Manda Monday--Canning planning

A few weeks ago, I walked into a Master Gardener Q&A session as folks were discussing tomato plants.  People were nodding in agreement when the Master Gardener said "Two tomato plants is enough, there's really no need to plant more than that."


And from the back of the room in that shrill voice of hers...okay, mine...I screeched, "ONLY TWO? BUT I PLANTED TWELVE!"

The Master Gardener and her small but experienced gardener audience chuckled at my tomato enthusiasm, since clearly this newbie got a little out of control when purchasing her seedlings.

Well, I beg to differ. Having twelve tomato plants is going to be totally awesome, especially since I plan on canning a lot of the fruit. 

Yep, that's right, I'm going old school. Actually, canning is new again.  As food costs rise, home canning is a great way to save money, especially if you grew the food yourself. 

As I am, with my TWELVE TOMATO PLANTS.

There are plenty of books and kits to help you get started.  The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving has been on my nightstand for a few days now, and I'm getting my materials ready.  I have a pressure cooker (Thanks, Uncle Rich!), funnel, jar lifter and an assortment of jars, lids and bands.

I hope to have enough tomatoes for a few jars each of pasta sauce, crushed tomatoes and diced tomatoes.  Of course, more would be better.  In my wildest dreams, I'll be up day and night for two straight weekends as I can can can thousands of beautiful red tomatoes. 

In addition to the Complete Book of Home Preserving, I have an older Ball Blue Book for canning from BFF Laura that's going to come in handy, as well as The Encyclopedia of Homemade Preserves. Online, I'm looking at the Ball Canning website and the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Now, all I need is for my 100+ green tomatoes out there to ripen all within two weeks of each other.

Note to the crowd at the Master Gardener Q&A session:  Next year, I'm planning for TWENTY tomato plants. Minimum.  So there!

Flea market find

Not too long ago friend Yogi and I hit the Kendall County Flea Market. 

We got there early, so not many vendors had set up other than the ones in the barn. But the barn displays were fantastic!  Every vendor took such pride in their wares and things were beautifully displayed.

The good thing about hitting the flea market early is that it's still cool outside (well, maybe not this week) and it's not crowded.

Here's my find from the flea market:

It's a square cake stand! Isn't it awesome?  Cake stands are quickly becoming my thing, and I was happy to snatch this up for only $10.00.  Yogi's theory on the hole in the middle is that it's meant to allow for stacking another smaller stand on top.  Do you have any ideas as to what the hole is for?



Yogi and I are heading to the Kane County Flea Market in August...maybe I'll add another piece to my growing cake stand collection! 

XXX Pumpkins

So Aunt KB gave me 8 pumpkin seedlings in the spring, and 6 made it into my garden. A few weeks after planting them, I got this email from her:

"Thanks for the shout out on the blog. Good luck on the pumpkins. Just so you know - you have to have "pumpkin sex" to get a good harvest."

UM, WHAT???? EXCUSE ME????

KB continues:

"The girl pumpkin flowers are the ones with the green pumpkin balls under them - the boy pumpkin flowers do not have this part. You take a q-tip and get friendly with the boy flower and then introduce the q-tip to the girl flower. You will have a limited time in which to have pumpkin sex - so take advantage of an open flower. If all goes well the pumpkin ball will start to grow and turn into a big pumpkin.  KB"

After I finished reading this email bomb, I sat in my chair dumbfounded for quite a while.  I had to help the pumpkins reproduce?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME???  THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN MENTIONED WHEN YOU GAVE ME THE SEEDLINGS!!!!

Honestly, this was the first I had ever heard of helping plants produce fruit, and I know Martha has never mentioned this in her magazine/blog/website/show.  And also, isn't that what bees are for? 

I told KB she was crazy and bees handle this sort of thing and that I had no intention of helping pumpkins in the bedroom and this kind of thing really should have been discussed prior to me receiving the pumpkins and is this some crazy joke that more experienced gardeners play on newbies and OMG I gave one of those seedlings to MOM2 and are you telling me I need to have this conversation with her????

Fast forward several weeks later, when I have lots of flowers on my pumpkins (and zucchini for that matter) but no fruit.  I began to wonder if maybe KB was telling me the truth about the birds, bees and pumpkin business.

I attended a Master Gardener Q&A session where KB's wacky ideas about pumpkin pollination were confirmed. Turns out it not some crazy scheme cooked up by my aunt to make me do weird things to squash in my garden, but a way of helping nature out.  But believe me, I still tried to get out of the role of pumpkin pollinator.  I even whined to the Master Gardener, "Seriously, shouldn't bees be doing this?

And then she dropped a bomb on me..."Yes, but have you seen any bees in your garden this summer?"

And the truth is, I've only seen one or two bees all summer.  This is not good.

Dismayed by all this flowering-but-no-fruiting and bummed out by my lack of bees, I decided to bite the bullet.  I smushed some flowers together and hoped for the best.  Then I saw this:

See the golf-ball size pumpkin underneath the flower?  Maybe my pollination assistance had helped, even though the flower accompanying the baby pumpkin hadn't been smushed.  I thought my work was done, so I didn't mess with that flower.  I have come to regret that decision: here I am a week later, and it looks like that golf-ball size pumpkin is withering away rather than getting bigger.  Crap.

I'm having similar issues with my zucchini.  Lots of flowers but no squash so I started smushing flowers together there, too.

Now I do have three small zucchini growing, along with a question: Do I need to be pollinating every single female flower, or can I just do one or two and the plant will get the idea? 

This entire experience is leading me to think that next year, I either need to stay away from pumpkins or get myself a beehive in the backyard.  Pumpkin pollination might just be too much for this Martha wanna-be.  At any rate, I'll keep smushing flowers together and crossing my fingers that I get some pumpkins and zucchini in the fall!

Martha Monday--Women with Vision

Tonight on the Hallmark channel, Martha Stewart presents a prime-time special, "Women with Vision" at 8pm EST.  I will be on it. 

And by "on it," I mean I'll ask The Big Guy to Tivo this for me so I can watch it at a more convenient time...like three years from now when I'm running in only five different directions, and not 12 like I am now.

Oh, did you think I was going to be on the show?  Nope, sorry.  When Martha does a "Women who barely function in the morning and don't even have time for breakfast and have to stop at the Dunkin' Donuts drivethru for coffee and bagels because they were too busy getting rid of a dead snake in their backyard and preparing for tonight's community education class of Living Well and Spending Less" episode, then I will be the guest on that.  In a totally unrelated note, can you guess how my morning went?

Find out more about the show here.

Register now to live well and spend less!

Quick reminder:  my next Live Well, Spend Less! course at Waubonsee Community College starts next week on Monday, July 18 at the Sugar Grove campus.  To get a small taste of this class, check out my blog post on living well and spending less in the summer.  Also, take a peek at what we accomplished in this class during the spring semester.  The best ideas featured in the class (as determined by the participants) will make it onto The Martha Initiative.

Sign up for the class here.  You can find it by typing in the class title:  Live Well, Spend Less; or by typing in my last name: Grant.  As always, you can see a list of all of my upcoming courses on the right sidebar.  I hope you can join me at Waubonsee!