The joy of Sweet Success ................ Cucumbers

We have friends who are new to small town Kansas living.  They are from a very big town in California.  In their semi retirement, they have taken up gardening.  Gardening in the middle of Kansas involves four different seasons and this is a new concept for this couple.  I am amazed at how much time and effort they have invested in a very large backyard garden.  They have really done their homework and it has paid off. Their garden is beautiful as well as productive. 

Bruce and Ester are adventuresome in their planting.  A couple of years ago Ester shared a cucumber variety that they had grown.  Sweet Success.  They are the perfect blend of the best characteristics of a cucumber.  You will get lots of cucs from just a few plants.  They have a nice smooth skin and remain straight in growth.  They live up to the "sweetness" in their name.  No matter how large they grow, they remain crispy and sweet!  Speaking of growth......... I should tell you to keep an eye on your Sweet Success patch.  These cucumbers really take off!  One day they are three inches and the next they are double that!!!  They are like any cucumber, and require a fair amount of water and full sun.  Their leaves are huge so provide a nice shade.  Mine are crawling around and over one of our raised beds but Bruce & Ester have trained theirs to climb a heavy wire panel.  I am having trouble thinking of faults for this plant.  It would seem to be the perfect cucumber choice for every reason! 

Following is a cucumber & onion type recipe that I have been making for several years.  Everyone that I have shared it with has really liked it so I think you will too!

                                           Refrigerater Pickles
7 cups thinly sliced cucumbers
1 cup thinly sliced onion
1 cup thinly sliced green pepper (I add a hot pepper or two as well)
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp celery seed
2 cups sugar
1 cup cider vinegar

Combine all ingredients and store in a gallon glass jar in the refrigerator for three days.  Stir each day.  After three days, they are ready to eat.  They can be kept in fridge for a couple of weeks or can be frozen in smaller containers. 

The incredible, edible......... BEET.

Detroit Red Beets

June and July is beet season in our part of the country.  I think that appreciating the wonder of a beat is an acquired thing.  As I grew up, I didn't know many kids, myself included, who were very crazy about them.  Maybe kids now days like them.  I hope so.  At any rate, as a grown-up, I just love beets!  Baby beets in butter, harvard beets, beet juice, pickled beets and beet greens in salads. Have you ever grated a beet over a lettuce salad?  If you use a hand grater and would rather not have pink fingers, hold the beet with a sheet of plastic wrap as you grate.  A boiled egg pickled in pickled beet juice is a real treat.  If you haven't tried a beet in a while, you should.  They are full of healthful benefits for us.  They are loaded with vitamin C and low in calories. Beet tops are high in vitamin A.   If you have never grown a beet you may not know how pretty the plants are.


Myself, I like to cut the top off the beet bulb off. (stash the tops in a plastic bag in the fridge for salad later) I peel and cube the beets into a small saucepan.  If you are peeling lots and lots of beets, then you save time if you blanch them, slip the skins off then cute them up.  I add a couple of tablespoons of water to the saucepan and simmer until the beet cubes are fork tender.  I stir another tablespoon of butter into them and sprinkle with salt & pepper and a little lemon juice.  Oh my........ how delicious! 

freshly pulled beets

A very popular version of beets is to pickle them.  The following is my Grandmother's tried and true recipe for Pickled Beets.  

Lula's Pickled Beets

3 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups water

2 cups white vinegar

1 tsp pickling spice

Cook and peel beets.  Bring liquid to a boil.  Boil 20 minutes.  Put beets in jars and pour hot liquid over and seal.  Makes 11 pints.  This is a very old recipe so I would advise putting the filled jars through a hot water bath canning process.  It also doesn't tell us how many beets this will take so you would have to visualize 11 pints and start there.  I am sure that they harvested the beets they had available, then kept canning and making syrup until they were all put up for the winter.

Bubble Gum Petunias are the ones...........



A single petunia plant!

 Of all the plants that Kansas State Research promotes, the Vista series Bubble Gum petunia is by far the most talked about garden flower.  Each Spring, the university plants research gardens to multiple species of various plants.  The plants change each year so that over the years, hundreds  and hundreds of plants are researched. The plants are kept relatively weed free with no fertilization and depend on rain water.  The theory being that if certain varieties flourish in these conditions, they are likely going to do well in our gardens.   Annual flowers who "make the grade" are listed in an Extension publication called Prairie Star.  Perennial flowers are on the Prairie Bloom list.   These lists may be found at ksu.edu  

What's the buzz all about over these Bubble Gum petunias?  They are a bright "bubble gum" pink color.  They retain their vibrant color, even in the mid-summer heat.  They bloom continuously without dead heading and they grow to be HUGE!  The following picture is ONE plant. The color in this blog doesn't do true justice to the petunia color.  It is exactly the color of bubblegum!  Notice that this is a standard size washtub.

Bellow is a group of 5 Bubble Gums planted at our Welcome to Clifton sign on the south east side of town.  I planted them in mid-May.  They haven't been fertilized and have been watered once!

Our corner driveway bed is planted to different colors of pink Vista series petunias.  You can see that they are all doing well but the Bubble Gum still have outgrown the rest.  If you have a garden color scheme that doesn't go well with bright pink,  the Vista series petunias come in many colors and any will perform well for you.  Just keep an eye out for the Vistas......

Introducing Broken Prairie Gardens

Sagae Hosta

It is safe to say that I have had a life-long attraction to gardening.  I grew up, surrounded by family and friends who viewed gardening as a natural way of life.  Both sets of Grandparents, were avid gardeners.  My Grandparent Alcorns, Bert and Lula, lived in town on a huge corner lot.  Their garden spot was several times larger than their home.  An orchid and grapes filled the back acre or so of their yard.  They were adventuresome in their gardening.  Bert's family was from Kentucky so he experimented with a variety of southern crops.  His biggest success was ....... of all things....... peanut growing! 

As soon as I was able to get into the dirt, I was right in the middle of my folk's garden.  To this day, I remain mystified that one can plant that tiny seed, cover it with dirt, water it and then........ there is a tomato!  I have been planting seeds and covering them with dirt most of my life.  With Mark spending long hours in the "big garden" (farming), our family garden has fallen to my doing.  I don't mind a bit.  Gardening is very therapeutic!  Over the years, I have had huge gardens.  I used to can mega amounts of fruit and vegetables.  Now I have what I call my "kitchen garden".  It produces an amount of vegetables that we can use up during the summer.  With the exception of sweet corn, decent produce can be purchased at our grocery store during the rest of the year.  My family is convinced that there is no equal to our homegrown frozen sweet corn so we put up a year's worth of that. 

When our kids were in 4-H, I learned about a Master Gardener program sponsored by Kansas State University Extension.  At the time, our county was not eligible to train for it :-(   Six years ago, I saw the news article stating that Clay county was invited to attend classes for the River Valley Extension Master Gardener program!  Yeah!  I was the first one to sign up that year.  The intent of this program is to train people who will go back out to their communities and volunteer to educate others. The program in my area has grown and we have over 30 volunteers in the district.  We have a variety of programs and projects going in our county.  I hope that this blog will be another means in which to pass on information that has been thoroughly researched. If it is something that is hearsay, or that may have worked once for me, I will let you know.  I will do my best to keep it entertaining!