more garden pictures

The trapped watermelon. by the time i discovered it, it was already too big to pull back thru the fence.


Molly outside the garden looking in at me. She’d been sniffing at the trapped watermelon.


Regular watermelon on the ground


Zucchini


Broccoli is still growing




Baby cantelope


Cherry tomatoes


Amish paste tomatoes


Tomatoes growing tall


Cauliflower


The lettuce seeds that also sprouted some tomato seedlings and some other unidentified stuff (all the tomato seedlings have been pulled out at this point)


Stevia and basil


Asparagus and volunteer ground cherries

ground cherry jam

i made ground cherry jam for the neighbors.


cooking it down




the neighbor i made it for gave me these jars to use. it went straight into her fridge, thats why i just poured it into jars instead of canning it proper.



GROUND CHERRY JAM recipe
5 c. berries
1/2 c. water
4 c. sugar
1/2 can (6 oz. size) frozen orange juice
4 tbsp. lemon juice

Remove husks and wash berries. Measure berries and water. Bring to boil and cook until berries burst. Add sugar and frozen orange juice concentrate (not diluted!), and lemon juice. Cook for 30 minutes stirring often to prevent scorching. Jar and seal.
- http://www.cooks.com/recipe/w0j80z8/ground-cherry-jam.html

ground cherry pie

i made ground cherry pie. this is a strawberry picking flat i re-purposed to hold the cherries while they dried out for a week or two before husking them.


molly wanted to sniff them


peeled the husk back


fed it to molly. she gobbled it up too quick for the camera to catch.


bucket of ground cherries


husk for the compost bin


pie!




i use a pie shield to keep from overcooking the edges


pie


it turned out too sweet for my taste. too much sugar in the recipe, or my ground cherries must have been extra sweet. but my neighbors were delighted to have it.

raised bed garden photos

sugar beets


sugar beet getting pretty big


raised bed garden, sugar beets down in front, most of the rest is ground cherries. they volunteered themselves and then took over.


bellflower got shaded by the zucchini. just not a good spot for it. i need to find a better home for it.


zucchini in the raised bed, upon being crowded by the ground cherries it decided to just hang out over the edge.


even the carrots got invaded by the ground cherries


ground cherry


with husks pulled back


you pick ground cherries up off the ground. you dont pluck them off the bush, they're not ripe. but they're bushy! you have to kinda shove your head and arms in to reach them.


my garden and raised bed

ugly bug pictures

ugly little grub bugs that were eating the leaves of ground cherry plants


their backs were covered in goo that wiped off on my gloves when i touched them


i pulled them off and squished them under a brick. that seemed to end the problem. i have no idea what they are tho. never seen them before.


a gardening community suggested that they're beetle larvae. they suggested potato beetle, but i'm seeing striped cucumber beetles in my garden. googling seems to bring up similar pictures for both. so i'm going with the striped cucumber beetle larvae. and the goo on their backs is their excrement, it makes them less tasty to things that would eat them. *gag*.

a tale of ground cherries

as an experiment i grew ground cherries this year. i also grew pineapple tomatillos, but as it turns out, they look and taste the same.



this is what the bushes look like in my garden. i had no idea they'd get that tall. i had to prune them back to keep them from smothering the neighboring plants.

tomatillos


ground cherries


you dont pick them off the plant, you pick them up off the ground. otherwise they're not ripe. they're not very big.


peel off the paper cover




its a bit time consuming to peel them all, and since my kitchen table is currently covered in crap, i set up on the floor. i had a captive audience.


or perhaps i should say a nosy and hopeful audience


one bucket equals one bowl. and puppy says never give up hope. both dogs thought they tasted fine and wanted more.


sweetpea enjoyed them tremendously


they were perfectly bite sized


but i wont be growing them again. it is a HUGE hassle to get under the overgrown plants to pick up them up off the ground one by one, and then peel them one by one. i simply dont have the time or energy to waste when there are so many other things in my garden i could focus on.

and the taste, well thats hard to describe. its kind of a slightly pineapple slightly tomato flavor. its sweet, but not very. it has tiny seeds in it that i spit out, like grapes used to have when i was a child.

everyone i've had taste them (myself included) says they're not sure if they like them or not, but then refuses a second taste. except the dogs and the tortoise of course.