The garden is winding down

It has been a month since I lasted posted here at Dirt in my Fingernails. School has started and I have been substitute teaching a lot. Plus I have been hired to start teaching a third grade class full-time starting in November so I have been gathering materials and making plans. I have been neglecting my garden, I'm afraid.

As you can see from the picture above, the garden is no longer full of lush green life like it was in July. It's to be expected I suppose. Several of the crops have been removed and others are in their last days and weeks.

As you can see here, my tomato plants are still full of tomatoes that I have not been able to keep up with. Many of them have problems with cracking and usually go straight to the compost bin. Also, my big Beef Heart plants became so top-heavy with huge tomatoes that they fell over, taking the flimsy trellis with them. Several large tomatoes rest on the ground outside the garden where they are being feasted on by the army of slugs that have appeared. I should probably do something about it, but with everything else going on, I have kind of lost the will to fight. The tomatoes I do pick usually sit in a bowl on my kitchen counter for a few days until they begin to spoil and I take them out to the compost. I just can't keep up with them and I don't have time to process them. Next year I'll plan better. You can also see the bell pepper plants to the right. I've found that if I catch the pepper when it is just right, I can take it inside and use it immediately or cut it up immediately to freeze. If I wait too long, it'll rot on the vine or on my counter waiting to be used. I've lost several of those already. And the patch of weeds in the middle of this photo is where my pumpkins used to be. I need to clear this area out so that those nasty squash bugs don't have a comfy home to overwinter in.

As you can see above, my sweet potatoes are flourishing. They've spread out to cover a huge area and I can't wait to dig them up and see what we have. Jeff is getting antsy and wanting me to dig them up, but from what I understand, I need to wait until the foliage on top begins to die away before I dig.

I have planted several items for my fall crops and they seem to be doing well so far. Here are the mustard greens and collard greens I planted in August. The collards appear to be getting eaten by the cabbage worms I've discovered. I tried Neem Soap spray. We'll see how it works.

Here are my cabbages that are also being eaten by cabbage worms.

And here are the lettuces and spinach I planted in early August. For some reason, many of the seeds I planted didn't come up. This is all I have from that particular planting. There is Black Seeded Simpson on the bottom, Red Sails in the middle and Spinach on top. I also made a second later planting of spinach over on the right where you see the little tiny green sprouts. And yes, the weeds are encroaching on the left...I need to get to that.

And finally, in mid-September I went out and planted the rest of my lettuce and spinach seeds in several vacated spots in the garden. Here is a close-up shot of spinach (bottom) and Red Sails lettuce (top) seedlings in the bed where the melons used to live. They are only two weeks old but are off to a great start!

Today's local weather:
High temp: 76 F
Low temp: 54 F
Sunny in the morning, thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening.

Spaghetti Sauce - My Latest Experiment

So on Thursday, August 28, I decided to try my hand at making spaghetti sauce using my roma tomatoes. I had frozen 3 gallon-sized ziploc bags full of washed and cored romas plus I had probably another gallon's worth that I'd just picked sitting on my counter. I thought I'd share with all the web surfers out there what I did and how it went.

First, I had to soften the tomatoes so that the seeds and skins could be removed from the tomato flesh. I took all three bags pictured here plus the ones on my counter and filled this stock pot almost to the top.

I heated the tomatoes on high heat and let them simmer just 5 minutes or so, long enough to soften them and loosen the skins. Then I ladled them into the food mill to press the juice and flesh through and separate out the skins and seeds.

Once everything had gone through the food mill, I had quite a bit of juice in my turkey roasting pan.

This was what was left over and what will feed my compost bin:

Next, I put the roasting pan of juice into a 350 degree oven for one hour. After one hour, I turned the temp down to 300 degrees for four more hours. I stirred it every half an hour to make sure it wasn't sticking. The point of doing all this was to have the water cook out and reduce the juice so that it was thick like sauce and not runny.

One hour before the sauce was done, I prepared and added the seasonings. (I'll post my recipe at the end of this post.) After the end of the total 5 hours of oven time, I took the sauce out of the oven. It smelled wonderful. Meanwhile, I had brought my boiling water bath canner full of water to a boil. I had sterilized some quart jars and had the lids and rings simmering (not boiling) on the stove for 5 minutes. When the sauce was ready, I used my funnel and ladle to fill hot quart jars with the hot sauce (remembering to remove the bay leaves first!). I wiped the rims of the jars, used tongs to put on a lid and then screw on the rings to fingertip tight. I then put them in the boiling water bath canner. All of those tomatoes had simmered down to just over 3 quarts of sauce. (I knew it would be considerably less than what I started out with, but it was still a disappointment after all that work!)

Anyway, I boiled the quart jars for 45 minutes. Then I removed them to cool. Here they are. The white powdery stuff on the outside of the jars is mineral deposits from our hard water in the boiling water bath. After the jars cool, I have to wipe that stuff off before I label them.

The good news is that there was a little bit left over so I added some chopped tomatoes and sauteed onions and garlic to it the next night and we tried it on pasta. It is really really good. The only difference I will make next time is I will decrease the amount of crushed red pepper in the recipe. It calls for 1 tsp. but I think the end result was a little too spicy for my 6yo's tastes. Jeff and the two older boys will like it, but I think next year I'll only add 1/2 tsp.

Oh, and in case you're interested, here's the recipe I used. I have to credit the folks in the Harvest Forum over at gardenweb.com with the recipe. I altered a couple of the instructions/ingredients as mentioned.

Spaghetti Sauce

4 gallons fresh roma tomatoes (yielding approx. 16 cups puree)
3 Tbsp. oil
4 cups chopped onions
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 tsp. oregano, crushed
2 bay leaves
1 Tbsp. plain salt (non-iodized)
1 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 Tbsp. dried parsley
1 Tbsp. celery leaves, minced (I skipped this ingredient)
1/4 c. lemon juice

Prepare tomatoes yielding approximately 16 cups of puree.
Saute onions in oil until soft and translucent. Combine with remaining ingredients except lemon juice in heavy saucepan. Simmer 2 hours stirring often until desired consistency.*

* Instead of simmering 2 hours, I roasted in the oven for one additional hour after simmering the tomato juice for 4 hours, as mentioned in my description above.

REMOVE BAY LEAVES. Pour into jars and can (as described above).

Yumm! Next year I'll need to grow more roma plants so that I have more than 3 quarts of sauce to show for it!

My new garden visitors

I went to Back-to-School Night at the high school last night so Jeff had to tend the garden. When I got home, he told me that in the course of watering the garden, he'd found two praying mantises. This photo isn't the exact Praying Mantis found in our garden. I borrowed the picture from the above link on wikipedia. However, ours looked just like this one.

This is such great news! I'd been hoping all season to see at least one praying mantis and Jeff found two, each at a different location in the yard. According to wikipedia, these things mate in the fall so maybe that's what they are getting ready for. They are more than welcome to lay their eggs in my yard.

Why am I so excited about these praying mantises? Praying mantises are one of the good guys, bug-wise. They are predatory insects who feed on those nasty bugs who would try to eat my garden. So inviting them into my garden is an organic way to control bugs. My only hope is that they stick around and invite some friends and have some babies. It was very obvious to me that once I put in my garden, the bad bugs showed up. I was only hoping the good guys would eventually realize this was a great place to find a meal. Yippee!!

In my pre-garden days I'd never think I'd be cheering the arrival of new bugs. Now I am enlightened.

Today's Local Weather:
High temp: 85 F
Low temp: 67 F
Morning fog, plentiful sunshine later, possible thunderstorms over night.

Today's harvest

This is what I got out of my garden just this morning:That would be (clockwise from the left):

* four Cherokee Purple tomatoes
* three Beef Heart tomatoes
* two Better Boy tomatoes
* a bucket full of Roma tomatoes
* one spaghetti squash
* one muskmelon
* one red bell pepper
* one golden bell pepper
* 5 cucumbers
* a huge container of grape and cherry tomatoes

The harvest is particularly large today because I worked yesterday subbing all day in a classroom so I totally neglected the garden. Even last night I had to take my 12yo son to his guitar lesson and make dinner so I didn't even walk out to the garden at all. But today I didn't work so I made up for it. What a haul! I need to figure out what to do with it all.

Meanwhile, look what I found growing back behind my tomatoes near the birdfeeder. I included my sandal in the photo just so you'd have a sense of scale of these things. Huge!


Today's local weather:
High temp: 87 F
Low temp: 69 F
Cloudy, chance of showers or thunderstorms throughout the day.

Lessons My Garden is Teaching Me

Things in the garden are slowing down a bit and the kids are in school again, so I have time to be philosophical. I planted this garden this year to give me something to do over the summer months so that I wouldn't dwell on the fact that I didn't have a permanent job. There was a possibility that growing our own food might offset our grocery bills a little, but that wasn't a big motivation for me. It would just be a nice bonus. What I didn't expect were all the other things I'd learn from having my own garden.

I live in a stereotypical suburban neighborhood which is probably like hundreds of identical neighborhoods all over the country. We have winding roads with names that are "Peaceful" or "Moonlight" or are named after nature like "Red Maple". Cul-de-sacs with basketball goals and kids riding bikes sit at every turn. Cookie cutter houses sit on row-by-row of 1/4 acre lots, all separated by the obligatory privacy fence which cuts us off from our neighbors and fosters the delusion that we are more spread out than we really are. Our yards are planted with grass and an ornamental tree or two with Walmart shrubs and annuals planted next to the front door. We sterilize the lawn with chemicals to kill all of the "weeds" and insects. The key is that *we* control what lives and dies on our little rectangle of land.

And we all do it. Most of us never give a thought to it. It's just what you do.

But what if we don't? What if we decide not to use chemicals and to let the dandelions and clover grow? What if we decide to attract life to our land rather than keeping it away? We can put up bird houses, bird feeders, bird baths. We can plant other plants that aren't there to impress the neighbors.

In my suburban backyard, near the privacy fences my neighbors had erected, I planted a garden. Not a manicured flower garden. But a large, fenced-in vegetable garden. We also planted berries that (from what I am told) will eventually spread out of control.

We didn't sterilize our land this year...we invited life. Now with that invitation is the risk of (gasp) bugs and weeds. But my garden has taught me to look at that differently.

In my pre-garden days, I thought of bugs as pests. Period. And weeds made the lawn look uncared for. I no longer feel that way. Bugs are not one size fits all. There is a huge variety of life out there that we wipe out when we sterilize our lawns. But when we allow life to exist in its normal state, we realize the delicate balance that was created by Mother Nature, Creation, God (whatever you call it). If we stop trying to control everything and just let it be, everything can manage very well on its own, thank you very much. Yes, there are bad bugs out there that can eat your food crops. But there are also good bugs out there that will eat your bad bugs. And yes, clover and dandelions make your lawn spotty. But they also attract bees which pollinate your other plants. Even snakes can be scary, but they eat nasty yard pests like mice and voles. It is all in the balance. Human beings like to upset that balance. We need to work more at respecting and preserving it.

My garden has also taught me to resist perfection. See that picture at the top of my post? In my old way of thinking, I would look at that photo and see all that is wrong with it. My spaghetti squash up front looks pathetic, my walkways are getting covered with weeds, the pumpkin patch is yellowing and wilting, and I've even left some bricks out when I was finished using them. I was good at beating myself up for not making things perfect. But now when I look at this photo I see it differently. I see the open spot up front where my (now dead) zucchini once stood. I have 22 cups of shredded zucchini in my freezer. I see the sprawling sweet potato plant that keeps growing and (I'm assuming) producing sweet potatoes underground. I see the spaghetti squash that has survived despite the attack the plants have undergone. So far I have frozen the flesh of 6 spaghetti squash that I managed to salvage from the damaged plants. And I think that two of those that remain may be salvageable. My pumpkin patch has several healthy looking pumpkins that are turning orange. Wilting vines aren't stopping them. My huge tomato plants are still producing and I'm picking a huge amount each and every day. And right up front under that lattice are the lettuce seeds I've just planted and will be germinating soon for my fall crop.

This garden, my first real garden, has seen a lot of success. It isn't perfect, but then what is? It has been a blessing in more ways than anyone can see.


Local weather today:
High temp: 84 F
Low temp: 64 F
Partly cloudy

A Race Against Time

Jeff has been nursing the pumpkin patch along for the last several weeks. Starting in mid-July, we have been undergoing an all-out attack on the pumpkins which included squash bugs, squash vine borers, powdery mildew, and scorching hot sun. The fact that anything is still alive out there is, in itself, a miracle. But it is barely holding on. Here is what my pumpkin patch looks like this morning.As you can see, the pumpkins are turning orange. The tiny Jack-Be-Littles (not pictured) are doing great and look fine. There are 3 Sugar Pie pumpkins and two are mostly orange and one is only starting to change. This particular photograph shows our two jack-o-lantern pumpkins in the early stages of changing to orange. I have to say that the amount of work and space that goes into growing pumpkins sure doesn't seem to be commensurate with what you have to show for it. I would rather not grow them next year but instead use the space for something that wouldn't have me pulling my hair out so much. But Jeff wants pumpkins. I finally compromised and said I will do one pumpkin plant next year and that is it.

Today is August 18. Do you think this pumpkin will survive and make it until Halloween?

Today's local weather:
High temp: 84 F
Low temp: 61 F
Sunny

Life Cycle of a Garden

Lately, I've been frantically working to preserve what I can from our garden before they go bad. So far I have put up:

10 pints of dill pickle slices
8 pints of bread and butter pickle slices
8 pints of dill pickle spears
22 cups of frozen shredded zucchini
200 (approximately) dried then frozen cherry tomatoes
4 baked, shredded then frozen spaghetti squash

I have also frozen a gallon bag of roma tomatoes, a gallon of Better Boys, and a gallon of Beef Hearts for temporary holding until I gather enough to can. I am hoping to can the last batch of pickles today now that the kids are all back at school and I have the house to myself today.

But in between picking, freezing, and canning, lately I've been thinking about the life cycle of a garden. It's amazing to me to see it change over time. It occurred to me that a garden's life is similar to a person's life. When the seedlings are small, there isn't much to them yet, but you just know they're filled with limitless potential. Then you watch them grow and spread out. If you nurture and protect them, they can spread out further than you ever expected them to. Suddenly, in the heart of summer, they're thriving and producing beyond your wildest dreams and every item you pick feels like a blessing. But then it happens. Gradually you begin to notice weaknesses. It could be bugs or a disease that suddenly appears. You do everything you can to minimize the damage and prolong the life of these precious plants. If you do a good job and the plants are strong, they can still last quite a while. But, as fall approaches, they begin to fade. Production slows down and some plants succumb to the bugs or disease or just the stress of coping with the demands of late summer. They begin to die off. The garden becomes sparser and what is left begins to look feeble. You realize the end is near for this crop. It has been a good run, but it is nearly over. As temperatures cool and winter approaches, you reconcile yourself to accept the garden's fate. It is sad, but there is one thing that pulls you through...seed packets saved for next year.

My 2008 Garden:March 31, 2008 (Before tilling)

April 18, 2008 (Preparing the soil)

May 31, 2008 (The seedlings are planted)

June 22, 2008 (Everything is growing)

July 7, 2008 (The plants are young adults)

July 29, 2008 (The plants are producing like crazy but starting to show signs of trouble)

August 14, 2008 (Plants are beginning to die off and production slowing down)

Stay tuned for more...

Today's local weather:
High temp: 80 F
Low temp: 60 F
Partly cloudy with chance of afternoon thundershowers