garden – Page 3 – The Salem Garden

“Mother, There Are Entirely Too Many Tomatoes in This Kitchen!”

…said my sixteen year old daughter one day last week as she was trying to get ready for school.

It was hard to argue when the counter looked like this…

and then when she went to get some cereal she had to move this…

I knew she had a point.

So I got busy, and started processing tomatoes.

The tomatoes in these green and orange bins came from my friend Betsey.

Guess which opalka tomato Betsey and Ed grew? Yes, the one on the left. Their compost must be incredible! Ed gave me the plant that produced the puny tomato on the right that I grew, so it’s the same variety and batch of seedlings.

Anyway, I got busy and did some canning.

Which was fun, but I’m still struggling a little.

I did manage to can eight quarts of tomatoes, and I have plans to work on some apple butter this week.

It’s all about babysteps..

Freezing tomatoes is definitely the easy way out so my freezer is quite full.

I just wash and dry them, put them in freezer bags and suck the extra air out with a straw before I seal the bag shut.

The skins come right off after they defrost for a few minutes. I also like to put them in the food processor, with skins, seeds and all, and puree them to make tomato or pizza sauce. I cut them into pieces while still frozen for stir fry dishes, salsa and things like that.

Yes, that is Michael’s Dove bar to the left, clearly not mine 😉
On Saturday the frost forecast was looming so I picked as many green tomatoes as I could and decided to try storing some in newspaper to ripen.
I washed and dried them…
Wrapped each one in quarter sheets of newspaper.

And tucked them in a box, with the pinker tomatoes on top.

We’ll see how it goes.

Today’s project involves what to do with this guy…

He weighs 2 or 3 pounds and looks just like a little pumpkin.

What do you think?

I’m going to have to force myself to cut him up later for dinner…

Or maybe I can carve a face, just like a real pumpkin.

This is Salem after all!

What did you do with your tomatoes this year?

Michele

Happy Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day! October 2015

The fifteenth of the month has become my very favorite day because even if I don’t manage to publish a post myself, I enjoy visiting all of the other garden bloggers to see what’s blooming in their gardens.

Reading GBBD posts is always an uplifting way to spend an hour (or two)!

We haven’t had a frost yet here in Salem, so while the garden is starting to wind down, it’s still producing and blooming almost as much as it did in September.
The morning glories are glorious, even at ground level and paired with rosemary.

The mexican marigold is happy hanging out with the lovage.

Lovage is very similar to celery and I’m using it often these days in soups and stuffing.

I’m always posting photos of my volunteer snapdragons. I remember my mother using snapdragon in an arrangement for my first communion when I was seven years old, and I can never quite believe that it grows so easily in my garden. I’m hoping that the foxglove right behind it blooms in the spring.

Here it is up close with the macro setting…

I can never get enough of snapdragon or the macro setting.

Macro’d cilantro…
These yellow chrysanthemums survived last winter’s difficulty. The other chrysanthemums really did not.

The taller zinnias are supposed to be a giant variety, but their not too big. I planted them quite late in the season (maybe the first week in July or so) so it took them a long time to bloom, but here they are!

It is a very pretty bloom.
I’m still kind of partial to the Cut and Come Again variety of zinnia.

This single shoot of bellflower popped up on the opposite side of the fence among the pepper plants.

Sedum is one of my favorite fall plants. This small variety has very delicate flowers.
This white daisy-like chrysanthemum is being crowded out by other plants in the bed, but there’s a bit that’s still with us. I need to thin the iris, echinacea and black-eyed susan that surround it. If anyone from the area would like starts of any of those plants leave me a message in the comments and we’ll work it out.
And the knock-out roses are non stop. Yay for knockout roses, you just can’t hurt them!

Be sure to visit May Dreams Garden by clicking here to see what’s in bloom today in gardens all over the world!

Be well,

Love, Michele

What’s Happening in the Garden- September 26, 2015

Hi everyone,

Well, it looks like I just took another long hiatus from blogging. So much has happened and I’ve been debating about whether or not to share it all. It’s hard, life changing stuff and I guess I need some time before I do. I’m sure that I’ll find the words and ways to talk about it. We’ve spent a lot of time away from home this summer but the garden just kept growing and growing…

What’s happening? Let’s see…
The herbs are thriving…

For the most part they don’t mind drought, or at best, inconsistent watering, like most plants do.
The parsley and snapdragon and oregano just forge on, along with the mint and thyme, chives and dill…

Herbs are so easy to grow.

The morning glory and moonflower are doing their September appearance. It’s hard to wait all summer for these to really get going, but it’s so worth it.
They are perfect…
and beautiful!

This is not the best photo, but I still wanted to show you that a few of the Cut and Come Again zinnias have finally started to shine in front of the fence.

The more I cut them, the more they grow. I may try to get some arranged for the “In a Vase on Monday” blog hop.
This guy is haunting… he just keeps coming back.
I’m pretty sure it’s tomatillo… but so so late in the season. Am I wrong about that?

This is what happens when broccoli bolts… bet you don’t get to see that too often. Just as it started to move toward getting ready to pick we had a very hot spell and that was the end of the broccoli.
This variety of pepper is Buran, a native of Poland. Their nice, light and tasty with rather thin skins.
The hot red peppers are ready to be strung up to dry, then I’ll shred them into flakes. We like hot foods but these are pretty intense when their fresh.
I lost the tag to this yellow tomato but I have to say that it’s delightful. It’s sweet and holds it shape in salsa or stir fry.

Romas, for sauce…

The Kellogg’s Breakfast variety are still green but should start turning any day now. These weigh at least a pound each. I’m looking forward to slicing one open to taste it.Little sweeties… perfect little pops for eating, cooking, anything!

I planted fresh cilantro in early August in anticipation of the salsa that would be coming.

I missed the window for planting sweet peas in the spring so here they come for the fall. Something chomped on them while we were away and they grew right back when we came home and there was more activity in our yard again… hoping for some blooms soon!
Swiss chard is another nice cool weather vegetable. Something is eating at it a little bit, maybe slugs?

The red onions are almost ready to be harvested…

and the white onions are curing on the bottom of a nursery tray turned over. It’s not sophisticated, but I have to say yay for nursery trays as drying racks, it’s really working.

It’s a good thing that the peppers, onions and cilantros are ready to make salsa.

I’m going to have a busy morning. I might even can some, we’ll see!

How’s your garden growing? I have some blog reading to do!

It’s good to be back.

Love you all, Michele

Of Hydrangeas, Rose of Sharon, Arbors and Tenneball…

Last week we had a great vacation in a village on a bluff overlooking the ocean.

It’s kind of a private place, but I have to share a few glimpses.

It was all about the beach, the gardens, our family, good food and tenneball.

One of the best parts of the week was that the Rose of Sharon and hydrangea were in full bloom.
There’s something perfect about the combination of hydrangea and Cape Cod houses. The soft colors and texture of the flowers really complement the gray shingles. I’m asked for advice about how to grow hydrangea all the time so I need some experience. I’m looking around my garden for the right spot to fully experience hydrangea propagation and care so I can share with others.
I could do some great things with blooms like this.

I found this gorgeous clump of cleome on a corner property and I’m tucking the idea away for our front garden next year.
A salt marsh borders the village to the west. The colors seem to change throughout the day.
Turning around from the view of the marsh one finds this long Rose of Sharon hedge. I think of this as Yankee thrift at it’s best because the Rose of Sharon plants send off new plantable shoots every year. I could probably start my own Rose of Sharon Border quite easily here in my garden at home.
One of the gardens featured a beautiful collection of dahlias. I’ve grown them in small quantities in pots and borders, but never close to this degree.

Of course I was interested in how they were staked up. It looks like the gardener used simple go away green poles and ran garden twine along and through them to hold everything together.
Even as they faded, the dahlias were delightful!

I would love to be a gardener who could name every variety of each plant, using the common and latin names…

…but I’m not.

I just enjoyed each bloom for it’s beauty.
I also enjoyed this beautiful house, arbor and another Rose of Sharon border. There seemed to always be an arbor in view or just around the corner in the village.

In Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, and in several other communities in New England, tented church camps grew into more formal cottages which grew into fully equipped seasonal and year round homes. The village we stayed in has similar roots as a church camping ground. This house reminds me of the Oak Bluffs cottages.
The old Post Office building is decorated with patriotic spirit.

One of many inviting porches in the village.

Our young boys created a game that they named “tenneball”, a wacky combination of tennis and badminton with very specific, unconventional rules. They held a tournament in the volleyball court to the left and I decided that I could have watched tenneball all day as long as I was admiring those pretty blue sailboat shutters, the gardens and the arbor. I won’t be posting pics of my participation in the tenneball tournament. Let’s just say that the kids got a pretty good chuckle…
When not playing tenneball or admiring gardens, we were enjoying the interesting architecture.

and pretty tiered gardens. Yes, still in the garden… they were clearly one of my top reasons for enjoying our vacation so much!

Another reason was the beach that was just down the hill. The walkway to the beach involved negotiating a steep forty step staircase.

It was very easy climb up and down with such beautiful sights to enjoy on each end.

I hope you had a restorative vacation in a special place this summer too~

Thanks for stopping by!

Michele

Therapy

It’s all I need.

Love, Michele

What’s Happening in the Garden–7/31/15

Hello out there! Another short and sweet post.. so many reasons, I could go on and on, but I’m going to focus on the garden today.

Things are cooking, growing, producing, blooming… not at the usual July 31st rate, but that’s okay.

My favorite border has started to come into full bloom.This is kind of a wild and crazy space…

We’ve been eating lots of beans.

The first broccoli flower is starting to appear.A tomatillo self-seeded from last year… The peppers finally found their mojo!

Definitely a good thing!

We managed to stake and cage the most precious of the tomato plants last weekend. I have many growing kind of wildly and enough that are up off of the ground and well trimmed to keep me happy.A blog that I follow (I’m sorry that I can’t remember which one) just talked about this year being the year of the tomato in their garden. We’re having the year of the onion here. Who would have thought?Sweet…

Early girls are starting to turn pink… we will have tomatoes this year, I know we will!The opal basil rebounded nicely. I had completely given up hope on this. It was so spindly and small that I could barely see it a few weeks ago. Never underestimate the magic out here folks! Dill is the same way… it’s everywhere.

I love growing dill.

I do think that if it’s not eaten by critters we may have lots of eggplant soon. We’re not eggplant eaters, but we’re good sharers. Black eye susan are everywhere, in all of their sunshiny glory!

Here’s the view looking down.

Lots of love to all of you! Thanks so so much for stopping by!

Michele

What’s Happening in the Garden- June 30, 2015

Wow, where has a month gone? Well, here at The Salem Garden it’s gone to medical emergency after medical emergency after medical emergency. After months of sickness and a very tough weekend in the hospital my youngest daughter was diagnosed with Functional Abdominal Pain Disorder. Yes, this is a real thing and it involves a lot of pain. She’s doing better but we have some work to do to get her back to her happy ten year old self. In the two and a half weeks since that happened my dear mom was also hospitalized and had surgery to remove her gall bladder, then last Friday my younger brother had a major cardiac event (while at my Mom’s house helping her recover) and was hospitalized. He tells me that he feels much better now that he has a pacemaker. Thank God!

So, the garden is a combination of the last thing I’m thinking about and my biggest outlet for stress. I have very little time to tend it, let alone blog about it, but when I do get out there it’s the most wonderful place in the world and I weed and prune my heart out. This is horticultural therapy at it’s very best!

It’s been cold here. So cold that my tomato plants are still waiting for that push of heat that puffs them up and the lettuce is as happy as can be. It’s been a very strange garden year.Here’s the garden looking down from the deck. Weeded and edged but pretty darn simple. That’s okay, we have a nice Farmer’s Market downtown on Thursdays.

The onions have grown quite a bit in a month. They don’t mind the cool temperatures.

Here they were last month:

To say that the tomato plants have struggled is the biggest understatement ever. I had two solid flats full of seedlings that were just beautiful. They grew right on schedule and were ready for the garden at the exact moment that I planted them. Then they just sat there and looked sad and small. It was cold, very cold. Tomatoes do not grow well in cold. Their little leaves start to turn in and turn yellow. Fortunately my dear friend Betsey came to the rescue with some extra seedlings that were bigger. I added them and replenished mine with some extras that I had held back under shelter. I fertilized with vermicompost a few days ago and I swear their starting to look better. We’ll see what happens. Maybe some mulch would help as well.
We do have buds and one fruit on an early girl. Thanks to Ed and Betsey for this plant! Poor peppers, same story as the tomatoes. I don’t know about this. We have tons of raspberries. Maybe this will be the year that I figure out the raspberry jam. The chicken coop flowers are fine.

We integrated our four baby chicks in to the flock last week. Their still spending some time on high perches but overall their doing quite well. This is a very feisty little flock of chicks. They can defend themselves. I may still start some cucumbers in this little bed. We pulled the herbs out a few weeks ago because we have plenty in the new herb garden closer to the house. It seemed silly to use this precious real estate for herbs when we can add some veggies to it. I just have to add some compost and plants, and remove some rocks… which is all the equivalent of scaling Mount Everest at the moment. Maybe some fall plants will land here? Here’s a little plot of bush beans. I’ll share the variety when they produce (and I find the seed packet). My Harrington estate rose is blooming! No, that’s not a real variety of rose. I just call it that because it came from the Harrington property that abutted our old house on Forrester Street. I missed the spring pruning this year but I’ll try to catch up with it soon. My little crop of broccoli seedlings are doing well. I should really start some more for the fall. I think that would work.
And of course the lettuce is still thriving. We are enjoying this lettuce all day every day! I should find a spot to add some more, especially if it’s going to stay cold. We could have lettuce all summer, no bolting here!

How’s your garden growing? How are you doing? I miss all of my blogging friends and I hope your all well and having a great garden season if your in the northern hemisphere, and a good winter if your in the southern.

Enjoy everything!

Love, Michele

What’s Happening in the Garden- May 31, 2015

Hello from finally rainy Salem, Massachusetts!

I haven’t posted in quite a while. There’s been so much going on here; sick children, graduating children, coming home from college children, going to college children, dancing and soccer and proms. Big life events can be great subjects for blogging but they don’t jive so well with gardening and garden blogging, especially the sickness. I’ve been pretty consumed with the needs of my family, as I should be.

So, the garden isn’t quite where it usually is at this point in May, but that’s okay. I can always catch up on the bean planting or substitute things or buy bigger plants that are further along. It will all work out in the end, or not, and that’s okay too.

These are the rainclouds that I was trying to out plant and out photograph before they burst this afternoon. I just made it and now we’re under a flash flood warning. It’s been so dry that the flood warning is welcome.

I post a pic of this view every year. It’s raining hard and is expected to continue through Tuesday, so I’m not sure that the iris flowers will survive. I’m glad I took this photo when I did.

Things are getting underway out in the herb garden. That’s parsley in the foreground. The oregano came back strongly, along with some dianthus, thyme and chives. I just put that brownish lovage in the back and added the new rosemary plants. Rosemary doesn’t winter over here unless we have an extremely mild winter, which is rare. Looking from the other direction the cilantro was started from seed. The blueberry bushes are loaded with berries! I need to plant more blueberry bushes. The Solomon’s seal is about to bloom……along with my favorite yellow iris, and the German iris. Here’s a first for us; horseradish in bloom! It emits an odor of horseradish all around it. I don’t really love horseradish, but I’m kind of enjoying this. I hope the flowers don’t take away from root formation. I planted a little bit of broccoli… so cute! And the lettuce is happy. This is thriving because Michael does a good job of watering it for me with the leftover chicken water.

Here’s an interesting fact about this lettuce; the mesclun mix on the right was fertilized with vermicompost a few weeks ago and the row on the left wasn’t. Vermicompost is the way to go! I have a nice little worm bin here under my desk and all I do is feed them fruit and veggie scraps and keep an eye on the moisture content of the box. I harvest the compost once in a while and the “tea” or liquid that the worms produce every few weeks. It’s easy once you get the hang of it. I should blog about my worms more. I started these onions from seed in the early spring and transplanted them a few weeks ago. I need to make sure they don’t dry out and keep fertilizing them. Maybe I’ll try some vermicompost.
Looking back, there’s lots of open space. I still have basil, tomato and foxglove seedlings,along with peppers.I dug this big pot of dill out of the front yard yesterday because we reconfigured the landscaping out there. Dill doesn’t really transplant that well, it’s better grown from seed. These are small enough that they might settle in if their handled carefully.

If any of you local friends want some dill just let me know! It will be here for a few days until the rain stops.

How’s your garden growing? I miss you and your comments and your blogs! Leave me an update so I can stop by and check in!

Love, Michele

Help! Help! a Lily Tree Question…

First of all, I’d never even heard of a lily tree or tree lily depending on which web site I look at, until an hour ago. My friend posted these photos of her lily tree with these really interesting growths protruding out of the base of the trunk.

So our question is

what is this?

Are they roots or a pest or an alien life form?

I haven’t seen anything quite like this before.

What say you gardening gurus, master gardeners, people who google better than we do…

Help!!