Dragon Fly on Pineapple Guava

April Garden Video

Clck here

Thursday Night's Storm Damage

The wind took down a big oak tree. Fortunately there was no injury to us, the main part of the house or the garden.  In fact the tree falling opened up a new sunny area for vegetables and flowers to grow.

Pictures of the tree damage - click here

Springtime in My Lake Helen Garden

 Snapdragons, Dianthus, Gallardia

 Cabbage from the winter

 Lettuce in the strawberry pot

 Spinach, Red Majesty and Butter Crunch Lettuce

Late February

 Mississippi Silver Crowder Peas in foreground

Late March

Late February

 Blue Lake Pole Beans

Late March

 Nothing more hea

venly than orange blossoms

 orange blossom time

 the fragrance of The LORD

 Fairytale Eggplants in pots this year

Late February





Late March

 L to R: Moctezuma cucumbers, Cherrie Sweetie tomatoes still in pots, Better Boys up and going

 Imperator Carrots

Late February

Late March

carrots with Yellow Crookneck Squash in the back 

Bumper Crop of Turnips!!!!

White Hakure Turnips did great for us this year.  Taste is superb.  Dug the final ones yesterday. All these you see and more were grown in a 4' x 4' area of a raised bed.  Planted in September.  Been munching on them all winter.

Camellia in February

In some ways it looks like not much is happening in the garden in February.  Most things are happening behind the scenes.  Seedlings are growing, soil is being prepared, and brown stuff dead is being cleaned up little by little.  But we have one bright spot early in the month.  Our Camellia by the back door endures all of the January cold and shows off all by itself.

Charcoal making

A year ago I became interested in making charcoal at home; partly because I read an article about the Amazon and how the Indians had enriched the soil with charcoal, and partly because I prefer cooking on a charcoal grill and am tired of paying $7 a bag for real lump charcoal (not briquettes) at the store.  Charcoal is made by baking wood in an oxygen deprived environment.  One crude way of doing it is to take a 55 gal. drum and place a trashcan full of wood in it with the lid on the can.  Poke holes in the bottom of the can so that gases from the wood can escape and light a fire in the 55 gal. drum.  For the first 3 hours just keep the heat going.  Not much happens. somewhere around the 3 to 4 hour mark all hell breaks loose.  The gases from the wood are forced out the holes in the bottom of the can and they ignite.  Wow do they ignite!  After all of it burns away and you let it all cool off you have charcoal in the can.  It was a big success.  The charcoal cooks down to about 40% or 50% of the original volume.  2 videos are below, one in this post and one in the previous post.  Also some still pictures can be seen at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lowell.a.moore/CharcoalMaking?authkey=Gv1sRgCLX10JTYz4H6Bg&feat=directlink

If you want to know more about enriching your garden with charcoal then use the search term: Terra Preta. You won't be sorry.

I also want to thank Michael at http://centralfloridagarden.blogspot.com/

for getting me inspired to take action.

Lowell

Charcoal making videos

Seed Ordering Time for spring

Yesterday I ordered:
Better Boy and Cherry Sweetie tomatoes
Yellow summer squash
Mississippi Silver Crowder peas
Imperator Carrots
Renegade Spinach
Butter Crunch and Majestic Lettuce
Blue Lake Pole beans
Fairytale Hybrid Eggplant

Datura Magic

When I bought this Datura, otherwise known as Devil's Trumpet, it was a small seedling about 6 inches high.  It has now, a year later, taken over a large pot and stands about 4 feet high.  It keeps blooming like mad as long as I cut the seed pods off.  I have been able to share cuttings with several friends.

100 onion sets are out

Granex Yellow onion sets - about a hundred

The Beginning of Fall

Eggplant are still blooming and producing

Butternut squash are up and growing

The Autumn Sage is in its glory

Sweet potato bed is coming along

Cucumber experiment for this fall is looking good

The Constant Critter Battle

Yesterday morning I went out to survey the garden.  Some fairly large animal had dug up the lettuce seeds I had planted in one portion of my raised bed.  Leaving the other portions alone.  I was annoyed, smoothed out the holes, planted more seed, and headed out to the big box store for a repellent.  I bought the stuff the man (who probably never grew anything in his life) said was the best.  It is made of really yucky ingredients - dried blood, urine, garlic juice....that kind of stuff.  This morning I checked again and the mess was even worse.  I think the repellent just made the creature mad.  It certainly did not do any good.  Huge holes are now present where my tiny lettuce seeds were planted.  Don't know what I am going to do next.

Fall planting

More sweet potatoes are in, with a different soil combination (the experiment continues), also spinach. butter crunch lettuce,cucumbers (Eureka and Moctezuma varieties), winter squash and sweetness hybrid II carrots.  I am way too late on tomatoes for the fall, but since I have a greenhouse I may try some anyway.  Some critter got into my lettuce seeds last night and made a royal mess.  Most likely it was looking for grubs and worms.  Not sure what it was, but from the size of the holes it was not small.  Could have been a coon.  Critters are just a part of gardening.  I'm thankful for every veggie I get.

Dog Days

These hot humid August days make for a good time to kick back and do nothing.  The garden plants know it.  They are in the doldrums.  They aren't sick, they just aren't doing much, and personally I don't blame them.

Figs...... at last

I planted a fig tree three years ago.  A Brown Turkey Variety from a local nursery.  It never did well.  The weather did not cooperate and then I kept digging it up and transplanting it every year because it was never in the "right spot".  That did not do it any good. When it survived our rather harsh winter last year I knew it was a survivor plant.  This year I left it alone and it is producing figs like mad.  It is still small, only about four feet high, but has about 20 figs on it as of today.  Some are beginning to ripen.

Eggplants - Fairytale

Fairytale is my current favorite hybrid eggplant.  The plants are medium size, about 3 feet tall and really prolific. The fruit is exceptionally small by eggplant standards.  They are best when picked at about 4-6 inches long.  But boy are they tasty and tender.  They have the best flavor of any I've had.  The skin is tender enough to leave on in some recipes, but most of the time it is best to remove it.  There is none of the bitterness of other eggplants.  An added benefit is that they are beautiful.  I have them in my from garden where they are as much ornamental as anything else.  I'm on my second large crop from the same four plants I planted in the spring.  They are slow to get going, but once they do - Watch out!  We  freeze them, dry them, make appetizers out of them, stuff them and of course enjoy them fresh.  My mom had a great eggplant casserole that Diane has been able to replicate.  Mom would never write it down, but Diane has gotten pretty close. 

Lowell's Bread and Butter Pickles

Cucumbers have not been great growers for me.  One year Powdery Mildew killed them...that was before I even knew there was such a thing as Powdery Mildew. Then moles got them.  This year I have just experimented with a different variety in a different location.  I have gotten a few.  In the midst I ran across an easy recipe for bread and butter pickles that produced (with a few tweaks) the best pickles I have ever had, and I did it in 1 afternoon.  Here's the recipe:
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Lowell's Bread and Butter Pickles

Ingredients

·         1 large cucumber, sliced

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         1 onion, thinly sliced

·         1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds

·         1 cup white sugar

·         1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

·         1/4 teaspoon celery seed

·         1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

·         ¼ tsp allspice

·         6 whole cloves

Directions

1.      In a medium microwave safe bowl, mix cucumber, salt, onion, mustard seeds, white sugar, distilled white vinegar, celery seed and turmeric.

2.      Microwave on high 7 to 8 minutes, stirring twice, until cucumbers are tender and onion is translucent.

3.      Transfer to sterile containers. Seal and chill in the refrigerator until serving.

Nutritional Information 

Amount Per Serving  Calories: 36 | Total Fat: 0g | Cholesterol: 0mg

Sweet Potato Experiment Continues

Last fall we had the greatest tasting sweet potatoes ever.  The variety was Beauregard, planted in July and dug up on Thanks Giving Day.  This spring I planted more sweet potatoes.  The variety is unknown. planted a different time of year, in different soil.  They did not taste as good as last year's.  Then I read about "Curing" sweet potatoes and wrote about it in a previous post.  We cured the SPs in the shed for a few weeks.   The taste definitely improved.  Unfortunately the taste was no where near last year's.  I planted more Beauregard's in late spring.  We will see if it is the variety.  I planted the unknown variety in July using the original soil mix from last fall.  We what tastes better.  This will teach me to experiment with unknown varieties of vegetables.  It was a free extra SP from some store.  I love experiments.

Raised Beds

After a year of fighting battles of mythological proportions that made gardening something other than the fun relaxing enterprise I envisioned, I decided to try raised beds.  Once you have gone raised you will never go back.  It solves a multitude of problems and gives a level of control you cannot get otherwise. Nematodes (those vicious underground plant decimators) are not a problem in raised beds.  Weeds are easily manageable, and the gardener can grow more per square foot than traditional gardening.  For small or back yard gardeners like myself I can think of no better way to go.  Here are a few of my details and why I did what I did:

Size - I went 4' by 8' - 4' wide is as wide as I can take and still not have to get into the bed to plant or harvest.  I can reach to the center from either side.  8' long just suited my space needs.  It has proved to be big enough to get nice harvests of peas, green beens, 30 pounds of sweet potatoes, enough eggplant for us and the neighborhood, and so much lettuce and carrots I started saying, "What's up Doc?".  I like the size.
I used 8' 2x12' pieces.  I really believe 2x10s would be fine, but the extra height has allowed me more flexibility when adding poles and frost cloth and other mechanical things that seem to sometimes be needed. 10 to 11 inches of dirt is great.  1x anything might be okay.  I just wanted the extra strength.  Sometimes I stand on the edges to tie things.  I think that if the gardener used 1x boards the 8' sides would need extra support.  The 2x boards do not.

Material - Controversial - Some people despise pressure treated wood.  I do not.  The arsenic is gone.  The Chemicals used now are safer.  I do not know what "safe" means anyway.  I do not see much that is safe about this world anyway.  People have been afraid of PT wood leaching it's chemicals into the soil.  Well yes, from what I could find, they do leach....copper leached about 2 inches out from the board in 10 years.  That was the worst I could find.  The deal on copper of course is that if it ever gets to leaching (that depends on a bunch of factors) it will kill the plant before anything else.  You won't have anything to eat from that plant, thus copper poisoning does not seem to be a problem.  With all of that said, I feel relatively comfortable with PT wood, but I also lined the inside of the bed with a construction grade black plastic.  It made some of my friends feel better....and me too.  It was easy to do.  I cut it and stapled it around the sides.  Once the dirt is in the bed the dirt holds the plastic and the staples can rust away.