Cold and the last butterfly

We are supposed to have snow flurries in San Antonio tomorrow. While the boys are imagining building snowmen and throwing snowballs, what it really means is a few snowflakes and a possibly frozen garden.

We picked the last of our cucumbers and red tomatoes. We picked a few green toms for some salsa, but we still have a ton of green toms on the vine. It is supposed to get down to 26 degrees, and I'm pretty sure the toms won't survive that. I'll probably go out tonight and pick some more.
We also picked the last of our green beans. We had an awesome harvest this year. These beans were great to eat right off the vine. Check out M's open mouth down below - he's getting ready to insert a green bean.
The boys found a butterfly. It was obviously too cold for the little thing, as it couldn't fly and was having trouble walking. They wanted to bring it inside so it could warm up and fly away and they were disappointed when I told them it probably wouldn't work - it was just the butterfly's time to go since they don't live well in cold weather. They started talking about it being the last butterfly and how they wish butterflies could live inside and live forever and couldn't they just build it a little house inside with flowers just for a little while.....sigh.


They were a little more cheery when I suggested that the butterfly came to our garden since we have the best dill (for laying eggs) and cosmos (for eating) in the neighborhood, and we are sure to see the caterpillars in the spring.

Quick chicken update:

We finally finished expanding our chicken run. Now the chickens can come out and forage more often and we don't have to worry about tying up our dog.

Today's Harvest

Tomatoes are coming in nicely. We are still getting a few peppers and okra. And I think I can report that our chinese noodle beans have been our summer/fall bumper crop. We've been eating them almost every day, and the kids haven't gotten tired of them yet. I'm going to plant more of these next year for canning and freezing.

The gourd is trapped.

I'm not sure what to do about this gourd. Somehow it had a massive growth spurt in between the times we checked on it, and it is now lodged in the trellis. The boys would like to cut the trellis and save the gourd because ( and I quote) "It looks like a butt!!!!" And what is cooler to a 9 and 5 year old than a butt shaped gourd?

Butt I don't think I have anything that will cut through the trellis - it's pretty thick metal. Although the gourd seems stronger - it's already bowing out the metal on one side.

E doesn't seem to care - she's too busy deciding which piece of okra to eat first - tough decisions!

Grubby grubs

I have decided to grow garlic this year. In preparation, I put horse manure in one of the raised beds back in June. I let it sit there until I was ready to plant the garlic (planting dates are usually in Oct. here in Texas). As I was digging in the horse manure (which composted beautifully - the dirt looked good enough to eat!) we found several beetle grubs. We normally find a few small ones in our other beds - they come from june beetles (but we usually call them June bugs).


These were bigger than we had seen before. Maybe better dirt (or manure) equals bigger grubs? Or maybe a larger beetle found our manure pile tasty.

Well, our chickens LOVE grubs. Love, love, love. They actually fight each other other these things. So, we spent a while grub hunting for the chickens.


Look how happy the grub hunter is as he holds his catch.


As we continued our dig, we apparently uncovered a couple busy making baby grubs:

Yep. Two little june bugs getting busy in my garlic bed. Isn't nature exciting?

This blog may be dying, but my garden is not!

And I have the pictures to prove it:


Red zebra tomatoes

Broccoli (with bonus volunteer basil plants!)

Chinese noodle green beans

Birdhouse gourds

And okra is still producing pretty well:

The recent rains have brought new life to the garden - it was amazing how quickly everything sprang to life. Our peppers are still producing, and I was able to get some strawberry plants for our first ever strawberry bed.

Earth Oven (the big one!)

Well, we didn't wait long after building our mini earth oven to start building a larger one. We're still not done. Our projects seem to take longer since we have 3 little helpers running the project with us.

We are trying to do this as cheaply as possible. So far, we have spent only $39 on supplies - mostly sand (the kids keep absconding with it - I think we need to build them a sandbox)

Alrighty - we began with a circular foundation, made from large pavers (obtained free from our neighbor). We only dug about 4 inches down into the ground since they ground rarely freezes here. In areas where freezing is more common, the foundation should be dug deeper down to provide more stability.
The outside of our foundation. And, yes, that is our littlest one minus her clothing. I don't know what happens. When I bring her out, she is fully dressed. I turn around, and her clothing has disappeared.
We filled the foundation with old broken concrete, rocks, and broken bricks. We had most of this lying around in our backyard.

We filled the foundation the rest of the way with small gravel (free from craigslist!). Then we put in several glass wine bottles (thanks Josie!) for insulation (helps the heat from escaping down into the foundation)

We filled the spaces inbetween the glass bottles with our insulation mix - clay slip (basically watered down clay) and perlite. We couldn't find a source of sawdust, and the book recommended perlite as a good second. We formed a ring with bricks (free from Julie - thanks!) to surround the oven mix (clay and sand) that would form the foundation for our hearth floor.

The hearth floor - the earth oven book recommends using fire brick. We were unable to locate a free or cheap source in our area - there aren't that many fireplaces in our part of Texas. The books says that unglazed saltillo tiles might work well, and my husband was able to get all 6 of these for less than $5 at a tile store. They don't butt up against each other as closely as we would like, but we are going to see if they work out for us.

Building the sand dome - I think this was everyone's favorite part. Who doesn't like playing with sand? We made ours 16 inches high - like the book recommends.

We're mixing up the soil for the first layer of the oven. This is a mix of clay, sand, and water. The clay we got from our own yard. The sand we purchased from the home improvement store. Everyone had muddy feet after this!
We're adding the first layer of the earth oven. It goes on four inches thick around the sand dome. The sand dome was covered with newspaper to prevent the clay from sticking to it.

All done! Doesn't it look beautiful?

A few cracks started to form a couple hours later. We just filled them in with more building soil.
After about 4 hours, we went back and cut out the door. Then we started firing up the oven - this is more to help it dry out than to cook anything. The oven won't perform at it's best until it is totally dry. Since it's been raining (yea!) it's really moist out (it started raining after we lit the fire - hence the tarp).
You can see at the top of the door, and at the very top of the oven where the clay is getting lighter and is drying.

It will probably take a couple days and a couple more firings until we add the next insulating layer, so stay tuned!

Persimmons

We have a persimmon tree in our backyard. They start to bloom early in the year - around March. Then they grow all the way thru September. If you pick one too soon, you'll know it. Unripe persimmons are full of tannins - it feels like your cheeks are getting sucked inward by a strong vacuum. No kidding.

So, we usually wait until they are just starting to turn orange, then we pick them and let them ripen on our countertop.

If we wait too long, the birds get them:Here they are, waiting to be picked:We usually let most of them ripen, and then we scoop out the flesh and save the pulp for making muffins, breads, etc. The pulp freezes really well. They also taste awesome when eaten fresh. But they all seem to ripen at the same time, so they don't last long.

Mini earth oven

We have been wanting to build an earth oven for a while, and we decided to try and make a "mini" oven this weekend to test out our building soil and our technique. It was a lot of fun, and we were so impressed by how easy it was, that we are going to start the foundation for a bigger one soon. The book we are using is Build Your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer.

We arranged some large pavers on a wood base and built our sand dome on top of that:

Mixing the clay/sand mixture to the right consistency - the kids' favorite part:

Adding the clay/sand mixture over the sand dome.

Somewhere in the middle of this, it started pouring down rain - woo hoo! We kept the oven dry with an umbrella.

Cutting the door and scooping out the sand mold:


Then we lit a fire to help dry out the inside.

We hope to be able to fire it up later this weekend and cook a few mini pizzas. This oven is not insulated, so we don't expect it to hold heat for very long, but we'll see! More to come!

It looks like a garden again because...

...beds are filling up with plants:...the tomato plants are getting flowers:
...peppers are growing:....kids are getting muddy :-)

The weed you can eat

Wild Purslane is usually seen as a weed. When A first started exploring our backyard, he discovered some and dubbed it "the alien plant". It does look a little weird - big fat leaves, red stem, and teeny tiny yellow flowers. I never thought too much about it - I always pulled it up and disposed of it. It grew like crazy and came back all over the place.

A couple years later, A wanted to know what the alien plant was really called. So, we researched, and, after a trip to the local nursery, discovered that it was purslane. And we found out that you can eat it. A promptly tried a leaf, then immediately spit it out. I asked him what he was expecting, and he said "not that". It does have a somewhat bitter taste, but we rarely eat it by itself. We cook it with eggs, soups, and sometimes we put it in our stir fry.

Turns out that purslane has really high amounts of omega-3's. So it's also good for you.

And not all purslane is wild. Some purslane is sold at nurseries as a ground cover. Here's a picture of one currently growing in my garden:
Purslane is extremely drought tolerant, so it has been flourishing in my yard. The one above gets chomped on regularly. It seems to have juicier leaves compared to our wild ones:
Although, with more water, the leaves on the wild plants will get pretty juicy, too. But I rarely water the purslane. Unless I'm planning on eating it. Below is an example of purslane that does not get watered (and it also gets walked on):
When it gets damaged, the leaves turn a sort of purple color. And the red stems really stick out. I think it does look a little like an alien plant.

What's currently growing?

Or better yet, what is trying to grow. The weather people are expecting lower temps next week - only a high of 95 degrees - woo hoo! I'm tired of these long 100 degree weeks. I want my garden back!

Alright, off my soapbox.

Here are the seeds I started about a month ago. I've been keeping them in trays which I keep filled with about an inch of water, so they stay moist. They also only get morning sun, and they are pretty much shaded after 1pm.

TomatoesSome peppers - these are cayenne:The yellow cucumbers are doing surprisingly well:And here is our cotton plant. I'm hoping to overwinter these guys. Not sure it can be done, but we'll see.And here is proof of our flood! We are using this to try and solarize the soil and kill the virus that sent our tomato plants to an early death. And for some reason, the kids get a really big kick out of playing on outdoor carpet.

hmmmm....

I couldn't think of a title. I have ignored this blog for over a month! Lots of unpredictable events have unfolded these past weeks (the biggest one being a minor flood in our hallway and bathroom, resulting in carpet being pulled out and tile installed - all done by me and my DH).

I'm planning to bring this blog back to life. Well, as least wake it up from it's sleep, anyways. I have started seedlings (I don't care that it's too hot!), and have been taking cuttings and have started amending soil beds for the fall garden.

Seeds started:
Red Zebra toms
Illini star toms
Cayenne peppers
Unknown chili piquin peppers (super hot!)
Cotton (planted really late, I know, but the kids and I did a lesson on cotton, so it seemed appropriate that we plant cotton seeds).

I'll have pictures soon!

Summer heatwave update

"It's so hot. Ya wanna be lazy. So hot. It will almost drive you crazy."

Anyone remember Teddy Ruxpin? Thanks to my sister (who listened to him almost every night) , I have that song memorized, and it's been popping into my head lately.

Well, we did get some good rain one day this week. It didn't last long, but it did fill up our rain barrels that my husband had just finished a couple days before. Yea! Now I want more barrels. With the 100+ degree days we've been having, I'm going to use up all the water fairly quickly.

We have a few plants that are still growing/producing, but most everything seems to have stalled. Our asparagus beans are still producing. I even put some new seeds in the ground last week and they have sprouted and seem to be taking off.Our gourds are also taking off. While our pumpkin leaves are wilting in this heat, the gourd plants are doing really well.A is posing with his bottle gourd. He wants to make his own berimbau which is an instrument used in capoeira. He's really excited that it's growing fairly quickly.Our gourds are currently being attacked by cucumber beetles. Normally, they enjoy our cucumber plants, but since it's too hot for those, they have moved onto our gourd flowers. So, we've been spraying garlic spray and squishing the ones we can see - here is A in action:It's a shame, because they can be such pretty bugs.