Help Your Garden Beat the Heat

It seems that the hot, hot summer has finally arrived.  This presents a whole new range of gardening challenges, the foremost of which is how to keep your garden alive and thriving in these hot summer months.  There are a few plants, such as okra and jicama that love these long, sunny days.  Most of the garden is just crying out for mulch, water and shade though.

I was scouring the internet looking for tips on the best way to keep the garden happy and thought I’d share some of the creative things that I found.  As far as watering goes, the quick watering that is fine during the spring just won’t cut it in Texas in July and August.   The plants need a good, long, slow watering that will allow the water to soak into the ground near the roots.  A drip hose will accomplish this, as will a soaker host.  Another creative idea is to save your two liter soda bottles or gallon milk jugs, poke a very small hole in each one and bury it several inches deep in the soil right next to your plants.  If you have a row of plants, space them every few feet.  Two or three times a week, just go out and fill up all the bottles.  The water will slowly leak into the soil near the roots, giving the plant a thorough drink.   Remember to mulch heavily to help prevent evaporation and help hold the water around the plants’ roots longer.  No less than three inches is recommended.

If you have young trees, shrubs or bushes, a great idea is to put a very small hole (I used a drill and made a 3/32” hole) in a five gallon bucket.  Place the bucket near the base of the tree or shrub and fill it up.  It may take up to an hour for the water to slowly leak out – which will almost assure that the roots will be getting the water they need to keep the plant healthy.

Don’t forget one of the most important things when working out in the heat – take care of yourself too!  Make sure that you stay hydrated and shaded from the hot sun.  Try to get out before it gets too hot.  If you find yourself outside working during the hottest part of the day, just take it easy and take lots of breaks.  

As always, stay cool and happy gardening!

Horse Nettle - A Thorn FIlled Weed in the Texas Tradition

I’ve heard it said that everything in Texas bites, stings, or sticks.  Now we all know that Texas is full of lovely flowers and can be home to many varieties of our favorite vegetables.  That being said however, Horse Nettle lives up to the old Texas folklore.  

Here is a picture of one of the plants in our garden:

  

I wanted to show the flowers and fruit, but the flowers are a week or two off and they won’t have ripe fruit for a month or two.  Here is a link to some good photos to help you recognize it easier:

http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/prairie/plantx/hrs_nettlex.htm

Horse Nettle (Solanum carolinense) is found in the eastern part of the U.S. and as far west as West Texas.   Our garden is full of them and they are full of thorns!  The stems and leaves both play host to some nasty, rather large ones (thorns that is).  I won’t go near them without gloves.  The root system boasts a long tap root, making it hard to pull out and, also puts out rhizomes to help spread the plant far and wide.  It is a member of the nightshade family and like a lot of nightshades, it is poisonous.  The root, leaves, flowers and fruit all contain an alkaline that can cause it to be potentially fatal.  Don’t be fooled by the lovely tomato like fruit it bears – it can be dangerous stuff.

That being said, the flowers do attract bees and some moths and a few birds and small rodents are known to eat the fruit.  In the past, it was used by some American Indians as as a sedative and antispasmodic, and although it isn’t considered by most people today to have any value medicinally, there are some herbalists that still use it.  Here is an informative page that claims horse nettle can be used in the treatment of epilepsy, asthma, bronchitis and other convulsive disorders.

http://www.naturalmedicinalherbs.net/herbs/s/solanum-carolinense=horse-nettle.php

I also read an article that claims the leaf can be applied directly to the skin to treat poison ivy.  I would think you’d have to de-thorn it first! 

Medicinal uses or not, for now I do my best to keep the horse nettle out of our garden.   Whether you choose to cultivate it or kill it, be careful!

The Many Uses Of Borage

Lovely borage.  Not only is it a great companion plant for most things in the garden, the blossoms are both delicious and nutritious and it is very pretty when in bloom.  All that being said, it seems that there should be something to do with the plant more than just eating the blossoms and admiring it.  Although the leaves are edible, my family finds the prickly, fuzzy texture of them to be a bit of a put off.  My daughter put the leaves on her sandwich one day and declared it ‘ok but not great’.  A quick trip to the computer led me to a sight that claims borage jelly is pretty good.  It uses both the leaves and the blossoms -  both of which we have plenty.  Here is a link to the recipe:

http://www.food.com/recipe/borage-jelly-381762

After making sure we had all the ingredients on hand, I sent the kids to pick the borage.  They came back with plenty and we went to work.  Guess what, I actually followed the directions!  Well, all except for the one that says to use dry pectin.  I had unknowingly picked up the liquid variety.  Never having used it before (and rarely using pectin at all for our jelly), I had no idea if I needed to alter the recipe to adjust for it.  I ended up just using it in replace of the dry and following the rest of the directions as written.

It didn’t gel.  I ended up with seven half pint jars of very runny jelly.   Always looking for the bright side of things, I declared it syrup and we had pancakes for dinner.  I added a bit of fruit and we enjoyed our creation very much!

I found another recipe for borage jelly that I plan on trying next.  If you look at this recipe, you’ll notice that it doesn’t call for any sugar and uses honey instead.  I like the sound of that.  I wanted to try it before blogging here so that I could report the results, but the local stores were out of dry pectin and I didn’t want to repeat my mistake (if indeed that had anything to do with it).  Either way, they say that practice makes perfect and I have plenty of plants to practice on.   

http://borninthewrongcentury.com/2011/05/29/recipe-borage-jelly/

If you’re not a jelly or syrup fan, here is a whole page of recipes using borage.  They range from salads to soups to cocktails, and there’s even a recipe for borage fritters!

http://www.herb.co.za/herbal/borage-recipes.htm

All in all, it seems that there are many uses for borage if you’re just willing to explore a little bit.  Here in Texoma land, we need to take advantage of the plants that grow well, and borage seems very happy here.

Happy Gardening!

Yeast and Sour Dough Starters

I recently got lucky enough to be given an Amish Friendship Bread starter.  The bread is easy to make and the kids love it.  It makes a sweet dessert bread and we’ve made cinnamon, banana, and chocolate chip varieties just by adding different ingredients on baking day.  The directions refer to the starter as a sour dough starter and that got me to wondering about making actual sour dough bread.   I’ve scoured the internet looking for sour dough starter recipes (since no one has given me one), and they all look about the same.  You need flour, water, yeast, time, and patience.  Here’s where the fun part comes in though – you don’t actually have to add yeast, you can allow it to gather in your starter from the air around you.  You can also add ingredients that will spur the creation of yeast and add a bit of a particular flavor if you like something specific. 

I will admit that although I have baked bread for years, I had no real idea where the yeast came from – other than the grocery store.  I always imagined it as kind of like pollen.  I could picture myself getting some cheesecloth and going outside to harvest it.  Wrong!!  It’s a single cell fungi that is all around us.  It will naturally gather in your starter and get to work.  Quite a while ago, people learned how to cultivate yeast from certain sources to produce a variety of flavors.  These help create unique tastes for wines and other spirits, but can also alter the taste of true sour dough bread.  I recently read that grape peels are a very good source for a sour dough starter.  Juniper berries can also be used.  My grape vines aren’t producing grapes yet, but we have a slew of juniper berries around here.  (At this point, you can see the wheels inside my head turning, and you know that I have to give this a try).

Here are a couple of links to sour dough starters.  If you’re feeling adventurous, you might want to give it a try.  There is also a link to a forum discussing the various successes and failures of the process.  Of particular interest to me is the one about the juniper berry yeast starter.  That’s my kind of experiment!

Here is one that collects the yeast from the air around you:  

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/sour.htm

Here is one that has you add a package of yeast: 

http://www.food.com/recipe/sourdough-bread-starter-13750?layout=desktop

And here is the fun juniper berry yeast starter experiment:

http://forums.egullet.org/topic/105634-juniper-berry-bread-starter/

Enjoy – and good luck!

Growing Mushrooms Indoors

I saw a link floating around online a couple of months ago about growing mushrooms indoors.  You just needed a five gallon bucket, enough coffee grounds to fill it up, and a starter kit.  Ok.  I like mushrooms and like to try new things, so why not.

I did a little research, read a few reviews, and ended up ordering this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000E7L2M4/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The instructions left a little to be desired, but they did include a phone number to call if you weren’t sure about things.   I filled the bucket with a lot of help from the good people at the local Starbucks and got busy.  Look what I ended up with!

Yes, that is a quarter sitting on the mushroom.  It is there for size reference.  I think I was actually supposed to eat these monsters before they got this big, but I couldn’t resist letting them grow a bit.  My plan is to eat most of them but leave one or two to dry and go to spore.  The idea is that I can then start again and have a regular supply.  Economically speaking, these would be expensive mushrooms if you only got one batch.  Fun either way, but not cost effective.

So there you have it.  You can grow mushrooms indoors without much trouble.  You just need a source to get started.  I remember going mushroom hunting with my parents many years ago.   We’d occasionally come across button mushrooms that had dried out.  If you stomped on one, you could see the spore burst out into the air.   If you know your mushrooms and know of a place to find wild ones, maybe you could gather your spore naturally.   I can see a hike in the woods with my mushroom field guide in the near future!

Continual Sowing: Beets, Turnips & Radishes

Do you sow a little beet seed each week? How about your turnips and radishes? If you're not, you certainly should. Remember that you only get one root per seed planted. If you plant some seed every week, not only will you get more harvest, but it will be staggered through the season, instead of a glut of roots and then nothing.
One exception to this is if you intend to can your harvest. In that case one large harvest is preferred, though you can always stagger sow a lesser amount for fresh eating.
Let a few go to seed, so you can collect them for next year!