Jesse's Giant Sunflowers

Liz and I put the last of the tomatoes into the ground today...not that I don't have more plants, because I do...just no more room. I will try to get at least some of the rest into containers....in fact I need to go out right now and do that.

I also hoed the whole upper garden and hilled up the potatoes up there. Some of the winter squash was eaten right down by something so I just put tomato plants in the empty holes in the mulch. There are baby squash on the greyzini already! Beets are up. Indian corn is knee high, which is amazing as it has been in less than two weeks. Merveille de quatre saisons lettuce is forming heads even though I have it planted in half a fifteen-gallon barrel. This lettuce is great stuff...seems to stay sweet and crunchy forever. I will certainly plant more when we are done with this bunch!

The soup

Herbs for Soup

The 17th of June and I am making soup. For the past two weeks it has been miserably hot most of the time. Now it is downright cold and a warm, hearty supper sounds like a good idea. It is too early for much to be ready in the garden this far north, but there are plenty of herbs. I picked chives, walking onions, orange mint, creeping thyme, woolly thyme and lovage (nice since I am out of celery.) One thing nice about fall is making End of Garden soup, with the odds and ends of whatever is left in the garden. However, at this point the garden isn't even all planted.

Lovage, an herb, the leaves of which make a nice substitute for celery in soup

Rhubarb Season

Rhubarb always reminds me of my Grandpa Lachmayer. He had a big patch behind his house and all the grandkids loved to get a handful of sugar from Grandma and a stalk of rhubarb from him and then crunch away at the tangy treat. The less sugar you used the more macho you were (not that we had ever heard of macho at that point in time.) Later when I became a semi, sorta adult style person I took him pick-up truck loads of well composted horse manure to make it grow better. You would have thought I was bringing him solid gold by his reaction and I had plenty to spare.




Now the house, the patch, and the dear grandparents are all gone. (Although I have a picture of grandpa on my kitchen wall and I know he watches me from it...I can feel it. So I talk to him in my mind all the time.)




The rhubarb lives on, though, in family patches at several homes. All but one plant of my bed came from his stock and I know my mom has some.

Rhubarb Crisp

3 cups diced rhubarb
1 cup granular sugar
3 T flour
1 1/2 t cinnamon

*** combine and spread in lightly greased baking dish

Topping

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup oatmeal
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 t cinnamon

***combine until crumbly and spread over base

***Bake at 375 degrees for approximately 45 minutes. I have had this recipe for way over twenty years and I take great liberties with it as to amounts of ingredients. (It is very forgiving.) In fact I generally just cut up enough rhubarb to fill my biggest baking dish...certainly more than three cups and then cobble up enough topping to cover it. Cinnamon I just dump in. I like it...how can I go wrong with lots? I froze four cups for winter use too and I think I am going to try making rhubarb jam. I found a recipe that sounds good and we have a pretty good amount left so......

Cats in the Garden Pond two by two

And in my freshly tilled soil everywhere. These darned little barn cats wrecked my first planting of beans, which I replanted yesterday. They are always knocking over the water garden plants and trying to catch the gold fish and koi. The only one that doesn't drive me nuts is Kashette.

If you think that wheelbarrow is going to keep us out of that nice litter box you just tilled up, think again!

Defense against the dark (cat) arts

We didn't do it...and that's our story and we're stickin' to it

Yesterday after night milking the boss took the skid steer with the stone bucket on it and dug over my old sheep pen garden patch. It is so fertile up there (after years of housing sheep) that a cow parsley plant will have a root as big as my wrist in a few months. The soil was very dry and worked up beautifully to a fine, crumbly texture. Wish I could plant today, but it rained a little last night and our soil is such that if you touch it when wet it compacts to the consistency of hardened cement.



While he dug I weeded my squash and giant sunflowers and put a little Sevin on the squash. Cucumber beetles are practically wiping it out. I have been gardening every minute that I am not milking cows, bookkeeping, cooking or writing...and there has been darned little cooking or bookkeeping going on around here. I do flowers one day and food the next. I couldn't get very forward with the food gardening though until the boss got my ground ready for me. Soon as it dries out, full speed ahead.

Geranium and petunia seedlings, just planted and waiting for some sun.

Walking onions

Top, or walking onions

Are starting to set tops now. As soon as these harden off you can plant them either in pots or in the ground to propagate as many as you want. They will self sow as well, which is how they earned their nick name.

Peas in bloom