Random Topics on a Monday

First, an update on Mom.  Some of you have asked about her and have been praying for her and we so appreciate it.  Mom was released from the hospital and sent home.  She continues to regain strength.  The UTI had gotten into her bloodstream and really did a number on her.  After two weeks of antibiotics, it has cleared up.  The bleed in her stomach that was repaired is holding.  Mom's hemoglobin counts are rising and holding steady.  She'll be getting physical therapy to help her get back to where she was.  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!  Thank you for your prayers.

Just to the south of our purple hull pea patch, right next to the honeybees, I planted some zinnias.  The bees seem to like them and they're pretty.  Tricia has been picking the blooms and making fresh flower arrangements for the house.  They look nice.  In all it's about a 30 foot row of zinnias, and when they are done, we'll save the seeds from the dried flowers so that we can beautify the garden next year.

While many plants in the vegetable garden are waving the white flag, several crops are really coming into their own - like okra.  Okra has a big beautiful flower as well:

We're picking okra daily, now.  They grow so fast that if you skip a day, many of the okra pods get tough and woody and must be thrown out.  We're eating a bunch of them, though, making oven fried okra, curried okra, okra stewed down with onions and tomatoes.  I'll have to check our inventory in the pantry of pickled okra.  We may have to build back the quantity of pickled okra in the pantry.

Oh, and while we are talking about jars in the pantry, our salsa inventory was running a little low, so Tricia made up a batch of salsa with our homegrown onions, tomatoes, and jalapeno peppers.

It rained six inches today at the house, making it impossible to get anything done outside.  Maybe tomorrow will be a better day?

On-going Fall Harvest

I've just about gotten everything planted for the fall garden, with the exception of radishes, turnips, mustard greens and spinach.  We're still getting pretty strong bug and worm pressure right now, so we'd like to get some cooler weather that may dissuade them from nightly all-you-can-eat buffets in the garden before we plant.

Speaking of all-you-can-eat buffets, I came back from work the other day to find one of our goats named Popcorn had jumped over a weakened part of the garden fence and that dude was in the garden eating.  Fortunately, he only got to the sweet potato vines when I caught him.  I was still some kind of angry with him.  I had used landscape timbers as fence posts (bad decision) and they rotted.  The goats took advantage of this and pushed the post down and it enabled Popcorn to get in the garden.  Today I picked up 6 treated 8 foot 4x4s at the hardware store.  Mending the garden fence is my next project.  (Thank you, Popcorn.)

One thing that's really coming in strong right now is peppers.  They are in abundance, healthy, and colorful.  We bring baskets and baskets in and have started taking them to church to give away.  They'll continue producing until the first frost kills them.  The average first frost date for our area is November 10th.  That means lots more peppers forthcoming.

The photo below shows Anaheim peppers at top and right, bell peppers at bottom, lilac bell peppers at left and underneath them are sweet banana peppers.  Not pictured are the jalapenos.  We've been picking a bunch of those, halving them and coring/seeding them and freezing for making jalapeno poppers.  With the Anaheim peppers (mild) and bell peppers and banana peppers (sweet), we chop those up and freeze for cooking.

Around here there's something called the trinity of Cajun cooking.  That includes bell pepper, celery and onion.  When we were in the grocery business, one of our more popular selling items was Pictsweet Seasoning blend.  This was pre-cut and frozen Cajun trinity.  No chopping or work.  Cajun Trinity frozen in a bag.  Open the bag and dump in your skillet to cook down.  Easy peezy.  Although we don't freeze them all together.  We cut and freeze peppers, onions, and celery to use in cooking.  It's a great time saver in the kitchen.

The bright orange peppers below are called Datil peppers.  They are HOT!  We core these and put them on the dehydrator for drying.  Once completely dry, we put them in a food processor and make pepper for seasoning.  We learned you've got to be careful.  We've added a little too much to dishes and you had to have a glass of water handy while you ate!  The peppers on the right are Hot Banana Peppers.  Unlike their cousins, sweet banana peppers, these will start a five alarm fire in your mouth.  They look just like the sweet ones, too!  We normally pickle most of the banana peppers - both sweet and hot.

The last photo is okra.  The production of okra is certainly way down since the summer.  We grow several varieties (Louisiana longhorn, Burgundy okra, Beck's Big okra, and Clemson spineless).  We chop them up and cook down with onions and then freeze in quart freezer bags.  We'll freeze a lot of this to use in winter gumbos.  Once you have an inventory of all the garden harvest in the freezer, it makes cooking the meal that much easier and cuts out trips to the grocery store.

In a few weeks, I'll chop all the okra down and plant mustard greens, spinach, radishes and turnips between rows on the fallow ground between where the okra was planted.

It's Never Too Late (Or Early) To Save Seeds

It's in the low 30's now and cool weather always means, "It's Gumbo Season!"  We had a delicious seafood gumbo at Mom & Dad's house the other day that was loaded with shrimp and crab meat.  Tricia made a shrimp and okra gumbo just a few days later.  You can't get tired of gumbo.  While I was eating it, I remembered!  I hadn't saved any okra seed yet!

Well, it's not too late.  The okra in the garden generally lasts up until the first frost.  We usually plant Clemson Spineless as those are the perfect size for pickled okra.  I can finish off a whole jar in one sitting.  We also plant Beck's Big Okra and Burgundy Okra.  However, you get the biggest bang for your buck planting Louisiana Long Pod Okra.  The okra stays edible up until it reaches about 10 inches long.  Clemson spineless would be "woody" and inedible long before that.  I had a long pod of okra that was drying on the plant so that I could save the seeds.  Before it shattered and I lost the seed, I went out and got it.

This is a non-hybrid old heirloom variety that has been passed down for a long, long time.   You can save the seeds and store them and keep passing them down.

From just one pod, would you look at all the seeds I was able to save.  They are plump and dry and in good condition.  I'm sure this spring, I'll soak these, plant them and get good germination.

Just for grins I decided I would count the seeds as I put them in the supplement container that I store seeds in.  I re-labeled the container and put the number of seeds.  119 seeds from that one pod!  That's a lot of okra plants.  I think I'll only plant 25 or so this spring.  The rest I'll save for future planting.

We generally freeze quart bags of cut up, cooked okra for making gumbos in the winter, AKA "Gumbo Season."  I hope we have enough to get us through...

Louisiana Long Okra

It's the first day of July and it is hot.  I picked the last two cucumbers on the trellis and pulled the tired vines down.  The plants were just worn out.  We've never made or eaten more cucumbers - ever!  What a year.  Between Boston Pickling, Suyo Long and Marketmore varieties, we brought in baskets and baskets of the crispy, crunchy refreshing cukes.  We gave lots away at church and many to the neighbors and family members.  Each and every day we had a refreshing cucumber salad and made tzatziki.  I'll plant a fall crop once the inventory in our fridge is exhausted.

Much of the other veggies in the garden are finishing up as well, but the okra...  Well, the okra is coming in.  Okra scoffs at hot weather and dares it to get hotter.  The okra grows quickly and we pick many pods each day.  For the past couple of decades, I've planted primarily Clemson Spineless okra, Burgundy okra, and Beck's Big Okra.  I like them all.

Clemson spineless is the old standby.  We've eaten many gumbos with that variety in it.  The size of the Clemson spineless is perfect for pickling.  I love pickled okra.  Once I open a jar, it doesn't last.  The cold, tangy, spicy taste is just hard to resist.  Clemson spineless has a downside though.  If you don't pick them soon enough, the pods get "woody."

What do I mean by that?  The pods get hard and inedible.  You can tell when you go to cut them up for cooking and your knife struggles to pierce the pod.  When that happens, those go directly into the compost pile.  It was happening more and more.  So I decided to try an old heirloom variety from our area - The Louisiana Long Okra.

It's called that because the pods grow long.   How long?  About 16 inches!  I have a habit that when I cut an pod off the stalk, I chop the leaf off that's directly beneath the pod and let it drop to the ground to add to the compost.

Just by looking at the length of the okra, you would think the pod would be tough and woody, but that's not the case.  Another benefit over the Clemson spineless is that the fire ants don't seem to like them as much.  Clemson spineless is always full of fire ants that climb up the stalk and eat the pods.  When you pick the pods, the ants eat you!  So far, no fire ants on the Louisiana Long Okra.

According to my best guess, the pods are averaging about 10-11 inches long.  That means the harvest is a little better than double the other varieties.  That's not too shabby.

I like this variety.  I think  they've permanently replaced Clemson spineless.  I'll save seeds and replant next year.  I can't wait to chop these up, drench them in egg and roll them in panko breadcrumbs and make oven fried okra.  That's our favorite!  The two rows of okra will go right on producing through the next few months of summer without giving up.  It's a summer garden workhorse.  

Trying a New Thing with Okra

Our three rows of okra has really produced this year.  We've given a lot away.  We've eaten a lot - mostly oven fried okra, stewed okra with tomatoes and onions, okra with ground meat over rice, and pickled okra.  We began putting bags of cooked okra up in the freezer for "gumbo season."  We even eat some of it raw.

We never tried dehydrating it and thought we would try that out.  Here is a day's picking of the three varieties we grow: Clemson spineless, burgundy, and Beck's Big okra.

Prior to dehydrating, Tricia blanched the okra.  Notice how the burgundy okra loses its color:

She cut the okra in half and laid out on the trays of the dehydrator.  She dehydrated them on the vegetable setting for 12 hours.

And then they were dehydrated.  We ate a bunch of them.  Crunchy.  Tasty.

They are probably 1/3 or 1/4 the size of what they were when we put them in the dehydrator.

The remaining ones that we didn't eat were stored in a quart-sized mason jar.

We'll snack on them.  I like them.  I'll experiment and shake some salt and other seasonings in the jar to add a little "pop."

Heat and Drought-Proof Gardening

It has been exceedingly hot and dry.  It always is this time of year, but even more so in 2022.  I haven't mowed the grass in a month.  We are watering everything in the garden and the landscape every other day just to keep things alive.  It is a good exercise to see what in the garden is able to survive and even thrive in the dog days of summer.

This garden plant wins the contest hands down.  Can you guess what it is?  I'll show you the flower as a hint:

It looks almost like a hibiscus.  That's because this heat and drought tolerant plant is in the hibiscus family.  That is an okra blossom.  Okra seem to really enjoy the heat.  I have a few inches of mulch around the base of the plants, and I'm sure that helps them, but I really hardly ever water them.

They keep producing.  The photo below shows okra at almost every stage.  You can see the blossom about to come out, small pods, and then finally pods that are ready for harvest.  The variety you are looking at are called Clemson Spineless.

The colorful okra you see below are called Burgundy okra.  They really stand out in the garden, but when you cook them, they lose their color.  The taste is the same as the others.

As I pick a pod off the plant, I cut the bottom-most leaf off and let it fall to the ground.  I call that "chop and drop" and learned that from a blogger named the Florida Survival Gardener.  Chop and drop employs the usage of the plants leaves to create mulch around the base of the plant.  It ultimately forms organic matter that adds fertility to the soil.

Here are the three varieties of okra that I plant (from left to right):

Beck's Big Okra
Clemson Spineless Okra

Burgundy Okra

All three are non-hybrid heirloom.  I save their seed every year and replant.  I end up with more saved seed that I can use.  This year, in a test, I planted some okra seed that I had saved from 10 years ago - the container was marked "Clemson Spineless - 2012," and they still germinated.

I have three rows of okra planted.  Every other day I go out with a bucket and a pair of clippers and harvest a bucket-ful.  It seems like the hotter it gets, the more they produce.  If it wasn't so hot, I would definitely be wearing long sleeves.  Okra always makes me itch something fierce!

Spring Garden in Late April (Part II)

Back again.  Here is the second half of the garden update.  After the four rows of onions, we have two rows of tomatoes.  I had a catastrophe this year with all my planted tomato seeds.  I lost almost all of them.  I supplemented with (mostly) heirloom varieties that we purchased at a local nursery.

It won't be that much longer before we have red ripe tomatoes!

I have another row of corn.  This one is a shoepeg corn called "Country Gentleman."  I like that name.  The corn is a whitish color and it is sweet.  The weird thing about it is that the kernels aren't in uniform rows like most other corn.  the kernels are randomly spread.  I'll explain better with a photo once we harvest.

I have four varieties of okra planted this year: Clemson Spineless, Beck's Big Okra, Burgundy Okra, and Jing Orange Okra.  We ran completely out of okra this year before "gumbo season" was over.  Shame!  That won't happen again.

Here is a little plot of rainbow chard.  You can see how it gets its name.  The one with bright yellow veins and stems is hidden behind the other leaves.  The greens and stalks are sweet and very healthy.

From left to right in the photo below:

Amaranth!  Now, I've never grown or eaten this before, so this is a new thing.  It is supposed to be very healthy and a high source of protein.  I'm learning something new here.

Bull's Blood beets: We're harvesting beets almost every day now and eating them with every meal.  

Black Turtle Beans:  These will be over-running the beets soon.  We dry these and then make refried black beans.  We really like them with fresh-made tortillas!

And that about wraps up the garden, except for the potato patch and the melon patch.  Maybe I'll show you that next week?

Saving Okra Seed At Season's End

We're at the very end of okra season.  It seemed like a short season this year.  Usually they produce longer.  I asked Tricia not to pick some of the biggest, prettiest pods on the stalk as I wanted to save them for seed.  You know, that's one of the hard parts of seed-saving - Saving rather than eating the crop.

So we allowed the okra pod to completely dry out on the stalk.  These are Beck's Big Okra, an old heirloom variety.  I had never saved any seeds from them.  My favorite are Clemson Spineless and we also plant Burgundy Okra for some color in the okra patch.  You can see the okra pod is very dry.  In fact, it has split open, and you can see the okra seeds exposed.  If these had been left any longer, some of the seeds would have popped out on the ground, perhaps producing "volunteer" okra next year.

I brought the dried okra pod inside (away from the mosquitoes) and put it on a plate.  I peeled back the okra, allowing the seeds to roll out on the plate so they wouldn't get lost.  A few fell on the floor and rolled off, causing me to search like crazy to find.  I was doing an experiment to see how many okra seeds I could get out of one pod.

Here are a few of the seeds shown close up.  These seeds are very hard.  When it is time to plant them in the late spring, I soak them in water for a day to soften them up to reduce the germination time.

So when I counted all the seeds from that pod, do you know how many I got?  119!  One hundred nineteen seeds.  I'll put those in an old vitamin container where they'll stay dry and in the dark until next year.  I'll plant maybe a quarter of those next year along with some Clemson Spineless and Burgundy okra.  I need to plant a lot more next year to ensure we have enough frozen, chopped okra for "Gumbo Season!"

Summertime Super Crop

Along about this time the garden is baking in the summer sun.  Cowpeas like purple hulls, black-eyes and Ozark Razorback peas are growing and the sweet potato vines are taking over, but most everything else is hot and tired - like me.  Except, of course, the okra.  Okra laughs at the heat.  "Bring it on," it says.  It continues to grow and bear new pods every day and will continue to do so until around December.

We have one row of okra planted right past the sweet potato jungle.  On that row, I have three different varieties of okra planted.  First, we have the old standby - Clemson Spineless.  You can see pods of different sizes on the stalk.  It doesn't talk long to go from a yellow flower to a tender, four-inch pod ready for picking.

Next we have the Burgundy Okra variety.  This variety is burgundy, like its name suggests.  While Clemson Spineless has ridges on the pods, Burgundy is pretty much smooth.  The color is attractive in the garden as both the pods and the stalks are burgundy, but once the pods are cooked, they lose their striking color and turns green like the others

Finally, we have another variety, Beck's Big Okra.  This is an interesting okra with numerous ridges.  It is a fat okra.

I would rank the productive yield as follows: # 1 (by far) Clemson Spineless Okra, #2 Beck's Big Okra, and #3 Burgundy Okra..  Every single day, we go out with a bucket and pick a 'mess' of okra.  You have to be careful as fire ants love to climb up the stalks and eat (I guess) on the okra.  They'll bite you.

We like to cut the okra in half and roast them in the oven with olive oil and salt and pepper.  Also, we cook down sliced okra with tomatoes and onions.  We make a curried okra dish that is very flavorful.  Finally, we oven fry sliced okra with Panko bread crumbs.  We eat a lot of okra.  At some point, we'll start freezing some to get ready for okra to add to gumbos during the winter months.  Winter months.  It is nice to look forward to cooler weather, isn't it?

Soaking Okra and Checking out the Side Yard

My wife and I often talk about how strange it is that some years certain garden crops just absolutely produce so much that we can't eat or store it all.  We share the bounty with family and friends.  And then other years, when we do everything exactly the same, we experience crop failure or the crop may produce, but not very much.  It is very odd.  We try to examine the inputs to see what happened so that we don't repeat the error.  Oftentimes, we can't find what went wrong.

Last year our okra crop was lackluster at best.  The year before, we discovered a recipe for "Oven fried Okra" and this was a game-changer.  Previously, we ate okra primarily in gumbos or cooked down with tomatoes and onions or we had an okra curry recipe that we enjoyed.  The oven fried okra with panko bread crumbs was a favorite of ours and we ate it often.  

Okra is normally a big producer.  You have to pick it every day as it grows faster than kudzu.  Last year, our okra failed - big time.  We have no okra in the freezer.  This year things will be different.  This weekend I readied the seed.  I'm planting three of our favorite varieties: Clemson Spineless Okra - this is our old standby.  Dependable.  Hardy.  Prolific producer.  Next, we have Burgundy Okra - this variety is burgundy in color.  We like things with color.  It doesn't produce as much as Clemson and when you cook it, the color fades, but it it a nice variety.  Finally, we have Beck's Big Okra - a short, fat, variety with a number of ridges on the pods.

When I say 'readied the seed,' here's what I mean:  Okra seed is tough.  It is hard as a ball bearing.  If you would just put it in the ground, it would take a while for the seed coat to soften and germination to occur.  I began soaking my okra seed in warm water 24 hours in advance of planting:

By soaking the okra seed, you are jump-starting the germination process.  It speeds up the process and allows you to see sprouts in a couple of days after putting them in the ground.  After 24 hours, the seed is soft and the hard coating is swollen and coming off.  I dropped them in the ground.  In no time at all, okra sprouts are popping up out of the ground!

We will check back in on the okra later.  For now, let's mosey over into the side yard.  Right next to the Irish Potato patch, I have some Thornless blackberries planted.  The two varieties I have came out of Arkansas and are named after Native American tribes - Navajo and Arapahoe.  We've been pleased with these plants.  They produce berries almost as big as a man's thumb!

As you can witness from the photo above and below, they are full of flowers.  It won't be long before we'll be picking the sweet berries to eat!  One thing on my 'to - do list,' is to take some cuttings and plant more blackberry bushes to expand our berry territory.

Finally, the muscadine vines have put on lots of leaves, displaying a hopeful start to another good producing season.  

My camera wasn't focusing in right, but I believe you can still make out the tiny clusters of muscadines in the photo below.

We are hopeful for a good crop this year.  Regardless, we'll have a good time in the outdoors soaking up vitamin D and enjoying nature.

Before And After

I had a big double row of zinnias growing on the last row of the garden before the sugar cane.  For months it gave us beautiful technicolor blooms.  Tricia has been picking bouquets and putting them in a vase in the kitchen.  It was my first trial in planting flowers in the vegetable garden.  Last year I planted zinnias right outside the garden in the holes of some cinder blocks that line the ditch that borders the garden.  They did nicely and at the end of the season, I saved the flower heads for seed.  I really didn't know how well they would germinate, but Good Golly, Miss Molly, I think every last seed grew.  I think I'll plant them again next year. 

Well, last week, in one of the earliest freezes I can remember, temperatures dipped into the mid 20's and zapped the zinnias.  In a stunning before and after shot, you can compare the photo above with the same flowers a day after the deep freeze hit.  From delightful to dull in a very short time.

But the flowers weren't the only thing that the freeze claimed.  It also obliterated our okra.  We have harvested loads and loads of okra this year.  We ate it very often and have some frozen for gumbos, too.  It produced for months and was still producing until the north wind freeze dried it.  Here is a photo of the last two plants left standing before I chopped them down.

We often talk about planting seeds in the garden.  Once a plant runs its course, what do you do.  I want to talk about that briefly.  In the past I would just uproot the dead or dying plants and toss them in the compost pile.  That's not a bad thing to do, but there is a better alternative.  Over the years I started to leave the root system intact. 

Okra grows into a large plant.  Some of the okra plants were approaching three inches across at the base of the plant!  Instead of pulling the plant up, I use a cheap but effective pruning saw I bought for next to nothing at Harbor Freight.  I saw the plant top off right above ground level.  Once I'm done, you can't even tell a plant was even there.

So what does that gain me?  A lot.  The roots will quickly rot and the decomposed organic matter will amend the garden soil.  It opens up passageways for rain water and air flow.  The tunnels that the roots opened will help earthworms as they move throughout the soil and finally the roots will feed soil microbes.  Overall, it is a win-win to leave the roots in the soil.

The okra plants themselves are another story.  Some of them were ten feet tall.  After I chopped them down, I piled them in the back of the garden.  I'll cover them with piles of wood chips mixed with some cow poop and allow them to decompose for a year or so.

Once things in the garden were vibrant with a multitude of colors from bright zinnias to the green okra.  Now, everything is dull and drab and dead.  Not for long, though.  The sugar snap peas are growing and are beginning to trellis.  Soon they'll be blooming and there will be more color in the garden.