Thursday, June 29, 2023

June's Garden (2023)

Summer is here. My days start in the garden just as the sun is rising and before the heat arrives. 


Everything is flourishing better than ever before and it is keeping me bustling.

My newest experimental crop is garbanzo beans. They are from a grocery store and not surprisingly, the germination rate was about one in ten. 


The leaves look like ferns and there is one bean per pod. I have been told you can squeeze the pod and it will pop so you can eat the bean fresh.  I can't wait to try it.

The Yukon Gold potatoes are finished. Now that the plants are dead, the green stakes surrounding the bed are visible. They were tied together with strings so the vines wouldn't spill over into the pathways. The garden rows are close together to not waste growing space. Anything that is a tripping hazard gets propped up - walking is much safer.


The large harvest was a surprise. They were planted later than the Red Pontiac and White Kennebec but grew faster. The others are still winding down.


Some of the onions have been dug and I discovered the amount of sunlight made a significant difference. The front half of my garden is full sun but it becomes progressively shadier toward the woods. The Super Sweet Onion slips which came from a local nursery were the earliest to be transplanted in the garden and were in an area of full sunlight. They matured first.


Generic bulbs were also purchased in bulk from a local nursery and were scattered all over the garden. It has been easy to compare the size difference since they are all the same variety.  The strawberry bed that was full of onions is almost empty since most have been dug. It is also in full sun.



Both the Super Sweet and the generic which grew in the strawberry bed are huge!


In the middle of the garden in what was originally the spinach bed are some of the generic onions. They were planted along the edge and at the sunniest end. Tiny okra seedlings were added to the middle of the row when the spinach finished. The okra didn't shade the onions until a few weeks ago but regardless, none of the bulbs are more than half the size of those grown in full sun.



Those in the back in the deeper shade are quite small. None performed well at all.


However, a huge unexpected success was the onions I started during the winter from seed. They were the size of hairs when transplanted into this full sun bed and I didn't expect them to live. They are still maturing and have matched the size of those from the strawberry bed.


These are storage varieties and will be tested to see how long they last. 


Next year, more will be started from seed but all must be planted in full sun.


Onions must be air-dried to cure before being stored. My wrought iron porch furniture makes a perfect drying rack. The dehydrator was set up outside because drying onions in the house is like breathing napalm.  All the activities on the porch have come to a screeching halt.



The back deck has a smelly problem too. An opossum moved into our neighborhood and has made a nuisance of himself (they smell like rotted garbage: just a fun fact for city dwellers). He is emptying out the birdfeeder and has invited his camera-shy raccoon friend to slurp the sugar syrup from the hummingbird feeder (sugar is expensive now!) They party all night long under my kitchen window. 


We have set up the motion detector alarm. The raccoon has the sense to bolt when we open the door but the opossum stands his ground.  He has become accustomed to us, the lights and the noise so refuses to budge. We have to shoo him away every night.


Bill has to go out all hours of the night when the alarm sounds to prod it off the deck with a stick. Since we don't have livestock that can be harmed, it has received grace. 


Possum poking is our latest pastime. Our lives are never dull.

10 comments:

  1. I'm so glad to read your garden is doing fabulous, after last year's disappointing one. The garbanzo beans intrigue me. We love them here, and I use them in all sorts of dishes. Your flourishing garden is a beautiful sight to see.

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    1. Thank you Laurie! I still feel like my garden might collapse and die at any minute. I don't feel like I can trust it to provide for us anymore. My insecurity is driving me to put up as much as possible. I guess trusting the weather is not a good thing.

      I'll let you know how the garbanzo beans do. I'm looking forward to eating them fresh. We love them and eat them all the time too.

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  2. Everything looks so great! How do you store your onions besides dehydrating them? I'm still looking for a good way to keep them after harvest. You need to write a children's book about that possum!
    --Melanie

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    1. Last year I caramelized some in the crock pot (I didn't want to stand forever in the kitchen, chop, dump them in the pot and wait). They were canned, dehydrated and the juice in the bottom was either canned in small jars or frozen in ice cubes and added for seasoning. The dehydrated ones tasted like the French fried onions you buy in the can. Reese and I can eat them straight like potato chips and fight over the last one. When you cook them, they shrink way down to nothing. It looks like a large amount on the porch but it really isn't if you could see how much food Reese eats.

      After they dry thoroughly, I move them to the basement on an open wire shelf sitting by the steps where I can glance over and check them often. Last year when they began to go bad, I chopped and froze them. I really don't have the freezer space for that but it was better than losing them.

      This year I am going to can some without carnalizing to see how they taste. I put a little bit in my canned green beans for flavor but you couldn't taste them. I'm going to try that again and add a larger amount. Today I want to try dehydrating a whole half slice and see if it makes a big chip for dipping sauce. There are recipes for pickling and fermenting I want to experiment with. My real hope is that the storage varieties I started from seed during the winter will last until next year.

      My goal is to find a way to use all of them before they go bad.

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  3. Lovely to see your abundant harvest. Those garbanzo beans sound fascinating! Sarah x

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    1. I wonder why more people don't grow them. Once I tried growing soy beans and they were impossible to shell. They were tossed and never grown again. Years ago I had an aunt who grew pinto beans. I asked her why since they were so cheap in the store, she replied the flavor was great and if you ever tasted them, you would never eat a dried one again. Some day I'm going to try growing them.

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  4. Your garden is amazing! Lovely to see the abundance of onions and potatoes. 

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    1. I pulled up the last of the onions this morning since we have rain scheduled for later today. The rest of the potatoes need to be dug but I'm waiting for my sons to visit so they can do the heavy work. They will be rewarded with fresh cooked potatoes and green beans cooked with onions. They are all willing to work for homecooked food.

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  5. I know Hubby will be disappointed -- but somehow I don't think possum poking is going to be an Olympic sport! :) Those onions are gorgeous. Do you ever braid them?
    My garden, alas, is not so good. The grasshoppers have taken what the deer haven't. (And nothing much emerged anyways, because it was too cold.) I'm going to try replanting, but we have such a short growing season, anyways.

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    1. The possum has not been coming around as often now that we only put the bird seed out early in the morning. Bill said there is enough bugs and there is no need for us to be supporting freeloaders.

      I haven't tried braiding the onions because getting them to last more that a month or two in storage has been unsuccessful. Most of the first ones that I dug have already been either dehydrated or caramelized and then dehydrated. There are about twenty on a wire rack in the basement where I can check them often. If there is any kind of a blemish or a space where the outer skin has been damaged, they go soft. When you slice them, the juice drips which is great for flavor but not for storage. Last year I left them on the porch thinking they needed to dry longer but they still went soft. They just don't keep long but that is all I can buy locally. The storage varieties I started from seeds are still on the front porch and are far from being dry. The leaves are still green.

      I'm sorry your garden hasn't been what you dreamed. Mine never is either. I lost 4 squash plants this morning to insects and another bunch of cabbages to worms. I have been spraying them daily for the last 4 or 5 days. Even though it is organic, I'm not even sure I want to eat the cabbage leaves now. Bill goes out during his lunch break with a tennis racket and swings at the June bugs. Its hard to miss since there are so many. He says it is good exercise and he is accomplishing something.

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