Jenny - Great Meatball Recipe

Great meatball recipe that I've just kind of jury-rigged together. Came out delicious!

1 lb of meatballs, beef or venison preferred

6-8 oz of beef gravy, jarred or homemade

8 oz of Michele's wild plum jelly

salt to taste

pepper to taste

Roll the meatballs up, small to medium. Use whatever seasonings you like. I used salt, pepper, dill and parsley. Brown them in a pan. You don't have to cook them all the way through. You're just browning. Remove the meat from the pan. If you're making your own gravy, then deglaze the pan and make your gravy. I deglazed with a little wine and then added about 1 1/2 tablespoons of flour, salt and pepper to taste. I then added water until I had about 6-8 oz of gravy. Dump the meatballs, the gravy, and 8oz of the wild plum jelly into a slow cooker and cook that on low until all the flavors are melded together. This took about 40 minutes for me.

Serve on a platter with toothpicks stuck into them for an appetizer, or in a bowl if preferred. I bet these taste great over egg noodles!

Michele - A Frost

Well, we have enjoyed the yield of our fall garden for more than a month, but sadly, the frost over the Thanksgiving weekend has put an end to it.  I'm wondering if there is anywhere I can get some onion bulbs this time of year.  Rumor has it that they will grow nearly year around, and I'm willing to test the theory. 

Just  because the vegetable garden is done for the moment doesn't mean it's time to rest.  Now is the perfect time to start pruning and preparing for spring.  It may seem a long way off now, but I seem to remember two ladies scrambling to get the rose bushes pruned before they put their new leaves on this past spring.  Don't procrastinate (like me), start now and you'll be able to relax and enjoy your efforts later.

Jenny - Pepper Harvest

Yesterday my husband picked a huge harvest of peppers! There was danger of a frost overnight, so he ran out to the garden to salvage what he could. It's typical of us to have multiple pepper harvests out here. Our plants often last well into autumn. We'll be shipping some out to my parents on the east coast. Here's a pic, and these are not even all of them!

Jenny - What I'm Up To

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous out, and my garden beds are calling to me. Well, crying more like. So many things have been going on that I've fallen behind on my weeding something terrible. So the children and I are embarking on a fall cleanup project. We'll be weeding, straightening out and trimming back any plants that have misbehaved themselves out of shape.
Oh, that reminds me. Always check your plant resource (online, book, whatever you prefer) before trimming a plant back, especially if you intend to do a hard trim, where large portions of the plant are cut away (clematis comes to mind). As a general rule, waiting until just before or just after winter is best.
Once we're done we'll be moving on to the plants inside the house, so hopefully you'll get some posts from me on keeping your house plants happy. In the meantime....

Happy Gardening!

A quick update

OK, this may not be an informative post, but I've just checked on the garden and am now all excited, and I'm sharing the news with you. We have cucumbers! There, I said it. Now let me yell it - WE HAVE CUCUMBERS! They are six or seven inches long and not much thicker than a pencil right now, but they seem to be growing fast. The vines look great and are full of blossoms. I can't wait until next week when we get to eat them. I believe these are the Armenians but the English cucumber vines look good too.

Oh, and by the way, I opened up a jar of the spicy dill pickle spears I made a couple of months ago and they are very tasty. My son ate half the jar for lunch the other day and I'm working on the other half.  Here's a picture of those tasty things:

And since I've got you reading this anyway... I also picked a tomato, two green peppers and two chili peppers off of the plants left from our spring garden today. What a blast!

Cucumbers

Hello again everyone. We've enjoyed a good growing season this year and I'm happy to say that our fall garden has been started. There are still many things to be planted, but the cucumbers are in and looking good.

My children and I all love cucumbers, so it's natural for us to plant them each spring in the garden. I have been looking for the best cucumber to suit our needs for quite some time, and have finally come up with a winner. For our house, we love the Armenian cucumber. It is also known as the yard long cucumber, and it's name speaks for itself. It is said that these do not make very good pickling cucumbers because they tend to lose their crunch. I made quite a few jars of pickles with our spares this year and will report in a month or two what I think of this. In the meantime tough, it must be said that we have never had a bitter one. I had a lot of trouble a few years back with bitterness in our cukes. Some research suggested that this can be due to heat and low water. I'm not very good at watering the garden and prefer plants that will forgive me for this. 'Regular' or pickling cucumbers can get very bitter. English cucumbers don't tend to get bitter, but they do like a lot of water in order to produce a good volume of fruit (or should I say veggies). Armenians seem to flourish with very little attention. That means it is right for us.

I don't know how they will do in the cooler climate of a fall garden, but I'm determined to find out. Ever one to try new things, our garden is now sporting some Armenian seedlings, as well as some English cucumber seedlings. It may turn out that the English variety does better in the fall garden around here. I'll let you know if a couple of months!

There are a lot of web sites devoted to the various cucumbers, their pros and cons and preferred growing conditions. It may take a little research, but with some effort and experimentation, you should be able to find one just right for you.

Until then, happy gardening.

Jenny - September Veg Gardening Duties

Hi, y'all. Sorry for the long absence. I wanted to chime in to talk about gardening in September. In some areas of the country, it's time to plant bulbs and shut down the veg gardens for the winter. Not so in Texoma. We have the blessing of a long growing season and can now prepare for what's sometimes called the short season. You can also often get away with the cooler weather crops that most of us don't dream about earlier in the year, crops like peas, beans, and lettuces. I know that's hard to believe while it's still so blazing hot outside, but it's true.
If you have tomatoes, you may have noticed that they're still producing. Great! This happens to me all the time, and I'll often have tomatoes all the way until the first hard frost. Keep them watered and happy, and see what happens. Our pepper plants are also going strong. We've been harvesting steadily all summer. We have so many, we've had to give them away! We'll be keeping them happy for as long as possible also, as well as harvesting seeds from the tastier ones.
So go ahead and begin prepping your garden beds and get to replanting. Clear away any spent plants from your spring/summer garden. Loosen up the soil if it has become packed again. You might want to fertilize, especially if you've grown soil sappers like corn or tomatoes. You can also plant soil rejuvenators such as peas in those beds. They can help return some life to the soil. Many crops ideal for the short season can be sown directly into the soil. Good. That saves time. Peas, beans, and many lettuce types are direct sow. Squash are direct sow, though avoid any super-long growers (Check the seed packet), or "juicy" squash like zucchini that might resent coldish nights. Perhaps most importantly especially while the days still blaze: water in well!
Every garden is very dependent on tree cover, shade/sun exposure, wind, etc. Even in Texoma the terrain can change from one town to the next. My garden beds set onto straight prairie land perform differently than my friends who have a lot more tree cover. You know your garden best. Check your seed packet instructions (or look it up online of course), trust your instincts and have fun with it!