Kitchen Garden Harvest. 8.7.2021

 Pretty good crop I think.  It's keeping us out of the grocery store for this round of coronavirus.  The sweet corn is "Trinity". The beans are Ning's special NE Chinese beans.

Digging Potatoes. 8.7.2021

 I dug some more of the potatoes.  They seem to keep better in the ground, so I only dig what I need for a couple of weeks.  I should eat less of them.  I'm starting to look like a potato.  But they ate very good and cook nicely.

Resizing a Vintage Shirt. 8.7.2021

I found a vintage shirt that I liked. Back in the age of the dinosaurs, I owned a shirt with exactly the same fabric, only in green. This looks like batik but is printed cotton.  This one was way too big, but the chances of finding one in my size are remote. So I used a shirt that fit well, as a pattern, took this one partly apart, cut it using the other shirt as my guide, and sewed it back together. I thought about just cutting the body of the shirt narrower, but the sleeves wouldnt look right. So I took off the sleeves, and cut them the same as my better fitting shirt. Then I cut the body of of the shirt narrower too.

Before cutting, I sewed the new seams and tried it on to check the fit.

The hardest part was sewing on the sleeves. I had made the shoulders 1 1/2 inches narrower on both sides, and the body of the shirt about 2 inches narrower. The arm holes are curved. I made multiple tries before getting it right. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the shirt and now I can wear a walk down memory lane.

I'm also pretty happy with the seams. The original shirt had flat felled seams, which dont have any rough edges insidecor out. I could have zig zagged the new seams, but they wouldn't look as smooth or as nice. Flat felled edges are not too hard, and my result was OK for a novice.

Kitchen Garden Harvest. 8.4.2021

This is a good time of year for the kitchen garden. The tomatoes on the right are from the dwarf variety, "Clare Valley Pink". Not a vigorous plant, and not many tomatoes, but they are good flavor. The oblong tomatoes are "Purple Russian". Very good production and very good flavor. The zucchinis are from the Burpee hybrid, I forget the name. The cukes are various types, mostly sneaky ones that evade detection until they are quite large. The apple is "Gravenstein", the only ripe one on the tree.

Zucchini makes a nice meal, cut into fries, sprinkled with garlic salt, pepper, some hot pepper and season salt, and olive oil then air fried for 8 min at 375. I mixed in some green beans too, but the zucchini is better.

Purple Russian tomato.

Clare Valley Pink tomato. I think this plant is off the irrigation line, which might explain why it didnt grow much.

Dahlias. 8.4.2021

Not much to say about these. They brighten the room!

Rufus is the Best Dog on Earth! 8.2.2021

Flowers. 8.1.21

Four O'clocks and poppies, all volunteer. Daylilies that I grew from my own hybridizing a few years back. And squashes, quite fragrant and honeybees love them.

Dahlias and Nasturtiums. Also more volunteer poppies. The nasturtiums are volunteer too. The dahlias are saved from last year.

Three Types of Slicing Tomato. Goliath, Russian Purple, and BrandyFred Dwarf. 8.1.2021

 Today I harvested the first of the big slicing tomatoes.

Dwarf BrandyFred.  I can't tell this from Brandywine.  Really super delicious.

Russian (or Ukranian) Purple. I don't know why they call these purple. More mauve-ish to my eyes.

Im not sure where to count a start date for these. Goliath had a setback due to baking in the wall-o-water. I'm estimating about May 1 although that is not perfect. If we use that date, each of these is 90 days. Early Goliath Hybrid.

Sweetcorn Progress Note. 8.1.2021

These are the variety "Ambrosia". I planted the seeds 5.23.21. They are starting to silk and tassle. The first ones that I planted, Sunglow and Trinity, are not quite ripe. I harvested two ears of Sunglow today, The kernels were small, but they were sweet and the flavor was very nice. Give them another week or two to fatten up.

Blackberries. 8.1.2021

These are the variety "Triple Crown". This is the only variety so far that works for me, produces reliably and well, is thornless, and the berries are delicious. Today I picked about 10 cups, enough for a big batch of blackberry jam.

Fig Harvest and Fig Jam. 7.30.2021

Both Lattarula and Desert King are bearing now. The fruits are quite similar. The fig with the dripping nectar is "Lattarula" or the Italian Honey Fig.

Since it's a lot of figs all at once, I made some jam. I followed the Sure-Jell forvlow sugar recipe. I think it gels a little too firm, but it's very tasty. I could see lowering the sugar level some more, but the recipe on the package insert says not to. I do love this jam. It's also quite pretty.

Still Jammin'. Shiro Plum Jam. 7.30.2021

I made four batches of Shiro plum jam. The plums can become too soft and juicy as they ripen, but also very sweet and flavorful. The tree is so prolific, and almost never has an off year. They make a great, delicious jam. I made two batches using pectin for low sugar recipes, and two batches using Pomona pectin, with no sugar added. That last was for Ning, who likes the very, very tart result. It's like those lemon candies. The low sugar version is still plenty sweet, and I like that very much.

The jar on the left, which is more golden, was made with the low sugar pectin (Sure-Jell). The one on the right is more yellow, using the Pomona and no added sugar. I guess the difference is either the sugar, or the Sure-Gell is apple pectin while the Pomona is citrus pectin. The Pomona was also a bit more creamy in texture, while the Sure-Jell is more jelly-like. I noticed that inthe past when I was making freezer jams. The pectins I am using. It depends on the Recipe. I'd like to use less of the one-package per batch types, because they cost too much. However,the recipes are often specific forvthe product and claim they can't be interchanged. I don't know.

Rufus is Still the Best Dog on the Planet Earth. 7.30.2021

More Alpatieva 905A Tomatoes. 7.30.2021

There are still lots of small to medium size fruits ripening on the Alpatieva 905A dwarf + determinate tomato plants. It's too bad the leaves are becoming yellow / brown and crinkly, which I'm guessing is fusarium wilt. I moved them far away from the other tomato plants to socially distance them from each other.

I don't think I will save seeds from these. However, they are quite early and nice enough. One option would be to rais them with a paper mulch so there is no splashing from the soil. The plants that I have mulched with brown paper, from the beginning, all seem OK so far.

Today's Harvest. 7.30.2021

The tomatoes are Alpateiva 905A, cherry types Sugar Rush and a home saved volunteer yellow cherry, and salad type Unicorn. Thw cukes and zukes are various types.

Canning Sweet Pickle Relish. 7.30.2021

These were cucumbers that I grew this year from seeds I saved last year. Im not sure of the variety - could be Bush Pickle, Patio, or Alibi Hybrid of a hybrid of those. Regardless, they did well and I will save seeds for next year. I grew them to make pickles, and did. Now with some mixed sizes and no need for more pickles, I made some Sweet Pickle Relish, and canned it. The recipe was from Better Homes And Gardens Home Canning Guide. The recipe made about 25% more than it said. Im not sure why.

Dwarf Tomato Alpatieva 905A. 7.26.2021

Well, this one is bad news and good news. The bad news is, the plants are quickly succumbing to the wilt fungi, unlike my other tomatoes currently. A few weeks ago, I gave these a paper mulch, probably too late. The good news is they are the first slicers to bear in my garden this year. I think I'll move the container to a location more distant from the other tomatoes, and see if remaining fruits ripen there. Alpatieva 905A is early, but the extreme fungal susceptibility puts it on my no-grow list for the future. I wont bother to save the seeds.

Alpatieva 905A is listed as ripe in 65 days from planting outside. I started the seeds March 31, planted outside May 1. That's more like about 80 days but it is still my first slicing tomato. Flavor was OK, home grown tomato flavor but not super outstanding.

The Best Dog on the Planet Earth. 7.25.2021

Rufus, hanging out and keeping me company.

Bush Bean, Green Bean Update. 7.25.2021

These are the green beans I planted 7.8.21, so 17 days ago, to fill in the raised bed after harvesting garlic. I gave them coffee grounds and crushed eggshells for fertilizer. Something, possibly slugs, ate the growing points from several plants. I always plant a lot extra in case things go wrong, so I think it will be OK. These are two rows Tenderette, two rows Blue Lake Bush 274, and two rows Roma. They are all historic, nonhybrid varieties so I can save seeds if they grow well. They seem to like the hot weather and irrigation method, and maybe the coffee grounds and eggshells. As for the irrigation, this 1/4 inch soaker hose is worthless. It started to clog up a month after I installed it. To make use of it, I used a safety pin and stuck holes in it every six inches or so. So now it's kind of a misting hose, which does work. I installed a big sediment trap in my water line to reduce future problems. Maybe if the garden line did not bypass the filter, the soaker hose would have been OK.

Harvesting the Rest of the Envoy Potatoes. 7.25.2021

These are the earliest yielding potato. They have great cooking properties, and very tasty. I'm about out of store bought potatoes, so dug up the rest of the row of Envoy. They turned out to ve just as early as potatoes I planted two months earlier, but I think Envoy were smaller size and smaller yield, maybe.