Yums From the Farmers Market

This weekend, J. and I hit the big Farmer's Market in downtown Kansas City and came home with some yummy, great-looking veggies.  Chipotle was there handing our free $10 tokens that could be spent at one vendor in the market, so everything in the picture was free.  We had the carrots Tuesday night, and the Yukon gold potatoes mashed last night.  The banana peppers went into some of the salsa we made on Monday evening.

I won't say who ate them, but I'm pretty sure those peaches are no longer present in my kitchen either.  And, shortly, those beets and cucumbers will find themselves pickled.  Sometime (hopefully soon!), I'm going to show my sis-in-law how to can salsa.  That should be great fun.

Ya know, looking at that picture, I'm thinking there's really nothing better than fresh produce from the market, unless it's walking out of your house to pluck it right out of your backyard garden.  Who needs a bowl when you can eat blackberries right off the vine while sitting on your patio?

I suspect everyone is in the middle of canning, freezing, preserving and, well....EATING!  What have you been up to?

Falling Back

My grandmother used to say "time waits for no one" and, being the wise woman she was, she was right.  Yesterday was the day we set our clocks back and get an extra hour of sleep.  While the extra hour is great, am I the only one that hates the time change?  It's now going to be dark when I get home from work!  That means no recess for the chickies or doing ANYTHING outside after work.

 

So I let the girls out for a looonnnng time yesterday afternoon while I did some work around the poor, neglected garden.  That's right...I fell back into gardening. 



My autumn harvest!

Note the 2 jalapenos - they are the only jalapenos we've gotten this year and J. is as happy as a witch in a broom factory over them.

 

Those crazy I-thought-they-were-dead-from-the-drought tomato plants are producing like made now.  The oblong tomatoes are Romas and they are literally falling off the vine.  Probably because the vines are dying now that we've had a couple of near-freezing nights.  I don't know if there's enough to do anything with or not.

These Roma plants are looking a little sad, bu tthey're dropping tomatoes like crazy.

You can see that my garden has been pretty neglected since we've been spending all our time getting the house ready to sell. 



Would somebody PLEASE mow!?

Thank goodness J. mowed right after I took this picture.  The weeds were starting to get taller than the tomato plants.  And look at those potato boxes!  I wonder if there are any taters in there or if the weeds have cannibalized them?



Can you spot the strawberries hanging on for dear life in what used to be my strawberry bed?  Actually they seem to like being insulated by all those weeds.

I would have had a couple more really nice size tomatoes but some feathered critters got to them before I could.



"It wasn't me!" says Fiona

I hope you enjoyed your turn around my forgotten Fall garden, folks.  It feels good to be back.

 

I've shared this post as part of this week's Barn Hop.  Go check out what everybody is up to!

A Potato Farmer I Am Not

We were supposed to have a cold front cross over us last night and send some more showers our way, but it seems to be taking its sweet time.  I took advantage of the reprieve to do the chicken chores - they got a banana for a treat - and I also wanted to dump the Yukon Gold potatoes that I had planted in the laundry tubs.

Both tubs had lots of vines growing in them earlier in the summer but were now dying back.  In the first tub, this is how many potatoes I found:

Boy was I disappointed.  But I still had one tub to go and all bets were on it.  So I dumped it over and here's what I found:

What you see if what you get folks:  just 1 good-sized potato and 3 smaller ones.  *sigh*

I'm thinking it's the combination of the oppressive heat this summer and I think I should have put more dirt in there.  Contrary to what I had read, all the potatoes were in the dirt and there were none in the straw.  Oh well, I still have the potato boxes to dig through, so maybe I've actually got some potatoes in there.  We'll try Yukon Gold again next year.

When I moved the tubs to dump them, I discovered that I'm growing a bumper crop of grubs and something very disturbing.

Look closely in the yellow circles and you'll see what I mean.  Termites!  Not surprising, I guess, since this is where an old tree was cut down.  But, in the interest of being a good neighbor, this just won't do.  I'll be buying some termite stakes later today.  Ugh...nasty things.

In the rest of the garden, which I am pretty much ignoring at this point, the once-written-off tomatoes have set some more fruit and I have some cucumbers!  How they got this big without me seeing them is beyond me.

Well, I'm on vacation today but it's not much of a vacation:   it's time to go work on the house some more and maybe sneak in a little more "me" time since it's my birthday tomorrow.  I'll be 26.  And, if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell also.

This post is part of this week's Farm Fresh Friday and Farmgirl Friday blog hops. 

Looking Back at Monday

I'm still sore and tired from this weekend's painting...isn't that awful?  If only I were half my age again and not soon to be 42 in a couple of weeks.  Ah well.  We only get smarter and better looking with age, right?

 

I was out and about in what's left of the garden yesterday and snapped a few pictures for you.  The first is my crazy tomato plants that I thought were dead but, now that we got rain over the weekend and the temps have died down, they now have a crazy amount of new growth and blossoms on them.  There's no way fruit will set and ripen on these so late in the season but I just can't bring myself to pull them up.

What I was after in the garden was one of my sugarbaby watermelons, so you can imagine the fit I went into when I found it like this!

I suspect one of our enterprising squirrels or rabbits got to it Sunday evening\night and, by the time I arrived, the ants had already moved in and were feasting on its sweet yumminess.  Ugh..I'm still ticked off about that.

As always, the garden never ceases to surprise, and the newest item of interest is one lonely little cucumber.  It doesn't look all that great either, as the cuke beetles are winning the war and the vines will probably die.  To tell you the truth, I'm not really holding up my end of the battle very well.

The highlight of the day was an evening of relaxation for once.  J. had bought us tix to see John Hiatt (again!) at the Uptown Theater here in KC.  The Uptown was built in 1928 and fully restored in the early 90's.  It's on the National Historic Register and is ranked 82nd on the top 100 concert theaters.  So I probably don't have to tell you that the acoustics in there are incredible.  The seats not so much, though - I think my butt was asleep halfway through the show.

 

That pic above was taken from our seats in 6th row center (woohoo!).  Those are the box seats towering above us and I wanted to share the color scheme and detail that this old theater sports.  It must have taken a gang of painters a year to paint all that.  Come to think of it, I wonder if those painters are looking for any work?  Maybe on a crappy old house here in the hood?  :-)

 

The opening act was a young lady by the name of Samantha Fish.  If I had to describe her in one word, it would by D-Y-N-O-M-I-T-E!  I heard someone describe her as the bastard child of Stevie Ray Vaughn and B.B. King and that surmisal is dead on.  That young lady (she's only 24) can play the heck out of a guitar.  (By the way, that's pronounced gee-tar for you city slickers.)  She's playing Kuckleheads on Friday night if you're anywhere near KC.  You'll find J. and I there for sure.

John Hiatt belts out his hit "Cry Love" on the Uptown stage. He never fails to blow the doors off.

The best song of the night was "Down Around My Place".  Click here if you want to see and hear John play it.

 

"Down Around My Place" by John HiattThe radio is busted, down around my place
Every tool is rusted, down around my place
Creeks and rivers dried up, down around my place
My woman's tears are cried up, down around my place

Tonight, we're hitting another concert:  Lyle Lovett is playing Yardley Hall at Johnson County Community College and I can't wait!  The first time I heard him sing in person, I cried because his voice is so clear.  He is truly blessed with an incredible gift.

 

Have a rockin' great day,

 

This post is part of this week's Tuesday Garden Party.

Well, I'll Be!

Blight and fungus on the tomatoes. 

Cucumber beetles and squash bugs.

Bunnies taking up residence and eating every leaf off the pepper and jalapeno plants.

Unbearably non-stop 100+ degree days that caused us to retreat to the cool shelter of the house.

And then a miracle. 
Just when I had written off the garden for the year as a semi-disaster, the heat broke and I ventured out to find something amazing.

Today's harvest!

 

The Roma plants were laden down with ripe fruit.  There's pasta sauce in my future this weekend, I think.  And my first ripe Sugary Baby watermelon and J.'s first cabbage.

Not only had the garden survived, but it was regenerating.

Those green beans that I had left to dry so I could harvest for seed were actually re-growing and had new blooms on them.

The cucumbers didn't succumb to the cuke beetles and were climbing like mad up the trellis.  Bees were busily flitting between the vines' flowers, their legs laden with pollen.  Will we have cukes this year after all?

Then my gaze turns to the tomatoes that I thought were dead or would be shortly.  All have a ton of new growth on them in the past few days.

Sharing their cages are the watermelon vines.  I found this little guy hanging on for dear life.  I'll have to take some old panty hose out there and build a sling for it.  I hate that the tomato cage is in the way in this picture and I have some others that are better, but I love this one the best because I actually captured an ant busy at his work.  Can you see him?

Click to biggify!

From the old comes the new.  And so it is in my garden.

If you like this post, you might also want to check out this week's Green Day, Farm Fresh Friday, Farmgirl Friday, Ole Saturday HomesteadingTrading Post and Eat. Make. Grow hops. 

The August Garden

It's the first of August and we've turned a corner.  August means that fall is not that far away, and thank goodness.  Cooler temps have gotta be coming soon. 

*crossing my fingers*

We garden and homesteading bloggers often make it look as if we lead easy, carefree lives in a land of perfection.  I'm about to stomp soundly on that fantasy with my muck boots by showing you some not-so-pretty pictures of the farm as it looks right now.

So leave your rose-colored glasses on the patio table, grab your mason jar and come with me.

It already seems like fall with all the leaves dropping from the trees.  This heat and prolonged extreme drought are really taking their toll on everything.  I'm mourning the fact that we probably won't have a fall with beautiful colors this year.  Heck, at this point, I'd just be happy to have the trees survive.

This picture is pretty embarassing, actually.  Maybe somebody should clean this place up!  And maybe that would be me if it weren't still 97 degrees outside at almost 9 p.m. 

The strawberries actually look pretty good and have filled in nicely.  This is the bed after J. and I spent a couple of hours sweating and weeding...and sweating some more.  Without our constant attention over the last 5 weeks, the weeds took over.  But, to be honest, those weeds shaded the strawberry plants and are probably the reason they're still alive.  As you can tell, we have more weeding to do.

Poor almost-dead Early Girl tomato.  Like many of the other plants, I would rip her out if there weren't still tomatoes waiting to ripen.  The only good thing here is that the tomato plant and cage are providing something for the Sugary Baby watermelon vines to climb up.  They're loving this weather and are quickly overtaking 1/2 the raised bed.

At least the Roma tomatoes are doing well.  They're a little crisp around the edges, but producing like mad.

And, finally, my cucumbers.  They are just now starting to take off despite my constant battle with the cuke beetles.  Tons of blooms on these, but no cucumbers have set.  I wonder if I'll get any this year?

Well, thanks for touring my poor garden.  I wish I could show you those beautiful plants that I had last year, but they just aren't here.  I'm not going to be sad about it anymore.  I'm not going to dwell.  Remember, failure is a learning experience!

Thanks for stopping by and before you go:  don't forget to enter my Amazon gift card giveaway.  It ends on Saturday!

When Life Gives Your Cucumbers, Make Cucumber Soup

My cukes are just about the only thing left in my garden that hasn't keeled over in this heat and drought.  That and the Romas.  But, despite that fact, I have tons of blooms but no cukes!

So I was really  happy when Hen House ran the special earlier this week for locally grown cucumbers for just 25 cents each.  I picked up 4 of the most mammoth cukes you have ever seen.  In fact, I should have weighed them before I set to work on making the most delicious cold cucumber soup.

Have you ever tried this?  If not, you must!  I had it for the first time earlier this Spring and fell in love.  It's creamy, it's cold, and so light on your tongue.

CrankyPuppy's Cool-Me-Down Cucumber Soup
Easily serves 4 with leftovers; prep time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

3 large cucumbers (or 4 medium-sized)
1/4 cup chopped parsley (I often omit this)
3 scallions, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill (or 1/2 tablespoon dried dill)
1/8 cup fresh lemon juice
1 pint buttermilk
1/2 pint plain or Greek yogurt
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preparation:

1. Peel the cucumbers (they're so slick, it's easier to use a potato peeler than a knife.)
2. Cut them in half and remove the seeds. My technique is to use a paring knife to get most of it, then use the tip of a spoon and the rest scrapes right out.)
3. Sprinkle the cucumbers with salt and let them stand 30 minutes. This will draw some of the water out of the cukes.
4. Drain the excess water off.
5. Chop the cucumbers coarsely and put the pieces in the blender along with scallions, dill, lemon juice, buttermilk, and yogurt. Blend at high speed.
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
7. Chill well before serving.  I like to top each bowl with chopped scallions, sprigs of mint, or fresh shrimp. 

The flavors continue to blend as this soup sits, and it hits peak max flavor at about 2 days after you make it.  But you can eat it as soon as it's chilled also.  It's so light that it's really more of an appetizer or snack, though.  Also, you can substitute sour cream for the yogurt or heavy cream for the buttermilk and add more dill for taste.  I'm not a huge dill fan, so the recipe above is what I use and it's quite "dilly" enough for me.  ;-)

By the way, my cost to double the recipe and feed up to 8 people was just $4.37!  ($1.28 for 1 quart of buttermilk, $2.09 for 1.5 pint plain yogurt, and $1.00 for cucumbers; everything else was fresh from the garden or in my pantry).

So, if your garden is doing great and you end up with more cucumbers than you know what do with, this is a great way to enjoy them. 

Hope you enjoy!

I'm sharing this yummy recipe with Tuesday Garden Party,  Farm Fresh Friday, Farmgirl Friday, LHITS DIY Linky Party, {Green Day}, Inspiration Friday, Weekend Wrap Up Party, Ole Saturday Homesteading Trading Post, Strut Your Stuff Saturday, Simple Things Sunday and the Homesteading Blog Carnival..

Garden Horror

It's bug city this year - I guess because of the lack of really cold temps this winter and the hot, dry weather we've been having.  While last year was a dream gardening year and I had no problems, I am now fighting a huge war against every fungus and bug known to man.

Let's start with the cucumbers and their arch enemy, the Cucumber Beetle.

Cucumber Beetles

Whether spotted or striped (mine are spotted), they're about a 1/4 inch long and hibernate in your soil.  The adult female will lay clusters of 200 to 800 tiny, orange eggs on the back of the leaves or within cracks in the soil at the base of the plant.  Larvae emerge after 5 to 8 days and spend 15 days feeding and then repeat the cycle. Their mission in life is to seek out cucumbers and other cucurbits and destroy them.

Adult cucumber beetle treating my cukes like a buffet.

Looking over my cucumber plants, I found only this one adult cucumber beetle.  They are fast little boogers, let me tell you!  But cuke beetles are also dumb - despite having wings, they won't fly away and will instead drop to the ground as their only defense.  So I caught her and did a little tap dance on her head.  And, no, I don't feel bad about it.

Finding only one adult doesn't give me a lot of solace, even though I didn't find any eggs either.   You can see the damage she caused to just that stem in the picture.  What I'm worried about is that the larva are already in the dirt gnawing away at the cucumber roots.  Seriously, I never knew that gardening would turn me into a nervous wreck.  I've always heard that it was relaxing!

Treatment:  Trellising helps protect against all but the adults, and we're already doing that.  We'll be spraying the plants with Neem oil later today to see if that makes them less attractive.  I also read that you can try 1/2 tsp of peppermint oil in about a quart of water sprayed on once a week.  Apparently, the beetles don't like the taste.  Plus your garden will smell minty!  LOL.   We'll also be making sure that there is plenty of mulch right up against the base of the plant.  This interrupts their reproductive phase.

And, if that doesn't work, spray with Rotenone.  Rotenone is organic and occurs naturally in some plants; however, some recent studies are linking it to increased occurrence of Parkinson's Disease so I will be avoiding it.  I'd rather let the beetles have my plants.

This fall, we'll till the soil up and expose the eggs to kill these pests. And next year we'll plant radishes with the cukes.  Apparently the cucumber beetle is a picky eater and doesn't like radishes touching anything else on its plate.

Tomato Fungus:  Fusarium or Verticullium Wilt

Back on June 20th, I talked about pulling up one of J.'s Early Girl tomatoes because it was infected with what I thought was fusarium wilt.   These are the only plants in our garden that are hybrid and not organic, and we bought them as seedlings from Home Depot. I am now fully convinced that they were infected with wilt before we bought them.

This is the second Early Girl that was right next to the one that I yanked out.  Despite my fervent hoping and praying, it is infected as well and I can confidently state that I am certain this is verticullium wilt.  It starts with yellowing on one side of the leaves, stems or plant and eventually spreads upward.  What is happening is that the fungus is attacking the roots and the plant is blocking off water avenues to stop the fungus from spreading further up the plant.  In doing so, it is starving itself and the leaves start to die. 

Doesn't this just make you feel sad?

As you can see, it's heavy with fruit.  I am crossing my fingers that it hangs on long enough to get these tomatoes ripened so we can harvest them.  Of course, we also take the chance that the fungus will spread in the soil to our beloved heirloom Cherokee Purples and Rutgers.  I think I see some signs already, but no yellowing yet.  

Treatment:   To start, plant varieties that are resistant.  They're usually marked on the seed packages when you buy them.  And make sure you never plant your tomatoes in the same place every year.  There is no known cure for plants infected with either fusarium or verticullium wilt.  Honestly, you should yank the plant out immediately.  I just can't bring myself to do that as I stand there and look at all those juicy green tomatoes.  Tto try to combat it from spreading, we will be scouring the local nurseries for some RootShield, the only product that *might* combat fusarium or verticullium wilt.  

The other thing you can do is sterilize the soil, but it needs to be done in the full heat of summer.  I would have to rip out all my plants and cover the entire raised beds with clear plastic and let it bake for the rest of the year.  I'm not willing to do that.  Plus doing that also kills all the beneficial organisms in the soil as well.

Squash Bugs

I really hate these guys.  They attacked my cukes and pumpkins late in the season last year in the other raised bed so I thought I would be cool and switch the squash and cukes to the other bed to get away from them.  These nasty little critters overwinter in the soil and are really hard to kill. They can also travel fairly long distances and reproduce quickly.  And did I mention that they will literally suck the juices out of your plants until they die?!

Due to excessive squishing, I had to borrow this picture from Deardorff and Wadsworth.


Seriously, squash bugs make me say naughty words.

Treatment:  Squishing and more squishing.  Wear gloves and be prepared - they STINK when squished.  Put a board down in the garden and they'll congregate under it, which makes the finding and squishing even easier.  My garden is like a horror movie - as I squish, I imagine ever more horrific ways to dispatch with these evil bugs.  Maybe some leftover fireworks?  Or, if your squeamish, dump the bugs and eggs in a jar of soapy water and watch them drown.  Very satisfying...

You can also try spraying the bugs with soapy water, but I have found that to be somewhat unsuccessful in killing them but it does make them fall off the plant.  I guess what the spray doesn't kill you can squish.  And, for any eggs that you find, either remove that part of the leaf of use duct tape to pull them off.  Kind of like waxing your garden!  :-)  Or how about a dustbuster or shop vac to vacuum them up?

I just read about some guy in Kentucky who sprayed his leftover squash with moonshine and then set it on fire to get rid of the squash bugs.  Lacking in the subtlely department, but I'm sure it's highly satisfying.  I mean, who doesn't want one of these?

Aaaaarrrrgggghhhhh! 

I hope none of you are having these kinds of problems but, if the garden boards online are any indication, you probably are.  It is a bad year for us gardeners, I guess.

I've shared my buggy freakshow with this week's Ole' Saturday Homesteading Trading Post, Country Garden Showcase and Farm Girl Friday.

Creative Gardening With Arches

If you were around last year, you may remember that my cucumbers, watermelons and pumkins took over the whole dang yard in late summer.  They spilled out of the raised beds and across the lawn and, while beautiful, it meant we couldn't mow that area for a month and a half. 

So I spent the winter thinking about what I could do to fix it:  move them to a different location, give them their own bed...hmmm, what to do?  And then I thought "why not go UP?"  And the idea of using arches to do that was born.  As my garden design came together for this year, I thought an arch trellis would be great to allow the cucumbers (on one side) and the spaghetti squash (on the other side) to grow up the trellis over the Contender and Blue Lake bush beans, where they would shelter them from too much sun as the summer heat grows.

I looked and looked and looked some more on Craigslist and elsewhere for some used fence panels, but there were none to be had.  So we loaded up the truck and trailer and headed to Tractor Supply where we snagged a 50" x 16' goat panel.  I have no idea why it's called a goat panel (do you?).

Once we arched it, however, we realized that it was way too tall so we cut off about 4 feet of it.  I'll use that as a trellis elsewhere in the garden.

Cutting the fence panel with a grinder was the fastest way to "get er done".  It only took a couple of minutes.

Cutting the panel left some prongs on one end.  Turns out that it was really useful to stick those down into the ground to make the whole thing more stable.  But we also sank some rebar into the ground and tied the panel to it with metal ties.  When the plants grow up, I can just see it becoming a sail in the summer wind if it's not tied down well.

Click the pic to biggify and you might be able to make out our teeny cucumber plants to the left of the trellis.  They'll be climbing shortly.  Most of the green in the middle of the arch is the bush beans and we noticed yesterday that they have teensy weensy little bean pods on them.

Turns out the panel fit perfectly within our garden bed with about an inch to spare! All that was left was to get the squash started up the trellis. One of the runners was over 3 feet long, so we couldn't have waited much longer to get this trellis in.

Spaghetti squash vining up the new arch. Crossing my fingers that this works!

What kind of creative garden ideas have you used or are thinking about using?  I'd love to hear about them....leave me a comment!

I'm linking up to this week's Homesteader Blog Carnival, Homestead Barn Hop, Frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Teach Me Tuesday and Tuesday Garden Party.  Go check it out!

How Does Your Garden Grow

It's certainly looking like Spring around the ol' urban homestead, so I thought we would take a little tour today to see what Mother Nature has been up to lately.  So put on your sunscreen and your floppy hat and let's go!

Ooooo...our first ever strawberries! I swear I checked one day and there was nothing and then I turn around and there they are the next day.

Looks like there are all kinds of baby plants waking up right now. I never ceased to be amazed that I can put something in the ground and life springs out of it.  Simply amazing and beautiful!

Little baby Sugar Baby watermelon, Contender bush green beans, and spaghetti squash arriving on the scene. These are all new guests for us here at Cranky Puppy Farm this year and they seem to be coming on nicely so far.

The onions we planted last fall seem to be progressing nicely.  I think you're supposed to harvest these when 3/4 of the greens fall over.  All I know if that the necks are huge on these things!  They really like being in bed with the strawberries.

J.'s Early Girl tomatoes that already need to be staked.  These girls already have blooms on them!

And now for my favorite part of the garden....



A close-up of my gorgeous black bearded iris - my favorite flower.   Look at those colors on the inside of the flower and the delicate veining on the petals.  See the shiny specks?  I suspect that's pollen that's been carried out on the fuzzy legs of every-busy bees.  By the way, these flowers are HUGE.  They're about 5 to 6 inches across.

 And, not to be outdone, the Climbing Blaze rose that I planted last year to train up around the door to the coop is going to bloom this year.   We had one of these in our front yard just off our front porch and it was beautiful.  You just have to stay on top of keeping it pruned, because it can quickly become a maneater.

Looks like I may get a bloom later today or tomorrow.  I really need to get out and get this thing trained up and over the arbor over the door to the chicken coop.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the tour today as much as I did.  I can't think of a better way to start off a Monday after a stormy weekend than with sun, fresh air and some of nature's beauty.

How is YOUR garden doing?

We're linked up to this week's Garden Life, Barn Hop #58  and Tuesday Garden Party hops. Go check out what everbody else is doing!