Archive for the ‘garden’ Category

harvest time

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

We plant 10 to 12 heirloom tomatoes every year. When they ripen, there’s no way we can eat them all before they go bad, so I save them for winter and spring when grocery store tomatoes are pale and mealy. Do I can them? Naw. I found an easier way.

First, I pick a few giant bowlfuls of deliciousness…

harvest1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I chunk up the biggest tomatoes but usually leave the cherry tomatoes whole, I seed and cut my peppers, then throw them onto a big cookie sheet (with sides) with a whole chopped onion. A drizzle of good olive oil over top. Salt and pepper. ..
harvest2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I roast a pan (or two) at 450°F for 30 to 35 mins until it looks like this and smells insanely good…
harvest3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After they cool, I pour it all into a pot and use a stick blender to make it smooth…
harvest4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you feel strongly about removing tomato seeds, this is the point at which you’d want to push the sauce through a sieve with a big spoon. If you’re lazy like me, you leave them in. I usually chuck in basil or tarragon from my garden, maybe a few cloves of fresh garlic, and blend that in, too…

harvest5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there it is, all blended and ready to divvy up into freezer-safe bags for the season…

harvest6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I label them so I know to finish the oldest bags first. Our freezer is already full and there’s about another month of harvesting left. Uh oh..
harvest7

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come January, I’ll have fresh-tasting soup, pizza sauce, pasta sauce and a good base for chili. Yum.

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Before you ask, here’s our heirloom tomato list this year:

  • Green Zebra (2)
  • Brandywine (2)
  • Mr. Stripey
  • Sungold Cherry
  • Black Cherry
  • Garden Peach
  • Peacevine Cherry

I could not locate Orange Oxheart plants this year. Sadface. They make the absolute best tomato soup ever. Will have to grow some from seed in the spring.

loving the way this looks!

Friday, September 16th, 2011

wall appreciation

Just wait until the wood turns a lovely silvery grey. Perfect.

walling in the beds

Friday, September 16th, 2011

So. We live on a hillside with a steep grade. When it rains or snows, the soil travels downhill. My planting beds slowly migrate into the paths, which I am constantly digging out. How to solve this dilemma? Some sort of retaining solution, der.

In some places, the drop from bed to path is well over a foot, so off-the-shelf retainment has been impossible to find — believe me, I’ve considered everything from concrete curbing to galvanized roofing materials to gabions. Large rocks just looked busy and let soil through the gaps. We finally gave in and decided we’d have to make our own. And when I say “we,” I mean our landscaping friends from Land Design Associates.

In the September Dwell (The Hidden Fortress), there’s a house that uses 4″ x 6″, Japanese-style wood pilings like so…

from september 2011 Dwell: the hidden fortress

from september 2011 Dwell: the hidden fortress


 

They’re staggered, wabi-sabi style. Imperfect, much like our topography…

september 2011 Dwell: the hidden fortress

september 2011 Dwell: the hidden fortress


september 2011 Dwell: the hidden fortress

september 2011 Dwell: the hidden fortress


 
You see that look frequently in bamboo edging…
bamboo edging | lovewood.com

bamboo edging | lovewood.com


 
Bamboo isn’t beefy enough to actually hold back the hillside, so we’ve decided to riff off of the hidden fortress and use wood pilings. The boys showed up yesterday with a truckload of 5″ x 5″ white cedar fence posts…
cedar fence posts

 
They started by digging trenches to accommodate the pilings…
trench dug

 
Then they cut the posts into random lengths and pounded them into place. One wall done!
one wall done

dragons with wings

Monday, September 12th, 2011

One of the many things I love about having a pond…

dragonfly

what the… ?

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

So what’s green, 5″ long and currently eating the heck out of one of my datura plants?

hawkmoth larva on a datura leaf

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the larva of a Night-Flying Hawkmoth! Yeah, I’ve seen these guys before, which is why I’m not killing it. It grows into a moth as big as a hummingbird! Better yet, at a glance it even looks like a hummingbird because it has a long “proboscis” that it sticks into the trumped-shaped datura flowers to pollinate them — check it out. So cool.

If you have tomatoes, you may have seen the larva before — it’s also known as the infamous tomato hornworm. I found one in our veggie garden last year but a braconid wasp laid its eggs on its back, just like the photo below. When the wasps hatched they finished it off. Ewwwwwwwwwwww. What a way to go. Don’t you wish there was a short video about the whole gory process?

tomato hornworm with wasp eggs | http://www.vegedge.umn.edu

tomato hornworm with wasp eggs | www.vegedge.umn.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

how an arborist stakes a tree

Friday, August 5th, 2011

So, about those newly planted Cryptomeria japonica ‘Yoshino’ (Yoshino Japanese Cedar). Not to worry — they look happy. But at nearly 10′ tall, they needed staking before the coming nor’easter blasts topple them this winter. Shouldn’t be an issue next year when their roots have spread some to give them more support.

When you want things done right, it pays to know people who know people. Shiva hooked me up with Tim Lucksinger, an arborist out of Newport, RI. Nice guy. Curiously, he’s never tried karaoke even though he has the ideal name for it.

So how does a professional stake a tree? Like this…

the trio all staked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So it doesn’t seem too hard, honestly. All it took was some sturdy rope (or really super heavy-duty twine)…

all strung up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A sturdy wooden stake, pounded into the ground at an angle pointing away from the tree so that the rope will hold with some tension. Obviously this man knows his knots…

the stakes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then the rope runs through a section of rubber hose that fits around the trunk of the tree about 2/3 of the way up. Hose is a smart choice because it won’t abrade the bark and hurt the tree like rope alone would…

hose from the front

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The hose is cut in the back to give it more flexibility…

hose from the back

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s that. The stakes come out in about a year. Thanks, Tim!

the replacements

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Remember when we took that oak tree down a while back? Well, his special-order replacements finally arrived…

the yoshinos arrive

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cryptomeria japonica ‘Yoshino’ (Yoshino Japanese Cedar). Not native, from Asia obviously. They look like junipers in that shot, right? But they’re not. These are three fledglings and they’re typically bushy and cone-shaped when they start out. But as they add 3′ to 4′ feet a year, they loosen up so that you can see between the branches and become more irregular, like this…

cryptomeria japonica ‘yoshino’ adolescents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hard to believe that’s the same variety of tree but it is! That’s a grouping of three that I pass on one of my running routes.

I love that they naturally look like large bonsai. They’ll add introduce a small bit of Zen to our front yard, which will hopefully tie it to what’s going on out back. See how they’re only like 12′ to 15′ across? Perfect when you have power lines to content with. Plus I don’t really want to block my view of the city.

Here are two older Yoshinos that I pass on a different running route…

cryptomeria japonica ‘yoshino’ grownups

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They get stately as they age — and wicked tall. That doesn’t bother me. It will be a nice accompaniment to our scraggly oaks.

Now to finish getting them planted. Two in the ground now. One to go.

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Many, many thanks to my gal Shiva for getting her grubby hands on the trees I wanted and then lugging them up here for me. You rawk, girlfriend.

 

marvin o’gravel balloon face

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Get the reference? A few days ago, this arrived in our driveway…

gravel truck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which means I can get some closure on certain areas of the yard. To start with, the veggie garden. We put down the steel edging to separate paths from plantings…

steel edging installed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

another shot of edging

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we layed down weedblocking cloth because I’m hella tired of pulling weeds…

weedblocker installed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then there was lugging the gravel up the steps bucket by bucket — the smallest gravel I could find, called “rice stone.”

rice stone closeup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will know soon whether that was a good choice or not. Am loving how it looks so far…

no more stairs of death!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No more stairs of death!

the princess blooms!

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

Our new hardy Pink Princess lotus started to open yesterday morning…

hardy lotus first opens

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today at dawn, it was full-on glorious (click to biggify and be impressed)…

hardy lotus from the side, 24 hours later

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

hardy lotus from the front

 

gone fishin’

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

So we started with 11 fish: 5 koi (2 Platinum + 3 Ghost) and 6 Japanese goldfish (3 Gold Comets + 3 Sarasa Comets)…

the fish release

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were more chicken than fish the first week, cautiously swimming around the bottom of the pond and hiding beneath the plants. They finally braved their way to the surface and now follow us around the pond hoping we’ll feed them. In less than two weeks, they’re practically taking the food out of our hands and have been known to nibble on our fingers, much to Bix’s delight.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get fish to hold still long enough to take their picture?

fish4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fish2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fish3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then there were 10. We’ve suffered a casualty. One of the Ghost koi swam into the skimmer pipe and got caught in the skimmer basket. Doh. There were many 6-year-old tears followed by a proper burial. Poor widdle fiddie.