About Thyme

Let's talk about thyme.Thyme may not be the first one that comes to mind when you think about herbs.

You might think of bold oregano, or a friendly sprig of parsley.

You might think of flashy basil, the popular rock star of herbs. Everyone seems to admire basil.

Sage could come into your thoughts, soft fuzzy aromatic leaves of sage that remind you of autumn and holidays (and sausage).

Lush lovely lavender? And its enchanting romantic scent? Lavender is like a sailors siren. Be careful around lavender.

Maybe you think of Rosemary... sturdy rosemary, the survivor. The one herb that still looks fresh and strong in the garden when a hot dry summer has withered everything else.

Some people might think of cilantro, but others won't, because it seems like people either love or hate cilantro.

Mint might meander into your thoughts, mint, the mother of juleps and mojitos. Mint is one of the first herbs to show up in the garden, just in time for the kentucky derby.

Or if you're thinking of early spring herbs you might think of chives. You can always depend on chives. They will never let you down.

But thyme?Thyme sometimes gets forgotten.

But thyme is the herb I reach for most often.

It's the herb I want by my side when I'm making dinner every night.

That's what thyme is... thyme is on your side.(Please forgive me for saying that. I know it was very corny but I couldn't help myself.)

Thyme is modest. It doesn't take up too much space in the garden and it stays close to the ground. It makes lovely little purple blossoms.

I planted thyme once and I never had to plant it again. I don't do anything special for it, but somehow it endures the winter and comes back to life each spring. It's strong.You can't kill thyme.

(Forgive me again?)

I like to put thyme into pot roasts, chicken stew, shepard's pie, and chicken and wine sauce. Thyme is good in tomato dishes and soups. And it's also really nice in salad dressings and marinades.

I think if I had one bit of advice for any new gardener I would tell them...... you can never have too much thyme.

Sideways

I talk about the weather often.

I can't help it. So much around me is connected to the weather. And I'm in awe of all the things that Mother Nature creates... a gorgeous rainbow, the hoot of a night owl, the crunch of dry autumn leaves under my feet, and the way a fresh winter snow softens the whole landscape under a clean blanket.But we all know that Mother Nature is not always gentle. She's not only about rainbows and owl hoots and pretty snow. She can cause some serious damage.

I hesitate to write about the rain here (again) while there are folks in Texas right now who are suffering from the longest drought they've ever known. But they always say to write about what you know... and this year rain is what I know.

Several weeks ago Mother Nature sent so much spring rain that I thought that maybe I was going to have to build an ark. Each day brought a new storm. The ground became saturated. Lakes formed all around me. I sloshed and splashed all over this farm.

Once during that soggy time there was a howling wind that shook the house all night. I heard creaks and shrieks that I'd never heard before.

The next morning I looked across the garden to a little area that I generously refer to as "the orchard." (It's not a real orchard. It's just a few struggling fruit trees that would like to think that they're an orchard.)

After that tremendous wind almost every one of them was leaning sideways.One of them had even been broken in half.So I walked out there to see what I could do for the survivors.

I used the post driver to sink some T-posts into the ground next to the sideways trees..And then I tied the trees to those posts with strips of cloth ripped from an old sheet.Not very pretty, (and definitely not very professional looking) but so far, so good. These little trees seem to be staying straight as we've transitioned into drier summer weather.

Ironically, it is raining right now as I write this... and the garden actually needs a good drink of water right now. But I wish there was a way to share this rain with the folks in Texas.

7-Upsidedown

"7-Upsidedown" sounds like it might be some sort of interesting cocktail, doesn't it?

I came up with that title on purpose. I thought you'd be more inclined to read a post that sounded like a cocktail.

But in this case the "7" is really "Sevin," an awesome bug killer for your garden.

You can get it in powder or liquid form. I like the powder. It comes in this shiny bright red bag.The "Upsidedown" is how I apply it. I used a hammer and a nail setter to poke holes in the bottom of a coffee can a hundred years ago and I still use that same old rusty coffee can. I fill the coffee can with powdered Sevin, pop the lid back on the coffee can, turn the can upsidedown, and then shake it over a row of vegetables that is menaced by bugs. Using Sevin this way distributes the powder evenly without much waste. Leftover powder remains dry in the can until next time, even it it sits on a shelf over winter. (I keep another coffee can lid on the hole punch side when not in use.)I should mention that one drawback to using Sevin is that it kills a lot of bugs, including some beneficial ones.

There is a lot to be said for going organic and never using any chemicals. I admire you if you do that.

But me, I'm not organic. I occasionally use Sevin on my garden. And I seem to have turned out, turned out, turned out, turned out, just fine, thank you.

Spring Cleaning

I'm going to show you something embarrassing...Wow. What a mess the garden is!

But it's spring, and time for spring cleaning, and I might as well keep it real here and show you the spring time mess... and how I go about cleaning it up.

First I make a big pile of all the dried up debris..And then I set it on fire.I enjoy doing this... burning up the garden debris smells like spring to me.

It smolders and smokes because some of the debris is funky and wet, especially this year. We've had rain after rain after rain around here. Some whole towns are under water. Everything is soggy. Fields are waterlogged. And farmers wonder if they'll ever be able to get their tractors into the fields.

My garden is soggy, too. This debris fire smoked for hours.But it sure feels good to get the garden cleaned up!

On Growing More Chives

Chives will never disappoint you.

Not only are they the first edible green thing to show up in your garden in the spring, but chives are very reliable. They will grow almost anywhere, in any kind of soil. And they will return again, in the same spot, year after year. Plant chive seeds once and you'll have chives forever.

If only 401k's and family members could be so reliable.

In fact, upon deciding that I want more things I can truely depend on in my life, I decided to plant more chives. And the chives, themelves, make doing this easy.

There are two ways to grow more chives from an already existing chive plant...

1.) Don't cut your chives back in late fall. Instead let them make flowers. As the flowers dry out on the plant, you will find that they cradle these lovely little black tear drop shaped seeds. Plant the seeds in shallow soil in the place you want new chives to grow. Little tender green new chives should appear the following spring.

2.) Propogate your chives by digging up some of the bulbs of your current plant. Separate the bulbs and replant them in the area where you want the new plant to grow. This can be done in early spring or late fall. If you're doing this in the fall you may want to cover them with mulch or loose straw to help protect them over the winter.Either way, that's all there is to it... not much work for a hardy flavorful reliable herb!

How to have Fresh Homegrown Tomatoes on Your Thanksgiving Table

If there's one thing that can get tomato loving home gardeners really scrambling this time of year it's the threat of the first frost.

I wonder if meteorologists know how their announcement of a frost affects us tomato loving gardeners? A frost forecast sends us all out into our gardens with bags and baskets to collect every last luscious tomato on the vine before the frost destroys them. I've poked around in the tomato patch with a flashlight in the middle of the night to salvage tomatoes after hearing of impending frost on the late news. Every tomato gets picked, no matter it's ripeness, or uh, unripeness (is that a word?), even if I end up with a kitchen full of hard green tomatoes.Of course there are some tasty ways to use green tomatoes. Green tomatoes make an exceptionally good cake.

Sometimes I can up a batch of green tomato salsa... one well known Foodie Farmgirl has a really great recipe on her award winning blog. I recommend her recipe (and her blog).

And who can turn down a plate of freshly fried green tomatoes?

But you can also save some of those green tomatoes, let them slowly ripen, and enjoy red tomatoes for weeks to come, even possibly through Thanksgiving...

Gently wrap each green tomato in newspaper. Place them in a single layer in a shallow covered cardboard box (shoe boxes work nicely), and place the box in a cool dry place. Check them about once a week and use them as they slowly turn red.

I can't take credit for this simple and lovely hint! As it is with some of the best advice in the world, it was passed down to me by a nice little elderly lady before she passed on. I think of her fondly every autumn as I enjoy ripe tomatoes long past the first frost.

As Promised, A Parasitized Tomato Worm...

At first glance this might look like some kind of freaky flower. It's not a flower.

Look again... Here's the same picture, cropped. Do you see the tomato worm under all those white tubular things?
A while back I posted about tomato worms.

There are pictures of healthy tomato worms in that post. This worm is not healthy. This worm is dying. There is a kind of wasp that lays it's eggs on tomato worms. The eggs turn into cocoons. The wasp larva inside the cocoons feed on the body of the tomato worm. And the tomato worm dies... or something like that. Please remember that I'm just a homegrown countrygirl, not an entomologist! If you happen to have found this post because you're writing a school report about tomato worms, you might want to do a little more research, just to be sure.

Interestingly, the tomato worm, itself, is also a larva. The tomato worm is the larva of a kind of moth. So when this happens the wasp larva are feeding on a moth larva.

It's an interesting world, isn't it?

Something else that's interesting... in the earlier tomato worm post I described a tomato worm with wasp cocoons on it as looking "like it has grains of white rice lined up all across it's back."

But this picture doesn't look like that at all! Strange. To the naked eye a parasite covered tomato worm looks like it has grains of white rice lined up all across it's back. In fact, that is exactly what this one looked like when I took the photo.

Imagine my surprise when I downloaded the picture on the computer... and saw that it really looked like this! Who knew?!

Isn't it funny how a camera can see things that our eyes can't!

Freezing Romas

Autumn is rapidly approaching. So rapidly, in fact, that it arrives tonight! Here on this little farm (in Eastern Daylight Time) we will officially transition from summer to autumn at 11:09 pm.

What this means is that the sun is exactly over the equator at 3:09 am, Universal Time, and today the daytime and the nighttime will be as equal as they get.

Which means that from now on our nights will start getting longer.

And days will get shorter.

And summer is officially over...

Which means that my very most favorite thing about summer, fresh tomatoes, will soon be gone.

If I wrote an encyclopedia, I'd put a picture of a fresh tomato under the entry about "summer." Sure, I like feeling that warm sun on my cheeks, the smell of fresh cut grass, the bright colors of summer flowers, and that deliciously long daylight, making for romantic late night sunsets. But tomatoes define summer for me.

Are you like me? Do you gobble up as many fresh tomatoes as you can fit into your meals throughout the summer? Tomato salads, fresh tomato salsa, tomato omelets, pasta tossed with chopped tomato, tomato sandwiches, and just plain old sliced tomatoes on a plate? Oh, and don't forget just standing in the garden picking cherry tomatoes and popping them right into your mouth... certainly I'm not the only one...

Although there's nothing like the taste and texture of a fresh vine ripened tomato, many of us try to save that summer bounty by preserving them. I put up as many canned tomatoes, salsas, sauces, and tomato based soups as I can. Any time I pop the lid off a jar of plain old home canned tomatoes and smell that tomato goodness I announce, "That smells like summer to me."

Sometimes I dehydrate tomatoes, too. They take up so little space and they give such a tangy burst of rich tomato flavor!

But something else I like to do is freeze romas. They freeze beautifully! They retain that deep red color. They keep their shape and that nice meatiness. And maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like freezing them intensifies their sweetness.

Frozen romas can be used in soups, stews, and chili. You can throw frozen romas into a the pan when you're baking chicken or pork chops and serve one of those nice baked tomatoes as a simple side. They can be thawed and chopped and added to spaghetti sauce you bought or canned yourself. Or you can serve them with scrambled eggs or in an omelet.

My biggest recommendation is to skin the romas first, before freezing them. I've frozen romas without taking the skins off and I regretted it. Those skins become chewy and bothersome in your mouth and mess up an otherwise fabulous meal.Freezing romas is one of the easiest things to do... here's how I do it:

Pick the prettiest romas that you can find. Drop a few at a time into boiling water for about a minute, until the skins start to crack, and transfer them to the sink filled with ice cold water. Peel off the skins, cut out a little bit of the core (optional) and place them on a baking sheet lined with freezer paper. I try to put as many on the baking sheet as will fit, letting them touch each other as little as possible. Freeze them for several hours, then put them into resealable plastic bags. You might rather vacuum seal them, but I prefer to use resealable freezer bags so that I can remove twos or fews at a time without thawing the whole bag of tomatoes.

If you find some romas at a farmer's market, or if you have some lurking in your garden, you might want to try freezing them. The next time our season changes it will be to that one that begins with a "w." What a joy it will be to pull out a bag of summer goodness from your freezer in the "w_____!

Winter Rye

Like winter wheat, winter rye is planted in late autumn. It thrives on fall's bright sunny days and cool damp nights, growing remarkably fast for it's first few weeks of life. Then, just as those young fragile looking wisps of green begin to turn into a lush green carpet, the weather turns harsh and winter arrives. Cold weather seems to choke out the new growth, turning it yellow and brown. You think it can't survive. Later in winter the snow and ice cover it brutally. And you forget all about it.

But those winter grains have remarkable survival skills. A field of wheat or rye can withstand even the toughest winter.

In the spring, melting snow will reveal dull looking patches of green. You may remember that the rye was there. But it looks bad. You wonder if it will make it. You think about how you trampled over it pulling a downed tree to chop for use in the wood stove over the winter. You remember how the monsters rough-housed on it after a brief thaw and how they tore deep gashes into the muddy ground. It couldn't have survived that, could it?

Don't worry. Rye is resilient. By the time nature gives us just one sunny day, a promise that spring will come, that rye turns into the prettiest green that you've ever seen. A field of wheat or rye in the early spring is the brightest, most colorful thing for miles.

We are all familiar with the sweet, nutty taste of rye, or pumpernickel bread, but rye might be grown for a variety of other uses, as well. The grain may also be eaten as cereal. Mixed with other forage it may be grazed upon by livestock in a pasture. Rye straw is preferred by some for animal bedding in stalls. And, of course, it can be made into whiskey!Rye might be grown by home gardeners for another purpose... to keep the topsoil in the garden! Each year, water, snow, and ice wash unplanted loose soil out of gardens. Planting a cover crop will help to keep the soil there. When you're ready to plant your garden just mow over the rye and till it in. Not only will it have helped to retain your soil but few weeds will grow in rye, so you will have relatively few weed seeds to fight.

But when you cut it and till it under you'll miss out on the fantasitc beauty of those tall golden stalks and silk encased grain tops. A field of rye is just magnificent.

Growing Garlic

Garlic. It's supposed to be good for us. They say it helps our hearts. It lowers our cholesterol. It helps to lower our blood pressure. It is said to help us get over a cold or flu. And it also keeps the vampires away.

There are definitely a few blood sucking vampires I would like to keep away.

Thank goodness garlic doesn't keep homegrown countryboys away... because I like to eat a lot of it!

If you grow garlic once, just one year, you can keep growing garlic every year, without ever having to buy more garlic to plant.

Here's what you do: Plant some cloves of garlic in the late fall. Let it sit there, tucked safely away several inches underground. Then forget about it (just don't forget where you planted it). Mother nature will take care of the rest. In the spring, when the time is right, some garlic shoots will appear, sometimes even while there is still snow on the ground.Eventually those little green shoots will grow tall. In the heat of summer, they will start to yellow and wilt. Then they'll turn brown. This is when I dig them up. I tie them together and cure them by hanging those bundles of tied garlic bulbs in a dry place. This is similar to curing onions.After a few weeks, when the garlic is nice and dry, I rub off the dirt covered outermost layer. This reveals the next papery layer which is a nice bright clean white. I pull each bulb from the cluster of tied up bulbs, trim the roots, and then I put all those pretty garlic bulbs in a pantry drawer.

That's it! Those bulbs of garlic keep just fine for months. Not much work for a whole lot of powerful, healthful, vampire-fighting taste!

Tomato Worm

If you grow tomatoes you've probably seen these guys.

I'm sure they have some official name but I call them "tomato worms."

They're wicked looking, aren't they?!

They usually hang out on the stems and leaves of tomato plants. Sometimes I find them on pepper plants, too.

I've heard of people loosing a whole patch of tomatoes to this worm. But that has never happened to me.

Sometimes when you hold one of these they'll leave a little bit of greenish goo on your hand... eeew.

When I find one I pluck it off the tomato plant and throw it in to the chickens. Chickens like tomato worms!

Occasionally you'll find one that looks like it has grains of white rice lined up all across it's back.

I don't feed one that looks like that to the chickens.

There is a kind of wasp that lays it's eggs on the tomato worm. The eggs feed on the body of the tomato worm until it's time for them to hatch. The tomato worm dies from the parasitic eggs. When I find a tomato worm like that I leave it alone... so the wasps can be born and continue to keep the tomato worm population in check.
I haven't found one like that yet this year, but I'll take a picture of it if I do.

How to Have Potatoes in June

Yes! Fresh new potatoes in June! Here's how to do it:

1.) First of all, remember that potatoes are Irish. Or that the Irish love potatoes. Or that potatoes grow in Ireland. Or remember the Irish potato famine. Or think of anything Irish. Because then you will remember to plant potatoes on Saint Patrick's Day. What?! Your ground is still frozen then? Same here. But potatoes get planted as close to Saint Patrick's Day as possible.

Of course I've never found a nursery that has seed potatoes for sale in March, so you want to save some of your potatoes from last season to use for seed.

They aren't pretty. But they are good for seed. (And truth be told, most of them are still good eating, too.)

These potatoes started growing little potatoes in storage. (You can read about harvesting and storing potatoes here.)

2.) Put on your winter coat. Your garden is cold in March.

3.) As soon as you can get your rototiller and your hoe into that cold dirt, work the soil into a nice powder and dig a deep trench.

4.) Cut your seed potatoes into chunks that have an eye or a tendril growing from them.

As the plant begins to grow it will get energy from that potato chunk, so be sure to leave enough potato to feed the plant.

Place your chunks of potato about a foot apart in the trench, tendril or eye facing up.

5.) When all of your potatoes are placed in the trench, cover the whole length of trench with a hill of soil. Really pile it up so those potato pieces are laying deep down in the soil.

6.) Now wait. And watch. Eventually little green shoots will start to poke out of that hill. If you planted your potatoes in the middle of March you are probably still having occasional frosts when the plants start to show. That's okay! Cover those babies generously with loose straw. Make sure they are well protected under straw any any time you suspect a frost.

7.) You might need to say a little prayer to Mother Nature because you put a lot of work into planting those potatoes and she can take out your whole crop with one cold night.

No matter how well you cover your potatoes, they might get a little nip causing some leaves to turn black. Don't lose hope if this happens. The potato plants might survive this.

8.) Beware: Some people who don't know any better might laugh and make fun when they see you planting potatoes in your garden in March. Let them laugh. Snuggle down into the warmth of your coat and think about June... you will be the one laughing when you are eating fabulous fresh new potatoes!

Stirrup Hoe

If you enjoy working in your garden you probably have one of these. It's a stirrup hoe.

This tool is great for getting rid of little weeds.If you you haven't used a stirrup hoe before you might be pleasantly surprised at how quickly it can help you weed your garden. It works best on new, little weeds but I sometimes muscle out larger ones with it, too.

Push and pull this tool in between your rows to uproot those nasty little buggers and your garden will look as purdy as a picture in a magazine.

Rhubarb Flowers

I think about food a lot.

At any given moment of a day I might be thinking about food or putting energy toward food in some way... planning the garden, planting seeds, pulling weeds, fertilizing, harvesting, storing food, taking care of animals, looking up recipes and thinking about "what's for dinner tonight."

I'm not the only one with this malady.

There are others who, like me, enjoy thinking about food. We keep grocery lists. We collect cookbooks. We save recipes. We stock our pantries. We plan menus. And we look at food blogs.

You know who you are.

Plants, on the other hand, put all of their energy into making more plants.

Everything that a plant does is toward the goal of making more plants. They take in water and nutrients to grow and make more plants. They each do it differently but they all do it. Some plants make seeds or spores that grow new plants. Some plants spread root systems that put up new plants. Some divide themselves into multiple plants.

As an eater of plants, my goal may not always be the same as the plant.

Such is the case with rhubarb.

We eat the sweet tasting stems of the rhubarb, not the leaves, roots, or flowers. So we want to encourage the plant to grow a lot of long thick stems. (The leaves should not be eaten because they contain a high amount of oxalic acid.)

The plant, however, wants to grow more rhubarb plants. So it makes flowers that contain seeds to grow more rhubarb plants. But when the rhubarb plant is putting energy toward making flowers it is giving less energy toward making those juicy stems.

So, unless you want a decorative, flowering plant, when your rhubarb starts to bolt (make flowers) cut the flowers off and you will have more tasty stems to make into rhubarb pie.

"Warm Snow"

It snowed here yesterday.

Although quite pretty, it was a bit of a let down after more than a week of sunny, warm, spring like weather.

The bright earthy wormy smelling days had fired me up. I felt the warmth of the sun on my cheeks. I didn't wear a coat. And I planted a few cold hardy things like lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, beets, turnips, and carrots.

And then last night this started to happen.

By dawn it looked like this.
But this afternoon the sun was working it's charms again. And it made me think of something an Amish gentleman said to me once. "The best time to till your garden is when there is a cover of warm snow on it."

I never quite understood what he meant by "warm snow" until today.

I 'Dig' Potatoes!

I mean that in every sense of the word. I dig them.

And I dig eating them, too.

And if I might brag just a little bit... we grow good potatoes here at Homegrown Farm.

Seriously good.

But then I'm biased. Because I like potatoes. I like them in all of their different disguises and preparations.

Remember Forest Gump's friend Bubba? He liked shrimp in all of it's disguises and preparations.

"You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it... Dey's uh, shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir fried. There's pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad..."

Potatoes are like that too.

They can be baked, boiled, broiled, sauted, or fried. Dey', uh, potato soup, potato salad, potato gratin, baked potato, fried potatoes, potato fries, mashed potatoes...

You get it.Potatoes are one of the easiest foods to store. Just keep them in a cool dry place and they keep for months and months... until it is time to put them back in the ground as seed for next year's potatoes.

I have heard all kinds of weird and complicated instructions for planting and storing potatoes, like that you can't plant your own homegrown potatoes, that they have to be cured before they are stored, that they require a certain exact humidity, that if one potato goes bad it ruins the whole bunch, and that the ones with green on them are poisonous.

We have never had any of this happen and we always eat our own potatoes from storage all year long. And we haven't bought a seed potato in years.

Sure, when winter is growing long and we are eagerly awaiting spring's arrival, the potatoes grow tentacles and start looking a bit wrinkly... but don't we all start doing that at the end of winter?