More Flowers and Some Pretty Scary Caterpillars

I had noticed that some of my tomato plants seem to be have lost leaves and there was just some stems at the top of the plants. I have seen this before and I know to look for a large caterpillar that can pretty quickly eat a tomato plant. I have had an infestation a couple times this year and I just pick them off. A moth comes by and lays a few eggs. Unfortunately while out of town they got a head start. In the last 2 days I have found about 5 or 6 of these. The caterpillars are pretty cheeky. They just are on top of the plant and the green color is intense. They are about 8-10 cm in length.
They may look a little scary but they don't hurt you.
  Not all of the plants have had them and I take them off and then smash them!!


The wild zone has lots of cosmos and they are looking nice.
These white flowers are the chives that are blooming. So they test good and look nice as well.
I do know that okra is not universally loved but I think that you must admit that the flowers are delightful and the plants are handsome to look at.


1889 grams +824 grams +1434 grams totals 4.147 KG

With a total of 154.147 KG for the year totals

Okra Anyone?

The okra plants are very handsome and I will have to post a picture of them soon, but I have had some excellent pods that I have used  in the rice dish which I made again today. The interesting thing about okra is that it is from Africa. I always wondered how a kidnapped people would bring theses seeds to the the New World. It must have been a nice touch of home. These pods are about 8-12 cm long and at that length are tender and have some mucus but the rice just seems to be smoother. I have been cutting up whatever I can bring in from the garden and then cooking it up.
Today I had nearly a KG of tomatoes in the harvest. The bunny protected area seems to be working and so I planted about 60 seedlings into the garden. Some things are perhaps a little close together but lettuce and some things will be harvested and then the   kale and collards will have more room to grow.




I did a lot of cleaning up today; I harvested more sunflower seeds and cut up stems and other spent plants for the compost and got the garden looking a lot neater.
I was going to till so that I could plant and put up some more fence and have room for the rest of the seedlings but then there were a few drops, then a lot more and the rain just came down heavy but only for about 10 minutes. The gauge said that we had about 60 mm of rain. However that was more than enough to fill the 55 gallon rain barrel. The potential for captured and gray water harvest are incredible.
Later I went out and want to finish cleaning up and do a little tilling and there was a clap of thunder that scared me right back in the house. That will have to wait for tomorrow.
Sadly the a watermelon and a pumpkin split open and were ruined. I think that this was due to was the rain after so much dryness lead to growth inside but the rind could not expand. Still the weight is still going up toward the goal.

The Bunny Wars

I have nearly 100 baby plants that will soon need to go in the ground and another hundred on the way. So the thought of putting my little ones in harms way has driven me to action. As of yet the bunny trap has been ineffectual. I have tried a few baits and so has the Farmer’s wife but to no avail. She did find his den recently in some azalea bushes and flushed him out. Well there are some suggestions on the web about using bait that is made up of what he might be eating; which at this time is strangely some okra leaves, and having a little Hansel and Gretel tidbit trails that lead to the trap or put up a fence with the trap being the door? Why the trap if you are going to have a fence? I though about putting a baby kale plant from the seedlings in the trap seeing this kind of like a kamikaze mission or taking one for the team.
However, I am trying a fence. Michael Palin of The Omnivore’s Dilemma recounted how the wood chucks lead to a temporary form of insanity and that the fence was his savior. Well, the fence I would say looks pretty good. I suppose there is a certain farm-ish look but for now the fence is in the upper garden and mostly hidden and not out in the more open yard. It does look neat, safe and orderly. This little space is for growing plants that while certainly they are natural they are our friends and need some help from us. We can try to do this in a healthy way or might be lured into more drastic measures with chemicals and other sorts of more lethal arsenal. Well 6 seedlings spent the night in their new digs and looked fine this morning before I took off on a trip.
Last night I had the last of my three servings of vegetable yellow rice. This was incredibly delicious dish and even though there are a few things not all eaters care for in their individual incarnation, together they made some beautiful music.
Recipe
Large handfull of bunching onions, large handful of basil, smallish eggplant, peppers and some okra pods and cherry tomatoes. These were all sliced up and put in the pot with about 100 grams of kielbasa sausage and cooked down till starting to soften. The package of yellow rice was added and cooked for 20 minutes. To see all of these things come out of my garden and into the pot was a great satisfaction even if I don’t ultimately meet my goal for overall production of weight.
Try the above recipe and see what you think.
Total for the harvest the last 2 days is
824 g.

The fig tree is not making lots of figs but there are still a lot of green figs and every day one or two start to turn dark and then in 24-48 hours you have the honeyed flavor that most peculiarly shaped fruit. I appreciate the stragglers that will if history holds keep coming on for the next month or so. I love figs but I guess I have more understanding for the Hebrews wandering in the wilderness that tired of Manna and grumbled. I never audibly grumbled but the anticipation of having a fig from the tree has returned.

Summer Heat and Rain

This weekend will make 50 days with the high temperature of the day 90 or greater. This is a record breaking streak that surpasses the previous 36 day record and at this point no break is in the forecast. I know that no individual day or heat spell can itself be blamed on global warming. However, when you put this in the context of what is happening around the world, fires in Russia, large iceburgs breaking off from Greenland, it seems that there is a pattern. We do our part to be frugal with resources but I know that I still have a big Fat Carbon Foot Print.

We have the luxury of reflection, or angst,  as we consider what is happening to the planet's environment. It seems that everyone is waiting for someone else to do something, or kick it down the road for the next generation to fix.
A few years ago when I was in Vietnam for a couple of months people were still trying to cobble the basics together. When you have to worry about how you will make things work for the next day it is difficult to think about something as abstract as the environment.

This week there has been some modest harvest. I cut off and brought in to dry one of the two rows of sunflowers that I grew. In a week or so, when dried, I will harvest some. I have had some requests for some seeds so I will save some out and will try to process some more to eat.

Today I had the very sweaty job of wrestling the new rain barrel in place. I had to dig out the rocks on the bottom and put them back in so that I could get it under the spout. I think it is going to work well. You might remember that I wrote about getting the rain barrel at a workshop that the Alabama Environmental Counsel put on. We did not have rain for more than 40 days and I did not get it installed right away as I despaired for rain. The Farmer's Wife did a nice job with the paint. I complimented her on the camouflage paint job that makes it nearly disappear. Check out the AEC for your own barrel.
www.aeconline.org The New Farmer is away but we ordered some more seeds for the fall and winter garden before she left and I will start some more seedlings. The first batch (100) are doing pretty good and are now outside acclimatizing to the heat. In a few more days I will start transplanting some of them into the garden if we keep getting rain.

Finally
I have a report of
1.434 KG for this week in the way of produce. Carrots, tomatoes eggplants and some basil that are making some great pasta dishes for  a total of
151.34 KG

150 Kilograms: A Few Cherry Tomatoes Make the Goal

150 Kilograms: A Few Cherry Tomatoes Make the Goal

I have been hoping to reach the next intermediate goal of 150KG for a few days. I was under by 121 grams yesterday and on the way in from work I found these scraggly few tomatoes and they weighed exactly the 121 grams that I needed. I think that this must be an omen or sign but with this the total weight of all produce from the garden is 150 KG. We are now only 50KG from the official goal for the year. I remain optimistic.

There has been some other good news. This weekend the local drought broke and there was nearly 3 inches of rain. We had some pretty heavy downpours but lots of smaller rain storms to let the water sink in and moisten the soil that was starting to be so dry. The temperature however is still in the 90's as it has been every day for the last 45 days. The okra, eggplant and tomatoes have made it through with the help of the New Farmer's reliable water and nuture.
I did notice that there are some sweet potatoes that are starting to stick up over the ground promising a new crop. I do have some problems with insects and I think a new bunny is back and I will need to try to deal with that pest before the next part of the garden season starts. This week I will pull up some of the older plants and use my tiller to mix in some compost and then put in some new seeds.
The New Farmer and I have started nearly 100 seedlings and this week I will put them out to harden in the higher temperature and I will start some new seedling for the greens and other winter crops. It is hard to think about the cooler weather crop when it is so hot but now is the time to start for the best result.

Sunflowers

I am starting to start to harvest some of the sunflower seeds. The process is actually pretty complicated. I have some very large sun flowers which have heads that are 15-20 cm across. I have been concerned that the lack of rain may lead to problems with the seeds filling out. I think that sun flowers must be pretty drought resistent since of all the plants we have they are looking pretty good.
After the petals have come off head the seeds fill out and this can cause the head to warp.  The next step is to pop out all the seeds  and try to get out the debris.

The next step is to make a brine with salt water and soak the sees overnight.
The next day the seeds are roasted at 300 degrees for 20 minutes. I think that this was a little too long. They smelled great and taste good but are a little dark. I haven't tried to shell them in a batch which would be convenient since they are pretty small.

Still harvesting about 500g a day and there is a tropical wave coming but we have just broken the the record of 40 consecutive days over 90 and almost no rain during that time.

148.740 KG with the harvest added today.

The Dry Season

There has been nearly 40 days without measurable rain here at the Suburban Farm. This has been an unusually long stretch and if it were not for watering everything would be dried up and dead. The New Farmer is out watering right now. I remember that a priest at church once told us in a sermon that 40 in the Bible did not mean actually 40 it just meant more than you could keep count; that would be 2 people fingers and toes. It was the Israelite version of a  "bazillion ".  Well it does seem like it has been a bazillion days of very hot and dry weather. It is times like this when I wonder how it is that people don't see Global Warming as a problem.
The weather has reduced productivity quite a bit. Flowers, a few squash, peppers and eggplant are all coming in now.
I have put up another batch of figs and that will be what I will store for the year and the rest will be for fresh eating.
















Tonight we had tomato, eggplant, pepper, squash and basil all from the garden
I have some carrots to bring in and we will be closing in on the next mile marker when we get to 150 KG which I expect to do some time this coming week.
















In preparation of the coming rain the New Farmer made over a 100 newspaper pot and we have started lettuce, cabbage, kale and lots of other things for the fall garden


3.059 KG to add for a total of 146.5 KG

Figgy Preserves

Every day there are more figs to pick and eat or in this case preserve. I think that we had the big flush of figs this weekend.
However, last year I continued to get a few figs every day to eat or cook with until late in the fall.
With all these figs I decide to make some whole fig preserves. These preserves require cooking the figs for 2 and 1/2 hours and then canning for about 20 minutes. The Farmer's Wife helped out with this since it often takes more than two hands to fill jars and move the hot bottles in and out of the canner.
Also this weekend had a dinner with two kinds of squash and egg plant that were baked into breaded slices to make a squash casserole dish. I also had some Acorn squash with the meal.
Since I cannot do much planting or gardening now with temperatures greater than 100 and no rain so I have started making pots and will start seedlings inside for the fall garden.


For the last few days I have picked 5.581 KG of produce which has been mostly figs and tomatoes

Now a total of 143.4KG  for the season.