Vegetable Decor

The thing about harvesting from three different gardens, which I am doing at present, is that sometimes produce tends to get waylaid in the process. Frequently I find snap peas in my purse, beans in my pockets and occasionally, a turnip in my car's console, like today. Wayward produce is usually a little limp and often mocked by my friends. Like this turnip which ended up getting a face, the name "Herbie" and was strung up on my rearview mirror by my passenger while I was driving.

Poor Herbie. After a day swinging back and forth on the road he ended up in a salad. And I felt kinda bad about that.

First Russet Potato Harvest

I've started digging up some russets from my community garden. Harvesting about two months earlier than I planned, but I noticed some spade marks on potatoes I had hand dug out, which means some pilfering has begun. This is expected in a garden that resides in a public park and is not fenced. I seem considerably less annoyed about the food theft than the other gardeners, maybe because I counted on it from the start. Plus, I generally share some of my bounty with others, so I'm thinking my produce brought joy to a few households in the neighborhood.

These russets are smaller than I wanted, but I'd rather get a harvest of small potatoes than none at all. I've left half of the bush to continue on. I'm planning on preserving these in bottles.

I'll be using a pressure cooker to bottle them because of the low acidity of potatoes. You need higher temperatures for proper preservation.

You know, it's really sad how the words "pressure cooker" now bring up horrible images after the Boston bombing. I used to always think of my aunt and uncle's farm when I heard those two words. Now, the pot has a negative connotation. I hope to help transform that experience today, as the kitchen steams up.

Cherry Plums

I've been trimming a rather rangy bush located right off my deck. Its long thorns have been tearing at my market umbrella. While hacking it down, I suddenly noticed tiny yellow cherry-sized fruits dangling from the branches. After looking the unfamiliar bush up online I discovered it was a cherry plum.

This explains why the birds keep visiting the tree. I plucked a few cherries and yum! They taste exactly like a delicious yellow plum. A lovely discovery. Apparently cherry plum is an ingredient in Bach's Rescue Remedy. Hm, I'll be trimming more carefully now.

Gardeners start your ovens!

One day you're planting and before you know it you're in full on harvest mode and the produce starts backing up on you. This morning I kicked into gear with more cooking/baking/grilling action. 

Fresh beets. Saute the leaves in oil and garlic or add fresh to a salad.

Baked beets - Prick & sprinkle with coarse salt.
425 degrees for 50 minutes in foil. 
After baking, slide skins off. Slice and drizzle with Balsamic.

Fresh picked rhubarb

Rhubarb crumble - recipe here.

Fresh basil. Great for pizza toppings, tomato sauce
and of course, pesto! Recipe here.

The eggplants are coming. The eggplants are coming!
I'm currently gathering new Indian recipes for bharta.
Love bharta! I welcome your recipes.

A fairytale pumpkin is born.
Hoping this will be big enough to display come Halloween.

Don't know how my tomatoes will fare this season. A fierce wind flattened the whole tomato hedge, as I've been calling it. They are propped up now, but don't know if the bent stalks have done permanent damage.

Need to hit the community garden today to see how those bushes did.

Kohlrabi

It's that time of the season when you're making decisions about what to plant more of next year. Kohlrabi is on my list.

Kohlrabi

I've been eating it raw mostly. Delicious! I have a wicked sweet tooth and find that eating veggies moments after picking is like eating healthy green candy. Home grown veggies are actually sweeter than store bought because the vegetables' natural sugars turn to starch over time, and time is exactly what it takes to get veggies to market.

In the hope of getting another crop in this season, I picked up more Kohlrabi seeds yesterday. Taking a quick glance at the planting instructions (which honestly, I seldom do) I was surprised by the stern warning to not plant Kohlrabi next to tomatoes.

Look where I planted the Kohlrabi in my kitchen garden. See that tomato leaf caressing the kohlrabi? They may be strange bedfellows, but thankfully everyone survived unscathed.

I admit to being quite undisciplined about planting instructions. I ignore depth, spacing, companion planting, etc. Instead I just cram everything in wherever it'll fit and hope for the best.

The Kitchen Garden on the 4th of July

I'm sure I could do better, but it's worked for me so far. (The exception, potatoes are never planted in the same bed successively.)

For me, getting too anal about gardening complicates the simplicity of growing food. I also enjoy learning lessons organically from Mother Nature.  I know, it doesn't make sense, but frankly I've had few failures and a lot of great food has graced my table. Here are a few pics of the action in my little plot of earth.

Pinot Noir Peppers

Home-grown Romaine and Garlic

Tomatillos Reaching for the Sun

Brussels Sprouts Preparing to Grow a Stalk

Red Cabbage Starting to Heart Up

Buttercup Squash Full of Blossoms

San Marzano Tomatoes Tiny and Green

The microclimate in my community garden plot is a whole other thing. Even though the garden is a mere mile from my house, the veggies are far more advanced. The garden field is quite open and has no shade whatsoever. I've harvested numerous cabbages, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, snap peas, spinach, carrots and Russet potatoes from that garden, but all the lettuces bolted. Here is a pic taken a month ago. (It is far more lush today.)

Russet Potato Plants

Green Cabbage

Made some tasty coleslaw from those cabbages. Sweet!

This community garden is in its pilot stage. We hope to have raised beds next season, and some of us are lobbying for bark chipped paths.

The Community Garden in Early June

A Word About Hostas

They really pretty up a garden fast and transplant like nobody's business. If you know a fellow gardener who has one, and is willing to share, there's no need to spend $10 or more to buy a plant. Take your shovel and slam it into the ground, dig out a small section and transplant it in your garden. You'll have greenery like this in no time flat. This lovely specimen was dug into my garden about four weeks ago. It was an 1/8th of this size, and certainly not symmetrical.

Radishes Or....????

Any idea of what these are? No, they aren't radishes. If you read yesterday's post you'll know I've been mucking around in the nether regions of the potato planter, pilfering early potatoes from the velcro'd door at the bottom.

These are French Fingerlings. Tiny, delicious little nuggets of perfection. Once your potato bush flowers you can dig out a few of these tasty morsels and treat yourself to the thinest skinned potatoes you'll ever eat. Scrub them clean and you are sure to scrub off part of the skin. Aren't these fabulous?

I could not longer resist the turnips either and yanked up this lovely fellow. We ate the turnip raw and cooked up the greens. Tender!

Simply served hot with a squirt of lemon, butter and salt. What could be better? Don't you love this time of year?

The Progressing Garden

A month ago, this section of the yard was useless patchy grass.

Today it is a hotbed of free organic produce. I may not be fully unpacked and properly moved into the house yet (renovations, ugh), but there's food growing in the ground. My priorities are evident. 

The community garden plot is flourishing as well, but more on that later. 

I started out preparing this area with a shovel. But the sod was quite thatchy, so I headed over to Home Depot and rented a Mantis rototiller.

This entire section was completed in under 45 minutes. The Mantis provided a fairly rough chop and my intent was to go over it again to fully chew up the sod, but the tiller broke down and I called it a day. I know I'll be fighting grass throughout the season as a result, but it was more important to get veggies in the ground the same day than to seek some sort of visual perfection.

I highly advise wearing steel-toed shoes when operating power tillers. The Mantis was quite manageable but it would jump occasionally when I hit roots. I found an old pair of Doc Martens in the closet and put them straight on.

My uncle chopped off three toes with his lawnmower, so power cutters of any sort should be handled with care. (Note: never a good idea to cut a lawn in flip flops.) The Mantis sliced right through roots this size. Imagine what it would do to flesh.

I added a mere ten bags of triple mix to the soil and started direct sowing seeds forthwith. Next the seedlings that were started indoors went in.

The raised bed, directly behind this bed, is in full swing now as well. There's been plenty of fresh spinach to enjoy (all eaten and already reseeded) and daily servings of delicious Mesclun salads for over a week.

Yesterday I noticed the first sugar snap peas on their way. It's amazing how quickly a kitchen garden can take hold and start feeding your family.

Will soon be able to dig into these lovely Manchester Turnips. Bet they'll be great roasted or in a stew.

There was even a bit of time to toss in a few flowers in a bed nearby to attract pollinators to the veggies. Hostas, Hibiscus, Gerbera Daisy, Bleeding Heart, Snapdragon, Impatiens, Pansies, Foxglove and some exotic varieties, which I can't immediately recall the name of, were my choices. All pink. It's my girlie section of the garden.

And remember that bag of potatoes I planted May 8th? Well, here it is today. Last night I opened the Velcro door at the bottom of the planting bag and retrieved a few new potatoes for dinner. Only complaint, I wish the bag were taller so I could hill it up more and get a larger harvest, but we'll see what the final count is in another few weeks.

I also container-planted some tiny Pinot champagne grapes and have been enjoying them for about ten days. Tasty!

I love berries of all sorts and was sad to leave a very productive berry bush behind. Starting anew, I've planted a few berry bushes on both sides of the yard. This section has blackberry, raspberry canes (taken from my last yard), honeyberry (aka Haskap), gooseberry and of course wild and ever-bearing strawberries.  Edging will have to come later.

Strawberries are planted throughout the yard, in hanging pots, strawberries pots and even in a broken rattan chair. Blueberry bushes are on the opposite side of the yard.

I'm trying to use every possible inch of the yard for food production, while keeping it semi-attractive and restful to the eye. It's a work in progress. 

Mole Hole

Well I know who was living in my raised bed now. Unfortunately the field supervisor brought this poor little guy in tonight. I saw her skulk past and suddenly noticed something dark and furry in her mouth.

The mole was already quite dead, so no use trying to free it. This is the first mole I've ever encountered in a garden. Its fur was like velvet. They eat primarily earthworms and my garden is rich with plump, healthy worms. Somehow I don't think he is the only mole out there though, because the field supervisor was dying for a second go and quite miffed at being locked in.

A backdoor in my raised bed.

There's a den entrance in the middle of my raised bed. The garden supervisor found it. This explains why my basil has been repeatedly uprooted. I don't know who it belongs to yet: mole, vole, groundhog or rabbit. I've only seen rabbits in the yard so far.

Good thing I'm digging out more beds.

Digging Dirt

Well, the digging begins and what I am finding below the grass is not encouraging. 

Tree roots galore and hundreds (thousands) of stones, small and large. This is gonna be a chore. Pacing is key. Fortunately I have a few plants in a raised bed already. Part of the bed took a hit overnight from some raccoon shenanigans but I can replant. Plenty of time.

This is the section of the yard I am digging out for now, leaving the other side for the fire pit and grape arbor. Every shovel full is pure elbow grease. Gonna need a lot of amendment I'm afraid. It'll be fun to see how much food a small parcel like this can produce.