Summer garden update

My garden and its harvest is keeping me busier than I anticipated. With sparse rain, I have to water the garden using captured rain water. Weeds seem to have gotten away from me and my asparagus trench needs to be filled in. Too bad I lack enough dirt to do so. (Can you help, Dad?) And my future plans include converting more of my lawn to grow food. Is putting in a garden and laboring over it worth my time?

This is all part of my learning process. Just because I grew up on a farm and my mom had a large garden does not translate into instant ability to grow things. I have lost corn seeds, corn seedlings, herbs, cucumbers, carrots and beans to various predators of the insect or mammalian variety. I am still uncertain what was attacking my beans but have accepted the loss as part of vagaries of gardening.

So far I have harvested 70 ounces of strawberries, two garlic scapes, 25 ounces of peas (includes the pod) and 8 cups of rhubarb from my garden. I purchased ~35 pounds of strawberries either at a u-pick farm or from the farmer's market, and I picked 14 cups of rhubarb from a friend's house.

My own strawberry harvest took at least a 25% hit from insect damage and ~25 ounces of pea pods has given me about a cup and a quarter of peas. Since picking peas is still new to me, I harvested pods before the peas had matured. The garlic scapes are too new for me to incorporate them easily into my diet but part of the reason I put in a garden was to try new things, both growing and eating them.

I estimate my 3.3 pounds of strawberries was worth ~$13 at a farmer's market.
My 8 cup rhubarb harvest is worth ~$6.50 at the farmer's market.
The garlic scapes are worth less than $1 since I saw one vender at my regular farmer's market selling garlic scapes for $2.50 for 1/2 pound.
The 21 ounces of Romaine-type lettuce was worth ~$3.50
My current 12 ounce pea harvest is worth ~$5.00 with more on the vine.

My garden is in a holding pattern between the early and midseason crops. The garlic and onions are nearly ready and blossoming potatoes means I can harvest small ones while the beans and solo pepper plant have only started blooming. My corn has tassels and silks, my plants are loading up with green tomatoes, the carrots seem healthy and the cucumbers are tiny. I am hoping to plant some broccoli and carrots for the fall. My herbs are still in small pots and need to be transplanted. I plan on getting around to it before cooler weather settles in--permanently. Surveying the garden, picking wild black raspberries and fighting Japanese beetles are taking a goodly share of my time. My next post will address some changes to saving my money.

The Christmas jelly jar saga

At my local thrift store, I had been looking for jelly/jam jars to make jam in for Christmas gifts. However, the usual location was not yielding any jelly jars, just a few lonely quart or pint jars. With Christmas looming closer, I broke down and bought new jelly jars wrapped in thick plastic during my big once-monthly grocery shopping trip. Not only was I buying new, but had a lot of plastic waste to deal with. Why not the good old fashioned cardboard box Kerr!

So my new jars were all nestled in their plastic-wrapped cardboard divisions in my basement waiting for me to fill them with strawberry and red raspberry jam goodness from the berries I picked and froze in my chest freezer. I was looking forward to making a batch of jam with my homegrown strawberries. Then I made a recent pilgrimage to my local charity thrift shop, the one I visit weekly and brag about all the stuff I find. Internally I was shrieking in frustration because there on the shelf was not one, not two, but four boxes of a dozen jelly jars complete with dried up spiders for me to purchase. Well, of course I bought a box because a gal can never have too many jelly jars and if I gave them away as gifts, well, less crying over jars that never return to me. I will take 25 cents a jar any day!

I visited the store two days later and there was still another box left so I bought that one too. Now I have an assortment of jelly jars in raised-relief fruit, quilted, standard smooth, and wide-mouth half pint sizes. I think I can freely give away jars with little guilt even if I thought six weeks without jars in the thrift story meant I could purchase new. And no, I am not sharing my ill-gotten gains. I may even been stingy with the two batches of strawberry freezer jam I made. I never shared my homemade jam gift plans so if the jars never leave the freezer, no one but me will know...

Surprise harvest: Strawberries in November

I have written endlessly about gardening, my garden plans and my new gardening areas including my raised strawberry pyramid. Well, Sunday November 9, I was picking strawberries in freezing temperatures (30 degrees Fahrenheit) with little flecks of snow sprinkling on me and the strawberry plants. Talk about a disconcerting experience--picking strawberries in November in the upper Midwest! The snow is not enough to do anything but add flecks of white, but not how I imagined my strawberry harvest would take me this year (or any year). I guess when the Jung's catalog says Ozark Beauty is an everbearing strawberry plant, they are not kidding. With freezing temperatures, I am not sure how long I can expect any berries to ripen, but I am interested in seeing how long they can hold out. There are a few that are starting to blush red...

Summer garden report

I have talked a lot about my garden but not really discussed the results of all my repurposing and frugal garden ideas. Recently, I have begun harvesting strawberries, green bush beans and cucumbers. So, to brag a bit about my success, I have taken a few pictures of my fruits and veggies.

I harvested a couple strawberries prior to the one pictured, but this is the first that was undamaged by earwigs or partially eaten by other animals. While most of my gardening techniques are organic, I used Sevin powder around the strawberry bed to get the perfect strawberry pictured here. I planted 50 Ozark Beauty everbearing strawberry plants, had 13 take, cut off blossoms and runners until July 1 and started to get strawberries about three weeks later. As an everbearing plant, the strawberries bloom and produce fruit throughout the summer rather than just in June. I have to survey the territory every day to check on ripeness. Right now, three more strawberries are nearly ready with just some white left and there are plenty more blossoms and small white berries waiting to ripen.


I received a surprise on July 22: my first two green beans! I knew the plants had bloomed, but did not really look at the plants until recently. I happily harvested the two beans and stored them in the refrigerator. The picture below contains four days worth of beans and the newly harvested strawberry. I had forgotten how fuzzy green beans are and enjoyed them for dinner with onions and a bit of bacon. Yum! The strawberry tasted wonderful for afters.


These beans were picked Sunday, July 27. My bean plants may be hitting their peak. I only have six plants producing so the numbers I am posting are not going to be impressive. Part of my reasoning for planting beans and some of the other plants is trying them. Do I like to grow them? Do I like to eat them? If the answer is yes to both, I will keep them on my list for next year when I expand my garden. I can plant more because I liked what I had. More plants means more work and more harvesting, but essentially doing a test plot helps me focus on what I can do and what I like.


While I have not taken pictures of my cucumbers, I do know I will try a different variety next year. The dual-purpose bush cucumber I purchased was not very bushlike and is a bit too spiny for my comfort. It is a robust producer and I may end up giving away the seeds to someone more interested in cucumbers than I. I definitely only need one plant to produce the cucumbers I will use. I have not touched the six I have harvested with at least ten on the vine!

My late-planted peas are slowly growing, my onions are holding their own even as they were planted in May and eaten by rabbits, my tomatoes are growing (even if I have blossom end rot on a goodly share of them), and my Jacob's cattle bean is starting to bloom and produce tiny pods. Hopefully, I will love the onions, enjoy the peas, can the tomatoes and see if I like growing my own beans for cooking.