Category Archives: unexpected outcomes

bugs, nothing to do with plants, success, unexpected outcomes

A Winter project

June 1, 2023 CocktailFarmers Leave a comment

Greetings! Once again I am demonstrating what the road to hell is paved with, by not actually updating this blog as intended. We are still here, still growing wildly aggressive vegetable and ornamental gardens, and still occasionally becoming entangled with the local wildlife, as we did last fall:

Late last October (the 28th to be exact, according to the time stamp on my iPhone photo) J discovered a Swallowtail caterpillar in the parsley. A hard frost was bearing down upon us, so J brought the caterpillar in, placed it in a box with sticks and lots of parsley (they will also eat dill), and convinced me to purchase a butterfly cage. We named it Waldo, as in “Where’s Waldo?” because it was a small caterpillar in an enormous box filled with sticks and parsley and we often lost track of where it had wiggled off to.

Our crawly friend spun himself (herself?) into a chrysalis attached to a stick, and we placed it in the cage and hung it in the garage as J read that it was a decent place to overwinter them – away from drafts, but dark and cold enough to mimic what was going on outside.

In late April we brought the cage inside, hung it on the sun porch, and kept watch. Apparently, the chrysalis will lighten up as the butterfly gets closer to hatching, and we noticed that happening about a week ago. After a couple of days of no change, the chrysalis got dark again, which J insisted was a sign the butterfly was about to hatch (and I secretly thought it meant it was dead.)

Turns out, J was right:

….well, at least about the butterfly getting ready to hatch; turns out we were both wrong because according to the Interwebs, any Black Swallowtails that are more blue than yellow are actually female. She made her appearance yesterday. While Monarchs need a day or two (and some natural sugar, like an orange slice or a cotton ball soaked in sugar water for sustenance) to get their wings under them, Black Swallowtails have no time for such niceties. Walda washed her face, fluttered her wings a couple of times and took off for the rhododendron across the yard. I suspect we will not even get a thank you note, but to be fair, we stashed her in the garage in winter, which is poor host behavior.

experiments, gardening, lessons, squash, unexpected outcomes

There are always a few surprises

August 22, 2014 CocktailFarmers Leave a comment

We have always ordered our seeds from Pinetree seeds, in Maine. We like them because they are a small company and they promote seeds with a good germination rate. On the few occasions that the seeds do not do well, Pinetree either replaces your seeds or refunds your money. We’ve noticed that when we let them know about a problem, it is probably not limited to us because those types of seeds often disappear from the following year’s catalog.

Last year we ran into our first case of strange vegetables. We had ordered more of the Mr. Big Pea and decided to try Sugar Snap peas as well. We very carefully planted the seeds in specific rows, one type at a time. The plants came up, and we had a mix – some were the Mr. Big Pea (shell peas), others were just Sugar Snap (pea pods.) Literally from one plant to the next they could be different. We investigated – peas can cross-pollinate. Lesson learned – we shrugged it off, ate what we liked, and froze the rest (mostly the pea pods.) I had the thought of using them in a stir fry; I think we still have a few bags, a year later. Clearly not popular with us.

This year something’s going on with the squash. We’re growing yellow squash and zucchini; they are in the same area. One yellow squash plant is producing these:

Now, you would think that it’s a cross-pollination issue, right? Except that there is a type of squash that looks just like that, called a Zephyr squash. We know this, because we grew it two years ago. It was not a particularly disease-resistant plant, so we only grew it that one year. So it could be cross pollination (both types of plants are in the same area) or it could be a Zephyr squash plant. Which is essentially a cross-pollinated summer squash/zucchini whose seeds are saved.

Maybe we should start our own seed company with the offspring of all of our mistakes.

canning, Cooking, end of season, exhaustion, experiments, lessons, success, tomatoes, unexpected outcomes

The end…..for now

November 8, 2013 CocktailFarmers Leave a comment

Today I ate the last dozen or so Sungold tomatoes. I would like to note that it is November, and this is amazing. I would have documented the occasion, but I was at work and forgot my camera. The garden kept going all the way through the second-to-last week of October, finally succumbing to a hard frost somewhere over the nights of October 23rd and 24th. It was a fantastic run. I can only tally what we canned or froze, but here’s where we stand in our first large-scale effort to preserve our harvest for later use:

22 jars dill pickles
5 jars bread and butter pickles
12 jars sweet banana peppers
4 jars green tomato chutney (hurrah! A use for unripe green tomatoes at the end of the season!)
56 cups of diced tomatoes
8 bags of beans
1 bag of peas
3 bags of corn
3 bags of peppers (jalapeno & Fooled You)

It was not a stellar year for either the peas or the corn – although we did eat some fresh – but it was an amazing year for tomatoes. We boiled, peeled, seeded & diced those suckers in 2-cup increments and froze them for use in cooking. We’ve already used about 9 bags so far, and the taste is so much better than even the canned organic tomatoes I normally buy. However, all these frozen vegetables take up a bit of room, as you can see:

There’s no way to really calculate what we harvested and ate fresh – over the long weekend of Columbus Day, J harvested about 15 of our Bride eggplants, fire roasted them, and turned them into eggplant dip. We ate one container, and froze the other two for future consumption as the recipe calls exclusively for Asian eggplants and we can’t get them around here unless we grow them. So we’ll defrost that container, maybe for New Year’s, and think longingly of fresh summer vegetables. It’s just about enough time to have forgotten how hot and backbreaking it is to weed in the middle of summer.

Until next year……

back forty, beans, gardening, herbs, lettuce, rabbits, raised beds, success, sungolds, tomatoes, unexpected outcomes, zucchini

A banner year

August 9, 2013 CocktailFarmers Leave a comment

So while we’ve had a few problems this year (see also: rabbit in fenced garden, bugs) it’s turning out to be an amazing year:

We’ve lost a couple of squash plants – due to powdery mold, bugs or both, it’s not clear, but we’ve successfully harvested zucchini pretty consistently since the middle of July. Of our 6 plants, 3 are producing – all zucchini – and we’re keeping up with consuming what we’re picking. We’ll stick with the 6 plant plan for next year, because if everything does well we’ll have to give stuff away even at that low number. We’ve come quite a way from the days of 6 of both types of plants. Those were some dark times – for us, and the neighbors.

The tomatoes this year are amazing. Our sungold plants are over 6 feet tall, and so heavy we’ve taken to leaning the cages against the fence and lashing them in place:

Our peas this year have been somewhat anemic – Mr. Big Pea produced enough peas for a sandwich bag, and the sugar snap lagged further behind that. Which is interesting, given that we rotated them to a different part of the garden and we used a soil inoculant to help the plants live longer. Currently they start to die off just as the pods begin to form, so instead of being indeterminant, we get one harvest. J yanked out all the Mr. Big Pea plants earlier this week and planted a second crop, something we’ve never done before. We estimate about 7 to 8 weeks before we’re at a huge risk for frost, although the last 2 years we’ve had snow near Halloween, which is about twelve weeks away. We had the seeds for planting, so we figured we’d give it a shot. Also planted this weekend – the third crop of lettuce, and more parsley, cilantro and basil. I’ve picked pretty much what we have, so if I want stuff for the fall, I had to replant. I’m also hoping for enough basil to do a little pesto this year, and freeze it.

We’ve had a lot of rain this summer, punctuated but spells of hot, sunny weather, which has been enormously helpful to the garden, and to our non-farmed yard. It has never looked this nice this late in the summer since we moved in. And as I write this, it’s raining again, after a week of sunny 80-something days:

I’m sure in years to come we will look back on this season fondly. Except for the peas. And that rabbit.

rabbits, unexpected outcomes

The thin line between cute and varmint

July 11, 2013 CocktailFarmers 1 Comment

Let’s review the definitions of cute vs. varmint, shall we?

Cute – adj. – 1. Delightfully pretty or dainty. 2. Obviously contrived to charm; precious.

Var mint – n. – 1. an undesirable, usually predatory or verminous animal. 2. an obnoxious or annoying person.

That’s right, that’s a photo of a rabbit inside the garden, suddenly turning both of us into Mr. McGregor – right after we got over our astonishment that the cute little bunny rabbit can fit through the fence. This was a scenario we had not planned for. The photo was the second time Peter had deigned to enter the garden; late last week when he did it J went in after him, startling him badly as he ran toward the end of the garden, looking for a way out. J was able to shoo him out the gate, and then thought he fixed the problem by tightening the gate closure at the bottom to keep him from squeezing under it – which was how we thought he was getting in.

Sunday morning I was drinking coffee on the porch, and the rabbit was nonchalantly nibbling clover on the lawn. “How cute,” I thought. The rabbit hopped closer to the fence. “Hey J, come watch how sad this rabbit is going to be when it discovers it can’t get under the gate anymo……….” Bam! One minute we’re looking at the bunny on the stepping stone, acting all casual, and the next, Houdini is in the garden. We did not realize the rabbit could get through the fence until I watched him shove his furry brown hindquarters through an opening 2″ x 3″ in an attempt to evade my amature paparazzi efforts. For a few moments, we thought he was still going under the gate. Apparently not. Also, we might have a boneless rabbit living in our yard. Go measure that 2″ x 3″ out. I’ll wait. Right? It is most definitely a rabbit, not a chipmunk or something that would logically fit through the fence.

We’re at a bit of a loss about what to do about this, and also what, exactly, Peter is eating in the main garden. We think the raised bed with the good stuff – carrots and parsnips – is secure enough, but who can be sure anymore? It’s possible the rabbit is after the straw that we put around the tomatoes, but I would think the fresh clover outside the fence would be more appealing. Eventually the rabbit will get too big to get through the fence. Hopefully before it eats anything in the garden.

There was a definition of cute I didn’t include up above:

Cute – adj. – 3. clever, shrewd.

Exactly.

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