oldmobie's Doings

[oldmobie]

My first harvest of green beans for the year.



Tossed them in a little olive oil, salt and pepper, then steamed in 5 minute intervals 'til they were done. (20 minutes total.) Not bad. Thinking of soaking in soy and water next time.

Planted moschata squash and cantaloupes today. Tromboncino, Joseph's landrace, store bought Waltham's Butternut, my own saved Waltham Butternut. Repeated that sequence from west to east, twice, total of 8 hills. Then 2 hills of cantaloupes.

Edit: Also transplanted my replacement Carole Depp's Resilient beans from the "flat" (jug bottom) to the "patch".

[kazedwards]

Your green beans are looking good. I can't wait for them myself they are my favorite. Have tried pickling them? I have not tried it myself but I hear they are very good. We like to sauté them in olive oil with salt, pepper and maybe a little garlic. My wife gets very tired of them by the end of the season. Very jealous.

[oldmobie]

Jul 4, 2014 1:04:14 GMT -5 kazedwards said:

Your green beans are looking good. I can't wait for them myself they are my favorite. Have tried pickling them? I have not tried it myself but I hear they are very good. We like to sauté them in olive oil with salt, pepper and maybe a little garlic. My wife gets very tired of them by the end of the season. Very jealous.

Never have pickled them. Mom used to can them. Sometimes they'd develop a sour taste that I didn't like, though everyone else thought they were fine. (Can they ferment if they're canned properly?) I don't like them canned anymore, but frozen's ok, and I really kind of like them fresh. I think it's texture. I don't like them raw, but still pretty firm. With that "fuzzy" feel on the outside still intact.

How do they taste pickled? How's the texture?

[kazedwards]

I hear it is similar to pickled asparagus in texture. With a little crunch but still softer than fresh. I have never tried them my self. My wife's uncle pickles asparagus each year so we have it from time to time. He uses jalapeños in it for a little bit of spice and it is a very good flavor.

[oldmobie]

First ripe tomato yesterday. Volunteer cherry. Wife said it was really good. I was too late for a pic.

[oldmobie]

First ripe Rattlesnake beans and Triomfo Violetto today. I liked the taste. They seemed a little asparagus like. Don't know if they're that different, or if I'm just tasting unseasoned beans for the first time.

I thought steaming them lightly would retain the color better than boiling. Wrong. I opened the steamer and the color was mostly gone. But I found it!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jul 7, 2014 1:32:28 GMT -5 oldmobie said:

I thought steaming them lightly would retain the color better than boiling. Wrong. I opened the steamer and the color was mostly gone. But I found it!

Purple colors are typically water soluble and sensitive to pH. I often add a bit of vinegar to the cooking water. Here's an example with red-podded peas.

[oldmobie]

Transplanting and fertilizing day:
Transplanted the rest of the cukes, tepary beans, pink phlox into the new flowerbed. Transplanted extra Trionfo Violetto green beans into holes where store bought have failed 3 times. Transplanted Joseph's Landrace dry beans into "the patch" as replacements. Fertilized all that, plus the Carole Depp's Resilient dry beans and all the various jug bottom "flats".

First cantaloupe just peaking out of the soil.

Some varieties are worse than others, but I have sweet corn tassles showing in every variety. Nothing is waist high. Too late for fertilizer to help?

[oldmobie]

Had to reposition a sprinkler that a vine had grown up in front of. It's the kind with a stake on bottom that pokes into the ground, so my wife kinked the hose and I pulled it up and stuck it in the top clip on a nearby T post. It didn't act quite right, and I noticed the post was bent. So I had her kink the hose again and I pulled on the post to straighten it. Apparently it was very old, and it broke at ground level. I hit the ground and rolled onto my back, holding the top of the post and the sprinkler next to my chest, yanking the hose out of my wife's hands in the process. The sprinkler started and I got hosed pretty good by the time she could kink it off again. Would've been really funny, if it happened to someone else.

[steev]

Yes, a butt-plant is great fun, so long as one is resilient.

[philagardener]

No video?!? Probably better that way!

[oldmobie]

Running out of time to plant corn. Planting for Joseph's cross tomorrow, still wanting to squeeze in a planting of "decoratives". Today, though, we planted for the Red/ White / Blue popcorn project. Ended up planting 7 short rows: tiny blue popcorn (2 rows) on the west, Pennsylvania Butter Flavored (white, 3 rows) in the middle, whatever red corn kernels I could find (2 rows) on the east.

I doubt that I have exactly the right red genetics here. I didn't have any red popcorn, and couldn't source it locally. So I sorted out seeds that looked red from Indian corn, dent corn and Astronomy Domine. I have no idea which ones have red aleurone, or which have red pericarp. Plus I guess the red seeded crosses won't be popcorn, so that'll mean back-crossing. But it was time to move forward. I suppose that I'll keep anything that has any combination of the desired colors on one cob. Anything else will get popped, boiled or fed to the critters.

[oldmobie]

Planted zucchini today, 8 hills. The four to the east are Black Beauty and Elite Hybrid, two hills each. The four to the West are Joseph's landrace.

Also planted five Ashworth seeds to be detassled later and hand pollinated with Oaxacan flour corn. I will be planting it in waves, trying to match it's receptivity to the pollen shed of the Oaxacan. Next planting is the 19th, both Ashworth and Oaxacan, followed by two more Ashworth plantings in August.

Experimented today with using vinegar to preserve color in my Trionfo Violetto and rattlesnake beans. We like to steam them about fifteen minutes (still pretty firm) and dip them in ranch. With the the vinegar in the water and the beans up above, the success was less than complete.

Before:



After:



Even though I still lost most of the color, less of it seems to have gone into the drip tray this time. Also, there were occasional purple steaks in the ranch this time.



Next time, maybe I'll soak 'em in vinegar for five minutes or so, then steam 'em. Or maybe that'd be too strong. A vinegar solution? Maybe half in vinegar, half in 50% solution, for taste testing.

Edit: Noticed my first watermelon yesterday. Same "always first" hill of Black Diamond.

[oldmobie]

Finally got my courage up and sowed buckwheat directly into the garden. Sowed heavily in an area about 9'X12' west of yesterday's zucchini. All the home gardeners' success stories I can find are based on sowing into tilled soil. All the no till info I can find is for larger scale farming and a no till drill. So it's time to learn by experience, I guess. Hopefully, it will outcompete (kill) the grass without being hard to kill (so it doesn't become a weed). Or maybe it's a more manageable weed than grass? If close mowing kills it, can I get a desirable crop high enough to survive before the buckwheat seeds in the ground germinate? I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Also drug out all the old carpet pieces leftover from Mrs oldmobie's flowerbed and spread them on the ground in the new garden along with some pieces of heavy tarp. Hopefully it weakens or kills the grass before I need to move it aside and plant anything new there.

Replanted peanuts today because germination sucked last time. We had more NC Giants, but we replanted Tennessee Red with whatever comes from the produce section. Mrs oldmobie keeps them in the freezer for peanut brittle. Had 10 or so extra seeds, so we tucked them around the (still young) elephant's ears and in the rectangular pot the sweet potatoes never came up in.

Most of the hedge and mulberry cuttings seem to be dead. I threw out the ones that showed no life. I kept the ones that still have green leaves, or seem to be growing new ones.

[oldmobie]

A few pics of how things are growing:

The sunflowers at the back of the flowerbed:




Don't know if you can see 'em, Mrs oldmobie's newly transplanted phlox are in front, in three short sections. I forgot to take a closeup.

Bottle Gourds (whose seeds the duck failed to eat):



Ornamental gourds and assorted pumpkins:



My wife said her unfinished flowerbed could take in my homeless cucumber transplants:
(This is about 1/4 of what went in the flowerbed. There are 10-12 others in the new garden.)



and Joseph's Tepary Beans: