Chandra, We are enjoying a bountiful harvest and it is keeping me busy from early in the morning until late every night just keeping up with harvesting and processing all the food. Most days I am either harvesting or processing the harvest between 12 and 18 hours a day.

I do not keep fresh tomatoes inside on the counter very long, but how long they last depends on how ripe they were when brought inside, etc. Tomatoes picked at breaker stage will last longer, of course, than those that were fully ripe when brought indoors. Every day I set aside enough fresh, ripe tomatoes for us to eat that day and the next day and then I process all the others or give them away. I either freeze, can or dehydrate tomatoes every day, and some days I am busy doing all three more or less at the same time, as I am right now. During harvest season, there are not enough hours in the day. When I get tired of dealing with the tomato glut, I start yanking out plants. It is the only thing that saves my sanity in a year with very bountiful harvests---knowing I can take out the plants when I am tired of tomatoes (or beans or cukes or whatever). I won't take out all of the tomato plants, but once I've frozen, canned and dehydrated all we can possibly eat, I'll take out most of the plants and just keep a few for fresh eating.

I line up my tomatoes for fresh eating on the kitchen counter out of direct sunlight. Sometimes I put them on a plate and set them on top of the microwave just to keep them separate from the piles of tomatoes I'm canning, cooking, dehydrating, etc.

There are many ways to preserve tomatoes. I've been using the Mrs. Wages mixes to make chili base, catsup, pasta sauce, etc. I make a year's supply of one item, and then move on to the next item. In some cases, I'm making a two-year supply. This week I've been making and canning catsup (or maybe that was last week) and chili base. Next week I'll be making and canning pizza sauce. I've been canning lots of salsa. I've made many quarts of tomato sauce to use in cooking during the tomato off-season. I've been dehydrating tomatoes and storing them in the freezer. I've got 3 or 4 gallon zip-lock freezer bags full of dehydrated bite-sized tomatoes in the deep freeze already. So far, all I've done is bite-sized tomatoes, but now I am going to start dehydrating Jaune Flammee and Principe Borghese to use as sun-dried tomatoes.

To dehydrate, my stove has a convection oven that has a 'dehydrate' mode. Before that, I used a countertop food dehydrator. There are many discussions about the various dehydrators on the Harvest Forum, and probably a few here on this forum that you can find with the search feature. Because I store mine in the deep freeze, I only dry them down to an estimates 15-20% moisture level. If you want them dry enough to store them on the pantry shelf unrefrigerated, you have to dry them down to 5% moisture. I don't know how you measure the moisture level. I just guess. When they are at 5% moisture, they snap in half when you bend them. If they don't break in half when you bend them, they aren't dry enough.

I don't grow sunchokes so cannot answer your question about them, but I bet George or someone else can and will.

For our pond, we just went to PetSmart and bought regular gold fish. In fact, for some of them, we bought feeder gold fish, which are very small. They've been in the pond for about a decade now and are big. People always think they are koi, but they're just ordinary old goldfish.

I haven't had a leaf mutation on a datura. Isn't that interesting that you've had that happen. I don't know if it is a viral infection or what.

Laura Bush petunia is not stable, and when it reseeds you get all kinds of shades of white, pink,violet and purple. I've even had some pink flowers with white streaks. I think it is interesting to see what I get every year from reseeding.

With the barn swallows, you can put Tanglefoot Bird Repellent(linked below) on their nests when there are not any babies in the nests, and they will leave because they don't like getting the sticky stuff on their feet. It is made by the same people who make Tree Tanglefoot Insect barrier. At our house, the cats discouraged them from building nests on the porch above the door, so then they built them on the north side of the house up under the eaves. I love having them around, but not on the porch.

I'll have to come back and look at all your photos later. The canning in the kitchen is calling me to come back and finish it up for the night.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Tanglefoot Bird Repellent

Hey Chandra,

Those are beautiful pictures! Looks like a wonderful garden. Our garden, while no where near as far along, is looking better than it has in a couple of years. I'm digging potatoes and picking green beans now. Tomatoes are not yet ripe. But they are looking good.

Don't pick the flowers off of the Jerusalem artichokes. They don't harm production and they are beautiful to behold. The variety I have at my home will reach 12' on a good year and won't flower until August. However varieties differ. It sounds like yours are doing very well.

I'm quite excited about cluster beans. Mine came up quickly and appear to be thriving. It has been years since I "discovered" a new food crop! We are awaiting harvest with much anticipation.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Chandra,

What a gorgeous garden. I think it's one of the top ten most beautiful gardens I have ever seen. I am green with envy. :)

I never touch my sunchoke flowers. They are so pretty, and I like looking at them almost as much as I like eating the sunchokes!

Jo

Chandra, we hang a flystrip over the counter and it catches a lot of the fruit flies along with regular flies and grain moths if those show up. we also hang a couple on the front porch to catch the flies and gnats that are out there.

George, so glad to hear that your garden is looking good this year. Does that mean we can come see it? If you saw ours now you would know that it doesn't always look like it did last summer late. Everything is weedy this year, despite being mulched.

Dorothy,

yes, most certainly. You folks are good friends and could drop in, even to see the garden, when it's not looking so great. Will get back with you, as Jerreth mentioned inviting you over. But... I don't remember if we agreed on a time, even roughly.

George

Kids are banana freaks. Fruit flies are year round in our house. I always have an empty plastic bottle with a bit of tomato in the bottom with a paper funnel inserted through the opening. They go in, but don't come out.

bon

Dawn,
Thanks for the useful tips and info. In the last few days we tried to dehydrate the tomatoes with help of scorching sun and Nesco 700-Watt Food Dehydrator. Nesco did good job and very fast. But natural dehydration under sunlight spoiled the tomatoes, white mold formed beneath the slices so I have dumped entire batch into compost pit. I would see your post before trying sun option, lesson learned! Unfortunately our modern over not have 'dehydrate mode'. We ate the hydrated slicing as well as cherry tomatoes, I never thought dehydrated tomatoes tastes so yummy!! We are going dehydrate as many as we can. I wish have planted more tomatoes in place of corn LOL! We are going to dehydrate other vegetable as well, see how it goes. Thanks for the info about Mrs. Wages mixes, will try it.
I am observing mutated datura, so far flowers are not affected but only leaves. Laura bush petunias are more than two feet high no, I am thinking to trim them back so that they behave like ground cover than taller filler in the front line. I planted them at the outermost edge of the flower bed, but they have grown taller than taller flowers in the rear rows.

Barn swallow are too fast in building nest and laying eggs. They already laid two eggs in their new/remodeled home, so I have to wait till they raise their kids and gone!

I have uploaded few more pics including tomato degrading experiment.

George,

Thank you. Sure, I just browsed the pics of the Jerusalem artichokes, they looks gorgeous, so I am not going to remove any blooms. As they are growing in onion beds, I thought extra nitrogen might have delayed blooming. But I see couple of flowers and some flower buds.

Cluster beans are our favorite. I am eager too how they will perform in your garden. Our cluster bean plants growing well too. They thrive on summer heat! I often see some leaves getting curled in the beginning I guess trips, but I not see any this time so far.

Jo,

Thanks, but those are too big words for my garden. I am sure you will build better garden next year around your beautiful castle. I agree with you and George on sun chokes. I am eager see they them in full bloom. If see them what I saw in online photos, then I am going plant them in flower bed as back drops.

Dorothy and Bon,

Flystrip and bottle with paper cone sounds like a good remedy. Thanks. I will try to both options.

Cheers -Chandra

Chandra, How do you eat cluster beans?

Carol,

Here I am C/P of the email sent to George some time ago.

..You can cook it like beans, stir-fried or streamed etc. you can type Gavar or Guwar or Gaur bean recipe in google to get many ways of cooking. If you like bean curry then you like cluster beans too.

here are couple of links to cluster bean recipes;

"19 cluster beans recipes"

"Cluster Beans With Yam"

Here is one recipe my mom told while I type this post:

We call this 'cluster bean palya' goes very well with Indian bread or tortilla.

Ingredients:

1 lb Cluster bean
1 Onion, 2 garlic cloves
2-3 Green chillies (or depend upon spice level)
1 tsp masala powder ( or black pepper if you not have masal)
1/2 Cumin seeds, 1 tsp Mustard seeds, 1 tsp brown sugar or gjaggery; oil to saute, salt to taste
Curry leaves- 1 string and few Coriander leaves for garnering (not an option for you, LOL)

Procedure: Heat oil add muster seeds, then add crushed garlic, cumin seeds soon after muster seeds start spluttering. then add chapped onions, add 1" cut long cluster beans when onions cooked. Cook them until they become tender, then add masala poweder, jaggery, green chillies and salt. We usually serve hot with chapathi (indian bread) or fresh corn tortilla. or you can have them with bread burger or pizza topping or as a filler with taco.

regards -Chandra

Chandra, Thanks and that sounds good. Also I must apologize because I think I asked you about them before. I think I also have some seeds so maybe I need to plant a few and try them.

Carol,
No problem. It is still good time start cluster beans.
-Chandra

I just bookmarked this whole thread, at least until I can get all this great info down. I'm really excited about a new (to me) food plant which LIKES Oklahoma heat! Perhaps cluster beans will work their way into Southern American cooking, just like Okra did, a some centuries ago.

George

George,
Many vegetables are first timers to me since I started gardening in 2008. I guess same with any newbies. Every year I try few vegetable which I never tried. Some time I feel like Oh is that vegetable! But ended up growing those unique types only once, but some add to every year list. I found garden in the backyard is wonderful scientific lab. I love my backyard lab much more than my spectral lab (office)... I just worried that our Bermuda turf will slowly disappears. -Chandra

Here I am adding more info from the literature review and my own experiments for those interested in this vegetable.

Clusterbean also called Gavar/Guar/Guwar/Guvar bean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L. Taub.) is a self pollinated, multipurpose, drought resistant, and restorative annual leguminous vegetable crop. Green and tender pods of cluster bean are used as a popular vegetable in many parts of India and Africa and some part of the SE Asia. It is also grown as a forage crop as well as green manure. It has great It has soil-enriching properties since it is a legume used for reclamation of saline and alkaline soils.

It is said to be extremely drought-tolerant and grows well in arid and semiarid regions with little moisture. Too much moisture will leads to more vegetative growth and less pods. I found that this crop not new to southern states, but has been cultivating more for gaur gum, has wide variety of food and non-food uses. Gaur gum is used in gluten free food! It is one of the best food thickening agent, almost eight times as powerful as cornstarch for thickening applications.

It is quite easy to cultivate. I did couple of experiment on its performance by sowing seeds in early spring and early summer (never tried as fall cop), transplanting vs direct sowing, limited water vs regular water in the last three years but with limited no. of plants with uneven replications, so statistically saying my results are not scientifically sound. Here what I found- it does well if directly sown seeds in mid-summer, I usually sown here in Norman around first week of June. It is good succession crop after you harvest your spring crop. Even you won't like it as a vegetable but as a soil improvement or green manure crop. It also suppresses the summer weeds in the vacant beds.

Cluster bean seedlings are too sensitive to transplant shock, plants will get stunted and reduce yield significantly. However if you follows Dawn's paper cup trick of planting entire cup then it will not have any impact. I tried that this year with direct sowing and cup transplanting. Both seem to be growing well, but with cup I started a week early, they have couple of extra leaves.
This year, I am also thinking plant second batch in late July as it is kind of a short day crop, I observed that number of pods per cluster keep increasing and taste better when day length shortens. Expect bountiful harvest from August to until first frost. It is very frost tender crop, little frost will kill entire crop. So harvest all pod when there frost forecast. Green pods store pretty well in freezer. I not found any difference in taste with fresh and frozen. We are still eating last year's harvest.
I will keep adding if come across any interesting info about this vegetable.

-Chandra

Chandra while in Tulsa this morning, and having some down time, I looked at all your pictures. I find it truly amazing the amount of produce you harvest.

Kudos to you.

Moni

This is GREAT information. Thanks!

George

Jay,

Did you browse the photos recently? I have uploaded some pics yesterday. Your peppers are started producing good.
Some of them are really great for making green chilli chutney and long ones are great for chilli fritters.

Here are pics of your peppers. I lost their name tags, but have map record- the drawings of each beds with location and name each plants/varieties and date of transplant.

Cheers -Chandra