Kerry’s Garden

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…

I’ve heard it’s appearance compared to liver and if I had been strictly feeding red wine I could see how that would be so. This gelatinous mess is mother of vinegar. It forms on the surface of vinegar or wine that is becoming vinegar. I know it looks nasty as it can be but if you have never had homegrown vinegar you have missed out. After having my first taste I refuse to buy that nasty white stuff in the plastic bottles for anything other than cleaning.

I bottled a gallon of peach wine and a gallon of raspberry wine today. Bottling day is usually a major vinegar feeding day too. I usually get a little over 3 bottles per gallon and the ‘little over’ goes into the vinegar barrel in the kitchen along with what ever partial bottles are in the fridge that are past their prime. I used to try to position the tube part of a turkey baster just right so as not to disturb the floating mother. Once or twice of wine spilled all over the place and a drowned mother was enough to give that up. Now I usually fish the mother out and discard it prior to the major feeding. There is enough of the bacteria in the remaining vinegar to convert the new wine and create another mother over time. If I don’t remove it, the act of feeding will submerge it and cause it to fall to the bottom. This just ends up plugging the spout on the side of the barrel. No good if I ever hope to harvest any of this goodness. This is the thickest mother I’ve had so far at almost an inch thick.

A couple of summers ago my neighbor made a trip co Ca. I looked after her flowers while she was gone and she brought me a few goodies when she returned. One was a packet of Ca. Poppy seeds. I hadn’t seen these beauties since I lived out there. I remember seeing them grow in the cracks of the sidewalk. Very tough but pretty plants. I scattered the seed but none came up that summer or last. This year two plants emerged and both are blooming. Thank you Rhonda!

So is it peony or piney or pie knee? Depends on who you ask. What ever you call it I call it gorgeous! Thank you Gina!

This is the third spring for this rose. I believe I am going to try my hand at propagation this year. I’m leaning towards bending one of the branches over and burying it after a light scraping of the bark and a touch of rooting powder. Perhaps by next spring I will have a second plant.

This weekend saw the transplanting of the basement tomatoes into their individual cups. I’m a little late with the tomatoes this year. I started them in the basement as usual but didn’t realize that the light in the prop bench had gone out not long after they all came up. The cooler soil temps delayed their growth and I was too busy to notice. So… I am probably a couple of weeks behind where I would be. It is probably for the best though as it has been so wet here, I still have yet to get into the garden to get it tilled. The weeds are loving it. I am going to have to mow the weeds prior to tilling and before they bloom if I have any hope of getting anything to grow out there.

It is going to be another AWESOME year for gooseberries. They are some of the most rugged little plants I’ve ever seen. Very thorny but well worth the work of picking. The fruit ripens over time so there is a longer harvest than many of the small fruits. When I planted these several years ago, I had never tasted a gooseberry. I had good reports and, as they could grow in partial shade, I decided to give them a try. They are getting full sun in the spring till the leaves of the locust tree fill in. For the rest of the summer they only get about 2 tor 4 hours of sun in the morning and perhaps a little filtered sun late in the evening. They are loaded with fruit again this year. There are the original two bushes that are about 4′ tall and a third I planted last spring or the year before. One is a Poorman (my favorite for flavor) and two are Pixwell. One was purchased locally (Highlands Garden Center) and the others may have come from Indiana Berry though I am not sure. The latter has fewer thorns but the former has larger sweeter berries. If you are feeling adventuresome and have a 5′ square semi-shady area you can part with they are well worth the little work they require.