I may have missed listing of few of the books I've read over the past year and half or more. There's barely enough time to read, so adding them to my blog is not a priority. This was my third reading of Moby Dick. The novel is not what you think it is. Nor is Uncle Tom's Cabin the book you think it is.
The elderberry trees I planted last year have thrived. They may be doing so well as to require some rigorous monitoring and pruning to keep them from overtaking my yard. Sorry kids, when you inherit the house, the first thing you will have to deal with will be all the feral elderberry. I harvested some of the flowers to make elderflower tea, but I'd rather wait to see what I can do with the berries. They won't be ready until the end of the summer. I have four elderberry bushes, but how many berries I get will depend upon how dutiful the birds are at foraging. I dug out my blackberry this year because the birds would get to them before I could. However, my blackberry were not producing very well because the very sunny location I planted them required more watering than I was willing to do. I wasn't interested in a making such a resource intensive berry. The elderberry so far seems much more prolific, although the preparation of the berries to remove the arsenic compounds may make it more work than picking and eating a blackberry.
The Kentucky soils again made me feel like I know how to garden. My first garlic crop worked much to my surprise. I didn't harvest too soon or too late. We roasted some of the fresh garlic and I set the rest up in front of a fan downstairs to cure for a couple of weeks. I have about three dozen bulbs to store. And a week or so after the garlic harvest, my basil plants needed a first clipping to keep them from going to seed. My kale was doing well despite the heat, and from these confluences arose the return of summer pesto. That's a bus tray piled with my garden's contributions in the photo below, the first of 2022. Actually, the twins have been eating my kale basil lemon pesto all year, as I still had enough frozen from last summer to last through this past June. To the basil and kale, I add raw pumpkin seeds, olive oil, and just a little bit of parmesan - easy on the cheese so that it is more vegetable than dairy product.
Maypop is a North American passionflower that is cold-tolerant. It makes
an edible fruit that has long been eaten by native Americans and rural populations in the southerneastern US. In Louisiana it is sometimes referred to as
pomegranate vine. It has a vine growth form that is known for being
weedy, and some consider Passiflora incarnata invasive. I've had to pull runners up all summer to keep it from growing over my
other plants. I'll know next year if I have a source of fruit juice and
leaf cover to cool my porch, or if I have a weedy monster I can't
control. It does die back completely in the fall though. It does not leave behind a woody vine that persists through the winter. The fruits just needs to be scooped out, squeezed or pressed
against the sides of water-filled pitcher to extract the juice, then chill.
Also known as Lebanese spinach, Egyptian spinach, Palestinian spinach, If I get a lot of seed pods I may make refrigerator pickles out of them. Below is a closeup of some of the leaves. And at the bottom are the plants in my garden. They are well over six feet tall. I had minor beetle damage on the top leaves mid summer, but they grew well and needed very little care or watering. I'll probably grow it again as I have been using the leaves all summer on pizza, sandwiches, and wraps. Photos of the cooked version coming soon.
I grew another crop of asparagus beans this summer. Asparagus beans originated in Asia and are increasingly grown in the US. They looks like snap beans but are actually more related to southern cowpeas. They are also pest resistant and in my garden much easier to grow than some of the more common Kentucky bean varieties. The photo at the bottom is my storage freezer. It is filled with tomatoes and lots of bags of asparagus beans - I can make Lebanese green beans for dinner all winter.
It has been good weather for gooseberries. I did a better job pruning them this spring too. I'm picking them as soon as they show a little blush of red. The birds have so far left them alone, but the chipmunks are getting their fair share.
This year I had my first cherry harvest. These are North Star cherries, a sour cherry. Sweet cherries do not do well here in Kentucky. My small tree, more a bush right now, produced enough cherries for a cobbler or pie. However, I ate them in smoothies and in oatmeal. Next year, a cobbler. You can pit them quickly with a metal straw, it was not much work at all. I planted the cherry trees a couple of years ago. This spring I planted elderberry, aronia berry, American hazelnut, a currant shrub, and a Chicago fig. Chicago figs are a cold-hardy variety unlike the figs I used to pick in Athens, GA and Charleston, SC. I am also trying two new vegetables this growing season. I have a new variety of asparagus bean in the ground, and I also have Egyptian spinach. Egyptian spinach seedlings are shown in the lowermost photo. There are several varieties of this spinach and some debate as to its origins as a food. From what I have learned I am growing a Lebanese variety, which is more in line with the common name used to advertise this plant at Truelove Seeds. They call it Palestinian spinach, but it can go by many names depending upon the region. It is prepared as a very green stew or soup to accompany rice or meat. Just in front of all the spinach seedlings is a staghorn sumac. I'm not sure this little volunteer is going to make it, but I have a couple of now large plants (my height) that should flower and fruit this year. I'll use the berries to make my own sumac spice and sumac-ade to drink. 
