Back safely

Back from our trip to Colorado and we return to a minor bounty. I understand it was dry and hot while we were away, but it rained the day we returned, and again last night and this morning. If I was going to somehow investigate the usefulness of rain barrels this summer… it had better hurry up and return to our more typical dry and hotness soon.

Yield after return from vacation

 

The biggest surprise was that we got the biggest zucchini of the summer off of wilted plants. I sure hope the disease that makes the plants wilt doesn’t harm the taste or healthfulness of the squash once it’s baked into Johanna’s bread.

The biggest zuchinni

Here is the promised recipe:

Johanna’s Zucchini bread

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

2 cups loosely packed drained grated zucchini

2 teaspoons vanilla

sift together flour, salt, baking soda/powder, allspice and cinnamon. Set aside.

Beat eggs, add oil, sugar, zucchini and vanilla. beat in dry ingredients.

Grease and lightly flour 2 standard-sized loaf pans. Pour batter into pans. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean.

After bread is dome, wrap in plastic or tin foil and store overnight in refrigerator before slicing. Good buttered or dusted with sugar.

– We pour batter into 4 mini pans and back for about 45 min. for gift loaves. Tasty!

Damage done

There is something about losing a plant to disease or pest that feels like a rite of passage. This year we took a couple of risks, grew a couple of things new to us, and watched a couple of things wilt and be ruthlessly chewed.

The pretty white moths Gracie watched grow from their cow-a-pidder stage finally got the best of us.

eaten broccoli leaf

I have seen a number of posts (listed below) suggesting organic gardeners try nematodes (sp?) but I was simply too lazy to try… especially since my children enjoyed picking the green worms off the plants and raising them into voracious butterflies much more than they enjoy eating broccoli.

Zuchinni wilt

Our garden experiment felt a lot like a biology lab when I read this blog’s June post . Blogger Dave lives very close to us in middle Tennessee and so I have been reading his blog with great interest, especially when he gives instruction on garden pests. His description of a squash borer that transmits a disease called wilt was very informative, but, I swear, within a week… my plant leaves looked a lot like his. I checked for the beetle he photographed, with spots on its back, and found nothing, until last weekend. I did see one beetle, and as my zucchini plant died, it seemed to attract more aphids and other critters, perhpas the equivolent of an injured fish attracting shark.

zuchinni bread dreams

The girls have been tasting the zucchini spears at dinner. We saute them up with fresh basil, store-bought garlic and italian spices with olive oil, but their true love is zucchini bread. We have a recipe from a lady named Johannah Runyon, who we got to know in Columbus, Ohio years ago. She was a big gardener and had wonderful recipes from her youth in Germany (as well as fascinating stories about growing up when she can remember the Nazi youth groups before the war ended).

We’ll collect the last zucchinis and say a fond farewell to the dying wilt-ridden plants, and I’ll share Johanna’s recipes in a bit.

Wildlife spottings

Bunny in the yard

This little bunny has been visiting our garden, taking the occassional bean or green leaf. So far I cannot say the little guy has done any damage to anything we planned to eat ourselves, so we are glad to see him. I take it as a sign of a nice healthy garden that more mammal wildlife is hanging around— of course we may feel differently in the future because rabbits do multiply like– well, rabbits.

The girls come running to see him whenever we call them to the breakfast window. We saw a chipmunk recently too. It has been a while since we’ve seen a chipmunk. I think our lawn leopard has been discouraging their visits.

Pooh, the lawn leopard

Well watered– for now

Grace collander warrior

After a couple of good weeks of rain, my garden warrior was prepared to harvest. Grace is still young enough to be excited about picking tomatoes and the like, while Emma, at 10, is more interested in finding tadpoles and distributing them to the little boys in the neighborhood.

tomato in hand

The first colander of tomatoes is modest, but sweet. We have already given a dozen or so of the early red rubies to neighbors and now I’ve served them up in a salad, and fried up with some zucchini dipped in fresh basil, flour and Parmesan cheese. Not bad.

first tomato haul

We will be vacationing soon and I wonder how the garden will hold up. We haven’t had the courage to ask a neighbor to pull the hose around with the trickle from the rain barrels. It’s a leisurely exercise for me, but would likely be tortuous for someone else.

This year has been unusually well-watered so far. I doubt that will continue through the end of July and August, but being absent for part of that time almost guarantees not a drop will fall. Like the opposite of washing your car.