the little wild kingdom

[wyoDreamer]

I had a recipe for strawberry jam that used a granny smith apple instead of pectin - just grate it up and add it to the strawberries. It ended up with a decent thickness for spreading. Apples have a lot of pectin, especially crab apples.

Editted to add: granny smith apples have a lot of pectin, otherwise use under-ripe apples. The more ripe the apple, the less pectin it has.

 

[flowerbug]

it has been rather wild here this season. for about two months i lost half the team here as Mom was sick (she's doing better now thank goodness). add that much more work to my schedule, all the mowing, weeding, etc. well it was hectic.

the gardens have been doing mostly ok. cucumbers we pulled the plants at last as nobody wanted any more and we were tired of having to deal with them - especially as tomato season has taken over any extra time.

also bean season has been keeping me busy checking gardens and getting the early dry beans picked as much as i could get done. some beans are just now starting to flower (those planted weeks later than the first patches).

with 44 different kinds of beans planted it can be fun trying to figure out what is going on and which did ok and others that didn't do much at all and some that are just now setting flowers/pods, so they may not finish in time or not, we'll see...

the melon plants have gone gonzo. six plants and at least 30 melons out there. if they all get ripe at about the same time it is going to be fun trying to eat and find homes for all of them. i sure won't need to plant as many next time around. they are very good too when they get ripe at last. short season enough that they have worked well here. they like to crawl around on the rock piles (and by crawl i mean vines of 20-30ft). definitely a keeper crop for us. my previous tries at growing melons didn't finish very well at all and were largely a waste of space.

the tomato crop has been plenty to keep us going and running out of jars with the shortage of lids we can't find. we have some cases of wide-mouth jars but no lids for them. hope to get some this week or we won't be doing much more canning and not enough room in the freezer for all these tomatoes (from 30 something beefsteak varieties of plants and one cherry tomato).

have had another dry spell but finally this evening we've gotten some rains and it is raining again now to give it a good soaking out there. not what i really wanted for some of the dry beans but that is just how it goes at times. win some - lose some. i think i had most of the dry beans that were ready picked so i shouldn't lose too many to rot from these rains. what i can pick and dry out quickly of critical varieties might help but i think i don't have any super critical ones out there this year. the beans on the fence are largely later beans so they're just getting pods and not ready anyways.

any spare time i get i am happy to be shelling beans.

the pea garden turned out ok too... and the garlic was lifted and the onions are ready and the strawberry harvest happened and i have freezer jam and strawberries in there for the winter months... i planted some onion seeds, peas and buckwheat in that small garden just to see what would come up (the onion seeds were old).

with the tomato harvest and me needing to bury scraps from processing tomatoes and cucumbers too i've been able to start reclaiming one of my gardens from weeds (it's been mowed this season what i couldn't get planted this past spring). as part of the project i'm doing along there it needs to be done anyways so this is all good. i just wish i had more cooler weather to get going on these heavier projects. the rains will help digging as the clay is getting pretty hard.

cosmos starting to flower.

squash doing ok. really glad to see some of my cross-breeds coming back. the cross between kabocha and some orange pumpkin and also a cross between buttercup and an orange pumpkin. both of these we like so i wasn't sure the seeds were too old or not. will be saving seeds from these for sure! baby blue hubbards are not quite as baby as i was expecting, not sure we like them but we'll be finding out. also planted some new buttercup seeds but not sure they did anything yet.

peppers, etc. in the tiny garden we stuck them in. didn't do that great, but some harvest. just not the best of soil in there.

 

[flowerbug]

a few pics from the cedar tree trim i had to do to keep this tree from taking over the pathway back to the fenced gardens.

i'm sure it will get some green on it again eventually as these buds of new growth show that the trunk is always checking to see if there is enough light reaching in there to support some new greenery. the way the deer constantly trim these trees i can see where that is a required adaptation to have. it was my hope that the deer would trim this particular tree back for me enough through the years, but for some reason they rarely touched it. so after being patient for so long i finally had to give it a hair cut.

ok, gotta get out and finish up mowing the grassy spot to the south.


and of course a bean picture:

my attempt to capture the various stages of drying down of the Spotted Pheasant. mainly i wanted to show the pattern and the pink color in contrast to how it looks when it dries all the way down to the golden color.

 

[flowerbug]

tree froggy picture from the other day:

 

[flowerbug]

I love your gardens. They must be a full-time job for you!

they are!

a big harvest this morning worth thousands of $. i can't make that kind of $ working a local podunk part-time job.

 

[flowerbug]

a few bean pics from yesterday. these are of a cross breed that showed up here which i call Yed (for Yellow Red ). it is a longer season bean than fits here well, but it has persisted so it will keep getting grown when i get a chance to renew the seeds.

the first picture was made using my indoor light setup which didn't work out very well at all, but after some fiddling i could at least get this to look sort of ok:

and then a bit later the sun happened to finally come out and in between clouds i could get this snap shot (which didn't need any fiddling at all for the colors to show up):

i've seen many different kinds of beans but none with this sort of pattern so i hope eventually i can find a bean lover further south who will adopt some of these so they can continue to be grown in a more friendly climate.

 

[flowerbug]

was able to get some more gardens put up for the winter today. a bit chilly out there and windy but at least there was progress. a high of 50F and winds up to 35mph. tomorrow is supposed to be calmer even if a bit colder but that is ok. i've already dug out a trench that i need to use to bury the last scraping i need to take off the top of the garden that is left. and then once i get that done i can spread out the last few buckets of wood ashes and get that raked or dug in.

the garden i need to take some dirt off the top with the weeds, it can be skimmed now and i'm glad i did what i already got done in there today (found all the grass and got that done first just in case i can't get back there right away). that was already buried in another trench. the other part of scraping the surface is to gradually lower the garden area and to use that sandy soil in a neighboring garden which needs to be raised up a bit more. the tulips and other spring flowers underneath the garden prevent me from doing this all at once without a large amount of work that would have best been done the end of July or early August. to say the least, that didn't and likely won't happen...

so we are making progress, garden are getting put up for the winter. almost all of them will be done tomorrow if the weather cooperates and i can actually get outside.

my back was not too mad at me today and it isn't getting worse so we'll see how it feels tonight and tomorrow. so far so good.

plenty more to do. there always is, but it does feel good to have more accomplished now because it sure makes spring a lot easier too and i can get work done on other projects like cleaning up a mess i made last year or ...

 

[flowerbug]

I ordered Sweet Dumpling for this upcoming season. DD15 loves acorn so I thought we would try.

the plants are more compact than the larger sprawling squash we grow plus the fruits are not as big. still good enough for a hungry person. being so sweet i wouldn't eat as much. used in combination with other things it adds good filler to a tummy on a cold day. did not notice any bug problems.

 

[NH Homesteader]

There are some new medications but they are really challenging to get access to and very expensive. Basically other than seeing a neurologist (which I did 10 years ago and didn’t help much), which, good luck getting an appointment in the next year right now… there’s not much doctors will/can do for you.

I try not to take ibuprofen but some days nothing else works!

 

[NH Homesteader]

My health anxiety does not thank you for that information 🤣