Phase II in the Garden with Cucumbers and Summer Squash

We made a bumper crop of cucumbers this spring/summer in the garden.  It was a cool snack to have between meals or in a salad as a side dish and ate more cucumbers this year than you could shake a stick at.  We gave a bunch of them away and pickled the rest using the lacto-fermentation method.  Although we still have about a gallon of those left, the inventory is quickly depleting.  With that in mind, I planted a long row of them on the trellis that the sugar snap peas were growing on and they are coming on strong.

The cucumbers have blooms galore and if they set fruit, we'll have a spectacular fall cucumber harvest.  I planted several varieties: Boston Pickling (my personal favorite), Marketmore, and Suyo Long.  The Boston Pickling seeds were from some seed I had saved from 2015.  Knowing that seeds 10 years old would have a poor germination percentage, I planted them real thick.

Lots of blooms on the plants and if you look closely, you can see that we've got some baby cucumbers!

But cucumbers aren't the only plants with blooms.  Right to the north of the cucumber trellis, we've a row of yellow crookneck squash, zucchini squash and straightneck squash.  We have a real battle on our hands with the squash borer.  One day you'll have a healthy plant and the very next, it will have wilted and died due to this terrible pest.  Even if we have a good bit of squash in the freezer, I want to put up plenty more.  The blooms give me great hope that we can have phase two of the squash harvest.

We aren't the only ones happy with the blooms on the squash.  A big, fat bumblebee was knee-deep in squash flower pollen as I snapped this photo.

If the Good Lord's willing, we'll see a maturation of fruit on both the cucumbers and squash and will enjoy a nice harvest!

Spring Squash

We plant Black Beauty Zucchini and two types of yellow squash - straight neck and crookneck.  I like to plant them early to try to get out ahead of the squash borer.  That devilish critter burrows into the stem.  One day you have beautiful, productive squash plants and the next day you walk out to find your plants decimated.  Heat also plays a number on the squash plants and temperatures are already 80 degrees by 8am and in the 90's in the afternoon.  That heat causes my squash to wave the white flag and melt into the ground.  

Our squash harvest was exceptional this year.  Here's what they looked like exactly a month ago:

Beneath the canopy of squash leaves were numerous blooms and squash of all sizes.

Each and every day, we'd pick baskets of squash.  We ate it.  We brought baskets to church to give away.  We knocked on the neighbor's door and gave them a bag of squash.  We gave some to family members.  All that and we still have a refrigerator full.  Tricia talked today of making a squash casserole that we love and freezing it.

As with most things, we have favorite recipes we cook to use up the abundance.  Just yesterday, Tricia made a zucchini lasagna.  Sometimes she's made this and used zucchini sliced thin in place of lasagna noodles.  This time she put the sliced zucchini in addition to the noodles.  She hit it out of the park with that!  We've come to love zucchini cake.  It's a Bundt cake that is so sweet and moist.  You'd never know it had zucchini in it if we didn't tell you.

Well, all good things come to an end.  I noticed today with sadness that our squash plants have all died due to a combination of the squash borer and the heat.  It was good while it lasted...

Random Ramblings on a Monday

Observation #1 

Last week was a teaser.  In the mornings, temperatures actually dipped into the 60's and it NEVER made it to 90.  In fact, by mid-morning, it hadn't reached 80 yet.  Humidity was low.  It was pleasant and a foretaste of fall.  This week, we have a high pressure sitting over us.  It is dry and temps are forecast to be in the upper 90's.  Ugghhh...

Last week we drove east on our road and took a left on LA Highway 102.  I looked out of my window and saw a large field of soybeans.  I remarked to my wife that they were ripe and needed to be harvested before rains set it.  Farmers are wrapping up the first crop harvest of rice and trying to get the beans in.

Well wouldn't you know it, we rounded the curve and a combine, two tractors with carts and two big trucks with trailers passed us.  In about 30 minutes on our way back, the combines were busy at work, bringing in the crop!

In comparison to other occupations, farming requires heavy labor inputs as well as unthinkable capital investment.  A brand new machine like the one you see below runs between $500,000 to $700,000 - maybe more.  That just makes my head hurt.  I know the guy on the combine.  I like how he has two big American flags flying on either side of his cutter bar.  He also has his last name on the grain hopper with a crawfish with pinchers raised making the 'I' in his name!

Fuel prices are up and fertilizer prices are at all-time highs.  I know there are a lot of very nervous farmers concerned about how things are going to work out.  

Observation #2   

When I was throwing my dirty laundry in the hamper the other day, I started laughing when I thought about what I was looking at:

Most folks probably separate out their 'whites' from their 'reds or blacks' when putting dirty clothes away for washing.  You don't want your colored clothes bleeding on your white clothes.  We separate between "regular" and "farm" clothes.  There's a reason for that.  The farm clothes are so doggone filthy with dirt, mud, cow poop, blood and other stuff, you don't want that touching your regular clothes.  Lots of times, especially after picking up hay or working in the garden, the clothes will be soaking wet with sweat and needs to be laid out to dry outside before putting into the farm hamper.  

Observation #3  

Take a look out on the back patio.  I've got some tomato seedlings and some squash that I planted from seed a few weeks ago for the fall crop.  I transplanted the squash this weekend into the garden bed.  The tomatoes will go in the garden this weekend.  I want to get through the high heat of this week before I subject them to the stress of transplanting.

The tomato plants seem to be really healthy.  I've been watering them with some fish emulsion mixed into the water.  They seem to like that.  I've got 29 plants, but I'll give some of them to my oldest son for his garden.

Hopefully we'll get a good fall tomato crop.  The fall crop is usually better for us with less bugs.  The trick is to get tomatoes harvested before you get an early frost!  We'll see how it goes.

As the Worm Turns

For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be for ever, and my salvation from generation to generation.    Isaiah 51:8

Last week we picked the very last cucumber off the vine.  They had been producing since spring.  We have eaten a lot of cucumbers this year!  Production was off the charts, especially with the Marketmore variety.  But all good things come to an end.  I told Tricia that we'd have a brief time of no cucumbers, but...

Not to worry.  I had planted some Boston Pickling Cucumbers from some seed we saved in 2016.  They ALL germinated and were beginning to vine.  It was time.  I took them out to the garden, put a little composted chicken litter down in the holes I dug, and planted the cucumber plants.  I trained the vines to wrap around the trellis.  The cucumber plants were happy.  I walked inside thinking, "We'll have cucumbers for most of the year!"

There's an old saying about not counting your chickens before they hatch.  The very next day, I walked out to check on the cucumbers and this is what greeted me:

Some little green worms were wiping the edges of their mouths with handkerchiefs and then burping loudly after devouring every green leaf off of every cucumber plant!

I had transplanted spaghetti squash in the garden.  So far the worms have not discovered them.  These right here are butternut squash.  I think I'm going to keep them right here on the patio for a little while - or at least until I can pick up some Neem Oil.

The tomato plants I planted for the fall crop are looking healthy.  If the Good Lord's willing, we may have a fall crop of tomatoes, but then again, we may not.  Here is the first tray:

And here is the second.  If you look down to the very bottom of the photo, you'll see a six-pack with just dirt and no plants... yet:

Those are Round 2 of the fall cucumber crop.  If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again.

Putting Some Stuff in the Ground in August

We march forward toward September and the gradual reduction in temperature and humidity that will be welcomed with rejoicing by yours truly.  The okra continues to produce in abundant fashion.  As I write this, Tricia is 'cooking some okra and onions down' that she'll freeze and we'll use in gumbos throughout the winter months.  Cucumbers, believe it or not, have had a rebound and are producing once again.  

Speaking of cucumbers, I've got to tip my hat to an elderly gentleman who dropped by the house this spring and gave me some cucumber seeds.  They were of the Marketmore Heirloom variety, and I've got to report that they were the stars of the show, producing steadily throughout the hottest of months when my Boston Pickling and Suyo Long varieties faltered.

Anyhow, I planted a few seeds in some seed pots to get the fall garden underway.  Here are some zucchini and yellow crookneck squash:

And here are some spaghetti squash.

In a little experiment, I planted 12 Boston Pickling Cucumber seeds from some seeds I had saved back in 2016.  What do you know?  All 12 sprouted.  We achieved a 100% germination rate on some seeds we saved 6 years ago.  Not too shabby.

Having that all planted, I got out my Vegetable Planting Guide to see what else I could get my hands dirty with.  Well, it told me that it is time to plant Irish Potatoes.  Right now.

Our feed store does not sell seed potatoes for fall crops.  What we must do is save seed potatoes from our spring crop.  I dug through the bin of potatoes and picked out a dozen small red potatoes (Lasoda variety).  All of the potatoes from the spring are holding up good, stored in the dark in a well-ventilated hallway.

You can see that most of them have (at least one) nice eye growing on them.  That gives me optimism that we'll have spuds this fall.  It is always a risk, right?  The choice is, I could eat these 12 potatoes and really enjoy them.  Or, I could put them in the dirt and see if I could multiply a dozen potatoes four or fivefold?

I'm taking a chance.  I won't put them in the cooking pot.  I'll put them in the planting pot.  I'm trying an experiment this year.  Instead of putting them in the ground, we will try our hand at growing them in pots.  The area where I normally plant them is already populated with purple hull peas and blackeyed peas that are about to put on pods.  No room for potatoes out there.

I filled 12 nice sized landscape pots with the rich compost made from the rotted wood chips in our mulch pile.  It's black and moist and teeming with earthworms - a good medium to grow potatoes in.  Once the potatoes are up, I'll dose 'em up with some composted chicken litter.  Another plus is that, if we get an early freeze like the one that killed my potatoes a couple years ago, I can pick up the pots and bring them in the garage and save the spuds. 

Here are the potatoes planted before I put 3 1/2 to 4 inches fresh compost on top.  I'll be watching over the next several days to see when they sprout.

We have rain for the next 5 or 6 days forecast, but once that is past, I'll look to what else I can put in the ground.  I'm thinking it's time for a couple rows of snap beans.  Happy Gardening Fall Gardeners!

The Hills Are Alive...

Once I got all the tomatoes, peppers, corn and beans planted, I started phase II.  That consisted of straightneck and crookneck yellow squash and zucchini.  Those seedlings were started in hills in the garden as soon as they put their first true leaves on.  Then I planted some other items that we transplanted.  I'll show you those today.  In the seed trays on the back patio, I started two varieties of cucumbers - Suyo Long Cucumbers and Boston pickling cucumbers.

What we'll focus on today are some of the vegetables in the photo below that we'll be transplanting:

• Butternut Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Green-striped Cushaw Squash
• Tahitian Melon Squash
• Georgia Candied Roaster Squash
• Moon and Stars Watermelon  

These plants were all started from seeds and the germination was fantastic - even the Moon & Stars Watermelon seeds which were saved from back in 2012 all popped up.

Spaghetti Squash

To give these seedlings a good head start, I dug holes and lined them with some biochar we made.  The photo below shows a big tub that we made last year.  It consists of homemade charcoal mixed with cow manure, hay and shredded paper.  This was put into a tumbler and tumbled over a year.  The bacteria in the cow manure inoculated all the microscopic holes in the charcoal.  Now all this will go into the soil and will give the soil fertility to assist in growing healthy vegetables.   

Here is a hill of spaghetti squash.  It was time that they get put in the ground.  The leaves were just starting to turn a bit yellow.  It will green up in no time now that the roots are in the soil.

In the very back of the garden I have a huge pile of wood chips that we use in our Back to Eden Gardening method.  We had 24 truck loads in all delivered to the house - for free!  I kept hauling it to the garden by wagon-load and stacking it high.  We compost directly into the wood chips.  There is one downside.  The hill has taken away some space that was formerly planted.

But then again, as I thought about it, I can still grow veggies on the hill.  I planted all of the squash and melons around the perimeter of the hill.  As all of the squash and melons listed in the bullet points in the second paragraph above begin to grow, they'll vine over the hill.  The brown hill of wood chips will be transformed into a productive green hill of squash and melons. That's a good use of square footage in the garden that might otherwise been fallow.

A Couple of Late Season Plantings

Still hot down here in August.  Since it was so wet in the spring, we experienced lots of crop failure.  I've tried some things in the garden that I've never tried before, putting in crops in the heat of the summer rather than waiting until later to try to make up for some lost time.  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work

In the first photo below, I started some seeds on the back patio in early July so that I could get them in the ground as soon as I could.  These are pumpkins - New England Sugar Pies and Sweet Dumpling Squash.  I generally try to have these planted on July 4th.  I love pumpkin pie in the fall and hopefully the seedlings you see will produce nice pumpkins that Tricia can transform into delicious pies and cheesecakes.

Our yellow crookneck squash and zucchini squash were attacked by squash borers with an absolute vengeance this year.  Perhaps the fall planting will provide better results.  I've said this a million times, but as many times as I plant, I'm always amazed with the miracle of a seed.  A dead-looking seed is placed in soil, watered, and in a few days things start happening!

The seed pops through the soil with such determination, pushing the soil out of the way and reaching toward daylight.

Finally, the cotyledon opens!

We'll get these in the ground later this week.  In other garden news, we planted a bunch of cucumbers and transplanted them to the trellis bed, the last of the corn is tasseling, the sunflowers are about to bloom, the sweet potato vines are expanding all over the garden, the green beans are blooming, the okra are about to begin producing in massive quantities, the zinnias are blooming, the late planted cantaloupe and watermelon are vining and blooming, the luffa and birdhouse gourds are vining like crazy, the purple hull peas are yielding great and the blackeyed peas are about to begin producing.

We sat outside this evening with an uncharacteristic breeze blowing, talking about how many days until cooler weather comes in.  Wow!  Cooler weather has me thinking about planting broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, chard, kale, and all those great cold weather plants!

Putting Seedlings in the Garden

I’ve been nurturing 9 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes that I planted from seed, hardening them off on the back patio and giving them some fish emulsion to feed them and make them happy and green.

Heirloom Tomato Seedlings

Same thing with two different varieties of cucumbers and 4 different varieties of yellow squash and zucchini.  Thanks to nice weather and mild temperatures, they’ve grown from this:

Cukes, Yellow Squash & Zuccs

 To this in 5 days:

My, how you've grown!

Saturday morning once chores were done, I was champing at the bit to get all those seedlings out of the seed pots and into some soil.  That requires a little work, so I began turning over the soil in the rows with my ‘Cheap-o’ Garden shovel from Harbor Freight.  Yeah, it isn’t a quality tool that will last forever, but at $5 it was priced right and you know what?  It gets the job done. 

Shovel-Ready Job

In a post from a couple of days ago, we talked about earthworms.  I discovered a bunch of earthworms while working up the rows.  Five years ago, there weren’t many earthworms at all in the garden.  Now, due to soil amendments and composting, I hit worms with every shovel.  In the post from the other day, I mentioned the clitellem.  That is the part of the worm that is nearest the head.  If you chop an earthworm in half, the half with the clitellum will likely survive and grow a new tail.  In the photo below, you can see the clitellum (raised band) on the left hand side, and that tells you that the earthworm’s head is on the left and tail is on the right.

Heads or Tails?

While we’re discussing that, I also wanted to show you firsthand the benefits of composting and amending your soil with organic matter.  I turned over soil that exposed a four inch layer of mostly rotten hay/leaves.  This organic matter does several things.  First, the organic matter retains moisture in the soil and that comes in handy during the hot, dry months that lie ahead.  Next, it gives the soil some structure and loosens things up so it doesn’t pack tightly after a rain.  Finally, I find that it is a magnet for earthworms.  It is a little hard to see, but if you look at the chopped piece of grass below, the end of it is pointing at a fat earthworm.  He’s working hard to produce castings to get my seedlings off to a healthy start.

Organic matter in the soil

In no time at all I had 24 feet worked up and began to work on the next 14 foot section.  The remaining piece of the row is currently occupied with Chioggia Beets and I’ll be harvesting that in a day or two.

Working up hills for squash

I like to sprinkle some chicken manure to the soil before pulling up the rows on top of it.  That’ll allow the roots to dig down and hit the fertilizer and then take off.

The chicken's contribution to the garden

Benjamin and Tricia helped me and we got them all planted.  Now we’ll just watch them grow and patiently wait until we have red ripe tomatoes, cucumbers and squash to harvest and enjoy.  Is gardening and tending to meat birds, milk cows, and dairy goats hard work?  You bet!  But the benefits are worthwhile, in my opinion.  I like what Joel Salatin says about it:

Summer Squash Time!

On the higher side of the garden, things are thriving.  On the low side, not so much. According to the weekly forecast, there is basically no chance of rain this week, and that will allow for some drying out to occur.  We definitely need that.  I need to plant some purple hull peas and get my okra and basil transplants in the ground.

Let's take a look at the north part of the garden.  On the left (below) there is a trellis with some pole beans growing skyward along with some Malabar spinach.  On the right is an absolute jungle of cucumbers.  I have four different varieties planted and I picked the first one last night - a Japanese long cucumber.  Between those two is what we'll talk about today.  I have fourteen hills of four different varieties of summer squash.  The plants are healthy looking and the hay has done a great job of crowding out any weed growth.

Welcome to the Jungle

If you take a peek beneath the foliage, the yellow blooms guarantee a fantastic harvest.  The bees and other pollinators have discovered the blooms and are doing their job.

Squash Blossoms

You can see squash at various stages of development.  With nice weather, it doesn't take long at all for the squash to mature and be ready to pick.

Baby Crookneck Squash

The first day I went out without a bucket and picked five nice squash.  With no bucket, I simply put them in my shirt and pulled the bottom up to make a makeshift container.  Every day since, I've brought a bucket as my shirt wouldn't hold the bounty.

Straight neck Squash

The first and easiest thing we've done with them is simply stir fry them with some rendered beef tallow that we told you about Here.  Squash with some onions is a perfect, healthy side dish for any meal, adding great flavor and color.

Skillet fried squash in beef tallow

The very next night, Tricia took a couple of our pastured eggs from our benevolent hens and made an egg bath.  She cut the squash into disks, put them in the eggs, and rolled them in flour.

Then using the beef tallow that we rendered that you can see in the bowl on the top right of the photo below, she fried them in the skillet.  We enjoyed the bountiful harvest immensely.  Local Food at its best. 

Fried yellow squash

While those recipes are delicious, we haven't eaten my all-time favorite squash recipe - YET: 

Black-eyed Pea's Baked Squash Casserole  Click on that link and give it a try.  It is really a side dish, but I could make a meal of it.  Zucchini, both the black beauty and the grey varieties, will be coming in shortly.  Can't wait.