My bee hive looks good going into fall!

Bee on Borage-photo courtesy of Elodie Holmes

Bee on a borage flower—Photo courtesy of Elodie Holmes

I went into my one and only topbar hive today to see how the ‘girls’ were doing and am thrilled to report that they have 18 bars-10 full of honey, 1 bar being built and 7 full of brood. They look to be in really good shape for winter. I didn’t see the queen today as I was in a hurry but that was ok as there was lots of capped brood and larva in those 7 bars and lots of activity with the bees coming in and out of the hive carrying in pollen and nectar.

Around my property right now native plants such as Apache plume, chamisa and asters are all blooming and the bees are loving them. Plus my Russian sage, catmint, spireas, lavender, honeysuckles, Datura, borage and my out of control, drought tolerant silver lace vine (all over my fences) is full of little flowers and the bees are loving all of them as well. I’d say they are truly ‘busy as a bee’.

I can’t tell you how happy and grateful I am for this to have happened as this past June I almost lost all of my bees. Nothing is worse or more depressing for a beekeeper than to not have any bees! My queen had disappeared after winter sometime in late spring, and I suddenly discovered I had only 2 bars with a few hundred bees roaming around aimlessly, not knowing what to do without a queen. I had two friends, Bob Z and Les Crowder each give me 1 bar of brood so the hive could survive until I got a new queen acclimated to the remaining bees. The surviving bees had the new queen lay an egg in a couple of queen cells they made to supersede the queen I bought. This process is called ‘supersedure’ which is the bees way of replacing an existing queen in the hive with a new queen without a beekeeper’s interference. They obviously wanted to raise their own queen instead of accepting the one I bought. The queen I bought ‘disappeared’ and a new queen of their choosing emerged and took over. The rest is history. She has been one kick-ass queen to build up her hive so big in such a short time. I just hope no bear will come by this far south but they are always worrisome in the fall and one has been seen not too far away. I’ll keep my fingers crossed it doesn’t come my way.

The runaway

giant marrow 08-10

A BIG runaway! DISCLAIMER: This one is way too big to eat! I entered this in 2010 in the State Fair instead!

At this time of year if you’re a vegetable gardener, you’ve experienced it—zucchini runaways. One day you go out and see this cute little zuke and think I’ll give it one more day and the next day you go out and it grew into a baseball bat. It’s like overnight it got on some steroids and went ballistic.  Now it’s too big so what do we do with them besides hide them under the bed in case an intruder comes in? Well you could use them as door stops or take them to the fair but here are 4 ideas to eat them!

Savory Zucchini Pancakes
Take 2 cups of grated zucchini, add two beaten eggs, 2 tablespoons of flour, and 2 teaspoons of some fresh herb you have and 1 cup feta or mozzarella or cheddar or whatever cheese you have (please, no Velveeeeeta). If you want more, then just up the ingredients like 3 cups zucchini, 3 eggs, 3 tablespoons flour, etc. Just don’t up the herb, keep it at 2 tsp so not to overwhelm the flavor of the zucchini (what? zucchini has flavor? Yes, at least two varieties do – Costata Romanesco and Benning’s Green Tint (not a zucchini but a delicious summer squash). All the others, in my opinion, are worthy of either the compost pile or the chicken coop or both) Then saute them in olive oil until brown on both sides. This is my favorite way to cook super-sized zucchini.

Garlicky Zucchini Medallions
Slice them into medallions and saute them in olive oil with some crushed garlic cloves until tender in a BIG fry pan. Sprinkle lightly some red pepper flakes and add fresh grated Parmesan cheese on top and cook a few minutes more till melted. This is also great with a little left over spaghetti sauce drizzled over them.  (Can you really drizzle spaghetti sauce. No—but you get the idea-don’t drown them.)

Zuchinni Soufflini (This one comes from my mom-thanks mom!)
1 1/2 lbs zucchini
1 large onion, chopped
3 TLB butter
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper
2 beaten eggs
1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs
2 TLB butter

Cook squash whole for about 5 minutes in boiling water. Cool. Dice into cubes. Saute’ onion in 3 TLB butter and add to zucchini. Stir in cheese and seasonings and allow mixture to cool before adding beaten eggs. Spoon into buttered 1 quart casserole. Toss bread crumbs with 2 TLB melted butter and sprinkle over casserole. Bake 30-40 minutes at 350°F about 30 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean. Serves 4-6 people.

Of course there is always the infamous zucchini bread but how about chocolate zucchini bread? I got this recipe from a friend many moons ago and it is excellent. Your kids, friends, spouse or partner will never know they are eating something healthy!

Chocolate Zucchini Bread
2 ¼  cup all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 ¾  cup sugar
½ cup butter
½ c vegetable oil
2 eggs, large
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup buttermilk
2 cup unpeeled zucchini, grated
6 oz choc chips
¾ c chopped walnuts

-Preheat oven 325 degrees. Butter and flour a 13” x 9” x 2” baking pan
-Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt into large bowl.
-Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until well blended. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients, alternate w/ buttermilk in 3 additions each, fold in zucchini. Mix in choc. chips + nuts. Pour into the baking pan. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean in about 50 min. Cool completely in pan.

So the next time you get a runaway, don’t despair, now you have some ideas on how to use them besides hiding them under your bed!

2013 Garden Pictures

entrance insideout

I’ve been taking some photos of the vegetable garden the last few days. The light is so beautiful at 8 am every day that before I started weeding, I took these photos. Slowing down and and really looking how beautiful the garden is makes all the work worthwhile. Enjoy!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Pickle class a success!

pickle class

Duskin with picklesPickle making class went well today. We processed 15 lbs of cucumbers into about 15 pint jars. Pictured above are some of the finished pickles. Duskin, who co-taught the class with me brought his giant pressure cooker. We didn’t use it as a pressure cooker this time but instead filled the big pot with water to sterilize the jars and to use for processing the pickles using the water bath method. I brought my camp stove to make the brine and syrup. It was a beautiful day for making pickles outside instead of over a hot stove. After a short talk on the how to process food safely, everybody got involved—Duskin sterilized the jars, while the students cut up the cucumbers and garlic, mixed up the brine and syrup, added all the ingredients and cucumbers into the hot sterilized jars as they came out of the pot, poured the brine and syrup, wiped the lips of the jars and put the lids/caps on them. Then we put them back into the hot water and brought the water back to boiling and adjusted the processing time for our high altitude. While we were waiting for them to finish processing, Duskin showed them around Milagro Community Garden. When the pickles were done, we pulled them out of the hot water and let them cool enough and then the students took home a jar of each type of pickle. Good job folks!

Here is the one handout that wasn’t available today that I told the students would be available tonight:

Preparing and Canning Fermented and Pickled Foods

Here are the handouts that were given out in class:

General Canning Information

Duskin’s Favorite Pickle Recipes

Lastly, here is the Lemon Dill Refrigerator Pickle recipe that Randy asked for:

Fresh-Packed Refrigerator Lemon Dill Pickles

Food Preservation Class TODAY-canning pickles

799px-Pickle

Do you have too many cucumbers? Do you want to learn how to make pickles? It is much easier than you think! Today from 12 noon – 3 pm I will be teaching a preservation class on pickling for Home Grown New Mexico.

pickle_cornichonThose who show up will learn how to make two types of pickles-bread and butter pickles and dill pickles. We will review canning safety at high altitudes and then make the pickles using the water bath method. This is a hands-on class.

Pickle Making Class- 12 noon-3pm

Milagro Community Garden – located in parking lot behind:

2481 Legacy Ct, Santa Fe, NM

Tomato Lady of Santa Fe at Farmer’s Market this Saturday

3omato_costuluto genevese

Saturday I will return to the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market as the ‘Tomato Lady’. I don’t have lots of tomatoes yet but everyday more are ripe so come early to get the best choices like the beauty pictured above from Italy called “Costuluto Genevese”. I have 12 new varieties as well as the ones I grew last year.

Weeds!

weeds

I came back from a flyfishing trip at the San Juan River last week to out of control weeds EVERYWHERE! Ever since the monsoons kicked in (thank god they did) so have the weeds. Amazing how the seeds lay dormant for years until the right time and water show up. Boom! An explosion of weeds. Now I know how they feel back east having to weed all the time with all the water they get.

I finished weeding the main vegetable garden yesterday-did the last 1000 sq feet in section 3 in one day!  Oh, my aching back. My main vegetable garden is divided into 3 sections, each section being about 1000 sq feet. Section 1 is the most fertile, being the original section built on 13 years of composted horse manure 6 years ago in 2008. Section 2- I built originally for my giant pumpkins 5 years ago but I moved them (being the gorillas that they are) after they took over the rest of the garden and Section 3-I built last year so I could get my tomatoes (50 plants this year survived) on a 3 year rotation cycle since I grow a fair amount for the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market. I rotate them to one of the three sections every year. Meanwhile my giant pumpkins moved over to the unused part of the horse corral about 3 years ago and they have 2000 sq feet all to themselves. Well almost-I have 14 more tomato plants over there. The only part left to weed is the paths around the gardens, the apple trees and about half of the pumpkin patch. Progress!

This whole weeding thing has been pretty overwhelming  this year so the only way I can get my head wrapped around it is to break down the big tasks into smaller tasks. I just keep chipping away at it-a little bit every day. Plus I have to tend to the veggie plants, keeping ahead of problems that come up from time to time and now harvest time is upon us and that is intense too. All part of the joy of gardening!  If I didn’t love those fresh vegetables and those fantastic tomatoes that we all wait for every year, I might not garden at all. But those tomatoes keep me coming back!

Tomato Talk

closeup of striped german

Later today I’m going out to the Eldorado gardens  to  ‘talk tomatoes’ with a group of gardeners out there and tour their garden. We will discuss growing tomatoes and disease and insect control on their plants.

For the color pics/descriptions of tomato diseases and control:

TOMATO DISEASES

Here are the other handouts for anyone interested:

Tomato Deficiencies_Diseases_Viruses

PLANTING TOMATOES

Hail damage

hail damage-chard

Hail damage-chard

Well all this rain has been great but many of us have also experienced hail damage over the last few weeks. I escaped the hail storms in my vegetable gardens until last Friday. I was out-of-town at the time (which was a blessing as I would have been super upset). My house sitter called and told me (before I came home) that it was hit pretty hard. I came home 5 days later and this is what I found. The chard, zucchini, beans, cucumbers and a few tomatoes got hammered so hard they were skeletonized. But most of my tomato plants were covered with row cover (to protect them from the dreaded leafhopper) and they were fine. Four tomato plants that I didn’t cover also got severely beat up. The eggplants that were covered with row cover were fine but the grapes got severe bruises on the fruit and the fruit will be a total loss but the plant will recover.

So what do we do when nature strikes hard with a devastating hail storm. Not much I’m afraid. Sometimes the plants are beyond self repair and sometimes they bounce back just fine. I left everything as is for few more days before going out and upon inspection, most were already putting out new baby leaves – if the center of the plant wasn’t demolished. Yesterday and today we trimmed back all the demolished leaves leaving new growth and tomorrow I’m going to spray all the plants with some fish emulsion, an organic fertilizer, to help with more new growth and mix in some ‘Serenade’, an organic fungicide with the fish emulsion to help prevent any possible fungal diseases that might have resulted from the beating they all got leaving the plants weak. Sometimes taking a wait and see versus yanking them out right away is a better approach. It is amazing these plants are recovering nicely.

I am always amazed how strong the will to live is. I may have lost a few weeks but at least I didn’t lose the whole season. And I was very glad that everything that had row cover on it was protected. Here are some pics of the damage and recovery.

Hail damage-tomato plant

Hail damage-tomato plant

Hail damage-cukes

Hail damage-cucumbers

Hail damage-zucchini

Hail damage-zucchini

Look at this recovery compared to the picture at the top

Look at this recovery compared to the picture at the top

This zucchini is recovering nicely

This zucchini is recovering nicely

July 7, 2013—1.25 inches of rain! Woo Hoo!!

RAIN-July 2011

The storm today must have been like the one above we got in July 2011

We have a terrible drought going on for the last 3 years here in Santa Fe. Came home from a movie this evening to discover in my rain gauge, we got 1.25 inches of rain! Many little rivulets in the driveway and the arroyo we cross to get to the house had been flowing. Of course this is huge news considering we haven’t had any appreciable rain in months and months and months. I wish I had been here to see it come down! Gonna turn off all the drip system for a few days! YEA!!!

Anyone else get any appreciable rain today?

Is it a weed? White Horehound

?????????

There is a plant that grows everywhere around here and I’ve always wondered what it was. Grows like a weed so to speak. I knew it was in the mint family as the stems were square but was definitely not a mint. I just ID it from a book, Weeds of the West.

The plant growing in my gardens is white horehound which is a herb. There are two types of horehound—black horehound and white horehound. Black horehound can be toxic while white horehound can be beneficial. They are easy to tell apart because black horehound has little purple flowers while white horehound has little white flowers.

Since ancient Egypt, white horehound has been used as an expectorant. Native American and Australian Aboriginal medicines have traditionally used white horehound to treat respiratory conditions. Some people make homemade cough drops out of them and some use the dried leaves to make a tea. They actually sell the seeds in Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds but around my place it definitely grows like a weed on its own without my help. I use to pull it out because it is not a particularly attractive plant and frankly grew where I didn’t want it to grow.

But since I became a beekeeper, I noticed the bees are wild about it with its small white flowers, so now I leave it for them. The US Food and Drug Administration banned its use in US made cough drop saying it has no proven benefit. However it is widely used in Europe and you can buy it in European cough drops, just not US made ones.

I recently had pneumonia and a dry hacking cough that would give me fits. The only cough drop that would help stop the coughing that I tried is called ‘Ricola’ Cough Drops’, which is a Swiss made cough drop. Guess what is in those cough drops? Horehound! Only I didn’t know about white horehound, or Ricola cough drops or what that weed was growing in my gardens.  I found all this out while I was recovering and on the computer a lot-how serendipitous!

Happy bee-day!

Today was a great day! I had my teacher/mentor Les Crowder come over to the house because my bees have been struggling since April. In late April the existing queen disappeared and a hive without a queen is a doomed hive. So I ordered a new queen and after the proper introductory period released her and they ‘seemed’ ok with her but after 2 more weeks there was a new capped queen cell and the new queen had ‘disappeared’. I thought they must have killed her and figured I did all I could do. Then I noticed the capped queen cell was opened but still could not see the queen. Still with no brood or eggs I figured the hive was failing. Then 2 days ago I noticed some larva but still couldn’t see if there was a queen or if one of the worker bees (called an intercaste queen) had tried to take over the job which doesn’t work-they still would be doomed. Today when Les came by he found a real queen, lots of brood and eggs and thought the hive will be fine! What a relief! They wanted to do supersedure queen (natural requeening) instead of an outside queen and the reason I couldn’t see her is she has stripes like the worker bees instead of the normal dark bottom. She is big and beautiful and laying well. Best gift from the universe for my birthday today!

Herb garden

I use to have a great herb garden but then built the studio here at the house on top of where it was located and had to tear it out. What a mistake. I thought it would be easy to recreate that herb garden-but it hasn’t been. I’ve struggled with my ‘new’ herb garden space for the last three years. First, the drip system clogged up (I wasn’t paying attention) and the plants weren’t getting any water and died. Now for the last 2 years the bunnies, who aren’t suppose to like herbs, have leveled them to the ground because there is so little to eat out there. Last year I tried 3 different types of basil in a large pot on the deck because of the bunnies eating them and they did great. The bunnies won’t come up on the deck. This gave me the idea of growing them in containers.

herbs in pots

So this year I decided to take the little 2 inch starts that we get at the nurseries and give them a head start inside in April. They are now transplanted up in gallon size pots and are outside on the deck. Once I get a fence around the herb garden, I will plant them there. I think starting them inside and letting them get bigger (and keeping the bunnies away) will be the trick to getting a good herb garden again. Shown here are chives, oregano, English thyme, tarragon, lemon thyme and sage which are all perennial herbs I use in the kitchen. I already have kitchen sage, lemon balm, rosemary (arp variety), and lemon verbena tucked into the perennial garden among the other plants and they have all are done well for several years. I also have a winter savory and a garlic chive that did survive the bunnies and drought in the herb garden-must not taste too good to the bunnies.

Pumpkin disaster

pumpkin plant eaten

Well I started about 5 giant pumpkin plants this spring and am now down to one. Last night a squirrel (or rabbit) did my biggest plant in by chewing through the stem and killed it. Finito. Done. No hope for that one. And it was amazing because it had 2 layers of row cover on it and some shade cloth over the row cover but something must have gotten underneath all that. This is too bad as I started it in mid April in the house and felt it had the greatest possibility to produce a GIANT giant pumpkin. Now I’m down to only one plant (the back up) which is actually the seed from my 2010 NM State Record but it was started a little later as 3 other of my seeds didn’t germinate at all. I’m actually going to plant 2 more seeds directly in the ground now to see if I can get a backup to my back up. The soil is certainly warm enough but I’m not sure I will have enough time now to grow a really big one unless it is some super seed that takes off!

Curly Top Tomato Virus and Beet Leaf Hoppers

Photo credits: curly top disease - photo courtesy of http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=3352

Photo credits:
curly top disease – photo courtesy of http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=3352

Curly Top Tomato Virus
Last year, the Beet Leafhopper which transmits ‘Curly Top Tomato Virus’ was rampant in our gardens and devastated many tomato plants. I lost 50% of my tomato plants. The Beet Leafhopper flies in on the winds in early June through July, jump on the tomato plants and taste them. They don’t even like to eat tomato plants but sample them, transmitting the disease in the process.

Identifying Beet Leafhoppers
You will know if they are here as they come in waves and when you walk around your garden, you’ll see a lot of jumping  little green bugs that fly off when you walk by. Then they leave—flying to the next garden. Because of this, you can’t really spray anything to get them—here today, gone tomorrow. By the time you notice something is wrong with your plant, they are long gone. It takes about 2 weeks for symptoms to show up.

Symptomscurly top virus_helthy plant
Your tomato plant leaves will start to curl and the underside of the leaves will turn a purplish color The leaves then start to wilt and the plant will look stunted. You might think it needs water but it doesn’t, it is sick and won’t recover. ‘Curly-Top’ is only transmitted from bug to plant is NOT transmitted from plant to plant hence you will see a healthy plant next to a sick plant.

Remedies
There is NO CURE for this virus and if your tomato (or pepper for that matter) shows signs of the disease, you should pull the plant. You could leave the plant in BUT if another wave of leafhoppers come by and a healthy leafhopper bites your sick plant, it only takes 10 minutes in 90°F weather for it to be able to transmit the disease to one of your healthy plants. The best thing to do is pull any sick plant and dispose of it.

Leafhoppers do not like shade and if your plants are partially shaded, that may help keep them off but since most of us grow tomatoes in full sun that might be difficult.

Create a physical barrier with row cover

Row cover over the tomato plants in my garden

Another thing you can do is create a physical barrier between the bugs and your plants. This year, I’m covering my tomato plants with row cover until the bugs pass. Wrap the row cover around your tomato cage and put a piece on top of the cage BEFORE they come.

Lastly you could put out some tomatoes later in the season after the bugs leave. Last year when I was out at the Santa Fe Community Garden I noticed many rows of sick tomato plants but one row of perfectly healthy plants and when I asked about them, it turned out they were put out about a month later than the rest of them and by then the leafhoppers were gone.

Dry, sunny, windy weather are perfect conditions for the leafhoppers so look out this summer-conditions are ripe again!