Too Many Tomatoes

Our garden has done very well this year.

His Majesty's Raised Garden Beds

 

There is still no fence around it to keep the deer and other critters out, so we haven't planted anything yet. 

We have seeds, though. I guess they will make it into the dirt eventually!

My Husband's Garden

My husband came home from the dentist and announced he was going through with his plans to create raised garden beds.

He's been talking about this for a few weeks; he went to an auction with a friend who has raised garden beds and it's all he's talked about since.

The more he's talked, the more he's convinced himself that nice fresh garden tomatoes and the aroma of zucchini bread baking in the kitchen is all it will take to bring his summer to perfection.

I tried to talk him out of it. We haven't had a garden for four years and haven't had one that did well for much longer. I don't do well in the heat, I can't take the sun, and I'm allergic to everything outside. Plus, I have chronic pain and bending over to pull weeds or pick vegetables aggravates that.

"You'll thank me this summer when you're eating on that zucchini bread!" he exclaimed after he came home this morning with boards from Lowes.

"Oh right. I'll be so grateful because I was out in the early morning heat to weed, and then out in the heat again to pick the zucchini, and then I get to stand over a hot oven and cook that bread. Yeah, I'll be thanking you alright," I replied.

I don't mind gardening but I am turning 60 in June. I don't want to spend the summer I turn 60 working in a garden. I spent the summer I turned 50 in bed recovering from that stupid gallbladder surgery that left me bent over double and barely able to function. And now I'm supposed to spend the summer I turn 60 making zucchini bread?

Gadzooks. That was not on my Bingo card until he started talking about it. I know my man, and once he gets something in his head, that's it. He's bought the boards and he will build the garden. Nothing I say is going to make a difference.

Everybody who reads this knows I hate to cook. And have you seen the price of raisins lately? Who can afford a $6 box of raisins to make zucchini bread? Plus the spices are all sky high, too. So this zucchini bread is going to cost us $500 a loaf by the time he builds these raised beds and redoes the fencing around what used to the be garden.

Because this is all that's left of our former garden:

I can hear him out there sawing and banging away, happy as a pig in a mudhole. I'm supposed to be in here writing checks and paying the bills.

Seems like I get all the bad biscuit jobs around here. Clean the toilets. Pay the bills. Weed the garden whenever he gets it built.

I remember Howard Wallowitz on The Big Bang Theory told Bernadette before they married that she'd have to wash his clothes in special detergent, take him to the dentist, and all this other stuff. She said, "You expect me to have to do all of that?"

He said, "You don't have to do it, you get to do it."

So, I don't have to weed the garden, I get to weed the garden, and bake him his zucchini bread.

Sheesh.

How Does the Garden Grow?

We haven't planted a garden in a few years, but this year, given the pandemic and utter weirdness going on in 2020, we planted a small one.

It's about the size of a pickup truck.

It has zucchini, yellow squash, green beans, peas, cucumbers, and tomatoes in it. The tomatoes are still green.

I froze six quarts of green beans this morning. We've been eating squash for dinner nearly every day. I made two loaves of zucchini bread and froze one of them. I haven't found a way to freeze squash that actually works and I don't can (no pressure cooker), so we just eat squash or give it to my mother-in-law. Sometimes I make a casserole and freeze half of that, but we aren't rolling in enough squash yet for me to consider casseroles.

A very long time ago, we had a huge garden, and I did the canning and freezing and putting stuff up crap. It was incredibly time consuming, and since I generally either worked part-time or full-time and was always in school or sick, it wasn't something high on my list of things I really wanted to do. Not when the Green Giant has cans of beans that taste perfectly fine.

And here's a secret: I hate to cook. I don't mind baking occasionally, but mostly, I find cooking to be the most time-sucking thing I have to do. It's worse than laundry. It's worse than cleaning the toilets, even.

Cooking involves dealing with raw meat. Blech. It involves peeling, dicing, slicing (oh, there goes a piece of a finger - oops), boiling, baking, heating. It means finding the right spices or herbs or whatever. It takes hours of time and it's gone in 20 minutes. Or less. Cooking means having a hot kitchen on a 100 degree day. 

If I never had to cook another meal again, I would be perfectly content. When my husband worked, I ate a lot of Stouffer's meals and sandwiches on the days he was at the fire station. Now he is home every night. He wants a meal.

I'd just as soon have a ham sandwich. I swear, if I lived closer to a K&W Cafeteria, I would order enough from there once a week so all I had to do was reheat and be done with it.

This means I don't eat healthy foods. I know that. The premade meals are full of salt and preservatives and probably do not help my health issues at all. 

I hate cooking so much that I do not care.

My friends think this is crazy. What woman doesn't love to cook? This one. The one who would rather read a book or play the guitar than cook. The one who would rather eat a ham sandwich than cook something. The one who never, ever reads a recipe magazine.

This goes back a long way. One of my friends tried to help me figure it out the other week. "What do you remember from your childhood about dinner?" she asked. She described pleasant meals where her father and mother talked about their days. Leave It To Beaver kind of meals.

"Not anything like that," I said. I won't go into detail, but while I am sure there were occasionally calm family dinners, I can't remember them. 

"Didn't you help your mother in the kitchen?"

"She made me help her when she was punishing me for something," I replied.

Then I recited a story from when I was about 10 years old. My mother worked a full-time job. She came home around 6 p.m. every day. My father's hours varied; he owned his own business and came and went on an irregular schedule. I kept my brother for the two hours after school after I was deemed old enough to do so (I think they call them latch key kids, or did at one time). I was responsible for ensuring we both did our homework, that we hauled in firewood, that we fed the chickens and other birds, and did whatever other chores were required of us, which included gardening in the warmer months.

One evening I had no homework and decided to fix dinner for my mother. I don't recall what I made, but it was edible. I was so pleased with myself for having did this. My mother came in from work, made no comment about the table being set, or dinner being ready. She sat down and ate, and told me to clean up. Finally I couldn't stand it any longer, and said, "Aren't you going to say anything about my fixing dinner?"

"Now you know how I feel," she said. "Nobody ever says thank you. Go wash the dishes."

Wow.

Writing that out and thinking on it, it is no wonder I hate to cook. I doubt "hating to cook" was the lesson she was trying to impart, but that is the one I received, along with the fact that nothing I did was ever going to be right no matter how hard I tried. She was not someone easily pleased.

I'm an old woman now. I take full responsibility for not learning to cook better than I do. I cook well enough to keep us fed, but not well enough to make us healthy, I guess. Otherwise I wouldn't be fat, right?

Right.

I also take responsibility for not learning to like it. Or learning to do it better. It was my responsibility to make it a priority, once I became an adult.

I didn't. And I won't, because I hate to cook.

So there you go. That's how my garden grows. It's a good thing I like squash. (I stir fry it usually. That's easiest.)

Snake Berries

When I was young, my mother would sometimes send my brother and me into the fields to pick wild strawberries.

We were always admonished to watch out for the snake berries.

Snake berries look like strawberries. The biggest difference is that strawberries grow so that the fruit hangs down, while a snake berry grows so that the fruit points up toward the sky.

Mom always said snake berries were poisonous. 

This is actually called Potentilla indica or Duchesnea indica as its scientific name. It is most often called a false strawberry or mock strawberry. I have no idea where my mother learned to call it a snake berry but apparently others do too, as I was able to find this information by typing in that name. It is also sometimes referred to as an Indian strawberry (no clue why).

This berry is not indigenous to the US and apparently was brought into the country from Asia. It's considered an exotic invasive species. It must be hardy since it is all over the place around here.

Apparently it is not poisonous but also not very tasty. Mostly it is considered a weed.

Here are resources:

https://kids.niehs.nih.gov/topics/natural-world/wildlife/plants/false-strawberry/index.htm

https://www.wildernessarena.com/food-water-shelter/food-food-water-shelter/food-procurement/edible-wild-plants/duchesnea-or-indian-strawberry

Goodbye to the Garden

This is all that is left of my garden. Sunflowers and weeds.

I dub this the worst garden we've had in many years, maybe in 32 years. The groundhogs ate everything. I think we managed a few tomatoes and a couple of squash. Everything else did not produce or was eaten by critters.

We had fencing around the garden, which  my husband took down so he could mow over the dismal area.

My suggestion for next year? Raised beds. I'd like for him to take that space, cut it in half, build me two containers that are about waist high, and fill them with dirt. Then I could get out and work in the "garden" without having to bend over and further irritate my health issues.

Will that happen? No. But it is a good idea. If all we want are squash, kale and tomatoes, I think it would work splendidly.

Maybe next year I'll just plant things in containers on the deck, although since the animals eat my deck and the wood on my house, I daresay the veggies would not fare well there, either.

Late Garden Bounty

To my amazement, my garden is still bearing veggies. I picked these over the weekend - tomatoes, a cucumber, and a zucchini. I have never picked a zucchini in October before. Or a cucumber either, for that matter.

Our little patch has done splendidly this year; I wish I had felt like doing more with it for it seems it would have been most productive. I bought seeds early on thinking I would plant again late in the season, but because I have not felt well I did not do what I had intended. Maybe next year - but who knows what will happen with the weather, then?

Hatchlings

The mockingbird nest in the tomato plant now has baby birds!

The nest

A baby bird mouth waiting on mama

Here I am, mama! Feed me! Feed me!

Here's mama (or maybe daddy) but not feeding - getting ready to attack the photographer!

It is very hard to pick tomatoes when a bird is diving at your head.

Adventures in Gardening

My garden so far this year has left me scratching my head.

First, there were the strange squash, one of which you can see on the left there alongside the zucchini in the photo above. I still don't know what they are. I ate one and it had little taste and was rather mealy. I probably won't eat another but I don't know what to do with them.

The next puzzle was the green beans. Last year I accidentally planted pole beans. Pole beans are fine (a) if you like pole beans, which I don't, and (b) you are prepared to grow pole beans. Pole beans have green bean vines that grow like kudzu in that they will take over and wrap themselves around anything near them if you don't have fence or a pole or something to train them along.

So when I purchased seeds I bought bush beans. I also switched brands, having had trouble with seeds last year that did not produce veggies.

My bush beans turned out to be pole beans. Many pole beans. Pole beans that wanted to reach the fence when they were planted in the middle of my little plot. Pole beans that crept into the tomatoes and into the zucchini and then tripped you up when you tried to to walk through the little garden. Pole beans that started bringing down the plastic netting that we used for fence. Pole beans from hell.

This morning, in a fit of pique, I ripped every green bean plant from the garden and tossed them away. What few bush beans were growing were so few in number as to be useless and the pole beans, if that is what they were, were doing nothing but growing vine. It took me an hour but I felt vindicated when they were all hauled to the compost pile.

See hole the pole beans were taking over the tomatoes?

What I am left with now are zucchini, strange squash, and tomatoes. The zucchini are doing well. The tomatoes are starting to ripen.

The zucchini are doing great!

However, one tomato plant has a visitor. Mockingbirds set up housekeeping in the farthest plant from the house.

The nest has at least five blue speckled eggs in it.

So this morning when I resolutely stomped out to rip out bean vines, I found myself being chirped at. And not only by mockingbirds. Not far from the garden a baby finch had either fallen from the nest or was failing its first flying lesson. Its parents were having a fit. When I looked later, though, I could not find the bird and the parents were gone. I hope it flew away.

Meanwhile, the mockingbird watched me from the nearby spruce tree, fluttering occasionally in consternation. I wasn't paying any attention and did not know until I had ripped out the pole beans that there was a nest in the tomato plant. This is because the pole beans were hiding that particular plant.

When I saw there was a nest I went inside and fetched my camera. When I came out I saw the mockingbird fly away.

As I moved toward the nest, momma bird grew a little noisy. When I tried to peer in to get a shot of the eggs, I heard a rustling of wings and the next thing I knew I was ducking, for she was headed straight for my head.

Needless to say, I quickly snapped a picture and moved away. I did not plan to hurt the little eggs; I only wanted to see. But of course momma bird did not know that.

Gardening this year is quite an adventure!

Adventures in Gardening June 2009

Here it is, the last day of June. My flowers and gardening is ongoing. Some plants are in full bloom.

Alas, last night something, I presume a deer, stripped all the leaves and blossoms from one of my roses. It is but a bare stem now.

Marigolds and zinnias, sprouting in May from seeds I planted, disappeared.

This puzzled me until last week when I saw a rabbit nibbling at my newly sprouting sunflowers (planted to make up for the lack of zinnias and marigolds). Apparently my small seedlings made a good salad. I had hoped for a lovely bounty of beautiful colored flowers. I wanted to watch them sway in the breeze and feel their life and color breathe some liveliness back into my soul.

Alas, they are gone. Hopefully netting will keep the critters from the sunflowers.

But my pumpkins I planted about 10 days ago in the flower beds are flourishing (they have fence around them).



And my rescued mums bloomed in the whisky barrel:



My 40 cent geraniums, saved from the clearance bin at Walmart, are thriving.



And the garden is looking pretty good despite its small size.



That's zucchini, watermelon, corn and cucumber visible, with tomato plants and pole beans in the rear. You can't see the bush beans or the kale. Maneuvering in that small space is getting difficult as stuff grows. The best part is there are so many vegetable plants growing in there, the weeds can't find a toe-hold!

Thursday Thirteen

1. We have a small garden, about 10 x 10. It is a summer garden only; there isn't enough room there to plant enough for canning or freezing.

2. This year we planted radishes, kale, green beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers and marigolds.

3. The marigolds help keep away bugs.

4. The plot is very full, with only room for a hoe between rows.

4. The layout is thus: Row 1: radishes and peppers, Row 2: cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini (in hills, actually), Row 3: tomatoes, Row 4: Peas, Row 5: kale, Row 6: marigolds, and down the side in a vertical, green beans.

6. I wanted to make notes so I can have a better crop next year.

7. The marigolds work well next to the kale, and kale works better in rows than it did last year in hills.

8. Don't plant peas in such a small area. They are too much work for too little return. Plant more green beans instead.

9. The radishes did not come up at all and I believe birds ate the seeds. Next year, consider netting not only 8 feet high around the perimeter to keep out deer but also across the top to keep out birds.

10. Begin using Miracle Grow sooner in the year.

11. Make sure to fertilize extensively this fall with natural fertilizer from the pasture (cow poop!)

12. Consider planting broccoli next year instead of radishes.

13. Next year, try watermelon, too, if there is space! (They are $6 in the store!)


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.