to see what I have for hose and how wide the grove is.  I am not sure how easy it will be to drag that much hose to the end of the cornfield. 

The weed situation is pretty grim.  With all the moisture that we have had the lawn and the weeds are flourishing. I did weed the orchard, rhubarb, blueberries, asparagus and black raspberries.  There were two holes in the row of asparagus and the two new transplants that were grown for those spots are now planted and everything got a drink of water.  There were a few blossoms on one variety of blueberry and lots of blossoms on the raspberries. 

I am noticing that there are blossoms on the older growth of raspberries (what we planted last year). There is also lots of new growth coming which is not flowering yet.  Perhaps it will not flower until next year.  I will have to note where the fruit comes and then make note what to prune.  These plants are transplants from those that have grown wild on the edges of the grove so we do not know what variety they were. 

The grape plants got weeded and watered but I still have to weed the patio stones under the arbor.  All four of the grape vines are getting lots of little baby grapes.

I have lots of weeding left to do in the flower beds so that will be on the agenda for this week as well as planting the rest of the sweet corn.  It will be interesting to see if there is a benefit come harvest to staggering the plantings of the corn.   

Took Sunday off to go to the lake for Father's Day.  The mosquitoes were thick by the time we got back to the farm so there was no chance for evening weeding.  I did harvest a few radishes and made some kale chips to take along to the lake. 

Happy Father's Day, Dad!