Garden Notes: Late Spring

 We're in that time of year where temps can swing quite a bit over the days and nights, with the trend gradually pushing toward warmer and drier weather as spring gives way to summer. I'm not looking forward to the heat.

This year's garden is not an ambitious one. Dan had a knee replacement in early March, so we adjusted our expectations to allow for recovery time. Most of the planting is done for now, so garden chores revolve around watering as needed, mulching as plants get tall enough, and weeding until we get to that point. I work in the garden most mornings until going on 10, when it's getting too warm in the sun.

Here are my late spring garden photos:

These early peppers are a treat. This is one of the 3 surviving pepper plants I overwintered
in the greenhouse. One of the others is flowering, but the last one probably won't make it.

Another greenhouse survivor, a volunteer cherry tomato
plant. We'll have tomatoes on our salads early this year!

My red raspberries are doing abundantly well. 

EXCEPT!

A groundhog has taken up residence under the raspberry bed!
So far, it has eluded attempts to be captured and re-homed.

Said groundhog has done quite a bit of damage in the pea and lettuce bed.

All my pea plants have been pulled down and the ends eaten off. The last of the spring lettuce has been eaten as well. It will soon be too hot for lettuce, so I haven't replanted. I've sprayed the peas with a critter be-gone product, but I'm not hopeful. We usually eat peas abundantly through June, but not this year.

Even so, I've had a few peas to pick. But we're missing our customary pea salads.

Raspberries and kefir for breakfast, with a sprinkle of ginger and cloves

Cantaloupe in the African keyhole garden

Slicing tomato flower

Volunteer lambs quarter

 The photo above was taken in the old Buff Orpington yard. They had pretty much scratched and eaten everything down to the dirt by the time we moved them into the large chicken yard. Everything in there now is volunteers. We have tons of lambs quarter and black oil sunflowers! Those are from the chicken scratch. We also have a few elderberry trees and kudzu, which I feed to the goats.

We eat lambs quarter fresh in salad and steamed or sauteed as a green. 

The clusters of leaves can be harvested all summer.

This year instead of canning some, I've been dehydrating it.

Dried and chopped lambs quarter leaves.

It's a great addition to soups, stews, or to make lambs quarter lasagna or quiche.

And here's some living art. The Egyptian walking onions grow in the most interesting ways. 

Red raspberries and horse radish leaves in the background

Corn, cucumbers, beans, and okra are all coming up. Slicing tomatoes and sweet potatoes are coming along too. And so are the weeds! Why are there always so many weeds to tame? 

So that's my garden at the end of May. Care to share yours?

Garden Notes: Late Spring © May 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

The Cheese Cave Is No More

The cheese cave is now gone.

So what happened? It started to leak. After I'd had it about two weeks, I found a puddle of water seeping out from beneath it. I thought at first that perhaps it was because I was using the floor duct to vent it. So I pulled it away from the wall, mopped up the water, and kept and eye on it. But it still kept leaking. Clearly something was wrong. 

I contacted customer support with the idea of replacing it, but they would only refund me for this one after it was returned. Then I was to buy another one. Except the special buy price was gone and a new one was higher, so I said I'd rather shop around. 

I rearranged my solar powered chest fridge, which is working out just fine. I can keep it at the required cheese curing temperature, and it has the advantage of higher humidity—needed for curing cheese anyway. The beverage cooler maintained a low humidity. 

UPS picked it up yesterday, and I'm back to trying to figure out my pantry arrangements. That corner currently looks like this . . . 

So I had an idea, and now I have to re-envision it. I've about decided the rolling cart will stay, as I like to have access to the window. I open the windows to let the night air help cool the pantry, which helps with storage longevity. 

So my pantry project has been temporarily slowed down. But I think I'll make some progress this afternoon. I'd really like to get everything back in place. 

The Cheese Cave Is No More © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com

Of Proper Cheesemaking Equipment

I have to say that I feel I am pretty good at making do. There is a satisfaction in finding a workaround to a problem, especially when it involves not having to buy something. In my Tons of Milk post, I showed you my making-do way of pressing cheese with my rigged cheese press. Unfortunately, the precarious stacking of jars to weight the curds eventually could prove disastrous at times, such as when they toppled over. When I broke a large jar containing my arrowroot powder, I decided it was time to invest in a proper cheese press. 

This is the one I showed you in my Tons of Milk post.

Now that I've had a chance to use it, I can tell you that I like it better than anything I've tried previously. It's very heavy-duty. I like the crank and the way it applies even pressure to press the cheese. I admit I was skeptical that it would hold a two-gallon cheese, but it does.

Freshly pressed cheese from two gallons of milk. It weighs 2 pounds, 2 ounces.

The mold for this one has no bottom so whey can't collect in its bottom.

It sits on a base which has a spout for draining the whey.

I set the press in a baking sheet to catch the excess whey.

I'm still learning how to use it, as in how much to turn the crank and how to best wrap the curds in cheesecloth. For some reason my cheeses always have indentations of the folds of the cheesecloth. 

My other hesitation for making hard cheeses has been my climate. During milk season, it can get much too hot for proper aging of cheese, including in my pantry. Many cheese makers have a small fridge or "cheese cave," in which a consistent temp of between 45 and 55°F (7 to 13°C) can be maintained. I just didn't think I had room for one. But I did figure out that I can maintain 45°F (7°C) in the containers in the top of my solar powered chest fridge. 

Trouble is, it can't hold more than four cheese. So I started looking around for something with which I could make a cheese cave. The best option was a beverage cooler. It can be set to the required temps and is much cheaper than a wine cooler. I found one on special buy at Home Depot for half the price of a similar size at Lowes. 

But where would I put it? I have no room for it in the kitchen, so the pantry seemed the best place.

Potential home for a cheese cave?

My concern was the compressor putting out heat and heating the pantry more than it already gets during summer. When I kept my freezer and second fridge in the pantry, they added quite a bit of heat. This little fridge is smaller, but still, I had an idea.

The vent cover for the unused ductwork under the house is the same width as the cooler.

I had seen previously, where someone vented their fridge this way. Could I do it too? 

Dan made a styrofoam seal the same size as the blower opening in the back of the cooler. It fit perfectly and will hopefully help exhaust heat from the fridge compressor out of the pantry.

Cheese sizes from the old press will only fit 3 cheeses
per shelf. But the shelves will hold 4 from the new press.

The challenge now is keeping up the proper humidity for the cheeses. Cheese likes something like 90% humidity, so to maintain that, I'm experimenting.

At the moment, I'm contemplating what to do with that corner in the pantry. I can't put back the old shelf unit back because they are now too wide. The cheese cave takes up part of the space needed for their depth, so I'll need something narrower. That's my next project. 

Making do is great, but sometimes there's a greater need for proper equipment. "Food First" is one of our homestead mottos, and if this helps preserve our milk better, I've made a wise investment. 

Of Proper Cheesemaking Equipment © 2026

by Leigh at https://www.5acresandadream.com