Late Garden Experiments

I've been planning for two days to get down to the garden, to see how the beans and greens are doing, and to throw a little water on the beets and carrots in the horse trough.  Finally, this morning I suited up - hat, gloves, and crocs - and went down there.

The veggie trough is several water hoses away from the hydrant.  Nanny has one of those new stretchy green water hoses that's supposed to shrink when the water is off, and I have a hose cart with about 150 feet of duct-tape-patched hose on it.  I turned on the water, pulled the green hose over to the hose cart, and flipped a switch on the green hose to temporarily shut off the water while I screwed the green hose to the hose cart.  Before I even finished tightening the connection, I heard a poof! and a whooshhhhhh!, and looked back to see water spewing from the middle of the green hose.  Blow-out!  I felt bad about wrecking Nanny's hose.  Last week, when I was trying to perform the same feat, the shut-off valve blew out of the green hose.  I replaced it with the one from my own stretchy green hose.  Now it looks like I'll be giving her my whole hose. 

I will not be buying another stretchy green hose.

In any case, the garden is lookin' good.  I hooked up the Miracle Grow sprayer and laid into the beans with it.  Folks say that beans don't need much fertilizing, and they probably don't, but we're working against the seasonal clock with this second crop of beans and peas, and I thought a little insurance wouldn't hurt.  I did only one row of the purple hull peas, an experiment to see if that row makes more peas, or makes them sooner.  I also dosed some of the tired old tomatoes, to see if they'll get a second wind.

The okra needed cutting, and there was a lot of it, so The Husband cut a plastic shopping bag full, and I brought the okra back to the house to pickle it.  Some of the okra was too long to fit in a pint jar.  By the time I culled out the tall boys, I had five pints of okra.  As I was lowering the jars into the canner, the bottom fell out of one jar - don't know what happened there, unless there was already a tiny crack in the jar, and the heat from the pickling brine finished it off.  Had to fish out the okra and the glass in the pan, throw out the briny water (and the okra and the glass), and start over with one less jar than I started with. 

This is the second batch of canning that has gone wrong this year.  I think I'm losing my touch!