A Few Random Pictures

I love finding bizarre shaped veggies in the garden.
Most of you reading know by now that I actually like learning about the critters in the garden, especially if they aren't eating anything I'm hoping to eat later. Click on the picture to see the bright yellow spider above.
I got this pitcher plant at the downtown market in Roanoke at the beginning of last summer. It started out with beautiful pitchers that were actively catching insects. Then one by one the pitchers seemed to dry up and some of the leaves were looking a little cooked also. I brought the plant inside over the winter and continued to water it, but was not expecting much since it is a tropical plant and the weather in McCoy is not exactly tropical. But as you can see after putting it back outside this summer and giving it plenty of water and misting it is happily growing more pitchers. I was pretty pleased with my success and hope to take it into my classroom. I think the kids will love it.
The peppers below were sliced and put into our dehydrator, except for the serrano, which were put in whole. They turned out pretty good although it took about three days for them all to finish. I sliced the jalapeno peppers too small and several fell through the trays of the dehydrator, so I may just try cutting them in half next time.
Below is a lovely picture of some of the tomatoes that my mother in-law canned for me.
I have only cooked with butternut squash once before, so it looks like I need to be on the search for some new recipes to use!

Flower Pictures

This last picture was taken at the Biltmore Estate in NC. It is a pizza garden and it is planted in slices. Each slice is represents a different ingredient that would go on a pizza. Pretty neat!

Odds and Ends

This guy was already dead when I came across it in the yard, but I was so impressed with the colors I snapped a photo anyway.
Here is a mixture of some of the goodies still growing in the garden. I picked around 50 red tomatoes to give to my mother in-law, who is going to can some whole and make some juice with them. We are also loaded with yellow tomatoes and I'm giving them to anyone I come across, but we know not to plant so many of them next year since they do not can as well.
I pulled the weeds that had covered the Brussels sprouts I planted in July. I don't know much about what to expect from these plants. Some of the leaves have been heavily chewed. I actually sprayed them with an insecticidal soap. I also discovered about 10 little worms all curled up inside the very center of one of the plants. I couldn't believe how packed they were in there.
I thought it was neat to see the old corn and the new corn that is just coming in. I was really worried that the new stuff would not fill out since we've had so little rain, but I had some tonight and it was delicious! I also picked the rest of the butternut squash that you see in this picture. A couple of them were spoiled where some little critters had dug into them. Man there is some gross stuff hanging out in the garden sometimes.
Clay and I finally planted some fall crops. Here is a mixture of red and green leaf lettuce and some mesclun mix. Then off to the left of these plants I put in some spinach, kale, and broccoli seed.

I've used the dehydrator twice. First a filled five trays with cherry tomatoes, which took about 1 and 1/2 days to finish. Then today I filled five trays with basil leaves and they started finishing in about 1 and 1/2 hours. I so have to rotate the trays. The bottom trays and the produce near the center of the dehydrator dry faster so I have to check on it pretty regularly to keep stuff from turning black.

2008 Prices Fork Fair

I was really hoping to get some pictures for those of you who read this blog that grew up attending the PF fair. I deliberately went home to get my camera and change into my PF fair 75th anniversary T-shirt from last year, so I would be showing the fair spirit when I helped mom with Little Miss Prices Fork. Of course the big draw back to digital cameras is they have to run on batteries and even though my camera was working that morning it didn't have enough juice to take a single picture at the fair. This year it didn't rain either day so there was a good flow of visitors on both days. There were some new booths including a cool lavender booth set up by a lady who grows her own lavender plants on Norris Run. We didn't have enough exhibits to need both floors of the grange but it seemed like more people were participating. With the steady rain we have had this summer the flowers were spectacular and farm and garden seemed to have a boost also. For the past two years Prices Fork Elementary has posted their teacher list at the fair and offered to let students do their talent show acts at the fair. I think this has been great and has brought some new faces to the fair. I also really enjoyed the music by Dean Trimble and Friends. One of the guys singing happened to be grandma Rubel's son in-law.

Getting Ready for the Fair

Since I can remember my family has participated and helped out at the Price's Fork Fair. I like to carry on the tradition except instead of entering my dressed up doll and 4-H crafts I mainly have veggies and flowers. Thursday after work, going on a short run, and looking at floor tile with Clay I went to the garden to harvest as many goodies as I could find. I collected red and yellow tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green bell peppers, one yellow bell pepper, anaheim, serrano, and jalapeno peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, corn, a few beans, purple peppers, and butternut squash. I also had one volunteer pumpkin and a volunteer melon of some sort.
Mom came down and helped me arrange all of these for a "collection of fruits and vegetables" entry. She helped me spice it up with a few herbs, kale, and lettuce leaves. Clay added a few strawberries for a bit of color. Dave wanted to help too!
Here is the final product.
Friday morning I got up early to pick flowers. I'm not very good at making arrangements, so once again I took these to mom for some help. She even contributed a cool looking long stemmed flower to fill in the center that isn't in this photo.

A close up of the arrangement and one of the individual sunflowers we entered. When I drove the flowers up to mom's house she commented, "Do I take the bees with the sunflower?" (Zoom in to see them) I didn't think the bees would hang on. I'm not sure if they were dying or just in a drowsy state from it being early in the morning. I noticed they seemed frozen to several of the flowers and you could just knock them off like they were in a coma??

I did visit the fair after work. Clay and I did get serveral ribbons which is always fun. (Actually Clay really doesn't get into taking exhibits, but I put a few things in his name since he contriubtes a lot to the work). I may take some pictures at the fair tomorrow for a follow up post.

From Garden to Table

Today, when it wasn't raining I was busy weeding and finding some ripe goodies. I picked:
3 cucumbers, a quart of cherry tomatoes, 10 tomatoes (mix of red and yellow), 2 squash, 2 zucchini, 4 ears of corn. Clay and I leave to go out of town tomorrow so I wanted to use as much of this as possible for dinner. I fixed a Tomato Zucchini Casserole (Thanks to my sister Katie for this recipe!!) I rarely fix a casserole that my husband and I really enjoy eating and this one worked! Then I just sliced up some cucumbers and cooked some corn for the side dishes. Clay made a caprese salad also. We finished it off with a peach cobbler made from peaches that Clay's boss gave us. I will need to work on perfecting that dish a little.

Here is the recipe for the Tomato Zucchini Casserole
1 1/2 c grated cheddar cheese
1/3 c graded Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp dried oregano (I used about 1 tsp fresh)
1/2 tsp dried basil (I used a little over 1 tsp fresh)
2 cloves minced garlic
salt and pepper to taste
2 medium zucchinis (slice thin)
2 tomatoes (slice thin)
1/4 c butter
2 tbls finely chopped onion
3/4 c fine bread crumbs

*I used one squash in place of a zucchini and one yellow tomato, which made it very colorful!

Preheat over to 375, lightly butter 9x9 pan. In a large bowl combine both cheeses, herbs, and garlic. Season with salt and pepper then set aside. Arrange half of the zucchini slices in the pan, sprinkle with 1/4 cheese mixture, arrange half of the tomatoes and sprinkle with 1/4 cheese mixture, then repeat layers. Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in onion and cook until soft and translucent. Stir in breadcrumbs, cook until they have absorbed the butter and sprinkle on top of casserole. Cover loosely with foil and bake for 25 min. Remove foil and bake until the top is crusty and the veggies are tender, which takes about another 15- 20 min.

Clay and I did freeze some corn a couple of nights ago. The process consisted of shucking the corn and pulling the strings. Then rinse just a little and steam for seven minutes. Right after they steam dip them in ice water and immediately remove to a dishrag or paper towel to dry. I let them dry for at least two hours and I replaced the paper towels as needed. I probably could have used a drying rack if I had one! Then we cut the kernels off (about 3/4 deep on the kernels) and used a vacuum sealer to get the air out of the baggies. First time using a vacuum sealer that a friend gave us and we love it!

Dragon's Tooth

After dad's hike at Camp Altamons he has been motivated to keep hiking, which I think is super cool! So today we took on a not so easy day hike up to Dragon's Tooth. Here is one view a little over half way up.

These bugs were everywhere at the lower parts of the trail.
Updated: After using a field guide I believe these are Milkweed Bugs. I see these a lot when running in the late summer when new nymphs are emerging on the milkweed plant. The field guide I was using says that they often stray far from the plants, which would be the case here.

Here is dad looking through the two big "teeth" out over the valley below.
I didn't climb to the peak of the tooth but I did get halfway up on one, pretty incredible view.
This shows how high the tooth is and you can see why I didn't climb up to the top of it.

Can't wait for our next hike.

I don't have many pictures for this post, but if you zoom in on this one you should find an amphibious garden visitor.

This morning I made blackberry jam with my grandma. She had a very cool machine called the Squeezer II, that was probably made to deseed tomatoes. She used this to deseed two out of four cups of the berries we used in each batch of jam. I also made some pesto for dinner with enough extra to freeze some. My friend suggested using an ice-cube so that I could freeze small amounts that could easily be sepparted for future dinners. It worked spendidly. I've been eating a lot of sweet corn straight from the garden and have the freezer bags now to freeze some. Clay put vegetable oil on the silks of the first set of corn we planted and I have found very few worms!!! Although, I have seen a lot of earwigs down at the bottom of some of the ears. I will need to put vegetable oil on the second set we planted tomorrow also!

Identifying two new pests.

Kale - Harlequin BugTomato - Colorado Tomato Beetle (I thought I had two pests to identify but found one to be the larva of this beetle.Adult Harlequin Bug and the Adult Colorado Tomato Beetle

Colorado Tomato Beetle Larva (Zoom in for a better image.)

Flowers Plus Garden Woes and Worries

Mom's Green Thumb!

This last picture if zoomed up on shows a very creepy little critter that had his lower body attached to the squash and was probably the same critter that decorated the squash with the fancy, curvy artwork.

I've been very interested in finding out about all the living organisms in the garden, but on several occasions I've been completely grossed out, and scared of what I might discover if I keep looking so closely. Sometimes I just want to turn a blind eye. I threw out one of our squash plants that wilted overnight, victim to a stem borer most likely. I'm seeing similar signs of damage on my other varieties of squash plants.

I have felt overwhelmed by all the rain we have been having. The garden is getting out of control. The plants that I want to grow such as the tomatoes are turning yellow, and the lower fruit on the pepper plants are starting to rot on the bottom. The only plants loving this much rain seem to be the weeds, of course.

I also pulled up the rest of our bean plants that were completely covered by the squash beetle larva. Everyone bragged about how pretty the first harvest of beans were, but the new beans were covered in holes and some were looking very rusty. I found a few good beans to save for a future meal. I'm actually happy to have an area of the garden cleared for a fall crop.

This is the time of the year that I get scared of plants dying before the veggies are ready to be harvested or that I will get so much stuff that I want be able to preserve it all, and I will end up wasting a ton of good food. I have one gardening friend that just got a dehydrator and we used it for making some dried tomatoes, which is a method I never tried before. I also need to find a good way of drying some of my herbs before they go to seed or die. I've tried drying basil several times but have had no luck. I should probably just make a lot of pesto to freeze and save.

Besides gardening tasks that need to be done I will be making blackberry jam with my grandma this Monday morning. We went to Crows Nest Farm to pick berries on Wed. It is amazing how much bigger the u-pick berries are compared to the wild ones I'm use to picking with grandma, and even weirder is that the plants have no thorns. I'm not complaining, but it makes me feel like I'm cheating.

I will also need to be picking and freezing corn this week. I will be eating some also, one of my favorite summer treats.