Seeking Shangri-La

Wild Strawberries

2010-05-06T23:29:00.011-04:00

I was walking through the yard the other day when something caught my eye. Something red, down there near my foot. I bent down for a closer look and found . . . . .

Little wild strawberries! Last year I found some of these in my yard, but they were bushes along the fence. These are basically growing in the field of weeds that is the, uh, "lawn."

How cool is that?

No wonder that little bunny keeps coming into our yard.

I wanted to show the fencing that keeps Peter Cottontail out of the garden.

One side has tall fencing:

You can see it there on the other side of the bean and pea patches. That goes around almost two sides of the garden. The other two sides have much lower fencing:

Disregard the lack of tan, etc., but what I was trying to demonstrate in this photo is that it's a little bit higher than knee-height. So you can just step over it. But no Brer Rabbits can get in. Or at least they haven't yet.

The beans look great in their mulch bed:

And here in this shot you can see that i actually did get some newspaper down beneath the mulch in the pea bed.

Here's a closeup of the newspaper peeking out. I just used one sheet, folded in half. Hope that's enough.

And the cucumbers are popping up too!

Sprouting Pride

2010-05-04T21:17:00.013-04:00

There is a certain feeling one gets when one sees all of the little seedlings sprout. A feeling of pride, and accomplishment. And after three years of trying this stuff, of . . . relief, honestly.

This is what I saw this weekend:

The peas are growing :) All around the jury-rigged pea trellis. You can notice very clearly that the two front rows are growing much more hardily than the two back rows. We will see if that changes.

These are the Top Marvels (I think i called them Modern Marvels before. They are Top Marvel peas.) They are looking great as of 5-2-10. They have come up in droves and are smiling at the world.

Back here on the back are the Sugar Snaps. These are the ones that never took last year. Now, granted, I was trying to grow them in May, June, July, and August - months that peas don't generally like (I now know.) However, in comparison to these Top Marvels, they aren't looking too happy, are they?

Take a look at the bean patch:

All the pretty looking sprouts raising their heads and poking out. Here's what they look like up close.

When they first come out, you can see the shape of the actual bean pod still as they unfurl.

But as they get larger and grow bigger, they grow a great big leaf, to aid in photosynthesis. Later they will flower, like last year, and develop bean pods. I read last week that I should plant a new set every two weeks to ensure a constant harvest. I'm glad to be reading these sorts of things. Because of my job I can't get all of the information I need all the time. I did not realize that I would need to be replanting lettuce and beans. I know this year. Zucchini, on the other hand, you apparently don't need to replant. It just overtakes your garden and produces enough for a neighborhood.

Speaking of zucchini:

I planted three seeds in this hole so will need to thin it out. There are two plants growing about 12 inches away that I will also need to thin out. I hope the zucchini does better than last year! With everyone complaining about how they have too much zucchini, I am going to feel like a total failure if I can't have an overabundance of zucchini. I can always bring it to church.

The cucumber seedlings look very similar to the zucchini:

Same shaped leaves.

Before I closed up shop for the day, I mulched the bean patch and the pea patch.

I protected all of the pea shoots first before putting a 2-inch layer down here (approximately.)

For the beans:

Same thing, basically. Actually I meant to put down newspaper first, but only accomplished this in the pea patch. I want to mulch the rest of the garden to keep down the weeds as well. Need more mulch!!

Weeds weeds everywhere

2010-05-02T15:45:00.014-04:00

Already this year a lot of time is being taken up weeding. But, as you can see, there is a lot of square footage in this garden.

There are many different types of weeds encountered here. I am not good at identifying them but I would love to know if anyone else can. I have noticed from year to year that the types of weeds change. Once I eradicate a certain type, another type becomes more prolific. This year, we have the following:

This grass. I wish it would grow in the actual yard. When i yank it up, i throw it over into the yard, hoping it will take root there. All i really have in the "yard" is crabgrass, patches of dirt, and weeds. But unfortunately not this particular one. Which i don't want in the garden.

There's this one, which looks like an herb, doesn't it? I wonder if this is a remnant of something the gardener before me planted, before I came onto the scene. The garden layed fallow and became a jungle for a couple of years in between the last gardener and me. But there is something fragrant and tasty-smelling when I weed, and I have always suspected this is it.

It grows up to look like this:

I mean, it sort of looks like something you would munch on, doesn't it? (I know the bunny thinks so.) It is hard to pull up, has a deep root system with thick, ropy roots along with thready shoots, that, if you don't pull up when it's young, turn into woody substances.

Then there's this one:

It looks like lily pads, sort of, and is an invasive vine. It's very easy to pull up. It has little purple flowers but the root system is not deep and it's thready.

This one is easy to pull up but pops up all over the place. Before I was familiar with it, I thought it was one of the plants I had planted, like a pea or something (last year.) Now I'm wise to it. Not sure what it actually is, though.

Then there is this:

This is a seed pod dropped all over the garden (ALL OVER IT) by some tree in the vicinity. It looks sort of like a feather, doesn't it. A beautiful piece of nature's handiwork. On the left hand side you have a lighter than air, papery substance made for the express purpose of taking flight. On the right hand side you have a seed encased in a pod. It lands in my garden, plants itself, aaaaand:

The pod begins to disintegrate. The seed germinates. And a little tree begins to grow.

And then I yank that sucker out.

But there is no way I can ever pick up all the pods laying all over the garden. Lordy.

Anyway, if you know what any of these weeds are, lemme know!

The Bunny is Back

2010-05-02T15:38:00.003-04:00

It's hard to get a photo of him because he is so sneaky. But he doesn't scare easily. Or else his absolute stillness when I photograph him is a defense tactic. Instinct, if you will.

He's down there in the right corner, hiding from you. I put up the rest of the fencing this weekend in order to protect my newly sprouted plants from being, basically, his salad bowl.

Cool weather running

2010-04-27T21:22:00.006-04:00

It's been in the 50s and 60s here. for the most part. I know the peas are happy about that. There's another plant that flourishes in cooler/shady weather, and that is lettuce.

So I planted some, on April 25, 2010.

I planted three rows of it. The far right hand row has, uh, sorrel and arugula, i beeve (sorrel closest to the rear and arugula getting closer.) The middle row has regular leaf lettuce, and then spinach as you get closer. The far left row has all mesclun greens.

Here is what spinach seeds look like up close. They look like cilantro seeds. It's weird b/c in all the times I have eaten spinach, I have never come across these seeds.

Like with the peas, I threw caution to the wind and did not obey the spacing reccomendations. I just tossed them into the row all snuggled up next to one another getting cozy and crowded.

This is what mesclun green seeds look like:

Like a bunch of mish mash, mostly. Same thing on the spacing. It's nice to plant seeds. It makes you feel like Johnny Appleseed.

I had to put the fencing back up around the garden because of the little bunny. He's been back already. I will put up a photo to show you how we combat varmints around here. Maybelline of Bakersfield puts up shiny ribbons called "scare tape" to scare away birds. I think I will do that once I plant the tomatoes.

Grow lettuce, grow!

I'm a little late, but I'm a little Lazy

2010-04-19T19:48:00.012-04:00

I'm Ba-aack! And I'm not the only one. The little bunnies are back too, looking much bigger and huskier than last year. I don't know where they were hibernating for the winter but they must have chomped down on some serious root veggies beforehand. I'll try to catch them in action.

Yes I lost heart and kind of fizzled out at the end of last season. This has been mentioned to me. But I do have other time-consuming hobbies. Such as:

I've also taken up the country fiddle. Harder than it sounds, actually.

Ok well back to gardening. Don't want to bore anyone with overexplaining why I am not a fantastic fall - spring gardener. Such as Maybelline. I was shocked/jealous/impressed that when I went out back to finally clear my land for planting again, (admittedly a bit late), I checked out how things were going in Bakersfield and learned that her pea vines are already done and getting cleared out. This shed quite a bit of light on my problems last year with the peas. I mean, I know I don't have a lot of online fans, mostly this is just a journal that keeps records of planting times from year to year for myself. However, I'm embarassed that through all of my lamenting about the peas not growing last year, I never figured out that darn peas simply don't grow in the heat of the summer. They are really a cool weather crop.

I give a pass to my Florida relatives. Anything will grow anytime in that state. Lucky you guys.

Well, we will see this time around if I got them in early enough. I planted them this weekend, April 18, 2010.

First I prepped the garden. The dirt was in good shape but there were serious and invasive weeds that had taken root. I can't identify them like Skippy's Garden does so easily by sight. To me they are all weeds and annoying. I began by trying to rake them up with the hard rake after a good rain but that did not quite work. So I turned to a tool we found in the shed. I think it is a manual tiller. Here it is.

Now when I said "I" turned to this tool, I turned to this tool for approximately 3.5 minutes. Mister Siren took pity on me and put his biceps to work, tilling up the weeds in no time at all.

up the dirt and I plucked as many as I could out. We still needed more dirt. This garden has always flooded b/c it is low. With the help of a friend's pickup, we got a truckload of free dirt from nearby, but contrary to all of our assumptions, it was inadequate. We still need more dirt, and I am worried about drainage.

I should just make raised beds, sort of like demonstrated here,

but I am too cheap/poor . . . so give me another few years.

Now, the "trellis" I used last year was woefully inadequate. See here: It was just an old tomato cage and it did not work. However, that post was from June 2. So I'm impressed it was growing at all. Another thing this photo demonstrates is how goopy the soil in that corner of the garden got last year. I don't know if we have solved this problem with the extra dirt.

This year I made a better trellis, I hope. I read somewhere recently that because the peas have tiny little tendrils, they need something skinny to grab onto, so I wound string around the stakes. The "stakes" are just fence posts that are falling off of the cruddy old ancient fence around my property. We split them up and pounded them into the ground. Well, you can't beat free. We'll see how these things work before I start spending money on future crops.

I also read somewhere recently (Grow! Magazine, I believe) that you can sort of control weeds if you crowd the crops. This works for some crops but not for others. Potatoes and carrots and turnips, for example, will be ruined by crowding, b/c their roots will twist up. But other crhps will crowd out the weeds - bush beans, lettuce, etc. Taking this advice, I threw caution to the wind and ignored the spacing recommendations for the seeds and just planted a bunch in the trench I made. I'm hoping they take off like gangbusters.

Now, I planted two kinds. Sugar snaps (my favorite) and Modern Marvels. Sugar Snaps are supposed to grow 6-8 feet tall, the Marvels are supposed to be shorter. So we'll see which grows better here. I can always put up taller stakes.

I plan to mulch this year to also control weeds. I don't want to use last year's newspaper-mulch method. That was great as an experiment and everything, but I don't think I'll be repeating it. I want nice wonderful paths of mulch and as few weeds as possible. I think that mulch is the secret to that. Along with the truckload of dirt we got a truckload of mulch. It still is not enough. I don't think I'll put the mulch down until the seedlings start to come up. I don't want to make it too hard for them to come on out.

I see all of these perfect gardens with paved walkways and gravel walkways, etc. etc. I'd love to have one of those. I know the first step is to mark off the "areas" where the plants will be. But you know how frugal I am. Gravel and pavers cost money. I just grabbed some logs from the woodshed and used them.

You have the peas in the corner, then the bean patch, then the zucchini. Who am i kidding, that will never be enough room for zucchini. I will have to move them. Then to the right I planted five cucumber plants. I plan to put in lettuce/spinach/arugula/mesclun/sorrel patch to the far right, and then the area closest to us is reserved for the tomato and pepper plants when they get here. I'm ordering from Burpee's.

This is a closeup of the bean patch.

I think i might paint the logs white and maybe paint cute sayings on them. To make it more homey and less "some logs fell in my garden."

Okay, April 18, 2010. Let's grow!

Pepper Sickness?

2009-08-30T21:17:00.011-04:00

Mr. Stripey wasn't the only thing that suffered in the garden. I had some nice peppers finally develop out there as well. I didn't show you much of them. It took forever for them to grow, and I mean FOREVER. Maybe next year I will plant the bell pepper plants over by where I have that crazy jalapeno planted.

(POP QUIZ: how many different things can you put jalapenos in? Homemade salsa, tuna salad, tacos, chickpea salad, potato salad, tortilla soup, chicken enchilada casserole . . . and now I am drawing a blank. A little help here? comment section below.)

The peppers refused and refused to grow- i complained about it at length here, such as in this post entitled "My Little Peppers and How They Grow." The photos in that post were so cute and tiny as the bell peppers began their journey toward adulthood:

They quickly grew to a large size but hovered in their green state for weeks upon weeks

Now, one plant was an orange bell pepper plant, and therefore should have turned orange, and the other plant was a red bell pepper plant. So, I knew when they were ripe they would turn colors, then I could pick and eat them. Meanwhile, I was preoccupied with Mr. Stripey, the death of zucchini, the confounded beans which never really produced, and the sugar snap peas which sort of but never really gave me anything. (I did get about seven pea pods and we ate them in a yummy salad! I WISH i had gotten tons of those peas!)

But, finally, one day, color appeared:

This color appeared after a couple of days of rain, which suggests that perhaps the peppers needed a bit more water in order to really ripen and move the process along.

Unfortunately, after this, I didn't get a photo for a couple of days because I was out of town. When I came back in town, however, they were BRIGHT orange and red and ready to pick. They had slight abnormalities on their skins but no big deal, right?

So, I picked them and prepared to use them in dishes. First, I picked the red pepper. It wasn't totally red but as soon as I touched it, it fell off of the plant. It had a bit of brownish/green at the bottom. I left it on the counter, thinking it would finish ripening. It didn't. It turned mushy. That was a disappointment. Disappointment No. 1, as it turned out.

Disappointment No. 2, as it turned out, was this:

The "abnormalities" on the skin of the orange pepper, after it was left on my counter for a day or two, got worse and worse and worse, until it ended up looking like this! Now, what the hell is this all about? Should I have washed it with antibacterial soap as soon as I brought it in? Is this caused by bacteria or by insects or what? THey are just, spots that sort of sunk into the pepper itself. I really, really don't get it. I never used any pesticides or chemicals in the garden. I'm trying to eat fresh and get free food here, darnit!

I carved off the unusable portions, just like I did with the tomatoes, and got some usable parts diced up.

And . .. i ended up adding it to a chickpea salad, and it was fresh and tasty. The above shots are what the inside of the pepper looked like. I am just at a loss as to what is the deal with the produce from the garden. Something similar happened to the last zucchini we brought in, before the zucchini plants died. It had a little break in the skin, and we left it in the fruit basket, and two days later - the entire zucchini had sunken in on itself like it had a worm or something. Yuck.

I bring produce home from the supermarket all the time and leave it out on the counter . . . should I be putting my veggies in the fridge or something? Not the tomatoes, surely . . . but they are having problems too! Help! thanks.

Eating Mr. Stripey!

2009-08-24T22:26:00.011-04:00

The trials and tribulations of Mr. Stripey finally come to an end.

Last time we checked on this darn plant, one of the tomatoes had blossom end-rot, allegedly, and the combined weight of the three tomatoes was bowing the plant to the ground, so i had to use stop-gap measures and lay the stems across an extra cage.

Blossom end-rot:
In the end, that tomato looked like this:

Gross, huh? But think about how beautiful it would have looked if it didn't have that weird rotten spot??

the other two looked like this:

They ripened quickly. We kind of ignored the garden for only a week or two (tell you the truth, I needed a break. After the zucchini plants died, i lost heart. The beans haven't been producing like I hoped, the sugar snap peas never really came in, and well . . . sometimes you just need a break.)

Anyway, when we went back out to check, there were three ripe as hell Mr. Stripey tomatoes hanging there, ready to eat!

If there is anything I learned this year from gardening, it's to plant ten or twenty tomato plants next year. I just need more. Much more!

So what do you think this bounty looked like inside?

hooo-boy, it was such a treat!!

Look at those striations! Here's a closeup

Look at all that meat and the fact that there is practically no seed to get in your way!

This was the most delicious tomato salad. I did not adulterate it with green onions or blue cheese like the last one I exhibited here. Just kosher sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, the merest sprinkle of 15 year old balsamic, and a drizzle of truffle oil. The truffle oil really took it to that next level. And you know what made this so good? I finally got to eat a BIG FAT JUICY TOMATO from my own garden.

Now, DARN YOU MR. STRIPEY, i wish you produced more than three tomatoes!! Because I swear to you, these tomatoes were the most delicious I have tasted in my life. I'm not joking you, and eating a fat tomato every day for lunch in the summer is a tradition of mine. I am a tomato connosseiur. I love them.

These were really, really, reallly good.

I won't be replanting Mr. Stripey, though. So if anyone wants it, it'll be outside in my trash.

Tomatoes are carb free . . . . ???

2009-08-03T22:24:00.012-04:00

man, i bought around $15 worth of heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market this past weekend

whooooo-weeeeee! Look at those Cherokee Purples!!! I got three of those big suckers

And then five of the yellow tomatoes, I dont know what they were, Lemon Boys or whatever. The yellow tomatoes were markedly sweeter than the Cherokee Purples, but just take a look at how meaty the Cherokees are - barely any gel and seed!

Here's a great closeup

Here you can see the beautiful color striations, green, purple and red (well sort of, it's still the same crappy lighting in my kitchen, although I put it on a white platter this time)

So much meat!

I made the most delicious tomato salad with these tomatoes. I was trying (and failing) to recreate the most delicious tomato salad I have ever had in my life. It was at my best friend's wedding, last year at Citronelle in Washington, D.C. I don't think any of us were quite expecting a salad of heirloom tomatoes to explode in our mouths and then shimmy around like velvet to be washed down with a nice white wine like a song the way that chef's tomato salad was, but man, what did he use? I've always wondered? It was a wedding, he could have served us the same old tomatoes with slices of buffalo mozzarella and basil and we would have stuffed it in our mouths. As for me, I wanted to do these tomatoes the same justice.

So I found this recipe from Gourmet Magazine, circa July 2000.
"

3 tablespoons extra–virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons malt vinegar
3/4 teaspoon packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt (preferably flaky sea salt or fleur de sel) 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 lb ripe tomatoes, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices
1 scallion, thinly sliced diagonally

Whisk together oil, vinegar, brown sugar, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Arrange one third of tomatoes in 1 layer on a large plate, then drizzle with some dressing and sprinkle with some scallion. Make 2 more layers of tomatoes, drizzling each with dressing and sprinkling with scallion.

Cooks’ note: Tomatoes can be sliced and dressed, without scallion, 6 hours ahead and chilled, covered with plastic wrap. Sprinkle scallion over tomatoes just before serving."

Here's our version:

I added a little bit of roquefort cheese, leftover from the huge cheese block I bought at Costco weeks ago for the arugula roquefort steak dish.

Closeup:

I'd love to know how others make their heirloom tomato salads. Many recipes suggest balsamic vinegar and I do not like balsamic vinegar for salads, although I have some from Little Italy in NYC that is 20 y/o and pretty good. It is just too sweet, I think. I used tarragon vinegar instead of malt vinegar in this salad and it turned out good.

But, surprisingly, the real stunner in this meal was THE SHRIMP.

You should really get yourself some shrimp and keep it in the freezer. It's so easy to prepare as an easy dish - with pasta, with greens, , etc. etc. I love it! It's the summer version of frozen meatballs! :)

Anyway, this month's issue of Cooking Light had this great recipe for "Jerk-Spiced Shrimp" and we made it and I AM IN LOVE!!!
Ok, here is the photo from Cooking Light:

The Recipe:

1 tbls sugar ( I used light brown sugar and I recommend it)
1 tbls paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground thyme
1/8 tsp ground allspice
2 tblsp olive oil
1.5 lbs peeled and deveined large shrimp
Cooking Spray

- Combine spices. Toss shrimp and oil in large bowl and toss to coat. Sprinkle spices over shrimp and toss. Thread shrimp evenly onto skewers. Place skewers onto grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 6 minutes or until done, turning once.

ALL I CAN SAY IS MAKE THESE AND MAKE THESE NOW!!!!!!

I will definitely be making these at at least one party per year from now on. These are so freaking delicious that we were looking at one another with puppy dog eyes, sadly, asking if there were any left. Thankfully, there was a LOT of the tomato salad.

All in all, I love summer. You can make a lot of no-carb meals. Nice and healthy! This shrimp recipe is called "jerk-spiced shrimp" by Cooking Light but it is not really spicy enough for a true jerk name. Still, it is so tasty that I thought about cooking up another batch tonight. Wowza! I had five leftover shrimp for lunch today and they were just as good.

I highly recommend these recipes!

DESTRUCTION IN THE GARDEN

2009-08-03T21:30:00.013-04:00

Much like the beginning of the summer, Alexandria, Virginia saw days and days and days of rain this past week and weekend. At times it was so torrential i wondered if it was hailing. (My parents in North Carolina did have hail, grape-sized.)

I was kind of glad that the garden was getting watered without me, but when I went out to inspect the weeds that had surely sprung up, i was horrified at what I found.

Here is a photo of a healthy zucchini plant, on or about July 7, 2009, so almost two months ago. (Note, that it has grown much much bigger, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like.)

Now, a week ago, the leaves of this plant were so large that they reached the newspaper on the right side and were equidistantly stretched out all around. With beautiful squash blossoms beaming at me every morning and zucchini growing. Did you know that zucchini blossoms open in orange glory early in the morning and look like tiger lilies, sort of? They don't stay all twirled up all the time - in the morning they are open and glorious. I notice this from my shower window in the morning and I have been meaning to post about it for you.

Well, that is unlikely to happen due to this tragedy:
The leaves have been shredded and beaten into the ground.

Here is the horrifying closeup.

It would be impossible for photosynthesis to occur with these shredded leaves, not only because the leaf area does not exist anymore (mostly) but because the xylem and phloem in the stems has been destroyed. Xylem (zylem) and phloem are the tubes in the stem that carry the and water throughout the plants. I remember this from 7th grade biology, believe it or not. Our teacher made us sing a song about it, a really simple song, and she told us at the time "you feel stupid now, but you will remember this the rest of your life" and she was right. So: xylem carry the water up, phloem carry the food down. (i.e., xylem carry water from the roots up to the leaves, where photosynthesis occurs, and then the food is made there in the cells, and the phloem carry the food down to the roots, etc.)

So, in this plant, the xylem and phloem is pretty much brutally bashed out of commission:

Those are the main stems of Plant 1 and Plant 2. they were beaten open by what I can only imagine was hail and now there are ants taking up residence like it's an open house. I see no evidence of either xylem or phloem.

Then there are such exhibits as this:

Stems such as this have just given up.

After coming to terms with the devastation, I reminisced over times gone by.

Photos like these remind me to Carpe Diem. Look at all the sturdy xylem and phloem.

If you think I am not shedding a tear, I am. Mister Siren and I had words over a lack of sensitivity to the destruction. It was like losing a child. I'm serious, people! I was looking forward to a bountiful harvest of zucchini all summer, and i get - - - - - destruction. I feel like a pioneer in a year of famine or something.

There were other casualties:

My husband tried to repair the damage with scotch tape out of sympathy for me and his own dinner salads.

If the plant does not repair itself, all of these tomatoes will be at stake

Please mourn with me. This is way too sorrowful to mourn by myself.

RIP, zucchini.

Tomato Sickness

2009-08-01T18:19:00.009-04:00

The slow-producer Mr. Stripey, has something wrong with its tomatoes . . . .

This plant really could not be any more annoying!! It finally flowered and produced three tomatoes, after I fertilized it with special fertilizer which apparently gave it the nutrients it needed. Well, actually, we'll never know if it was the fertilizer or if it was going to finally flower and fruit at that time anyway. (The Schultz fertilizer, by the way, was not very good for my bell peppers. They have not flowered or produced any additional peppers at all, and I am really disappointed. I was hoping for a dearth of bell peppers all summer, especially since those suckers are expensive at the store.)

So anyway, when the tomatoes on Mr. Stripey started getting bigger, they started of course pulling the branches down to the ground, because the plant was so huge.
That branch is lying on the ground now, with the tomatoes up a little ways.

A nice green color.

I had to put another cage up, next to the original cages (there were two, remember, b/c of the number of stems coming out of the ground!) and balance the branches on the new cage. I was worried about the xylem and phloem getting bent beyond repair and not being able to carry nutrients to the fruit.
THey were much happier, off of the ground.

But, something is still wrong with these tomatoes. Or, at least one of them.

I noticed it quite some time ago. It's the middle-sized tomato. It has a kind of papery, brown thing on the end of it. It looks weird and rotten?

And here is the top of the tomato, near the stem:

Also showing a bit of the brownness.

Now, the other tomatoes are not showing this problem:

I realize that in the picture of the bottom of the affected tomato, there is some mold evident.

I think the green mold comes from it laying close to the ground and a few rainstorms lately. However, it was not evident a few weeks ago when I first noticed it. It was just the brown papery stuff:

So, can anyone tell me, what causes this? What is it? Is it going to spread? How do i get rid of it? And i'm guessing it is going to make my tomato inedible, huh? I am so disappointed! THIS IS SUCH A No-Good Plant.

Watch my zucchini grow

2009-07-28T21:44:00.013-04:00

Remember this big ol baby??

Some new ones are furiously growing in the garden:

That's the main plant, the one that is huge and takes up the expanse of, oh, I don't know, a couch

Here's the other plant, that thus far has produced NOTHING but all of a sudden has produced this beautiful looking zucchini.

Actually, by the looks of it we could pick these buddies now and eat them. But, the last monster zucchini was so bountiful and provided us with so many meals!! So they are growing while I am out of town. I told Mister Siren to pick them if they got too out of control. He's on tomato watch anyway since we caught an EVIL CARDINAL out there pecking away at the tomatoes every day.

For instance, with the zucchini, we grilled it with other vegetables
(by the way, this was only half the monster zucchini, just to let you know)
You may not be able to see it, but I use Emeril Lagasse's trick of inserting toothpicks in the onion slices before putting them on the grill, in order to keep them together better. He suggests putting the toothpicks into your onion before you slice it, and then slicing away, to make it easier. I have found this to be really useful.

Once I grilled up that zucchini and onions, I mixed it with leftover grilled corn
Remember that delicious post? Of course the corn I shaved off the cobb was unadulterated with crazy loco sauce or queso fresca.

So I shaved off the corn, mixed it up with the other veggies and leftover steak from the grill the night before.

At which point I began to make some tostadas. easy! You just cut tortillas into triangles, spray them with Pam, shove them into the oven at 400 degrees for about 4 minutes or something like that. Then put your veggies on your tostadas, sprinkle cheese on top, and pop them back in until the cheese melts.

This is a delicious and easy meal, and really fun to eat. What's more, it's really cheap and great to use leftovers in. But the best thing of all, is that it uses all the summer veggie flavors.

Another thing I love to do with fresh raw veggies (including the rest of my monster zucchini) is just chop them up, sprinkle them with salt and drizzle them with olive oil, and make them part of a fresh snack plate for dinner. We did this with some leftover steak, cherry tomatoes, olives, and cheese and crackers for dinner the next night and it was great.

So I can't wait until my two new little zucchini
give me a reason to come up with several more ways to stretch the bounty!

Best tomato pasta

2009-07-18T17:35:00.003-04:00

I love when food bloggers turn you on to their own favorite recipes and then those become your favorite recipes. I tend to favor really easy recipes since I do not have a lot of time for preparation these days. Before I worked strenuous weeks, I loved to make complicated rich dishes for myself and Mister Siren or anyone else who was around. Now, it's all about ease of prep, saving time, saving money, and deliciousness.

Plus, the numero uno rule in the summer: I LOVE TOMATOES. Last summer I ate a tomato every day for lunch, salted with olive oil. To round out my stomach and get me through the day, I'd eat a small serving of cottage cheese and maybe some avocado if I could find one. I think next year I will plant even more tomato plants b/c the yield from these is not quite enough for my daily lunch needs + our dinner needs.

But anyway, I digress. I found my new favorite recipe, which is coincidentally the favorite recipe of MattBites. The recipe is actually from Gourmet magazine several years ago but based on Matt's recommendation, I have now fallen in love with it and will probably be making it for the next several years as often as possible.

Capellini With Fresh Tomato Sauce:

1 small garlic clove
3 lb tomatoes
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 lb dried capellini (angel-hair pasta)
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

Accompaniments:

finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano; extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling (optional)

Mince garlic and mash to a paste with a pinch of salt using a large heavy knife.
Core and coarsely chop two thirds of tomatoes. Halve remaining tomatoes crosswise, then rub cut sides of tomatoes against large holes of a box grater set in a large bowl, reserving pulp and discarding skin. Toss pulp with chopped tomatoes, garlic paste, lemon juice, salt, sugar (if using), and pepper. Let stand until ready to use, at least 10 minutes.
While tomatoes stand, cook pasta in a 6- to 8-quart pot of boiling salted water, uncovered, until al dente, about 2 minutes. Drain in a colander and immediately add to tomato mixture, tossing to combine. Sprinkle with basil.

The photo above is credited to Gourmet Magazine.

You can also go to MattBites.com and see his beautiful, perfect version.

Now, when I made this with juicy, delicious tomatoes from my garden (heh heh, don't you wish you had some?) i had more fun than I ever thought I would, grating tomatoes. Who would have thought the act of grating tomatoes would bring so much pleasure?
Once you grate and chop all of the tomatoes, you have a big bowl of pulp and chopped pieces.

And it says only one clove of garlic but I am very disobedient when it comes to garlic. Fresh basil from the garden, too - and the basil, by the way, is not looking too good these days. It is really flowering and I am going to have to raze it to the ground and just make pesto and freeze it soon. :( It's the most common thing I use!

I made the mistake of cooking the pasta first and then making this sauce, so then I had to wait the required 10 minimum minutes for the sauce to gel . . . I could barely make it.

I was very excited for the last 16 seconds.

Here is my finished product.

I love this china dearly. It is my grandmother's and was passed down to my mom and then to me. I realize though that it is not well suited to food photos. I need some white serving pieces to photograph from.

That aside, this dish makes me drool. We use whole grain pasta which has a distinctive taste and makes it even better. Basically, we were fighting over the leftovers the next day.

File this under YUM.

Everyone loves tomatoes

2009-07-14T21:41:00.007-04:00

yep. it's true. I do. You do.

and so do the fauna out in the yard.

case in point:
something got this one good.

and the other side?
even the little hidden baby ones are not safe:

i don't know who, or what, is killing my tomatoes:

but you have to be VERY vigilant in the garden

Monster Zucchini

2009-07-13T21:59:00.010-04:00

Skippy's vegetable garden is showing her first zucchini.

I remember way back when when I was asking Maybelline tips for how to grow my own zucchini (she is in Bakersfield and it just seems like food leaps out of the ground onto your plate from her garden . . . she already has so many tomatoes she had to start canning!)

I have my first zucchini, too!

WHOA! WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? it's over a foot long.

Well, it started with the beautiful zucchini squash blossoms. Some people like to fry them up and eat them. It's kind of a pain in the butt so I haven't done that yet. There are a million of them, though, so if i was inclined, i could. Actually it's the most copious thing in the garden.

There are two kinds of squash blossoms, female and male. I posted about this previously, but it bears repeating, especially now that I have so much photographic illustrative evidence. The way you can tell the difference is: the male flowers are on top of skinny long stems, and the female flowers are on top of, well - nubs that are attached to the base of the plant, which will one day, if fertilized, turn into a zucchini.

Who does the fertilizing? Bees, and other insects, i guess. That's why if you are going to eat squash blossoms you need to check inside for bugs.

So, these are all male flowers.
You can tell by their long skinny stems.

And here is a female flower.

You can tell because it is attached to a nub that is close to the base of a plant. Know what that nub is?

It's a zucchini! I was as surprised as you. The flower on the top falls off and it just keeps growing and growing.

It becomes something like this:
Is this not crazy? nature is weird and very cool.

Now, what would happen to female flowers when they are not fertilized? Unfortunately, the nub just withers up and never becomes a zucchini - a wasted chance for the plant to produce a valuable vegetable. Sometimes it takes days for the flower to fall off. It's pretty sad, too. Especially when you are waiting and waiting for your plant to produce another zucchini and you have six or seven male flowers, waiting to fertilize another female flower.

Like this. Argh. Why won't you grow? It's all limp and flexible, and then a day or two after this photo, it was completely withered and dried out.

Well, anyway, this zucchini just kept growing and growing

ANd i didn't really know what I should do - pick it at a certain size, or what? Also, i didn't know how to pick it, which is a stupid question, really, but it's true.

Then one day we came out and this monster was just laying on the ground. It was so huge and heavy it made my husband feel inadequate just looking at it. It probably doesn't even taste good. I HAD to pick it, so i just lifted it up and lightly twisted the base, and it came right off.

Can't wait to grill this sucker up and use it with the leftover grilled corn and steak on some tostadas!

WOW! Best Grilled Corn

2009-07-12T23:59:00.007-04:00

This summer Gourmet Magazine had a huge feature in their issue about grilling that talked about El Salvadoran-style grilled corn. The trick is that you smear the grilled corn with "crazy-loco" sauce (yes i know that is redundant), something different than the butter we usually use.

I was enthralled when I read this b/c I have to confess I am not a huge fan of corn on the cob. It gets stuck in my teeth. It's messy and not pretty and it really does not taste that good. So smearing a delicious sauce on the corn that is probably pretty fattening only made it sound more appetizing to me.

Then, on one of my favorite blogs, The Kitchen Witch posted about making Mexican-style grilled corn, and the recipe she researched was almost precisely the same as Gourmet's El Salvadoran recipe. Same premise, just a slight change in the ingredients.

The main difference between these two recipes is that the El Salvadoran recipe calls for mustard as part of the crazy-loco sauce, and has optional ketcup. The Mexican recipe calls for no mustard or optional ketchup but instead calls for sour cream, and also cilantro (which I did not use.)

I started off prepping the corn as shown in the vivid photo spread in Gourmet. How can you resist glamorous presentation?
Mister Siren was put to work preparing these ears of corn. You peel the leaves down, remove the inner cornsilk (which is kind of a pain), and then use one of the leaves to tie leaves together. These tied-up husks serve no purpose except to act as a pretty handle. I love it!

Here is a closeup of how you do that:

Now thankfully, The Kitchen Witch's post reminded me that you must soak the corn for a good amount of time before you stick them on the grill, so that they do not dry up and burn when you have them on there. I did so. She said do it for 25 minutes. . . . Our grill was already ready for steaks and we were holding up the process, so I got about 7 minutes of soaking done.

But man, I think that made all the difference! The corn, when it came off the grill, was so much sweeter, more tender, juicier than any corn I have had on the cob before! I don't know if my family has just failed to soak their corn before. If you have not been doing so, try it. Maybe I AM crazy-loco, but this corn was out of this world, and I just had some other corn on the cob last weekend for 4th of July, too.

So anyway, then after you grill it and it's all tender (about 10 minutes or more), you take it off and spread this sauce on it.

My sauce was sort of made like this:
1/2 cup mayo (used light mayo)
1/2 dijon mustard
8 oz light sour cream

As I said, you can look at Kitchen Witches and Gourmet's recipes for the true sauces, and then adjust.

THEN, the important part is, you crumble this cheese called Queso Blanco on top of it . . . I thought this was probably the same thing as Queso Fresco but it is actually different, or at least it is sold in a different package and labeled differently, and thank God it is sold at Costco, b/c I had little time to shop today.

You "put a hefty squeeze of lime" on it, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper if you want it. I couldn't stop eating it! I'm a total convert!

Corn has many fans, and the handle comes in handy, although not everyone loves the sauce and the cheese:

Salad Nicoise

2009-07-12T23:08:00.005-04:00

So, what do you do with a handful of green beans?

I've learned a lot about planting green beans (and peas for that matter). First of all, I need to do rotated crop plantings (planting a new row every week or two so that I have enough green beans produced all summer.) Because we LOVE green beans. One of the things I remember most fondly as a child is that, over at my best friend's house, her mom had planted low bushes of green beans, and when we were out playing all day (locked out of the house! go play! don't come in!) we would swoop by these bushes every few hours and snap off some beans and pop them in our mouth. They were so good. And the bushes seemed to produce many beans per bush.

That was kind of what I was expecting from the beans I planted. Well, a), the beans were definitely one of the most hardy plants in the garden, but b) they weren't the variety I thought I had planted. Not the best friend's mom variety, anyway. They grew much taller and were not as bushy. You've seen the photos in previous posts. c) they produced great beans, but only about three per plant total, and these came in sporadically, so in all, i got a handful at first, then a second handful, then just a few more. I don't know if I'll get any more this season, maybe so.

Still, what to do with a handful of green beans? This same question has faced the author of a great and funny blog, "Gardening Without Skills," whose okra is really taking off and presents her with several okra every couple of days. Like me, she wonders, what do I do with a couple of okra every couple of days?

Since I have tomatoes and lots of lettuce in the garden, the answer was given to me by another great blog, (Simply Recipes), and I think is a great solution for using whatever handfuls you have around after harvesting your garden! Salad Nicoise! As the author of "Simply Recipes" relates, this French salad, when served in France, is composed of anchovies, raw vegetables, yadda yadda yadda. She suggests that you serve it with tuna steaks carefully marinated and seared, a nicely homemade herbed vinaigrette, and a bunch of other delicious stuff.

Here is hers:

Ingredients

Vinaigrette
1/2 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium shallot, minced
1 Tbsp minced fresh thyme leaves
2 Tbsp minced fresh basil leaves
2 teaspoons minced fresh oregano leaves
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Salad
2 grilled or otherwise cooked tuna steaks* (8 oz each) or 2-3 cans of tuna
6 hard boiled eggs, peeled and either halved or quartered
10 small new red potatoes (each about 2 inches in diameter, about 1 1/4 pounds total), each potato scrubbed and quartered
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium heads Boston lettuce or butter lettuce, leaves washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces
3 small ripe tomatoes, cored and cut into eighths
1 small red onion, sliced very thin
8 ounces green beans, stem ends trimmed and each bean halved crosswise
1/4 cup niçoise olives
2 Tbsp capers, rinsed and/or several anchovies (optional)

Method

*Marinate tuna steaks in a little olive oil for an hour. Heat a large skillet on medium high heat, or place on a hot grill. Cook the steaks 2 to 3 minutes on each side until cooked through.

1 Whisk lemon juice, oil, shallot, thyme, basil, oregano, and mustard in medium bowl; season to taste with salt and pepper and set aside.

2 Bring potatoes and 4 quarts cold water to boil in a large pot. Add 1 tablespoon salt and cook until potatoes are tender, 5 to 8 minutes. Transfer potatoes to a medium bowl with a slotted spoon (do not discard boiling water). Toss warm potatoes with 1/4 cup vinaigrette; set aside.

3 While potatoes are cooking, toss lettuce with 1/4 cup vinaigrette in large bowl until coated. Arrange bed of lettuce on a serving platter (I used two serving platters, shown in the photos). Cut tuna into 1/2-inch thick slices, coat with vinaigrette. Mound tuna in center of lettuce. Toss tomatoes, red onion, 3 tablespoons vinaigrette, and salt and pepper to taste in bowl; arrange tomato-onion mixture on the lettuce bed. Arrange reserved potatoes in a mound at edge of lettuce bed.

4 Return water to boil; add 1 tablespoon salt and green beans. Cook until tender but crisp, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain beans, transfer to reserved ice water, and let stand until just cool, about 30 seconds; dry beans well. Toss beans, 3 tablespoons vinaigrette, and salt and pepper to taste; arrange in a mound at edge of lettuce bed.

5 Arrange hard boiled eggs, olives, and anchovies (if using) in mounds on the lettuce bed. Drizzle eggs with remaining 2 tablespoons dressing, sprinkle entire salad with capers (if using), and serve immediately.

Serves 6.

For mine, I used green beans from the garden, pictured here:

I used a delicious tomato from the garden, pitted against a tomato from the store. We did a taste test of the garden tomato from the store tomato, and although the store tomato had a great amount of wonderful tomato scent, when you bit into it after biting into the garden tomato - it tasted like , uh, shredded wheat. Which is sad, considering how great tomatoes from the store usually taste to me. WHY do tomatoes grown in my own yard taste 50000000 times better than the ones I buy in the store? Why can't they taste the same? It makes me sad.

Anyway, all i can say is that I am pretty happy I am growing my own tomatoes and I wish I had several more reliably producing plants.

In addition to the tomato and the green beans, I used greens from the garden, as usual.

I loosely followed the blog's recipe for the vinaigrette, but I did not use fresh lemon juice b/c unfortunately, lemons are no longer 3 for a $1.00 like they were three years ago, and I have never been able to get over the hike in prices on citrus. Or maybe I never will be able to. I lived in FL until I was about 12 and I just think that citrus should be cheap, period. You should certainly not be paying $0.98 for a lemon or a lime, and I won't do it. I'll buy the bottled stuff which is just as good. In my opinion.

So, i used that for the vinaigrette, and I kind of cheated on the herbs - I used basil and tarragon, b/c that is what I have in the garden (no oregano, no thyme . . . . maybe next year I'll start growing those). I love how the hot potatoes soak up the vinaigrette. Oh, and I did not pour out the potatoes and then restart the water for the 12 beans I had. I just threw them into the last minute of the boiling potatoes. It worked just fine.

I put down all of my greens, sort of found whatever was in the cabinets that I could use, and assembled it on a plate . . . . I think this entire salad probably came to $7.00 for two people between the cost of the olives, potatoes, eggs, capers (all of which I had laying around, but let's say you had to buy them . . . ) ANd I bought a $4.50 can of albacore tuna to make it fancy - which, I think they are cutting corners on the solid albacore b/c it looked like chunk light tuna when I opened it and I was pretty mad.

But anyway.

VOILA.

I could not finish mine and Mr. Siren had to polish it all off for me. Thankfully we went out dancing and I worked it off. I think this is a great meal for several reasons:
1) you can use whatever handfuls of stuff you have from the garden
2) It's pretty darn economical
3) it's packed with protein and really healthy, and also has the added bonus of being no-carb.

Thanks, Simply Recipes!

Mr. Stripey Produces!

2009-07-11T20:27:00.011-04:00

This darn plant has FINALLY begun looking up. Well, why not, it's almost ten feet tall, and it's mid-July now.

I received several pieces of advice on some gardening forums about the issues I have been having with Mr. Stripey. As I have mentioned on this blog before, this particular variety of tomato is notorious for either under-producing, getting leafy and big, or being light on flavor for the fruits it does produce. Now, it seems like the plants you put in the soil, etc., do really well, but only people in certain areas have the right conditions.

Anyway, we've seen the photos of the plant getting taller and taller:
(it's even taller now)

And it kept producing these flowers that were really non-flowers. See Exhibit A:
They would open up, and contain no petals, no stamen, no . . . . (what's the opposite of stamen? Pistol? i think there is another name. I think pistol and stamen are on the male flower? Uh oh, i think i am getting this entire flower anatomy thing wrong)

Part of the advice I received was that there was either a phosphorous deficiency or some other kind of deficiency that I cannot remember right now. Everyone agreed that the plant did not need any more nitrogen, because more nitrogen (such as is contained in Miracle-Gro) only makes your plants grow bigger and grow more leaves, etc. - NOT the problem this plant has. We needed this plant to STOP growing and start producing fruit.

I also was told to stop watering so much. The plants were a bit overwatered because of constant rain. I think this did make a big difference for this plant and the other tomato plants.

However, the biggest difference, I think, was made by:
Go Schultz!

Look what happened less than three days after I used Schultz!
REAL flowers started appearing, the kind with petals! I was totally biting my nails while waiting to see if they would turn into full fledged beautiful flowers.

And they did:

I picked the Schultz fertilizer b/c it had the lowest content of nitrogen, and the highest of phosphorous, and the plant really seemed to respond to it - very quickly. I have not seen any other flowers on Mr. Stripey, though. I have seen more non-flowers. I am hoping that it bears some more fruit.

In response to this flowering, I have gone at the rest of the plant and mercilessly pruned it, as per the pruning instructions I posted previously. Remember, you can prune all branches below the first flower cluster . . . I didn't do that much, but there really is just too much greenery on this monster taking the nutrients out of the soil, and away from fruit production.

Here is Mr. Stripey now:

And the next flower cluster produced:
I think this is destined to be a non-fruit bearing flower cluster. See here:

It's weird and I don't understand it, but there it is.

Well, I can't wait to see these tomatoes when they finally ripen! Because the plant is so tall, and that tall branch was not caged, the weight of the new fruit has weighed it down and I bet they are almost going to be laying on the ground soon. I'll have to find some way to support the branches so that does not happen.

Let's all raise our glass to Mr. Stripey!

Salsa Garden

2009-07-07T20:05:00.010-04:00

Hey, i know that i didn't post something awesome and patriotic for 4th of Ju-ly for ya'll and i'm sorry. I really am. I let you down? But listen, I know you had plenty to read, because every single blogger and their mom put up some kind of 4th of Ju-ly content for you to read. I'm still trying to work through it.

I've really slacked off lately, but work and sequential houseguests have kicked my butt. However, that's kind of what this post is about. I think last time I posted, I said that I wanted to serve homemade salsa to some of my houseguests. Well, guess what? I DID!

Not EVERY ingredient is from my 'lil 'ol garden, but some of them are. I used tomatoes, jalapenos, and cilantro from the garden, and I stripped it bare.

Thankfully, the tomatoes ripened right on time (that is, the Early Girls did)

(Does the Early Girl start to look a little bit wilted in these photos to you? I noticed it started looking wilted. Then one day when I watered it a million ants ran out of the container. I think the roots may be having some problems. It has not perked back up, sadly.)

The tomatoes off of this plant are not large, they are small. About the size of roma tomatoes. Which is perfect for salsa.

I had previously picked some to save them, so I had about four of them. I had to buy some more from the store to round out the recipe, because I wanted to make a biiiiiiig bowl. My homemade salsa is always a hit.

So, the recipe is:

Tomatoes: 8-10 romas preferable
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
Couple cloves of garlic, chopped (always use fresh)
1 Red onion, chopped
Several limes, squeeze to taste
Salt, add to taste

and 1 jalapeno, chopped up small, I prefer to keep the seeds in!

The jalapeno plant has just been growing crazy. I mean, if you want a dependable reliable crop from a plant, I suggest planting a little jalapeno plant. Take a look at this sucker.

Big peppers on the bottom, more growing on the top. Constant rotation of production.

For the salsa, don't underestimate the need for the salt. Or the fresh garlic. I usually use 3 big cloves. That's me, though, and there's never enough garlic in our house. Then there's the lime. If there is something missing, it's probably lime. The problem is that it makes your salsa watery - but what you want to do is pop it into the fridge tightly covered with saran wrap for a good amount of time (at least an hour) to let the flavors gel . . . . and when you serve it up you can use a slotted spoon to put it in a pretty dish, like I have here.

Don't mind the obvious stovetop placement, as I have found this is the one place in my house I can take decent food photos.

However, (back to the subject at hand), once all of the salsa is gone you will find that you and your compatriots will be scooping up the salsa juice in frenzy, desperation, and nostalgia as you reminisce about all the unbelievably delicious salsa that was in the big bowl only moments ago. That's why I recommend using Tostito Scoops as the proper chip for this salsa. So does my husband.

I don't mean to toot my own horn about my salsa recipe. It's just that a) people rave about it, b) i personally love it, and c) i didn't make it up. Some man in Costco or Sam's Club told me how to make salsa when he gave me a salsa maker in, oh, 1999 or something, and i did buy the salsa maker (some plastic thing with some weird blade) and fell in love with that salsa and have been making it ever since.

How many times can I type salsa in one post???

My Little Peppers and How They Grow

2009-06-22T21:02:00.009-04:00

Coming up with titles for these posts is often an inside joke for myself. Today the title is patterned after a children's book called "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew," written by Margaret Sidney. The Peppers are a family of six, five children and their widowed mother, at the turn of the century. Extremely poor, starving, on the brink of death, and remarkably cheerful. I love books.

Anyway, this post is about MY peppers, which I have not posted about in awhile.

I've been lackadaisacal about posting updates on the pepper plants. I have three: a jalapeno, and an orange and yellow bell pepper. Or is one of them red? I can't remember. One is definitely orange. Anyway, since i posted a long time ago about the pest eating holes in the leaves, i've just left the subject alone. The plants were kind of wimpy and have been slow to develop.

The jalapeno had one lone pepper and that was it for awhile:
But all of a sudden the rest of the flowers dropped off and developed quickly into peppers:
That photo was taken on June 15. Now pay attention to the top of the plant where the newest peppers are developing.

Look at those hot peppers! Aiy-yai-yai! They're growing like hotcakes. whatever that means. Like the comics in the background?

Then we have the bell peppers. FINALLY they are growing
These are the orange bell peppers, I think. I can see five peppers beginning to grow - the really visible one by my hand and some other myriad tiny baby ones around the plant. I wonder how long it is going to take for them to grow and ripen?

Here is the red or yellow one, whichever it is:
And about four visible peppers developing on this plant so far. I wonder what tripped the development of the veggies on these plants? We have only begun having really hot days, and I know that the peppers are supposed to love sun and heat , , ,

The great thing about this is that soon I can make salsa from my own garden. Some of the cilantro has not completely bolted, the jalapenos are looking great, i can cheat with onions and garlic from the store, and if the tomatoes would just cooperate and ripen!
Because pretty soon we are going to just have green tomato salsa! My brother comes this weekend and i want to serve from the garden!

Growing basil; Terminal Leaves

2009-06-17T22:48:00.011-04:00

I recently left a tip about basil and plucking the terminal leaves on The Kitchen Witch's blog. As a new basil grower, she had not heard of this tip yet, and I had not heard of it either two years ago when I first started growing basil in my Aerogarden. (If you don't have an actual garden but want great herbs, consider an Aerogarden, those things work like a dream, and don't take up a lot of room or take a lot of work. Lots of fresh herbs all the time!!) (we got one for our wedding, as requested, b/c we lived in a small apartment, and man, was it heaven)

Anyway, the whole point is, with basil you want to encourage a lot of growth. I mean, you want to make that big batch of pesto that you have to freeze, right! And you want to be out there picking it three, four times a week when you have the tomatoes in season, right? So we have got to get these suckers cooking.

Well, pinching back the terminal leaves does just that. It encourages bushier plants by forcing the plant to produce more growth farther down the stem instead of producing a flower at the top of the stem as it naturally would if you let it go terminal and flower. So what you want to do is, in each bunch of leaves, if you can catch them as your basil grows crazily, pinch of each inner set of two leaves when they appear. Don't worry, because the basil will continue to grow at a rapid rate all over the rest of the plant and you will have plenty to harvest.

An illustration:
In this photo, you can see two sets of what could develop into terminal leaves that I am about to mercilessly pinch off. Directly above the huge basil leaf dominating this photo, in the center of the bunch of symmetrical basil, are two symmetrical leaves that I should have pinched off when they were budding. Don't know how I missed them. Must have been inside when it was raining for days. Nevertheless, they have to go.

Here's a little action shot for ya, showing you how it is done. Notice how, to the right of my fingers, there is a cascade of lighter green symmetrical triangles or diamonds stacked on top of one another? That is a set of terminals that is going to turn into a flower and that set of leaves will produce no more. (I don't know if "terminals" is really an appropriate term w/r/t gardening or basil, so don't borrow it.)
Now those leaves are gone and it is on to the next problem. Directly above where those two leaves were are two others that need to be plucked - they are in the center of a bunch and should have been plucked when they were more like babies.
Yes, I am still using newspaper mulch in the garden and yes, it is still cutting my weeding time down miraculously. It only took me and Mr. Siren about 45 minutes to weed last weekend after about three straight days of rain!!! I mean wow!

Now see the difference? Both of those sets of center leaves are gone now. The plant will have to produce leaves farther down the stem, which will make it bigger and bushier. It starts producing side stems, etc. Look at this photo compared to the original photo for comparison:
I also moved on to the left side of the plant, because I saw some terminal leaves there as well:
Ok, see those suckers right there in the middle? They gotta go. Pinch 'em off.
And . . . the aftermath:

So, I hope this has been informative. it is pretty easy once you do it one or two times. The hardest part about it is keeping up with your basil plant. But once you have been doing it for a week, you begin to see what it is all about. Because your plants begin to get bigger, and bigger, and grow faster, and faster, and pretty soon you don't have the time, energy or attention for all of that pinching. We are now harvesting these plants about three times a week for various stuff. Pretty soon I am just going to have to make some pesto for fun. Tonight we had it on homemade pizza. yay!

Bon appetit!

Squash blossoms

2009-06-15T21:01:00.004-04:00

I heard about frying squash blossoms before and somewhere I remember that these mythical squash blossoms grow on your zucchini plants . . . so i've been waiting . . . . and watching

and these appeared:
I first noticed these about three days ago (after those heavy rains). They are crusted with dirty in the above photo.

Today, though, they were larger and vibrantly full of color:
It's amazing how fast things grow in this garden! I mean, wow.

I was looking around for the place I read about the fried squash blossom recipe and found this scrumptious one on a blog called Cooking With Anne. But, in addition to her recipe, Anne related some very valuable information - there are male and female blossoms (duh), meaning, some of the blossoms will produce fruit (or vegetables, as is the case here) and need to be left on the plant. These are called the female blossoms. You want to pluck off the male blossoms only, Anne says.

This makes a world of sense. Here is a great informative link describing how to discern between the male and female blossoms, with pictorial illustrations. The easiest way to differentiate is by looking at the bottom of the blossom - is there a green bump, or a long skinny stem? If it's a stem, it's a male flower. If it's the green bump, it's female, and the bump eventually grows into zucchini, as long as that flower is pollinated. Another way you can tell is that the male flowers have nothing but stamen inside, the female flowers . . .. more female looking stuff.

One other tidbit I learned was that if the female flowers are not fertilized, they wither up and die. Hmmmm, reminds me of how a lot of the flowers on the Early Girl plant are looking right now. More on that later.

Anne's recipe is to pipe a mixture of goat cheese and chives into the blossoms, dip into a loose batter and fry in oil until crispy .. . . hers look divine but I don't want to steal the photo. Go to her blog to check it out and hopefully I will have my own to show soon!

I'm a Bean Counter

2009-06-14T12:18:00.011-04:00

The one thing I have been able to count on in the garden since the beginning has been the bush beans. Those suckers are going to be planted right in the same place next year, that's for sure. (well, the mesclun did well, too.)

As a review of what they looked like along the way, and because I know photos are really what people like to see, here's the beans in the beginning:
After they first emerged as a stately row. That was May 8, the first chance i had to get into the garden after about six days straight of rain, if I recall, and the mud there is churned up from vigorous weeding.

On May 17, they looked about the same:
although they steadily grew bigger, so big, in fact, that eventually one of them fell over and lay in the dirt.

But, eventually, they started producing little bud-like flower capsules - see the photos from May 24:
(sure wish I'd known how to use my camera's closeup function that day)

And then, on June 2, they had full-on flower pods:
Or, actually, those are the bean pods. I don't actually know the correct term of what I am seeing here. Because this is what happened next:
This is a photo from June 7. They flowered, and then the flowers withered, and were pushed off by little baby sprouting beans. You can actually see some if you look closely in this photo, beneath the white flower at the left edge of the big leaf.

Behold, on June 10:
ton's o' beans growing!! You can see, in this following photo, that some of the beans still have flowers attached that they are pushing off:
This is so neat. I just love getting out in this garden every day when I come home from work and learning about how things grow. I was and still am a true novice in every sense of the word when it comes to gardening and growing food and probably will be for years to come. But this process of discovery has been inspiring, uplifting, and awesome (awesome in the sense that it fills me with awe, I mean.) I realize I sound a little like the new parent who can't stop talking about their baby but that's why I started the blog, ha ha, so I can spit it all out here. What can I say, I am obsessed!

So, what do you think of the BEANS?!?

I am a big frequenter of others' gardening blogs and love to see photos of the crops I am growing and how they turn out in others' gardens, but I don't think I have noticed bush beans that anyone else is growing. If you have them, or you know where I can check them out, please leave me a comment :)

Am I What We Eat?

2009-06-12T20:49:00.003-04:00

I am diving in with both feet to the challenge to post a photo of our refrigerator.

As a precursor, to show you I am not insane, go check out one of the most interesting articles I have read recently: Picture Show: You Are What You Eat. Photographer Mark Menjivar began taking photos of the inside of refrigerators after three years of traveling across the nation studying the effects of hunger. His commentary on how the inside of a fridge reflects an individual is powerful and definitely a dialogue starter . . . just take a look! There is a fridge with a no-lie, whole rattlesnake just staring at you from one of the shelves. A freezer full of nothing but frozen meat and a bottle of jose cuervo. I love these photos.

Others I respect have been brave enough to take this challenge. For instance, the very accomplished food blogger on Life is a Feast did it last year.

As Mark Menjivar states on his own webpage, found here, "someone likened the question 'May I photograph the interior of your fridge' to asking someone to pose nude for the camera." And I definitely sympathize with the sentiment. Because I was ITCHING to tidy up, put things in at least their proper place, and hide certain things before I took this photo.

But here it is, in all its glory, folks:

Regrettably, what really stands out here is quite a big quantity of some sort of light beer. Not fair. We just inherited quite a lot of leftovers from a big group weekend in the woods and are storing it for a party in two weeks. Not that my husband is not drinking it. Hell, it probably won't really be there for the party.

Top shelf, two packs of mushrooms, one opened and covered in foil. Concentrate juice - i don't normally buy that but was having people over and wanted to offer another beverage. I would buy it regularly if we had the extra dough. Individual cottage cheeses which I eat every day to give me protein and calcium. Second shelf exhibits a bowl of hard-boiled eggs Mr. Siren eats for breakfast, a second container of mayo (again, inherited, saving for party), a bunch of chicken and some flank steak you cannot see (for crock pot chicken cacciatore, and for flank steak and fajitas from the leftovers)

So, what else are you looking at? Bottom shelf shows some produce (apples and oranges), a bunch of hamburger buns, the aforesaid beer, and some old rum punch I have saved for when I want to make myself drunk or sick, it will be the game. Also some new juice for making individual rum punch. We keep seltzer behind the beer but you cannot see it. There is produce in the bottom but we go through it so quickly it is all half chopped and in ziplocs and unrecognizable.

Also, there are forty kinds of cheese in the cheese drawer. And lots of leftovers that we cooked in chinese takeout containers that probably need to be cleaned out of the fridge. (I don't buy tupperware, I just reuse those containers.)

What does this tell me about myself and how I eat? For one thing, I need to clean out my own leftovers. For another, the bright beer is kind of embarassing. For the last, it is obvious that we are stretching our grocery budget. Because when I am not, there is a lot more in the fridge. Trust me. Maybe I should make this a weekly comparison. The Beginning of the Month vs. the End of the Month. Ha.

Now it is your turn! Be Brave and post a photo of your fridge and post a link in the comment section!!

My first harvest

2009-06-12T20:09:00.004-04:00

On everyone else's gardening blogs, the praises are being sung of spring peas! onions! strawberries! etc etc blah blabbity bippity blah, as Denis Leary would say.

Well I am not so lucky, except for plenty of basil and cilantro which I have gleefully been picking here and there when needed (which is several times a week.)

On my last post I wondered when the mesclun greens would be ready.

Well, I decided it was time. Mostly b/c we're broke this week and i wanted some salad and did not want to buy it! I mean, this was the point of the garden, right? And I wish I had the time or inclination to keep a meticulous log like Sally of the Minton Stable Garden
of the costs and returns of my garden so I could figure out if I'm ever getting ahead in this game . . . . . but in the end, my plan of growing my own food so I could eat for free isn't really racing ahead like I figured it would.

I have to inform anyone considering growing mesclun greens, but harvesting them is no fun at all. I recommend cutting them very close to the leaf since you are going to be trimming all the stems off inside at the sink anyway. Because there are so many small leaves, there are so many surfaces and nooks and crannies to hold dirt and mud from all the rains we've been having. And in one colander of greens, i found four baby slugs lurking! I had to turn over each individual leaf - it felt like hundreds - to ferret them out. Can you imagine if we had been chomping away and bitten into a slimy little slug? I SHUDDER TO IMAGINE IT.

So anyway, I cleaned them all up, it took about 20 minutes, then added some very thin onion, sliced mushroom, and chickpeas. I wish I could have added tomatoes from my garden!! but oh well. And tossed in olive oil, s&p and tarragon vinegar.

Here is our salad!
On the side there is some tuna salad on olive loaf. I don't make my own bread as I am pretty busy with the growing my own food right now. I make my tuna salad these days with celery, red onion, and pickled jalapenos, worcestershire, lemon juice, s&p and minimal mayo and mustard. I also like to make it with celery, grated carrots, onions, and walnuts and mayo. Mmmmmm . . . .

When we were in Italy (Venice) they had little sandwiches all over the place that were tuna fish with just olive oil and sliced green olives and cracked black pepper mixed in. Mister Siren came to really love it.