garlic press

they don't build 'em like they used to...

this was not the first time this has happened to me.  crappily built press, tough garlic, or bionic grip, i don't know.  there's enough of a stub left that the thing may be salvageable.  we shall see.

fall

out to the garden,
coffee in hand,
deep swallow of hot, brown brew,
deep breath of cool air,
i call to you from the other side of the screen door,
like an excited child,
(and in this moment i am),
it's fall!,
(and in this moment it is),
the first hint of long summer letting go,
i hear you inside shuffling for shoes,
you push through the screen door and step out into the cool, overcast morning,
we stand in the garden,
in the breeze,
listening to the trees sigh

winter squash harvest

staal and i harvested most of the winter squash yesterday morning.  there are still some out on the vines that are close but need a bit more ripening time and some of the plants are actually still blossoming and setting fruit.  i'm not sure if anything will come of the late-set fruits but i'm willing to give them a shot.  it's mid-september and we're still in the 90s so why not?

mature tromboncino marked for seed saving

i picked the acorn squash (there weren't many) a week or two ago as well as some of the sweet dumplings.

acorns

the neat thing about saving seed from winter squash is that you can save seed and still eat the squash---unlike beans where you have to choose between seed saving and eating.

sweet dumpling

these little guys are a decent size for a single serving.

sweet dumplings are a fairly dry-fleshed squash (i like a nice dry, flavorful squash) with good flavor.  i cooked up a couple for dinner about a week ago---quite eatable.

i put the squashes on shelves in the "greenhouse" (i hope to be able to relieve that term of it's quotations in the near future) for curing and storing.  the sweet dumplings and the acorns are good to eat pretty much off the vine but the other varieties need a curing period of 1-2 months to really develop full flavor.  
*a note on curing*  i'm already starting to see winter squash for sale at the store and if i hadn't grown a bunch i'd be tempted to buy some---i've noticed in the past when i've gotten winter squash at this time of year from the store the flavor is a bit disappointing but the ones i've gotten a few months after that taste much better.  their earliness in the market suggests they have not had time to cure and develop good flavor.

they're beautiful---the hard part will be waiting.  in the meantime i'll be keeping busy getting the fall garden going, stockpiling the kerrygold, and looking forward to some serious winter dining.

sweet dumplings and two varieties of kabocha

to my husband, born on this day in the year 1944

i'm not going to make a big fuss over your age,
i'm not going to throw a raucous party with a crowd of congratulatory well-wishers,
there won't be a cake,
or candles to blow out,
or the singing of the birthday song,
we can have a quiet day, love, if that's what you want,
but,
i will tell you i love you,
and in my heart i will celebrate your life,
and the beautiful light it brings to mine,
and, secretly, i'll wish you (at least) 70 more years of health and happiness,
and hope (selfishly) you'll always let me hold your hand along the way

happy birthday, staal.  i love you, madly. 

in the rain

i had my coffee in the rain this morning.  it was a beautiful thing.  

it's been a long, hot stretch of dust and dry weather---i don't know if insects can rejoice but it definitely looked like that's exactly what these guys were doing...

ants drinking raindrops

there were periods of light showers throughout the morning---quite pleasant to garden in the rain.

the perfect morning for transplanting fall greenies

the boy loves snow but he's not a big fan of being rained on...

zane using me for shelter when the rain picked up again

i'm grateful for every drop.

crab spider

this morning, while watering in the kitchen garden, i came upon the biggest crab spider i've ever seen.  she was breakfasting on a hover fly she'd snagged while hanging out on a scarlet runner bean vine.

i don't know if she removed the poor fly's head or if it just came off on its own during the struggle---
if you look to the left in the picture below you can see the disembodied head sitting on the bean vine watching(?) its body being devoured.  gruesome and very neat!

this is why i don't need television.

perennial greens, the kale experiment

i read a book a while back called, Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener's Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles by eric toensmeier and it turned me on to perennial brassicas (kales, collards, etc.) which i didn't know existed---most brassicas are biennials.  i've since acquired some perennial bush kale plants from a seed company i use regularly and a couple of tree collards that i bought as cuttings on ebay (i love ebay for interesting plant material). 

 

tree collards started from cuttings

perennial bush kale, 'kosmic' kale

i read somewhere that biennial kales could be propagated from cuttings so i thought it would be fun to try this year in addition to starting new plants from seed as i usually do.

i've got a few kale plants ('lacinato' and 'russian red') out in the orchard garden that i planted last year so i took some cuttings from them this morning.

last year's planting of kales---this year's mother plants

potting kale cuttings in pumice

i had good luck getting my ebay tree collard cuttings to root in pots of pumice under glass cloches that hold in the humidity so i'm using the same method for the kale cuttings.

 

we'll see how they do.

i'm wondering if the kales in the garden will perennialize---i've read that it's possible.  some of them have already bolted and set seed but they're still putting out new vegetative growth and showing no signs of wanting to bolt again or die.  they're really tough plants and they're getting some thick woody stalks on them.

hefty kale stalk

i particularly like 'lacinato' kale, sometimes called dinosaur kale, it's a beautiful plant, tasty, nutritious, cold and heat tolerant, and stands up to a lot of pest pressure.  

'lacinato' kale in kitchen garden

aphids are the major pest for kale and other brassicas.  my plants have withstood several major aphid infestations (one is currently underway) and they've come through just fine.  occasionally i'll give them a blast with the hose to knock a fair amount of the aphids off but other than that i don't give them any help.

we probably end up eating more aphids than the average american

we've recently had a visit from several cabbage white butterflies so i've been hand picking caterpillars off the kales, collards, and my fall greens seedlings.

the caterpillars don't go to waste...

 

i've purposely left a caterpillar here and there on large, well established plants that can handle the damage.  i figure the cabbage whites have as much right to keep there genes flowing forward as the rest of us.  

caterpillar damage to tree collard leaf

 

it'll be interesting and fun to see how things grow and evolve---will my cuttings take?  will the biennials perennialize?  how big will the tree collards get?  there's always something to learn and new discoveries to be made in the garden---keeps life interesting.