Yellow Four O'Clock. 9.6.2020

This is the same yellow Four O'clock. It just continues blooming and blooming and blooming. It's in a West / Southwest exposure, poor soil, and I have not watered it once this summer. I have been saving seeds from the red Four O'Clock. The plan is to save lots of seeds from this one too. It started blooming a little later, so I image the seeds will ripen later too.

 

Rufus. 9.6.2020

 

Buckwheat For Honeybee Forage. 9.6.2020

 I think the major honeybee forage now is dandelion and queen anne's lace.  About late June or early July, I planted an area of my garden with buckwheat.  I think it was early July.  The seeds germinated quickly, and grew rapidly.  They are now blooming.

From what I read, the buckwheat is a fantastic bee forage.  However, the nectar supply is in the am, so you have to watch then for honeybees.  This morning, the flowers were covered with honeybees.

They are still very active on borage and oregano flowers.  Next year I'll have to plant a lot more borage and oregano, I think.  Also, deer don't eat those.  I remembered that in the past, deer ate the buckwheat plants.

I tried growing buckwheat in 2015.   I don't remember a lot about it, except it looked about the same, and deer ate it all.  This time it's in the fenced garden.

Since buckwheat seems to bloom so quickly from seeds, I planted a second approx 8 foot by 8 foot area with more.  I don't have a lot of room.  That was the potato area.  If I had the ambition, I could clean up another equal or larger area for the same, but there is more firewood to cut.

This photo was in afternoon and using cellphone, so apparently not much nectar.  They are all over the neighboring oregano flowers.

As I understand it, the entire buckwheat plant  is edible by for fowl, so after it stops blooming, I can feed it to the chickens and ducks.  Also, if there is time, we might get "grain", the buckwheat seeds.  That's an off-chance.  I read that buckwheat mobilizes bound phosphorus in the soil and stores it in the plant, so if it is turned over as "green manure", there is more phosphorus available for future plants.  It also crowds out weeds and shades otherwise unused soil.  So, it's all good.

Firewood. 9.2.2020

 Our property has a few stands of small to medium size trees.  I love trees, but there was a stand of evergreens within 20 feet of the house.  They were mixed species - pine, fir, juniper, spruce - and planted as a hedge, as little as a foot apart.  Over the years, they reached about 20 or 30 feet tall.  This presented a fire hazard to the house, being near a long row of Leyland cypress on the neighbor's property.  So we had them cut down two months ago.

We have a wood-stove, which is under-size.  This wood-stove is nice as a supplemental heat source on cold winter days.  The ashes go into the vegetable garden, source of calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium, among others.  We gave away the largest logs, but kept the smaller ones for the wood-stove.

I want to get those into the woodshed to dry and for storage.  All of them need cutting into half, or thirds, or trim of the ends, to fit into the wood-stove.  The larger diameter logs get cut into cookies, to lay sideways in the stove, instead of lengthwise.  I think those will dry faster, and they burn faster.  Each day, I cut enough to fill the small wagon.  It's a hard job, but is gradually nearing completion.  I think there are about three days of work to go.

These go into the woodshed at the other end of the property.  They will cure for a year or two or three, before use as wood-stove logs.  This may be the last of my major firewood cutting.  It's too much.  But it will be nice to have them there for when we want them.

Sauce Tomatoes. 9.2.2020

 This spring I started a batch of Ranger sauce tomato seeds for tomato sauce.  I think those are the best ones for my garden and climate, no blossom end rot or other diseases, and they are highly productive, and delicious.  However, the postage and handling from Territorial Seeds was something like $7, when they could have just been put into an envelope and mailed for under a dollar.  And it was only something like a dozen seeds. in the packet.  I'm going by memory, but it was something like that.  So, I"m not sure what I will do for next year. Traditional Romas and Marzettas are great but i lose about 1/2 to blossom end rot.  Maybe just pay it and gripe about the gouging.

I love these going from seed to sauce.  This is the best of slow food.  Mostly, they ripen over about two or three weeks.   This was the first batch, enough for 20 packages of frozen, finished sauce, 1 cup per package.

This is about 3/5ths of the harvest.

I wash the tomatoes, then cut them hem into quarters, filling the cooking pots.

Then I cook on the lowest possible setting, stirring every 10 min or so for the first 30 min, until the tomatoes sort of melt and release juice, then stir about every 20 min.  These simmer for about 2 hours, lowest heat setting, lid ajar to release liquid, until the volume is 1/2 of what it was when they first liquified.

Then I let the sauce cool, to just a little warm.  I ladle it into the food processor, and process so there are no significant pieces of skin.  I do that instead of skinning them because I think the skin is important for nutrition, and is removed commercially due to texture.  By processing them,  there is no detectable effect of skin on texture.  Also, mine are organic, raised in my own garden with no chemicals, so there is no residue to remove.

I portion 1 cup into each freezer zipper bag, and freeze them flat for space considerations. 

I add other ingredients when cooking, for spaghetti sauce, or pizza sauce, or chili.  For spaghetti or pizza sauce, it's usually 1/2 tsp salt. 1 tsp Italian spice, 1 tsp minced garlic, some pepper, and add oregano when it's cooked.

I usually aim for one pizza or pasta a week - usually it's the pizza.  So, I like to make 52 bags to freeze.  This time was 25 bags.  I think there could be enough on the plants still green or ripening for about 20 more if I'm lucky.  That's OK.  I grew 9 plants this time, not wanting to over-do it and wind up with waste.

Honeybee forage. 8.22.2020

 The clover is done, and there aren't a lot of other things blooming en mass this time of summer.  I have some milkweeds that are finishing, and a few zinnias that are starting, but that's not enough for a difference.  Oregano plants are still covered with bees, but I don't have a huge amount of those.  The main flowers are dandelions and Queen Anne's Lace.  Our yard is filled with those, and the honeybees are foraging them now.

Wildflowers, Seeds Planted in June. 8.22.2020

 This was an area that contained irises.  I didn't want them there, because it is on an easement than can be paved at the whim of the holder.  Instead of just planting grass, I mixed together clover, grass seed, and wildflower seed.  I really didn't expect much, it has been hot and dry.  Even so, they are starting to bloom now.

I think some of these mixes are just extra annual flowers.  I really don't think zinnias, alyssum, cosmos, and bachelors buttons are native wildflowers.  Even so, they are nice.  Pollen and nectar sources are welcome now.

Chestnut Graft Updates. 8.22.2020

 I removed the remaining wrap from the chestnut grafts  - two more grafts.  They appeared a little constricted.  I think they will be OK in the long run, glad I removed them now.

The graft that was loose, I thought did not take, actually remained alive for the past two or three months, hanging on bt a thread.  I shortened it, and splinted it to see if it heals and maybe next year grows better.

Yellow Jackets by the Beehive. 8.22.2020

 This is very worrisome for me.  I saw that some yellow jackets had taken to a fig, and wondered if there might be a problem by the beehive.  So I set out a yellow jacket trap.  Within an hour, there were three dozen yellow jackets in the trap.  So I set out three more traps.  Time will tell.

I don't know where their nest is.  I wondered in the past if yellow jackets had killed off a beehive or more than one.  I read that they can kill them off in a few hours, for food. 

I have ordered some insecticide that can be mixed with cat food and placed in an animal-proof cage.  The yellow jackets carry it to their nest.  That will take a week to arrive.  Meanwhile, the traps will have to do.

So far, no bees enter the traps.  Just yellow jackets.

Tomato "Bodaceous". 8.20.2020

 Tomatoes got off to a late start this year.  I think we are heading into a good tomato month.  This being the Pacific NW, I'm grateful for whatever tomatoes I get.  I don't know if they are supposed to be this lumpy, but lumpy is fine, these are garden fresh, home grown tomatoes.

"Bodaceous Tomato"  8.20.2020

Edit:  Unfortunately, this was not flavorful at all!  I hope the future tomatoes are better.  It was basically like a grocery store tomato.