Weekend Odds and Ends

What good is rain if you don't go play in it?

Monday nights are becoming my night to blog about our weekend adventures. This past weekend was certainly enjoyable and relaxing (indoors, of course).  Being near Phoenix, we're still averaging 110 degrees unless some cloudy weather rolls in...which it did this weekend, YAY!

It is SO rare that we get any rain around here, that when we do get it, the kids have to run outside and jump around screaming RAIN RAIN!  This time we actually got enough that they laid down next to the curb and pretended to be swimming as the water crashed against their faces and streamed by.

You know WHY it rained? Because I was grilling steaks in the backyard. THAT'S why.  Sure, I saw gray clouds...but that doesn't mean JACK where we live.  It came on so quick that I didn't have time to pull all the New York Strips off the grill.  By the time I went back for the last three steaks, I returned to the house soaked.  But the steaks were awesome. Had them with pan fried corn and mashed taters. Mmmmm!

Grandpa Neff's beans.

Right before the rain, Wifey showed me how the beans were doing.  She said they've been at this size for quite a while. I'm wondering if I accidentally planted Oompa Loompa beans instead of Grandpa Neff's beans.  These guys are pretty small.

They've been growing since around March and sure looks like they have a ways to go.  Anybody know when these suckers will be done?   We planted our corn at the same time and it has already been eaten and the stalks have turned brown. These guys and the French Horticulture beans are taking F.O.R.E.V.E.R!

The cukes and watermelon are coming along nicely.  Here's a picture of a little watermelon hiding under some leaves.  We picked one a week ago or so, hoping it was ripe.  We were WAY wrong.  They green up so quick it just makes you want to snatch 'em up and eat up. Guess we'll just have to wait a month or so and see if they get much bigger.

Here's a little watermelon, chillin' under a canopy.

Our pumpkins are kinda doing the same thing.  Although they initially were a green color, they are now a pumpkinish orange color.  We'll be watching them eagerly too.  We love to decorate pumpkins for Halloween and can't wait to try our hand at a pumpkin pie recipe.

I also recently posted how we've been juicing some of our garden harvest after watching a Netflix phenomenon called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead by Joe Cross.  We use our own cucumbers mixed with apples, kale, blueberries, beets, peaches, asparagus, collard greens, broccoli, bok choy, celery and just about anything else from the fresh produce section.  We don't use ALL this stuff in one drink but we mix a good six or seven items.

Typically the flavor of the apples overpower the greens and I haven't had a blend yet that wasn't drinkable.  Even though a lot of pulp goes into our composter, we still get quite a bit in our drinks.  You can see it floating around in the glass and taste the little bits as you drink the beverage. We're juicing, on average, twice a day and consuming a LOT of veggies that we normally wouldn't enjoy eating.  If you haven't checked out Joe's movie, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. What? You've never been THAT bored? Oh, come on.

Heavenly juice from our Jack Lallane juicer.

Wifey's birthday is tomorrow.  Looking forward to some good eats.  Probably treat her to some Olive Garden.  I suck at keeping presents hidden though.  Once our oldest daughter gave away one of the presents (which she is infamous for doing), I gave in and gave her both on Saturday.  She is the proud owner of a new Brother Serger 1034D and Presto 23 Quart Pressure Canner/cooker.  That outta keep her busy for a while ;-)  You know you could find inexpensive juicers with Target Promo Codes and get your own healthy drink.

I'm off now to go see what those jokers in Washington are doing about the ill acclaimed debt ceiling crisis.  I predicted  it would all boil down to Obama using politics to go around the Congress and do whatever he wanted to do...like go to war with Libya. 

~OJD

SeedForSecurity Indian Corn Garden Harvest Update

Indian Corn grown of seed from SeedForSecurity.com

Quick update on the Indian Corn we are growing in one of our gardens. As previously mentioned, this is our second season at trying to grow corn. First season we planted too late. This season looks like a winner. Our first cob picked revealed "kernal gap" was occuring in our garden. With the help of some readers here and Google searching, I learned how to hand pollinate. This is a picture of some ears we picked yesterday. Not very much kernal gap on these. What a relief!

Different batch,  still in husks.

         I am fascinated by the multi-colored kernals. Wifey cooked these ears and we had them with dinner. We had to learn the hard way how to cook it, of course. Some researching shows that you cook the cobs very quickly in boiling water (some resources say just three to seven minutes in boiling water.) Believe it or not, the solid colored ears actually tasted more palatable than the multi-colored but they were a bit over-cooked. So, the next batch will be cooked perfectly.

I dried out an ear and hand pulled the kernals off for seed storage. They came of rather easily and I stored them in an amber pill bottle in the freezer (don't quote me on that one, I'm pretty sure I heard freezing is ok?)

PVC framed, bird netted, second season Indian corn.

This gardening experiment took some fine tuning but we are now comfortable that in THIS climate, with THIS seed (SeedForSecurity), and in THIS soil, we can grow a food that is delicious, nutritious, and fairly easy to grow (once you learn how, of course.) That remains our goal. Learn how to grow food that our family will eat and help reduce our dependence on grocery stores.

What's YOUR goal?

Seed For Security Update: Jacob's Cattle Beans and French Horticulture Beans

Purple carrots comparing size to a dime coin.

If you read my previous post about how excited I got planting purple carrots, you'll also know that they failed miserably. I can't remember where, for sure, I got them but it was NOT inside the United States. Needless to say, out of two 3'x3' raised garden boxes, I've grown maybe six carrots. The tops were deceptively large, or so I thought (as a novice gardener) so I picked a few. They were miserably small and scrawny. Smaller in diameter than a pencil and less than half the length. That was over a month ago.

I picked two more just the other day. You can see by the picture that they are still pathetic. I only have two left growing and they're staying in the soil until they say FEED ME SEYMOUR! Maybe I'm just being too impatient. I want this stuff to be ready to eat in under four months. Is that SO unreasonable?

French Horticulture Beans with cat-proof bird net

Which brings me to what replaced the purple carrots: Jacob's Cattle Beans and French Horticulture Beans. The Cattle Beans were a vivid spotted color almost like little cows. One 3'x3' raised bed garden was filled with Cattle Beans and the other bed filled with the French Beans. Considering they were planted in early May, I think they are growing REALLY well.

The Cattle Beans box is situated right next to a metal shed and I was warned by some seasoned gardeners in the neighborhood that the radiant heat coming off of the shed would burn two or more rows of seed closest to the shed. They recommended I grow some Armenian cucumbers on a trellis to absorb some of the heat. I didn't heed the warning quick enough and am losing some of the crop. I placed a blue tarp on the plant side of the shed today until I can build a trellis and find some Armenians.

Jacob's Cattle Beans (crop thinned by radiant heat
from nearby metal shed.)

I'm not sure when to harvest these yet so I'll have to do some research. SFS website has a lot of good information and tons of pictures. The bird netting has proved worthy as I haven't seen a hint of cat scratching or poop since I installed them. The kids actually stopped using it as a sandbox too. HOORAY!

When all is said and done, I'm happy with the results in our garden so far. This is an experiment to us and only our second season to grow food.  We see the coming hyperinflation and have begun our journey towards a greater self sufficiency. The more of our own food we can grow, the better off we'll be as the global turmoil continues. Now if only my HOA would allow a milk producing animal...

Seed For Security: Corn and Squash Update

Indian Corn from SeedForSecurity.com

I'm happy to report that our seeds purchased from SeedForSecurity.com are growing very well. This is our second time to plant the Indian Corn and it has done superb. Last season we planted it a little late and didn't get the joy of seeing it reach full size before the winter frost set in. We also discovered little grubs had eaten into the cobs once the ears were peeled back. The grubs didn't matter much since our corn hadn't been planted early enough to mature before the frost (there just wasn't much corn ON the cob yet.)

Needless to say, Wifey and I have pulled a few ears here and there and they look terrific. The SFS website says to harvest when the ears turn brown and/or start to flip upside down. I pulled one yesterday and tasted it raw. It was sweet and yummy. I can't wait until they are fully grown. I'm guessing about one more month. We've planted several rows, around seven or so. Each row has around 10 stalks. Each stalk looks to be growing anywhere from 2-5 ears of corn. We should have a terrific feast ahead of us!

Butternut Squash from SeedForSecurity.com

Second on the list is our Butternut Squash. Not to be confused with Buttercup Squash. Very distinguishable once you see the difference. We planted one little row of squash as a test crop.  We have one seed that has gone berserk and it is growing all over the place. The rest are growing too but this one appears to be on steroids. I don't think it is coincidence that it is positioned closest to the water source. I've counted three squash coming off the monster stalk so far. I'm not sure I've ever tried squash before but if I'm going to take the time to grow it, you can be darn sure I'm going to try to eat it.