A Gift From the Squirrels

Last spring while I was planting my garden I discovered a good looking little plant growing in the grass near the garage. I had no idea what it was but decided to keep my eye on it for a while. When I was watering one of my flower pots a week or so later, I saw another of these interesting plants  It didn't belong in my flower pot, so I dug it out. That's when I discovered a peanut at it's base, so I decided to move it to the edge of the vegetable garden.  One of my neighbours must have been feeding the squirrels peanuts, and the squirrels had apparently planted a couple of peanuts for me. I immediately moved the one from the grass into the garden with the other one.  One of these plants ended up under the canopy of leaves created by the zucchini and tomatoes, but it survived, even if it didn't grow as well as it's neighbour.

It was a long hot, dry summer, but I watered the plants everyday when I watered the rest of the garden, though apparently peanuts don't require a lot of water compared to other nuts.

Peanut plants produce small yellow flowers close to the ground. The flowers send spikes into the ground and the peanuts grow on those. I don't know of anything else that grows in this manner, but if you do, I'd be happy to hear about it.

I looked up when to harvest the peanuts, and it said to wait until the leaves on the plants turned yellow. Well, we had snow before that happened so once that melted away I decided to dig up the plants and see if there were actually any new peanuts in the ground.

Each plant had several new peanuts, though definitely not the 40 my research says they might produce. I shook the dirt off the roots and put the plants in the basement to dry.  After a couple of weeks I removed the peanuts from the roots and put them in a single layer to dry some more. 

I may eat them raw or roast them. I might even replant them next spring. I am thankful to the squirrels for supplying me with these little treats.  I never would have learned so much about peanuts without their help.

A New Way to Use Zucchini!

I may have mentioned that I have a new raised vegetable garden. I got things off to a late start and then the heat came, so I didn't have much hope. It has not rained in so long I can't remember what it even looks like, but I babied my little plants by watering them everyday, by hand, with a watering can. The water was often quite warm as the full cans sat in the sun, or I got it from a hose that was laying on the grass. It might be the fresh soil, or  it might be the warm water, but I could swear I heard those darn plants grow. I've just come from checking out what is growing in the local community gardens, and they are not doing nearly as well. I'm thrilled with my lush little plot.
 
My garden contains eight tomatoes. I started all the plants from seed that I saved. Four of the plants are the Bulls Head Heritage tomatoes that I grow every year, two are purple tomatoes, and the other two are yellow. I picked those up at a farmer's market last summer. I also have a cherry tomato plant that I purchased growing in a big pot. While it's tall and producing some fruit, it's not nearly as lush looking at the plants I started myself.  I have one pepper plant in there too, and it's got several peppers on it. I've never had luck with peppers in the past so I'm very happy with that.  One side of the garden has a row of assorted lettuces, and a row of multicoloured carrots. And then there is the zucchini plant. Other than that, the only other things I've managed to squeeze into this small space are a couple of peanut plants that the squirrels planted for me, and a crazy wild cucumber that I've let grow, just for the fun of it.

It's just the lettuce and zucchini that I have to deal with at the moment though.  We have been eating a lot of fresh salad greens and I've also just picked my 4th zucchini. I likely should have picked that one yesterday as it definitely grew bigger overnight! I see at least 3 more growing out there, and while I'm enjoying them, I am glad I only planted one zucchini plant.  I like stir fries so I've been using them up that way. I did give one away, and last night I made a Veggie Pie out of another one. It was delicious and I thought I'd

share the recipe. I know I'll be making this again, as it was easy and even tastes good cold. It calls for Bisquick. I didn't have any but it's easy enough to find a recipe online to make your own.  At this time of year, if you aren't growing zucchini, you will likely find some on your doorstep. This is another way to use them up. Besides the usual cakes, breads and cookies for dessert, now you can make pie as part of your main meal.  Enjoy.

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Garden Vegetable Pie

2 cups chopped zucchini
1 cup chopped tomato
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup Bisquick mix
3 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Heat oven to 400F. Grease pie plate.
Mix first four ingredients in pie plate.
Beat remaining ingredients until smooth and pour over veggies in pie plate.
Bake until a knif inserted in centre comes out clean. (30-40 minutes)

Colour in the Garden!

April showers bring May flowers......except when they don't.  This year we had a late April snow storm and a drought in May so the flowers only showed up on the very last day. But they are here now and I'm so happy to see them that I just have to share.

Both my peonies and iris are blooming right now, and I have several varieties of each.

 Besides this single red peony pictured above, I have a white one that I just love

as well as the more the common fluffy red and and pink ones.

Currently there are three more varieties that have not opened yet.

Of the irises I have, this one is my favorite.

with this one being a close second.

This purple iris is my most common one and I have clumps of them all over the place. I've given away so many of them over the years that I have trouble finding homes for them now.  I do wish the ones above would multiply more quickly but though I've had them several years, I still have just one small clump of each with just a few blooming stems on each.

The yellow iris my neighbour gave me have really brightened up the back corner of my garden and it looks like they might give the purple one a run for their money over time.







I have a couple of other mixed coloured iris as well, but I'm not all that fond of them as they have smaller blooms and are bordering on ugly. I expect I will likely replace them as I find others I can't live without.

The chives, along with the peonies and iris by my kitchen door, add colour while we wait for other things to bloom.

You may remember this overgrown section from my last post, but it has colour now.

As the bleeding heart end their cycle, a lot of other things are ready to take over.  I'm so happy to see the colour returning to the garden after such a long winter.





I hope I've managed to brighten up your day.

Down on the Farm

Our Friday Friends group decided to take a little photography trip last week, instead of doing out usual art projects. We didn't go far....just down the road to the local sheep farm.


As it turned out, there were other things to see besides just sheep.

There were large old trees




 and interesting garden gates.

The old stone farmhouse

had a peaceful place to sit out back.

The garden had some interesting mulch...wool scraps, as well as the usual straw, to keep the weeds down.

Flowers grow with wild abandon along the fence rows.

and critters help themselves to whatever they can find.

The cedar rails were piled up and ready, perhaps to repair, or make more fences.

 Some of the lambs are still being hand fed by the farmer and they live away from the rest.

Others are doing fine and even grazing on the grass now.

One of my friends was very excited to meet her first lamb. It had managed to get through the fence and came right to her.  She couldn't resist a snuggle.

Our friendly sheep farmer came out to chat with us for a while.  The same lamb my friend had was happy to greet him too.  It definitely likes people.  I hope he keeps it, as his cull list is growing longer day by day.











We had a wonderful time exploring and meeting the sheep. I know I got at least a couple of pictures that will inspire me to create, and I'm sure the others likely did too.

  



A Farmer, I'm Not

Last year a friend gave me a heritage tomato called a Bulls Heart. It's long like a Roma tomato but it's big and juicy and I really liked it.  He had indicated that I could save the seeds and grow my own this year. I looked on line and found out how to do that.  It's quite the procedure really, since tomato seeds have a gel coating on them that has to be dissolved first.

I followed the instructions and saved some seed, and this spring I planted them, half expecting they wouldn't germinate. But they did.  As far as I know they all did. The problem is, I put off planting them as I was waiting for a chance to get some soil. Then I found out it's better to plant them in a soil less mix, and I have pots full of that from previous plants I've brought home.  I dumped some of that into a lined basket and planted the seed in there. By then it was about a month later than they should have been growing.

Then I kept thinking I must transplant them into individual containers so they would have more room to grow. Once again, I wasn't doing the job when I should have been. They were growing long and leggy, but at least they were growing.  You can bury tomato plants part way up their stems if you like, and I did that when I finally got around to transplanting at least some of them. Oh yes, there are others still in the basket. I don't have room for them in the garden anyway, so if you have a spot for one, without a guarantee that there is even time to grow the thing to maturity, just say so.  First come, first served. Bring your own pot.

I still don't have the transplanted ones in my garden yet.  But at least they grew since I transplanted them, so they must be happy in their new environment.  At this point, I'm afraid that the very day I put one out in the garden some big rain storm will come and flatten the wee things down.  I would like a plant or two to actually produce at least one new tomato for me this year, so that I can try this again for next year. Hopefully I'll get my act in gear and do the planting and transplanting chores on time if given that second chance.

My store bought tomato plants in the garden, on the other hand, tripled in size this week with all the heat and rain.  Good thing they liked the weather as I have not been out to water them at all since the day I planted them. I'm no farmer, that's for sure.

Garden Surprise - Mystery Solved

As I mentioned in my Garden Adventure post earlier this year, I had no deer for a while so I decided to plant a garden. One of the things I planted was an assortment of lettuces.  Everything was going fine until one day I noticed something strange.  There was this white thing sticking up out of the ground.  As far as I knew, lettuce didn't grow big thick roots like that, so I took a picture and put it on Facebook, asking my friends if they could identify this plant.

I got all kinds of responses, running from white carrot and parsnip to horseradish.  After checking out those plants online, I knew it wasn't any of them.  I still had a mystery on my hands.  And for some reason, I stopped eating the leaves.  I mean, I had planted lettuce, and this sure wasn't a lettuce, so I wasn't eating it until I knew more.

A friend of ours, Brian Henderson,  used to be the horticultural professor at Algonquin.  He's now the head gardener at Upper Canada Village.  While out prowling the countryside one day, we stopped in for a visit.  As we were about to leave, I mentioned this strange plant and he said it sounded like a Daikon Radish.  I had never heard of such a thing, but I must have described it really well because, when I looked it up online, that's certainly what I had. 

I read that they don't mind a hard frost, so I left it in the ground until this week when morning temperatures were often around minus 7C. Then I dug it up, washed it off, removed and stored the leaves and wondered what to do with the thing.  The younger leaves can be used in salads, as I had been doing in the beginning.  The bigger leaves can apparently be cooked like spinach, or used in recipes calling for spinach or kale.  The root itself, I figured could be grated and used in salads too.

A friend came for tea yesterday, and I showed her what I had accidentally grown.  She knew what it was right away, and said she always had to get hers at a farmer's market!  I asked her what she did with them, and she told me they were good in stir fries and stew.  I was planning on having a meal of pork shoulder chops, with onions, potatoes and carrots all cooked in the same pan.  I decided this was a good time to try cooking some of my Daikon radish too.  It was actually very good, and now I'm planning on creating a stir fry soon.

Like my friend,  I will be looking for these daikon radishes at farmer's markets in the future. I can't imagine growing a whole row of these things as one is good for several meals!  One or two a year will make a nice change of pace though, so I will be looking forward to finding them.

Finding this new vegetable growing in my garden was a much better surprise than finding that the deer had eaten all my hostas, as they had for the past couple of years.  That's for sure!

Garden Adventures

I gave up trying to grow vegetables several years back because the deer were getting more of them than I was. But I have not seen any sign of deer here for over a year, so this year I decided to plant a few things.  I put in an assortment of lettuce, an assortment of tomatoes, and a few pumpkins.

The lettuce was nice and I learned I like more than just the usual iceberg and romaine that I tend to buy.  I'll likely try that again next year, but I bet something comes along and eats it. I can't be this lucky two years in a row, surely.

With this year's drought conditions, the pumpkins didn't get enough water so, while they produced lots of flowers, I don't see any actual pumpkins on the vines.  It may be just as well as I had no idea that they would climb everything in sight.  They went into my bushes, up the tomato cages, and even climbed up my rose bush.  Bright orange flowers in unusual places have amused me all summer, so I don't really feel like that idea failed. I'd try that again too, but since I already placed the plants at the edge of the garden thinking I could coax the vines out onto the grass, I'm not really sure how to keep them from climbing all over what ever other crop I choose to plant next time.

I just heard from some friends recently that they have so many tomatoes that they are busy making one thing after another out of them.  Here's where I feel that I really succeeded.  At Canadian Tire I bought a pack that contained a variety of tomatoes, including a cherry tomato. We like those so I also purchased another variety of cherry tomatoes as well. One grew upright, and the other sent vines all over the ground. I don't see the tags so I'm still not sure which one is which.   One of the other plants in the pack is also a cherry sized species, but they are yellow and pear shaped. Nice and mild.

The nice thing about this variety pack is that the various tomatoes all have different maturity dates.  So far I have had some Old Time Tasty tomatoes, some Early Girl, and some Better Boy.  The Old Time ones are indeed tasty, but more acidic and a bit bigger than the other two. They are short and squat, while the Early Girl have an almost pointed bottom.  The Better Boy may be considered better because it seems to be more prolific than the others.  If I ever do have trouble keeping up with the crop, that's the one that may produce more than one ripe tomato at a time.  Yet to come is the beefsteak.  I'm not fond of big tomatoes, but I only see a few on that plant so far, so things are working out quite well.  Every day for a while now, we have fresh tomatoes of some variety.  There is usually a little bowl full of the cherry sized ones, and there may be one or two of the others waiting to be eaten also.  They are the perfect size to be eaten at one meal, so none of them have yet landed in my fridge.  I definitely hope Canadian Tire decides to offer this variety pack again next year.