What Did You Do In The Garden?

[flowerbug]

...
Kids and hubby have bee. Helping me shell pinto beans.

one thing nice about shelling out dry beans is that once they are fully dry and if you don't need the space you can keep them in paper bags until you get around to it. save it for a rainy day, fall, winter, etc. or until you get hungry enough.

not that i really wait that long here, as i do love to shell beans and to see what Momma Nature has been up to in the gardens.

 

[Zeedman]

What will you do with the garden huckleberries? Growing for first time after trying as a kid. Your right, birds, animals, chickens, people could not eat them-even after a frost.

There are a few recipes, I'll probably try the mock blueberry pie. I don't believe the berries drop, so hopefully I will end up with enough in the Fall to do some experimentation.

 

[Zeedman]

Besides entertaining the grandson, what do you do with them?

As I was harvesting seed for the Cyclanthera explodens gourd, I realized that I forgot to answer this. I do snack on a few while out in the garden. However, there are a few things that I preserve mainly because they are rare & unusual, and this is one of those. Martynia is another... but all of those plants were killed by flooding this year.

 

[heirloomgal]

Well, DW & I spent a little time in the rural garden today. Still muddy, so all we did was harvest cukes, gherkins, okra, and more dry pods from the MN 13 cowpea - all of which are doing well. The sweet corn was still standing ("Miracle" is half the height of Painted Mountain), but all of the covers on the pepper cages were blown off, and some pepper plants broken. Many of the beans & peppers which survived the last round of flooding are wilting again, and may not survive. We've had 18"+ of rain in the last 6 weeks - our average annual rainfall is 34".
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Bea hot pepper (left) and Grandma Roberts Purple Pole bean (right)

All of the tomatoes there are languishing too. Other vegetables have been more tolerant of the wet ground. The Garden Huckleberry, while less robust than I have seen it at Heritage Farm, is still healthy & producing a good set of berries... and apparently the birds have no interest in them. All of the soybeans but one (on the low end) are as healthy as normal. We picked some of the earliest edamame soybeans (Sakamotowase) today, and had them with dinner.
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Garden Huckleberries (left), Tokio Vert soybean (right)

But if there was one good veggie to grow in a wet year, it was Water Spinach (Kang Kong). Hard to believe we just harvested it all last week.
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Cool weather tomorrow, will likely be pickling & freezing all day.

What do you think of the taste of the huckleberries?
You grow martynia? ! Wow! Taste like okra?

 

[Zeedman]

What do you think of the taste of the huckleberries?
You grow martynia? ! Wow! Taste like okra?

Haven't tasted the Garden Huckleberries yet; I'll harvest those in September, unless I see signs of deterioration. So far, it appears the ripe berries hold very well on the plant. When I first saw this growing on SSE's Heritage Farm, it was September; most of the leaves had fallen, and the huge clusters of shiny black berries were clearly visible on the bare branches. It was an impressive sight.

My Martynia is a Native American cultivar of Proboscidea parviflora. The reason I first tried it was that I read its young pods were used similar to okra. That is true - to a point. You have to pick the pods very young, because they quickly develop tough internal fibers. The texture is okra-like, and slightly bitter. The flowers resemble snap dragons or foxglove, and are rather pretty.

Martynia is not a plant for those faint of heart, or olfactory sensitive... the plant gives off an obnoxious smell during hot days. And in the process of harvesting the pods, your hands will get coated with the oily, smelly substance that exudes from sticky hairs covering all surfaces of the plant. You do NOT want this next to a garden path!!! I only allow it to grow in the "anti-social corner", along with garbanzos & Litchi tomatoes. I grow it mainly for the large hard, curving, sharp-ended seed pods for which it is named "Devil's Claw". For a plant native to the U.S. desert Southwest, it is surprisingly well adapted to Wisconsin climate. The seed survives & volunteers after our winters, and flowers amazingly quickly - 30 days after germination.

 

[seedcorn]

Not @Zeedman , what I remember was they were awful tasting. So much so that birds wouldn’t eat them. I saw on Internet recipes how to fix them-sounds like if not prepared ahead of time correctly, I’ll experience the same thing I did as a kid. I do remember not to pick till after a frost.

 

[Prairie Rose]

I started my winter tomatoes in the aerogarden today, and made an attack plan for getting the outside gardens back under control now that it is cooler. I hate to say it, but I have...nothing in the garden this year. It's so overgrown with volunteer morning glories (and, of course, bindweed) that I couldn't get to what I did have planted to care for it.

I'm tempted to take a weed torch to all of it, then cover it in plastic for the months of september and october to get what solarizing effects that I can before it gets cold. I know bindweed and morning glories are a sign of soil compaction and my best tool to deal with that is time and letting things grow to help loosen the soil and plenty of compost, but it feels like I am going backwards. Even in the long days of summer I am still working from dawn to dusk, and it only takes a few days of that to get behind on the bindweed control. I have been working 60+ hours since march of last year...I still want to garden, but I'm really struggling with how to make it all work.

 

[Phaedra]

I started my winter tomatoes in the aerogarden today, and made an attack plan for getting the outside gardens back under control now that it is cooler. I hate to say it, but I have...nothing in the garden this year. It's so overgrown with volunteer morning glories (and, of course, bindweed) that I couldn't get to what I did have planted to care for it.

I'm tempted to take a weed torch to all of it, then cover it in plastic for the months of september and october to get what solarizing effects that I can before it gets cold. I know bindweed and morning glories are a sign of soil compaction and my best tool to deal with that is time and letting things grow to help loosen the soil and plenty of compost, but it feels like I am going backwards. Even in the long days of summer I am still working from dawn to dusk, and it only takes a few days of that to get behind on the bindweed control. I have been working 60+ hours since march of last year...I still want to garden, but I'm really struggling with how to make it all work.

Do you consider to use cardboard to block light that is necessary for them to grow? Basically I am trying Charles Dowding's no dig method (cardboard+compost mulch), and he mentioned bindweed in this video.

 

[Marie2020]

Pulled out all my broccoli and gave the Caterpillars to my chicken. I won't be protecting butterflies ever again

 

[Phaedra]

Pulled out all my broccoli and gave the Caterpillars to my chicken. I won't be protect butterflies ever again

My broccoli are all harvested before Caterpillars arrive, but cabbages not, so....many of them become "treasure boxes" for my chickens - see who will find the "treasure (worm)"~