CSA Season Begins!

Technically, our CSA began last week, but Charlie and I were out of town, so our share partner got the whole share last week. 

This week’s share includes: Green Romaine Lettuce, Red Lettuce, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Spinach, Tokyo Bekana, Turnip Greens, Garlic Curls, and Oregano

My plans for the week include making a giant salad with the green romaine lettuce, the red lettuce, tomato, cucumber, oregano, and some of the tokyo bekana. I’ve already roughly chopped the spinach and turnip greens together with the remaining tokyo bekana, then quickly cooked them with some garlic, olive oil, and salt. Yum!

Have you ever participated in a CSA? What were some of the best things you got in your share?

Almond Bergamot Bundt Cake

A couple of weeks ago, I set out to make a pound cake. You see, we’ve been getting an awesome egg share this year from Southtown Farms, and my family and I figured we’d be able to go through the full share at a dozen a week. Well, we were doing just fine with it, actually, until one day someone accidentally bought an extra dozen eggs or two to make quiche, and then we just had a million damn eggs. I’d seen some pound cake recipes online that used a whole lot of eggs, so I looked at a few (here’s one I used for reference) and made up the rest based on what ingredients I had around.

We ended up bringing this cake to my aunt & uncle’s house one evening when we had a BBQ. My other uncle was there, too, as was part of my immediate family and my cousin. Since my Heritage Bundt Pan produces a pretty huge cake, I figured I’d only need to bring half of it with me, but I never got around to cutting it and brought the whole thing. As it turned out, nearly 7/8ths of the whole cake was gone – despite the fact that a few members of the family are trying to avoid sugar! Too tempting, I guess. :)

The flavors here came out really nicely. They layered together well with just an undertone of vanilla, a hint of caramel at the edges from using the natural sugar, and then the headiness of almond and bergamot (which you’ll recognize as what makes Earl Grey tea taste as it does). I finished this moist cake with a drizzle of a nice quality melted dark chocolate – I used a bar of Dagoba I’d gotten as a gift.

*Note: If you do not have the required bergamot extract, you can infuse the milk with Earl Grey tea for a similar result.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter
6 eggs
3 cups whole wheat flour (this is what I had on hand – you can use white whole wheat or split between whole wheat and all purpose)
2 cups natural sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon bergamot extract
2/3 cup yogurt (I used one 5.3 oz cup)
1/3 cup milk
1/2-3/4 bar of good dark chocolate, about 1-1.5 oz (optional)
handful of slivered almonds, toasted (optional)

Directions

Grease and flour a 10-cup bundt or tube pan. Do not preheat the oven.

In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well each time. Add vanilla, almond, and bergamot extracts.

Add flour mixture to the cream mixture, alternately with yogurt. Add milk. Beat until smooth. Pour batter into the prepared tube or Bundt pan. Place pan on a tray to prevent overflow in the oven.

Place cake into cold oven, set the temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for 60 to 90 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. (This took me about 60 minutes, but your mileage may vary depending on how long your oven takes to heat up.) Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes before turning it out onto a cooling rack.

In a double boiler or CAREFULLY in the microwave (don’t burn it!), melt the chocolate. Cut the tip off a small plastic sandwich bag. Spoon in the melted chocolate, and drizzle lines back and forth over the cake. Decorate with almond slivers if desired. Let the chocolate set before serving.

Epic Midnight Snack (Grilled Cheese with Red Onion and Avocado)

Sorry for the crappy picture, folks, it was, indeed, midnight, and I got a new device that I’m not used to yet!

Today was our annual pie eating contest, and we had a long, busy day, especially since a huge storm knocked out our power last night and cut out quite a bit of our prep time. By the end of the night, we just wanted to relax. Our September issue of Real Simple magazine magazine came in the mail today, and I paged through it. It had a delicious looking page of recipes about how to jazz up grilled cheese sandwiches in three different ways.

One suggestion was to add currant or fig jam, bacon (I’d use tempeh bacon!), and a thinly sliced pear to the basic cheddar on white bread sandwich. Those flavors sound amazing together – I’ve eaten baked brie with pears on Christmas with my family, and cheddar and chutney sandwiches when I lived in the UK. Another suggestion was hugely appealing to Charlie, who loves pesto on just about anything – add pesto and thinly sliced tomatoes to the sandwich.

But the sandwich that I had for a midnight snack tonight was to take thin slivers of a red onion from our farm share, pair it with slices of avocado, and get that sucker grillin’. It was super delicious, and I definitely want to eat this again. You’d think that I’d have eaten enough during the pie eating contest, but since I don’t compete, and I was hosting, I spent about half the day making pies, then half the day making sure people had enough food, and by that time, I barely ate anything myself! I definitely tasted a bunch of the pies, but I need to pay more attention to feeding myself on days like this… or making really delicious midnight snacks like this. Yum!

A quick note about the garden…

Just wanted to pop in with a quick garden update!

We lost most of the peas because they don’t like the heavy rains we’d been getting, and even under protection, they got soaked. We did get to harvest a few, though, which tasted great. I’ll probably try to grow these again in the fall.

I think I mentioned that I had to start the lettuce over again, and it’s now coming up beautifully. Of course, this week our farm share started up again, so we have leafy greens coming at us from all directions, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Here’s a photo of the lettuce:

I’m going to try to start a windowbox of lettuce in the fall and see how long I can keep it going. Check out this awesome windowbox full of salad! It belongs to Steve from Enjoy Time Outdoors, and I’m hoping that I can get a box growing as healthy as his in the fall.

That’s what’s up in the garden for now! I’ll try to get some photos of the brussels sprouts that are doing nicely in the ground when I get a minute. Also, today’s the last day to enter to win this set of measuring spoons, so don’t forget to head over there to leave a comment!

A momentary pause from the rain.

It’s been nothing but rain here for quite a few days, and will be for quite a few more days to come. The garden needed the rain, but not this much! I’m just thankful that we’re not in an area where rising rivers are threatening our homes. Friends near the Mississippi, we’re thinking of you.

Speaking of the garden, some of the veggies are just getting more beautiful every day. We’re also probably only a few weeks away from getting deliveries from Farmer Rich, so that’s exciting, too.

Here’s the broccoli and peas in the bottom bin, and carrots in the top bin.

The peas are actually starting to get a couple of flowers on them!

The apple tree is getting more and more leafy each day…

The chives in the yard are beautiful and flowering a gorgeous lavender color.

I didn’t even realize it, but the green onions from last year got put in the ground, and they’re up again.

Here’s the first look at the burgundy beans…

And here’s a picture of my rogue tomatoes, if that’s what they are…

I sowed a whole bunch of corn, but it hasn’t come up yet, as well as the soybeans, but I’ll just try to wait patiently until the weather sorts itself out. Until then…

Why there aren’t many recipes in November…

Just thought I’d write you lovely readers a little note and let you know why there haven’t been (and won’t be) many recipes posted during the month of November.

The reason is that I will be eating macaroni and cheese from a box (hey, at least it’s Annie’s organic 5-grain with some fresh broccoli thrown in), Chinese food (I found a new place nearby that delivers AND has many, many, many vegetarian options), and things that I ate constantly for meals when I was a bachelor and/or in college, such as a handful of nuts, a piece of fruit, and some crunchy carrots and celery.

But the reason for that is because I’m participating in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where a whole bunch of people all over the world each try to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in a single month. I tried last year, but my arthritis in my hands was really painful and I had to drop out around halfway. This year, I am totally rockin’ it, and I’m nearly at 26,000 words. I still love my plot and it’s pretty cohesive. Sure, it will need a ton of editing, and yes, it’s getting in the way of me cooking the many winter squashes I have left from our CSA, but luckily, those store well.

So, unfortunately, I’ve told myself that I cannot bake until my novel is done. There will be a few exceptions to this, of course.

When the things I decide on from this post get here, I’m going to break my rule.

When Thanksgiving rolls around, I’m going to definitely break my rule, though I’m really hoping that I’ll be pretty close to being done by then (in order to write the 50,000 words in 30 days, you have to write 1,667 words a day, so today, you should have 15,003 written, and I have 25,822, though I’m fairly certain my novel will be longer than 50,000 words).

And, you know, if I’m craving something really delicious, it might have to happen, but only if I’ve written at least 1,667 words that day! I promise to return in December with some awesome holiday recipes… I can edit while they’re in the oven. *wink*

Herbed Garlic Squash Fries

The credit for the concept of squash fries totally goes to my beautiful friend Clara, who is very clever in the kitchen and also good at the “use up what’s left from the CSA” game. She mentioned the idea in a facebook status, and since Charlie is not the biggest fan of squash (but I am), and we both like oven fries, and since we have a ton of squash from our CSA, it had to be done.

Clara gave me some basic directions, but I promptly forgot them and may have even deleted them. I did not go on an internet hunt for them. Instead, I ran with Clara’s concept and made up my own lovely little side dish. I had a delicata squash that looked like it would be a perfect size for Charlie and I to share. Since I love thyme and squash together, I went out to the back deck, in my slippers, in the cold, in the dark, with my pair of kitchen scissors, and stabbed at my herb garden, hoping that some of the thyme was still alive. Some of it was… but not a lot. Thyme is a pain in the ass to deal with when all of it is in good condition, so when some of it is sad, it is a frustrating time indeed.

The next roadblock was the cheese. My dream of these fries included them being crusty with garlic and parmesan cheese, but when I looked in the fridge, the familiar canister was not in its home. I then remembered the wonderful spinach fettucini with homemade alfredo, served with a breadcrumb stuffed portabella mushroom that Charlie had made for me the other night. It was awesome. What was not awesome was that he forgot to tell me that we were out of both parmesan cheese and parchment paper. (I can easily forgive him after a dinner like the one I just described.)

Time to go to Plan B. I really wanted that coated, crispy brown edge that the cheese would have given. I looked in the cabinets. Nutritional yeast to the rescue! If you’ve never used nutritional yeast before, you can get it in the bulk section of most natural foods stores, or in a shaky container just like parmesan cheese! It’s actually a great vegan substitute for parmesan cheese, so I liberally sprinkled that into my mix instead. Most nutritional yeast is also fortified with Vitamin B12, which is difficult for veg*ns to get enough of, so sprinkle some on your garlic bread and mix it in your mac & cheese. Or… make these fries! We served this meal with Milo’s Kale Chips (currently in season in the tri-state area!) and Gardein Veg*n “Chicken” Tenders.

P.S. I’m still looking for awesome apple suggestions! What would you do with a half bushel of apples?

Ingredients

1 medium delicata squash (butternut or other similar variety would be fine, too)
extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (or parmesan cheese)
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
3-5 cloves garlic, minced
coarse salt to taste

Directions

Peel the squash, cut lengthwise, and remove all the seeds and stringy bits. Slice into small strips. Try to cut them evenly so they’ll cook evenly.

Dump the squash into an appropriately sized bowl. Add just enough olive oil to coat them. Toss them with your preferred utensil to make sure they’re evenly coated. Add the garlic and thyme and toss again. Add nutritional yeast and mix it up a bit more to ensure that the nutritional yeast evenly coats the pieces.

Spread the fries in a single layer on a nonstick baking sheet coated with a quick spray of oil, or, if your partner didn’t use up the rest of the parchment paper without telling you, you could use that if it’s more convenient.

Bake at 400*F for 20 minutes or until the fries are soft in the middle and browning on the outside. Don’t forget to give them a good shuffle once in a while when they’re in there. If you feel like it, put them on broil for about two minutes at the end to get them a bit more crispy.

Season Wrap Up

I’ve pretty much thrown in the towel in terms of my garden for the fall. I got a lot busier than expected (which is great! I’m taking an art class and a yoga class!) and the weather has been really weird. It’s hot, then it’s cold, it’s dry, then it rains buckets. Sure, these are things that farmers have to contend with, but even the farmers I know have said that it’s been a rough season in some ways.

A few weeks ago it seemed like our groundhog friend was gone for the year. They tend to have a summer home (under our shed) and a winter home, and in September, ours wasn’t appearing in our yard multiple times a day. I thought again about planting some greens like spinach and kale, but being busy, then the weather, and then having a flare of my fibromyalgia decided for me that it would not be so.

Due to the groundhog’s frantic eating of everything, our pumpkins never really got anywhere. They’re still flowering (we’re thinking about eating the squash blossoms) but it’s obviously too late for them to make pumpkins.

Let me run down the other things I’ve planted and whether or not it was successful.

Broccoli: Total fail. I planted it in a spot that I thought would be sunny enough, and it was not sunny enough. They looked a bit like frankenstein broccoli because of all the twisting and turning they did to try to get to the sun.

Peas: Died in the ridiculous temperatures.

Honeydew: Made several melons, though we had a hard time figuring out what the right time to harvest them was.

Container Kale: Bolted.

Watermelon: SUCESS! We ate one of them on a camping trip. I couldn’t believe it.

(That’s my partner, Charlie, by the way… I’m not sure if he’s ever appeared in photos on here!)

Corn: It was majestic. But the squirrels ate most of it before we did. It was a sight to see.

Kohlrabi: Another winner. Tasted great! I already bought some seeds to try purple kohlrabi early next year.

Eggplant: As you might remember, these were not from seed, they were seedlings from Farmer Rich. They were awesome! They produced all summer (we might even get another one or two small ones out of it) and we’ve had some delicious dinners from them. I’ve got more in the freezer, too.

Carrots: The jury is still out on these. Not sure if they’re really doing what they’re supposed to underground. We’ll try them again next year if they don’t work out.

Herb garden: It was awesome! I’ve been drying bits of the herbs to save for the winter.

Scallions: Better late than never. They are beautiful – not quite as big as the ones Farmer Rich sends us, but still delicious.

And one final surprise…

I planted that winter squash a while back, and then we had a heat wave, and it was really dry, and it just looked dead. It was only about six inches tall, and it was just totally flopped over and looked un-saveable. I ignored it, thinking it was dead.

Last week, I looked out the window, and lo and behold… it was flowering!

I raced outside and not only was it flowering, but it was fruiting!!!

So, we’ll see how that turns out. Hopefully we’ll get some squash out of it!

Autumn Bars (with Maple, Pumpkin, & Apple)

Edit: Hi, and welcome to all you folks who found me from the Earth Balance Facebook page or tweet! I try to explain in most of my recipes where substitutions can be made, and I’ve got a bunch of recipes that are simply vegan on their own… click the vegan tag on the right to see more. :) Thanks for stopping by!

I’m trying to go backwards and work forwards with the posts that I “owe,” but this one had to be shared, and as quickly as damn possible.

Last weekend, we were headed up to a potluck in Massachusetts. It was the second annual Friendsgiving – a way to kick off the holiday season with our chosen families. Part of me wanted to make something incredible and savory, and part of me knew that others would be disappointed if I didn’t bring something sweet.

I’ve been wanting for a while to adapt my Pumpkin Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting to be vegan. Yes, there is vegan “cream cheese” and yes, there is vegan “cream cheese frosting,” though I figured I’d take it one step at a time. I’ve made plenty of wonderful vegan pumpkin sweet breads before, since pumpkin is a wonderful component of vegan baking. I wanted to really get more of a cake going, though, something lighter. I knew there would be at least one vegan person at the potluck, if not several more, so this was my chance to develop the vegan pumpkin cake recipe.

But not as cupcakes. No, something far more brilliant. You see, recently, there was a really amazing looking Peaches & Cream Bars recipe from Sydney at The Crepes of Wrath. Sydney was wrapping up summer with a beautiful layered bar of cake, thinly sliced peaches, a bit more cake to hold it all together, but little enough so that the peaches showed through, and it was all topped off with a glaze.

I wanted to make this recipe. I still want to make this recipe. But, in our house, the seasonal food trend has long turned from peaches or nectarines on to apples, so I figured I’d try to make this lovely thing with apples or pears. Then, I had my own stroke of genius, and I decided to keep Sydney’s structure and switch it to a completely fall adaptation: pumpkin cake, sliced apples… and a maple sugar glaze. My friend Katrina helped me with the baking and assembly, and at the last minute, I decided to swirl some Overflow Apple Butter into the cake batter before putting the apple slices down. It was an awesome autumny spice addition.

To answer a few questions I had when I was first gazing at this recipe, mine came out kind of like a cakey brownie consistency… It could have been eaten with a fork, but most certainly was picked up and eaten with fingers, as well! Yum. My brother met us at the potluck, and he loves my pumpkin anything, so he dug in as soon as I opened the container.

Sydney, you wait for it… I may try this again with your cake (no pumpkin), cardamom, cinnamon, and pears.

Ingredients

1/2 cup earth balance
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons natural sugar
3 tablespoons flax + 6 tbsp warm water
1 cup cake flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup soy milk
1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
3 small apples, sliced thin
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup apple butter (optional)

Maple Glaze

1 tablespoon earth balance, melted
1/3 cup confectioners sugar, sifted
1/4 cup maple sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

Float your sliced apples in some water & lemon juice while you wait. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13×9 pan with parchment paper (Sydney uses a jelly roll pan/cookie sheet, so hers are a bit thinner).

In your stand mixer (or a large bowl with your bad ass muscles), cream together the Earth Balance, brown sugar, and natural sugar until fluffy. In a separate small bowl, combine the milled flax seed and warm water. Stir together until it thickens, then mix into the sugar. Add the vanilla paste and the pumpkin. Stir well.

In a separate bowl, stir the cake flour, all purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt together. Add this to the pumpkin mixture, alternating with the soy milk, until both are fully mixed in.

Spread 3/4 of the batters into the prepared pan. Swirl the apple butter into batter.

Drain the apples. If desired, coat with an additional bit of maple sugar. Line up the apples in rows along the top of the batter.

Drop the remaining batter in globs over the apples and bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the bars are firm.

Let the bars cool. Stir together the ingredients for the glaze (Earth Balance, confectioners sugar, maple sugar, maple syrup, and cinnamon). Drizzle over the bars and let harden before cutting.

Overflow Apple Butter

It’s the time of year that there is always an overabundance of apples around the house. For us, we get them in our CSA. For others, (ok, for me, too) they go apple picking and get just a little carried away. Or, perhaps, they’re (like me, again) and have a pie eating contest and didn’t estimate the number of apples needed for the apple pies correctly, and had a huge pile of apples left (and no one interested in more pie).

Left with that calamity, I decided to put my slow cooker to use again and make some bangin’ apple butter. I still haven’t learned how to can, so don’t get all worried about how you’re going to deal with that stage. The good news is that apple butter is supposed to freeze pretty well, so even if you don’t know how to can, you can still make this! It also lasts a couple of months in the fridge and makes an awesome gift. Oh, and one more thing – it cooks down a LOT, so don’t worry that you’re going to have four quarts of apple butter to deal with. I ended up with maybe six cups.

I love this recipe because it was super easy and because it made the house smell incredible. This is a lot spicier than many apple butter recipes out there, and it came out awesome!

Ingredients

12 cups apples (or just keep peeling, coring, and dicing apples until your slow cooker is about an inch or two from full)
1 peach (optional)
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon vanilla paste

Directions

Peel, core, and dice those apples as small as you can deal with. Toss them in the slow cooker. I had a rogue peach that was going to go off, so that went in, too, but you can leave that out if you want.

Dump in all the other ingredients, a little at a time if you’re hesitant about the sweetness or the spiciness. Adjust to taste. Give it a good stir.

Cook on low with the lid on for 8 hours or so. Take the lid off and cook on high for 1-2 hours or until the mixture looks a lot less liquidy.

Put through a food processor in batches (or use an immersion blender) to smooth it out. Leave it a little chunky if you like!

Store it in thoroughly washed containers in the freezer. Try it on some homemade muffins. Mmmmm.

First harvest: Kohlrabi

I know that yesterday’s post went on for pages, so this one will be short. I just wanted to finally share with you the joy of harvesting something from our garden that we had planted from seed and getting to eat it!

Tonight Charlie dashed outside (before we heard about the tornado watch, hah) and pulled up these two lovely bulbs of kohlrabi. One had a little munch taken out of it where our groundhog friend enemy tried to eat it before we did! I can’t really blame him. The kohlrabi was delicious and I kept sneaking pieces of it to eat raw before Charlie could get to cooking.

We made an awesome stir fry with tofu, a lemony ginger sauce, and tons of vegetables. It had cabbage, farm share green onions, broccoli, farm share carrots, farm share zucchini, and of course, the kohlrabi from our garden. Since Charlie is generally the master of stir fry around here, I’ll have to try to get him to give me some approximations from his head for a recipe because it was so delicious.

Our meal had something in it that was from seed to table. So freakin’ cool.

Fruiting summer crops while planning for fall.

Let me start this post by saying that it was recently my birthday, and my awesome partner bought me a new set of bamboo gardening gloves. They’re so great. I love them because the arthritis in my hands makes a lot of gloves feel uncomfortable, and I already have limited dexterity at times, so really bulky gloves make movement very difficult. These gloves are thin and the fabric is soft, which makes my fibromyalgia happy, since my overactive nervous system is very sensitive to rough things.

These are the nifty gloves…

Now, onto the garden. My knee is definitely not healed, and while I’m off crutches, I’m still hobbling around on a cane most of the time unless it’s a really short distance. I just couldn’t stand to not plant my sugar pumpkins, though, so I decided that I’d go outside today to get them in the ground. I can’t bend my knee very well and I definitely can’t kneel, so I brought a beach blanket type thing outside and set it up next to the area where I was going to work. Then, even more slowly than usual, I dragged all my supplies over to where I’d be working. Instead of standing to till the soil like I usually do, I used a short cultivator and was able to still get the work done fairly quickly. There were awkward moments, sure, and I definitely was in a bit more pain than I would have liked, but I’m thrilled that I got some planting done.

Here’s a tour around the garden. Nearly everything is either flowering or fruiting, and it’s pretty awesome.

The eggplants, as I’ve mentioned before, were seedlings from our CSA. They’ve been doing wonderfully and at least six eggplants have started to take shape, with more flowers closing and looking like they’re going to be eggplants. I’m hoping to serve grilled eggplant at a BBQ this weekend and impress our guests!

This kohlrabi might be one of our most successful plants so far. It’s just about ready to harvest, and we started it from seed!

I really thought my shelling peas were a lost cause. They weren’t doing well, they weren’t climbing up in the three sisters plot, and they just looked kind of ratty. Lo and behold, however, I straightened this guy out and tried to help him back onto a stake, and he was flowering! I may try peas again for the fall, but in containers so that I have a bit more control over them.

These crazy vines are all are all a result of only two honeydew plants. (They end about halfway down the row, and that’s where the kohlrabi begins.)

It looks like this flower has closed up and is trying to start a honeydew!

This next one I just can’t get over. Our watermelon vines are growing all over, though they don’t have nearly as many flowers as the honeydews. This is so freakin’ adorable, though, and you can totally tell that it is a tiny, tiny watermelon!

And finally, my pride and joy: my corn. It got pretty trashed in a terrible thunderstorm we had the other night with winds up to 60mph, and I didn’t think any of it was going to survive. We watched out the window as stalks just got smashed down. We picked the stalks back up a few days ago, though, and a few of them didn’t get wrecked to begin with… and it’s starting to get somewhere! I believe “tassling” is the correct term.

It is so incredible watching all this stuff grow.

I got started on my plans for my fall garden today, too. Sugar pumpkins have been a high priority, since, well… they were the first thing I tried to grow, and that was a year ago! I planted late last year, though, and we had an early frost, so I wasn’t successful. I’m actually a bit late again this year with them because of my knee injury, but our vining plants have been growing like crazy because of the heat, so with any luck, they’ll catch up just fine.

I got the sugar pumpkins in the ground today, and I evaluated the seeds that I had available for what would be good to plant for a fall harvest. Some crops, like kale, are even more delicious in the fall, since the cold weather makes them a bit sweeter.

Kale is definitely on my list of things to plant, and I’ve been looking forward to planting it (and Charlie’s been looking forward to eating it!). I think I’ll also try to do some lettuce, though I don’t remember exactly what variety I have seeds for. I’m going to put that in where the kohlrabi is now, as that is just about ready to be harvested. I have plans for a small area of cabbage (maybe 3 plants) and a small area of winter squash.

The winter squash that I have is a bit of an experiment, really. It’s called Butterbush, and it’s a space-saving variety. It’s a vining plant, but it’s compact and will take up about a quarter of the space of regular vining squash. I’m particularly interested to see how this goes because, as you can see, our vining plants got really out of control this year, so I might be interested to try some of the compact varieties of melons next year. As I may have mentioned, though, the seeds that I have were seeds that I bought when a Cost Cutters was going out of business, and the seed packets were 20 packs for $1! I just bought whatever varieties they had that I knew we would eat, and that’s what I’ve been growing.

Spinach! It just occurred to me. Spinach is what I’m missing. I don’t think I have any seeds. Perhaps I’ll go out and buy some. I have one row of unplanned space (plus whatever frees up when these monstrous melons finish), so I’ll be able to stick some in there.

Next on my list? Figuring out how to get that pesky groundhog that’s been eating everything to leave my veggies alone!

My knee injury is ruining my gardening time!

I haven’t posted in a bit, particularly about the garden, and that’s because I had a pretty terrible fall about ten days ago. I tripped outside of Charlie’s house and, if you’ll excuse the expression, ate shit. Pretty much my entire weight went on my [already arthritic, twice operated on] left knee, so Charlie has been holding down the fort with the garden and we’ve been eating miscellaneous take out and quick meals. (In case you’re wondering, I’m currently in physical therapy for a subluxation of my patella, and they’re going to decide if I need surgery for my meniscus tear in a few weeks.)

The good news is that the garden is at the point where it mostly just needs watering. The plants are big enough that they’re battling it out against the weeds (I’m sure there’s some weeding to be done, but it’s not as concerning as when the seedlings were tiny). Charlie’s been checking to make sure that the white cabbage moths leave our broccoli and kohlrabi alone, and those are doing much better.

Here’s the word of mouth report, passed on from Charlie, and based on what I can see through the window! (I’m on crutches and can’t really make it down to the garden.) Our pumpkins are growing like crazy already, which is awesome. Both our honeydew and our watermelons are spreading out and have flowers on them!

Our corn is getting very tall. Last night we had our volunteer shift for our CSA, and our farmer was there. We had a nice chat about what we were growing and how we were doing with it (I loved it when he said it sounded like we have our own little farm going on!). He said that the saying is that corn should be “Knee high by the fourth of July” and ours is definitely that tall, so it seems like that is right on track!

Are you ready for the most exciting part?

We have an eggplant!

The first actual crop of the season is here and growing besides the blueberries. This photo was taken on the first day that Charlie noticed it, which was taken a few days ago, so it may be even bigger by now, assuming that some greedy animal didn’t steal it. The eggplants are a bit ahead of the game because when we got them, they were giant seedlings from Farmer Rich, but hopefully any day now, we’ll have fruit developing on the things we started from seed!

Planting the pumpkins…

It’s unbelievable how much our plants have grown in the past 10 days since I’ve posted. Some days, I feel like we will never reach harvest time. Other days, like today, I look at pictures that compare the size from only a week or ten days earlier, and I am amazed.

I woke up early again today despite the fact that I’d gotten very little sleep for two nights. I noticed that the temperature was only at 74 (and it was headed up almost to 90) so I quickly got dressed and went outside.

If you recall, the last time I posted, I mentioned that I planted some of my pumpkins for the fall. Three giant pumpkins sprouted in the area that is away from the main garden plot, and they were very close together, so I decided that it would be a good idea to transplant the middle one away. Since not all of our watermelons survived, we had a bit of space in that area, so I moved one of the giant pumpkin seedlings to over there. I was a bit nervous about it, but I used a trowel and just went for it and it went extremely well. Now, that long row looks like eggplant, eggplant, giant pumpkin, watermelon, watermelon, giant pumpkin, giant pumpkin, so our little markers aren’t quite accurate anymore, but at least everything has the space it needs.

The lumina pumpkins also sprouted in a tiny corner of the main garden plot. Sadly, none of the giant pumpkins that I re-sowed in the three sisters plot came up! I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Since the four lumina seedlings were very crowded, I transplanted three of them to the three sisters plots (two in one, one in the other, and the fourth is near the three sisters with the single pumpkin). Hopefully they will thrive and benefit each other.

The peas that are separate from the three sisters are also starting to come up. The ones that are in the plot are various sizes – one of them will need to latch on to a piece of corn soon or I’ll have to build a trellis. The corn is getting quite tall, but it’s not very sturdy. We had a lot of wind when it was young, and it seems to be leaning a bit. I may try to build up some hills around them a little if I can without hurting the peas.

The herbs are doing awesome and we had wonderful homemade pesto last night with our copious amounts of basil. This photo is from when I first planted the seedlings from the CSA, and now it’s filled in even more.

I also did some weeding today, but it is impossible to keep up with and one day soon, Charlie and I hope to mulch the plants now that they’re a bit bigger. Charlie has taken a pretty big interest in the garden and has been a huge help. He usually goes out to water and weed in the evenings when he gets home from work, which is nice because I usually go out in the mornings.

We have had a few problems with pests. At first, we thought that it might be slugs, as our broccoli and a few other things were getting lacy. We set some beer traps around and got some slugs, but not ridiculous amounts. I saw a white moth today and I am now suspecting white cabbage moths, but unfortunately, I may have to spend some time picking them off the leaves if that’s the case! Haven’t gone back out to check yet.

More pictures coming soon!

Farmer Cat Update…

I have some great news to report on the garden. A few days ago I was starting to get discouraged, as I was really fatigued and hadn’t had a chance to plant a few things that I wanted to, and our little seedlings weren’t growing much, but they are finally starting to grow quite a lot! I also got to do some work in the garden a few mornings this week before it got very hot, so we’re in pretty good shape!

One of the things I’ve been meaning to plant is the carrots. The carrots will be Charlie’s responsibility, as I think I’ve mentioned, since I don’t want to be on my [arthritic] knees dealing with root veggies, but I was happy to plant them for him since he’s got a busy schedule with school and work. I got a big double row planted in between something that Charlie’s mom is growing (beans, maybe?) and another small empty plot I had.

In the empty space next to the carrots, I planted a few more giant pumpkins. I haven’t had any luck yet with the ones that I sowed in the three sisters plot. I actually put a few more in the three sister’s plot, hoping that that trio will be successful. I think that some of the seeds ended up getting washed away and then eaten, so I figure it’s worth trying again. Some of the methods actually recommend waiting until the corn is a week or two old to plant the peas and pumpkins anyway, so it’s not a terrible tragedy that they didn’t come up the first time. So, hopefully, between the pumpkins that are in the three sister’s plot and the pumpkins that are over on their own, we should have some huge pumpkins to carve! (If not, I’ll have to go steal some from my younger brother… he has been successful in growing pumpkins for the last several years!)

The giant pumpkins need a lot of time to grow since they’re so large (they can be over 100lbs!) but other pumpkin varieties don’t need as much time, so I’ll be sowing my sugar pumpkins (also called “pie pumpkins” since that’s what most people use them for) in a few weeks. I also planted just a couple of one more variety called Lumina Pumpkins, which are a gorgeous pumpkin with a white outer skin and an edible inner orange flesh!

Here’s a picture I found online:

So I hope we get a few of those, as they would be lovely decorations.

This morning I also got to sow some more shelling peas. You’re really supposed to do those pretty early in the spring, but they have a short growing season, so if they can withstand the heat, I’ll have some, no problem. If anything really bites the dust, I’ll pull it up and start over in a few weeks for a fall harvest. Time to start reading up on that!

Similar to the giant pumpkins, I sowed some with the peas in the three sisters mounds, but not many came up. I think I have two or three in one mound and one in another. I’d really like a bigger crop than that, so I replanted some in the mounds, and I also did a row of them in our main garden plot next to the three sisters. There’s a trellis there, so the peas will be able to climb up it.

And how are the rest of our crops doing?

So far, so good. We lost some seedlings when we went away for the weekend (some that had been in the ground already and some that were not yet planted). It seemed like some had been overwatered and some had been underwatered by the person taking care of our plants. Our main loss was in melons, and that seems to be from overwatering/damping-off disease, which I believe is fungus. Two of the honeydews we had in the ground already just shriveled up and died! It happened to three of the watermelon seedlings that were in the ground already, too, once we got home, but two of each plant are still going strong.

Honeydew	Watermelon

I’ve also got my row of broccoli doing well and my row of kohlrabi doing awesome, though the ones that are towards the front of the plot are definitely doing better as it seems that they’re getting more sun.

Broccoli	Kohlrabi

The corn is just amazing looking… (though I have some more weeding to do!)

And the eggplants that were quite tall seedlings when we got them from the farm share are doing well.

Our container plants are also doing well, but that’s going to have to be a post for another day. I’ll also probably have to write a whole post about pests later, but I think I should do a little research first (perhaps setting some traps) to see what kinds of little things are chomping on our veggies. Something was eating a bit of the broccoli last week, and now something ate a little of the honeydew, and now a bit of the eggplant… so it’s time to get serious about it. I haven’t done any pest control yet (besides fences) so I think we’ve done ok so far!