Ridiculous
It seems like every year there is a plant or two that produce so far beyond normal that they can be labeled “ridiculous”.
I’ve had the pleasure of documenting 10′ sunflowers and 7 foot jalapeno plants previously and was wondering what 2012’s mutant surprise might be.
I think I have my answer; it looks like basil will be my freak plant this year.
Not one plant, but one bed of plants, 3 or 4 types actually. A healthy dose of composted manure in the bed and a consistent drip irrigation undoubtedly contributed, as did proper pruning/harvesting. Any flower buds on the sweet basil get nipped off every few days and harvests from the top down produce prolific branching. As for the Thai, I mainly grow it for the color and aroma of the flowers (plus the bee bliss it provides); it continues to grow as it flowers (vs bolting and declining/drying out).
This is perhaps 1/4 of the total in the garden and I share, so don’t be shy if you are local and would like some.
Pesto anyone?
(Front right is Thai, left is Genovese, tallest (I think) is large leaf Italian. .
Time to Make the Donuts
Does anyone else remember the exhausted but dedicated Dunkin Donuts man from 30 years ago?
I’ll admit that right now I’m tired and actually somewhat relieved when I spot a thieving squirrel running the fence with a Roma snatched from the one of the few remaining plants.
Don’t take this the wrong way; we really do enjoy the fresh harvest we’ve been consuming every day of the last few months. However, the 2/3s of each day’s harvest that we don’t eat is what is wearing me out.
Picking, cooking, blending, blanching, canning, freezing- almost every evening lately has involved at least half of these activities. Over the winter and into spring I know I’ll be glad for the August evenings and weekends spent running between the garden and the ,but….
Well, enough said.
Maybe I break the streak and don’t expand production significantly in 2013; maybe I even throttle it back a little, with the tomatoes.at the very least 🙂
Actually when you push things like this you develop systems to juggle things more efficiently.
My “Time to Make the Donuts” zombie walks typically go something like this:
Cut the okra every day for a steady daily harvest (most of which is roasted and eaten right away). Okra harvest is a good warm up even with just a dozen plants; you get to stand up straight and snip at eye level in August but is it hot and itchy just the same.
Harvest Tomatoes en mass every 3 days or so, one night cook them down whole (either in a pot or roast), refrigerate overnight, then mill and finish cooking/canning sauce, paste or soup the next night.
Once or twice a week slice them in half and oven dry 3 or 4 trays overnight at 190 degrees and freeze in the morning.
Pick snap beans one night, limas the next, take a day off and repeat. Thank mrs cohutt for shelling the limas.
It’s hot work and I’m outside anyway so I’m now cooking the tomatoes down on the gas side burner of the grill.
Pick beans, return the the porch, stir.
Repeat until beans are picked; check for peppers.
Return to the porch, stir.
Get distracted by a dang bug or bird or something and waste 10 minutes trying to get a picture or just watching it.
Come in for a water break.
Find out which tomato was bruised or punctured when you brought it in to ripen 3 days ago (follow your nose to the sun room, one of the 150 out there at any given time has gone stealth-funky) and give it back to nature.
Add a dash of deet to your temples and and chin as the evening drags on and the mosquitoes try to move in for the kill (the downside of drought relief here.)
Take a break and let paranoia force you to check the CDC website AGAIN to see if West Nile has been reported in any contiguous counties yet this summer (it hasn’t, the closest is Cobb county 40 miles south, 2 cases).
Sidebar: Here is where you check if you weren’t familiar –
The Main Centers for Disease Control West Nile Page
The Georgia Human West Nile Case Map by County
Go back out to try and finish a thing or two and listen to the thunder rumbling closer as the sun sets.
Come inside, change out of your sweat soaked clothes. Wipe down and label yesterday evening’s jars of soup and paste.
Bring in the pot of Romas and cool in the sink in ice water before moving it to the fridge for the night.
Look into the pantry to find a spot for yesterday’s work. Discover there isn’t room and leave them on the counter for the elves to put up later.
Scoop a cup of vanilla ice cream and crash into a soft chair on the porch.
Try and type out a blog post that starts out with a whiny pity seeking tone but ends in self satisfied smugness. Recklessly decide it is too damn late to do any serious proofreading of the post.
And remember that nobody ever continues to do anything they really don’t want to do. 😉
Drinking from a Firehose
I’ve been slowly and quite manually “threshing” the stack of rice in Lizzie’s house.
More on the rice later; in the meantime life and more pressing harvests & processing have been standing directly in between me and my rightful claim as the “Rice King” of northwest Georgia.
I found carrots that my garden planning (or lack thereof) had obscured from my view, perhaps planted in the very early spring, or even last winter(?). They are a little knarly but will do well as soup stock components.
Also, a middle of the night monsoon brought a lot of rain over the weekend but also a lot of wind; pepper plants had branches sheared, bean towers pulled hard against their tethers (one has been down twice already, eventually I catch on do something to stabilize them) and tomato cages toppled. This bed of Romas was getting long in the tooth already; the wind actually did me a favor. (The cage has fallen towards the camera from one bed into the next, resting on a tangle of beans and basil.)
Sauces, soups, frozen and oven dried Romas have been the black hole of my “free time” lately; this is among the last of the harvest “peak” for 2012. ( I sure and heck hope so anyway; I have rice to process 😉 .)
That’s all for now; I had to put something up as proof I am still at it……
Rice Harvest Day #3
Time is very tight with garden and work demands, so mostly just pictures:
* The hat is because at least 50% of the people who asked me about the rice suggested I wear one like this; little did they know I actual had one, a for real souvenir from Vietnam.
Rice Harvest Day #1
After some waffling & indecision over the last few days, I decided today that enough of the grain had turned to the “ripe” yellow/brown color to warrant harvest. The subjective call was aided by the fact that every day it seemed that an increasing number amount of the rice was getting consumed by my local colony of house finches or perhaps the wrens or sparrows I’ve seen rolling through the garden form time to time.
First, what is yellow enough to be declared “yellow” and when exactly does the count of these subjectively color coded grains equate to 85% of the total? (This was what was suggested by my developing world rice growing website as the harvest signal.)
Yesterday I observed the following during my “inspection”:
I thought it was on its way but not quite ready.
I had drained the paddy Sunday in order to hasten the harvest and it seemed to contribute to a noticeable difference in the color just a day later:
So I harvested the entire lower paddy.
Details to follow tomorrow.
Water Hyacinth Flower
Wow, I didn’t see this one coming:
(Clic-pic to zoom)
Panorama
I’ve been working to catch up with the tomato processing backlog and haven’t much in the way of garden updates ready.
I did find some time to play around with some of the recent photo-mapping shots and merge a few into one large panorama shot.
(Note to my “low-tech” followers: In order to be able to blow up and navigate this large photo, first click the photo below and allow the picture in the new window to load completely. Once loaded the pointer should show as a “+” magnifying glass; click the picture again and it will instantly pop to full size. Use the up/ down & left/ right arrows on the right side of your keyboard to navigate and control your view.)
Plump Rice
The grain on the stand of rice in the main paddy is gaining in mass and beginning to flop/lean over as a result.
The first two were a little late for good contrast but you get the idea:
Due to my overly ambitious (lack of ) spacing between beds and paddies and such, I will have to put up a temporary retention rope around the rice to keep it more upright.  I had to do this with the asparagus bed last year and it was pretty simple to get in place.
More to follow
Kittehmato II & III
Spend a week away during tomato harvest crunch time and you can be sure you have some picking to do upon your return.
Last week was no exception, even with friends and family making a serious attempt to alleviate the surplus a bit in my absence (with my blessing). Below, a sample of the Sunday morning tomato harvest from the boxwood section of tomatoes (the back section is tonight’s project):
This of course means tomatoes are clustered all over the sun room in baskets and buckets and trays; some of which have also served as a kitteh napping bed from time to time. The result is an increased probability for Kittehmato sightings.
The original Kittehmato post (linked here) was almost two years ago if you missed it.
Today we have not one but two Kittehmato exhibits to share. A bed of tomatoes in a basket, Kittehmato II:
Kittehmato III, after getting up for a while (likely to eat) and then returning to the tomato bed for a second attempt at a complete state of quasi-conscious lethargy:
Odd thing, this large feline aka Monster Baby. Perhaps a maternal instinct coming out? 😉
Behind cohutt's fence 