spring 2012

I'm pretty sure the winter of 2011-2012 was the warmest on record.  The average temperature was well above normal, the number of days below freezing was well below normal, and we didn't even try to go up to West Virginia for our annual snowboard trip because they didn't have a winter up there either.  I got to till the garden early this year thanks to global warming, and Lauren and I sowed the spring seeds early in January this year:

The results:
*  Our spinach crop was outstanding.  We ate spinach salads for a month and froze about 8 baggies for later.
*  The beets were underachievers.  I mentioned it in the beet entry, but we only have about 20 beets this year.
*  The lettuce was more sparse than usual.
* The peas seem exactly the same as last year.
*  We planted 1/2 the tomato plants early and they are growing like gangbusters.
* etc.  The roses were fantastic this year, we have an 8 foot tall sunflower plant in the pit now-  its the beginning of May, the fleas and mosquitos are already getting on my nerves.

In conclusion:  The spring crops still matured at about the same time, and I can't really say they were any better off because of the early start.  Watering intervals could have had an impact on lettuce and beet success, but why did the spinach do so well?  The tomatoes that we started early are already several feet tall, covered with blossoms, and some have some little green baby tomatoes forming.  I think the insects could end up being the story of the summer though.

sweet potatoes

Stories may be told for generations about the sweet potatoes of 2011:

Big mamma up there in the pyrex dish beside the wine bottle satisfied the sweet potato portion of 3 casseroles at thanksgiving last year.  The rest of them were pretty healthy-sized too.  We started with 9 little plants, slips, that I bought at Ford's and planted in April.  They overgrew the entire pit by fall, and made for a hell of a harvest in November.  I tried to start a nice fall garden just inside the pit's fence with cabbage, brussels sprouts, and broccoli, but that was a wasted venture as the sweet potatoes covered the entire pit and choked out everything in their way.  A November frost set me to harvesting, and I was amazed at the size and quantity of the bounty.  It was a long, wet fall and the sweet potatoes seemed to like it.  My one complaint would be the sweetness of the potatoes.  I planted beauregards like I always do, but they weren't as sweet as I wanted them to be.  I guess it's kind of like when a watermelon gets too much rain and grows big but doesn't have much taste.  We didn't let that stop us though.  We've been eating these sweet potatoes for the last 6 months.  I like to cut them into chips and bake them with a little cinnamon. I've made sweet potato salad like I would a regular potato salad but it just doesn't have much flavor or "kick."  We gave several to the Hancocks, and both of our families have enjoyed the 2011 bounty of not-so-sweet potatoes.

Peas

Peas:  I was picking and shelling some peas this afternoon with some considerable help from the wife.  We plant the peas first thing in the spring and now it's may 5th and we've harvested a couple of times.  We get the seeds from fords- sugar snaps and snow peas.  I take some of the snow peas out of the package and mix them in with the sugar snaps.  I prefer the sweet peas, but my mom likes the snow peas and their plants are more vigorous and the purple flowers are nicer than the whites of the sugar snaps.
  We have a little wire fence around the pit mainly to keep the dogs out, but it serves nicely as a trellis for the peas in the spring and then beans later in the summer.  I take the little english hoe and make a little rut around the inside of the fence.  I throw the peas out pretty liberally and then cover the furrow back over with the hoe.  After a couple of weeks I thin the plants a little and then I just let them go.  spring 2012 has been pretty warm so the peas got off to a good start this year.  We've got them shelled and sitting in the fridge waiting for us to figure out what to do with them.

Why I wish I was retired

I woke up this morning with the garden on my mind.  I've got some extra incentive to get things nice because Lauren and I are taking engagement pictures here sunday.  I was up early so I made some coffee and raisin bran for my boo and me.  I let the dogs out; our two, cash and holden, and the two we're dogsitting while kurt and camille are out of town.  The puppy shat her crate so she got a bath and a cleaned crate.
Got that done before 9 so the rest of the day was divided between chopping wood, weeding the garden, and getting the yard looking nice.  I'm thankful it was a gorgeous summer day.  Last June got so hot that all of my blackberries just turned brown and withered on the bramble.  Today was upper 80's but pleasantly overcast.
I got some work done in the kitchen today too.  The pots and pans cabinet looked like my childhood closet when I was supposed to clean my room.  You had to open the cabinet slowly so you could cradle everything as it fell out.  I got that little project done and I froze some of the zucchini that was taking over our counters according to the directions on http://www.pickyourown.org/freezing_summer_squash.htm.  I loved my squash soup earlier this week so I started to make squash and barley soup.  Luckily for me the barley takes 1.25 hours to cook.  In that hour plus of thinking about the soup I decided that squash and barley sounded nasty so I would get some meat at the store later.  I put the harvest to use as I made some pasta salad for lunch.  I used the beet water from the pickling this weekend to boil the pasta in.  I added banana peppers, squash, onions, and basil from the garden to make a pretty tasty snack.
When Lauren made it back from work we went over to the school to look at the bird that has been causing so much fuss lately.  We picked up a couple beverages from the store and sat on the curb watching the Gastonia anomaly.  Stacy Trull, who works for Gaston County Schools, said he had seen people there in the past couple of days with enormous "gun barrel" binoculars and super zoom cameras.
Just 20 more years and I can make this a daily posting.  For now, I love the summer time.

An exciting day

Reasons why today was a good day:
1.  My last day of work for the year was a coaches golf tournament.  very nice
2.  The blog got its first 2 followers today, and for the first time I didn't account for 100% of the page views.( ok, the followers are my fiance and Susan looking for something to do while they're at work, but since nobody else looks at the page anyway I don't need to say that.)
3.The bird I saw two days ago really was a scissor tailed flycatcher.  I watched it again yesterday and it put on a show.  I tried to take some pictures but they all turned out to be little white specks on top of a fence, a black and white blur with a sky background(still speck sized), or he landed in the tree right beside us and then I got pictures of leaves and a black tail sticking out.
I called my birdiphile uncle robbie when I saw the scissor tail again and confirmed the sighting, but he wasn't there and he hasn't called me back.  I left a message with the bird lady at the schiele museum and she hasn't called me back.  Either she doesn't care, or she gets a dozen calls a day from Gastonia rednecks with outrageous bird sightings and didn't feel like bursting another simple minded bubble.  So.. I posted a message on the Charlotte Audobon Society's listserv and I've excited all sorts of birders who want to know where Forestview High School is all of a sudden.  One fellow told me this would be his "year bird."  I don't tell normal people that I sit around and watch birds all the time because I don't want to seem like too big of a dork, but if you add these folks to the birding spectrum I think I fall in the normal range now.
I'll talk about my squash soup next time I get a chance.

Birds at school

Yesterday was a teacher work day so we played a few holes of golf in the morning and then made it to the school to at least walk through the office and be seen.  The little while that I was there was pretty exciting.  I saw an indigo bunting for the first time in my life at the feeder outside my window.  After that I was glued to the window eager for his return.  While I was watching I saw a bird fly out of the top of the 25 foot oak tree outside of my window with a super long black and white tail.  I immediately thought it was a scissor tailed flycatcher and started checking sites on my computer to see if I could be confused.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu is my favorite place to check on birds.  The good folks at Cornell said the scissor tails were in Oklahoma and surrounding areas.  Gastonia, NC is pretty far on the outskirts of Oklahoma.  Our school is in a pretty rural area with plenty of wide open space that is a good area for flycatchers.  We have eastern kingbirds, bluebirds, and occasionally phoebes, but never scissor tails.  I started doubting myself so I walked down around the baseball field and onto the soccer field in the direction the bird flew.  I looked on top of every fence, every pole, and power line, but no scissor tail.  I told the baseball coach mowing the grass to keep an eye out for a bird with a really long tail, and he looked at me like he wanted to punch me in my face.  I'm not really expecting much help from coach in finding this guy but I'm excited about finding him.

5/5/12-  It was definitely a scissor-tail and I hope he makes it back this year.  he caused a lot of commotion last year.  I wasn't looking at an indigo bunting on my feeder though.  That was a male blue grossbeak and he's back again this year.

Beets

I finally picked the beets today.  Lauren and I only planted a 10  x 3 row, but they had a good spring.  We started from seed ( pinetree garden seeds beet mix https://www.superseeds.com/ ) in the beginning of february.  We raked the bed, spread out a bunch of seed, and raked it again to try to get the seeds buried. I know you're supposed to plant them 1/2 inch deep 2 inches apart, but I got tired of carrying a ruler with me after the first couple of years of planting seeds.  I went back through and thinned the plants out a couple of times and used the leaves and little beets in spring salads.
These beets were ready to be picked a while ago, but there were only a couple with brown shoulders.  When I boiled them and skinned them to make pickled beets the rough parts came right off.
I've been pulling one up every once in a while, wiping them on my pants, and eating them.  They're a little strong and ironny that way, but it just tastes healthy.  Lauren likes 'em cooked so she got me some directions for making refrigerator pickled beets from http://whatscookingamerica.net/Vegetables/RefrigeratorPickledBeets.htm
and I made pickled beets this morning.
I cut off the tops and bottoms of the beets and dropped them in the stewpot of boiling water for a 1/2 hour.  After they'd been in the water for a while the skin slid off pretty easy using just my fingers.  A couple of the cylindrical ones required a little finger nail.  I sliced them up and put them in some jars.  I used 1/2 as much sugar as the site told me and I added some stuff to some of the jars.  I put jalepenoes in one, dill seed in another, fennel in one??, and some onion to the others.  Now they'll take up room in the fridge for a couple of weeks before we get to find out how it worked.

5/5/12-  The beets were awesome.  We gave several jars away and we polished off about 4 by ourselves.  They were great on salads, and even though Lauren didn't really like the dilly beets, when they were the only ones left she ate them anyway.  This year the beets just didn't do as well.  I planted a bunch, but we've probably only got about 20 plants out there.  No pickling this year.  I wonder if it was too warm of a winter/spring?