Charlie

Heidi, our golden retriever, died a month or so ago. I finally decided I needed a new walking pet. So we got Charlie on Saturday.

Reduced Hives

I took the top super off of Doug's three hives and set them about 30 yards away. There was some wax that needed to be cleaned near them, so, if there was any honey in the supers, I'm sure the bees will take it away. In the photo, the left most hive had the guard bees that were most protective of my entering. When we moved the hives to my yard, the right most hive seemed to be the meanest one. They were rather gentle this time.


I also took the top two supers off of my hives in Clarence's yard and set them about 15 yards away. When I checked yesterday after church, they were being cleaned as well, although I doubt the top supers from each hive actually had anything in them. My bees are most gentle. I don't think I had a guard bee come after me at all.

Still Alive

Admittedly, not much happens in the garden or with bees on Thanksgiving. However, I have a small report to make.

Last week, I moved cold frame hoops from one of the beds that will be dormant over the winter to the bed where the cauliflower are planted. I rained during the interim, so I wasn't worried about freezing temperatures. Yesterday was windy and felt cold, but the low was predicted to only get down to 39F so I didn't cover the plants in any of the garden boxes. I woke up this morning to learn that the low was at that time 34F and had been down as low as 30F in the yard. I think it will get cold again this evening. So this afternoon, I went out and put on the covers on the three raised beds. Fortunately, nothing had succumbed. The broccoli heads are getting big. We don't need them for our Thanksgiving meal, but I will need to harvest some of them soon, as there are four of them that are rather large.


While I was covering the last bed, I saw a bee exploring. So, I went to look at Doug's hives. All three of them had bees coming and going. I took a photo. They were orienting when I first looked at them, but not when I grabbed the camera. But you can see 4 or 5 in flight if you look closely. The look like little brown dots.

Cold Frames

I'm trying it again. I've covered two of the cold frame hoops with plastic. The beds have broccoli that is just on its way to growing. I am hoping that this year, unlike last year, the cold frames will be able to keep things alive. I've covered them for the past week. I took the covers off today to allow the rain to soak as much as it could, although the rain was rather light. It's already 34 and Kathy and I just went out to put the covers on. There was already frost on the twin sheet that I have over the cauliflower. (I had to use a sheet because where I planted them I didn't have hoops installed.) It's frozen several nights and things have survived so far. I hope we weren't too late this evening.


Of course, I don't need cold frames over the onions or garlic. Last year, I had four covers. One of them had water in it when it was stored and when I tried to unfold it, it just broke apart. I have one left that I haven't tested. I may try putting that over one of the onion beds to see if it helps things along when it gets a bit colder.

Green Beans

It is starting to turn colder. I think it will freeze in the next few days. With that in mind, I decided it was time to pick all the green beans that had grown in the one bed that I planted back in August. In the two and one half months since then, I really haven't given them any mind. Last week we picked a few for meals, so I knew there would be some to harvest. Jenna and I picked about a bushel and a half today.



We pulled out the Seal-a-Meal. It would be nice if we didn't have to par boil and do other things to process the green beans, but that isn't in the cards today. We will dehydrate some too (because Kathy wants to try that).

I spent some time before that continuing to weed the onion and garlic beds. Pesky little weeds just keep coming back. These are winter weeds and won't be deterred by the cold, so it will continue to be a task in the weeks to come. At least I got is so that the onions and garlic are not surrounded to the point where they will get choked off.

Tobacco Bee Sting Remedy

I mentioned in an earlier post that my tobacco salve worked well as a bee sting remedy. It brought down the swelling quickly. The only problem was that is was sort of crude.

I let the three leaves I gathered off the side of the road after the tobacco harvest "cure" in my garage. Basically, I hung them up and forgot about them until the other day. I wanted them to be brown and stiff.



Here is the process I have followed so far. I took two of the leaves and crumpled them up and put them in a mortar. Using the pestle, I crunched the leaves to get them as fine as possible. It took a while, perhaps five or six minutes per leaf.

Then I strained the result through a sieve. I took the part that didn't strain and worked on it some more with the mortar and pestle. I got most of the leaf that way. The last little parts that didn't seem to want to get any smaller, I just threw away.



Tobacco, it turns out, can be made to be quite small. I suppose they used to call this snuff.

In the end, I had a little less than a quarter cup of tobacco powder. I've stored it in a medicine bottle. My plan is to take some lotion and mix it in until it gets to a consistency that I like. I'm not sure if I should do this now or wait until I need it. I can imagine (but don't actually know) that there might be benefits to each.

Weeding

There is a variety of weed that just proliferates in my garden during the winter. It starts as a small little thing and then just takes over. It has been too cold lately to get out in the morning or evening after I have come home from work. But today was a beautiful Saturday and so I made it my mission to get at least some of the weeding done.

My first task was to select a tool. I tried weeding the other day entirely by hand and didn't get too far. I need something that will go between the onions and garlic that are planted 4" apart. I've asked my creative with metal daughter-in-law, Leora, to see if she can make me something. But I realized I had tools at home that I should at least attempt to use. Kitchen forks are tools. I selected three from the arsenal to try things out with. The small fork was from our camping gear. I think it was an odd fork that we never threw away. The middle fork came from an old army mess kit. I really like it for peeling potatoes. I cook potatoes in the microwave for a couple of minutes and then use the tines to rip off the potato skin. It works really well for that purpose. The big fork is a serving fork.


As I tried each fork, it became obvious quickly that the serving fork was best suited to the job. The garlic and long red Florence onions were planted last and had the fewest weeds. I was able to clean up the soil and get weeds disturbed in those areas quickly. The yellow of Parma had been planted much longer. It took a lot of time to clean out that bed and I only got half way through it today. The photos below are before and after shots.

3 Persimmons

Last year I harvested one persimmon. This year I have three. I picked one and ate it already. I think I will pick the other two today. Very tasty. It might be possible to have too many persimmons, I think. Eventually, if the harvest gets a bit bigger, I think I will be able to handle it. If it gets bigger than a dozen or two, I will have to think about how to store or process persimmons. So, three for this year is a good number.



Of course, this reminds me of my favorite Japanese tongue twister.

隣の客はよく柿食う客だ。
Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki kuu kyaku da.
The visitor next to me eats a lot of persimmons.

More on Garlic

During the week while I was away, we evidently got a fair amount of rain. Good for the garden and the seeds. Of the 48 garlic cloves I planted, 44 are now up and starting to grow. I think Kathy's response has been, "Just what we need! More garlic!"

Garlic Sprouts

I planted 48 garlic cloves and took a look yesterday to see how they were doing. I counted 24 sprouts. So half of them have sprouted. As I recall from last year, it seemed to take a lot longer for the cloves I got from seed savers to sprout than it did this year. I noticed that seed savers did not offer my variety, Chet's red, this year. I may plant some more when I get back from my trip so I can share the cloves with Seed Savers and others.

I still have a number of bulbs in the cold room at the office. i should think of a way to process them. I'm going to have to look to see what the options are.

Feeding Doug's Bees

Doug left me with four and a half gallons of honey to feed his bees. I surely wasn't going to do it the first week they were here. They had been nasty animals when we were getting them moved. Then there were storms, busy Saturdays, and other excuses. But, I knew the plan was to feed the bees so that they would be ready for winter and winter was not yet. It has been getting a bit chillier lately, however, and so it was time Saturday to feed them.

My first task was to take off the covers and just inspect. Two of the three hives looked as if they had capped honey in the top supers. The photo below is from the nastiest of his hives. It came with two supers and it looks as if there is honey all the way up. The middle hive was the weakest coming in and looked to be the weakest still. The first hive was in between.


After pulling the tops and taking a look, I put an empty super on each with a top feeder following on top of that. I poured honey into each from the gallon containers Doug had left me. The weak hives got about two gallons each and the healthy hive got about one. We still have a bunch of yellow jackets and other invaders around, so I took the practically empty containers into the house and drained them off into my own stocks. It didn't amount to much, but thanks Doug for the small donation.


So now each of the hives has an extra super and a supply of honey to store. I won't be able to check back on the progress of the bees at storing the honey for over a week because I am traveling. My guess is that they will store it very quickly and that by the time I get home, there will be nothing left in the top feeders.


Just as a side note, Doug's bees are still pretty defensive. I was buzzed by all three hives as soon as they were opened. However, they left it at that and when I had walked away 20 feet, they didn't follow. I like bees to be a little protective. I think it makes them healthier. Just looking at the entrance during the day, they are still actively foraging.

Onion Sprouts

Not much has been happening in the garden. The majority of the broccoli and cauliflower I planted died. I did plant seeds of the same that have started coming up. So I have 5 broccoli plants and 3 cauliflower plants from the nursery and about the same coming up from seeds. A bit of a failure. Tim suggested I planted too close to the fertilizer. I will try to remember that next year.

It will be interesting to see how harvests of broccoli and cauliflower and lima and green beans turn out. It is getting cold. The low this morning was 41F. It's forecast to be in the 40s all week.

On Saturday, I planted 48 garlic cloves. Because only about a third of the onions sprouted from my earlier planting (none of the purple of Parma made it), I also replanted more yellow of Parma seeds in the open spots. There are a lot of weeds sprouting. I will need to get them out, but I would like to give the onion seeds a chance to get established a bit first.

Broccoli Cauliflower

(br>It turned out to be a busy Saturday. After planting onion seeds, I went to Webster Brothers in Walkertown. It's the one place that I can guarantee finding cauliflower to plant. I haven't mastered the art of growing broccoli or cauliflower from seed. Maybe I will try it next spring.

On the way there, my son Jason asked me to help him install a ceiling light and fan. That took the bulk of the afternoon. The fixture was actually rescued from Jenna's room when I installed a new light there and Jason's baby room had a ceiling outlet for a light and fan, but nothing installed. It made for an interesting afternoon because, despite our thinking it through, we didn't understand until faced with the facts that there are two sizes of pipes that can be used to hang such fixtures from the ceiling. We learned this because we purchased the wrong one and had to go shopping again to find the right one. Then, we learned about how easy it is to trip a multibreaker and how challenging it is to reset one. But the fan and light were ultimately installed and worked.

It was evening before I got to plant the broccoli and cauliflower. I used my McDonald's straw trick to guard against cutworms. I installed the straws in the house before putting them in the beds. I put the plants in the beds with the poor soil. Things grew there; it just doesn't seem like the soil has much to it. I fertilized heavily and added a scoop of soil from one of the better beds right at the spot where the plants were placed. I think I will need to water regularly until the plants are established.

Garden Friends and Onions

My activity this past week has involved getting the garden ready for fall planting and planting some onion seeds. I had Sam and Taylor come over and finish cleaning out the beds. It was well worth the cost for their three hours of work.

I planted some onion seeds. This year, I am planting 4 to a square foot. That will give them a little more room. I also planted in a bed that is easier to water. I want to give them a little more water next spring than the yellow of Parma got last year. Hopefully, it will keep them from going to bloom prematurely. I planted 48 seeds from a purplish yellow of Parma onion that I had saved. It will be interesting to see if they turn out to be purplish, too. Then I planted seeds in 136 spots for true yellow of Parma. I had plenty of seeds left over from last year, so I used those rather than the seeds I had gathered from this year. I double planted so that there were at least two seeds in every hole. A couple of years ago, I didn't plant deeply enough and the seeds either didn't sprout or died shortly after. This year, the holes were maybe a half an inch deep, but not fully filled in when I was done. I hope they sprout and that they weren't planted too deep.

The rest of this entry is just pictures of garden friends that I've seen around.

Tobacco

The best thing about being stung is that I get to try to figure out new ways to deal with it. I don't have a pulmonary reaction; no anaphylaxis. I do seem to swell up at the site some however. the site turns red and is a bit hot to the touch. But, there really isn't any pain, at least there hasn't been any yet.

I got two stings on my neck. I haven't quite figured out how the bees got inside the veil, but I now understand the phrase, "a bee in your bonnet." The top photo is of the sting on the back of my neck. It has swollen to the size of a very small egg (in diameter at least).

The second photo is the sting on the front of my neck. It is about the same, but the red has gone down my chest some. It is the one I can actually see, so I understand it best.

The one on my ankle (the third photo) didn't really do much at all. In part, I think the sock kept the bee from burrowing the stinger in as deep.

The bigger question, is of course, how to treat these stings. Eventually, beekeepers build up an immunity to the toxins. Or perhaps they just develop a biochemistry that isn't as reactive, which is technically not the same. It occurred to me, at Eric's suggestion, that I ought to take some tobacco and use it as a salve. I'm trying to use it with judgment and skill, which is hard since I don't really have much background.

The good part is that we live in a tobacco neighborhood. There are 3 tobacco fields near the house. I've noticed in years past that leaves often fall off the trucks and can be found laying on the side of the road. So, on my way home from work today, I kept my eyes open as I drove by all three fields. Only one of them had some leaves laying to the side. The big harvest hasn't happened yet. I talked Jenna into jumping out of the car to rescue some for me.

I've never figured out exactly how to use tobacco. This is its only proper use, but my ability to use it properly is not yet developed. In the past, I've tried just laying the leaf on the affected area. That hasn't worked too well. Today, I thought I would take the brown part of the leaves that had already become crispy, chop them up and mix them with lotion that we have kept from hotel visits.



It's not awfully attractive, but it is staying on my neck. I think next time, I will try to totally pulverize it. If I had a mortar and pestle, that would do the trick. Then mix it with lotion so that it is smoother.

The final issue is how to judge whether or not it has had any effect. Since I'm not in pain, that can't be the measure. Size is hard to judge. Maybe I will rely on Kathy's judgment.

Doug's Angry Bees

My buddy Doug is moving to Memphis. FedEx closed his position in Greensboro and so the move to Memphis is the result. He was originally going to try to take his bees with him, but there were too many things happening. So I told him I would take them. He came over and made a spot in my natural area. It's where I'm going to move one of my hives from Clarence's when it's time, so this is a good preparation for it. Doug will take them to his new place in February when they are pretty much dormant.

He brought them over this evening. One or more of his hives were not pleased to be moved. Doug had been stung at his house before arriving here, so he was a magnate for his angry bees. He must have had 20-25 stings by the time he was done. They transferred their anger to me as well. I got stung twice on my neck and once on my ankle. They followed us all the way from the natural area into the garage.

I am now lathered with and ingested of benedryl. Once the stingers came out, the pain has subsided, but the stings feel hot. Alas, no anaphylaxis. I hope they settle down a bit. Fortunately, being in the natural area keeps them away from a lot of stuff.

It's amazing what we will do for those we love! Doug does love his bees!

Water Flow

I had Jenna help me with a little test today. The question was, "How much water flows through the hose when different numbers of barrels are engaged?" I took a quart canning jar out and, when I started filling the jar, Jenna started the stop watch on her cell phone. She timed until the jar was full. Here are the results.

Hoses Opened	1	2	4	8
Seconds to Fill a Quart Jar	17	14	14	14
Gallons per Minute out the Hose	0.88	1.07	1.07	1.07
Gallons per Minute per Barrel	0.88	0.54	0.27	0.13

It is clear that the second input adds a bit to the overall flow of the hose, about 20%. However, above the second hose, there is no benefit to flow into the garden. Having 4 or 8 barrels feeding the water did not yield an increase. At the same time, adding more barrels did decrease the per barrel flow to the Y connector.

My conclusion is that I will get the best results from using two barrels at a time, perhaps for multiple rounds or at least until they have been significantly depleted. Then switching to different barrels on a subsequent round. After a round is completed, I plan to open all the lines so that the emptied barrels can refill, further helping keep the hoses clean of junk.

Looking at the barrels, I saw that my water from the air conditioner had turned yellow. I disconnected it. Something must be growing in that hose as well. Probably due to the fact that it has to travel uphill a bit to get to the point where it is disgorged into the master barrel.

Honey Pests

It's yellow jackets. They are the pests.

I set the equipment and supers after extracting honey out into the yard. Bees immediately found the stuff and began cleaning it off. But I guess I left it too long, or maybe this is a normal part of the process, but I got hordes of yellow jackets, too. After the bees had long gone, the yellow jackets hung around.

I finally went out in the yard with my bee suit on to carry some of the equipment away. The yellow jackets followed and seemed to find me more interesting than the equipment. So I stood there for 30 minutes, waiting for them to get on my arm or belly where I could kill them. I probably got a couple of dozen. It didn't put a dent in their colony. It just felt good.

Now that the equipment is gone and the wax more or less cleaned up, I see just a few. It will help next year if I have a hive in my own yard again. Then I can put the supers back on the hives. I will remember (I hope) to move everything further away from the house.

Beans and Water

The middle of August is not usually the time to start planting. Most people are probably slowing down and just putting their garden to rest. I decided to keep things going. This is especially true because I hired to young men from church to help clean things up and (eventually) process the new horse manure I got.

I had them clean out one of the beds in which I had raised onions and garlic. It had gone to weed mostly. They brought in 8 loads of manure using the small barrow. It filled the bed to the brim. All that was left of me was to use the garden fork to turn it, fertilize, plant and water. (More about water in a moment.) I planted blue lake beans, 4 per square foot yesterday morning.

I had actually found enough ambition prior to their help to clean out the other onion bed by myself and plant Lima beans. The Limas have now sprouted. About 90% came up. Of these, I lost another 2-3% to animals taking off the first leaves. They seem to be growing well. I planted Limas at this time another year and had a fine harvest. Since I will probably be eating them by myself, there will surely be enough. I have more seed, but don't feel the need to fill out the bed.

Now about the water. When i was watering the blue lake bean bed, I sensed that, once again, I was not getting the water pressure I expected. I've had this happen before and found that it was the nozzle I was using that seemed to be the problem. I took off the nozzle and got a little better result, but it made me curious about whether or not there was something else going on.

I went to the place where the hoses all meet. In the past, I found a bit of blockage where the hoses meet the Y connector. I disconnected the hose that ran from the connector to the garden so I could see what was coming out and systematically eliminated all hoses but one and opened up that one's line and let the water run. When I did this, the water that came out of each was initially pretty dark with junk. Probably some sort of algae.


Here's what I think. The junk doesn't wash away because the water pressure is too stable and the flow is too slow when I turn on the hose. After all, there are 8 barrels feeding the one hose and the size of the connectors and size of the nozzle reduce what can go through the system at any given moment. So, algae start to grow in the hoses. The water pressure is probably even lessened a bit because there is junk growing in the hoses.

When this will become a potential real problem will be when (if ever) I finally get a slow drip system installed in the garden. Then the water will flow evenly, but slowly and junk will grow.

In the short run, one solution might be to cut off all but one or two barrels and just take water from those barrels. The water would flow faster through those hoses when they were in use. And, when the entire system was opened back up, the pressure of the backwash as the barrels filled back up again may help further clean out the hoses. Overall pressure during the partial shut down might be a little less, but I can live with that. I may only need to do this periodically as preventive maintenance. The other solution is to pour chlorine bleach into the system to kill the algae. Not a good idea. If the water in the hoses is as stagnant as I think the chlorine might not get where it was needed and there are doubtless environmental impacts I would rather not have.

3 gallons

I pulled two supers last Saturday, one from each of my hives. I left them in the Volvo wagon, partly because there they wouldn't attract other bees who would start robbing honey and partly because I was lazy or busy (I can't remember). I had intended to spin them out last Saturday, but Doug hadn't finished spinning his own out and, toward the end, he started getting stung quite a bit because he couldn't keep the bees out of his garage. We knew it was time to quit. I picked up the extractor on Monday, but didn't get to any spinning. By Wednesday, Red came by to mow the lawn and noticed that something was leaking in the back of the Volvo. So, I clearly left the hives there too long.

I pulled the supers into the garage and made sure I kept the doors closed. I put tin foil under the supers to gather any honey that leaked out (and there was a bunch leaking). Thursday I had a church meeting that went until late. I think I got home at 11:15. So, my major work started on Friday morning, when I spun out the frames.

I ended up with three gallons of honey out of a small and medium super. The small super actually provided more because there were no brood frames. I should have check frames before I pulled the super. Actually, I did check on the top super, but the comb had not been capped, so I went one below and didn't check on that one. Next year, if I can remember, I need to check all the supers I pull, frame by frame to see if there is any brood. i should pull those that have any brood and put them together into one super.

I gave three quarts to Clarence, my arrangement with him is to give him a quarter of the hone for keeping the hives on his land. I've bottled the rest and let the bees and yellow jackets clean off everything that is left on the surfaces of whatever I used to extract. This year's honey is quite a bit darker than my previous batch. I'm not sure why. It tastes just as good.

Tomatoes in the Pantry

For us, tomato season is over. The leaves have all gone small, then spotted, then brown. There is no more (or at least very little) fruit that has not turned orange or red and been harvested. And, I think I can say it without offense, Kathy and I are tired of canning tomatoes.

I took stock of what we have in the pantry. There are 34 quarts, some of it in pint jars, of canned tomatoes. We have 4 quarts of chili sauce, a quart of spaghetti sauce, 3 quarts of tomato sauce, a quart of tomato paste, and a couple of quarts of tomato juice. It hasn't been a bad year.


I have also saved seeds. I used a fermentation method I found on the web. I saved, Hungarian Heart from the one plant that survived early planting. I also saved Italian Heirloom, John Baer, and Rutgers. The Rutgers didn't grow well, even though I planted pretty hardy looking plants from the Farmer's Market. I hope I don't have wilt in the bed they were planted in. Next year, I will have to plant them in a different place. I think that for canning, Rutgers and Italian Heirloom have been the best. If the John Baer would just get a bit bigger, they would be very nice because they have small stems and easy to remove skin.

manure and compost

I pulled the onions that had gone to seed in one of my beds. The replacement crop is going to be Lima beans. I noticed that the soil level had dropped about 3" from where it was originally. Some of it is just because it has become compacted a bit. But I can't help but think some of it disappears into the plants that it supports.

I put what was left from one compost bin into the soil as I prepared it. Eight loads in the small cart, probably not filled all the way to the top. It raised the soil level back to where it had been a year or so again. Of course, mixing it helped a little to as it freed up the soil a bit.

Then, out of the blue, Jessica told Kathy that the farm where she manages horses had manure ready to pick up. I got a trailer full. It is pretty lumpy and dry. I really want to run it through the shredder/chipper and mix it with other things that have been thrown into the compost bin in the past six months. I expect it will take another six months to be ready. At least that's the way things have gone in the past. It sounds funny to say it, but I'm glad to have manure again.

Different Kind of Split

It had been weeks since I went into the hive. Clarence needed to cut the grass in front and he had been stung a while back. I also had left an entrance reducer in on the swarm hive (No need to leave a colony vulnerable because the entrance is too big when they are weak.) But, the hive had grown strong and it was time to pull the entrance reducer out. I also wanted to see how crowded things had become. So I gave Clarence the spare veil and we went in.

The bees were indeed starting to show signs of being crowded. In both hives, the top set of frames were drawn and loaded with honey. I went back today and added extra boxes to each. None of the frames are drawn and I don't expect them to change much between now and when we harvest. But they have more room.


I noticed one thing that was very odd. The swarm hive had a lot of bees hanging around the back. At first, I was just totally confused, wondering if my smoking them had driven them back there. Then I realized that the brood box doesn't sit quite right on the bottom board. There is a small crack -- a different kind of split if you will -- that runs around the back corner. The photo below is actually of the right rear (facing from the front) corner of the hive. The crack is very slim, but it is enough to let them out and they seem to really like hanging out there. I'm not sure how this happened exactly, or how I will fix it, or if I will fix it. The hive seems happy otherwise.

Chili Sauce

I harvested more tomatoes yesterday, a shopping bag of Italian Heirloom and one of John Baer. With the John Baer that were in the refrigerator from last week, we had about half a bushel. We now have a fair number of quarts of canned tomatoes. I thought it would be good to make something else. I remembered loving my mother's tomato chili sauce. Of course, it is always the case; the recipe you want from your mother went with her when she passed.

I found the following recipe on cooks.com.

1 peck tomatoes
9 green peppers
6 med. size onions
3 c. sugar
3/4 c. salt
1 doz. med. red peppers
1 qt. vinegar
3 tsp. cloves, ground
3 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. ginger

The half a bushel of tomatoes meant we had two pecks. Kathy wants one for straight tomato sauce. So I did the homemade chili sauce. I substituted 2 poblano peppers for the med. red peppers. Then cooked it for at least four hours. It yielded 10 pints.


If I were to do it again, i might cut the spices and vinegar a little. It is pretty strong stuff. And I don't think it is a full duplication of what my mother made, which was pretty mild by comparison. Still, a generally good use of extra tomatoes.

One last comment: This allowed us to compare the processing differences between the John Baer and Italian Heirloom varieties. The Italian Heirloom are much, much larger. But, they are also a bit more unwieldy. The skin of the John Baer just slips off when parboiled. The John Baer also have less pith in them, making it easier to keep most of the fruit when you take out the stem. They just don't grow as big. They also tend to bleach when they get too much sun.

Processing Tomatoes

This is the time of the year when tomatoes get ripe. It's pretty obvious, but it always catches us a bit off guard. Because it's not just that they are ripe, it's that they must be processed while they are still in their prime or they are wasted.

Kathy went to Toronto last week in the midst of the period of first ripening. I grow the food, but I can't process it without her. Not that I couldn't, I just find myself adrift trying to manage it alone. It is a team task. Fortunately, before the fruit went bad, she returned and we got busy. This is actually the second batch we have processed. The first batch, which we did just before she left, we skinned and put into quart-sized tubs in the freezer. What is pictured below represents a little more than we did then. I also got some tomato juice out of the left over drippings. Pretty tasty stuff!


There are more to do. We had a bumper crop of Italian heirlooms, most of which probably weighed a pound each. You can get a lot done with fruit that size. The tomatoes pictured below are John Baer variety. I was afraid that nearly all would be lost to blossom rot, but somehow, the majority of fruit I have seen lately has been in pretty good shape. A few blemishes, but not the terrible signs of rot. There were a lot more fruit by numbers, but about half the total volume. I think we will process these into something different. I would love to duplicate my mother's chili sauce. There is no recipe so I need to search around for one. Hers was not spicy in the least, so I am trying to figure out what she had in it.

Blooming Onions

It has been so hot, I have had low motivation to do anything in the garden. Of course, this time of year, you have to pick zucchini daily or they grow too big. I've given up on the yellow squash. I keep wondering why I planted it! Any, there are plenty of tomatoes coming ripe. The Italian Heirloom have done the best, with consistently large fruits of about a pound each. We put some in freezer containers this past week. I'm not sure of the texture or the taste of these yet. We have to try cooking with them first.

One task I have been avoiding has been cleaning out the raised beds that had onions. This morning I finally decided to work until it was too hot to continue and clean out the bed where the yellow of Parma had grown. I clipped off all the blooms. They filled two plastic grocery bags. I'm going to have more seeds than I know what to do with. I guess I will send the ones I don't need to Seed Saver's Exchange. Many of the blooms are not yet ready to release seeds, so I put the blooms aside. However, seeds were dropping from some of the blooms. I got about third of a cup of onion seeds, which I cleaned up a bit by sifting them through a colander.


I presumed originally that the bulbs on the onions that had gone to bloom would be useless, but, as I picked them out of the bed, I realized that the bulbs on many were still rather large. So, I decided to process some.


I extracted the stalk from which the bloom grew from the middle of each and, for some, I chopped the onion up, for others, I cut them in quarters. I got about six quarts to freeze. Putting my work in the freezer, I realized that we still had frozen onions from last year that we haven't used. So, I stopped with six quarts and decided it was too much work. I think I have the best there was to offer anyway; the ones I didn't process were rather small.

Good and Bad Tomatoes

I picked my first tomato today. It was an Italian Heirloom. Large by any standard -- and there are more on the way.


On the other hand, as I suspected from my early examination and as predicted by the pH levels in the bed, I have nothing but blossom rot among the John Baer variety. Such a shame to lose a whole harvest of one variety.

Water Engineering

It took more parts than I thought it would need to make the connector to shuffle water from the air conditioner drain to the water barrel. The pipe was 1/2", but it needed to expand to 3/4" to then connect to a threaded part that would hold the connector to hold the hose. Once it was assembled, I watched it to see if water would start dripping into the barrel. It didn't. I went under the house and found that, like the part on top that I had needed to fix, the bottom connector had been poorly assembled and was leaking inside the house. I fixed it. It only dribbles into the barrel, but I figure that is 6 to9 gallons a day.

Bumbling Beekeeper

I executed the beekeeping plan, only to have a couple of things turn out differently than I had planned. First, there were three frames full of capped brood in the box that was supposed to be devoid of any brood. Second, most of the honey in that box was not capped and therefore not adequately cured.

We did extract honey from one of the brood frames, because the caps had ripped off and it was a mess, but we left the other two frames with brood alone. We extracted honey from the other frames, a little less than a gallon.

I put the box in the bottom position of the swarm hive and put the extracted honey on top of the hive inside a top feeder. It rained a bit in the evening, so I put the fume board on top of it, just slightly askew so the bees could enter and exit but so that it wouldn't get washed out. (I assumed the fumes had all disappeared by that time.) When I checked back, the honey was all gone, so I presume the bees from both hives robbed it and I will get it back if I end up harvesting this year.


I ended up needing two fewer boxes. The frames in the brood box I had placed on when the bees swarmed was not drawn even a little bit. There was a super that had new frames that were modestly drawn, but just barely. Both have come home with me.

Water Source

North Carolina is in a technical drought again. However, I just checked with a statistical source and that doesn't seem to add up. However, it hasn't rained in several weeks (more than just a few showers that didn't actually accumulate anything).

We have a drain on the side of the house that takes the condensation away when the air conditioner is working. The water just drips, but I wondered the other day how much I could accumulate if I put a watering can underneath the drip. I think this is a 3 gallon can, but it may be smaller. I filled it up 3 times during the course of the day. So that is between 6 and 9 gallons, just from the air conditioner.

I am thinking of creating a small hose that will run from the spout to the water barrels. A little extra water for the garden is always welcome.