Stop Eating My Apples!

UGH! Are those flying ants!?? They were all over my garden and on my lawn!

Hundreds of them! Carpenter ants? Oh no! I stepped on as many as I could, but I'm sure I hardly made a dent. Most disturbing, one large batch was within five feet of my back door!


On the other hand, the tomatoes look like they might actually be starting to ripen!

Of course, the ones with the most color have also been eaten by critters already, or have some metabolic damage.


I didn't get too many flowers planted in the veg. garden this year (for beneficial insects), but those I did plant are only just now starting to bloom.


Okay - something is eating my apples. Here's a small pile collected under the Jonagold. There were more the day before - something ran off with them overnight.

But there! Do you see it? It's not just insects - something is taking BITES out of the apples while still in the tree!

Okay, Ellen...calm down. Who could the culprits be? Deer? Bears? Squirrels? Crows?

The bears are certainly out eating the apples, but not in my yard (no damage to the fence since spring).

Deer might be, but they don't have the right kind of teeth to do this kind of damage.

Squirrels? Maybe - I'm sure they are around and they must know when the dog is trapped inside.

Crows? HM. I've seen them fly off with dropped apples from the yard.


Well, all I can do is hope that some of the apples are left alone and ripen enough for me to eat them.

I was all excited last week to see I actually had a northern spy on the spy tree - I didn't think I had any this year. When I took these photos, though, a day or two later, it was gone. GONE!

LEAVE MY APPLES ALONE!!!

Home Grown Tomatoes

There ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon 'n lettuce 'n homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin', out in the garden
Get you a ripe one, don't pick a hard 'un
Plant ‘em in the spring, eat ‘em in the summer
All winter without 'em is a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' and the diggin'
Every time I go out and pick me a big 'un

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love and homegrown tomatoes.

You can go out to eat and that's for sure
But there's nothin' that a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put 'em in a salad, put 'em in a stew
You can make your own, very own tomato juice
You can eat 'em with eggs, eat 'em with gravy
You can eat 'em with beans, pinto or navy
Put 'em on the side, put 'em in the middle
Homegrown tomatoes on a hot cake griddle.

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What would like be without homegrown tomatoes?
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love and homegrown tomatoes.

If I's to change this life I lead
You could call me Johnny Tomatoseed
Cause I know what this country needs, and that’s
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see

When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cold dark cemetery
Out in the garden would be much better
'Cause I could be pushin' up a homegrown tomato.

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What would like be without homegrown tomatoes?
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love and homegrown tomatoes.

This was one of my favorite John Denver songs. He didn't write it (that may have been a fella named Guy Clark), but he did record it.

I noticed yesterday that some of my green tomatoes are starting to look kinda yellowish...could they actually be ripening? These 40-degree nights (Fahrenheit) aren't speeding them along any, though.

Crop Updates - an Evening in the Garden

My heart has simply not been in the garden this year. The weeds and pests have taken over, and I can't seem to get myself to care. It's the whole job thing - will I find a new one (and be moving), or will I be on unemployment come winter? With the former, I won't be able to reap the benefits of my veg garden, with the latter, a garden's worth of produce will surely be welcome if there is no income! I waver between the two. Some days I'm out there weeding and mowing, but most days I just don't seem to care. It's been a strange year.

I finally gave up on the peas. The freezer is full and the plants were slowing down. The pods that remain I'll let dry and then harvest for seed.

Still, other things should be ripening, so it was time to tour the beds and see what was what.

The garlic will be ready for harvesting pretty soon. The tops are turning brown, which is usually the indicator. I pulled up this one to check size - not too bad. I'll give the rest another week or two.


Ah - the Haralsons are starting to redden! I'm very excited about the apples this year. Only Haralsons and Jonagolds, but there are several fruits on these two trees.

As you can see, these runner beans are still refusing to grow up.

The pole beans are just not robust this year, either. Only now are they FINALLY starting to fill in, but even so, they are Spartan. Reasons? I have a few possibilities: these are the same beds in which I planted beans last year; I didn't use any innoculant this year; we had a cold snap early in the season; we had a lot of rain in June, and very little rain in July; and the soil is generally pretty poor. Take your pick.

But, the beans are blooming and that's a happy thing. The hummingbirds are content - between the beans and the bee balm, there is finally food for them in my yard.

The first two blossoms here are runner beans (scarlet and painted lady); the others include Cherokee Trail of Tears, Rattlesnake, and Blue Coco, among others.

Beans are starting to form. I imagine in a week or so I will start picking and freezing.

Look! A tomato!

The zucchinis are doing well - lots of blossoms and some fruits already, which something seems to be enjoying.

I picked these last night and after some judicious trimming, they became stuffed zucchinis. Rice, sausage and tomato sauce.

After a slow start, the cukes are now loaded with blossoms!

I admit, I have been a poor gardener this year. Not knowing if I was staying or leaving, my heart just hasn't been in my garden. So, I did not patrol for pests, and here is why one wants to keep on top of CPB infestations:

The leaves were completely gone from the spuds and the plants were brown and dead. Still, I was hopeful that there might be some potatoes underground, even if small, so I dug in with my hands.

Voila! Not a whole lot, but better than none at all. These are, I believe, purple majesty potatoes.

Scrubbed up, they are a beautiful purple-black color. It almost looks like a pan full of very large black olives!

The inside, as you can see, is a beautiful deep purple.

And look! Purple smashed potatoes! I know, some folks will turn their noses up at this, but I think they are lovely. And they taste just wonderful.

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Getting Started

We've had some beautiful sunny and mild weather this month. In fact, today the temps are soaring upwards towards 60*F! The snow is melting away like fat on a hot skillet (we are down to about 7", with LOTS of bare spots). So, of course, one's thoughts turn to the garden, which, although still under snow and suffering from ground freeze, will "soon" be ready to dig and plant.

So, yesterday I purchased a new bucket/tub (the old one is frozen to the ground by the compost bins, and now sports several holes and cracks, thanks to my efforts to unstick it), and mixed up a batch of seed starting "soil."

Why do I make my own? In the long run, it is a lot cheaper. I used to order seed starter mix from one of my gardening catalogues, but when gas prices started to skyrocket, the shipping became more expensive than the bag of mix. So, now I purchase a bag of perlite, a bag of vermiculite and a bag of peat moss. Bring 'em all indoors to warm up (have towels ready for that peat moss, which will pee all over your kitchen floor as it thaws). Then, take your handy bucket/tub and mix up up with a 1:1:4 ration (perlite:vermiculite:peat moss). Stir it up well. Add water to make it uniformly moist. Then start filling your seed trays.

I've finally started to refine my seed starting. I've given up on onions, broccoli and cauliflower, so this year the only veg I needed to start by seed was tomatoes. Of course, I have several varieties, about 33 last count:

In the past I've planted about 10 of each type, but this year I only went with about 8, although some of the "pots" got more than one seed.

Why so many? Well, I can't resist the names! Orange banana. Orange Flesh Purple Smudge. Al-kuffa (a rare Middle Eastern variety). Dad's Sunset. Garden Peach. Let's hope that late blight doesn't show up again this year - I really want to see what the OFPS looks like!

And just to prove that the sun is out and warm, here's Idefix doing what he does most of the time: snoozing in a sunbeam:

A Sad Day in the Garden

Well, there they are: ninety tomato plants yanked from the garden and stuck in a bag.

I console myself that at least if we get the frost tomorrow night that they are predicting I won't have to worry about covering the tomatoes.

Too Many Veg!

I just don't have enough garden space! Every year I increase the size of the garden, and the following year it seems it is still not large enough.

After getting the tomatoes planted on the 31st (the day that followed with snow, gale force winds and heavy killer frost), I found myself with only three beds left. This wouldn't have been a problem if I only had one or two items left to plant, but noooo - I still had potatoes, bush beans, oats, runner beans, fava beans and sunflowers to get in!

Yesterday I jumped the gun and stuck the potatoes in. Six varieties: Purple Viking, Adirondack Red, Adirondack Blue, Carola, Red Gold and, my favorite, German Butterball. I had to stick the latter in amongst the wheat - there was just no other room!!!

Luckily, the bush beans get interplanted with the potatoes, so those will get planted later on. But I think the oats and fava beans will have to wait until next year. I will try and stick the runner beans somewhere, and the sunflowers will get shoved into nooks and crannys whereever I can squeeze them. Herbs and buckwheat...well, the herbs can go around the edges, but I think the buckwheat will be left out this year, too. Pity - it's a great pollinator attractant!

In the meantime, the ol' sheets of black plastic have been laid out to kill off another patch of lawn for next year's garden. I guess I will have to get the tiller operational by then.

The Tomatoes Are In

Before yesterday's blizzard (who knew), I decided to take advantage of a sunny day and plant my tomatoes. Silly me - all the early warm weather has had many of us gardeners chomping at the bit and foolishly putting out cold-sensitive plants.

I should've known better, but I put my faith in my row covers and planted away. In the afternoon gale force winds came whipping into town and brought tiny hail, some sleet, and big ol' snowflakes with them. It was quite a sight. The storm lasted less than half an hour, but it was followed by a really heavy frost overnight.

I haven't checked the total damages in the garden yet. My excuse: had to leave the house by 7:30 for an early dental appointment in Glens Falls. I'll check out the damage when I get home.

If things survived (and I think they probably did - I had doubled up the row covers), I should have lots of good tomatoes this summer. I didn't plant as many as last year, but I do have some really neat varieties, like Orange Flesh Purple Smudge (had to plant it just for the name), Orange Banana Paste, Paul Robeson (one of my favorites - a dark almost brown tomato with a smokey flavor), Garden Peach (Mmmm - sounds good), and Cour di Blue. All in all I have something like 20 varieties planted. The diversity makes for some really great sauce.

Killed my first Colorado Potato Beetle a couple days ago. Grrrr. I'm putting off planting the potatoes in hopes of disrupting the beetle cycle. According to the Maine Potato Lady, I should plant two weeks after the last frost. So, right now that means mid-June. Hm...almost seems too late to plant by then! We'll see how that goes.

And to top it all off, I discovered yesterday that I don't have enough garden beds! I have only three beds left, and I still have to plant the potatoes, beans, oats, sunflowers and fava beans (not to mention the herbs, buckwheat, and companion flowers). I suspect the oats and fava beans will not go in this year. I put down the black plastic (before the storm) yesterday to kill off another patch of lawn, but it won't be ready to go in time to plant this year...unless I just want to take the shovel to it now and start digging. Ugh. The things we do for fresh food! :)

And So It Begins...

On Sunday we were told it would rain - 50% chance. Of course, that also meant 50% chance it wouldn't. It didn't. Which, for the outdoor chore department, was a good thing. I had planned to spend a rainy day inside doing dishes, laundry, cleaning (all of which really does need to be done), but I opted to do outside stuff until the rain came. Translation: I spent the day in the yard!

The piles of hardpan dirt (I refuse to call that stuff soil) were shovelled into the wheelbarrow and mixed with peat moss, pearlite and vermiculite, and then shovelled onto the top of one of the veg gardens - I'm trying to build up the soil in this spot ala "lasagna gardening" (no tilling, just piles and piles of stuff on top of the ground). I have some serious weeding to do there (I'm not convinced this is the best way to build a garden; it's great in theory, and probably works like a charm if you have good, and copious, sources of compost, topsoil and manure to layer, which I don't).

I then set about digging weeds from the regular veg beds. Six beds are now weeded and nicely raked into raised plots, ready for planting. It sort of looks like I have six new graves in my yard, albeit very long and narrow graves! Ten beds remain to be done.

I was sorely tempted to plant peas. I spoke with a neighbor in the morning as Toby and I passed by on our walk. He, too, was contemplating putting in his peas, if he could get his tiller going and his garden dug up. I heard the tiller running most of the morning, so I suspect he did just that. In the end, however, I passed on the peas. I know "they" say you can plant them as soon as the ground can be worked, but, sheesh, it IS still April! It may have been in the 80s Sunday and Monday, but snow is not out of the question yet. Maybe I'll rethink peas next weekend.

Meanwhile, the garlic have all come up beautifully and are standing tall at 6-8"! I'm very excited about this - I may have garlic to sell come fall! AND, I found some onions and leeks from last year's seeds still growing! Hm - maybe starting them from seed isn't too bad after all, although to have maybe a dozen survive out of 150 isn't really a good survival rate. I think I'll stick to ordering sets for now.

I did make a mistake on Sunday: I put the tomatoes out in the sun. I thought a little sun would be good for them. Unfortunately, I overdid it - their tender leaves were scalded. I thought I got them into shade quickly enough, but apparently I didn't. So now I'm nursing them along in the house, back under their grow lights. Their second leaves are growing, so I'm hoping most will survive, especially since I had planned to sell some this spring!

Patience - it's a hard lesson to learn, and even now I find that I want to rush along, even though I really do know better! Sometimes you can cut corners, but more often than not, you cannot. Ths can be a hard lesson to learn.

The Garlic is Up

Yes, the garlic is up - even the ones I planted waaaay too deep! If all produce and produce well, I should have garlic to sell this fall! Woo-hoo!

We had another lovely day yesterday. I put the little tomato plants outside to get a little sun, and I'm afraid I overdid it a bit. Their little leaves were looking rather pale when I brought them in: sun scald. :( Hopefully they will recover soon. [I also got a little sun scald - my arms are pink above the glove line!]

Spent the whole day outside: hanging laundry, making trellises for the hops from old sunflower stalks, making trellises for the grapes from bamboo poles, making mulch for the new trees and shrubs (by chopping up the dead ornamental grasses and other gleanings from the flower gardens), turning the compost pile (and combining two bins...I may actually have enough for each garden bed to get at least a small dressing this spring), rolling up dripper hose lines and starting The Weeding in the veg beds before planting.

It was a full day. I even heard a bluebird - the first since that poor blighter was around last month.

A Final Gasp from the Garden

Just when I thought the garden was finished, and just when I had finally cleared the last tomatoes off the kitchen counter (batch #4 of sauce), I go out to put away the row covers only to find...more tomatoes!!!

>sigh<

Planted some more garlic over the weekend. This was one of my mail order varieties: chrysalis purple. $12 for two very tiny bulbs (yielding 13 cloves). I think in the future I will stick with the garlic at the Sharon Springs Garlic Festival (bulbs the size of your fist for $1 - $2.50 each)!

Garlic planted to date: Purple Stripe (14), German White (23), German Red (26), Elmer's Topset (45), and Chrysalis Purple (13). Cost: $16 for 108 cloves from Sharon Springs, plus $12 for 13 cloves from mail order. Kind of makes one say "hm," eh?

I should have two more varieties arriving via the mail. Hopefully they will be worth their price.

Frost and the First Fall Harvest

It was bound to happen, and sure enough, it did. We had our first killer frost last week. I covered what I could, but even so, some things took a hit.

When I got home after work that day, I pulled up all the pole and dry beans, tied them in bundles, and they are now hanging upside-down on the porch to dry (makes going in and out the back door a bit of a challenge). I threw row covers, blankets, tarps, sheets and towels over tomatoes, corn, squash and pumpkins. Since then we have been having very summery weather - hot and humid. So things are getting a second chance to ripen.

Saturday, after I returned from the Garlic Festival in Sharon Springs (highly recommended, by the way), I pulled the rest of my onions. Those that still had stalks have been braided and are hanging in the garage (the porch is already full of onions and the afore-mentioned beans, and the kitchen is full of onions and tomatoes). I pulled some carrots, too, including one monster that is as big as a silver dollar at the base of the leaves and close to a foot in length! A few small rutabagas joined the harvest.

A second batch of tomato sauce was brewed up that night and stuck in the freezer Sunday morning. Yes, indeed, using paste tomatoes makes all the difference when making sauce. My recipe? Well, hard to say - each batch is different. But here are the basics:

Ellen's Tomato Sauce

1. Run a bunch of tomatoes (mostly paste, but add whatever else you have that is ripe) through a tomato food mill (like Squeezo - I kid you not, that is the name). This wonderful machine, which works like a meat grinder, squeezes out the juice and pulp in one direction, and the seeds and skins in another, nicely separating the two. Do this until you have about a gallon or more of juice.
2. Pour the juice into a large kettle, preferably an enamel kettle and set on medium heat to start cooking. You want as much of the water to cook away as possible.
3. Meanwhile, dice up an onion or two and saute in butter. When soft and tender, put the onions in the sauce.
4. Additionally, cut up a few carrots. If they are small, use two or three. If large, you can probably use one. This will provide some sugar to cut the acid of the tomatoes. Toss into the sauce.
5. Chop up some green peppers and add them to the sauce as well.
6. If you have fresh basil, oregano, parsley, chop them up and put them in the pot. If not, used dried. I also put in some freshly ground black pepper.
7. Cook. This part can take several hours. You want the moisture to go away, leaving you with a nice thick sauce. I usually give it three or four hours, then I'm ready for bed. I could probably go longer.
8. Before you finish, toss in some grated Parmesan cheese. Mmmmm. I add maybe a half to three-quarters of a cup.
9. Cool.
10. Ladle into freeze-able containers and stick in the freezer. Voila!

More Firsts

Plucked my first tomato of the season yesterday! It's not 100% ripe yet, but it came off the vine very easily and will be perfect in a day or two.

I also found, quite by accident, my first beans yesterday. I was picking peas and suddenly found a "pea" that didn't look right. It was too flat. Lo! and behold, it was a bean. Either very short pole beans or very tall bush beans. Regardless, a lot of them were ready for picking and so I did. There weren't enough to make a meal for me, so Toby got them with his stew beef last night.

I think the cauliflower is a lost cause. It started to produce heads last week, and I had high hopes, but they are looking very brown now and don't seem to be growing. The best of the bunch is covered with frass from the LGWs (little green worms), so that right there is a real turn off.

Harvested two more broccoli heads, though, and gave them a thorough soak in salt water last night. Maybe I'll blanch them tonight.

It also looks like the peas are starting to dwindle. Harvested enough for two more containers to freeze, and there are still plenty of pods on the vines, but unless we get some sunshine, I don't think I will be getting too many more harvests - the pods are not filling out.

And just when I was thinking the corn would never produce even tassels before our first frost, I found that one of the varieties (I think it is the Tom Thumb) is starting to get tassels - it is barely knee high. The garden never ceases to amaze.

Tilling, Tomatoes and Driplines

We finally got some sunny and warm weather, and some real rain, over the last four days. I took advantage of it to get some more gardening done.

First on the list: get the new beds made! I pulled off the plastic to find that the lawn had been mostly killed off, so armed with string, flour and the tiller, I attacked the patch and created five new beds. Flour? Yes. After measuring off the spaces for paths and garden beds, making them straight with string attached between two sticks, I mark the ground using flour. It's cheap, it's available, and it's biodigradable. Once my flour lines are on the ground, I can wind up the string and till away, no worries about string getting wrapped around the tiller tines, or my beds being crooked! So, I now have two more long beds and three short beds running perpendicular to the long beds (had to work around an apple tree, so these three beds have a different alignment).

After tilling, I got out my super duper square-ended spade (from Lee Valley Tools - the best garden purchase I've made to date) and cut the edges of the beds. I have found that the tiller really doesn't do much but maybe stir up the top inch or two of the lawn. A good shovel and a broadfork really prove to be the best for making the beds, in my opinion. This time, though, I opted not to use the broadfork - I'm trying multiple techniques this year. The old beds were all broadforked when made and again this year. The older new beds were broadforked this spring. Then there are the "Weedless Gardening" beds where the lawn was mowed, newspaper put down and manure and mulch piled on top. And finally, these last five beds: the soil from the edging piled on top of the "tilled" center bit, which, as stated above, really isn't tilled deeply. We shall see if any of these beds prove to be better than the others!

So, the lawn was tilled, the edges dug out and plopped on top of the "tilled" center, the clumps were broken up and raked into slightly mounded beds. About an inch of manure was spread on top and the whole thing sat for a couple days, resting.

The next chore: completing the drip irrigation system. My new lines and clips arrived, so in the heat and humidity of Friday my mom and I installed dripper lines. I had been using 12" drippers, but the new lines are 6" (this is the spacing between the drip holes). This is what Dripworks recommends for veg gardens (12" for flower beds), and I am thinking now that they are right. Still, we use what we have and now all the beds are equipped with water for the summer. I have the system set on a timer that has four settings per day, seven days a week. I have set it for 15 minutes of dripping each time. We'll see how that goes. Too much? Too little? We'll have to wait and see. Sure beats standing out there with the garden hose for over an hour every night after work!

Finally, the tomatoes. I have TONS of tomato plants. I was over ambitious this winter ordering seeds: they all sounded so interesting! As a result, I ended up with about 18 varieties of tomatoes (Paul Robeson, Black Prince, Rose, Siletz, Rose di Berne, Roma Paste, Grandma Mary Paste, Bellstar Paste, Blue Beech Paste, Dad's Sunset, German Lunchbox, Principe Borghese, Brandywine, Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, and I can't recall the others). And when you plant from seed inside in the winter, you plant extra seeds because they might not all germinate, and those that do may not all survive. Long story short: I ended up with 150+ tomato plants! I have filled the two new long beds and one short bed with tomatoes! And I still have plants left over! If you are going to be in Newcomb anytime soon, and you want tomato plants, come see me!!!

All that remains now to be planted: beans, corn, squash, pumpkins, celery, herbs and companion plants, sunflowers. Space remaining: three long beds, two short beds, and the two "weedless gardening" beds.

Will it be enough?!?!? Stay tuned...