Diggin' and Pickin' in June

With everything going on lately, we haven't shown a lot going on in the garden.  I did some work in the garden planting on Saturday.  I planted 3 additional rows of green beans.  The green beans that I planted in early spring didn't do well.  It was the first year in many, many years in which we didn't put up any beans in the freezer for later.  Things don't always work out.  Hopefully in this planting, we will see success.  I also planted another row of sweet corn, a row of black-eyed peas, a row of cantaloupe, watermelon, butternut squash, birdhouse gourds, louffa gourds, and sunflowers. 

But let's back up.  We planted more things, and while we have many things still growing, we are harvesting, too.  Here is a basket full of some of the last of the beets.

We planted Red Mangel Beets for the cows, and chioggia beets and bull's blood beets for us.

We oven-roast most of the beets in the oven.  That's our favorite way of eating them.  Tricia also made a couple batches of beet kvass.  Back in 2014, we showed how we do that in this post:
Making Beet Kvass

We also picked some lima beans.  These limas over-wintered in the garden and are bearing again.  I wait until the pods are brown, but you can't wait too late as they'll pop open and you'll lose the beans. 

Finally, each year in May and June, it is prime blueberry and blackberry season.  Each day we (but mainly Russ before he moved out) go to the bushes with quart-sized containers and pick all the berries that have ripened since the day before.  We eat some while we're picking, of course!  We put the berries in a colander and wash them up.

We put some in the fridge to snack on fresh, but we also like to freeze some to use throughout the year.  An interesting way to freeze them is to lay them out on a single layer on a stoneware tray.  Pop 'em in the freezer and the next morning we pull them out and loosen them from the tray with a spatula. 

When the are all loose, we pour them into a zip loc bag and put them in the freezer for storage.

With the berries individually frozen, it is very easy to pour them into a measuring cup for baking muffins and blueberry pancakes with chocolate chips.  My favorite!

Up next in the garden:  harvesting sweet corn, more cukes, tomatoes (although it is a bad year), squash and zucchini.  In a few days, we'll be planting pumpkins.

Sunday Morning Silent Garden Stroll

11 For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.  Isaiah 61:11 NIV

This morning after Sunday morning milking I wanted to walk through the garden.  Last night we had a family night out to the movies in Lafayette and didn't get to pick okra.  Okra grows so doggone fast.  If you miss a day picking, the okra goes from tender to woody and inedible.  I wanted to make sure I picked it early this morning.  The morning sun was filtering through the trees on the east side of the garden.   

Yesterday's refreshing rain had everything blooming.  Here are some beautiful lima bean blooms.

Just underneath the canopy of lima bean leaves that cover the trellis, you can see pods full of fat lima beans!

On the next row I see black-eyed peas blooming.

A luffa gourd that came up volunteer from last year's seeds is blooming as well.  Its bright yellow flowers full of nectar is attracting honey bees as you can see this one making a "bee-line" for the flower.

It landed and began filling itself with pollen.  The bee hive in our column is gone.  It makes me wonder where his hive is now.  It is good to know that there is still a colony of bees in the vicinity to keep things pollinated.

Just a few steps down and you can see purple hull peas blooming in the center of the photo, with a pod that will be turning purple soon.  In the top left corner of the photo is a dragon fly.  Can you spot him?

Towering above the garden near the end of the garden are the stalks of okra.  Big beautiful blooms announce the soon arrival of more pods of okra. 

It doesn't take long for a bloom to turn into okra pods.  You can see okra at various stages of development just behind the flower below.

More black-eyed pea blooms pop up in the Sunday morning sunshine.  Cowpeas and okra relish the warm, humid conditions prevalent here now.

They keep thriving, putting out pods that we'll be shelling soon.  Lots of work still remains to be done in the garden.  We'll be busy harvesting and then working on getting the fall garden in pretty soon.

I spotted this guy trying to blend in with an okra stalk!

It's Sunday morning.  He's not in any hurry... Nor should I! 

A Christmas Tree In the Garden

I was standing out in the garden admiring the Christmas tree.  Well, not really.  It is really a tabasco pepper plant.  The peppers on it the run from bright red to atomic orange, to bright yellow to neon green makes it pretty close to what a string of lights on a Christmas tree looks like.  I think the plant is beautiful.  The three tabasco pepper plants I have growing grew up volunteer from the seeds of some plants that were given to us last year by the proprietors of the local feed store that we patronize. Who knows?  Maybe if these plants freeze and die over the winter, some of the seeds from these peppers will spring up from the soil, giving us yet another year of peppers without having to plant them.

I like to go out and pick the brilliant red-colored ones, snapping the peppers off of the green stems and leaving the orange, yellow and green ones to ripen for a while.

Once I get a nice bunch of them, I'll bring them inside and make homemade tabasco pepper sauce.  We posted about how we make it in THIS POST and others in previous years as well.  We really like the way the pepper sauce tastes and how it flavors beans and rice and other dishes.  It is so easy to make and absolutely delicious.

Right south of the row of tabasco peppers is a big trellis of various varieties of lima beans. We've harvested them throughout the year and it is time to harvest the last of them.  The freeze that we had the other day burned the leaves and knocked the plants back a bit, and I don't think they are going to make it much longer.  We picked a bucket of lima bean pods and shelled them, putting the assorted shelled lima beans in a bowl.  We threw the vines over the fence for the cows to eat and once they ate everything they wanted, I composted the remaining vines.  I think the variety of lima beans is beautiful.  Check out the bowl of limas in the photo below.  Like the tabasco peppers have different colors, the different varieties of limas make a nice collection of assorted sizes and shapes of beans. They taste great, too!

Some of the pods were green and thus weren't dried yet, so we shelled those and left them on the window sill to dry.  When these dry fully, we'll cook them up.

We enjoy growing and eating things from the garden that are not only pretty to look at but great to eat, too!

Gotta Love Those Butter Beans

When Russ was a newborn, he had some very serious, life-threatening injuries that required a long hospital stay after being life-flighted to New Orleans Children's Hospital.  Thank the Good Lord that he is fine now.  Russ was one day old when he was life-flighted and a nurse on the transport team nicknamed him "Butterbean." I've never had a nickname, but I always thought the nickname, "Butterbean," for Russ was a good one.

Guess what? I like butter beans, too!  I have an entire row of them growing in the garden.  They grew like crazy all throughout the spring and summer.  They are loaded up with nice pods and on Saturday, I figured it was a good day to get a bowl and pick a 'mess' of them.

Trellised butterbeans

If you take a peak beneath all the foliage, you can see numerous pods hanging from the vines.  To determine the ones that are ready to pick, I just run my fingers over the pod, looking for the bulge telling you that the pods are full of mature butter beans.

Ready to pick

After a few minutes, I picked a nice bowl of them.  Picking the pods off of the vines is a satisfying thing.  You can't really call it work.

But the thing that is more satisfying than picking them is shelling them.  In order to shell them, it is important to find yourself a comfortable spot to sit.  The first choice would be to sit down in a rocking chair on the front porch.  I opted for the second best choice as it was nearer - a swing under a shady live oak tree.  Of course you can shell them anywhere.

A nice spot to shell butter beans

The pods are large.  The beans within are huge, fat and bulging.

I planted several different varieties.  Here is a cool-looking speckled pink and maroon one.  If I remember correctly, this is the Dixie Speckled Butterpea.

They are big beans, easily wider than my ring finger.

Here's a nice contrast between the two varieties I was picking.

The beans are large, so it didn't take many beans to start filling up the bowl.  Those are some nice looking beans, right there.

But here is the nicest shot - the real money shot.  As pretty as they are in the bowl, they are even prettier when they are cooked up and plated on top of rice with some cut up sausage, garnished with some fresh green onions with a side of sauteed bok choy and some homemade cornbread.

Wow!  That's a good southern meal.  Gotta love those butter beans!

Picking Butterbeans

This spring I planted two types of lima beans on a trellis in the garden made with a concrete reinforcement panel - speckled lima beans and Henderson lima beans. They both climb like Jack's magic beanstalk, and the only problem with that is that they can climb so high that it is difficult to pick the pods from the uppermost vines. Since the fall garden is in full swing, and the leaves of the climbing lima beans are falling to the ground, I figured it best that I get out there and pick the stragglers before the beans shatter to the ground or sprout in the pod.

I grabbed an 8 cup measuring cup and walked out to pick some beans.  The remnants of Hurricane Patricia were still coming through our area.  I dropped 5 1/2 inches of much needed rain on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm and an easterly breeze was blowing as I began filling the measuring cup with lima bean pods.  Or maybe I should call them butterbeans.  I like the term butterbeans for them a bit better.  When cooked with some sausage, they are creamy, rich and delicious, just like butter.

When Russ was just a baby (now he's 20!), he had a serious, life-threatening condition that required a lifeflight transport to New Orleans for emergency surgery. He was only a day old, and I remember one of his flight nurses on his transport team nicknamed him "her little butterbean!"  I still remember that.  Anyway, here are three butterbean pods, plump, full and ready for picking!  Some pods are brown and the beans inside harder and dry, but that's okay.  They both are good eating.

Henderson Lima Beans

It didn't take me long to pick two quarts of butterbeans and some Purple Beauty Bell Peppers.  It was nice outside and while picking, I watched the cows munching on the hay bale and the chickens chasing down bugs in the pasture.  Penelope the peahen was making her daily trek from the pasture, over the fence, into the yard and up into the very top of a live oak tree where she roosts for the night.

2 Quarts of  Butterbeans

Here is a Henderson Lima Bean:

Henderson Lima Bean shelled

And here is a Speckled Butterbean:

Speckled Butterbean shelled

I enlisted Benjamin's help and we sat on the floor and shelled the butterbeans.  It is an easy job.  The pods pop right open and the beans go in one bowl and the pods go into another.  The beans, obviously, will be eaten while the pods will be composted right back into the garden soil.

Shelling Butterbeans

In just a little while, we were done.  We had a beautiful bowl full of fat butterbeans.

A Bowl of Butterbeans

I can't wait to eat these cooked down with a little sausage or tasso for some smoky flavor and served over rice, with some buttery cornbread on the side.

Lima Beans, By All Means

Back in April I planted two different varieties of lima beans that we got at a seed exchange at a sustainable agriculture conference.  I planted them next to a panel of concrete reinforcement fencing for them to climb on.  And climb they did!

Lima Beans Ready to Pick

They grew and grew and grew.  I began to wonder if these were Jack and the Beanstalk beans.  They grew so high that it bent over the panel so that it hung down, making a 'tunnel' of lima beans.  Lots of leaves and vines, for sure.

Lots of Foliage

Everything else in the garden is playing out, but new leaves and vines are still being put out by the lima bean plants.

Still Growing!

I climbed into the "lima bean tunnel" with a big bowl and began picking the lima bean pods that were fat.  That let me know that there were beans that were ripe inside.  I would hope that there are more beans coming as so far the plants are putting out a ton of leaves, but only a few lima beans.

Bowl of beans

We shelled the lima beans quickly.  The Henderson lima beans were just a pale green color, but the Speckled lima beans were beautifully colored.

Speckled Limas and Henderson Limas

Some people don't like to eat lima beans, but I find that they are delicious, especially if a little bacon or tasso is added to the pot while you are cooking them.