Gardening Between Raindrops

I'm guessing most folks will agree that it's been a strange spring. When the trees leafed out early, I thought summer was right around the corner. Not so. We've had a few warm days, but mostly it's been rainy and cool. It was so damp and chilly last week that we started a fire in the woodstove one evening, something we've never done in May before!

As my blog post title suggests, gardening has been sporadic because of the rain. Still, I'm getting things done. Another thing that's strange, is that everything seems slow to germinate and slow to grow. I thought it was just me, but we bought some hay last week and the farmer mentioned how slow-growing everything has been. But slow or not, here's what's happening in my garden.

I still have a few things from my fall and winter garden.

Fava beans and lettuce. This is the first time I've grown favas.
They are a lot of work to prepare, but they are very good to eat.

That's the lettuce I mentioned in my "Ricotta Ranch Dressing" blog post.
Now that I figured out a salad dressing, it's decided to bolt! Oh well, lol.

Multiplier onions ready to harvest.

They are smaller than globe onions, but they do better for me than globes.

A few beets, volunteer potatoes, and horseradish. I thought I dug
all the horseradish root out last fall, but it's come back with vigor!

In the other end of that same bed, volunteer tomato
and a bunch of violets. All volunteers get to stay.

The winter wheat was also planted last fall and is beginning to turn yellow.
We're just hoping we get a string of nice days when it's time to harvest it!

March-planted snow peas are in full bloom. No pea pods yet.
The flowers in the background are collards, radishes, & turnips.

Also blooming, April-planted bush beans. These had severe
insect damage when first sprouting. The survivors look good.

I also planted three hills of watermelon last month. 

And these, Tatume summer squash. The seed was saved from 2013, so I
wasn't sure of viability. I dumped a bunch in two hills and it's growing well!

April-sown cucumbers.

I started tomato seeds early in April as well. I planted saved seed and Matt's Wild Cherry tomato to grow on my front porch trellis. Of that first planting of the Matt's, only one seed grew. I reseeded my little pots with the rest of the seed and transplanted the one.

First Matt's Wild Cherry tomato transplant.The picnic fly
dome is to keep the cats from using this spot as a litter box! 

A couple more from the second planting are sprouting, so I should get three plants from one package of seed.

This month (also in between raindrops) I've planted corn, okra, summer lettuce, borage, Swiss chard, calendula, dill, sweet basil, marigolds, pumpkins, peanuts, amaranth, black turtle beans, and more cucumbers and tomatoes. Dan planted sunflowers and potatoes. Also, I've been transplanting my tomato starts, but my sweet potato slips have been slow to grow. Still to transplant—sweet peppers, cayenne, and tomatoes as the seedlings get big enough. Still to harvest—garlic. Soon, I should have pictures of all that to show you.

How about you? Is the weather letting you garden?

Gardening Between Raindrops © May 2020

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

Dr. Schultz's Super Tonic

"Let food be thy medicine" is attributed to Hippocrates, or at least it used to be. With the current social trend to question and criticize everything, who knows? Either way, it points to a different philosophy of heath and medicine than is common today.

So who is Dr. Schultz and what is his Super Tonic? I'm glad you asked. Dr. Richard Schultz is an herbalist and former student of Dr. John Christopher. He developed a food-based cold fighter and immune booster which he called Super Tonic. I found out about it from a friend who loaned me a video. That was about fifteen years ago and we've been making and taking it ever since. We recently needed a new batch, so I thought I'd take you a few pictures and tell you about it.

The ingredients can easily be homegrown or found in the produce section of most grocery stores. All are fresh, and preferably organic. I use equal parts by weight, but there's no need to be exact. For a one gallon jar I used about a quarter pound of each.

• Garlic (not necessary to peel)
• Hot peppers (the hotter the better such as habaneros)
• Ginger root
• Horseradish root (sometimes hard to find)
• Onion (hottest you can get such as white)
• Apple cider vinegar, raw, organic

Chop all ingredients. You can do it by hand or with a food processor, the only precaution is to wear gloves when handling the hot peppers, because they burn! Put it all in a glass jar and cover with the vinegar. I let it settle and add more if needed, the proportions I'm looking for are 3/4 settled herb and 1/4 vinegar on top. Exactness not required.

Place in a cool dark place for a minimum of two weeks; longer is better. Give the whole whole thing a daily shake to mix it up. When you need it, strain it into dark glass bottles, but save the veggies for squeezing.

I use my wine press to extract as much of the herbal vinegar as I can.

From this batch I squeezed out more than two extra cups of tonic.

Store in a cool dark place.

There is no specific dosage, but it's recommended to start small, such as half a teaspoon in a small glass of water or juice (tomato is good). It can be used as the vinegar in oil and vinegar salad dressing, to season greens, etc. All the ingredients are common foods, so it's impossible to overdose. It mostly boils down to taste preference and how much health support you want.

Why are these ingredients so good for you, and how to they help fight winter colds and sinus problems, plus boost health and immunity? I'm glad you asked that too.

Garlic - antiviral, antimicrobial, antioxidant, antibacterial, expectorant

Hot peppers - anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, decongestant, antibacterial, analgesic, stimulant

Ginger - antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, stimulant, digestive, analgesic

Horseradish - antibiotic, decongestant (especially sinuses), expectorant, stimulant

Onion - similar to garlic, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergenic, decongestant

Apple cider vinegar - antioxidant, antibacterial, antiseptic, antiviral, and ant-fungal, preservative

All that healthful benefit from common foods. You can understand why we keep in on hand.

Dr. Schultz's Super Tonic © October 2018 

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

Garden Analysis for 2010

Christmas snow

Our Christmas snow turned out to be about 2 inches. It started around sunset, continued on through the night, and still falls gently today. This morning not a creature was stirring, nor wanted to venture out in the snow, but everybody wanted to be fed!

Snow makes the garden look decidedly tucked in for it's long winter's nap....

Snow covered garden

... so this may be a good time to publish this post, which I've been working on for awhile. These are my thoughts on what my garden taught me this year, and what I'd like to do differently next year.

Garden notes on things I want to 
remember, research, repeat, or resolve

Things that did well this year:

Amaranth, Giant Golden (or is it Golden Giant?) - did well in dry conditions.

Beets, Red Detroit - very happy with these, both for greens and roots

Black turtle beans - produced well even during our dry spell with little watering

Broccoli,

• DiCiccio though slow to start producing
• Waltham 29 - poor germination but larger heads than DiCiccio. Will save seed & try these again

Bush beans, State 1/2 Runner - ditto to what I wrote about the black turtle beans. Originally a substitute for a drying bean I ordered. Very prolific. These supplied most of my beans for canning this year. Dried seeds can be used as soup beans.

Calendula (pot marigold) - slow to get going but showy. I collected lots of seeds to plant and harvest a bunch next year.

Carrots, Scarlet Nantes - theses are the first carrots I've grown that have attained a decent size in our clay soils. Very sweet eating too.

Herbs, oragano, thyme, rosemary, sage, sweet basil, dill, yarrow, echinacea - all did very well though 1st year echinacea is just leaves. Apparently though, I have 2 different kinds of thyme plants. I noticed a distinct difference in smell.

Lettuce, Parris Cos Romaine - mine never do make a true Romaine head. Need to stagger plantings better.

Marigolds - long lasting and prolific! I've been reading though, that some varieties are better against nematodes than others (when planted as a cover crop), so I may try another variety next year.

Melons - ate our fill & had plenty to give away

• Cantaloupe, Hale's Best
• Watermelon, Small Sugar

Okra, Clemson Spineless - the only problem was aphids and ants toward the very end. Discovered the goats love the whole plant.

Potatoes, Red Pontiac - did well. My problems was planting too early. I need to plant a few in the spring for summer potatoes, but the bulk around July for winter storage

Radishes, Cherry Belle, Pink Beauty, & China Rose - The China Rose are supposed to be good winter keepers but I planted too late for much size. Need to stagger plantings for these as well.

Swiss Chard, Fordhook Giant - it took a break when it got hot, then came back. Survived several frosts.

Turnips, Purple Top White Globe - produced beautifully

Winter Squash, Buttercup - got a goodly amount for storage. Have seen them bigger in the grocery store though

Things that had problems (and what I believe them to be):

Cabbage plants - Dutch Flat and Savoy

• had to purchase because I was too late to plant my own seed
• growth seemed really slow, heads small. More compost?
• cabbage moths
• fall plants did much better than spring

Cucumbers, National Pickling

• Mosaic virus
- need to research treatment

Horseradish -

• Planted with the potatoes as an insect repellent companion
• Spread outside of its pots 
• This is a problem because it is a hybrid variety
• Needs its own bed
• Probably need to find an heirloom or OP variety

Nasturtiums

• spindly, died quickly, no flowers - they don't grow well in this part of the south. Ah well. Just thought I'd give them a try anyway. I loved growing them when I lived in Arkansas.

Onions, Ebenezer

• sets grew well, but some bulbs developed soft spots on one side. I haven't been able to identify the problem yet though
• seeds never germinated

Pole Beans, Kentucky Wonder

• The problem was that I used the popcorn as poles. Japanese Hulless just doesn't grow tall enough
• Not as prolific as the bush beans, but I do like not having to bend over to pick them.
  

Parsnips, Harris Model

• didn't sprout as in nothing grew
• probably planted too late 

Popcorn, Japanese Hulless

• corn earworm
• one success however, was no cross pollination with my sweet corn

Pumpkins, Small Sugar

• poor germination
• poor production, only got 2
• I believe lack of water was part of the problem

Rutagabas, Purple Top

• didn't germinate, nothing grew
• probably planted to late

Strawberries - both June and everbearing

• overrun with a creeping, spreading "wire" grass, even with landscape cloth & mulch

Summer Squash, Yellow Prolific Straightneck

• bacterial wilt
• squash bugs 

Sweet Corn, Stowell's Evergreen

• poor germination
• hence poor pollination
• corn earworm

Sweet potatoes, Porto Rico Bush

• grew well even in dry conditions
• Black rot (a fungal disease) noted on tubers during curing

Tomatoes (both my Romas & Rutgers)

• Blossom end rot - resolved with Enz-Rot calcium spray
• Anthracnose - initially I thought they succumbed to blight, but when the plants recovered and started producing again, I figured I was wrong. Finally identified anthracnose from this site. 
• Fusarium or verticullium wilt? 

Zucchini

• Powdery mildew
• Anthracnose? - noted dark spots on fruit 
• planted for fall crop but they didn't get enough heat

Thoughts on those things

• Most of my problems were diseases rather than pests. Seems though, that pests are easier to control than diseases. Or at least, organic pest control products are more effective than organic disease control products. I haven't had success even when used prophylactically. 
• What saved my tomato preservation was the number of plants. If these had been healthy, I would have had too many tomatoes. As it was, I got barely enough, and actually I would have liked more.
• Bush beans vs pole beans (???) I like the productivity of bush beans, but like the ease of picking pole beans. Opinions?

Things I'd like to do differently next year

• Finishing mulching before I start canning in June!
• Plant potatoes for a fall crop
• Try some new stuff:
• asparagus
• Egyptian walking onions
• and/or potato onions
• ramps
• and more
• Try different varieties of:
• lettuce - needs to be a Romaine type, or else I need to learn to grow Iceberg too, for DH (his favorite)
• sweet potatoes - or maybe just certified disease free slips, or both
• amaranth - golden giant is too giant, though produces excellently
• sunflowers - want to switch to black oil for feed
• Swiss chard - just to compare 
• potatoes - in addition to Red Pontiac, which we like
• Horseradish - try to find an heirloom or at least OP variety
• marigolds - used a grocery store seed pack but will switch to a French dwarf variety (Tagetes patula) which are reputed to be the best for nematode control
• Do more mixed companion beds à la Sally Jean Cunningham's Great Garden Companions
• Grow a patch of field corn, with pole beans and pumpkins
• Get my cabbage seeds started early enough and plant enough for a big batch of sauerkraut!
• Grow more:
• cucumbers
• pumpkins
• varieties of winter squashes
• turnips and beets
• sweet potatoes. Maybe try an additional variety too. I've gotten such good recipe ideas from you all that I want more next year.
• Watermelons grow don't ripen well once the weather turns cooler. Pull vines earlier.
• Expand herb gardens (these will be raised beds)
• Cold frames next spring, row covers next winter
• Semi-permanent irrigation for the tomatoes. I plan to put down a soaker hose when I put in my plants and leave it there. It will be covered with mulch, but will be in place for more consistent watering. I think that was part of my tomato problem.
• Get some Tattler canning lids

So much to do! The other thing I'm learning is to take both successes and failures all in stride. Our time, money, and energy have to be divided amongst many things. Not only the garden, but upgrading the house, but also in simply establishing our homestead in general. There are lots of one time jobs (like fencing and remodeling) which take resources from other projects. I'm learning to be patient and simply chip away at it as we go along.

Garden Analysis for 2010 © December 2010 by Leigh at http://my5acredream.blogspot.com/

Potatoes & Horseradish

My seed potatoes are planted.

Originally I ordered 4 lbs of Red Pontiacs, but when confronted with bags of them at Tractor Supply, I bought another 5 lbs "just in case." Just in case of what I'm not sure, but now I have 10, 23 foot row trenches of potatoes planted. Once the plants are taller than the trenches, I'll fill them in. Later I'll mulch heavily (up to one foot deep) and then wait for the harvest.

Except for occasional volunteers from buried compost, I've never grown potatoes before. In a way this is odd, because of all the years I've been gardening and we do like potatoes. After all, I grew up in the midwest, where potatoes were our staple starch. You know, the old "meat and potatoes" thing.

The other thing I planted, or rather sunk, were two pots of horseradish, smack dab in the middle of the potato patch. You can see the tops of the two pots sticking out of the soil, in the photograph above. I saw on a companion planting chart, that horseradish is a good companion to potatoes. Since horseradish is perennial however, I didn't want a permanent bed in that particular spot. After all, next year my potatoes will be planted elsewhere.

My order came with five horseradish roots. Three, I planted in a corner of the garden, the other two I potted.

I don't usually do well with potted plants.

However, I figured that sinking the pots might work well. They won't dry out for one thing.

For another, they won't spread uncontrollably, plus I can move them when I want. I'm curious as to how well this will work out.

I'm thinking now, that I probably should have waited to order the potatoes so that I could plant them later, for a fall harvest. That would make more sense, considering our long growing season, and as most of them will go to food storage anyway. My seed potatoes were beginning to sprout however, so I figured if I didn't get them into the ground, I'd lose them. How long the last of this crop will keep in the spring for a later planting is a question I don't have an answer to. It's one more thing I'll have to work out as I go along.

Potato Growing Links:
University of Illinois Extension - Potato
The Organic Gardener - Growing Potatoes
Seed Savers Exchange - Potato Growing Guide
BBC Gardening Guides - Growing Potatoes
and some nutritional information - World's Healthiest Foods - Potatoes

Horseradish Growing Links:
Bert's Gourmet Horseradish
How To Garden Guide - Growing Horseradish
GardenGuides.com - How to Grow Horseradish

Potatoes & Horseradish (both text & photos) 

copyright April 2010 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

Early Spring Planting

So, is it spring yet? Maybe not according to the calendar and the groundhog, but yesterday was an absolutely glorious day; upper 60sF, beautiful blue skies, and no bone chilling wind blowing out of the north. As you can imagine, I was out in it.

Except for the red Pontiacs, sweet potatoes, and rugosa roses, my seed and nursery orders are in, so I have been planning, preparing, and planting!

I'm late for planting garden peas outdoors. Also for starting cabbage plants indoors. I could have planted the peas during the first two weeks of February. But, the soil's been too muddy to till, with all the rain we've been having and then that snow. We did finally get part of the garden tilled, and I got the peas planted last Wednesday. Little Marvels, which aren't supposed to need trellising. We'll see.

I didn't realize it, but I could have started my cabbages indoors around the first of the year. I'm way behind on that, but then I didn't have my seeds yet. I need to plan better next year. For spring planting, I bought nine Dutch flat cabbage plants to put in. My mouth is watering just thinking about sauerkraut I'll be making from them. I'll use my cabbage seeds for a fall planting.

Some of the really exciting stuff though, is this bed of 52 strawberry plants...

... planted where last year's green beans and sunflowers were. I planted 25 Junebearing (Allstar) and 27 everbearing (Eversweet).

Down in the big garden, in the garden side zigs and zags of our zig zag fence....

.... I planted three Caroline red raspberries (in the foreground, you can see one cane sticking up) and two more blueberries (one Jubilee and one O'Neal), farther down the fence.

Still to plant, five horseradish roots. I've never had horseradish plants before, and need to figure out where to put them. They're perennial, so they need a permanent spot. My research tells me they deter potato bugs, so the potato patch is a good place for them. I wasn't sure about that though, because my potato patch won't be in a permanent location. I also read that horseradish is prone to taking over, and to plant them in pots. So, I'm thinking about planting them in pots, and then sinking the pots in with the potatoes. I have plenty of three and five gallon pots leftover from planting the Leyland Cypresses. If I do that, I can keep them contained and move the pots about as I change locations for my potatoes from year to year.

I also need to plant my cabbage plants. I've been hardening them off and now today, more rain. *Sigh*. Hopefully I can get them in the ground soon, with the rest of my cool weather crops!

Early Spring Planting text and photos copyright February 2010 

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