End of August Accounting

It’s been a good gardening season. Things have gone so well, in fact, that we plugged in the extra freezer in the basement to keep the surplus produce. 

One evening's produce gathering

 The zucchini and yellow squash produced very well. That shouldn’t be a surprise. The over-abundance of zucchini has become a well-worn cliché but we haven’t really had much luck with summer squash over the last couple of years. Last year the yellow squash did not produce at all and we only got a few zucchinis. This year, so far, we’ve picked 14 yellow squash and 21 zucchinis.

Squash plants in early July

Yellow squash and zucchini

 A couple weeks ago I realized the squash had a pretty bad infestation of squash vine borers. The poor plants looked terrible but they were and are still producing fruit.

Squash vine borer damage

We have eaten a lot of squash so far and given some away but we had way more than could be eaten fresh. So, into the freezer they went. I diced up the squashes, blanched them in boiling water for 3 minutes, dunked them in ice water, drained them, and then spread them out on towel-lined cookie sheets. After giving the squash pieces some time to dry, I removed the towels and put the sheets in the freezer. The next day, I broke up the pieces of frozen squash with a wooden spoon and put them in quart size zipper-top freezer bags. There are now six full bags in the freezer and a half dozen squash still in the fridge.

Frozen zucchini ready to be bagged

I made a double batch of zucchini muffins for the freezer too.

The green beans are not doing as well as they did last year but I’ve still manage to put away a quart size freezer bag full of them. The chard, on the other hand, has been doing very well since I managed to head off the leaf borers. I’ve put three full quart bags away in the freezer so far.

So much lovely, leafy goodness!

The cucumbers have also been very productive. They are sneaky, however. I’ll look at a cucumber and decide it’s slightly on the small size and decide to wait a day or two before picking it. A day or two later, it’s gotten huge! Fortunately, these cucumbers, no matter what the size, make great pickles. I will admit that I’m a lazy pickler. I’m a fan of making small batches whenever it is convenient. I don’t want to heat up the house with the canner or risk getting limp pickles if I screw up the process. So, I make freezer pickles. They are so simple and are delicious. So far this season we’ve picked 37 cucumbers and made 11 ½-pint jars of dill pickles, 7 of sweet pickles, and 5 of bread and butter pickles. I’ll probably be making some more this week as the collection of cucumbers in the fridge are starting to add up again.

Cool as a cucumber and ready to be pickles

Six 1/2-pink jars of dill freezer pickles

We’ve done a little fridge pickling as well. The beets and watermelon radishes are doing fairly well this year. We didn’t plant that many of either. The radishes are great on sandwiches but we worried we wouldn’t go through them quickly enough in their raw form. The solution was fridge pickles. Since we were doing the radishes, I figured we could pickle a few beets as well. We picked just enough for two ½-pint jars of radishes and one of beets. The radishes are crunch and taste good but I will say that they leave a definite funk in the air.

Just a few beets and radishes

Quick fridge pickled beets and radishes

We did do one bit of unplanned preserving as well. Early on when we first moved into this house, my husband built a trellis for wild grapes that were growing behind the garage. Last year, they didn’t do much but this year they produced enough that I thought I’d see if I could make a little jelly. Well, it did turn out to be a little jelly – just a ½-pint jar and a smaller jelly jar – but it turned out really tasty. The tartness of the wild grapes is really wonderful; not at all like the standard store-bought grape jelly. I only had one cup of juice so it took a little mathing to get the pectin measurement right but I’m calling this experiment a success.

Lots of grapevines on the trellis

Bunches of wild grapes

Draining the juice from the cooked grapes

Mmm...jelly!

An Update on the Birds

On July 4, I wrote about the multiple birds that were nesting in our hedge. I thought I’d share a little update about how they turned out.

The mourning doves had a particularly successful brood. They made very little noise until they outgrown the nest. Then, we could hear them crashing through the branches of the cedar as they were figuring out their wings. I don’t know how many eggs were laid in this clutch, but I was able to get a picture of three nearly-grown birds hanging out by the nest.

Three mourning doves

The robins, on the other hand, had a bad time of things. Well, perhaps not bad, but completely unsuccessful. The female robin sat the next for some time but nothing came of it. Anytime someone went near the next she would fly off making quite a racket. It makes sense that she would try to draw whatever intruder away. That was so different from the nearly-silent doves. By the end of July, it appears that the robins had abandoned the nest. I found a broken egg on the driveway under the lilac bush.

Broken robin egg

The real stars of our little bird show were the cardinals. While Mr. Tomato was continuing to take care of the chicks in the nest by the driveway, the Mrs. began sitting another nest across the yard. We watched a lot of comings and goings from both sides as the pair raised two broods. Just this week we’ve seen both sets of junior cardinals out exploring. Junior, a bird from the first nest, is almost entirely fledged out with adult colors while the Junior Juniors (I've seen three together at once) from the second nest is still has some baby down. They like to sing and play in the evenings just as the light is fading so I haven’t been able to get many photos but I did catch one of the Junior Juniors the other day.

Junior Junior cardinal

As a country girl, I never expected to get to enjoy so much wildlife in my suburban backyard.

Who's that checking out our garden?

It's one of the twins!

Sun Bunnies

Rabbits are notorious for letting the air out of tires.

Solar Food Dehydrator

Several years ago, when we still lived on the mountain, my husband and I saw a solar food dehydrator in Mother Earth News. (You can find a diagram of it online now at http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/solar-food-dehydrator-zmaz06aszraw.aspx?SlideShow=11) We thought it was a fantastic idea and decided to build one of our own. The magic of living at a lumber mill was that there were always leftover bits of wood and other materials lying around. We managed to construct the entire dehydrator out of scavenged pieces, hinges and all. We did have to buy a kit to make the two drying screens but that was all.

Homemade solar food dehydrator

The dehydrator is basically a big wooden box with a piece of glass on top. We started with an old window and then built the rest of the box around it to fit. Somehow, we found a sheet of metal that was nearly perfect for the reflector inside. We added screened holes for ventilation and doors on the back that could be opened to load the screens full of food and for ventilation. I’m pretty proud of the way it turned out since it was cobbed together from found parts. Best of all, it works wonderfully!

View from the back with bottom door open

Interior with two drying screens in place

Side view showing screened vent holes and top door propped open for airflow

We used the dehydrator quite a lot back then drying strawberries, blueberries, cherries, zucchini, yellow squash, and herbs. Since moving to the southern tier, we’ve used it once to dry a batch of wild hops but otherwise it has remained tucked away in the garage. That is until about a week ago. I had gone blueberry picking and thought it would be fun to dry some. My husband pulled it out of storage and gave it a good cleaning then I loaded it with some washed blueberries.

Blueberries loaded and ready to start drying

It was just my luck that I picked some of the only cloudy days so far this summer on which to get the dehydrator going. It needs extended, direct sunlight to function. You’ve got to turn it throughout the day to keep it facing the sun. After the first day of partial sun, the berries were just starting to dry.

Berries on the morning of day 2

Day two was actually sunny, so quite a bit of moisture was pulled out of the berries. Day three, however dawned completely overcast. I don’t like to keep anything in the dehydrator for more than three days. I worry that if the food isn’t dry by then that it might start to spoil. So, I brought the berries in and finished them off in the oven for about four hours. After all that effort, the blueberries had turned into just over a cup of dried berries and they taste great! It was very much worth it to drag our homemade dehydrator across the state with us.

Chewy, yummy dried blueberries!

The Wait is Over

For a couple of weeks, we’ve been tending the garden and waiting for the next round of vegetables. Well, they have arrived. A week ago I picked two yellow squash and one zucchini. They were all a little on the small side compared to when we usually pick but I was running out of patience. I sliced them in half the long way and cooked them with just a little oil, salt and pepper and they were fantastic.

A handful of summer squash

It always amazes me how quickly some vegetables go to just about ready to pick to how they heck did they get so big already. Just four days after the first runt squash, we picked two more yellow squash and three zucchini that were just on the edge of being oversized. Then three days after that there are three more zucchini. I really like summer squash – I would not have planted six of them if I didn’t – so this is not a hardship. I’m glad that we’re actually getting so much from the plants this year. Last year we only got a couple squash before the plants quit. The yellow squash never even really got started.

Cukes and Zukes

We’re also starting to get cucumbers. There are only a few big enough to pick so far but there appear to be more on the way. We decided to try to get them to climb this year. We got our hands on some wooden stakes to reuse so we figured we’d give it a try. They are not stellar climbers on their own but once trained seem to be getting the hang of it.

Climbing cucumbers

I was happy to find that the first cucumbers were not bitter. It has been so hot this summer that I worried that they would turn on us like last year. Maybe they are doing okay because it has been consistently hot. Last year the cucumbers went bitter because a sudden spike in temperature stressed them out. Hopefully, they’ll hold their sweetness this year.

Just one of many tiny cucumbers

The heat has not been the only thing making this year’s growing season so different from last year. We haven’t seen any significant rain in weeks, now. The lawn is brown and crunch so there’s been no need to mow for quite a while. We had been leaving the back lawn mostly un-mowed anyway. My husband’s idea was that if we leave the clover and wildflowers in the backyard, they would attract bees. When they were finished blooming, the bees would turn to the garden. My husband is a brilliant man. Now that the clover is brown, the bees are busily working over all the blossoms in the garden.

Because of the lack of rain, we’ve had to water the garden on a regular basis. This has actually turned out to be a good thing. We can make sure the garden is consistently hydrated and fertilize on a regular schedule.

All the veggies get a drink

While this year has been dry, last year was overly wet. The constant rains fostered a fungus on my chard and beets. (click here for details) This year, I chose another bed for the plants, hoping to stop the cycle. Well, that worked but I have a new problem – leaf miners. These nasty little worms burrow into the leaves and eat them from the inside out. I did some research and found that there was little that could be done once the worms were hatched beyond cutting off the infected leaves.

Yuck! Leaf miners.

I did find, however, that with a little effort, I could prevent the worms from being on the leaves in the first place. It’s a fly that lays the eggs, so if you can keep the flies off the plants they can’t lay the eggs. I didn’t really want to engineer a barrier to I decided to tackle the problem post-fly. The fly lays the eggs on the undersides of the leaves so all you have to do is flip over each leaf, find the eggs, and brush them off. My chard bed is very small so this is a perfectly reasonable chore. Every couple of days I inspect the chard, brush off eggs, and cut off infected leaves and I think I’ve gotten ahead of the problem.

Teeny-tiny eggs

Chard all bright and lovely

There are a lot more plants in the garden just on the edge of being ready to pick. A quick rundown: the green beans are flowering like crazy and have put on small beanlets that will be ready to pick before we know it; the tomato plants are covered in small green tomatoes on the verge of blushing; we have a few peppers that are about the size of golf balls; and the pumpkins and acorn squash have tiny little fruits started. I feel we’re just on the cusp of a very busy veggie season.

Tomatoes

Pepper

Cantaloupe vines

Pumpkin

Green beanlet

Backyard Birds

We have a mixed hedge of cedar and laurel with some lilac mixed in that runs along the south side of our driveway. It is, apparently, a very attractive home to nesting birds. This spring a pair of grackles built a nest high in the cedars. Once hatched, the little birds made quite a racket, especially when one of the parents swooped in bringing food. It was really nice watching and listening to the little creatures, hoping that they would grow up healthy and strong.

Grackle with something yummy (maybe) for its chicks

On May 22, I saw a little gray bird hopping in the grass near the garden. My first thought was, “Oh no. The little guy fell out of the nest. I wonder if it can fly well enough to at least get off the ground and away from predators.” There are some neighborhood cats that I’m sure would have loved to pounce on the fledgling. But then I saw two more little birds on the fence nearby and knew that they were our little grackles on their first trip away from the nest. They all could fly (well enough) and seemed to be having a nice time exploring in and around the garden.

Such sweet little things!

I thought that was it for our little rookery. The babies had flown and it was now getting into late June. But then about a week ago, I saw a robin with its beak filled with twigs and bits of dried grass. It kept flying into one of the lilac bushes among the laurels so I decided to check it out. Sure enough, the robin was building a nest just high enough to be above my reach. Not that I wanted to reach the nest. We just always joke that robins are not the best at picking safe spots for nests. I remember as a child looking down into a nest of peeping mouths when a pair of robins had built their nest in the bucket of my father’s backhoe.

Robins' nest in a lilac just above my head

The robin had a problem, though, beyond the relative low height of the nest. A pair of cardinals had also chosen that section of the hedge in which to build a nest. There were a couple of bird fights in the driveway and it appeared that the cardinals were victorious. Three days ago we started to hear very small voices coming from the hedge. Today, those voices are much louder. We hear them frequently as Mr. and Mrs. Tomato-head dart in and out of the hedge to feed their babies. I wanted to get some pictures of the pair but they are always on the move. It sounds like there are at least two, if not three or more, chicks to feed so they have been kept very busy.

Mr. Tomato-head earlier in the summer before the responsibilities of parenthood

When I first heard the tiny peeping voices, I decided to try to locate the nest. I ducked my head into the hedge and took a look around. Lo and behold, there it was, on the left up in the cedars. I took a couple of photos and bragged to my husband about how I had found the cardinals’ nest. There was one problem, though. When I took a closer look at the photos, I discovered it was not the cardinals’ nest. It was that of a dove.

Surprise, its a doves' nest

Closeup of the nest - someone's looking at me!

What a delightful surprise! Of course, it should not have been that big of a surprise. A couple weeks earlier we had the opportunity to witness a pair of doves having fun sexy time on the roof of our garage. I managed to get a few photos as they were basking in post-coital bliss.

Mrs. Dove

Mr. Dove

I was still curious about the location of the cardinals’ nest, however. So, I ducked back into the hedge and looked around again when the Mrs. was visiting the nest. I was able to pinpoint the nest that time, though it was really difficult to get a good picture of it. I did get another surprise, though. A robin went flying off of its nest (the one I thought had been abandoned) and proceeded to chirp me a new one for disturbing it. So, it looks as though we have three pairs of birds sharing a fairly small space in our hedge. It’s like we’re running an avian maternity ward.

There is a cardinal nest in there, I swear!

Robin's just a little grumpy after I disturbed it.

General locations of the birds' nests in our hedge