September: Where Did It Go?

Here's what is happening in our garden beds at the end of September.

Our hoop house #1:  Salad greens grow behind the peppers which are still going
strong in the front of the space.

An overview of some of the outside beds.  You can see the bright greens of
 lettuces going strong in the third row from the rear.

Arugula is one of our favorite crops.

A close-up of some recently planted broccoli transplants.

Just one more day left in the month of September and then we will be moving on to October when it truly becomes fall here in Middle Georgia.  Wow!  Where did it go?  Of course we are already having cooler nights and milder days, but it still gets into the middle or upper 80's pretty regularly.  However, I must add that these small changes and the shorter days have already made a difference in the way things grow and thrive in the garden.  We are starting to say our good byes to many of summer's treasured crops such as tomatoes, cucumbers and okra, as they slow down and we are welcoming the fall favorites (lettuces, kale and collards) as they begin thriving with the cooler nights and milder days.

We have had an unusually rough time with the transition from summer to fall here at Elm Street Gardens with unusual onslaughts from insect pests (the result of the unusually mild winter here???) and unusual weather patterns that have inhibited germination of the fall crops.  (It probably falls into the misery loves company department, but I was perversely gratified a few weeks ago to read a post on FaceBook by a prominent organic grower in Georgia on her need to sew some of the fall crops a second time after the first seeding had failed.). But the fall crops seem to be humming right along now; we may be just a tad later than usual with some of them.

But such is life in the garden.  If it all worked the same way each year, it would be unnatural.  And not nearly as interesting.

Suzy

Community Spirit in Hancock County

More than 300 people came together on Labor Day for a picnic on the grounds of Elm Street Gardens’ home place.  The event was the third annual Hancock Community Labor Day Picnic and it turned out to be a lot of fun.  Everyone pitched in and did their part so things went smoothly and we were left with clean grounds and happy memories.

Jackie Craig starts the set up of the serving line.

Opening ceremonies.

Lining up for the food and getting comfortable in the shade.

 It was an old-fashioned potluck affair with everyone bringing something yummy.  There was also whole hog barbeque and grilled organic chicken from White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia.  Some of the highlights included sack races and other fun games for the children, our lively emcee, Tommie Ingram (who did just enough talking sparked with good humor and enthusiasm to move things right along), a nifty scavenger hunt and a raffle that had everyone waiting to see if they had won (the grand prize was a Farm Box from Elm Street Gardens with the addition of pork from Three Centuries Farm and grass fed beef from Fort Creek Farm).  Hancock “4-H Club” and “Young Doctors” helped greet and serve and were a huge help to the adults. Everyone got plenty to eat and then took time to sit around and visit with new friends and old.  And garden managers, Brad and Megan, led a tour through the gardens. 

Young folks race with "egg spoons" on their heads.

Our wonderful servers help to get the pig ready to eat.

Start of a sack race.

Great fun as all hop toward the finish line. 

From my standpoint, it was terrific how everyone really made this picnic happen.  From set up to clean up, everyone took part and got it all done.  It truly was a community event in the best sense. And, although it threatened rain all day, there was not a drop until we had a brief cloudburst just as we finished cleaning up!  Perfect. 

Saving Summer

As summer wanes, I’ve been getting that feeling of urgency about preserving its tastes for the coming fall and winter.  So I’ve been shelling field peas, snapping pole beans and getting them in the freezer.

And I have a big batch of pears from our trees in the refrigerator doing their overnight thing before I pack them in jars and process them tomorrow.  This will be my third batch of pear preserves in the last month and probably my last as there are just a few pears left on the trees.  On the first batch I did a not-unusual “Suzy trick” and got busy doing something else at the crucial time and they cooked a bit too long.  I was able to save them by adding some hot water and reprocessing them. They looked a bit dark, but Robert ate a half jar of them at one sitting the other day and said they were very good so I must have rescued them in time. 

For the second batch of pear preserves as well as today’s production, I carefully followed the directions in an ancient copy of the “Ball Blue Book:  The Guide to Home Canning and Freezing,” Edition 30 from 1977, and they turned out beautifully.  Of course I’m giving myself some credit for managing to pay attention to what I was doing.  

And here they are.  It is always a satisfying feeling to see these
jars with their fruits of your labor.

As for tomatoes:  I have been making tomato sauce by roasting paste tomatoes, cut and anointed with olive oil and salt and pepper, on the grill. I firmly believe in roasting many vegetables as it really intensifies the flavor.  And in the heat of the summer when I cringe at the thought of turning on the oven in the kitchen, it is painless to roast them on the grill outdoors.  Then I pull the skin off and pop them into a freezer bag to pull out for soups and stews in the winter. 

This is my trusty old food mill.  I suppose I could get a new
electric one, but this is so satisfactory that I don't see the need for
another new-fangled gadget when this one works so well.

But mostly I concentrate on taking the roasted tomatoes and making a rich tomato sauce from them.  I do this by putting them in my old hand cranked food mill and in no time flat I have a lovely sauce to put in the freezer. I used to add flavorings such as basil and garlic, but decided that if I left the sauce plain, I could use it for anything and add the appropriate flavoring then.  Of course, a lot of it goes into the production of homemade pizza so I might as well add basil and garlic, but one never knows . . .

And speaking of basil:  My next project is to pick and wash huge quantities of the fragrant leaves and with the help of the food processor (okay, I admit that this is a gadget that is worthwhile for many a kitchen task), grind them into a simple pesto (again with not much added except for a little bit of olive oil) and freeze the puree in ice cube trays.  When they are frozen solid, I pop the cubes out and put them into freezer bags and quickly back into the freezer.  These are so handy to have during the winter and I can add a cube or two to whatever it is I am preparing that requires basil. 

Hopefully, these tastes of summer will last us through the winter. 

Suzy

Hummingbirds and Moonflowers

Hummingbirds and moonflowers:  How could it get any better?  Both are pretty special and we’ve had plenty of both in these last weeks of summer.  The record for the number of moonflower blossoms in one night so far is eleven.  The hummingbirds are too numerous to count.  And hard to catch in a photo.

Our moonflower vine is planted at the bottom of our back porch steps, growing up the bell pole there.  Moonflowers are relatives of morning glories, but are night bloomers with large white blossoms.  The white blossoms attract moths at night, which help in pollination.  This is the most successful moonflower vine we’ve had here in Sparta so far.  When I look at the blossoms opening, I hark back to the days when our children were young and we would all go out as the day began to fade and watch the buds start to quiver and shake and slowly open.  It seemed like magic then and still does.  And the big white blossoms are so appropriately named.  

We had been noticing hummingbirds darting around colorful blossoms in the garden earlier in the summer, but when we finally got around to making the half sugar, half water concoction for our hummingbird feeders we realized that what we have here is more than just a few of the hummers.  They are very territorial and fight over who gets to sup from the feeders.  So it is great fun to be on the back porch and watch the hummers dart around competing for their turn at the feeders. 

We have the best of both worlds, as one of the feeders hangs from the post with the moonflower vine while another one is very close by on the porch banister.  There is just a bit of overlap at the last of day when the hummers are still coming to the feeders and the moonflowers are just opening.  Makes for a perfect evening spectacle.  And great summer memories.

Suzy

This is a moonflower blossom in the process of opening.

A good evening for moonflower blossoms!  There
were eleven blossoms all around the bell pole.

Well, I said hummingbirds were hard for me to capture in a photo,
didn't I?  The dark spot below the feeder is a hummingbird.  Honest!

August Beauties

It’s too soon to call summer over, but there has been a shift in the garden lately.  You can see the end to the vigorous production of new fruit on the tomato vines.  Old spent cucumber vines have been taken down and we are picking now from the latest succession of cucumber vines and the same is true of our delicate French Filet bush beans.

Of course, summer is far from over and we will still enjoy many of the summer favorites for a while to come, especially as we have succession plantings of tomatoes as well as those mentioned above, but our thoughts and actions are already turning to the leafy greens of fall.  The first of the broccoli and kale transplants are in the ground and sowing of leaf lettuce is in the process.

The Currey family celebrated the first birthday of grandson Will last weekend with a small family celebration on the back porch and the celebrant gloriously smeared with self-applied chocolate crumbs and frosting.   Just as it should be. 

The family birthday celebration meant that Uncle Brownlee came and photographed not only the birthday festivities, but also ranged the garden with his new camera.  So here is our ode to August captured in Brownlee’s pictures of the last of summer’s glories.   

The muscadine arbor is a mound of green, but there are ripening muscadines now too.  The old vine was flat on the ground when we first got to Sparta but we cleared the underbrush and raised the vine which we know to be at least fifty years old and raised it to its current trellis.  Now we have a cool shady spot to sit on a hot summer's day.

This Yellow Explosion Day Lily is still blooming in August.

We have plenty of sunflowers this summer.  Somehow they
make me happy just looking at them.

Here is a fresh new row of haricot verts beginning to
bloom and make delightful  green beans.

Fairy Tale Eggplant look as if they are regal jewels.  They will get just a bit
bigger and then they are ready to pick,  cook and eat.  

"Harris" kitty knows a good resting place when he
finds it.  Here he is in the bonsai garden adorning a plant.

Sweet basil.  It is really plentiful in August and now is the time to
make pesto for the freezer to get us through the winter.

This is not exactly a garden picture, but a nice shot of our tomboys on
one of their favorite vantage points for overseeing what is happening in the garden.

So thank you, Brownlee, for sharing your pictures!

Suzy