Kerry’s Garden

This morning I was pondering what to eat for breakfast. Bowl in hand, I remembered the berries. How cool is it to be able to take your bowl to the garden and pick your breakfast? Blueberries and a raspberries topped off with a little Fil Mjolk. A breakfast is born. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Even if you don’t have a large yard there are berries that will grow in containers. My blueberries have been in 5 gallon buckets for almost 10 years. Every few years I take them out and rejuvenate them by dividing, replenishing the soil etc. Strawberries do great in containers as do figs. I know a lady that is even growing raspberries in a container. I haven’t tried it but would imagine that gooseberries would probably do fine in containers too.

It isn’t even 9am and to look at me one would think I had been working in the yard all day. The humidity is rather high, to be expected with all of the rain we have had lately. The highs have been in the upper 80s – low 90s and being the heat wimp I am my gardening outings are pretty much limited to early mornings and evenings. I am on vacation for the next two weeks so I will have a number of extended mornings to play.

Yesterday I finished harvesting the red and white currants. I have a 1 gallon batch of red currant wine from last year’s frozen berries brewing. It tasted pretty good with the light alcohol fizz as it went into the secondary. The recipe calls for leaving it for at least two years before drinking.

The blackberries should be rip within the next couple of weeks. I will have to net them this week or early next.

The spring crop of raspberries has been very disappointing. There really isn’t one. My typical m.o. with the raspberries is to alternate the two beds for spring crops. In other words a bed is cut to the ground in the winter every other year. The bed that was supposed to have a spring crop this year went wild sending up new canes. This will make for a bumper fall crop sans any catastrophies, but I am missing the early berries.

The beans are up and not nearly as thick as I would have hoped. I didn’t get the germination I usually do with the Southern States seeds. There should be enough to enjoy them though.

The gooseberries are about to start. It looks like it will be a bumper crop again this year. I have a 1 gallon batch of gooseberry wine brewing from last year’s berries in the basement.

The figs are looking like they don’t have a care in the world. I really expected some rust as wet as it has been but nothing yet.

I sprayed the grapes with the organic fungicide (Serenade) yesterday but I am afraid I was too late as I saw some black rot on several clusters.

I got the posts and cages in the ground for the tomatoes today. I will tie them up tomorrow. So far the deer and rabbits have respected the fence.

I was rather disappointed to see that what was white echinacea last year has come up purple this year. They either don’t come true to seed or there was cross pollination. I thought at least I would see last year’s white flowers but nothing yet.

The birds seem to be leaving the blueberries alone this year. It could be that the mulberry next to the porch where they are growing is full of berries or it could be that they are a little more hidden among the other plants on the porch. In either case I am grateful not to have to fool with covering them this year.

It may be hard to see by the photo but this used to be a half barrel FULL of strawberries. That was till the deer got to it. It sits about 10′ from the corner of the house. I believe it was a deer and not a rabbit because on the ground next to this are more strawberry leaves. Surely a rabbit would have hit them first. Normally the deer are content topping my willows and keeping the grapes pruned. This is the first time one has left evidence of venturing this close to the house. Is nothing safe from these ravenous animals?

Thyme enough for food…My Nesco oven is on the back porch cooking a thyme roast. Mmmmm. I love thyme and it is so easy to grow. If you have never had thyme chicken you must try it. Just mix up some fresh or dried thyme leaves, salt and pepper. Loosen the skin of a chicken and stick the mixture under the skin. Broil or place on a rotisserie. One of our faves.

Time enough for work… The tomato fence has been repaired. The rogue maples and redbud saplings have been cut down. The containers are fertilized. The horseradish from Donna is in the ground. The yellow raspberry from Rita is in the ground. The spirea from Carol is in the ground. The volunteer grape toms have been moved to a new home. The rest of the garden has been mowed and the soaker hoses have been placed. The only thing left to do this weekend is bathe the dog.

Time enough for wine… The gooseberry wine I started a week ago went into the secondary and I started a batch of rice wine last night. Not saki, just rice wine. I’ve never tried this recipe before so we’ll see if it is any good. The recipe is basically brown rice and raisins. I added a banana peel from this mornings breakfast and replaced the juice of a lemon for the acid blend. Time will tell.

Time enough for rest… well, not quite yet.

First there was the weather, then there was the broken tiller, then… did I mention the weather? My fool self forgot to empty the gas tank on the tiller last year. So… assuming that all was well I didn’t think to test out the tiller early in the season while it was still too wet to till. Nope, I waited till the day I wanted to get the tomatoes in to try the tiller. Realizing my mistake I tried carb cleaner, disassembling the carburator, emptying the tank etc all to no avail. Of course this was a Sunday and nothing was open.

Several weeks and rainstorms later I picked up the carb rebuild kit at the local mower shop and rebuilt the carb yesterday. I went ahead and added a fuel filter inline between the tank and the carb. It took a bit of tweaking so that the filter wouldn’t interfere with the linkage but I was able to get it worked out. Within a couple of seconds of putting everything back together we were running. Well, sort of. Actually running wasn’t the issue. Stopping seemed to be a problem. It turned out that the cable had seized up and didn’t want to allow the machine to idle. Much 3in1 oil (no wd40 around), cursing and begging and the cable was again working as it was supposed to.

The tomatoes are in as are three short rows of Topcrop beans. All of the toms and two rows of beans are in a couple of fenced areas. Hopefully the deer and rabbit will honor the chicken wire. Either could get in if they really wanted to. One of the rows of beans were planted outside of the fence as kind of a test. Lets see how long they last. Typically they are removed as they get their first set of true leaves.

The rain we have been getting has really helped everything look great. I just love all the colors this time of year.

The Paul’s H.M. rose is really putting on a show this year. I’ve noticed mine tends to show a little whiter than most of the photos I see online. Perhaps it is due to the lack of all day full sun?

Walking in the yard a while back I noticed this crooked bamboo shoot coming up. How very strange…