Frumpin' up the Jam

... with ground cherries! The corn/jam/raspberry guy at the farmers' market had ground cherries for sale this week. New to me, but he said they make the best pies ever and great jam. I bought $3 worth, which amounted to 2 cups hulled. A quick internet search gave me some guidance for jam-making and the misleading impression that ground cherries would taste delightfully tart. I ate one and found it tasted like three-day-old dark meat chicken. My eldest tried one and came to the same conclusion. Discouraged, but reasoning that the addition of sugar and the application of heat couldn't make the ground cherries taste any worse, I threw them in a saucepan with 1 cup of sugar and 3/4 cup water and boiled them. One recipe suggested boiling them for 5 minutes or so (I boiled them for 10) and then refrigerating the jelly overnight (two nights passed before I got back to my project) and then simmering them another 15 minutes until they become translucent (never happened) and then pouring them into a sterilized jar (which I did).

The result? Delicious!

Resoundingly slapped with a seal of approval by two kids and me. (husband: indifferent). The seeds look like they would make for a miserable eating experience, but they don't effect the texture at all. The color is unappealing. The taste takes me back to the fig jam Nanny Ray used to make. Marvelous!

just cos ...

and Black Seeded Simpson. I picked a half dozen Parris Island Cos plants and cleared the way for another row of seeds.

 I only planted the BSS and PIC. A Northern Gardener article suggested planting seed through the autumn and covering the lettuce bed with 6" of straw once the nights get frosty. With luck and a good covering of snow, the lettuce might be ready to grow with the first warmth of spring and I'll be eating fresh, home-grown lettuce in early spring.

Above are the PIC and BSS a week or so ago. I have decided against rotating my crops within the season. So this is the lettuce and radish bed and it has had several plantings of lettuce (different varieties) and radish over this summer. Plus I had beans and peas in this bed. I do add compost into the bed before each new seeding. So far it's working.

Joe Pye Weed (native!)

I planted my two Joe Pye Weeds on the West of the house (note the delightful backdrop created by my aluminum siding - almost as delightful as the chain link fence behind the blueberries) amongst some cat mint and phlox (also native) and salvia.
I made a solemn vow to never plant fewer than three of the same plant ever again, but then I broke that vow because the nursery only had two Joe Pye Weeds left and they were half off and I have been wanting them and wanting them. Clearly, my back was against a wall and vows had to be broken. It's comforting to have tested my mettle and found that I am not hampered by resolutions at inopportune times.

New Blueberries

It was a great day at the local nursery. I got two Polaris blueberries and two Joe Pye Weeds (native!). I've only gotten the blueberries planted (the J.P.W. will require some shuffling, rearranging, etc). I put the Blueberry bushes in the bed along the fence. Polaris is a half-high variety and I hope my other varieties (can't remember what kind - Northblue, maybe and St. Cloud?) will work as pollinators. I added coffee grounds to the back-fill dirt and have cypress mulch which I hope will work as well as cedar for making the soil properly acidic to keep the blueberries happy. Some people might test their soil, but I choose guess-work and trial and error.
P.S. I am not as Minnie Pearl-ish as this photo might lead one to believe. I have taken the tags off of the blueberry bush.

I can't find my blueberries

and my sourdough starter got moldy. If I had a banjo and some musical talent, I'd set those words to song. Since I don't, I am

1. weeding the grass and pulling the strawberries (even though it hurts) that threaten to choke out my poor miserable blueberry bushes. I can't abandon my blueberries yet - they had their best year since I planted them in spring 2007, yielding almost 20 whole berries! This spring, I mulched them with the pine needles from our dead-as-a-doornail Christmas tree. Maybe that gave them a boost. Maybe they've aged into "greatness." I just read that if their soil is not acidic enough, the bushes will yellow. And if the soil is too acidic, the bushes will die. Since mine don't yellow and don't die, I'll assume they are happy. Maybe more pine needles this spring and some mulch with compost would make them produce more.
2. throwing out the moldy starter and looking to this site for guidance in a fresh start on starter.

Good show, old maid

The zinnias have put on grand show this summer, and the bees and hummingbirds and goldfinches have made merry amongst them to their hearts' content. I planted the Giant variety (being slip-shod in my record-keeping, I can't give more information on the kind of zinnia - something about Giant and California, if I remember correctly) and was a bit surprised at how giant a Giant zinnia is. It shaded my vegetables a bit - my peppers, in particular, got a bit lost. But, looking on the bright side (which the peppers couldn't do, because they were in the shade), the zinnias' height hid the weeds that always get the better of things no matter how good my intentions or how diligently I weed at the beginning of the gardening season.
Bob Flowerdew and Eliot Coleman would shake their heads in dismay and I strive every year to do better at weeding. Now I've learned to not turn the beds in fall or spring. "Now I've learned" meaning that I read that this spring after I'd turned my beds already, but both Bob and Eliot (Flowerdew and Coleman in case my leap to a first-name basis is confusing) told me (not personally but in their books which they may publish for other people besides me, but I don't know for sure) that I don't need to turn my beds. I do need to aerate, says Eliot. And maybe I'll try it.

Beauty and the Yeast

my starter, a large portion b/c I couldn't bear to discard any

At this point in my sourdough story, I seem to have achieved neither beauty, nor yeast, nor great taste. This may be an exercise in learning my limitations, but a man's got to know his limitations, so Dirty Harry says (and I presume a woman should know hers, too) and so I proceed.

 My starter is rather soupy and not very promising looking, but my first batch of bread did rise in the oven. NB: I used mostly whole wheat flour (use all-purpose next time?) and I added only a pinch of salt. The resulting bread tastes like communion wafers, according to my husband and is inedible, according to my kids.


I actually enjoy eating it with lots and lots of butter. I've stiffened my resolve (stiffen being such a suggestive word, but I'm sticking with it firmly because it's hard not to find innuendo in lots of words) and disposed of some of the growing collection of starter. I've also expanded my research resources. I started with The Lost Art of Real Cooking, which is delightfully vague in its directions and made me feel sure I could at least try making sourdough. I've also looked in to what Ma would have done (Ma Ingalls, of course) in The Little House Cookbook and what Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall suggests in The River Cottage Family Cookbook. Now my challenge is to find a warm nook in my house for my starter to bubble and grow.

Scarlet Nantes Carrots

Freshly dug Scarlet Nantes carrots - first picking of the season.

• planted on May 15 (as seed)
• good keepers last year (in the hydrator in my fridge) 
• can stay in the ground until frost.