Collecting walnuts

One of my hobbies is dabbling in woodworking.  Since I learned that we have black walnut trees, I've wanted to figure out how to harvest the nuts from inside their skins both to retrieve the nuts, but also to try to get the oil out for use as stains.

Last year we harvested walnuts from the yard, but never actually did anything with it.

Now that things have calmed down somewhat, Wifey and I decided to try it again this year.
 
This morning, we took the three kids out on a walnut-collecting expedition.  As we meandered around the woodsline of the orchard we collected what we could from the ground.  We also used a fruit-picker to get some from the trees.

In the end, we collected a decent number to mess around with.  Now we need to sort out how to actually retrieve the nuts and oils from them.

Minor cleanup in the garden

I was off of work this afternoon.  Once I had some free time, I did some more fall garden cleanup.

I pulled out three tomato plants that were pretty much done doing anything.  I harvested what I could before I yanked them out of the ground.  I also weeded a fair amount here and there.  Once that was complete, I harvested beans.

Sorry, no pictures.

Processing the last harvest

Tonight Wifey and I processed the tomatoes from the last harvest.  I also trimmed the beans from the same harvest.

It's a good thing we're getting to the end of the growing season.  Wifey threatened divorce (joking, I think) if I grow many more tomatoes this year.

She also told me that I can't grow as many tomatoes next year.  We'll see.....

I finally do something else with the orchard

As the title says, I finally did something with the orchard.  Now, that's not completely fair.  I've been mowing it, I had Japanese beetle traps set up, and put deer fencing around the apple trees.

Today, I put in an order online for four Royalty Purple Raspberry plants!

I settled on them after doing a fair amount of research.  For one thing, it didn't sound like I really needed to prune them very much.  For another, purple raspberry plants seem to work well near to black walnut trees.  From prior research, the span of 150% of the canopy is considered to be affected by the walnut's juglone excretions.  I don't know that where I intend to plant the raspberry plants is inside that 150%, but with the raspberry plants working okay, I figured I might as well plant closer to the walnuts since a lot of the other things I might consider are intolerant.

I wasn't able to find the Royalty plants at any of the plant nurseries near us so I ordered them from naturehills.com.

Harvest - How are we still growing this many tomatoes?

After mowing the lawn, I took a trip into the garden to pick some tomatoes.  I had to hold The Bear while doing it to give Wifey a break from watching him.  Then both The Boy and The Girl came out to help followed a few minutes later by Wifey.

It became a family event!  We Three Gents picked tomatoes while The Ladies picked green beans.  In the end, we came up totaling about 6.5 gallons of tomatoes and beans.  As with the last harvest, only about 1/4 of the tomatoes were of the Roma variety with the rest being the other type.

We'll trim, blanch, and freeze the beans.  I think Wifey's planning on trying a pasta sauce recipe with the tomatoes.

Pretty colors

I stopped off in the garden this morning before work to grab a few tomatoes for a friend.  While there, I couldn't help but notice the coloration of the marigold, petunia, and summer spinach all in a row near one of the fences.  It's unfortunate that the grass is long there (weeding........), but the color palate was enjoyable.

Thought I'd share for anyone who sees it.

Processing tomatoes

I'll need to do more posting about canning of tomatoes, but this can be a bit of a kickoff.

I wrote previously about how we harvested enough tomatoes last week to fill a seven gallon bucket.  A day or two later, Wifey and I did the first phase for her canning.

1. Clean the tomatoes under the faucet.  Gently scrub off the garden debris (mud splash, dried leaves, etc) from the tomatoes.
2. Half-fill a medium-sized pot and put on the stove under low heat.  For our electric stove, we set the temp at 3.  It's more than a simmer, but still below medium heat.
3. Put a small slice in each of a half-dozen tomatoes and gently drop into the water.  Leave them there until you see the skin start to pucker.
4. In a large bowl or large/low pot, 2/3 fill it with ice water.
5. With a large slotted spoon, remove the tomatoes and drop into the ice water bath.  This will shock the tomato and loosen its skin.
6. With a sharp knife (or your finger nails), remove the skin from the tomato.  Cut it into large chunks such that each is around the size of a large cherry tomato.  
• Be sure to smell the tomato.  If it smells at all like rot, throw it out.  It should smell strongly like tomato.
• If the skin doesn't readily come off from the tomato, if you had it in the hot water long enough, the tomato isn't ripe enough.  Throw it out.
7. Collect all of the processed tomatoes in a large container and refrigerate until you're ready to finish canning it.

Last night, Wifey finished the canning work.  The seven gallons of tomatoes made up six quarts of tomatoes.

The total is now 42 quarts for the year.

We have pears!

Actually, we've had pears for a while.  Having never grown any fruit of any kind, we weren't sure when we needed to harvest the pears.  So we'd put it off for quite a while.

Well, this morning Wifey grabbed me and said, "Let's go check out one of those pears!"  So we did.

We picked the largest of the pears (it was a big one) and shared it.  It seemed a little underripe (from a hardness standpoint), but still had some nice pear flavor to it.  I've certainly had less flavorful pears from the grocery store.  We enjoyed it.  And so did The Bear whom had a couple of small nibbles.

And it's just occurred to me that this is the first fruit we've had from one of our new fruit trees since the apples didn't make it past the deer this spring.  How cool! 

Harvest - Tomatoes and beans

It's been a few days since I've written a post about harvesting stuff.  The summer crops are definitely slowing down.  That said, we still filled a seven gallon bucket with tomatoes for canning and picked a lot of green beans, too.

Progress with fall planting

I had to take the day off work to help out Wifey with some home stuff.  After The Girl was done with preschool, she helped me in the garden some for some Daddy/Daughter time.  Besides enjoying my time with her, it was also good to show her some of this.  The Boy was four years old when he started helping me in the garden and it's nice to see his little sister following in his footsteps.

First, we planted the broccoli starters where the second batch of corn had been.

We then planted the snap pea starters where the cucumbers had been.

We also meandered around the garden and saw how the baby lettuce and snap pea sprouts are developing.

Wifey gets some fall crops

While I was doing a boating safety class with The Boy yesterday, Wifey took The Girl and The Bear with her to a plant nursery to look for some fall flowers.  While there, she bought a flat of broccoli starters as well as a flat of snow pea starters.

Apparently, she forgot that I'd started a number of snow pea plants from seed a week ago.  I hope everyone's ready for some snow peas this fall!

Cleaning up the garden for fall crops, part 4

The cleanup continues!

We had a quiet, nicely temperate morning.  In the interests of continuing the fall cleanup, I removed a tomato plant that was finished, then started weeding the box containing the potatoes.  That went quickly so I bounced over to the onion box.  That, too, went quickly so I started in on the garlic.

It's obvious looking at the picture above how overgrown I let the garlic (left) get this year.  It's quite embarrassing.  I need to do a much better job next year.  I'll blame it on the fact we were still getting established around the property this year.

My progress slowed to a crawl as I found that the only way to remove the crabgrass infesting the two garlic boxes was to methodically dig out all the roots.  I found that some of them went quite deep in the soil.

While working through the boxes, I found that what I'd thought were weeds among the crabgrass were actually some garlic sprouts.  When we went to harvest the garlic this year, we couldn't find many heads and what we found were miniature.  Apparently, they grew a good bit in the ensuing months.  I sorted through the cloves and replanted the largest ones in the box spaced about 4" apart.

After I finished with the first box, I started in on the second one following the same process.  4 hours later, I was finished with the entire task. 

Initially, I'd only intended to weed the boxes to prep for fall planting.  As a bonus, I discovered garlic already resident there and finished that planting task, too.



The fall cleanup series of posts began on August 29.

Green Tree Frog on the fence

I came across a Green Tree Frog climbing the wire fence next to where I was removing the corn, etc earlier today.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get a great picture of it (need a better camera), but there he was clinging to one of the vertical members.  Cute little guy.

Cleaning up the garden for fall crops, part 3

The cleanup for fall planting continues!

I had a bit of time this morning to do some garden work.  I decided to remove the second batch of corn along with the wholly-unproductive planting of runner beans.  And, of course, the crabgrass that infested the area.  The Boy was a great help in carrying the piles of debris to the wheelbarrow.  Once the area next to the fence was cleared, I tackled weeding part of the adjacent path. 

I'm not sure what I'll plant there this fall.  We have a few options to consider.


The fall cleanup series of posts began on August 29.

Wifey has been very busy with her canning

No pictures for this post, but Wifey asked me to bring up a quart of her canned tomatoes the other night.  She was adding some to some beef vegetable soup she was making.

When I checked out the canning rack in the basement, I found she had canned 36 quarts of tomatoes so far.  I think there may be 1-2 batches of tomatoes left on the plants before we're done for the year. 

I didn't count the jars of pickles on the shelf.  I also didn't tally up the bags of frozen green beans in the freezer.

Strawberry plants are in the ground

My parents have grown strawberries for a few years.  Over the years, their plants have sent out a number of runners and my parents got to the point where they were inundated with strawberry plants.  Yesterday, they brought over a number of the plants in an attempt to thin the herd, so to speak. 

Last night, I planted about half of them in the downslope corner of the garden that The Boy isn't currently occupying.  Wifey and I grew them on a very small scale at our first garden plot and before that in her first year out of college.

It'll be interesting to see how things pan out with them.

Mr Stripey and Big Boy tomatoes aren't worth planting

As I mentioned in my last post, The Boy and I removed some tomato plants that were never productive.  After my starters never did anything (I'm blaming the water softener), I purchased a number of varieties to see what worked and what didn't.  Two varieties of tomato that I bought were a complete waste of money.

Of the four or so Mr Stripey and Big Boy tomato plants that I had planted, I didn't get a single tomato out of either variety.  With each type, they'd get to a decent size, develop a number of splits while green, then start changing colors.  All I got out of each type was an expanded cloud of fruit flies.

I won't ever plant those tomato plants again.  They weren't worth the time, money or space they occupied in the garden.

Cleaning up the garden for fall crops, part 2

After church, The Boy and I got changed into grubby clothes and pulled out some of the tomato plants that either weren't productive -- in some cases, they never were but that's a story for another post -- or were a nuisance.  Once all that was done and the mess thrown into the woods to break down, I rototilled the area to prep for some fall crops.

All that mess in the background would be the sweet potatoes that have tried to take over that entire part of the garden.  Guess which crop we don't intend to plant ever again?



The fall cleanup series of posts began on August 29.

We have baby figs!

It's been a long time since I've done a front garden post, but this is a good one.  I'm happy to report that we have two baby figs on one of the new fig trees I planted this year.

How cool is that???

Green Tree Frog in the beans

While harvesting green beans, I came across a Green Tree Frog hiding out in the vines.  He was a cute little thing.  Obviously, I left him alone.

Harvest

With a day off of work I enjoyed doing some work in the garden this morning.  We also had a decent harvest.

Some Fall planting

Yesterday, I got home from work and was able to do some fall planting in the side garden.  I intend to do some more in the future, but for now it's a start.

I didn't take any pictures ("Oh look!  Roughed-up soil....") but here's a list of what I planted.

• Black-seeded Simpson lettuce
• Scarlet Nantes carrots
• Long Standing Bloomsdale spinach
• Sugar Ann snap peas
• Lacinato kale
• Cosmic Purple carrots

I don't really expect the carrots to do anything, but I figured that I might as well plant them since I have the free space and it hasn't really gotten all that cold yet.   Some of this stuff I located where the corn used to be.  Some is on the downslope side of the small red maple.  The snap peas are just inside the gate to the right as well as directly inside the gate.

I intend to do a slightly-later planting of the kale and, perhaps, the spinach in another few weeks.  I'd like to try setting up a cold frame in the garden to see how things go.