[gardeners] Sunday in the garden
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Mon, 17 May 1999 16:14:02 -0500
Sunday Miz Anne and I finished up what we had to do in the garden for
the weekend. Pulled the last of the brocolli plants, got a decent mess
of broccoli for dinner tonight and chopped a bunch of tender stalks to
add to my bag of veggie parts for making veggie stock later. Dried 16
trays of herbs Saturday and Sunday, included were rosemary, oregano,
thyme, winter savory, basil, garlic chives, and SASSAFRAS LEAVES.
Thought that one might throw y'all but sassafras leaves is what gumbo
file' is made from. Dried two trays of the leaves and ended up with
about 4 ounces of file powder.
Noted too, that the sassafras tree has fruit on it, first time I've seen
this. May harvest some ripe, if the birds don't get it all, and then
plant them to make more trees.
We got all of the soaker hose installed and working. Sort of a relief to
be able to turn a few valves and water everything in the back yard now.
The new faucets are working fine and the short hoses to the soakers are
finally leak free. A nice way to water here in the humid but droughty
south as no water gets on the leaves of the plants to cause grey mildew.
Turned the newspaper mulch in the garden yesterday also, killed about a
zillion snails that were hiding under it. Sure beats letting them come
out at night and eat my greens.
Does anyone know what to do with Black Spanish radishes? Thinned the row
I planted yesterday and got about 5 lbs of radishes. These things get up
to about 2 lbs each so that wasn't that many radishes. They're sorta hot
to eat raw and I'm not much on grated radish on raw fish. All ideas
gratefully accepted.
Have to pick New Zealand spinach this evening and blanch and freeze for
later use. Neighbors from next door came over last evening and we gave
them the chard we had picked for the day but will have to pick again
tomorrow. Looks like harvest and preservation of that harvest begins
early this year.
Last note - we had tomato, lettuce, and bacon sandwiches for dinner
yesterday. I made the bread and we grew the maters and lettuce. Bought
the hog meat at the market. It was very good and even the pup enjoyed
her sammich, a little tiny one.
Life is good.
George