Quien es mas Macho?

Ribbit's zucchini...or.....Loyd Bridges?

Actually, my money's on the two year old, peanut butter face and hands not withstanding, who grabbed it as I walked in the door proclaiming it was her baby and promptly began rocking and singing to it.

Take it away from her. I double dog dare you.

After she pushed it around in her doll stroller, fed it a bottle, gave it a bath and got bored with it, I got it back; it weighed in at 1 lb 12oz, a little over a foot long, and 10 inches around. It just opened yesterday and went berserk with growth over 24 hours. This is the same plant that other monster came from and it's got another waiting to be picked tomorrow. It's probably normal for you who grow zucchini on a regular basis and you're most likely rolling your eyes at me now. That's okay. This sucker can double as a bat! HA!

I love it! Lots of frozen zucchini for me. Woohoo!

The morning comes early. Sweet monstrous zucchini dreams.

Yes, As a Matter of Fact, I CAN!

**Posting this earlier than I normally do. Scroll down if you missed the Death Day entry.**

Before I let you know what I can do, there's something else I'd like to share with you. As if I haven't mentioned Kate from Gardening Without Skills every day this week (I love her blog), I need to mention her again! She ran a drawing for the cutest little garden gnome and I am the lucky recipient! I'm just stupid giddy. He'll have a home with the two frogs we just bought on Monday and be well taken care of. Thanks Kate!
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I saw a very basic BWB at the store this weekend and it's been gnawing at me since. Last night I broke down and purchased it. I figured if it didn't work, I would only be out $20 so it was worth it. Ladies and gentlemen, I can can! Well, kind of. We have a glass top stove. I'm thinking I'll have to hook up the turkey fryer and do it on that burner, but we'll see.

Before we broke out the canner, we made some freezer jam. Between finding the blackberry patch and watching EG's film of his patch, the boy had his mind set on some blackberry jam. I couldn't get my brave up to go in our patch, so I took the easy way out and bought frozen mixed berries. The boy mixed it up well.

When I was washing some dishes, I heard smacking...something was afoot. The picture is blurry because I grabbed the camera and snapped the picture as I was turning around in order to catch him red handed.

The jar we kept out is half gone already. Oh my goodness is it good. I know it's only frozen berries, but it's a bit chunky and sooooo good.

Then, we busted out the BWB and made my first batch of canned pickles. I have made refrigerator ones before, but never canned them for shelf storage. It took 1.5 hours for that stove to boil the water (more reason to use the turkey fryer), but I did it. I took the jars from the canner and set them on a towel to cool while I finished last night's blog entry. It was quiet, everyone else had gone to be, when all of a sudden, I heard a POP! Then there was another. It took me a bit to realize, the cans were sealing! I had done it. I was crazy happy.

But I was thinking. All recipes I've found are for a crazy number of tomatoes, peppers, whatever they are. What if I only want to do a couple of pints of something at a time? Do you have any recipes for that?

June 2009: Garden Blogger's Death Day

Kate and Crew at Gardening Without Skills has deemed the last day of each month as a time to recognize the things that have not gone so well during the month. I posted to KandC earlier that I ripped out my cucumbers on the side yard earlier this week, but forgot to take pictures. No blog about Death Day for me.

I spoke too soon.

I left the house this morning at 9:00AM, arrived back at around 12:00 and found this:

The zucchini bush had completely fallen over. Need another look?

My first thought was SVB. I had been so diligent and careful, but those eggs are hard to find. Writing off the plant instantaneously, I was disappointed as it was showing progress after not producing anything for a week, but I was conflicted because now I had something to share for Garden Blogger's Death Day. WOOHOO!! No wait...SHOOT, I liked that plant.

I went down there and couldn't find any sign of SVB damage anywhere. The stems of the plant weren't limp either. Aha! This was the same plant that got tipped over about a month ago. I leaned the plant up, watched it fall over and realized the new growth was most likely causing it to be top heavy. Eh, it made the zucchinis on the underside easier to cut off. I propped it back up, hoping I was right in it not being SVB damage and that it will start to grow straight like it did last time it tipped over.

I still needed death, so I got these pictures of the hanging plants that I gave up on a long time ago.

The boy's lavender will get transplanted in there tomorrow. The beans needed picking one last time, but it seemed each time I went to pick a bean, the entire plant came with it. Since this was the last picking I'd get out of them anyway, out they came!
That leaves more bare spots in the garden. I'm seriously considering just leaving it unplanted for fall. I don't know what I could put there that would mature in a month during this heat anyway.

Not all was doom and gloom; here's the harvest for today:

Tomorrow we're going to have to stew down some tomatoes.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Welcome and Unwelcomed Garden Guests

Hi, Hidinginmygarden!! Good to see you.

Seemingly the only good thing about July in Georgia is that the garden centers and craft stores start to freak out about their summer garden inventory and start marking everything down. We went to a craft store today to buy a dream catcher kit for the boy (he wanted one, but please remind me how spatially inept I am if I try to make another), and he spotted these frogs on 70% clearance. Who could resist!?

I couldn't, that's for sure. This dude takes up an entire SQFT, but he's worth it next to the sprawling cantaloupe.
This guy had a totally different feel, so I put him in the other corner yard with the sweet potatoes and butternut squash. Now that I look at him, I'll need to either put a drainage hole in the bottom or just dump him out when it rains.

Now I need to find one more to put in the side yard beds. They had additional ones, but the girl got tired of the "put your hands in your pockets" game and started touching things, so we left.

I found this little guy below on a zucchini leaf which I thought was rather odd. He was just sitting there, obviously not feeling well. Sure enough, a breeze came by, threw him off balance, and he fell down buzzing all the way, but not gaining flight. I haven't sprayed the garden with anything in the last month and a half or more, but I suppose even these guys have a life span. He did his fair share of pollinating. Thank you, Mr. Bee.

This next MammaJamma was cordially invited to leave at her earliest convenience. I've only seen one of these before in my life, but it was at the old house. She was in the corner of the gate door by the new corner yard. I found her when I was going to fetch the hose to water. I know EG posted tons of pictures of the black widow spiders he found last year, but it really makes me pause when I go digging around in those bush beans or zucchini bushes and the like.

She was a problem, yes, and I don't know what the tan thing is next to her, but that gargantuan, creme egg sac in the background was my real concern. Nope. No can do. The man came home and promptly introduced her and the egg sac to his hammer. It was beautiful carnage.

Now, I know spiders have their place in nature and I've never killed one in my garden for that reason, but there are spiders and there are spiders. My children play back there and I won't chance them picking up one of these lovely ladies while trying to coerce her into their bug box. Other spiders can stay. She will go.

Otherwise in the garden, we took the hanging beans and cucumbers which didn't do anything at all worth while out of the baskets and hung some wave petunias instead. Very pretty. The boy wants to plant lavender so badly because he thinks it smells like Mommy's lipstick, so we might go to find some later tonight, but I think we're out of season.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

For Dan: In Honor of Mister Early

Some of the most amazing garden photography I've seen have come from Dan at his Urban Veggie Garden Blog. Dan lives in Canada, and although his growing seasons are different from mine, he did have the promise of an early beautiful tomato and he chronicled the growth of Mister Early Tomato lovingly. Sadly, some time during the night, someone or might I say, something, skulked into his garden absconded with Mr. Early. He wasn't nibbled on, he wasn't damaged; Mister Early was totally and completely gone, clear down to his stem.

It's just not fair. Therefore, Dan, although you won't get your own early tomato to eat, please accept this gift of virtual tomatoes in tribute to Mister Early. Dan, whereas you might not get to savor your own early tomato, maybe your virtual early harvest can be bountiful.
The morning comes early, but it can wait until you check out Dan's photography. Sweet gardening dreams.

A Quiz, the End, and Would That Be a Cucumber in Your Pocket?

Hodgepodge for today, my friends. This is POST #2 for this same day, so scroll down for POST #1.

My cousin, Emily, sent me a fantastic link from the New York Times about famous avid gardeners of the past. The article is very funny and if you look at the right side bar, there's additional blogs written for the newspaper about gardening. Here's the LINK. It's titled "Stalin's Flower Garden." Take the quiz before you cheat and peak at the answers and let me know how many you got correct because I'm feeling pretty stupid about now. :)

The garden here seems to be slowing, if not winding down. There are no new blossoms on the peppers, beans, cucumbers or eggplants for some time now, and we've already discussed the squash issue today. A week ago, the beans in the corner yard looked like this:

I guarantee they look much worse for wear now. As a matter of fact, I pulled out the purple beans in the side yard today. They had stopped producing some time ago, but I never had the chance to pull them out until today. That side box of beans was planted along side some "bush" cucumbers and a little yellow pear tomato. When I pulled out the beans, look what I found hiding in the foliage!!
HOLY GOODNESS they were huge! Together, they weighed in at over 1.5 lbs. Don't know if they'd taste good at all. Most likely they'll be seedy and bitter, but they're fun to look at. Kind of like a coffee table book, a conversation started if you will. OK, maybe not, but here's a picture of the rest of the buggers off the same vine that I found hidden in the beans:
Ridiculous, right? I just gave away several to one neighbor, then I left a surprise cucumbergram for another neighbor; yesterday I gave another lady four of them and now I've got four more to add to the three in the fridge, granted these may not be edible, though. I keep chanting to myself "this is a good problem to have, this is a good problem to have" kind of like the little engine that could. It's actually a FANTASTIC problem to have, and I can't be happier. I'd make more pickles, but honestly, we've never touched the ones we've made. We're not pickle eaters, but I do love a good cucumber sandwich. I have some beans and a squash to fetch from the garden today, but there's a few assassin bugs holding court around there and a very jealous bee hanging around the squash.

I've realized in typing this I have multiple questions for you, only one of which I've asked outright.

1) if you choose to take the quiz, let me know how you do.

2) Should I plant something where those purple beans were or let it be until the fall plantings?

3) Have any good cucumber recipes that don't include pickling?

DANG, here I go again. Should have broken this post up into several. Tomorrow I'll try to get pictures of the garden again.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

The Zucchini's Being Squashed.

Nothing wants to be outside in 97 degrees with high humidity. Not even the plants. We've been above 90 all week with the heat index always being a few degrees over the actual. It's not pleasant.

About a week ago, I posted about my zucchini that seems to have stopped producing. It produced like gangbusters for weeks on end and then it didn't even put out male flowers for several days, which is unusual.

I thought for a time that the bush has reached the end of it's time. Then again, I haven't fertilized the garden all season, so that could have quite a bit to do with it as well, but things were looking so good for so long, I didn't see the need to. Then, I found this much farther down the main stem:

It seems like it just moved the new blossoms from the bottom to the top of the leading stem (term?). There aren't as many blooms, but it's still putting out one every third or fourth day. Not the 2-3 a day we had earlier, but still nice. The bushes are a little worse for wear and you can see the start of some powdery mildew on some of the leaves. I don't think much is going to go on here in July. For the most part, it may be the okra and sweet potato's time to shine. I can't believe I may actually need to start planning the fall garden already! More on that tomorrow....or maybe tonight since I missed a post last night. The niece and nephew were over to spend the night. It was a house of four kids under 6 yrs old. How do people do it!? At least it only took about an hour and a half for them to all fall asleep. I stayed with them this time until they all fell asleep being that the last time we woke up at 1:00AM to hear them still playing. It terrified me that we were sound asleep while they were still awake! They're playing well right now, and I've stalled them as long as I can. I'm going to run and make some breakfast.

The morning sure was early today.