Sunday, September 9, 2012

Thistle mitigation and transformations

I have been declaring war on thistles in the yard in the past few weeks. I have discovered a very effective yet easy and non-toxic way of getting rid of them.  This is tomato season, and when I've taken the last jars out of the water bath, I remove the rack and then lug the entire pot of just-recently-boiling water outside and pour it splash by splash onto the thistles in the yard.  We have such a lot of thistles growing about. I've tried digging them, I've tried poisoning them (eww, roundup- I was desperate!) but this is by far the most effective (and easiest!) way I've found. They start to turn brown immediately (they've been cooked!) and it seems to kill them by the root because none have tried to come back.
Today was a busy, busy day of transformations.  I started the day off early, up shortly after 6 making five quiches to take to our 4th annual pie sale at church.  I even made one with a gluten free crust.  And they all sold- three of them as whole pies- the other two pieced out by the slice.  With all the pies there, we brought in $539 that will go to the Common Fund at the Crisis Center.  This is the fund that keeps people's power on and the water flowing.  Sadly, all that money will cover less than a week of need.  sigh...
After church and clean up, I headed home to pick tomatoes and peppers.  Then I started the transformations.
This:
A sink full of heirloom tomatoes... became these:
Seven quarts of tomato sauce.
And this:
and another similarly full pail (love those ice cream buckets!- they are a harvest necessity here), became 3 quarts of diced frozen sweet peppers.  I just LOVE the purple peppers. The flesh on the inside is almost white so it's a wonderful contrast in color.   And look at the size of that sweet italian! They are huge this year!  I've got my day off tomorrow so I think I'll be harvesting, dicing and freezing hot peppers.
I may also take a trip to Kalona tomorrow to check out the quilt shops there to see if they can be any help for needles for my treadle machine.  Plus, there are always cheese curds to be procured....
I'm sure my day off will be a usual Manic Monday.  So, I must sleep.  V has had a stomach malady so my sleep was interrupted overnight Friday into Saturday and then last night Mandy was being a pest and woke me up shortly after 3 and I had a hard time falling back to sleep.  And having worked this weekend and getting up early to make quiche today, I didn't get a chance to sleep in.  I don't ever really sleep in (I'm usually up by around 7 or 7:30 at the latest) but I do love at least one day on the weekend where I can sleep until I wake up.  And I won't get that until next weekend.

9 comments:

  1. Ooooo... I'm gonna have to try that on the thistles. I'm afraid one of them went to seed last year and spread it's evil spawn throughout the front yard... of course it could have been one in my neighbor's yard.

    I read once that they have a 2 year lifespan. The first year they hug close to the ground and don't flower, the second year they send up the tall shoots and flower & go to seed. So one year I walked through the back alley and chopped off the heads of all the tall thistles before they could go to seed and it REALLY helped. But it only takes one of those suckers going to seed...

    I'm just about to use up the last of the frozen tomatoes from last year. Don't know that I'll get enough to put any up this year since they're just now starting to ripen. I guess it was just too hot earlier in the summer, but we've FINALLY had some days in the 80's this week. So far 71 days this summer over 90. Oy Vey!

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    1. Yup, they do have a two year life cycle, forming the rosette the first year and blooming the second. We have so many in the fencerows and meadow that it would be impossible to chop them all off. I'm just trying to keep them out of the yard and near the garden where we are likely to go with bare feet of flipflops.
      Hope your cooler weather lasts. I lost track of how many days over 90 we had this summer but you probably have us beat. We're up to about 80 here today. A lovely change.

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  2. Boiling water poured on any plant will kill it to the root... Effective but hard work. Great that you are not heating up water just for this but using already used water. One could theoretically do this with pasta a and veggie water (used for boiling same). Not sure if the pasta water would attract vermits, but the veggie water shouldn't. Good luck in your war on Thistles. I declared war on my entire front and rear yards 10 years ago and it seems to be a war of attrition, they are winning. Maybe time to start boiling up some water and work patch by patch. I don't care if I kill the small amount of grass I have as long as it kills the weeds. :)

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    1. Using water from pasta would be far more work for me since I usually drain my pasta over the sink. I figure that I've got to empty the water from the canner at some point, it may as well be useful. If the tomatoes keep producing maybe I'll be going after the weeds in the gravel drive next....

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  3. Good harvest this year. I came by yesterday,HAD A LONG COMMENT WRITTEN AND OUT OF THE BLUE A BIG POP UP APPEARED SAYING MY COMPUTER WAS INFECTED ,i TURNED IT OFF ,I MUST I HAVE WARDED IT OFF ,ITS GONE TODAY

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    1. Hmm. no clue about the pop up. Hope your computer is OK. It has been an amazing harvest this year considering the weather.

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  4. You are going to be quite buff after a few weeks of hauling canner water LOL! Does your church do a straight up sale or an auction? Ours does it auction style and we raise a crazy amount of money for the youth camps and charity that way, one of my desserts went for 65 bucks LOL can you imagine? Doesn't matter if it was horrible, people just like to help! Some of the tables I noticed went in together so they could afford to bid more and then proceeded to share whatever they won right there, got a fork? LOL

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    1. We do a straight sale between services. $2/slice $12 for a whole pie. If it were a more organized/sit down event we could do the auction thing but it also takes place every year on Rally day for Sunday school So it's always busy.

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  5. White vinegar works pretty well too...

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