Message To Myself

I picked tomatoes for salsa today.  I realized that no one needs ten 'Celebrity' tomato plants.  Nobody.

harvest from one plant

Remember this next year when you plan the garden.  Thank you.

Agastache Obsession

It appears that I have developed a full-blown agastache obsession.  Five years ago, I purchased this variety and the rest, as they say, is history...

Silvery, soft foliage, licorice scent, bi-colored flowers, ability to attract hordes of bees and hummingbirds -  what's not to like!  This was my only agastache resident for a few years and then, I discovered Deseret Nursery in Salt Lake City.  He apparently has an agastache obsession, too, as every time I visit, he's got a new variety.  So I began collecting.

Actually has periwinkle blue flowers

I have three more plants but they aren't blooming at the moment.

So far, I've learned that all agastache have that fantastical hummingbird attracting quality.  And they're all quite drought tolerant once established.  Also, I haven't lost one yet over the winter (knock on wood.)

Last, but not least, there is some debate about the pronunciation of 'agastache'.  Some seem to prefer a version that rhymes with 'mustache'.  I personally prefer 'a-gas-tacky' mostly because I love the look in salespeople's eyes at nursery's when I say that.  lol.

Presto Change-o

I've blogged before about the pleasures of having a garden.  In spite of the fact that I complain A LOT about the amount of work a garden entails, the pleasures are many and often delightful.  Take today, for instance.  I went from this...

...to this...

...to this...

 
in less than an hour. Yummmmm, apple crisp.  I did have to wait another hour for it to cool off to get a taste.  It was worth the wait. 

The Experiment or...

...what do you do with half a bushel of tomatoes?

I picked these this morning about 7.  There was a man walking around on my roof the whole time I was picking.  That was both weird and kinda cool (he was doing a re-roofing estimate for my husband.)  This is about 1/10th of the tomatoes on the vines and about 1/2 as many as will be ripe next week about this time (about 20 pounds total).  Just for the record, they are mostly 'Celebrity' hybrids with a few 'Early Girl' thrown in.

After a few hours of research done over the last few days, I finally decided to try the Crushed Tomatoes recipe for bottling from my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.  I had originally wanted to raw pack them, but from all the recipe research as well as the opinions of some of my canning friends, the crushed tomato recipe is supposed to yield a superior product in terms of texture and taste.  My plan is to use a bottle of these soon so I can conduct my own taste test before I bottle many more.

The process was lengthy but easy.  I peeled, seeded and roughly cut the tomatoes then brought them to a boil in the new, heavy-bottom stock pot that Mike bought me last year.  Thanks Mike!  It turned out to be a life-saver as the tomatoes were determined to get themselves scorched, but that awesome stock pot fended them off.

After pouring boiling hot squished tomatoes into the quart jars, I added salt (for taste) and lemon juice (for safe canning).  The jars process for nearly an hour, way longer than the simpler recipes, but necessary since the mixture was quite thick.  After I removed them from the canner, I hovered, waiting for the delightful pinging that signals a good seal.  One of those rascals made me wait an hour before it sealed!  The finished product...

Total time in the kitchen:  a bit over three hours. 

ETA:  I tried the leftover few spoonfuls of tomato after they'd chilled in the fridge.  They were absolutely delicious, way better than the canned ones I've been eating lately.  I'm going to need to make some more of these!

Loves Me, Loves Me Not

Last summer, I planted some Rudbekia 'Goldsturm'...brown-eyed susan daisies.  They were small plants, but bloomed quite a bit considering it was their rookie year.  Early in the summer, I taught the grandkids how to pluck the petals one at a time to see if their daddy or papa loved them.  Always finished with 'loves me' so we knew that we were all well-loved.

There were several times that the kids picked every single daisy in their quest for confirmation.  No problem.  I love sharing and what good are daisies that you can't pick?  But, apparently, there's some magic in having my daisies dead-headed by little helpers....

The plants are huge.  The daisies are huge.  And, as you can see, there are way more than a 'few' flowers this year.  Although I've been known to tinker with my photos in Photoshop, this photo is completely unretouched.  The daisies really glow like that at 7 am.

Now, if I could just get my garden helpers to help me with the roses....

I'm Done

Planting, that is.  It'll be quite a while before it's all harvested, but the garden is as planted as it's going to get this year.  We planted the last crops of beets, carrots, lettuce and next year's garlic yesterday.

Coffey Garden 2011

It's quite a sight.  Overwhelming a bit, when I realize that I have to eat and/or process all that food.  The light-colored rows are plantings that I covered with sand to prevent the native soil from crusting.  Also helps to know 'exactly' where I put those carrot and beet seeds.  The sunflower on the right is about ten feet tall.  It's a volunteer and, apparently, a mutant.  I'm looking forward to seeing it bloom.

The only real disappointment this year, garden-wise, is the pepper crop.  I planted bells and hot peppers and all of them have been, well, wimpy.  I think it's probably due to the cooler than usual weather that we've had this summer.  I may end up having to purchase peppers at my favorite Mexican market to bring the salsa up to its anticipated hotness.  Oh, and, ignore any weeds that you see.  I weed every *&$@ day, but they are relentless.  *sighs*  Adam's curse is fully evident in my garden.

A row of butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii) forms a hedge of sorts along the back of the garden.  They have been great at attracting pollinators into the garden to increase the vegetable pollination rates.  The flowers are particularly lovely this year:

Beans, Beans, beans!

Last week, a few tiny beans had appeared in the bean patch in my garden.  This week...

I swear it was only four days ago that I checked on them last and there was NOTHING edible out there then.  These are 'Spike' beans which apparently translates somewhere to 'appears instantly when gardener isn't looking' beans.  Mike helped me pick this first batch last night.

This morning, I fired up the canner and made Dilly Beans for my peeps in Eagle Mountain.  As usual with this recipe, I melted my nose by accidentally inhaling the boiling vinegar vapors.  lol.  No more stuffy nose around here, no sir!

Then, I tried a new (albeit USDA-approved) recipe for three bean salad.  Mike and I are big fans of a good three bean salad, but lately we've been making do with a quicky version that is less than delish.  This version looks so yummy!  It'll be difficult to wait a few days for them to flavor up properly so that we can taste them.

That's the good news.  The 'bad' news is that I still have almost half of that bowl of beans left.  Off to figure out something to do with my never ending bean crop....