We sure do… and cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes. Picked nearly three dozen cucumbers this week (the batch in the pictures just yesterday morning alone) and just when I think they are winding down the zucchini continue to produce more and more fruit. The peppers and tomatoes are finally turning red, and the Japanese eggplant are starting to come into their own. The lettuce has finally bolted and been removed to make room for a second planting of beans, and despite the garden fencing, the groundhogs took care of most of the broccoli, but there is still hope for cauliflower. The carrots have yet to be picked, so we’ll see what we get when they are ready. Edith has been busy shredding, pickling, canning, cooking, baking, slicing, dicing and more, and has hardly begun to start on the tomatoes!
Tag: garden
The vegetables continue to come in… I picked half a dozen zucchini, 13 cucumbers, and a couple of eggplants and tomatoes on Saturday, and then another dozen cucumbers and some more zucchini today.
The Giant Marconi peppers are just starting to get a tinge of orange to them, so hopefully they will turn red soon.
I’m starting to feel like Bill Murray.
I was out watering the garden yesterday afternoon, when once again I saw massive evidence of yet another groundhog invading the vegetable garden. Since I am becoming quite handy with the trap, I quickly obtained it from the garage, baited it with the vanilla extract and broccoli mix, and set it up right next to the hole under the neighbors fence. Within an hour or two, the critter had been caught.
I decided not to try and relocate the rodent while on my way to work this morning, so I left it inside the cage until I returned home this evening, then loaded the trap into the car after dinner, and went for a ride to the same spot I had relocated the first groundhog, not far from my in-laws’ house.
Why do I get the feeling this saga isn’t over just yet?
Another day, another groundhog.
I came home from work on Monday and found evidence of another groundhog: a hole had been dug under the fence from our neighbor’s back yard, so I decided to set up the trap again, baiting it with broccoli doused with vanilla extract. Tuesday night the trap and bait had been untouched, so I moved the trap closer to where the hole had been dug, and sure enough when I came home Wednesday there was another groundhog peering out at me from the trap. Instead of throwing the cage into the back of the car to “go for a ride” with the varmint, I took it with me for the 35+ mile trip to work at the Hopewell site and let it loose there. I could almost hear the strains of Born Free playing as I watched it run away from the cage and into the wild; well, maybe not, but I did learn something from the experience: if you leave your formerly groundhog occupied trap in the back of your car in the hot sun while you are at work all day, leave the windows open. A lot.
We’ve been battling for the past two weeks with a groundhog in the back yard. It’s been nibbling on Edith’s petunias and daisies, but mostly leaving the vegetable garden alone. That is, until Friday night.
I noticed Friday evening while checking on the garden that something had managed to get inside the fence and nibble on the lettuce and broccoli; the perpetrator had chewed a hole through the plastic fencing. On Saturday morning while walking downstairs, Edith spied the groundhog out the back window, which she chased with a broom until it scurried under the back fence and into the next yard. This morning, I again saw signs of visitation from the groundhog, and I took the Hav-a-Hart trap out of the garage and set it up, waiting for Edith to come home with some bait. Later, while I was in the back yard mending a garden hose, I thought I heard our little friend trying to dig into our yard from next door, but in actuality the little rodent was inside our garden fence! I quickly grabbed the broom and placed the trap inside the garden perimeter, so that it might run inside the trap while trying to get away from me. Edith heard the commotion from the kitchen window, and joined me in prodding and poking the groundhog as it ran and hid among our vegetables. I could tell it was getting frustrated and scared, trying desperately to escape, and it did eventually run inside the trap. I placed the trapped animal into the back of the car and drove it across Route 22 and up the hill about 7 miles to Berkeley Heights, where I released it into a wooded area.
I feel good that this pest has been captured and removed, but I’m really hoping that there are not more of them.
Steamed zucchini… Stir-fried zucchini… Zucchini pie… Zucchini Bread… and there are still dozens of flowers and fruits out in the garden just waiting to be picked, growing bigger and bigger and bigger…
Edith has already shared some zucchini with her mom and with her co-workers. Time to start distributing to the neighbors.
The vegetable garden is starting to come into its own.
I don’t want to be counting any chickens, but I am really impressed with the way the garden looks this year (despite my Sweet Treat carrots and Eureka beans not doing well at all.) The Big Mama tomatoes are already yielding fruit, as are the Giant Marconi peppers; today I cut three Sure Thing zucchini and a head of lettuce for the first harvest of the year. The Streamliner cucumbers however are late (lots of flowers and very small fruit, but normally by this time I would have harvested several already) but they are growing steadily, so I’m not concerned. The Japanese eggplants, broccoli and cauliflower are are coming along as expected, too. I’ll be planting the Oregon Sugar Pod II snow peas later in the summer, for an autumn harvest.
So, a few weeks ago, our dishwasher decided to stop working – the motor just up and died one afternoon. After calling in the local repair shop for their professional review of the situation, the prognosis was not good: not worth repairing, time to but a new dishwasher. For the past 6 weeks, we’ve been handwashing the dishes, morning, noon and night while we checked out Consumer Reports ratings and priced various models. Finally, this past Monday we took a trip over to Appliance Arama in Plainfield to pick out the model we wanted. Plainfield, New Jersey is what is considered an urban enterprize zone, designed to encourage business growth and stimulate local economies in New Jersey; as such, they are permitted to charge half of the standard sales tax rate on certain purchases. We were able to take advantage of the reduced sales tax, along with some pretty good up-front pricing, combined with two manufacturer rebates, and I decided to save an additional $125 by installing the dishwasher myself. This morning the new dishwasher was delivered, and a few hours later we were out of the hand-washing business once and for all.
It rained pretty much all day today, which combined with some pretty high relative humidity to make it an overall nasty day. I did wander out to the backyard to catch up on harvesting some of the tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and a single mature broccoli growing in the garden; much to my surprise, hiding under some leaves was the mother of all zucchinis. The fruit measured 17″ in length, 14″ at its maximum girth, and weighed 5.4 pounds. A minute later, I found another, somewhat smaller monster zucchini: 15″ length, 12″ girth, 3.6 pounds.
That’s some serious zucchini.
Or something like that.
For some reason, we’ve been enjoying the backyard probably more that we ever really have before. Maybe the weekend weather has been especially conducive to outside activities? We’re not really sure, but whatever it is, it is good.
Spent a good amount of time doing the usual maintenance stuff – I cut the lawn yesterday, and E. planted a few more flowers in the front of the house, before we headed over to her parents’ house for her sister’s husband’s birthday. This morning I headed over to the Home Depot to pick up a cinder block, 60 lb. of concrete, and a 4 lb. sledgehammer, all needed to complete today’s project: install E.’s new umbrella clothesline. A few weeks back when we hosted W.’s first Holy Communion shindig, I had removed a post, to which had been attached E.’s previous clothesline. The post was simply in the way of where the tent needed to be, so out it came. E., God bless her, has been practicing green laundering for many years now, way before it became fashionable; in fact, one of the feature that really sold E. on this house when we bought in was the clothesline. Must have come from watching all of those episodes of Little House On The Prairie as a child. Anyway, I had to promise to replace the clothesline, and I was able to convince E. to replace the old post with a new umbrella model, which I installed today. First I dug a 12″ square hole, 16″ deep, and put a layer of rocks in the bottom. I then took Mr. Shepherd’s cold chisel (Mr. Shepherd was the original owner, c. 1938, of our house; he was a mason, and many of masonry tools are still in my basement. He passed on many years ago, and his widow finally sold the house after 60 years to the Neilsens. Mr. Neilsen was not much of a handyman, and had no use for the former owner’s tools, but he was kind of enough to leave them in the basement workshop when we bought the house in 2002) and separated the cinder block into two halves, inserted the pole sleeve into the half with 4 sides intact and filled up the void with concrete. After letting the concrete set up for a bit, I placed the cinder block and pole sleeve into the hole and filled up the sides with more concrete. I was constantly checking for level and plumb, and I’m pretty sure once the concrete is cured the umbrella pole will be secure and ready for E. to use. We’ll see how it holds up when E. gives it a proper workout next weekend.
I also finally cleaned up the remainder of the branches I had cut down a few weeks back when they were hanging over our fence fro the back neighbor’s yard. I had gathered the branches into a tarp which was set aside until today, when I dumped them into a trash can and brought the can out to the curb for tomorrow’s pickup. Of course afterward I needed to clean up the tarp, along wth the shovel and wheelbarrow from the concrete…
Grilled up some chicken, served with broccoli and rice, for dinner. After dinner I out away the tarp, and finally fertilized the vegetables and flowers with Miracle-Gro.
For all of this work, there is still more to be done that I did not get to yet – need to tie up the rose bush in the front garden, as it has become top heavy and is sprawling into the surrounding flowers, and I still need to put down some new topsoil and grass seed where the tree used to be on the front lawn.
<Yawn>
It will have to wait until another day.
So much for kicking back and relaxing. Guilt can be a powerful thing, and such a beautiful day as today is a rare thing indeed, so rare, that the opportunity to trim the overgrown hedges in the back of the yard under such pristine conditions might not have come again soon, so I abandoned my indooor plans and cleaned up the back fence and some other forsythias in the yard. I must say, it looks hundreds of times better, and there is satisfaction in having completed the job. Also, sprayed the front hostas to help keep away the deer and rabbits.
To celebrate, I grilled up some zucchini, eggplant and vidalia onions, followed by a steak; we drained a 2005 Schloss Schönborn Estate Reisling that I had bought for W.’s First Holy Communion that was left unopened, which was simply outstanding. The evening finished up with the backyard sunset while listening to Madame George. Sweetness, indeed.
The vegetables are all in: 6 tomatoes (3 BIg Mama and 3 Beefmaster) 3 peppers (Giant Marconi) 3 eggplant (japanese variety) 2 zucchini (Burpee hybrid) 6 bib lettuce and a row of cucumbers (Streamliner.)
I had planned to also trim up the overgrowth of forsythia and other shrubbage that is falling over the top of our fence from the back neighbors into our backyard but the humidity was a bit higher today than yesterday, and I just never got around to it. It’s raining now, so maybe tomorrow – we’ll see. For as much as I do enjoy gardening and maintaining the yard, I think tomorrow will be a day to kick back and enjoy the well deserved day off.
E. usually takes the kids over to the Memorial Day parade in Berkeley Heights (compared to our town’s Fourth of July parade, their parade cannot compare) but I usually pass. The bast part is when they all arrive home with a doughnut or two for Dad, picked up while watching the parade. Mmmmm, doughnuts…
We’ve been incredibly blessed with some truly great weather the past week, and today was a spectacular day: temperatures in the high 70s to low 80s, low humidity, and a welcome occasional breeze, This evening it is in the low 60s, which we are enjoying out on the porch, curled up on the couch with a couple of good books.
Spent most of the day doing gardening – what else? Trimmed and cut the lawn, and extended the vegetable garden by 16 square feet to make some room for 1-2 zucchini. We tend to run out of space every year, and I find myself each year planting less than I would really like. This year I simply decided to add more space. We are incredibly behind with the vegetable planting, but I plan to put in the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants tomorrow, as well as get the cucumber and zucchini seed planted, weather permitting.
The flower beds this year look the best they have in years. Freshly mulched a few weeks ago, the perennials divided, thinned and trimmed some time ago, the plantings are beginning to take shape rather nicely. Still, some more weeding needs to be done in the large flower garden in the front of the house, a few more annual plantings here, some more mulch there.
We stopped at a local nursery this afternoon, K., W., and I, after I picked up W. from school; we met Mom there, and picked up a few more lantana, salvias to pop in some open spaces, and a few other border plantings. Sometimes I do feel like a kid in a candy store, with so many beautiful plants to choose, but I generally am able to control myself. In the past few years we’ve really been able to focus on perennial plantings, for the ease of maintenance, for a consistent design to the gardens year over year, and to avoid laying out loads of cash on new plants every year!
The irises in the front (photo above) have just started to bloom; I just love their color. I purchased them a few years ago from White Flower Farm; this particular variety is called Butter and Sugar.
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