The Great Grape Harvest of 2010

August 17, 2010 at 12:39 am (Fruits, Kids and Gardens, Lazy Gardening)

We just harvested our first official grape harvest. Boy oh boy are we proud! As you can see the darling little things fill a dinner plate. With luck, we might get a half cup of juice out of them!

All kidding aside, I was still pleased as punch over the grapes, considering they were volunteers. Yes, they are full of seeds and yes, they are tiny, but we have great hopes for their future.

Honestly, I don’t know a thing about grapes and what to do to make them…ahem…bigger. But I have a few months to figure that out. Meanwhile we have also planted two seedless Pink Reliant varieties in the same area. The seeded grapes were an accidental purchase at HyVee from about four years ago. I saw these enormous dark purple grapes and bought them, not realizing they had seeds. This is why we have grapes in our yard, since half of that bag of grapes remained uneaten and eventually ended up in the compost!

Now if we can increase the grape size, we could then consider making the grapes into jelly,  juice, or even wine or mead at some point in the future. Until then, well, I’ll just enjoy these tiny little grapes. The Princess has been eating away at them, wincing at their sourness, spitting out the seeds, rinse and repeat.


Leave a Comment

Millions of Peaches…Peaches for Me

July 10, 2010 at 5:49 pm (Fruits)

Millions of peaches, peaches for free…

Okay, maybe not a million peaches. But how about 41 pounds of peaches (gathered today)?

I opened up the Big Ball Book of Preserving and found…20 plus recipes for preserving peaches. I guess we will be busy today!

I’ve called in reinforcements…Mom will be here in an hour to help!

Leave a Comment

100 Fruit Trees

June 19, 2010 at 4:45 pm (Fruits)

No, no, no…not all of them in MY yard!

I was just watching the Victory Garden on PBS and they mentioned that New York City rolled out “millontreesNYC” with the focus on planting 1 million new trees by 2017. They are far ahead of goal, today’s tally was 360,264. That’s a lot of trees!

All I could think of, as they planted one and included all of the necessary steps, was wondering how many (if any) of those trees would be fruit or nut trees?

Look I’m all for trees. They are WONDERFUL. They provide shade, they clean our air and reduce the barrenness of the landscape…truly I do love them. But why, oh WHY is it that everyone wants to plant a tree that does nothing but these things? Why not that added benefit of food too?

Fruit trees could feed the homeless.That’s not such a bad problem here in KC, although I’ve noticed an uptick since the weather warmed. In warmer climates, having fruit trees in parks and public spaces could work out quite well. It could help supplement the diet of homeless or low income people, as well as educate children and other folk.

Our local Wal-Mart planted an apple tree (to my great delight) and the past three years I’ve seen apples on it every year. They get nice and big and then suddenly they are gone, picked by some enterprising soul, no doubt about that.

Want a big tree that will provide plenty of shade? Plant a walnut.

Do you have a small yard and not a lot of space? Plant a dwarf peach, apple, nectarine for apricot tree. They won’t grow much taller than fifteen feet and don’t take over the yard.

Ready to make your own cherry jam, cherry cobbler, cherry ice cream or cherry lemonade? Plant two cherry trees for optimum pollination and production and prepare to be blown away. I harvested 21.5 pounds of cherry from my one sour cherry tree this year. Amazing!

For those of you who are intimidated by the idea of how to care for a fruit tree, I totally understand. I had the same concerns myself once. Here are a couple of things I learned along the way:

  • Fertilize annually
  • Don’t over-mulch (this can cause the tree to rot)
  • Use an organic pesticide spray first chance in the spring, once more around 4th of July and again in late October/November range.
  • Don’t allow the branches to become overburdened, especially in young trees. Pick off some of the fruits to reduce the weight strain on the branches.
  • Share the bounty!

So let New York have their one million trees and good for them. I’m challenging all of my readers to plant 100 fruit trees in the next year.

And speaking of fruit…

Organic Strawberry jam - rolling out next year!

A preview of items we hope to sell next year. Here is a close-up of the strawberry jam…

The label for next year's jam

We don’t have tons of it this year, but we will next year with all of the strawberry bed expansions!

Leave a Comment

Bring On the Strawberries…and Whole Yard Gardening!

June 18, 2010 at 11:48 pm (Fruits, Kids and Gardens, Planning, Vegetables)

So I’ve been keeping a log of all of the produce for this year. The strawberries weighed in at 29.75 pounds. Rather impressive. But I want MORE. See I figure if I can triple the strawberry production for next year then I will definitely have enough to sell at the local farmer’s markets. Not to mention it means less lawn to mow and weed whack!

So yesterday, today and tomorrow I’m working on this little project…

Expanding the strawberry bed

Along the main pathway to the raised bed garden in our backyard I planted a line of strawberry plants last year. They took off and were my biggest producers this spring. Well, I’m doubling the width of the bed from one foot to two foot wide. This means a total of about 30 make that 40 square feet of additional strawberry plants and that’s just where I’m starting. The front yard will be next. I’m thinking of possibly planting border rows along the property line on each side in the front.

So if fences make good neighbors…a border of strawberries must make for lots of neighborly jam! Before I start the strawberry border I will probably encircle the base of the peach and pawpaw trees with the strawberry plants and expand from there.

The first step is removing the grass and putting it over here where the weeds have grown and the ground is uneven…

Square foot sod pieces are relocated to base of tepee

Then it’s simply a matter of throwing some potting soil or humus/manure/peat moss mixture and sticking the runners in. Look for nodes that have sprouted white roots. I haven’t even made it to the 4×8 planter to see what nodes are available there. All of the area planted so far came from the inside of the walkway where we don’t want the plants getting stepped on or crushed.

"Water us...please!"

It’s supposed to be torrential rains tonight. Do I dare believe it will come true?

Here’s some other pictures of the garden. I’d say that our horseradish is definitely healthy…

Gorgeous and healthy horseradish

A pensive moment in the tepee…the beans sure are growing well on it…

Emily checks out the pole beans

I’ve always heard it said that your corn should be knee-high by the 4th of July. Ours definitely qualifies and then some. The tallest of it is way past my waist now…

Corn in the far bed

Corn is approx. 4' tall now

Make a stop by Belton Community Days tomorrow. I’ll be doing a presentation on “Whole Yard Gardening” for the Cass County Sustainability Committee on Main Street at 5pm. Hope to see you there!

That’s it for now. I’ve got to go dig up the potatoes. The greenery died back, not sure if I’ve got potatoes in there to harvest or not!

Leave a Comment

My First Cherry Cobbler

June 12, 2010 at 11:13 pm (Fruits, Recipes)

All in all, we have harvested over fifteen pounds of sour cherries from our cherry tree. After hours and hours of pitting, I’m truly relieved the tree doesn’t produce like this all year. Dave has made most of it into jam, which is incredibly tasty, but I kept having visions of a cherry cobbler fresh from the oven. Having never made one before slowed me down for a couple of days. I guess I was having a crisis of confidence.

Yes, it’s true. I somehow made it to 40 years of age without ever baking a cherry cobbler. After thinking about it for several days I came to a realization…if I screwed it up, it wasn’t so bad. After all, I hadn’t paid any money for the cherries, so I’d only be out a few basic ingredients if it didn’t turn out right. So today was the day to try one. And wow, you know, I think it turned out just fine.

Unfortunately, my dear husband has informed me he does not like cherries in this form.

Say what?!

Okay, well, not to worry. I’ve called in reinforcements.

“Hi Mom. Would you like to come to dinner? I’m thinking of making eggplant parmesan and there’s some honey lavender ice cream left over from class and I just made my first cherry cobbler.”

“I’ll be there.” (And she sounded excited!)

I guess Mom really likes cherry cobbler.

Cherry Cobbler - mmmmm!

I just pulled it out of the oven. I haven’t tried it yet but…mmmm…it sure smells good!

As I walked by the butcher block I noticed that the bunch of bananas I had left to ripen were…well…RIPE. Almost too much so. Time for banana bread. Heck, let’s make that chocolate banana bread.

I put the two loaves in the oven…

Everything is made better by adding chocolate!

And in another hour we had piping hot, ever so yummy, chocolate and banana goodness. The secret to moist perfection is the addition of sour cream:

Banana chocolate goodness

I added a touch of Mexican hot chocolate for an extra kick. It tastes GREAT! Here’s Dave having a bite or two…

"All Mine!"

After all this, I’m not sure I’m up to making the Eggplant Parmesan! But it is soooo good, and everyone is looking forward to it, even Emily. I guess I’d best get to work!

p.s. We’ve harvested 55.5 pounds of produce out of our yard so far this year!

p.p.s. Want to have my posts automatically uploaded via your email? Click on RSS feed!

p.p.p.s. Uhhh…WHAT happened to the cobbler?

Who's Been Eating My Cobbler!!!!

Leave a Comment

Two weeks, and nearly 41 pounds of produce

June 1, 2010 at 10:25 pm (Companion Planting, Fruits)

In just two weeks of keeping track, I’ve weighed and logged in 40.75 pounds of asparagus, strawberries, and cherries. Amazing what a little bit of work in the garden can yield.

It looks as though my dear husband will be canning a double-batch of cherry preserves tonight. I just spent 45 minutes pitting, and probably have another hour or two to go, to finish pitting the total 5.5 pounds I have picked yesterday and today. It looks as if I finished picking just in time…the rain rolled in heavy a few minutes ago, with some hail to spice it up some.

This morning I wandered about and took some photographs of how things are progressing. Let me take you on a tour…

Look at all those cherries!

The cherry tree before I got to picking this morning.

Heirloom greens

I bought most of my seeds this year from Baker Heirloom seeds which is based in Mansfield, Missouri (home of Laura Ingalls Wilder). They have just expanded to include a location in Petaluma, California in an old historic bank building. So cool! On Saturday, right after I take a free rain garden class at Three Trails Community Center I’m heading over to 36th and Roanoke to take a “Oh! Those Glorious Greens!” cooking class. Quite timely, if I do say so myself.

Our backyard - June 1st

You know you are home when you look around and there is nowhere you would rather be. That’s how I feel in my backyard.

Horseradish in the front, zucchini and onions towards the back

It looks like the zucchini is setting its first blooms. That means lots and lots of baking ahead of us! My hands down favorite is zucchini nut bread. But I’m sure we will also saute and bake it as well…maybe even add it to salad. Ummm…I’m getting hungry!

Play "I Spy" in our asparagus bed

What will you find there? Lamb’s quarters? Thyme? Lettuce? All of the above and more…including asparagus.

Hoping for grapes this year

These grapes showed up a few years ago after we discarded some seeded black globe grapes in the compost. This year I bought three pink Reliance seedless grapes as well. If nothing else, I might have to make dolma (stuffed grape leaves) this year. Why let them go to waste?

Asian pear tree with pear buds

These won’t be ready to eat until August or maybe September. But I’m truly looking forward to it. Asian pears are so crisp and sweet and crunchy, they might as well be apples. Not ooshy-gooshy at all. I’ve never liked pears for the texture issues alone, but these babies trump all. And speaking of trumping all…what could be better than picking and eating it right there in the garden? These babies never make it inside our house!

Peas climbing the twig weave trellis

It won’t be long and I will be harvesting green peas and snow peas as well. All legumes are great nitrogen-fixers. This means they enrich the soil for other plants. Plant some today!

The mint has overgrown the meter!

I really hope the meter reader is not annoyed with us about this. The up side is that the mint is very fragrant. He (or she) will get a bouquet of minty goodness when they lean in to read the meter.

Clematis in peach tree

The Nelly Moser clematis is blooming furiously in the peach tree. I’ve had this peach tree about seven years now. It’s had some hard times, I didn’t know much about caring for fruit trees at first and we let it get too overloaded with fruit and lost a major limb a couple of years back. It is set to pop with tons of fruit again this year and I have been pinching off some of the smaller fruit buds in order to ensure the tree won’t be too overburdened with fruit.

Mmmm…peach preserves, peach pie, peach cobbler…

Pickling cukes are sprouting

And finally, in the same beds as the peas are the pickling cukes (companion planting technique). It looks like we will be busy pickling in 2-3 more weeks!

That’s all for now, folks. I hope you enjoyed the tour. Come and see me real soon!

Leave a Comment

2 1/2 pounds of sour cherries…now what?!

May 29, 2010 at 3:45 pm (Fruits)

I’ve been watching our cherry tree with growing excitement. Two years ago, we had a couple of clumps of tiny red cherries fall down onto the ground. This, after eight years of zero fruit. I was sure the tree was an ornamental!

Then last year I noticed small bunches at strategic spots on the tree. Still it was far from being productive. And then came this spring and the tree was covered with fragrant blossoms and innumerable bees hovered around it for days. When the blossoms dropped off and the tiny cherries began to form, I could not believe my eyes. They were everywhere!

Today I got out the ladder and picked as many as I could reach. I could only manage to harvest perhaps 1/8 of what the tree has to offer. Many are still green, but most are far out of reach. Despite this, I managed to pull in a whopping 2 1/2 pounds of cherries.

I have been told by someone familiar with cherry trees that the cherries will come in much larger next year. For now they are tiny things, the size of garbanzo beans or a little smaller.

Here’s the funny part…

I have 2 1/2 pounds of sour cherries and no idea what to do with them. How do I get the pits out? How do I make them into cherry pie? Or fritters? Or cobbler? What do I do now????!!!!

Leave a Comment

Bury Me Near the Strawberries

May 25, 2010 at 7:12 pm (Fruits)

But give it 40 or 50 more years – I’m not kicking off anytime soon.

This morning I added a spreadsheet to my Excel file “Yard Diagrams” and called it ‘2010 Harvest Tally.’ I’ll be keeping track through the year of what we pull out and how much it weighs. Just wait until I have peaches and apples, green beans, peas, lettuce, corn and more popping out of there!

I know I’m not at the level of the Dervaes family (check them out at urbanhomestead.org) but I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve managed to pull out of my little 1/3 acre so far this year considering how miserably cold the weather has been.Now it is hot, 82 degrees and the cold is a distant memory.

To date, I have harvested:

  • 1.5 pounds of asparagus
  • 19.5 pounds of strawberries

Wow…21 pounds. And that isn’t counting fresh herbs or the strawberries and tender asparagus shoots that never make it to the kitchen to be weighed.

What it tells me is that we can become self-sufficient in many ways. No, I’m not planning on planting a wheat field anytime soon, or moving in the cows and goats, but I clearly see a vision of how we could all be with just a few hours of work in the garden each week. It’s worth considering!

Leave a Comment

Strawberries!!!!

May 18, 2010 at 11:09 pm (Fruits, Lazy Gardening)

Wow. I just did the first run through of strawberries. The yield? THREE POUNDS. I figure we have another twelve still on the vine that will mature in the next few days. I guess I’ll be making jam soon.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit it…but I will…in the past hour the three of us have managed to consume about 2/3 of them. Dipped in ultra-fine baker’s sugar and…[long luxurious sigh] dipped in milk chocolate. I’m in strawberry heaven!

Last July I woke up with a start and realized I knew exactly how to get out of weed whacking. As soon as it was light out (yes, I get up at insanely early hours) I got to work pulling out all of the grass along the border of a walkway…20 feet in length.

I then took all of the strawberry plants I had propagated from the runners that escaped the raised strawberry bed and planted them along the walkway.

The plants have taken off. They now look like this…

Gorgeous! And full of fruit.

We held our second annual garden party this past Saturday. The weather wasn’t very conducive – it rained and was in the 40’s. Brrrr! One of our guests pointed to the border of strawberries and asked, “How do you keep them from going into the grass?”

“Oh, I hope they do,” I replied, “They can take over the lawn with my blessing. What good is grass anyway? It isn’t as if you can eat it!”

In a couple of years we will have at least one hundred more feet of border consisting of strawberries. Imagine what my daily strawberry yields will be then!

Leave a Comment