DRIFTING INTO FALL, THE GARDEN SHINES

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by backyardnotes in Fall, Fall Flowers, Flowers, Growing, Harvest, Photography, Vegetable garden

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beans, cabbage, comice pears, dahlias, fall, garden spiders, harvest, honeybees, matricaria, savoy cabbage, squash, tomatoes, verbena bonariensis

Mystery dahlia, but quite lovely

AS SEPTEMBER GENTLY NUDGES US INTO A FALL state of mind, there are lovely moments nearly everyday. The colors of late summer and early fall flowers are rich and vibrant. Tomato harvest is peaking. Cabbages are just this side of splitting. Pears need picking almost daily. Cactus are blooming! Winter squash are ripening and bees and spiders are busy, busy, busy.

I’ll let the garden speak for itself.

BIG mystery squash. Came from the zucchini packet!

I think this is a banana squash. The seed came from the zucchini packet!

Bartlett and Comice pears

30 year old (maybe older) mammillaria pringlei.

Berkely Tie-dye

Is this a beautiful blossom? Bean blossoms are often hidden by the leaves

Is this a beautiful blossom? Bean blossoms are seldom seen as they are often hidden by the leaves.

These are EVERYWHERE.

As are these (on the tiny flowers of sedum ‘Autumn Joy’)…

and partaking of nectar from caryopteris ‘Dark Knight’

Bees drinking at the birdbath. We have a beekeeper in our neighborhood–hooray!

and drinking at the birdbath. We have a beekeeper in our neighborhood–hooray!

Savoy cabbage

Matricaria. They look so cheerful and like sunny side-up eggs. They self-sow.

Matricaria (also known as feverfew); they look so cheerful and like sunnyside-up eggs. They self-sow freely.

Many plants in my ornamental and vegetable gardens are volunteers, like this verbena bonariensis whose seeds came from compost. Volunteer flowers in the vegetable garden enliven the scenery and invite lots of pollinators and predators alike.

Many plants in my ornamental and vegetable gardens are volunteers, like this verbena bonariensis whose seeds likely came from compost added to the garden. I like to leave volunteer flowers in the vegetable garden to enliven the scenery and invite lots of pollinators and predators alike.

HARVEST BASKET CHALLENGE

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by backyardnotes in Cooking & Eating, Food, Harvest, Summer!, Vegetable garden

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Arugula, cooking, garlic scapes, harvest, herbs, sage, string beans, Summer squash, Walla Walla Onions, winter savory, zucchini

Golden sage, winter savory, Walla Walla sweet onions, string bean mix, French breakfast radishes, arugula, zucchini costata, and a yellow summer squash (under the beans).

WHAT’S READY TO HAVEST IN YOUR GARDEN TODAY?

STRING BEAN, RADISH & WALLA WALLA ONION SALAD: BLANCH the beans until tender crisp, plunge into ice water, drain and pat dry; combine with sliced Walla Walla onion and quartered radishes and toss with a vinaigrette of white wine vinegar, mustard, chopped savory, a chiffonade of golden sage leaves and olive oil. Serve over lettuce if desired.

The dressed salad

CUT YELLOW SQUASH OR ZUCCHINI INTO THIN STRIPS. Coarsely chop the arugula. Choose a long, spaghetti type pasta. Heat up some olive oil in a large skillet. Flavor the oil with sliced garlic scapes, then remove them. Cook pasta to al dente; heat the olive oil over medium high heat and toss in the summer squash and a pinch of red pepper flakes and salt to taste. Cook until just tender. Drain the pasta (leave it a bit on the wet side and reserve a little of the cooking water) and transfer to a large bowl, top with the summer squash, add the arugula and toss gently to combine; add a little of the reserved water if desired to make the dish a little saucy. Add some grated peccorino romano over the top and you have a quick dinner!

Arugula, stringozzi and yellow summer squash.

ZUCCHINI CARPACCIO. THINLY (paper thin) slice the zucchini lengthwise with a mandoline; arrange slices on a large plate, slightly overlapping the slices. Sprinkle with coarse salt, a few grinds of pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Garnish with a little chopped arugula or whole leaves and some shavings of parmesan cheese. This makes a great first course. Who would think zucchini could be so good?

AUGUST MASH-UP–PART TWO

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by backyardnotes in Canning & Preserving, Harvest, Ornamentals, Uncategorized, Vegetable garden

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camping, canning, garden chores, harvest

BY THE THE BEGINNING OF AUGUST there is plenty of deadheading to do. As I started this tedious chore I felt inspired to create a bouquet using the more interesting deadheads (August 18th above) and have continued to add to it (as of September 8th below).

The same day that we dug the iris I enlisted the extra hands to help clean the garlic. With three pairs of hands we cleaned four varieties in no time. Yesterday I cleaned the remaining 25 heads. Total garlic harvested: 142 heads.

CANNING began in earnest with cherries, apricots and zucchini in late July.

Since spring-like weather persisted well into June the cherry and strawberry harvests were late. I put up five half pints each of strawberry and cherry preserves in the last week of July. These were modeled on a low sugar preserves recipe from Eugenia Bone’s blog post of July 18th.

PEACHES started showing up in the markets mid-August so I made peach preserves (seven half pints) and froze sliced peaches in half pound bags (5). At the end of the month on our way home from Palmer Lake, I bought more peaches (fifteeen pounds) and about four pounds of the last (!) bing cherries at Lone Pine fruit stand in Wenatchee. The cherries were wonderful and I put up 8 more half-pints of preserves. The lovely looking Glowstar peaches however had a difficult time fully ripening. They became 6 pints of what I am calling Ice Cream Peaches; kind of like a loose, syrupy preserve flavored with vanilla beans and Calvados brandy. They taste yummy!

The bulk of tomatoes remained firmly green even with the red plastic mulch until the last week of the month. And at that, only a handful or two had ripened.

We spent the week of the 22nd happily lazing about at Palmer Lake in northeast Washington. The DNR campground is small and was surprisingly short of visitors for a change. The water was warm, the weather was warm, we paddled around the lake, and I caught up on my travel journal. There is good birdwatching habitat around the lake; cherry and apple orchards to the east and some walnut orchards and open pastures to the north. Tom saw an Indigo Bunting! We have been ‘bunting hunting’ all summer on our trips to eastern Washington–too bad I missed seeing it. We saw a muskrat one morning in Palmer Creek and a beaver in the water at our campground on our last morning.

I LOVE FINDING something new and unknown to me. On one of our walks we spotted a hatching of Box Elder bugs, boisea trivittata. I snapped this photo so I could identify them when we got back home. Apparently they are a nuisance in most areas, but we had never seen them before. According to Wikipedia “They may form large aggregations while sunning themselves in areas near their host plant (e.g. on rocks, shrubs, trees, and man-made structures).” That is just how we saw them.

Time to move on to Septet

GARLIC & PICKLES

22 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by backyardnotes in Canning & Preserving, Vegetable garden

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garlic, harvest, pickles

AFTER 18 DAYS AWAY FROM HOME we returned to garlic ready for harvest and zucchini ready to be pickled.

GARLIC HARVEST was later than normal but there were still plenty of green leaves left on most of the stalks to insure good wrappers when dry and only one variety had started to fall over. I harvested Inchelium (26), two types of hardneck (50), an unknown softneck variety from friends (28), and a dozen Itlaian White, which after three generations are finally to golf ball size. Still left to harvest is Chesnok, (another hardneck type) that looks like it needs another week or so. I lay the garlic on the potting bench for about two weeks to cure before completing the cleaning and trimming for storage. The potting bench is on the north side of the house and protected from rain by wide eaves.

Here’s a look at the vegetable garden; the lettuces and zucchini plants seem to be most vigorous, but everything is doing pretty well in spite of the mixed-up weather.

This is where the zucchini pickles begin. Yesterday I picked enough zucchini from three plants to make the first batch of Bread & Butter style pickles. The variety is Costata, a firm fleshed, ribbed type that held up well for pickles last year.

Step one is the sliced zucchini and onions, salted and covered with cold water and ice cubes for two hours.

This little slicer is the simplest form of a mandoline and is still sharp after forty years of use and a must have to make quick work of slicing zucchini and onions.