Hello, springtime!

I guess I’ve sort of had an unintentional hiatus here! I’ve still been baking and cooking, but more cooking than baking, and lots of old favorites instead of getting really experimental. There’s always a certain point of the winter (even a non-winter like the one we just had) that I get a bit stagnant, but now, with the arrival of spring, I am rejuvenated! 

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I tried out one of those “artisan bread in five minutes a day” recipes. It was amazing, and probably one of the most successful bread attempts I’ve ever had. Posting about that is on my to-do list, and I bought a big jar of fresh yeast and I’ll hopefully come up with some great variations. 

I also am happy to report that I planted some vegetables today! I was considering not gardening at all this year because I’m scheduled for shoulder surgery next month. I’m going to be in a sling for quite a while, and I won’t be able to haul around my containers or sacks of soil or do anything really strenuous. But, I planted some small, manageable containers that I’ll be able to water with a watering can instead of a hose that I need to coil. 

I almost exclusively used seeds from the Hudson Valley Seed Library. I planted kale, a couple kinds of lettuce, the same peas & carrots as last year, spinach, green onions, and I started my sugar baby watermelons indoors. My littlest brother also told me that he suspects that the place he’s been growing pumpkins for the last few years is depleted in nutrients because they haven’t done crop rotation (they only grow pumpkins, and this revelation is undoubtedly because I bought him a copy of The Omnivore’s Dilemma for Kids), so we’re talking about planting some stuff over there to replenish the soil. 

I’ll be sure to post some pictures when my seedlings are up! 

Late August Garden Update

We’re about to get hit with a hurricane, which is kind of unusual for these parts. This morning, I went out and bought bottled water, and then immediately after that, I went to the garden. I took down my container plants from high ledges and set them in protected alcoves and under the eaves of the house, hoping that they wouldn’t be trashed from the storm.

There’s some great stuff happening out in the garden. The accidental tomatillos are growing wildly out of control. There are so many that the fruit just falls to the ground if we don’t go out to collect it often enough, and we’ve already given some away to multiple neighbors. This morning I went and picked as many of the ripe and nearly ripe fruits as I could, realizing that the strong winds of the storm would likely knock them off the plant.

My second sowing of broccoli is up and a few inches tall, but the small green cabbage caterpillars have been hard at work eating the leaves away. I thought I’d brushed away all the eggs that had been laid by the evil cabbage moth, but I must have missed some, as a fat caterpillar sat on a holey broccoli leaf today.

The second sowing of peas is up, too. Only a few of the very first ones that I planted came up, so I resowed a week or two after that. The very first ones have some peas forming on them already, and the others are a few inches tall and will flower soon. After their predecessors drowned so terribly in the spring, I’ve tried very hard to keep them under cover during heavy storms. The lettuce planted around the same time is also coming up nicely, though it seems that one variety is beating out the others.

I’ve got about three of these little sugar baby watermelons growing…

And we harvested a handful of ears of corn! (Before the squirrels got to it, unlike last year!)

Look how yellow it is on the inside!

I also have a burgundy bean plant climbing right up in this container…

And apparently, one of them that I planted in the yard did survive! Check out these awesome beans!

They’re this deep purple on the outside, and bright green on the inside, just like some of the peppers that we get from Farmer Rich.

Speaking of peppers from Farmer Rich, we got one pepper plant from him, and it’s fruiting now, too. If I recall, it’s supposed to turn to an orange-ish color, so they’re not quite ready to pick yet.

And finally, the pumpkins. The only variety that is really thriving is the Jack-Be-Little variety, both in the container and in the ground, and I’m attributing this to the fact that I started all of them in a container and then transplanted them. The ones in the container are much too large for the container but seem to be doing ok.

There’s that little pumpkin starting!

Made it out to the garden this evening…

Just a quick post to say that I did, indeed, make it out to the garden this evening once everything had cooled off a bit. I sowed Jack-Be-Little pumpkins in a container with a trellis (this could be awesome or a total fail). I also re-sowed peas and lettuce, trying to get things going again for the fall. Still more to do with that, but I’ve got to set up another container…

In Solidarity with Julie, because Oak Park Hates Veggies

I’ve been meaning to post about my garden for several days now, but first, I want to talk about something important.

In my life, I’ve been pretty active in social justice, but this blog isn’t so much about that. Sure, there’s no way to completely separate “Life” and “Activist,” but for the most part, I don’t get super political on here.

Yesterday, though, I heard about something that really pissed me off, and I thought it was important enough to share with you all.

In Michigan, in a place called Oak Park, there’s a woman called Julie who has a lovely family and a lovely vegetable garden that she started with her husband and kids in her front yard after a tree (planted by the city, mind you) broke a sewer pipe and did a lot of damage to their yard. Instead of just planting grass, they decided to make the space useful, and planted veggies in some tidy raised beds.

The problem -gasp- is that this all transpired in the front yard!

Now, Julie and her family have been through all kinds of drama with the city, where a vague ordinance was cited… and, [SHAME ON YOU, OAK PARK!], the city is actually taking her to court over this matter.

That’s right. Instead of fighting violent crime or theft or spending the money on budgets that have already been cut (I know around here, and in many places around the country, libraries and education and sports programs and art&music programs are suffering, just to name a few), they are taking Julie to court, and she is facing 93 days in jail. OVER VEGETABLES IN HER FRONT YARD.

Now, historically, we know that in times of economic depression, the Grow-Your-Own Movement rises again. And, in the present, we know that kids and adults alike don’t get enough exercise, time outdoors, or vegetables. So why the hell is this such a big deal?

You can read more about it on Julie’s blog, Oak Park Hates Veggies, and I really encourage you to take a minute to write to the City of Oak Park Planner, Kevin Rulkowski, [Here's the contact info - go ahead and CC the Mayor, who is on that page, too]. If you only have two seconds, there’s a petition to sign, and if you happen to be flush, you can contribute to her Legal Defense Fund. Stand with me in solidarity of Julie and in defense of the Grow-Your-Own Movement.

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Onto news of my garden. I was going to go out today to plant my pumpkins, but dang, it’s hot! 98* today. Perhaps this evening it will be tolerable, but now, at 1pm, there’s no way I’m heading out there.

Our brussels sprouts are getting bigger by the day (they’ve even grown since this photo):

Our Tom Thumb Lettuce came up and was delicious! Some of it’s coming back, but I need to resow, also, since all lettuce bolts eventually.

We thought for a little while that our broccoli was going to work out, as it turned into broccoli:

…but then it flowered (which was pretty cool, though). What can I say? No luck with broccoli so far. I’m going to resow that, too, for the fall.

The carrots are turning into carrots…

They’re bigger than this now, much wider around… now they just need to grow longer.

Our corn is coming up, though it’s in a different place this year and I think it’s less sunny there, as it’s not quite as tall as it was last year and it’s tasseling already. Hopefully it still works out. Our eggplants and peppers are flowering, with one or two eggplants trying to start, but no serious fruit yet.

And did I mention about our surprise plants?

We had three tomato-like plants growing up where I’d spread the compost and was trying to grow kale. The tomato-like plants totally took over the kale, and although I wasn’t planning to grow tomatoes, they looked so darn healthy, that I figured, why not? I’ll grow tomatoes, or whatever.

Well, whatever, it was, because…

…they started fruiting this week, and they are clearly tomatillos! That means the seeds were from our CSA. I’m just tickled. Two out of the three are tomatillos, and one is a tomato of undetermined origin, so we’re just going to have to wait a little longer for that.

Anyone have a fabulous salsa recipe? I’m going to have a LOT of tomatillos.

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!

Seedlings are up!

A handful of the little seedlings that I have in trays indoors are already up! So far, I have cells of Broccoli, Blue Curly Kale, Tom Thumb Lettuce, Dino Kale, and Radishes coming up indoors. The ones that haven’t germinated at all yet are peppers, spinach, and green onions.

The weather’s been pretty awful here the past day or two, so I have no idea how the stuff out under the hoop houses are doing. I haven’t even peaked into the containers! I’ve just let them be. The forecast says we’ll have sun by the weekend, and I’ll see what everything’s up to by then.

Container Garden: Go!

I am completely exhausted, but my container garden is officially in action!

Today Charlie helped me drill holes in the bottoms of my rubbermaid-type bins for my container gardens (the vibrations from the drill made my sensory issues from fibromyalgia go a little wonky!). I know a lot of people go with the dollar store type of container, or whatever they have lying around the house or can find on freecycle, but I bought new ones for two reasons: 1.) folks who use the kind that the dollar store has report that they have to buy new ones each year because they don’t last, and I don’t want to throw away plastic every year, and 2.) I don’t want to grow organic veggies in bins that maybe had not-foodsafe stuff in them. Since I’ll probably have some kind of container garden going for many years, whether I have a backyard garden or not, I considered it an investment. I was able to get “value packs” of Lowe’s brand rubbermaid bins for reasonable prices, and I picked up (if I recall) four 14-gallon and three 18-gallon.

Last year, I used a Jiffy brand of organic soil, but I couldn’t get that this year, and I was stuck with the MiracleGro Container Organic stuff, so we’ll see how that goes. It was a lot mulchier than the Jiffy mix, so I added some vermiculite to lighten it up.

We made a trellis for one of the containers like I’d said I would in this earlier post about my containers. It’s made out of old chicken wire and some scrap wood. The variety of peas that I’m growing don’t really need a trellis, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. Also, it will help me see how it works and make any modifications before I get my soybeans and burgundy beans going in a few weeks.

So, the peas are started, as well as an entire 14 gallon container dedicated entirely to carrots. Last year, all of my seeds were bought at a Cost Cutters that was closing, and they were 20 packets of seeds for $1. This year, I got just about all of them from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, and I made really careful decisions about which varieties would be best for me. For example, when I chose my carrots, I got the Parisian Carrots that are shorter, fast growing, and well suited for containers. I made sure to add a little extra vermiculite to the bin, since carrots need a very loose soil.

I started some Broccoli in a bin as well as indoors in a tray. I also did this with my Purple Kohlrabi, Lettuce, and Spinach. I’m hoping that by starting some outside immediately and some indoors, I’ll be able to stagger things a bit. I’ll also be re-planting the veggies that can tolerate the heat ok, so that we have them as the summer continues. (Remind me to hold off on the lettuce, though! We have an overabundance of that once June hits.)

I also got a Radish mix for being a member of the seed library, but we don’t eat many radishes in our house, at least not so many that I need to plant them, since we get plenty from our CSA. My mom loves them, though, so I started a small container of them to bring over to her house.

I ended up planting one veggie in the ground and that was the Blue Curly Kale. We had a bunch of compost that we’d dumped into the main garden bed, and the soil just looked so awesome… As I mentioned in my other post, one of the reasons I’m doing a container garden is because we might be moving, but kale is a pretty fast growing plant, and I don’t think we’ll be moving by the time it’s harvestable, so I just went for it and planted that in the ground. Well, although the actual compost looked soft and workable, the ground was still pretty thick and heavy from the cold and the rain, so my muscles are going to be reeeeallly sore tomorrow. I did get two short rows of kale planted, though, and I can’t wait to see how it does. It’s still going to get pretty chilly at night for a while longer, so I might try to set up some sort of ground cover situation tomorrow for the kale. If I need to, the bins are manageable enough that they can be moved into the garage for a bit of extra protection.

That’s all for now… I’ll post more once the little buggers start to come up.

Getting excited for gardening.

I know that there’s approximately two feet of snow on the ground, but I’m getting excited for gardening already. And, quite honestly, if you’re in my area (zone 6) and you’re planning to grow some veggies that enjoy cooler weather, like kale, cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts, it’s time to start ordering seeds! If you’ll be doing indoor starts like I am, it’s actually going to be time to begin those for the cool weather veggies very soon.

One thing that’s going to be different about the way I garden this year is that I’ll primarily be doing container gardening instead of planting things directly in the ground. This is because we’ll likely be moving sometime during the growing season, and I don’t want to give up gardening entirely. I’m not sure when we’ll be moving, or if the space we’ll be moving to will have a garden, or access to a community garden, or if I’ll just be able to have some containers, but having containers will be my bare minimum, so I figure I’ll be able to take them along.

Last year some of my big problems with my garden were timing (I started much too late) and pests, particularly a groundhog, and I think that will be alleviated a bit by planting in containers and keeping them in areas where he’s not comfortable going, like our deck. I need to get my hands on some containers, so if any of my buddies who read this have some that they’re not planning to use, I’d love it!

Here’s the design I came up with for my containers. (Yeah, I made a cute little sketch… sometimes I miss art school, ok?)

In case that’s illegible, or you’re a person with a visual impairment, it’s a picture of a rubbermaid container. I’ll be drilling holes in the bottom (or taking someone’s that they don’t want anymore because it has a crack in the bottom) so that it has drainage. The back side of it has chickenwire that is supported with simple wood poles on either end, and that will be my trellis for things like peas and beans! I’ll also have a thin pipe that will go to the bottom of the container that I’ll water the plants through, since from what I’ve read, if you water from the bottom, the roots are more likely to grow down instead of spreading out, which is really ideal for small spaces like container plants. Pretty neat, right? Is there anything I’m forgetting or that you can think of to improve about it?

I got my seeds this year from a really incredible local source. I joined the Hudson Valley Seed Library, and when you join, you get 10 free packs of seeds. I chose almost all things that can go in containers in case we move (one or two things can’t really, but I couldn’t resist).

Here’s a picture of all my seed packets laid out. Some of them are “garden packs” from responsible wholesalers, “art packs” that have beautiful designs by New York artists, and “library packs,” which have seeds grown right here in the Hudson Valley by small, sustainable farms. I can even send some seeds back that I’ve saved after my harvest this year!

Here’s what I got:

• Royal Burgandy Bush Beans

• Shirofumi Edamame Soybeans

• Di Ciccio Broccoli

• Parisian Carrots

• Forest Green Parsley

• Vates Blue Curled Kale

• Dinokale

• Tom Thumb Lettuce

• Sugar Ann Snap Pea

• Doe Hill Peppers

• Sugar Baby Watermelon

• Long Island Cheese Pumpkin (Google a picture of these, they’re cute)

I also have Bloomsdale Spinach and Purple Vienna Kohlrabi, and a Painted Daisy Art Pack that I already ordered from them, as well as the a beautiful variety Radish Art Pack that they sent to people who signed up for membership. :)

Cool weather growing starts sooner than you’d think! I’m also thinking of buying a fruit tree, like an apple tree, to keep in a container, but I’m working on finding the right orchard and the right variety (dwarf, self-pollinating, with apples that are versatile and/or store well). So, lots of research is going into that. I know that I won’t get fruit from it right away, but it’s a long-term investment that I’m happy to make. And if, for some reason, I were to move someplace that apples didn’t do well, or I absolutely couldn’t live someplace where I had space for a dwarf container tree on a balcony, it’s the type of thing that I’d be happy giving to a good home… I mean, wouldn’t you be delighted to get a tiny apple tree in a pot as a gift?

Anyone else thinking about gardening yet? What zone are you in? What are you going to grow?

Apple Walnut Salad with Grilled Portabella

Just thought I’d share an incredibly amazing salad that I just threw together consisting of almost all local produce. In fact, I think the only veggie in here that isn’t local is the portabella mushroom.

I got a bunch of great salad-y things in the farm share today, and Charlie (not the biggest salad eater) won’t be home for dinner. I basically started throwing things in until this monster was born. It’s got protein (including a tiny little bug I just fished out… hmmm, guess I should wash the lettuce more thoroughly next time) and good fats and it tastes incredible.

leftover grilled portabella mushroom (in a soy sauce marinade)
red leaf lettuce
carrots
celery
sweet peppers
cutting celery (it’s a really green, almost herby thing)
small apple, chopped
couple tablespoons of walnuts
tablespoon or two of pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds)

I’d originally thought about throwing some cheddar cheese in there, but it just didn’t need it. The smokiness of the mushroom, the sweetness of the apple, and the depth of the walnuts, and since my pepitas were salted, the saltiness of that… It was awesome! Highly recommend you try it… minus the tiny bug.

On another note, we went apple picking a week ago, and I have nearly a half bushel of apples still. I did make turnovers, and I did make two mini pies, but you see, that baking was done when our friends Ben & Emily came to visit after they were in the area apple picking. So, we really didn’t use many of our apples since they brought a ton with them, too.

My Harvest Fruit Crisp has been on my brain (I can almost taste it), but I’m definitely going to have apples left after that. If all else fails, I’ll make Overflow Apple Butter and give it away, since clearly, for me, it’s all about the actual experience of picking apples rather than the need to have nine million apples in my house. I’ve made it abundantly clear that I prefer pumpkin for my fall baking and cooking.

So what should I do with all these apples?

This is what we’re working with, here. You can see there’s even a few extra hidden back there in my bowl of squash. Do you have a favorite recipe that I should try? Or is there something you wish you knew how to make that you want me to experiment with?

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!

First farm share salad of the season.

Our CSA started yesterday, and we were delighted to pick up a variety of greens. Our share will increase in the later months, but in June, we mostly get leafy stuff. Although we definitely need ingredients from the grocery store or farmers markets still (the CSA share is meant to supplement your veggies, not eliminate the need to go to the store), we are utilizing many of the things we got in the share this week for dinner tonight.

If you’re getting a CSA, this is a great article about making the most of it.

I bet we’ll be eating our fresh farm share strawberries for dessert, too. Yum….

Ingredients

prize head lettuce (CSA)
mixed chard (CSA)
oriental greens (CSA)
sunflower sprouts (CSA)
green onions (texas super sweet variety) (CSA)
cucumber
tomatoes
portabella mushroom cap
carrots
gardein seven grain crispy tenders
trader joe’s goddess salad dressing

Directions

Prepare fickin* tenders according to package directions.

Make a damn salad!

*”fake chicken”