Sunday, July 31, 2011

Harvest Is Coming In


Tomatoes in my village garden. The vines at the family garden have four times the tomatoes set.

I'm on my last jar of salsa, my last jar of pickle relish. I'm out of tomato sauce and sweet red pepper spread.

So, it's a good thing I've been able to pick my first couple tomatoes and filled a tub with 30-some cucumbers. I picked a patty pan squash yesterday, too. The cantaloupe and squash have put up lots of blossoms and there is evidence of busy bee successes in the tiny, but swelling melons forming behind the twisted blossoms.

Now preserving the harvest will begin to take priority over weeding.

Yesterday, my sister-in-law and I harvested basil. We had decided to attempt to freeze chopped basil blended with olive oil. I've chopped basil and simply measured out usable amounts and frozen into Ziplock bags in the past. While this method results in a usable product, the color is less than desirable, being a deep black green. The first thing I noticed about the oil and basil processed with a food processor was the nice color. We decided to half-fill the cubes sections in the ice cube tray, press, and then add some additional oil on the top. We covered the tray with tin foil and put it into the freezer.

We did not use salt or water, simply basil and olive oil.

I have attempted to dry it. Sometimes I am able to dry the basil and maintain its good color. Other times, a fail, the basil turns brown or black.

Some tips, if you intend to dry the leaves of basil: Choose undamaged, clean and dry basil. Sometime simply washing the basil with cool water will turn the basil brown. If you must wash the basil versus wiping off the dust or dirt, use warmer water and pat dry, do not crush between paper toweling. Dry while still attached to stems. I have had better luck drying basil as quickly as possible, for example in my standing pilot gas stove versus hanging over a bar in a dark place.

Once dry to crumbly stage, detach leaves from stems, and store in a labeled glass jar in a dark place. I like to add a couple grains of rice to each jar to absorb any atmospheric humidity.

Tomorrow: Harvesting dill.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Last Saturday in July


Honeysuckle vine crawling over my fence has been blooming since June.

I know we have had an abundance of Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays this July. A couple people have told me we don't usually have five of each and it won't happen again for 700-800 years or some such. When I was in my twenties I would be yelling, "Weekends! (and paydays-- it seemed I always got paid on Fridays) Personally, that is too long a period of time to even wrap my mind around. These days, I tend to worry about things a little closer in, say the beginning of the school year.

During the school year, I substitute teach. It gets me through he time I can't garden, grow plants, or landscape for people here in frigid central Wisconsin. I usually don't get too many calls the first couple weeks in September. The merging of the two jobs is typically seamless.

This week, however, I managed to sell a medium to large landscape project, a couple smaller ones, and got a call from a school at which I sub, "Would I take on a month or so long subbing gig for them from day one of the school year?" YES!

Then in my head, hot, humid, and rainy weather notwithstanding; YIKES! I have a lot to do in the next 65 days.

Sixty-five days to the frost date.

Ten days ago, I just planted a veggie garden with fall, short harvest cycle veggies, and crops like parsnips, carrots, onions, and rutabagas which can be spring harvested, for a client. (Suddenly, in July, the need for a vegetable garden was overwhelming for her!)

Sixty-five days to the frost date.

Get going people!

Friday, July 29, 2011

The Bees Are Busy


Yellow summer squash blossoms

In the eternal quest to decide what do I want (to do with my day, with my life, and what will I do once my son flies beyond my wingspan and goes off to college in just a brief year), I walked in my garden, camera in hand.

The bees were hard at it. Their lives not focused on decisions, but simply on need. I could hear the buzzing, like flies working over roadkill, but without the stench. The bees were talking in beespeak about how delicious the pollen on the squash blossoms would be to take back to the hive. I watched them for a bit. At one point three of them were easily working in one blossom.

Everything about this hill of squash I added to my plot here in the village as an afterthought has been outsized. It is huge. Its stalks are huge, as are its leaves and blossoms.

I have planted other types of zucchinis and summer squash in my garden in the decade I have lived here and have never been loaded down with truckloads of their fruit. This might be my year.

I have anticipated having oodles of red okra, a good harvest of grapes, all the basil I need, and have been checking out different recipes for chow chow, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Not, yellow squash.

The skies are blue here and after yet another torrential rain storm late yesterday afternoon, the humidity is low, at least this morning. The vegetation is just dripping with dew.

For today, there is still weeding to be done, landscaping to work on, my son to raise. The "want" gets pushed on down the road replaced by the "need" for yet another day.

Sometimes, the simple acts of taking care of the needs develop into something much bigger, like a hive filled with golden honey, or the afterthought of planting a squash.

It seems to be working for the bees.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Timing is Everything


Messing around with dill and my camera resulted in this image.

Timing is so important.

The last three years I have tried to time the planting of my dill with the first bountiful pickings of my cucumbers so I have dill available to make gherkins and dill pickles. I like fresh, not gone to seed, dill in my canning. Yes, I can pick it and dry it, but it is just not the same.

This year, I thought I had a chance of hitting it right, but no, that week of heat the beginning of June baked the ground. It was a week, before I realized I would need to replant, because germination was so spotty. My dill is starting to seed out; the cucumbers are just now starting to load up. I missed it again.

Politicians here in Wisconsin and in our nation's capital have been playing with timing a lot, too. Fake Democrats running to force recall primaries allowing recalled Republicans time to do what I haven't a clue; the Tea Drinkers playing with the 2012 election and the debt ceiling.

It all makes me very nervous.

I feel like I have been a victim of poor timing all my life. I am old enough to be my son's grandmother (althought most day's I don't look it, even if I do feel it). It puts a different perspective on child-rearing.

Being on the tail-end of the aggregate that is the Baby-Boomers, I have often felt like I was the runt of the litter when it came to getting to the "job trough". The older Boomers got the cool jobs and the tail-gunners just have to clean up behind.

Now with the flattening of the earth, I wonder how America's labor force will go forward, particularly for those occupations where the products of labor can be transported anywhere via the internet. An engineer here expecting to make $60K to $100K can compete with one in India willing to work for $10 an hour. Who will a global company choose?

The other day in the wee hours of the night I happened to catch the New America Foundation's panel discussion on how to develop jobs and energy security here in America. I was terribly impressed by the expertise these scientists AND politians brought to the table. I wish every policy maker, banker, business owner, had seen it. Being on C-Span and airing in the middle of the night, I'm sure most did not. The audience did not include any major press coverage either.

Seems like I'm not the only one with timing issues.

Today, in my corner of the world, I just hope the rain holds off until evening.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

One of My Favorite Shrubs: Smokebush (Cotinus coggygria)


Smokebush 'Royal Purple' at a garden on the Outagamie County Master Gardeners Garden Walk in June.


Well, I have just oodles of things I need to do outside, from weeding the vegetable gardens to applying an herbicide to some poison ivy for a client, hacking back an Artic blue willow for another customer that threatens to overwhelm her patio to getting the truck jacked up so I can fix that tire.

Then there are the things I would like to do: mow my lawn, paint my windows, weed my perennial border, spend a morning learning more about daylily hybridizing with Dr. Darrel Apps.

But what is happening here in central Wisconsin? Rain. And more rain scheduled for late afternoon. If we get a break the dew point is supposed to swell to nearly 75 (very uncomfortable) and the temperatures climb to nearly 90; which makes those late afternoon storms possibly strong, with possible hail and strong wind sheer.

Yippee.

I bet you can tell I am really excited.

Not.

Right now the rain is coming down in sheets. I don't have to even look for a puddle or how it hits the street to tell it IS raining!

So plans have changed. I'll probably clean my house. That never ends, always a good raining day plan. Maybe I'll cook something interesting. I do need to source some oxblood red poly resin pots, follow up on some paint colors for a client, and draw a plan for a dry stream bed, so those things will probably move to the top of my hit list.

On a horticultural note I thought I would share some pictures of one of my favorite shrubs, the smoke bush. Mine is in all its glory the last couple weeks.

My smokebush 'Nordine' flanked by garden phlox last week.


'Golden Spirit' at Olbrich Garden entrance, left foreground. Remind me never to allow my 'Golden Spirit' to flower!


'Smokebush 'Golden Spirit'


Pretty panicles on 'Nordine'.


Although there are native green smokebushes we are at the very edge here of the zone for the deep burgundy-colored ones. According to the Morton Arboretum, 'Nordine' is the most northernly hardy of these. In Outagamie County, they are just that much closer to the lakes (Michigan and Winnebago)to be able to make the 'Royal Purple' a winner. It has a bit more intense color.

In Britain, I have heard the gardeners largely forego the panicles in order to keep the bush a more manageable size and encourage its bright burgundy color, and cut it to the ground each fall. Here in central Wisconsin, it is fairly late to leaf out (June) and I prune out the dead tips and branches after I can tell where it is growing out from. Sometime in mid-summer I prune for shape. The result is nice growing tip color, a tighter more compact form, and a healthy number of the "smokey" panicles.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Last Post on the Kiwanis' "Random Acts of Culture"


This will be the last post detailing the garden party hosted by Dr. Darrel and Marilyn Apps and the Kiwanis. The editor for our local weekly paper covered the event, too, and the upcoming issue devotes an entire full color page of great publicity for the event.


Hostas at three years old, growing in the best soil money can buy. No root competion here on the north side of the house.


Parterre of boxwood, barberry, sedum 'Angelina' and 'Gold Coin' lysimachia. 'Black Lace' Sambuca is featured in the center of the wheel.


Out quaint village seen beyond the yard. Cool yellows, grays, and blues set the mood in this section of the garden.



Hope you enjoyed the tour. By all accounts, it was a success. I think the intended goal was 50 guests per garden party. The first session was 72 and the second 62. Ticket fees went to the Kiwanis Scholarhip Fund.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Dr. Darrel Apps Does Daylilies (and Corrects my Blog!)


If you have a daylily in your garden, chances are my neighbor, Dr. Darrel Apps had something to do with it, somewhere along its genetic history. Until about 1950, daylilies were basically yellow or orange and pretty much looked like the orange ditch lilies blooming in profusion along the roadways of rural America. Back about 1975, though, Darrel with his newly minted PhD met up with a Professor Jablonski at the University of Kentucky. There, Jablonski was coming up with the 'Stella de Oro' daylily. Stella was different. Stella bloomed for what seemed like forever. Stella had tons of bloom. Even the foliage was different, shorter, bluer, yet the flowers bloomed above the foliage. The ubiquitous, nearly a weed, garden daylily of today signaled the beginning of daylilies as we know them.

Dr. Apps bought an originator's clump off Professor Jablonski (at the price of $50--yeah $50 for Stella!) and crossing it with a orangey-pale reddish hemerocallis fulva grossa (which are typically fairly sterile) managed to get the first of what would be daylilies with colors other than school bus yellow or ditch lily orange.

Over the next few years, daylily hybridizing exploded. Darrel introduced daylilies like 'Little Red Hen,' 'Happy Returns' and started his Woodside Nursery in Bridgeton, New Jersey. When he retired (yeah, he's retired but his work pace makes me dizzy!) he sold his Woodside Nursery to Centerton Nursery which maintains a listing of over 340 of his daylilies they have for sale. They do a much better job of close-up pictures than I do, and yes, the colors actually look like that!



Daylilies in a yellow-orange palette.


The color spectrum is huge these days. Daylilies come in almost every shade from creamy white to a deep burgundy purpley nearly black.




In the left foreground 'Romance Returns' and on the right, 'The Full Monty'.


Here in the United States, florists do not use daylilies in cut flower centerpieces. Darrel shows off what we Americans seldom see, daylilies can be the center of attention, despite their short shelf life. Could any garden party table top be more complete?


Darrel is not shy about including daylilies other than his own in his garden. Here is a close-up of the 'The Full Monty' developed by a fellow hybridizer. Sunday it sure looked like it was the whole package!

The affair on Sunday included so much more than just dayliles. See tomorrow's blogpost for some of Darrel's parterre and layout of his garden and the other cultural offerings sponsored by the Kiwanis in heir "Random Acts of Culture" garden party.

CORRECTIONS: The Internet can be a dangerous place. I do try to get it straight, so in an attempt to straighten out some of my crooked and glossy facts about Dr. Darrel Apps and daylily hybridizing, straight from the daylily's throat, sorta, this from Dr. Darrel Apps:

"Rachelle,
Just saw your blog for the first time! Enjoyed it immensely! Great pictures.

I've got to give you some information to correct a couple of things. Walter Jablonski was not a professor but a farmer from Merriville, IN. He started sending me letters while I was at the University of Kentucky and we became friends. I usually would visit him in Indiana on my way back to WI to see our parents in July. He introduced 'Stella de Oro' in 1975 and I got one of the first pieces for $50.00. I crossed this plant with every cultivar I had and got one seedling out of it by 'Suzie Wong' which I selected an introduced as 'Happy Returns'. Later I got 'Pardon Me' from some crosses and these two cultivars are in the background of many of my rebloomers.

A.B. Stout while at the New York Botanical Garden collected Hemerocallis fulva var. rosea (he named the clone 'Rosalind') and it was from this plant crossed with other Chinese species that much of the color breaks came. Several decades later I did use this plant and in fact recently selected some spidery forms from it. I did have most of the species but only brought three to Wild Rose because of lack of space.

I have never been President of the American Hemerocallis Society. I have been a regional Vice President and did serve on the board for a term and I've also received several awards. I asked to get off the board after one term and chose to spend my time with the International Plant Propagators Society where I did become president.

One last thing. I don't have a Ph.D. in Horticulture but rather in Agriculture Extension Education. At the time several Extension Specialists took their degrees in that area because it offered a better background in working with information delivery systems. Often the Ph. D. in Horticulture was physiology which wasn't the best preparation for Extension work.

You've got to see the daylilies at the other place one of these mornings soon. Give me a call.
Darrel "

Sunday, July 24, 2011

The Kiwanis and Dr. Darrel and Marilyn Apps: Forces of Nature


Darrel and Marilyn's home, note, no daylilies!


My house across the street--daylilies, I grew from seed. I have since learned the seed I bought from Jung's to grow out probably came from the hybridizing efforts of Dr. Apps.

Door prizes, roses, not daylilies. This is Wild Rose... go figure.



I would guess my quiet one block long street in the village was the busiest street in the county today. The Kiwanis Club is a force to be reckoned with and although the weatherman was calling for scattered showers, Mother Nature just wouldn't dare.

You see, I live across the street from one of the world's best daylily hybridizers.

And, I think my neighbor has been thumbing his nose at Mother nature for a while now.

And yes, "world's" best. Dr. Darrel Apps, Ph.D in horticulture and daylily hybridizer of over 390 patented daylilies, is my across the street neighbor.

The juggernaut that is the Kiwanis Club in my village held it first "Random Acts of Culture," a two-session, two-hour garden party featuring a tour of Dr. Apps' garden and restored Queen Anne home accompanied by musicians, oratory, and a pastel artist. This all in an endeavor to raise money for the Kiwanis scholarship fund. There were roving appetizer trays, punch, ice tea. Luckily, I was asked to give garden tours.

Any opportunity to talk about plants in such a beautiful yard, versus weed them, is a good thing!


View through the pergola of his musa bajoo (he over-wintered it in his basement in peat moss in a 5-gallon bucket after exposing it to a light frost last fall.



The pink bush is a rose, I believe it is Polar Joy.  To the left is a LA lily, I don't know which. The white spikey plant is Culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum) and the blue is echinops ritro. 
Not a lot of daylilies, what's with that? You'd think there would be lots and lots! Well there are several if you look, but as Darrel says, "Just daylilies are boring." I kid you not, I'm quoting him. Another quote? "Anyone who grows just daylilies and thinks they're a gardener...they're not." Okay, pretty harsh words from someone, I'm pretty sure is a past president of the National Daylily Society (or maybe they call themselves "Hemerocalis"). But remember, he does have a doctors in horticulture, not just daylilies, which are his passion. He can rattle off the Latin faster than the school basketball team runs the 50-yard dash.


Dr. Darrel Apps, daylily hybridizer, retired (Yeah, right!)


An as yet unintroduced daylily, developed by Dr. Apps. Proving sometimes, the best things are not for sale.

I realized after getting into this post that this will be more than a single blog entry, just like the tours I gave today ended up being more than 30 minutes. There was a lot to see and lots of questions, especially since this garden is only three years old, a particularly astounding feat for a garden in central Wisconsin, with our blazing hot, and this year, humid summers, unpredictable rainfall and snow, and frigid winters.

So tomorrow's post will continue with daylily lore legend, and how the world ended up with more that just orange "ditch lilies", a vernacular label Darrel detests.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Beauty in the Weeds










My mother is not a big weeder.

She does like the lilium genus. These are all from my mother's garden.

Regardless, of the weeding status of her garden her lilies are incredible. One of these days I might have to accidentally do some weeding and find a couple of the baby bulbs of her various tree lilies, longiflorum-asiatic, and orienpet crosses.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Everything I Touch is Broken


























It's a bit frustrating ...okay, a LOT frustrating.

Everything I need to use seems to be broken. I don't know if it is frustrating because I have deep-seated control issues or because that insane earworm song from my childhood about a hole in my bucket and why don't I fix it?

I think this inexplicable phase of my summer started a week ago Sunday. My son had been playing basketball with varied results. The team has had a somewhat variable performance this year, unlike last year where we dusted the courts with all-comers. One, the team lost three senior starters. Because we have had a good, if not great team, the last three-years running, much better teams have been willing to play us.

The boys who are seniors have been very dedicated to a dream of getting to state. They and their parents have dedicated a lot of time to pursuit of that dream. With the disappointing end to last season and the lack of dedication of the incoming juniors, the team is struggling to find its way. Many games this summer the team totaled 5 or 6 seniors. We lost games against good teams with a bench of 10-12 players simply because the boys were exhausted.

So Sunday after one of these exhausting basketball marathons with only 5 boys playing 11 games in 4 days, we both came home exhausted (me mentally, sometimes its been hard to watch, and my son physically).

I decided to make supper, carbs for him, a salad picked from the garden for me. I live in the village so it is never really dark, but colors lose their hues. I have a lot of different greens available to me: chard, cabbage and broccoli leaves, spinach, mustard, beets, head and leaf lettuce. I remember seeing a seedling of an euphorbia 'Snow on the Mountain'. When it is juvenile, the leaves lack the showy white margins. I remember thinking I should weed it out, because it is poisonous, but I was just too tired.

A side note here, cows can and will eat euphorbias. Hey, they have four stomachs! Reputedly, Abe Lincoln's mother died from drinking the milk from cows that ingested euphorbia. Every time she started to feel better they gave her some milk, thinking it was the most nutritious thing she could get, and they continued to poison her in small doses.

I washed my lettuce leaf by leaf. I chopped it up and put it in a bowl. About six to eight hours later, I was vomiting up my supper. My stomach obviously knows what is good for me and those couple small leaves of euphobia were not about to pass. I spent the night and part of the next day on the cool tile floor of my bathroom.

So from bad basketball, to bad salad, I move right along to rusty rims on my Ford truck. I have decent tires on my truck, but rusty rims. They don't always hold air. I travel with a tire gage and know all the places with air pumps. Generally, not a big deal, nuisance only. Being sick two days, put my tire inflating schedule out of whack. Result: a flat tire.

So, I task my son to haul my dad's air compressor out freom the farm, so I can pump up my tires. Unknown to me, he transports it on its side rather than upright. We start it up, it doesn't build pressure. I grill him, as I am checking various things on the compressor. Transport position come out. I decide to leave it upright in the back of the truck and come back to this problem in a day. Same problem. So what got broke? Maybe a gasket or the intake value, but it is beyond my knowledge. I am sure my dad and brother will rain down bad karma on me for the broken air compressor, but that bird has not roosted yet.

Insert 4 days with heat indexes up to 115 degrees F and record-breaking temperatures where just thinking of going outdoors breaks a sweat.

Yesterday, the dew point fell into the mid-60s and the temperatures were only in the upper 80s and low 90s. It felt like a spring day with a gentle breeze.

So truck has one badly flat tire, and I decide that fix a flat stuff in a can might allow me enough pressure to limp over to the gas station a couple blocks from me. It gives me nothing. Unless that tire stem is at the 6 o'clock potion, you can forget that stuff. It just doesn't work right (two experiences now). Trying to get the wheel in that position, the tire comes off the rim.

Ugh!

So now I am changing a tire. My son and my Ex will tell you, I am a very capable tire-changing person. My dad would not allow me to get my license until I could check and change the oil and change a flat tire. (Funny, how times change. I never change my own oil; environmentally, disposal is such a hassle, and rightfully so. And for safety, I generally do not drive my tires to failure, I spend too much time on the road, often with poor driving conditions.)

So, the Ford is a rust bucket, a rust bucket with new decent leaf spring so I can safely carry the loads I do. I tried four different places on the frame in attempt to jack it up high enough that the leaf springs are not compensating. No luck. I can not get the truck wheel off the ground. (And yes, with leverage (my weight bouncing on my wrench, I have managed to loosen all the nuts on the wheels so once I do get it off the ground that wheel will be coming off.

So I ran out to the farm for some 4x4s, and a couple a cement block and will attempt to jack it up by jacking up the axle, not my preferred jacking point, given that I have to be partially under the truck to do it.

And, did I mention the Mantis tiller is not starting again?

But the daylilies are in bloom and some are simply gorgeous.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

'Satisfaction'








The lily 'Satisfaction' has bloomed!

Satisfaction, indeed!

Spicy Mesclun Mix and Salad Greens


Spicy mesclun salad mix growing at the Chicago Botanical Gardens.


I planted this same mix in the garden and potager. Instead of the nice purple Asian mustard, I got an over-powering regular mustard. I like mustard, but not to the exclusion of all else!

I planted this mix in a seed tray so I could control germination, so if the seed was in the mix, I think it germinated. The seeds I thought I was getting were not what I got and definitely not the colorful mix pictured on the seed packet.

I like salads. I am always looking for greens to grow. These year I have been hardesting leaves of Savoy cabbage and other cabbages as they grow. I also have chard, spinach, parsley, buttercrunch lettuce, and a few leaf lettuces.

When the heat breaks, I'll plant some lettuce for late summer and fall salads.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Continued High Temperatures of all Sorts, Preserving Food, and Our Gardens


Waiting on tomatoes!


Between humidity, heat, mosquitoes, and politics (Wisconsin politics as reported by Rebecca Kemble) this summer just seems pesky. The economy is crappy, too. There's a lot to rile me up on a daily basis. Each day I try to concentrate on the things I can do something about and try not to worry about those things which I can't control.

I'm not advocating sticking your head in the sand, but I'm having a hard time finding the path on the beach. It's the same for many people these days it seems. The good things are probably not the easy things.

This weekend in the family garden, my sister-in-law made enormous strides in tilling. I was very impressed. Two torrential rainstorms, one in the morning, the other in the evening, have topped off any concerns I had for watering. Even with the heat, I am seeing small squash, pumpkins, and cukes forming. We are going to have quite a lot of vegetables. We are talking about doing some fall planting.

Here in the potager, mosquitoes are driving me crazy. They think my arrival in the yard signals "feast." The village sits on some of the springs and Mill Pond that feed the Pine River, and the water is arguably some of the cleanest in the state and also home to hoards of mosquitoes. I often spray DEET on myself to the point which I start to twitch (I swear!).

I worry about the quality of life here in the United States. Will these new world realities make us scramble to come up with good answers or will profit margins of multinational conglomerates keep financially raping the middle class? (It seems every time some economic indicators come back saying the economy has improved for the period, prices at the gas pump jump a few cents.

I came across these new stories about this company, the Tata Group, that has seemed to decide to develop products that address the severest needs of the most desperately poor in the world: shelter, clean water, and transportation.

This company seems to be demonstrating the sort of initiative which has made American manufacturing and research and development famous. This company, though, is Indian.

I have been watching the Cable China News Service lately. We Americans, I think, know so little about China. I don't wish to be quite so ignorant. They are going to have some serious issues with water quality and quantity, pollution, energy, and climate change. These are issues for which they have little or no government infrastructure in place to guide them. The business practices of the companies manufacturing within China for export to America because of low wages and lax environmental guidelines bothers me. Yet another reason, in addition to the balance of trade, to buy local.

I also have been worrying about the number of chemicals that are in our food supply that don't have any right being there. A particularly bad group of chemicals are endocrine disruptors like BPA.

So it comes down to the things I can control. Buy local, pay cash, preserve your harvest from your garden. Turn off all the lights, power strips, that you can. Recycle. Drive less. Everyone has to do these things. It starts small, but everyone has to do these things.

And those of you sitting on huge piles of cash, start investing it in energy production and products like those the Tata Group is manufacturing. And, do that manufacturing here in America, and if possible, right here in central Wisconsin. We have a great education system (a shout out for all you teachers in the state for a job well done!) and can develop any sort of labor pool you need. Consider us here in Wisconsin.

And keep swatting those mosquitoes! Each females hatches about 300 young in her lifetime, and only the females bite. Do what you can.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Harvesting Basil and What High Temperatures Mean for Gardeners


Basil leaves being held in a canning jar.


Yesterday, my thermometer on the south side of my house read 100 degrees. Now, official highest temperature anywhere in Wisconsin was 97 in Waupaca, where the family garden is located. That 100 might be accurate. With the high dew point that's a 117 degree "feels like" temperature. That's about 50 degrees hotter than my preferred temperature of about 65 degrees!

Plants don't feel temperatures the same way we do. The high humidity actually works for plants lessening the amount of moisture a plant gives up to the air. As the skies have been overcast without beating sun, although it is dry, it is not like our plants are experiencing this heat dome as we are. Our plants are growing fast and a little extra moisture will go a long way now. I watered extensively on Friday and Saturday to build up moisture in the soil.

For those of you considering planting fall and winter veggies, with this heat, I would hold off on that plan. Seed germination drops off dramatically at temperatures above 80 degrees for many of these vegetables. If you feel you are loosing too many days, I would water the soil amply the night before and then mulch liberally with a couple inches of finely shredded straw or shredded paper after seeding with a plan to remove it within about 10 days.

This is probably not a good time to transplant or plant perennials or shrubs, but if you must, water well, water foliage to keep transpiration levels low, mulch, and consider trimming back as much top growth as you feel you can.

Lastly, these temperatures have forced me indoors and to play in the kitchen. I thought I would pass these tips along for storing and using basil. Basil is one of my favorite herbs. I plant a lot of it, grown, from seed each year, and almost always run out.

Basil likes it hot. Keep basil flowering tips picked off. When it flowers, the flavor and the texture changes, so keep it picked back. Harvest it down growing tips to about a quarter inch above each joint. When using always discard the stems and any flowers, use just the leaves. Try to pick early in the day if you are storing any quantities, but picking as close to using it is always preferable.

Basil does not like temperatures below 40 degrees. Resist the urge to store basil in your fridge. Temperatures below 40 degrees will brown your basil as if it has been touched by frost. Storing the clean leaves in a container in a dark space maintains moisture content and color for many days with very little wilting.

I have had good results (good color and shelf life), drying basil by placing in an oven on a cookie sheet at 145 degrees for an hour and leaving them in the oven (my oven has a standing pilot and is probably always between 90-110 degrees) for a couple days to finish drying. I then store them in a Mason jar.

Enjoy the heat, if you can. If not, pick basil...

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Cooking the Harvest from the Garden






Lily 'Satisfaction' ready to pop. Already a huge presence in my potager, I can't imagine it in full bloom!





Last night, I pulled the first of some carrots, most no more than my small finger in diameter from my garden. Also, in my strawberry bed there were a couple potato plants that had grown from potatoes that had escaped harvest last fall which I harvested as well. Sliced and pan-fried with chives they made an excellent side for the Panko crispy breaded and baked pollock I prepared for supper for my son and myself. Salads of 'Red Sails' leaf lettuce, dino kale, spinach, and mustard greens rounded out the meal.

I should have taken pictures. I didn't. I was in cooking mode. What seems like a couple lifetimes ago, I have done stints as a professional cook (hence my love for stainless!). What they don't show you very well on shows like "Hell's Kitchen" is it is all about the timing. Cooking has a rhythm. All the food for a plate has to come to completion at the same time, allowing for the "hot food hot, cold food cold" mantra, for the flavors to completely develop, for presentation to be the icing on the cake. So, when I am cooking, I automatically fall into the pro-chef mode and I'm not stopping to take pictures.

And when I am done cooking, I am definitely all about the eating. I could take a picture then, but no. Eating mode!

Enough to say, the meal was delicious!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Count Your Bees and Your Blessings


Daylily 'Mary Todd' given to me by my dear friend Sheila.


Today is the national bee count survey day. So all of you into bees, get out and get counting and go to this link to find out more about The Great Sunflower Project. They offer great real world tips to help our bees. They also have the Bee-o-meter, a fun tool to see how many bees were counting in a 15-minute period in your zip code during the 2010 bee count.

While we are busy thinking about bees and that they help produce 1/3 of the food grown here in the United States, we should also think about the blessings in our lives. Here in central Wisconsin, there is a lot we can be very down about. For example: the unreasonable, unreal weather, the new governor and his capricious actions, the economy and the rhetoric in Washington preventing honest compromise and inability to see the global picture of what happens worldwide if we don't just drop the crap and increase the debt ceiling, all in addition to the individual things that just don't seem to go the way we want.

So here's my list of my blessings:

My parents are still living, as well as all my siblings and their spouses (and exes) and children. And, although my parents can drive me nuts, I would miss the council of my father accumulated in his 78 years and the foibles of my mother.

I have a nephew who is almost 8 suffering from Duchennes Muscular Dystrophy. At 8, he is smart, good-looking, and engaging, and doomed. This is a terrible disease and its long-shadow is already casting its pall on my sister's life. Thirty percent of DMD are caused by spontaneous mutations. We believe this to be the case for Sam. There hasn't been any other incidence among any of our relation that we can find. Needless to say, after learning of Sam's diagnosis, I gave both (my son, and my brother) the big strong men in my matrilinear line (and only ones still living) big hugs just for being. Boys are precious. Hug yours.

Second blessing: My Ex and father of my son. He's a great guy, just not a great guy for me. Although he lives in Chicago, and my son and I live in the wilds of Wisconsin, he has been there for us and provided for his son. And he's been a good friend as well.

Third: Boxers are great dogs. Faithful Companion is incredibly bright. My son and I figure she has a 50-60 word vocabulary and a sense of humor. This morning, I cleaned out the fridge and found a halfway to dried-out chunk of rice krispy treat wrapped in cellophane which I promptly deposited in her bowl (sans cellophane). After mowing down the treat she comes out to the dining room and rolls onto her back, curling her feet in and letting her ample floppy lips fall over her eyes and holds the pose until you notice, in a pose my son and I refer to as "Please Read the Directions Carefully Before Assembling Your Boxer". It never fails to get me to laugh. Faithful Companion knows this. She then prances over and actually gives me a big hug, knowing her job is done.

BTW, never teach your boxer to do the Conga.

So I am leaving you with a final blessing today of some of the things blooming in my garden. And especially today, let's pay it forward as bees do and as my friend to the north always says in her blogposts, "Be a joy-giver."



An unknown bulb given to me by the daughter of a friend who died last November. The daughter found them while cleaning out the basement of my friend's house.



An unnamed daylily cultivar




Sidalecea, grown from seed



Lilium 'Elodie', a great bloomer with nice black stems.