Thinking Ahead

Happy July 6th!

I hope everyone is enjoying sweating their behinds off as this heatwave rolls on.  Right now, I look outside and I start sweating!  Hopefully, this heatwave will break this weekend.  

I started thinking ahead this week about canning the future bounty from the garden and about starting a fall crop.  I have not done either of these.  I want to try both, if I can afford it.  I definitely want to get the canning operation going.  Hey, I've come this far, I might as well do everything associated with home garden, right?  Right.  I am optimistic that I'll get a lot of tomatoes and tomatillos this year.  I can makes some sauces, some salsas and whatever else I can think of.  

I started looking at canning options today.  We have the boiling water bath method and the pressure canning method.  I'm trying to keep this operation real, so I'm going for the pressure canning method.  I like to have as many options as possible and the pressure canning method looks to let me can just about anything I would want.  Pressure canning is all about killing the Clostridium Botulinum microorganism, which is the bad guy responsible for spoiling low-acidic foods.  You'll have to research the list of foods that are low-acidic on your own.  There is a brief article about canning one the American Seed Alliance site.  Anyway, it looks like I'm going have to drop about $150 to get this started.  I think I can swing that.  If anyone has any opinions or suggestion on the canning topic, I would love to hear anything you have to say.  I love advice!  

I also started looking into cold frames.  I don't know if this is doable where I'm at, but I'm going to investigate.  I was telling Miss 38th Street I was interested in doing the a cold frame this year.  It depends on getting some scrap wood and an old window, as well as finding a good spot on the property that Miss 38th Street approves of.  Or I could just put it in and ask for forgiveness later? (lets see if she reads this post).  I found this link about cold frames today.  Very Nice.  It's from the University of Missouri so I'm giving it a read.  I also speaks about hotbeds, which are heated cold frames.  I'll stick to the cold frames, for now.

On a sad note, my six blueberry bushes, which were doing well this year, are not going to give me what I wanted.  Mainly because the BIRDS ATE ALL THE BLUEBERRIES OF THE BUSHES!!!  Ahhh!  They were looking so good, too.  I have 3 Jersey Blueberries, 2 Elliot Blueberries and 1 Blu Ray Blueberry bushes.  Well, next year, I'm putting a net about the bushes.  Because next year, I'm going to have this:

OK, if anyone has any advice or stories about these subjects, I would love to hear them.


Stay cool!


Seriously, stay cool.  It's hot outside.  Margaritas help.


38th Street!

Happy 4th of July!!!

Happy 4th of July!!!

No personal firework display this year.  Banned in our county.  Too dry.  I have a feeling that this heat will be the norm from now on.  Anyway...

I pulled the Garlic yesterday.  It had went to seed, but I waited until there were only 5 to 6 green leaves.  I've heard a couple different things about harvesting Garlic, so I'll just try this first and see what happens.  Miss 38th Street is braiding the Garlic now, which I think is pretty cool.  Funny thing is, I planted the Garlic upside down.  So, all the garlic plants look like a "J" when I pulled them up.   Chui is assisting in the Garlic clean up.

Luckily, Mimi is not interested in the Garlic.  She just wants to play with the frisbee.  She's a little hot, so back in the AC for her.

I did have one garden casualty today.  I had to pull up the Roma Tomato plant out of the garden box.  It was diseased.  It was wilting and all of the green fruit had black bottoms.  It's out.  I might have to pull out one more.  We'll see.

Everybody stay cool today!

We're off to downtown for some fireworks.