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All my cilantro has gone to seed, and so it is time to harvest the coriander. Well, past time, actually, but that is the case with everything this summer. Once the seeds are dry, they just fall off the stalks when you brush them with your hand. I usually catch them in a colander, and then try to sift out the stray bits and pieces (easier said than done). Of course, many of them the seeds fall and start the next crop of cilantro. Cilantro is something we always like to have on hand (and I absolutely hate buying at the grocery store). Luckily it reseeds itself so easily that it is the perfect herb for the lazy gardener (which would be the appropriate title of my blog, now that I think about it).
Ok, I’m not talking extraterrestrials or anything. A couple of years ago I asked Chris to make me some covers so that I could continue to grow lettuce through the winter. He eagerly took on the challenge, and quickly created these. Somehow we started calling them “the spaceships”, and the name stuck. But now that I actually think about it, they don’t really look like spaceships, do they?
At the time, I wanted something I could move around the garden easily, whenever I wanted. These fit the bill perfectly, as they are light and easy to take on and off. Also, because you don’t want all your lettuce maturing at the same time, the size was just perfect for one batch. The plexiglass is curved to maximize the light coming in (although two sides had to be wood, for stability). I wish I had my act together this winter, and had taken a picture of the lettuce with snow on top. We’ve never had any damage from freezes when using these, and have been able to grow lettuce outside all winter long.
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I sure have missed playing in my garden and taking pictures.
This “working for the man” thing can be such a burden. It was back to the good life tonight, though. Chris dead-headed the flowers while I wandered around taking a zillion pictures and getting bit by mosquitos. Then we BBQ’d some duck and ate this delicious pepper, and finished it all off with another watermelon.
Call me crazy (go ahead, I know you do), but doesn’t this pepper look, I don’t know, naked or something? I really think this pepper has a chance to become America’s Next Top Model. I mean, until we ate it.
And it tasted as good as it looked. It was a Buran sweet pepper that I got from Seed Savers Exchange.
Technorati Tags: peppers
I think I’ve already mentioned that I’ve planted a fairly big crop of black hungarian peppers from seed. We had one plant last year and made a jar of paprika with it. We like a little kick in our cooking, so it was a nice supplement to the more common sweet paprika. This year I went hog-wild and planted a dozen or so seedlings, which are doing quite well (but falling on top of each other, as I ran out of stakes and cages).
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Some good news!
My cabbage is doing surprisingly well. It seemed every possible pest attacked it relentlessly early in the season, especially the cabbage whites and the striped flea beetles. But they all left, and for weeks now, not a single pest has bothered the cabbage. Which, by the way, has formed beautiful, tightly-packed heads. One day there were only some sad-looking loose leaves, and then magically it looked like actual cabbage. I have not grown cabbage before, and am excited that it seems to have worked. Hooray for small successes!
Technorati Tags: cabbage, kitchen garden
I finally got around to taking in all the onions harvested from the bed planted with purchased seedlings. It is hard for me to believe these all grew from such tiny seedlings. I think planting onions seedlings is one of the most backbreaking jobs in the garden, and each time I’m stooped over a bed trying my best to evenly space them into straight rows, I wish I would have made the beds more narrow (or grown longer arms!).
I didn’t take a picture right after planting, as I thought the bed looked so darn pitiful. I waited until new growth was clearly sprouting. I was so happy to see green shooting up! It is always such a leap of faith to put things in the ground and expect them to grow, and then it feels like a miracle to be savored when you see it finally start to take off.
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I was quite late planting my onion seeds this spring, so I supplemented with some onion seedlings that I purchased from Johnny’s.
Here is the description:
Field-Grown Onion Plants.
Includes one bunch (60-75 plants) each of Walla Walla, Red Burgermaster, and Copra plants. Copra Plants Unsurpassed for storage. Uniform, “rock-hard” storage onion with early maturity. These medium-sized, dark yellow-skinned storage onions have the preferred blocky round shape with thin necks that dry quickly. Firmness and skin are superior. Unrivaled in our yearly storage trials, remaining firm and sound after other varieties have sprouted. Highest in sugar (13 -14 ) of the storage onions. Walla Walla Plants: The famous mild variety from Walla Walla, WA. Red Burgermaster Plants Jumbo red bulbs from plants. Widely adapted and grower friendly, these bright red, globe-shaped onions have great flavor for sandwiches and salads. Internal rings develop better color earlier from transplants. Burgundy skin finishes well for superb appearance either with greens or topped.
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Here are the ten varieties of tomatoes that are currently ripe. I nearly had some yellow brandywine to add to the picture, but I didn’t see the first two that ripened and they disintegrated in place. There was another close to being pickable, but it could use another day I think, so I left it for tomorrow.
I don’t know what I was thinking when I planted 21 tomato plants. I guess I wasn’t thinking. Or maybe I thought they wouldn’t all survive. Or that the tomato fruitworm would wipe them out.
I’ve decided that I should plan a “pick your own” tomato party. Give the folks a little wine (or better yet, a lot), let them taste some tomatoes, and then send them out to the garden. I could even lock them in until they pick every last one, since I went to the trouble to build a really high and really strong deer fence. But that would only help for a day. There would be more tomatoes ripe the next morning. And on second thought, maybe it would just be more effective to drink the wine myself and forget about the tomatoes.
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It has been a while since I’ve written a post about a bug and my sometimes-gruesome attempts to protect my crops from them. Well, if you have been lamenting the absence of such a post, today is your lucky day! If not, you might want to check back on another day when I talk about a recipe or post a photograph of a flower.
Actually, there is nothing too gross here. Just a few pictures of my latest foe, the harlequin bug.
I noticed them a while ago, but couldn’t actually figure out what they were up to. I suspected they might be doing something inappropriate to my broccoli florets, but I couldn’t figure out what. And when questioned about it, they strenuously denied any wrongdoing. So, I took this picture and did a background check. Good thing I did. Read the rest of this entry »
Above left, are Cherokee Purple tomatoes, which I am growing for the first time this year. I think they are gorgeous to look at, and are described as tasting “smoky, earthy, and sweet”. I’ve only had one, but thought it tasted somewhat flavorless and watery. However, I think it was overripe, as I have since read that you shouldn’t leave them on the vine too long, as they can lose flavor.
We had a little taste test one night with the four tomatoes in the picture on the right w/ basil, mozzarella, oregano, & olive oil (beautiful Italian plate courtesy of my parents). They are fourth of july, Beam’s yellow pear, sun gold, and green zebra. I liked the flavor of the sun gold and green zebra best (at least that night), with fourth of july as the next best. Of course, I might have different preferences for other uses, such as in gazpacho or pasta sauce.
There are many more to compare. To be continued…
Technorati Tags: gardening, kitchen garden, tomato
I made a really big mistake, and picked one of my watermelons way too soon. I had read that a sign it is ready is if it breaks away from the stem with very little effort. I guess I proved that tip wrong, and with disastrous consequences (hey, you’d be upset too if you just wasted a huge percentage of your watermelon crop). I also thumped it and thought it sounded right, but I’m apparently not very proficient at distinguishing the subtleties of melon sounds.
The exterior on the ill-fated watermelon was darker and more uniform than the ones here in the picture.
Does anyone have any better advice? I obviously need to wait longer, but how will I know? And how quickly do they get overripe?
Technorati Tags: garden, gardening, kitchen garden, watermelon
The sun gold tomato has been a favorite in my garden for a few years now. I first planted them from seed. The next few years I ate from the volunteers that would pop up in the walkways. This year I grew two plants from the original seeds. If you haven’t grown them yet, I highly recommend them. These large cherry tomatoes are always my first tomatoes of the season, they are extremely prolific, and they are also always the last tomatoes in the garden (they last well past the frost date if I cover them with old sheets during the coldest nights).
They make a delicious gazpacho (with a beautiful color, to boot), but I love to just snack on them during the day or when I’m out in the garden. I also use them in couscous, as they hold their shape better than larger tomatoes which can sometimes get mushy when chopped.
When I eat them I like to imagine that I am tasting something close to the first tomatoes (small and golden) to leave South America for their journey to distant parts of the globe. Eating one of these tiny tomatoes is like consuming a miniature sun.
From an interesting article on the history of the tomato:
The earliest mention of the tomato in European literature is found in an herbal written by Matthiolus in 1544 [3]. He described tomatoes, or as they were called in Italy, pomi d’oro (golden apple), and wrote that they were “eaten in Italy with oil, salt and pepper”. This provides evidence that the first tomatoes to reach the Old World were a yellow variety, and that they were introduced via the Mediterranean. Red tomatoes were said to be introduced to Italy by two Catholic priests many years later [9]. Although not specifically documented, early tomatoes were probably small fruited, since they most likely were of the small-fruited cerasiforme variety cultivated by the Aztecs.
Technorati Tags: kitchen garden, tomato
For all 101 ideas, see the New York Times article or check out the feature at Kitchen Gardeners International.
I knew it was just a matter of time.
Each year I am inundated by thousands, perhaps even gazillions, of squash bugs. And each year, sometime in late summer, Chris finds me in the garden crazily stamping on squash bugs and yelling at them to go away. Sometimes he has to forcibly remove me from the garden. Sure, I know what you are thinking. I’ve gone on and on about the slugs, the flea beetles, the deer, the cabbage worms, the japanese beetles, etc., but this is different. It was the dreaded squash bug that killed my beloved zephyr squash last summer.
I did a quasi-scientific test this year with my eggplant. I split up a six pack of plants and planted some of them with black plastic mulch and some of them without. The differences between them are remarkable: the plants that had plastic mulch are about 50% larger (taller & wider, with bigger leaves) and have given me more fruit to harvest. I was able to harvest much sooner (and thus able to enjoy more Szechuan eggplant and baba ghanoush .
Of course, this isn’t really a scientific test. The plants are in different garden beds, and various things could be different such as the soil, the sunlight, the watering, and the amount of attention I’ve given them. They also have different neighbors (peppers vs. cucumbers & broccoli). And I only tried it with the globe-type eggplant (I didn’t split up the ichiban). But, it does seem promising, doesn’t it?
Technorati Tags: eggplant, gardening, kitchen garden
I’ve been getting better about making my own herbs and spices. Last year I grew spicy hungarian paprika, dried the peppers and then ground them. We used up all the paprika in winter goulash dishes, and it was delicious. This year I have half a bed dedicated to spicy paprika (I’m thinking of giving away some jars of paprika this Christmas) and have also planted some sweet paprika.
I also use the coriander seeds (picture above) in indian cooking, and save them to plant the next crop. I love fresh cilantro, and can never have enough.
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Who knows if this will actually work, but I figure it is worth a try. We were forced to take down a maple that was in front of our house because it was diseased and threatening to fall on our cars. We chopped it up for firewood and shredded the small limbs and leaves for mulch. But what to do about the stump?
Parents who go out of town and leave their teens behind should expect that unsavory things (from the parents’ perspective) are likely to transpire in their absence. We have no children, never mind teens, and therefore were shocked to come home to an orgy. A japanese beetle orgy. Sure, there were a few meandering about when we left, but they seemed innocent enough. How stupidly naive!
There is not much that can be done to combat this pest, given that there are no natural predators in the US. Except to grab them with your fingers and crush the life out of them.
I know what you are thinking. The poor beetles! What a severe sentence! She’s an overzealous prosecutor! This isn’t fair! But I will not bow to the political pressure from the right. I will not pardon them. Nor will I commute the sentence (and then sneak in an inevitable pardon later). No, guilt is guilt. The sentence stands.
Some might say this was entrapment. It is true, borage can be used as a “trap plant” to attract japanese beetles so that you can collectively do away with them. Too bad, I say. They still chose to eat in my garden, and now they have to pay for it. Even if they are rich (which of course they aren’t), and even if they have a friend who lives in a white house (which they might). Justice may be obstructed in Washington, but not in my back yard.
Technorati Tags: eggplant, garden, gardening, insects, kitchen garden
I only devoted half a garden bed to the cucumbers (about a 4 x 5 foot area) and added a couple of short trellises for them to grow on. On Friday I picked 18, and our neighbor promised to pick them while we were gone for a few days. We spent three nights sailing, and came back today to pick 33 cucumbers.
If you have any cucumber recipes, now would be the time to share them! A girl can eat only so many cucumber sandwiches… I could use some inspiration. Normally I’d use them in gazpacho, but I have no ripe tomatoes. I’ve been dipping them in hummus, using them in salads, and just eating them plain. And of course, leaving “anonymous” donations on my neighbors steps. But faced with this basket of cukes, I need some help!
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I know, everyone and their step-uncle is blogging about making pesto from the basil in their garden. So why am I blogging about it too? Well, I happened to try the pesto recipe over at 101cookbooks, which was recommended by Gini. It is called, How to Make Pesto Like an Italian Grandmother. Who could resist that, especially if you’ve got basil growing in your garden and pasta in your cupboard? So, I tried it, and it was terrific!
I added some tender young zucchini. Didn’t even need to cook it, just put it at the bottom of a big bowl and then put the hot gnocchi right on top. The heat from the pasta slightly cooked the zucchini, and then I stirred in the pesto.
Technorati Tags: kitchen garden, recipes, squash
The cabbage war is continuing. I was ready to declare victory, as I seemed to have the cabbage whites under control (or maybe they have been lulling me into a false sense of security before they completely obliterate my cabbage, it is hard to know). The new enemy is the striped flea beetle (a different variety of flea beetle than I have on my eggplant). Above is a photo of my cabbage when it was happy and healthy.
Below you can see the striped flea beetles and the damage that has been done already. I had no idea that so many bugs would be trying to eat my cabbage. I don’t even like cabbage all that much, but now that they are being attacked, I feel deeply, deeply attached to them. Mess with me if you want, but don’t mess with my plants!
Now that I finally have high-speed internet, I have been enjoying the free podcasts available on itunes. I listen to some npr shows (e.g., This American Life, Wait wait… don’t tell me- which is very funny) and a grammar/English language show (A way with words).
I also really enjoy some of the gardening podcasts, particularly one from the UK called The Alternative Kitchen Garden. I download the new episodes, drag them to my tiny mp3 player and listen while I run or garden. Ever since I listened to the comfrey episode, I’ve been dying to get some to add to my garden (apparently it is a good green compost).
Don’t know how we survived on measly dial-up for so long.
Technorati Tags: gardening, kitchen garden
The bees seemed to arrive late this year. The lavender had been blooming for a couple of weeks when finally they arrived. They love my borage, which is one of those great herb/flowers that keeps seeding itself relentlessly. Besides attracting bees to the garden, borage is good for using the flowers in salads. I know the leaves are edible too, but they are quite hairy and rough, which I don’t like (although the flavor is nice, kind of cucumbery).
Chris made these wonderful compost bins for my birthday last year. He used only reclaimed wood from an old barn, and we reaped the first bounty this spring when we emptied three wheelbarrows of compost into the garden. I throw in our kitchen scraps, weeds, plant materials, and shredded paper. I love them! And extra benefit: a place to wash off a harvest and sort your seeds.
Technorati Tags: gardening, compost
This is my first time growing cabbage, and until last weekend they looked perfect. How quickly things change! Every day I look for cabbage worms, but they have already wreaked havoc.
My gardening book says to put pots of mint in between the plants. Does anyone know if this will work? I also see that bt is supposed to help. If you have any advice, I’d love to hear it!
Today is a special day, as we will be eating the first cucumbers tonight. It seems like there are dozens of little cukes happily growing, so we should have more very soon.
Also pictured, some baby zucchini. Got to love summer in the garden. Now, if we just had some tomatoes to go along with these…
A great summer salad, especially if you have leftover corn from the previous night.
2 ears of cooked corn, preferably grilled
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
1/4 cup thinly sliced basil leaves
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
Cut corn kernels into a bowl, and toss in onion, vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper. Just before serving, mix in fresh basil.
Yes, a beautiful ripe raspberry. Too bad I didn’t get to eat it. I took this picture and then was so distracted taking other photos that I forgot to pick the berry. When I remembered an hour later, it was gone.
I am now fighting back. That very evening I installed netting over my berries. I can report that it works perfectly for all my berry bushes and my strawberry beds.
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