Canning Beans, Camp Alta Mons, and Dave

This past Thursday my parents came to help me pick the tenderettes (green beans). My mom was horrified when she arrived because I was pulling up the whole plant to pick the beans, and I was wasting a future crop. I pulled the plants on purpose because the leaves were so eaten up by the same little yellow beetle larva that was on the squash. They also made fun of me for being determined to kill as many as possible. I did leave the plants that were not eaten on so bad and may get a few more to pick. Mom took a mess of beans home with her and I took the remaining beans to my mother in laws to can. We ended up with 14 quarts, I think we could have gotten 21 if we had the ones that mom took but I was ready to be done and we had enough left after the 14 to give more away and cook some for the church service at Camp Alta Mons.

The service at Camp Alta Mons is a yearly tradition. Several of my favorite childhood memories took place at this camp when I was little. Many things have changed since then but I still love to go. The creek that I use to find and collect crayfish from has almost dried up, it was redirected to fill a giant pond that never filled?? A few of us hiked to the falls. (Nobody went rock hopping up the creek like we (myself and all my cousins) did way back when!) The falls have turned into a trickle and there is no swimming hole at the bottom, it seems to have filled up with silt along with some shifting in the rocks below.

The basket in the back is twice as big as the one in the front, so we had a lot of beans.


We have been in strawberry heaven this year!
I have been obsessed with learning about all the pests in the garden this year. Here are the squash bug eggs and nymph stages. They were hatching out like crazy for a couple of days but I think the outbreak is over for now, I hope.

I think these eggs look so amazing when you zoom in on them, they are from the squash beetle.

Here is a view of the falls at Camp Altamons.
My first photo of human beings. My sister, dad, and me!


My sister's son spotted this snail on the trail.Finally, here is a picture of our cat Dave. We got him as a wild, ferrell cat. We took him to the vet to be vaccinated and neutered. They clipped his ear in case he ran away when we got him home. Since we was use to running wild we had no idea what he might do. At first we didn't see him for several days, but we kept putting food out that was getting eaten. Then my husband used a sensor camera to snap a photo proving he was the critter eating the food in our barn. At that point he started showing up every night around 7:00 and we slowly got him to let us feed him there a little and even touch him. Before we knew it he was at our house all hours of the day and spends most of his time on our porch. He craves attention, is constantly under our feet, and follows us around in the yard like a puppy. So we have a real pet!

Returning to the Garden!

Some of these pictures were taken before I left to visit my sister in Indiana.
Before I left I made pesto, for a pesto shrimp pasta dinner with salad. Everything in the salad came from our garden, lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, peppers, and strawberries!!
A few pictures of the garden before I left.
This is one huge cherry tomato plant.

I've been away from the garden for five full days. It is amazing how fast things change. Clay picked 23 cucumbers in one day while I was gone and several squash. Today I harvested another 11 cucumbers and 12 yellow squash a couple zucchini and several cherry tomatoes. I cut up about three squash to freeze for later stir-frying, grated two zucchini for future baking. Later today or tomorrow I will give away as much as possible!!

I tied up several tomato branches that were dragging the ground and staked a couple cages that were falling over. The blight on the tomatoes is still spreading and the first ripe tomato Clay picked ended up being rotten. It is so nerve racking waiting to see if any of the tomatoes will be edible (not counting the cherry tomatoes). We will either be swimming in tomatoes soon or throwing away a rotten harvest. Our bean plants also have a blight, but it shouldn't be devastating to the crop. I'm thinking the beans are ready to be picked so I will be working on that very soon.

It rained last night after three very dry days! Clay watered a little bit while I was gone. Although the squash plant is producing like crazy the pests are starting to devour the plant. I have spotted the squash bug (it looks like a stink bug), and the squash beetle. The beetle larvae is a little yellow, fuzzy looking worm that I had to hand pick off today, and squish to kill, yuck! I also picked off as many squash bug egg clusters as I could find. I'm not using chemicals, but I read they wouldn't help anyway because most of the pests are found under the leaves and near the core of the plant. Hand picking before it gets out of hand is the way to go.

I also watched an excellent farm documentary last night called "The Real Dirt on Farmer John." It is a very positive and inspiring documentary compared to many that I watch that seem to focus on devastating tragedies. I highly recommend it!!!

Below is today's harvest in pictures!

School Garden and Mountain Lake Hiking

I decided to post a few pictures of the garden beds I'm helping out with at CES. I'm embarrassed by all the weeds, but maybe I can get a few people to help me clean things up better before the students come back. There are nine fenced in beds. I'm only using five of them now so I will have four to play with when school is back in session.

Here is the squash, zucchini, and basil bed. The sunflowers popped up from last years seeds.
I have not seen any of these insects on my plants at home but there were lots of them on the squash plant at school. I need to research this one. Click on the picture to see him up close. (I saw an article in a gardening magazine today that suggested keeping a list of insects found in your garden and to identify them by preserving one in a little medicine container that you freeze overnight to use as a specimen. Clay will love having insects in our freezer!!)
This picture is out of order, we don't have a fern bed with a beautiful forest behind it at school. This is up at Mountain Lake, War Spur Trail.
This is the flower bed the kids helped me plant. It is packed with sunflowers and cosmos (I think!) It probably needs to be thinned a lot. The big barrel in the back is a compost turner that was donated to us from the librarian. I'm not having much luck with it, but I'm not there to turn it often during the summer.
Another picture of the squash bed with a view of the purple basil and lots of weeds. We put the black weed paper down between the beds at the end of school. It is puffing up as a lot of grass continues to grow underneath.
This is one of the tomato beds. We just planted cherry and Roma, so there would be more for the kids to pick if they are still producing then. We have another tomato bed with some peppers, but they are not doing as well.
This is the herb bed. It has dill, Thai basil, mint, chives, and rosemary. Plus we through in a rhubarb plant.
From mountain lake we saw a lot of rhododendron.
A view of the hotel from the far side of the lake. Those that have been here before know that the level of the lake is shockingly low.
Colorful shelf fungi.
Another view of the now horseshoe shaped lake.
I liked this picture of the tree roots blending in with the rocks.

Gardening Question

For any of those reading that garden I wanted to see if anyone has used a copper spray for their tomatoes to fight the blight and other diseases. Clay and I have used a product called "Dragon Dust," although we mix it with water and use as a spray. It is considered organic from the reading that I have done, but I still felt weird spraying once fruit was starting to grow on the plants. Besides the spray I just continue to trim the leaves that are blighted.

Purple Peppers and Weekend Events

Our peppers are coming in much earlier this year for us! We have harvested this purple one and several anaheim peppers. We used the purple one in a salad, but learned a great recipe from a friend for the anaheim. We broiled the peppers until they were a little charred then put them in a plastic bag to "sweat." Then the skins were suppose to be very easy to peal off. Cut a slit in the pepper and stuff with cheese. Prepare some whipped egg whites and fold in some of the yolk for a batter. Dip the stuffed peppers into some flour then the batter and deep fry. This was super yummy!! I don't have any pictures because these were fixed at our friend's house, where we also enjoyed some amazing zucchini gazpacho soup.

On Friday Clay and I enjoyed the above described dinner. Saturday we attended a wedding at Maison Beliveau. A beautiful bed and breakfast located in Catawba Valley. My favorite part would be the lavendar walk ways, the smell was spectacular. Sunday we had a guest preacher, Mr. McPhail at church and then celebrated the 130 year anniversary with a picnic. I fixed a couple dishes with goodies from the garden, some chocolate spice squash cookies and cucumber dip with crackers. The food and fellowship was wonderful for about 20 min, until we had a 30 min. downpour that increasingly got worse and worse. A few people ran to the covered porch while the rest of us under the tents watched as water poured through the space where the tents were placed next to each other. Water bounced off plates for the unfortunate under the cracks and flowed like a river down the tables. Dishes were attempted to be covered but my dip became soup and the cookies very soggy. Those under the dessert tent continued to snack away as the rest of us were trapped huddled together under the other tents. Dad sacraficed himself to shelter Mrs. Kinnear from the rain blowing in sideways. Eventually the rain settled down and a few of the kids escorted the older folks to their cars under umbrellas, it was a cook out we want soon forget.

Jess and Rach - Kerry put together some pictures of the church over the years. Including everyone holding hands and counting off attendance at VBS and hanging gifts of warmth on the mitten tree. My favorite of you both was from a wedding where you were wearing these adorable pink dresses, your little girls would love to see their mommies being princesses!!

Rose of Sharon
This guy seemed very interesting.
Today's harvest - 11 cucumbers, 3 squash, 2 zucchini
This basket belonged to my Grandpa Sullivan. Dad gave me several when he cleaned out Grandpa's shed. Grandma was telling me how it use to stay full of beans during the summers when he gardened.
Cucumber Donut
We looked into this a little bit and think it is something called catface. It can be caused by cool temperatures, or excessive nitrogen. If anyone else has any info on this problem please share!
This is what the fruit of that weird volunteer plant I keep writing about now looks like. What is it??

Today was another busy day. I went blueberry picking again with my uncle Larry and another good friend of mine. Larry and I both gave some of our loot to grandma who is very excited to make a blueberry cobbler. When I got back home from some other errands I worked in the garden some. I cleaned up the tomatoes plants where the leaves have gotten spotty from all the rain and did some harvesting!

Pictures and Visiting with a Friend

I caught this bee pollinating the last of our poppies.

Daisy, my second favorite flower. My first our sunflowers but they aren't blooming yet.
Tri-Colored Sage - We just have it as an ornamental plant, but could be used with food.
We can't believe all the peppers that are coming in. We were told to pick the first pepper that starts on each plant early (Before it is able to be cut up to eat) because it puts all its effort into the one fruit, and if you pick it the plant is more likely to get going on several peppers. We didn't do that this year, does anyone else do that?


I'm thinking this is a case of bottom end rot. I'm not sure of the variety, so I'll look into that. Even with my blog I neglected to previous make a good record of what we planted this year.
We have had three solid days of rain showers, and here is the negative side of that.
One of the perennials I planted - Geranium Hybrid "Rozanne." I also planted a Armeria pseudarmeria, "Joystick Red," and a Gaura, "Whirling butterflies," but the pictures were no so good.
I keep taking pictures of the cilantro. We could never get this to grow before. I think it is ready to be used in some cooking!
I planted our two sucker plants and some of the heirloom tomato seedlings here.
Butternut squash, first time planting this and not really sure what to look for when harvesting, I need to read up on this one.
This is one insect I was happy to see!

*Our harvest the past two days has been cucumbers, squash, and zucchini. I also got my first taste of a couple cherry tomatoes!!! I need to harvest the chard and kale.

Update: I spent a wonderful day with my gardening friend Claudia today. She has a huge garden. We harvested probably the last of her peas and a few other goodies. I insisted on doing some weeding. I actually enjoy weeding and it is a perfect time to chat while you are doing something useful. I learned that it is important to pick the blooms away from any type of squash because they get so moist and yucky and it encourages the rest of the plant to rot. I've also heard that if you pick the squash before the bloom rots that you can cook it too! I also know now to put cardboard or something to prop up my butternut squash so it doesn't rot while waiting to mature in the fall. I did a few of these things when I got home and it finally stopped raining, again. I also tied some more string up to discourage the deer???

Side thought: I just finished a book called "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about a family that spends one year eating mainly from their own garden or local food. As I talk about my fascination with some of the topics in the book, killing turkeys/chickens, milking cows, making cheese, and preserving all sorts of food with my grandparents or maybe some other older folks, sometimes they just look at me like "duh." I forget that they grew up living that way. I just find that interesting and just one more reason I admire them so much. I also wanted to know though if they ever had a clean kitchen. Mine is always a wreck now that the garden is in full swing. Food sitting somewhere to be washed and later prepared in some way, food to give away, scraps for the compost, dishes from cooked food, and of course loads of junk mail. I just can't imagine the kitchens of the 1930s give and take a few years. (They probably didn't have the junk mail, you think that could be the difference!)

If anyone has a favorite, easy cucumber dip to share I'm hoping to experiment soon!