Strawberry Day

Yep, today is the day to plant...
  looks outside
 ...ummm MUD my strawberry plants in.
  This is one of my little strawberry babies, I have 50 of these.  My thought(s)?  If I have issues with them growing at least some should do Ok, right?  The two worst case scenario's are:
 #1 they all die
 #2 they all produce
 I just don't see with #2 that being a problem and if #1 happens... well then I learned something.  It took me about an hour to plant them all in the mud.  I put them in today as we are due to spend the rest of the week in RAIN.  Fun for us yes?  However I can't leave the poor things in their box for a week or more, they would die.  So I went out today and mudded them in.  About half of the little plants had really good crowns on them really think, a few were pretty small.  So we'll see.  
   I planted them in our old onion bed that the Elderberry trees are planted on both ends of.
  You can if you look very closely the escapee onions that we have growing there.  My thoughts at having the plants there with the Elderberry is that they will become the ground cover for the trees (shrubs, elderberry are tech shrubs).  I know the ground there is very good as it's full of worms and we already have things growing in the soil there, besides the onions.
 From what I have read over the years you should let the plants not produce the first year after you plant them.  I am debating this as I know the strawberry farms harvest yearly including the first year.  Anyone have some suggestions?   My Elderberries have been doing wonderfully since they were planted where they are, I think due to 2 reasons.  First is that they were grown locally, also Elderberry plants grow here naturally.  They have been sending out "suckers" too.
  This is the taller of the two "trees" see near the base?  that is the "sucker" plant.  Elderberry is one of those that can reproduce by suckers, or plants growing off of roots that grow near the surface.  There are quite a few of them around the "trees"  I do not know how fast they grow, I do know that they are going eventually I should be able to have tons of elderwine, and cough syrup.
 I was covered with mud when I was done with that planting, and when I was done needed a good bath.  
   I need to run for now I have to post these pics to pintrest and start on dinner, have a wonderful evening everyone!
 Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Today's Harvest

I have a few harvested items to show everyone today:
  First up is what we had for breakfast.  About a pound of Lambs Quarters, 3 squash flowers, some kale, and an onion.  This was all washed and I chopped up the onion, kale and squash flowers.  Had one of the kids run out and get me some fresh basil which got chopped too.

 I start with some sunflower oil (gods I LOVE this stuff) and I browned the onion then the rest goes into the pan and I stir fry them a couple minutes till they are fully wilted and a little dark.  I use a blueberry pomegranate dressing I found about 1/2 a cup while the pan is still on and I let it steam in the dressing for about a minute.  It made about 2 small servings of some wonderful greens.

 Here is something funny, at least to me.  I saw on listia.com the other day someone selling "organic Lambs Quarters" seeds.  I laughed at the idea, seeing as how my Lamb's Quarter is organic as it is growing in my garden... but I defiantly didn't put it there.  It came up on it's own, any place you "disturb" soil you will see Lambs Quarters growing.  If you want to eat them only go for the smallest leaves.  I tend to just take the tops off, and they will branch off; A LOT!  So don't worry about how much of the tops you remove.  It will keep growing.
  My lettuce is still growing, and I harvested a colanderful of them.  This is going to be lunch today, probably with some of our left over snow peas that are in the fridge; and some of the carrots from the farmer's market.

 While out I noticed my beans have tons of flowers on them. I think they are also the reason that the lettuce is still growing good as the beans are shading the lettuce.  I also picked some day lily buds, I think I got four of them; as they seem to go from no where near opening to open in a day.  They are suppose to be good as soup and stew thickeners, and because we don't have the solar dryer as yet I am freezing them.

 I have also noticed that the elderberry flowers have not yet opened, I am sooo waiting for those to open.  It seems all of my tomatoes are doing well in their new homes, and growing like... well.. like Lambs Quarters (most people would say weed).  I'm going to have to come up with supports for them soon I think.  They companion's the dill plants are also taking over, which is good.  Maybe I'll try to make Silver and the girls some pickles using the lemon cucumbers.  Hey, it might work once they produce.     That is one pint of black berries.  Yes, we are officially into the black berry picking season.  I expect we will get quite a few blackberries this year from the season if I got a pint this morning.  I also should be able to make a straight blueberry jam too as we seem to now have tons of wild blueberries now here.  My one plant has one berry on it, while the wild ones are loaded.

   I am going to hold off on making jams until we start getting rose hips from the wild roses.  Just so I can add the extra vitamin C to the batches.  Boy, it should be one heck of a day when I start doing my jams this year.  If my melons all grow and produce I should have quite a few of the cantulope jam too.  You know I was not sure if I'd like it, but I found I love it!  I will post the recipe when I make it.  I'm hoping to get another case of two of peaches again so we can, can some and try out the bourbon peach jam I found.

   I wonder if wintergreen berries would be good in any of it... I will have to find out.

 We got a piece of ply wood for the baker's rack, and now we are in the process of painting the wood then it'll go in the house... somewhere.  We are thinking the shelf under the TV will need to come out for the rack to come in.  Then we will be putting the computer on it for now.  The tomato by the chickens has some tomatoes on it, but they are still green so we'll see when they are done.  I think it might wind up being a paste tomato, but I'm not to sure.

 The kids are going to another "vacation bible school" this week, this one at my son's church.  So all this week we don't have to feed them dinner.  The girls are also going to be in the reading program at the library starting wednsday.  with next monday being a special evening event involving the "Hunger Games", the first prize is a boxed set of the books (hardbound).  Maybe one of the kids will win it.

 Well, I need to get back to my work; I got to plant some free irises a little while ago.

   Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

Garden Surprise!

Well looks like I'm doing at least 2 posts today for both my blogs, as I sit here waiting on my laundry to finish; then get my dishes done.  I seem to be suffering from a cold right now and I am considering taking a nap after my work is done here.

However I have a nice surprise to share with you from the garden:

That folks, is a flower head on one of my Elderberry plants.  It's the taller of the two plants and I saw at least 3 flower heads on it.  I am hoping the other Elderberry produces some flowers as well, but I have no idea if it will.

I need to now look up a good elderberry jam recipe or if anyone out there knows if you can mix them into another jam like maybe a blackberry jam?  As we are going to have tons of black berries this year and I'm thinking of a mixed berry jam.

That's it for now,

Be Well, Be safe, and Blessed BE...

Rain Tree Order Arrives!!!!!!!!!

Well... I said I was positively climbing the walls to plant.... guess what... I got to plant a few things. As you can tell from the title I got my Rain Tree order. I have to say... I am impressed with them. The Rhubarb crowns are HUGE the smallest was as big as my fist... about a pound in weight. The Russian Tea trees have flower buds already, and about 18 inches tall, and seem to be VERY healthy. The wintergreen still had berries on them, it looks like one of the 4 was just transplanted to a bigger pot before shipping. We tried one of the berries and.. WOW very nice minty flavor. Now the Goji Berry did look a little small.. based on pictures I've seen … but I have no clue on how fast they grow.

Now just to wait for more to come.....

Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be....

Foraging day!

Yep “foraging” , as foraging is one of the good things about living in a country/woods setting you can gather a lot more food than you can just by growing. Today was a blackberry day. As you can see my harvest was not big as it is still early in the season.

We have a great many blackberry canes along the road here, so many and so big that they over hang it in spots. The canes are so swollen with unripened fruits right now they are bending quite a bit I'll try to get a picture of in in a day or so.

We should have a great many more berries in about a week based on the coloring of the remaining berries now. Oh, that smaller bowl is of blueberries that grow wild next to my property. The blueberries seem to be spreading as well so next year we should have a good crop from those along with my lone one in my berry patch. I do hope to add to my berry patch next year.

For now any berries that I forage are being put into a baggie and being frozen (don't yell at the moment the baggie takes less room in my freezer than the jars and the jars keep getting broken by kids). I am freezing as I am hoping in a month or two, to be able to make my first jam/jelly. I am planning it to be a mixed berry jam possibly with rosehips in it for vitamin C.

I need to look up some recipes on jams/jellies online and look through the few I have stored on here and see if I have one I can modify for my use. Lowes right now has a anniversary edition water canner that I'd like to buy this month if we can afford it. Then I'll get some jelly sized jars and anything else I need and make my first attempt!

I am so excited by the thought, and I hope it “jells” correctly as I'll be doing this completely from a newbie standpoint. Any helpful hints would be appreciated!

Now take some time and find out if you have something “wild” near you to forage. Most areas that have any hint of wild berries sometimes will have “berrrying days” where someone will guide you to go to the best “patches”. Though I am sure they don't show you the town's favorite spot, why give out a good secret?

I have noticed the mandrakes (or Mayapple if you prefer) are not doing well this year I have only seen one with a growing fruit. So I am guessing I am not trying that jam out this year. I hope to next year though.

Be Well and Blessed Be...

Is summer already here?

WOW! it's been hot! So hot that we have only been digging our root cellar in the morning when it's the coolest. Over the weekend we bought one air conditioner for $40 at a yard sale. It has made sleeping at night in all this humidity wonderful. However the down side is it makes it so that we don't want to go outside in this heat. During the middle of the day that suits me fine, we just have to make sure we are doing our outdoor work as necessary. I don't recall it being this hot this early last year either, but then again I don't know the 'norm' for here either.

If you see me on facebook you'll know that I posted that we have lost one of our young hens. It was one of the white ones, something (Silver thinks it was a fox) dug under part of the fence and got into the yard. I think the one that died was probably defending the others as it was on of the more aggressive young hens, also due to the fact we had smaller ones in there that should have been easy targets; but they were not touched. So today's project is to (hopefully) finish the chicken coop today.

I wish I could get some pictures right now but, my batteries are dead in my camera and the ones we recharged did not last long. The root cellar right now is about7X7X2, It needs to be a bit bigger in two directions and a lot deeper.

I did get some pictures of my berry plants before my batteries died so here we go with those:

This is one of the three raspberry plants I got for my birthday, now I have not been watering these. I am thinking of starting too, but they seem to be doing well. Oh the picture of the blueberry you can't see the actual plant so I won't be posting that one. The lavender is in bloom, and the "red hot poker" lilies are coming up; I hope they flower this year. Oh, my bleeding hearts are looking lush, one of the Dahlias is looking well as well.

Here is one of the Black Currents:

Now to be honest I did not think these would do so well, however they seem to be growing fine. Though a couple days ago I did discover that one of them is broken in the middle, so I am down to one plant. I hope we can get a few more.

I am hoping (very much so) that we can dig up a spot for my herbs to go into later today. They are getting pretty nice sized and a few of them have been drooping in the heat so I need to get their spot set up very soon. I do know for sure now that my basil and Sage have both come up, I still have to figure out the rest of them though. My rosemary is doing fine, the Stevia though; I think I might lose one of them. The one that looked stronger seems to be drooping more than the one that looked worse. Go figure.

I do want to mention in this last little bit a minute bit about food storage. I have seen a good many people writing about it of late, and I'd like to comment on it.

#1 it doesn't hurt to keep extra food on hand.

Why? think, if there were some kind of weather problem and you couldn't get to a store you'd need it. Also if one of those is predicted people seen to rush to stores to wipe out what they think is "essential".

#2 Store what your family uses.

It does you no good to store 20 pounds of dried beans if you don't eat them.

#3 Stock up on non-perishables.

Why the distinction? I have seen people who plan for possible power outages by buying TV dinners... come on folks those won't last!

#4 Rice,flour,sugar,dry beans can go a long time in storage.

It is good to have these items "in stock" in your house as they can be used in almost anything.

#5 Don't forget your pets!

If you are stocking up for you it would be good to buy extra for Fido as well, if you can't get to the grocery store for you; you aren't going to make it for you dog/cat.

#6 Remember water!

You'd be surprised at how many people do not remember they might need to store water, but if you do not have power; you might not have water either.

Only you know how much your family uses of anything, or even what you use. So take a moment and figure out what you use the most, and my suggestion would be to buy those in bulk. I but flour, sugar, and rice in 25 pound bags, I am going to start buying them in those every month, not just when we get low. Now please folks this is just my suggestions on this, you don't have to follow it; but it wouldn't hurt you either.