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.