Harvest

The plants before you are gifts from the soil. The soil was hauled in from a garden that shut down. The tomato was so happy here that they came of their own accord. Best way to grow a plant I think. 

 The tomato plants yielded the first pretty little red tomato yesterday. In fact there were just enough for each of us to have two on our supper plate. The round ones are deep within the foliage.

 These are little golden tear drops.

Very pretty in salads.

 Looking close at the leaves you can see the white has heat damage on leaves. We had high heat fluctuation over the last week or so. The yellow/dark green variegation of leaf is a soil deficiency that called for some Epsom Salt sprinkled on the soil. Avoid the leaves getting wet during heat wave.

Harvesting poppy's

This is the second year that the investment of $4 into poppy seed has multiplies into glory!

This is what I get to see when walking out my front door. This morning my kids wanted to go to the bus stop on their own (just 5 houses down) so I had to go harvest the poppy of course to keep my eye on them so I know they are safe on the school bus.

The poppy having exploded with bloom now have many many seed pods that have matured. It is essential to continuous blooming to harvest off the pods. Now they are called poppy for a few good reasons. When you remove the pods they literally POP off. When the pods dry they actually do pop to disperse the seed. The seed does really pop out of the pod. As the pod dries it curls and then bursts.

It was so peaceful sitting there an hour listening to the music of the bees as they enjoyed to blooms. They are so calm and I feel calm around them. I was thinking about how folks are so scared of them. They are so beautiful and duty compels them to task. They tend the pollination we so need to sustain life here. Folks just go indiscriminately killing off the living things. One day like the si-fi movies , I wonder if they will just kill it all off.  No fresh harvests of fruits or vegetables no tree nuts or vines fruited. No olive trees for oil. May it never be in my grand children's life time. Fear God lest it might be in our own.
They sang to me working right along side of me. We worked peacefully together. No FEAR. Life is like that the fear all around us, waiting to see how we might respond to it...respect or destruction. Living with fear as a mentor. You see when the sun gets brighter on the flower the bees get very busy in that place, out of respect I move onto the flowers in the shade. They come to me and then move onto the places I am not. We have NO NEED to harm each other for we have mutual respect toward each other.

These are the pods, as they are harvested the plants are recharged to flower all the more for they no longer extend the energy making seed.

First of many harvests.

There is 3-4 pounds of pods = perhaps 1/4 cup of tiny poppy seed.

Think the little black seed you so often see on bread.

Now I can plant these this fall or bake with them.

However be warned that if your employer drug tests it could show a positive for opiate if you bake with poppy or even purchase breads with poppies on them. We have never had to have such labs but I have heard tales of such woes.

Those mischievous gnomes!

Morning harvest

The reward of a mornings work.

Click any image to enlarge

Hens a laying...

Borage in the lettuce bed. Lots of pollinators enjoying it.

This the east facing lettuce bed. I had to take this way back.

Clippings of the flowers are in a bucket of water.

Look at the size of that stalk!

Borage in the sun...

The Swiss chard, spinach, chive, brocolli are all thriving well.

As is the margeram and camomile's at the far end.

Looking toward the west side of the shed...

The bok choy in flower (for seed) is hiding behind the other borage that was trimmed after this shot.

The celery and the beets foreground.

Bok choy seed stalks, there are several plants still growing yet.

The broccoli it is now mostly gone to seed, save for a few heads left yet on side shoots.

This seed stalk healthy is harvested to dry for nest season.

Now this like to kill me. 

Yes folks those are the steel arbor sections you gave us. I saw this in my minds eye, suppose sometimes I ought not to pay attention to that minds eye but this time...well it is the cats meow

5 tomato plants here

 one heirloom brandiwine

2 yellow pear

100's a salad red

one beef steak for burgers in the summer

Now flowers over here will yield many good pollinators and lots of summer tomato.

Another borage

French marigold, seed pod heads in hand are hard to see.

Harvest to scatter this week.

Kale trimmed and carrots harvested left soil to till to plant the onions.

A few here and a few down on the other side of the kale.

now a little bit of blood meal and some nice light potting soil mixed in to my well composted earth...

Onions to harvest end of summer for the fall and winter months.

I got the hoses coiled and boy is my back tired from that one. One of the many skills gained in childhood working in the family gas station. I often got stuck with that job. Taught me well though.

This guy was laughing at me and causing mischief the whole time I am sure of it!

Noticed him as I was getting ready to close the work down.

Now how did those kids get up there?

The old braniwine heirloom made it through the winter. 

It was given a bit of Epsom salt and some bone meal to get the issues under control.

You see the other gnome?

this is broccoli raab seed almost ready to shell and store for next season.

Now I did this once had all of these folded after washing them. With some confusion over dew point thinking it was low temp to come one night I laid them out to cover. Now they will need attention again.

The tomato field got a good layer of chicken dung and pine shavings.

Well better get on with the day.

I have had a good 45 minute rest. 

Ye ha!

Is Genetically Modified Corn Toxic?

By Michael Reilly | Sat Jan 23, 2010 07:13 PM ET

In the United States, we grow and eat corn whose genes have been tweaked to make the plants more resistant to pests and pesticides. Most European countries don't, largely because the citizenry fears it isn't safe. But try as scientists might, they haven't been able to find any good reason why we shouldn't eat genetically modified (GM) food.
Until now. Maybe. A new analysis of data released by Monsanto pried from Monsanto's lawyers' cold dead hands by a tag-team of legal experts at Greenpeace and other groups suggests there may be something to the idea that we shouldn't be eating maize that's had its DNA messed with.
The study found that three strains of modded crops -- MON 810 and MON 863, which are resistant to pests, and NK 603, which is foritified to withstand weed killer -- significantly disrupted the blood chemistry of rats who ate them. According to an article in New Scientist:

With each of the three strains of maize, researchers say they found unusual concentrations of hormones and other compounds in the blood and urine of the tested rats, suggesting each strain impaired kidney and liver function. By the end of the trials, the female rats that were fed MON 863 had elevated blood-sugar levels and raised concentrations of fatty substances called triglycerides. Both are potential precursors of diabetes, according to [lead author Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen in France].

...

"What we've shown is clearly not proof of toxicity, but signs of toxicity," says Seralini. "I'm sure there's no acute toxicity, but who's to say there are no chronic effects?"

The researchers are suggesting that if the GM corn has the same affect in humans that is does in rats, we're unknowingly taxing our kidneys and livers, and probably raising the risk of damaging those organs.
But as is often the case in these type of reports, the conclusions aren't terribly convincing. For one, the effects are barely statistically significant, and the article goes on to say that independent toxicologists who saw the paper said Seralini was reading too much into the results.
So we're left with ambiguity. Terrific.
There's just one thing I want to know: why do activist groups have to team up to force Monsanto to release tests showing whether or not GM food is toxic? Shouldn't food have to be demonstrably NON-poisonous before anyone is allow to start feeding it to people??
Source: New Scientist
Image: Texas A&M University

Harvested the Brandywine Heirloom Tomatoes

Harvested the Brandywine Heirloom Tomatoes because we have another hard freeze tonight and they are splitting. Look at the size of those toms and they are a good 3 inches tall.
They will ripen on the counter.

Thanksgiving

Poem: Giving Thanks
Anonymous

For the hay and the corn and wheat that is reaped,
For the labor well done, and the barns that are heaped,
For the sun and the dew and the sweet honeycomb,
For the rose and the song, and the harvest brought home —

Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving!

For the trade and the skill and the wealth in our land,
for the cunning and strength of the workingman's hand,
For the good that our artists and poets have taught,
For the friendship that hope and affection have brought —

Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving!

For the homes that with purest affection are blest,
For the season of plenty and well deserved rest,
for our country extending from sea to sea,
The land that is known as the "Land of the Free" —

Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving!

First fruits of 2009 fall garden

I came home from a trip to Florida yesterday to find a reward for all my hard work.

radish,cherry tomato, pan squash and basil

YUM!

The Butternut Squash Gift

This spring discovered was a beautiful growth that I did not plant.

Many months back in the grocery I saw my favored squash and weighed it...upon that I gently returned it to its post for I was not a willing soul to pay so much for it.
I remembered the thought I had had of how cool it would be to grow such a squash for myself.
I distinctly remembered it!

One day said growth adorned itself with a tell tell flower distinctive of its family of squash.
Still I did not know what it was for some time.
It looked perhaps at first like a summer squash and the year past I had one growing here.

After some time however it became plainly clear what I had growing.
Watching this gift to me grow meant so much to me.
Each day growing so fast that I stood pleased and amazed.

This week it became a part of our menu.
How good it is to eat the crop of your hand
and better yet to enjoy the gifts that are freely given to enjoy.

There are at least three more on the vine.
This is going to be the most memorable butternut squash of my life.

Onion storage after the harvest.

The bucket is the compost pot, the left greens are yet to be trimmed, greens in the colander need to be washed and used.

Time for some Mongolian beef...

Storage...
After the harvest it is storage at the forefront of the mind.
The trimmed greens are like a green onion once cleaned of damaged lief. The stalk trimmed of any soft area makes for a good cooking green for kabobs.

Before I get to that I just thought I would be a miss to neglect....When you see the onions lay them self down...it is harvest time. It is finished. The onion is ready.
This may be hastened if things get a bit too dry, or if the soil is tired.
I have been preparing a better understanding for next year...
root veggie=potash or 0-0-10,
10-0-0 for the leaf formation in the beginning.
Some soil deficiencies can cause issue.

So cut off the end and wrap in foil. Do not let them touch each other. Store in a cool dry place.
If you yield two types of onion those with the darker outer layers are best for a storage onion. The whiter the onion the shorter the storage. Some onions last a very , very long time.

Word Filled Wednseday

Onion harvest
When they lay them self down, they have finished.
Genesis 8:22

"While the earth remains, Seed time and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease."