Vacation during harvest season

So I'm preparing for another vacation - this time to Europe with my mom.  We leave on Saturday.  Exactly in the middle of harvest season this year.  I had it all planned...last year this would have been well before the peak harvest season.  This year, it's smack dab in the middle of it.  I even have cherry tomatoes (Peacevine) that are beginning to ripen.  And worse, it's in the 100's outside - necessitating extremely frequent watering.  Dianna will be here - and she ensures me that she will harvest, weigh the produce, and water.  I still worry.  She's good at this, but these plants, this garden, is really MY baby.  I'm the one who walks it every day, the one who constantly monitors it.  I am the garden's momma.

So today I harvested two summer ball pumpkins at one pound each, and a yellow crookneck squash that was almost 1 pound (15 oz).  Yesterday I harvested over 2 pounds of haricots verts and pickled them.  Four pints of pickled beans.  Tomorrow I'll pick more beans, and then it's up to Dianna to keep the garden going while I'm gone.

So we've got a good start on the season, now we just have to weather vacations and we're good.  I will be looking at the gardens in France and Germany for inspiration.  And I will try to blog from my iPad about what I'm learning.  Stay tuned!

Mid-Summer Prep for Fall Veggies

It's always strange for me to think about upcoming cold weather and cold weather crops when it's 100 degrees outside, but now is the time apparently.  I got my Territorial seeds catalog and they are suggesting that we start cabbage, kale, broccoli and cauliflower now.  I did, they're under the lights in the basement.  Since I also transplant my lettuce outside, I started the fall lettuce crop as well. Outside I pulled the peas and direct seeded turnips and basil.  Hopefully our bunny friend will leave them alone - she's been munching on the carrots lately...

My big mistake this year was trying to interplant basil in different areas of the garden.  Next year it will have its own section, I just don't have enough for drying and pesto.  Hopefully there's enough time in the summer for the seeds to grow into plants. 

I'm hoping that the fall crop will do better than the spring crop - I got two measly 2 inch heads of broccoli and no cauliflower. The cabbage was OK - loose heads, but enough to make a good bit of slaw.  I still have to pick and use the kale, it's doing OK as well. 

Haricots Verts Harvesting

The importance of harvesting beans every day cannot be emphasized more.  If you are trying to be self-sufficient, you need the most productivity on the least amount of land...and beans are super producers!  But once they think they've set seed, they slow their production.  So it is imperative to pick every day or every other day.  Keep the beans harvested and you will keep the plants producing.  Dianna thought that I was obsessive, and people will wonder "why do you insist in picking every day?".  It's simple.  Most of what I do is all about productivity.  Square foot gardening, harvesting beans daily, companion planting, keeping the weeds out of the garden -it's all about getting the most food in the least amount of space while still using organic methods.  Day before yesterday I harvested 6 oz of beans, today 12 oz.  The magic is to keep harvesting, while the beans are young and tender.  The plants will keep producing well into the fall.

Rule number 4: Eat leaves with holes in them

I would never be able to be self-sufficient in veggies if I wasn't willing to eat leaves with holes in them.  Lettuce leaves, broccoli leaves, cabbage leaves - all of them will have some bug damage.  Of course they will, I'm completely organic in my production methods.  But just because the leaves have been munched on by something else, doesn't mean you shouldn't munch on them.  They're perfectly fine - as long as you wash off whatever it was that was doing the first munching.  ;-)

I collected some of my spring cabbage today (1 lb of loose leaves) and here's how it looked:

I will make it into coleslaw and no one will be the wiser - except me.

One note on spring cabbage, kale, cauliflower and broccoli: so far I have had very little luck.  No cauliflower at all, and you can see how loose the heads of cabbage are.  I got a 1oz head of broccoli - the largest one I got this spring, woohoo (sarcastic).  I'm fairly frustrated at that, but it means I should plant more spring peas I guess.  I'll plant fall broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage and see how that goes.

Zucchini harvest and "keeper" recipe

This year the zucchini is coming early - two medium ones that weighed almost a pound and a half.  They are Black Beauty - this year the first to mature.  Lungo Bianco and Cocozelle are on the vine, but not near ready to harvest.

OK.  Nice...but what to do with them?  I've been wanting to make some different recipes (grilled zucchini can only take you so far) and our neighbor Lisa found a recipe on pinterest for Zucchini cakes - like crab cakes only with zucchini.  This is what I decided to try.  Lisa came over and we amended the recipe a bit - here's what I did:

The two zucchini above, grated
1 large egg
1 cup cracker crumbs
Chardonnay smoked salt (from our other neighbor Celia) - to taste
7 leaves chopped fresh basil
2 medium garlic cloves, crushed
1 extremely small onion, grated
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Squish the zucchini in your hands above the sink - getting the excess water/juice out
Mix all ingredients in a bowl
Heat non-stick pan and put tablespoon-full dollops into pan, flattening slightly
Brown and turn over, brown other side
Put on cookie sheets and broil on low for a minute or less - just to make a bit crispier

 After tasting them, we decide that this recipe is "a keeper"!  She thinks her sons will even like them, and took one home for them to taste test.  A great use of fresh zucchini, and it was so fast that it didn't even make the house hot.

Pet-able chipmunk

We spend a lot of time outside.  Our patio is another room during the spring, summer and fall - it is where we spend the majority of our time.  And we enjoy watching the birds, butterflies, bats, rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks as we eat, pay our bills, plant seeds, weigh our produce, etc.  On our patio we started feeding the chipmunks so they would become tame.  Last year we invited chipmunks to come eat sunflower seeds, scattering them near our chairs.  A short-tailed chipmunk took us up on our offer and started coming when she heard our voices.  This is Stumpy.  (So named because she has a short tail.)  She is the bravest, most brazen chipmunk ever.  She lets us pet her.  She is awesome.

This is the second year of feeding and petting Stumpy.  She now comes to the patio when she hears our voices and has even jumped up on our legs.  We think she is letting us know that she wants more sunflower seeds when she does that.  She has avoided cats, fought with other chipmunks, and generally become the ruler of the patio when sunflower seeds are to be gotten.  She is smart and wonderful and so much fun to feed.  How lucky we are to have animal friends!

Peas finally!

I've been wanting to do a blog about my lousy pea harvest this year.  I've been extremely upset at the small amount of peas I've harvested, sure that last year it was much better and these two types of peas must be horrid for the IL garden.  This year I planted Dakota and Serge, while last year I had Lincoln and Knight.  Same amount of space - 16 square feet.  Up to now I'd only gotten a tiny bit of peas - not more than 5oz of shelled peas at most.  For shame!  And the ones still on the vine didn't seem to be plumping up either.

I was intent on letting people know about this year's experiment and how it paled in comparison to last year's.  Ha!  How wrong I was! 

This morning, before blogging about it, I decided I had to harvest and then go back to last year's records in order to check my memory - and get the exact stats on last year's harvest.  This morning I harvested a lot actually:

One pound and 10 oz of peas in the shell, amounting to 10 oz of shelled peas!  Well, guess what, last year by June 25 I had only harvested 7 oz of shelled peas.  This year, by June 22, I had harvested about 15 oz!  Obviously my memory of last year's garden isn't to be relied on.  It's a good thing I keep detailed notes.  That's the value of record keeping - I've found that no matter how sure I am of remembering how good or bad the harvest was, I never really can remember.

Here is my setup: peach tea, scale, and basket of peas waiting to be shelled, with my handy harvest record notebook at the ready...

Last year I was finished with the pea harvest July 11 and I had harvested 1 pound and 5 oz total.  This year, it seems, Serge and Dakota are giving Lincoln and Knight a run for their money...we'll see how it actually turns out, using facts instead of my memory!

Dill experiment

We have so much dill this year.  And it's huge now, and flowering.  But there are no cucumbers yet for pickles, or haricots verts for dilly beans, or even carrots to pickle.  I'm worried the dill will be done by the time I'm ready to can all the year's pickles.  In an effort to avoid this potential disaster I've decided to experiment.  I picked a bunch of dill and am freezing it.  Dried dill doesn't work well in pickles - as my daughter found out, it turns the broth brown.  So this is a potential solution (besides using dill seeds, which I will apparently have plenty of).  I've got my fingers crossed!

Pressure

I don't know about you, but this is the time of year when I start to feel a slight bit of food-related pressure.  Harvest season is about to get into full swing, and I have social occasions planned.  I know this doesn't sound like something that would create stress (hmmm...poor thing, she socializes for goodness sakes!), but I want to be able to do everything.  For example, today I left work early to try to get some wild raspberries harvested before meeting friends for dinner.  When I got home there just wasn't the time to change clothes, water the melons, feed the birds, harvest our own raspberries and still have time to walk down the road for the wild berries before leaving for dinner.  And those berries need to be picked, after all, they provide us with our year's worth of jam. 

Tomorrow I'm going downtown on the train for a work meeting, then meeting more friends for a free concert in the park in Arlington Heights in the evening.  When am I going to get to the berries?  I love spending time with friends and family but there are plants to be checked on, weeding to do, and most importantly - the harvest to be picked.  It's the time of year when it seems like there's just not enough time in the day.  On the other hand, as I sit here typing, I  slowly realize that this pressure is nothing compared to high-tech organizational politics...so I think I'm getting a little too obsessive about all this.  Maybe the friends and family and farming go better together than I realize, it's the work that's getting in the way!  ;-) 

(By the way, if you're a folk music lover and you live in the area, you should come to Arlington Heights tomorrow evening - The Small Potatoes are playing and they are absolutely wonderful!  A bonus: they are our neighbors.) 

The planned garden

This blog is for my colleague and friend's husband, who was interested in my square foot planting method and all the produce I can get from a thoughtfully designed space.  Nate - I hope this is interesting!  While you've seen my garden plan here, I couldn't plant the garden exactly as I planned it.  Close.  But the self-seeded dill took over where I wanted to plant the peppers, and thus I had to move stuff around a bit.  The most important thing was to keep the good companion plants together - and not plant bad companions next to each other.

Here is what the garden looked like before I left for Florida:

On the nearer side of the garden, from right to left I have dill, basil, carrots, then peas, basil again, and onions.  On the far left, outside of the photo are the tomato plants.  On the far side (again right to left) are the haricots verts, next to eggplant, which are next to pepper plants and then the onions again. (Onions don't like legumes and so I needed to keep them away from this year's planting and at the same time I had to make sure they were in soil that I hadn't planted legumes in last year - apparently they really don't like peas and beans.)  And finally, once again, just outside the photo (but a you can see a bit) are the tomatoes on the far left.

Here's a picture of the entire garden (I take pictures from this angle all year long to record how the garden progresses):

In this picture you can see the tomatoes at this curvy end of the garden, along with nasturtiums which are interplanted with them.  They are great companion plants, and the nasturtium flowers make the tomato space look decorative.

This is the key: plant in the square foot style, and only put plants that like each other next to each other.  Generations of farmers have experimented with this for us - Louise Riotte, for example, who wrote "Carrots Love Tomatoes" - and I go by the rules they have come up with.  Why repeat the experiment when we can learn from others?  So far so good.

Self sufficiency doesn't mean austerity

This is one of the posts I had ready to put on the blog before I left. 

I've realized that some people think that because we're self-sufficient in veggies we must have relinquished our entire back yard to vegetable patches.  How wrong.

We have all kinds of beautiful landscaping, with flowers and trees and bushes.  It really doesn't take that much land for two people to grow all of their own veggies. Here in the foreground you see the rangpur lime and our new fountain - which the birds love!

Good intentions

You know what they say about good intentions.  While I don't think my own personal road to hell is paved with the good intentions to blog while on vacation, I still think of the saying when I get back home and haven't written anything in a number of days.  And I DO have good intentions - even before I leave I write a few posts and save them, thinking I'll just post them while I'm gone.  But something seems wrong about that.  I don't know what, exactly, but when I'm not in my garden, I simply can't blog about it.  I need to be looking out the window at it, or be in the basement with the grow lights, or have worked and sweated hard all day in it in order to blog about living sustainably and growing my own food. 

So I was in Florida for my birthday and my daughter's bridal shower.  It was wonderful - and I even made frittatas with her chicken's eggs, and her kale, basil and patty pan squash for the shower.  It was refreshing to be on vacation and still be eating out of a garden (my daughter's to boot). 

When I pulled into the driveway, Dianna and a friend of ours were out harvesting strawberries and raspberries.  They realized I was on my way home and I might be upset that no harvesting took place while I was gone.  It was too funny!  They were even weighing the harvest for me.  Now, I had been gone for almost 5 days, and you realize that it was in the last 30 minutes before I got back that a flurry of activity was taking place, apparently to keep me happy.  :-)  What they didn't know is that I had already resigned myself to zero harvest activity while I was gone, and I actually thought that my harvest on Wednesday of last week would be the last of the strawberries.  They got 5 oz! 

But now I'm back and after work today I watered the container plants, went wild raspberry harvesting, picked the last of the strawberries, and harvested lettuce and herbs for tomorrow's lunches.  While I love to go to Florida and see my mom, daughter, and granddaughter (I miss them terribly), it's still good to be home.

Onions that came up on their own

These were in the garden, growing from seed apparently, completely unexpected:

I love it when things just "show up" in the garden.  It's such a testament to life and the perseverance of nature.  Last year our neighbors had "volunteer" tiny white pumpkins grow out of their compost.  Our cilantro self-seeds all over the place, so does our dill, and this year we have volunteer lolla rossa lettuce in our broccoli and cabbage space, growing happily among the brassicas.  But this summer these two onions were the biggest surprise.  I've had lots of trouble with trying to grown onions in the past.  I planted from seed in the basement, they were spindly little things when I planted them in the ground, and then they grew only slightly larger than a marble.  But, in true mother nature survivalist form, one must have produced seed, because yesterday, in with the wild garlic in the herb garden, we found these two onions, both bigger than golf balls.  Once again, like the wild raspberries, no fussing no tending - and here they are, bigger than anything I've actually tried to grow!  Now that's too funny!

Grilled garlic scapes

You have to snip the scapes anyway - the beautiful "almost-flowers" of the garlic - in order for the heads to grow as large as possible.  Of course you use them.  They're garlic flavor on salads, in frittatas, etc.  But we found a wonderful new way to use them - grilled!  Here is a photo of the scapes prepared for the grill: lightly covered in olive oil with salt and pepper.  That's all you need.

2 minutes on the grill and you have a wonderful side dish.

Things that must be sacrificed

When you are trying to live as self-sufficiently as possible, you realize that certain things must be sacrificed. 

It's a Monday night and I am pulling into my driveway at 7:40pm.  I didn't take my walk today because I didn't want to get up this morning, and I didn't even walk the path at the office because my day was full of meetings and e-mail.  But because I have a 2 mile route and do a 16-17 minute mile I think I can quickly change, go, and be back while it's still light out.  Then I can pick the lettuce and herbs for tomorrow's lunches, and have a few minutes to walk around the yard at dusk to pull stray weeds and assess how the garden grows.

But as I walk from your garage to the house, I notice that the potted plants are really dry.  Even though I used the water from canning to water a few of them them last night.  And then I pass the strawberry patch - and there are a ton of ripe ones.  Some of them are quite large.  "Oh man, they really need to be picked," I think to myself, and then realize that there are probably raspberries in the back yard that should be picked as well.  I look up and notice that the birds need to be fed (they eat me out of house and home); then there's still that salad harvest for lunches tomorrow...

At this point, I know what is going to be sacrificed.  It's no longer even an option.  I will not be taking my walk today.

Worse - I realize that I have a lot to do, and very little time to do it in.  So, still in my work clothes, work shoes, jewelry etc. I get busy.  First, it's been so hot and dry that it's not only the potted plants that need water, but the vegetable beds as well, so I turn on the sprinkler.  While that's going, I start with the raspberries because I know there aren't many out there and it will be quick.  Then I move on to the strawberries.  The strawberries are actually a bit of a pain to harvest because I have to undo the bird netting, fluff the leaves and look hard for berries hiding close to the ground, and then re-seal the bird netting barrier.  I collect a half pound of strawberries; so far so good.

The next step is to feed the birds - they are completely out of food and MUST be starving! ;-)  Then I move on to collecting the lettuce and herbs and edible flowers.  The potted plants still need watering so that's next, but the sun is going down and I noted that the squash bed is really dry when I was getting the chives.  So I move the sprinkler and go inside to fill the watering can.  After about 10 trips with the watering can, in and out, the plants in pots are watered, and I can begin to relax.  The outdoor work is done.  It's 8:50.  I stand on the patio for the last 15 minutes of twilight, watching as the garden fades into the night and a spider builds its web on the solar light.  Then I turn off the sprinkler and go inside.

Yes, some things need to be sacrificed.  They're not the important things.  That's what the night whispered to me as I smiled and climbed the stairs to the house.

Canning class photos

What a wonderful day!  We took a tour of the house and garden, then harvested the mint:

Stirred...

And stirred...

And then we finished it up with a toast and high-five when the jars sealed!

The jelly didn't set up the way it should - but it's marinade so that's not the end of the earth.  Still I feel bad...I wanted them to take home the very best of the best.  Was the pectin too old?  I didn't buy new pectin, and had this since last year maybe??  Very good lesson for me!  Buy pectin only as needed - not ahead.  But none-the-less, what a fun day!  I am blessed to have such great people in my life!

Canning class today

Today I will be teaching a couple of friends from work how to can.  We are making mint jelly.  For pictures of mint jelly, how to make it, and a great pork recipe using it, see my previous post here.  It should be great fun. I will post pictures of it after we're done.

Wild raspberry harvesting

About a block down the street from us there starts some significant stands of wild raspberries.  They go on for a half mile down the road, on both sides of the street, interrupted sporadically by various city properties maintained in a well-groomed, suburban fashion (thus devoid of raspberry bushes).  This is the path I walk each day as I try to get my 2 miles of exercise in, so I monitor the ripening berries closely.  Once the berries begin to ripen it's time to start the harvest.  We, and our neighbor Lisa, begin daily forays down the street, baskets in hand, laughing and exclaiming at the prospect.  I wonder what people who drive by think, three women walking down the street, swinging their wicker baskets as if they are little red riding hood off to the forest.  Later all they see are our butts sticking out of the bushes, or one of us will pop out of the bushes onto the parkway in a leap to avoid more scratches.  I laugh thinking about the expressions of passers-by.

Dianna calls it "bleeding for berries" because we don't dress in shoes, long sleeves and long pants.  On the contrary, it's hot out so we are usually in sandals, shorts and tank tops.  Of course that means lots of gashes from the thorns, but we look forward to it every year.

We collect daily because this is our chance to collect enough berries for jams and jellies that will last us all year long.  Now, truth be told, Dianna and I don't eat that much jam or jelly - we are not really breakfast people and don't eat a lot of sweets so it wouldn't be hard to collect enough for us.  But Lisa has two teenage boys, and they eat a ton of jam.  Every year we get enough.  We can together and split the results.  Dianna and I give most of ours as gifts.

I don't know why, but this summer ritual is particularly close to my heart.  It is true sustainability.  We pay attention to what is happening in the wild,  and mother earth provides - without us fussing, weeding, pruning, watering...it's there if we just just look for it and take advantage of it.  We don't harm the plants and we always leave some berries behind, and the relationship is strengthened.  This is our connected roots.

Rule Number 2

Rule number 2 for self-sustainable living: Re-use freezer bags.  With all the freezing we do to put up food during the summer, we use a LOT of freezer bags.  When we're using the frozen goods up during the winter it's super simple to just flip them inside-out, wash with soap and water and let dry.  Roll them up and put them back in the pantry for the spring and summer. 

I have to admit that this is not my favorite task - I find it irritating and tedious (if, like I said, simple).  But I've gotten 3 years out of most bags, and all of them make 2 years, and it saves money and the environment.  I don't use tupperware to freeze whole or chopped veggies or herb cubes because I try to get as much air out of package as possible before storing - freezer bags just work the best for this. 

Photographer

So a local photographer got in touch with me after seeing the Connected Roots blog.  We've been in touch and he may come over this afternoon to see the garden and take some pics!  If the schedules work out, look for some professional pics up here soon!

Strawberry harvest

I am so excited!  This year is the best year for my strawberry patch.  It's just a row, about a foot wide and 12 or so feet long between the patio and the garage sidewalk, but I've already harvested almost a pound and a half of strawberries!  We've been eating fresh berries, but also I've been on a mission to freeze enough strawberries for strawberry rhubarb tartlets this winter, and some other winter enjoyment.  I think I have about a pound frozen now, so we will probably just eat the rest of the strawberries fresh.  I've never had enough to save before, this is the third year so it looks like it takes about that long before the production is really good.

Here's a photo of the 1/2 pound I harvested today - going into a freezer bag:

Of course it's still not enough production to start to think I can rely on my own fruit all year long like I rely on my veggies for self-sufficiency, but it's a start!

Tiny squash trying to fruit early

If this is any indication, we will have a bountiful summer and fall of squash:

The top is summer ball pumpkin, the bottom is yellow crookneck.  But there are tiny black beauty zucchini, lungo bianco zucchini, cocozelle zucchini, buttercup squash and spaghetti squash.  Not to say that these will actually grow large, often they fall off the vine well before maturity, but man, give them credit for trying this year!

Late spring evening

So tonight I got home late from work - it was 7 pm.  I took a walk, and then, as usual, toured around the garden.  I weeded a bit, whatever I saw and could easily reach, and harvested a few strawberries and peas.  I noticed that my currants are being eaten.  Friday they were thick, this weekend a bit less so, and today I knew they were definitely being devoured by something.  So I took a few minutes and put bird netting around the currant bush. 

Then I sat down in the twilight on the porch with a glass of wine.

The hummingbird came to the window feeder again, and a robin was rooting around in our garage gutter looking for the last of the day's meals.  Mamma sparrow swooped down to the birdhouse to tuck her babies in.  The squirrels and rabbits and chipmunks were already in their dens, but I was looking up - waiting for Sammy the bat to start his/her swooping into the garden for mosquitoes.  This is late spring life at Connected Roots Garden, and I'm so glad I come home to that.

Garlic scape frittata: recipe for the grill

I hate being indoors when it's nice outside and so I'm constantly looking for ways to make lunches and dinners on the grill.  Last night I made a great frittata recipe and cooked it on the grill as an experiment.  It worked!  Awesome!  So I thought I'd share; here's the photo, and the recipe and instructions follow:

Garlic Scape Fritatta
You will need 4-8 ceramic or metal ramekins for cooking on the grill

Ingredients:
8 or so fresh garlic scapes
1 handful of last year's frozen haricots verts, thawed
1 handful of last year's frozen summer squash, thawed
6 eggs
1 cube of frozen sage pesto, thawed
1 cube of frozen fines herbes (parsley and tarragon mostly) pesto, thawed
1 cube of frozen basil pesto, thawed
2 heaping tablespoons cottage cheese
grated sharp white cheddar (to taste)
 A little olive oil

Chop the garlic scapes.  In a tiny bit of olive oil saute the scapes, and while they are cooking chop the beans and squash.  Add them to the scapes and continue to saute.  In the meantime scramble the eggs, add cottage cheese and herb cubes and whisk vigorously.  Take the veggies off the heat and let cool slightly before adding them to the egg mixture.  Mix in veggies and cheddar cheese.  That's it!  Fill the ramekins (you can lightly grease them if you think the frittata will stick) about 1/3 the way to the top.  I used 6 ramekins, 4 were quite small and the other 2 were a bit larger. 

Now you can go outside!  Heat the grill to 350 and put the ramekins directly on the grate.  Check often  and look for the frittata to be puffy and when you touch the center with your finger it's solid.  I cut into one of mine just to make sure the center was done - I don't like undercooked eggs.

We ate ours as veggie sandwiches; they turn out the perfect size for an english muffins.

Rule number 1

Connected Roots rule number 1 for living the sustainable lifestyle: Never, ever, put your fresh veggies in the refrigerator.

Once you are harvesting, trust me, you will have something ready to eat tomorrow, so why not just pick it when you're ready for it.  Well, you say, I often have 4 zucchini ready at the same time, or so many tomatoes or beans that are ripe and need to be picked that I can't eat them all that night.  Happens to me all the time.  We eat all we want fresh, then I put up the rest.

Sometimes I only have a handful of beans that we didn't eat that night - but it only takes 5 minutes to boil water, blanch them, dry them and put them in a freezer bag.  Pop them into the freezer and you've started your preparations for winter.  It's so satisfying to think, in the midst of summer, that you are already preparing for the winter.  Tomatoes: core and freeze.  Even if it's just one extra.  Tomorrow another 5 will be ready to pick and maybe you'll freeze 2.  Keep doing this every day and by the end of the summer you will have enough frozen tomatoes to defrost and make sauce.  Do you know how much time it takes to core a tomato? 5 seconds.  Another 5 to put it in a bag and into the freezer.  In other words it doesn't take time out of your evening to do this every night, it's simple.  Zucchini is similar, but it takes a bit longer because I chop mine into pieces then blanch, dry and freeze.  This year I'm going to grate zucchini, measure it, freeze it in 2 cup measurements and have it on hand during the winter for soups, stir frys and zucchini bread.  I've heard you don't have to blanch it if you freeze it this way.

Here's a handful of beans I put by last year - I'm going to use them tonight in my garlic scape frittata.  We're not getting beans yet, so this second to the last bag will come in handy, and it's just the right amount.

The main thing to remember - no veggies in the fridge, put them in your mouth or in a freezer bag.

Pea harvest

Today I'm working from home so I could wander out in the garden and collect lunch.  The all-day rain yesterday meant a lot of growth, and of course a harvest of peas waiting on the vine.  I got 5 oz unshelled:

Part went on my salad, part will soon be frozen for winter consumption.  There won't be many, but it will be a sweet mini-treat in the depths of winter.

Hummingbird visitor

A puffy little hummingbird - cold in the evening air, visiting our window feeder.  Taken about 45 minutes ago.  Had to share.

47 degrees at the end of May!

Wow - this is how we roll apparently...I actually had to turn on the heat when I got home this evening.  Poor Sassafrass the cat, she was almost shivering.  The temperature will go up tomorrow and we got an entire day of much needed rain, but still. 

A week off

So I took the last week off - everything!  I just needed a break.  A week off work, a week off blogging...the only thing that didn't stop was the gardening.  We mostly worked on the flower garden though.  We now have additional dianthus, a lupine, two new rose bushes and various other plants and alterations in the front and back beds.

Some changes to the fruit garden include moving one blueberry that wasn't doing great (my daughter tells me I need to plant them in pine bark, not with pine bark, but in pine bark, with little to no soil).  I didn't do that - just moved it - so we'll see how that goes.  It looks pretty happy so far.  We also moved the blackberry and watched as the squirrels devastated our bounty of peaches.  We had over 20 peaches on the tree and 3 are left.  Oh well.  Two bunnies have also invaded our yard, tiny cute ones.  One night as we watched the bunnies bounce about, the hummingbird and other birds flitting around, and a butterfly landing between us, Dianna exclaimed "I feel like I'm in a Disney movie!"  :-)  It was awesome.

Bean plants coming up

The bean plants are coming up now.  I know that 252 plants of bush beans seem daunting to many, but this is what ensures we will have enough for winter.  I'm happy they're already coming up, and of course not all of them will make it, but they will provide for us summer through winter into the spring. I just pick beans every day once they start producing, and what we don't eat fresh I blanch for 2 minutes and freeze.  It takes all of 10 minutes.  I think haricots verts are the staple of self-sufficient vegetable growing.

 I find myself counting the bags of beans we have left in the freezer, crossing my fingers that we will have enough until the spring veggies come into their own - and we will.  The second year of self-sufficiency in veggies.  And in the meantime I'm dreaming of eating them fresh, cooking them on the summer grill, and freezing more for next winter's bounty.

Mint jelly pork recipe

The best pork recipe I have is made with my homemade mint jelly.  And I have a ton of pork recipes, including a wonderful one for bourbon-brown sugar ribs.  But this impresses even the most discerning palate, and it's super easy once you have the mint jelly on hand.  For a package of about 8 country ribs you will need an entire 8oz jar of mint jelly.

Spread a little less than a half jar of mint jelly onto the bottom of a glass roasting pan.  Sprinkle with cumin and Chinese five spice.  Place ribs onto jelly and spice mixture.  Spread most of the rest of the mint jelly onto the ribs (reserving only a small portion to use as a side condiment after grilling).  Sprinkle with cumin and Chinese five spice.  Marinate for at least an hour, spreading the mint and spice mixture onto the sides of the ribs.  Grill until just barely done - so the pork does not get dry.  Serve with a little mint jelly on the side.

This is a wonderful meal, and for it you will need to can the mint jelly.  It's easy, fairly fast, and beautiful once you're done.

Here's the recipe I use from Ball:
1 1/2 cups firmly packed mint leaves
2 1/4 cups water
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 pouch liquid pectin

(makes 4 8oz jars of mint jelly)

Prepare jars and lids
Rinse and chop mint leaves
In a large stainless steel sauce pan combine mint leaves and water, bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then remove from heat, cover and let steep for 10 minutes
Pour liquid through a cheese-cloth lined sieve, measuring out 1 3/4 cups
In a large stainless sauce pan combine mint liquid, sugar and lemon juice
Bring to a full rolling boil over high heat - stirring constantly
Once you cannot stir the boil down, blend in liquid pectin and boil hard for 1 minute (again stirring constantly)
Remove from heat, skim off foam and add to jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace
Wipe rim, put on lid and screw on band to finger tip tight
Put jars in canner, making sure they are covered by at least 1 inch water and process for 10 minutes
Turn off heat, uncover, and let sit for 5 minutes before removing jars

See "The Complete Book of Home Preserving" by Ball (pp. 10-11) for more details.  I keep mint jelly on hand at all times for a quick and easy spontaneous gourmet meal.  

Mother's Day Melon Garden

Mother's day weekend involved creating a new garden - for melons.  Haogen, Minnesota Midget, and Blenheim.  We had two friends over to help us dig the grass out from around our cherry tree.  It only took an hour for the four of us, and we had a new garden area with 5 melon plants.

The cherry tree is in the front yard, far away from the squash in the back.  I've read that melons and squash can interpollinate and make the melons taste more like squash, so I wanted to make sure they weren't planted close to each other.  This might be a bit overkill, but it was a place that we could enlarge and still have it look like intentional landscaping.  It's the first year for melons, and they are so small despite starting them in the basement, that I don't know how this will work, but I have my fingers crossed. 

Spring salads once again

Finally, salads are looking pretty again.  The spring inclusion of radishes, petals from dianthus flowers and johnny jump ups makes the salads a joy to look at.  Today's dinner salad included spinach and tatsoi leaves as well:

The side salad a couple of days ago had the radishes:

I love it when my food is as appetizing to the eye as it is to the palate.  Being self-sufficient and sustainable doesn't mean being plain!

Pickled radishes

Last evening I came home and for the first time realized that we had more radishes than we could eat.  It was almost 7pm, and we still wanted to grill dinner, but I knew I wanted to harvest the radishes and pickle them.  So after dinner that's what I did.  I figured I had enough for two 8oz jars.  After cleaning and cutting off the tops I had 11oz of radishes.

I used 3 cups white vinegar, 1 cup water and 1/4 cup salt.  Brought that to a boil and then put fresh dill and garlic in the processed jars, then packed them with the sliced radishes.  I ladled the boiling water, vinegar and salt liquid into the jars, left 1/2 inch head space, and processed for 10 minutes.  I don't know how they will taste, but they look beautiful:

The second jar sealed, with that wonderful *pop*, during The Colbert Report.  Working full time and making sure we're self-sufficient does make for a long day, but it's so worth it.  I know it's only 2 jars, and it's not even officially spring yet, but I'm excited to have started storing the harvest for winter.  There's something special about putting food up that I can't quite describe.

International permaculture day and my daughter

Today my daughter hosted an international permaculture day at her urban homestead in Tampa FL.  She had guest speakers, a pot luck, and about 50 people came.  She is amazing.  I am so proud of her.  I wish I could have been there!

The garden is in!

Today was all about the garden, and getting everything planted.  A solid day of planting, but it's all in - including the extremely small peppers.  I decided to plant them despite their size because I could "fence" them in with bird netting and keep the squirrels and chipmunks from trampling on them, and they could get a chance to grow in the warmer air.  We did a great job - with time for pizza on the grill!

We planted 12 peppers and 8 eggplants:

8 celery, scattered amongst the self-seeded dill that took up my originally planned pepper location:

19 tomatoes, most in the garden:

But some in pots:

8 summer squash plants, 4 winter squash plants, and 2 tomatillos in the new squash garden:

Also, 28 square feet of haricots verts - 9 plants per square foot, and finally interspersed around the garden - 13 basil plants and 10 nasturtiums.  I'm hoping this will be a very good year.

Time to plant

So I definitely could have planted last weekend, but just as I was talking about getting the tomato cages down on Sunday it started to rain.  This week was another busy week at work and so I have only had time to turn on and off the grow lights and pet the tomatoes, no time to plant after work.  So tomorrow is the day.  I expect this weekend to be garden filled: 

The strawberries are blooming and thus need to be covered with bird netting or the chipmunks will eat them all.

The baby bok-choi is bolting (one of them) so I need to pick the others and cook them (maybe grill with a dash of balsamic vinegar?).

I've already picked and eaten over a half pound of radishes (put on salads and sandwiches) and will have to pick more...

...not to mention the mint that needs to be picked and made into mint jelly...

But most important of all - planting!  This weekend everything will go out except maybe the pepper plants.  Tomatoes, squash, melons, nasturtiums, eggplant, tomatillos - all of it.  And I'll direct seed the beans (french filet of course, yellow and green).  I will post pictures, I am so happy to be planting finally!

Rhubarb in syrup

So the second harvest this spring is rhubarb.  Last year we used it in raspberry jam.  This year we thought there was enough to make a rhubarb something or other all by itself.  Our neighbor Lisa combined her rhubarb harvest with ours, and we had 8 cups of sliced rhubarb.  Nice.  We were thinking 4 pint jars of rhubarb in syrup.  We stirred 2 cups of sugar into the 8 cups of rhubarb.  Then refrigerated overnight.  It's the easiest canning we have done - bring to a boil and put in the jars.  Process for 15 minutes.  It turned out beautiful.

But we only got 2 pint jars.  Hmmmm.  It's very tasty, but one jar per 4 cups of sliced rhubarb - I'm not sure it's the best use of our crop.  We instantly decided to grow more rhubarb - this year we'll plant a couple more plants and have rhubarb in syrup without regretting what else we could have done with the harvest.

Radish sandwich

My radish sandwich this weekend was totally delicious - two open-faced halves.  And easy breezy.  One baby bagel.  Cream cheese with fresh chopped chives and dried lemon thyme mixed in.  Sliced radishes thick on top.  Black Hiwa Kai lava sea salt sprinkled lightly on top.  A fantastically refreshing light meal!

Radish types and tastes

Radishes are the first crop of spring, and while I've harvested 6-7 of them already (and put them on salads), this evening I thought I had enough for picking and pickling.  I've been itching to pickle radishes - I feel kind of like Bryce and Lisa on Portlandia (watch here): I'm always looking for things to pickle (OK, not bandages etc.) :-).  But I do love veggie pickles like pickled green beans and pickled carrots and even pickled green tomatoes, which I remember my grandmother making.  So I was excited that I saw so many radish tops above the ground, seemingly ready to harvest and pickle.

Well, I was wrong about how many were ready.  I was fooled.  Most were very small and not quite ready.  I ended up with 1/2 pound (weighed with tops), and even some that I harvested were smaller than was appropriate.  But I had them so I needed to decide what to do with them.  The first thing was a taste test.  I harvested early scarlet globe, pink beauty, plum purple, and french breakfast (in order in the photo):

It's the first time I've taste-tested radishes.  I think the French breakfast has the most typical radish taste - a bit of a bite.  Both pink beauty and scarlet globe are mild, with the scarlet globe a little more "radish-like" than the pink beauty.  The plum purple actually seems to have a bit of a nutty flavor!  It was so fun to taste the difference between them!

So now I have enough radishes for a radish salad, or a radish sandwich (see Deborah Madison's cookbook - Local Flavors), but what to do with the tops?  Well, they are edible so I decided to make radish pesto.  I am using the leaves and roots, with olive oil and garlic.  Put them in your food processor with as little oil as possible, just enough to make a paste.  Then pack this into ice cube trays and freeze.  I don't put in the cheese because it doesn't freeze well (you can add it later if desired) and I don't put in nuts because the pesto is more versatile without them.  I will try using this pesto for sandwich spread in the summer when I make grilled veggie and cheese sandwiches.

Using green tomato salsa

We are almost out of green tomato salsa!  We only have 3 jars left - and one of those is open already.  We definitely need to make more next year.  Last winter we didn't use nearly as much of the salsa, but I think it's because we weren't being creative with how we used it.  This year, we used it for nachos, quesadillas, vegetable medleys, with eggs, etc.  It's not just for dip with chips.

Squash plants going crazy

These guys are big and beautiful, they are spaghetti squash.

The other types are smaller, but still doing great.  Everything from white, yellow and green patty pans to zucchini to summer ball pumpkins:

Bushy basil lessons

I know that you have to snip off the tops of basil in order to make it bush out.  But I only learned last year how early you have to snip off those tops!  Apparently if you snip off the second set of true leaves the plant really starts bushing out.  These are Thai Basil plants - and they are sprouting lots more leaves.  Now I'll have to figure out when to snip off these sprouts to promote more growth and bushiness.

I've done the same snipping on my lettuce leaf basil, emily basil, and genovese basil.  They're a little slower, but they look like they're reacting the same way.

Starting the spring harvest

Well, it's been a long long time since I've blogged.  Between work, family, and getting ready for the spring planting I just haven't found the time.  I must put up pictures of the squash plants, which are going crazy, and the basil and everything else I've had to replant into larger pots while they wait to go into the garden.  Not to mention the 52 lettuce plants I planted outside already.  But today I will post a picture of the first spring vegetable harvest.  While we have been harvesting herbs for a while now, radishes are the first spring veggies to be ready.  These were put on salad:

I never thought I liked radishes until last year when I planted some seeds given to me by my daughter.  I enjoyed them so much that I bought 9 different types of heirloom radishes.  The fall harvest didn't go well at all - a single daikon was all I got.  But so far this spring it's looking pretty good.  I mix the seeds and just sprinkle on top of the ground, so I don't know what these guys are for sure, but they look like french breakfast.  And they were very tasty!

Petting the tomatoes

Today I transplanted the tomatoes into larger pots.  They are doing so good this year!  And the best part is petting them...really.  According to the books I've read, this increases a hormone in the plant that produces stockier stems (according to the internet it's the Thigmo response).  So every day I pet them twice - when I turn on the lights in the morning and when I turn off the lights at night.  I stand there and talk to them and pet them and I imagine that they're smiling and happy.  Yes, I'm a hippie.

It's our energy - we are connected.  Not just in Connected Roots Garden - we are all connected.

Mother Earth expels our trash

One thing that I've noticed since creating vegetable garden spaces is that the ground is constantly serving up some new piece of trash, deposited years ago, but only now coming to the surface.  I see it as Mother Earth gradually getting rid of all the yucky non-organic things that we humans have tried to bury within her.  When I get my stitches during skin cancer surgeries this sometimes happens - an internal stitch will be pushed up and exposed, as if my body is saying - "no, I don't like this in me."  Mother earth is doing the same with our trash.  Good for her.  Here's my evidence:

Now, I walk my garden every day - literally every day (unless it's raining hard), so I can pull weeds before they take over, replant any plants that the squirrels dig up, etc.  And I have loosened the soil many times using the broadfork, smoothing the soil with a rake, and my hands.  I've planted for multiple seasons (always by hand).  Still, every other day or so I look down and there's some piece of glass, or an unidentifiable object of some sort, laying on the top of the ground.  It wasn't there yesterday or the day before, but today it's sitting right on top of the ground.  It is clearly mother earth expelling trash she doesn't want buried inside of her.  Working it up to the surface so I can find it and take it away.  Truly amazing.  But I throw it in the trash - which goes into a landfill.  It's just being buried back into mother earth somewhere else.  Disturbing.

Nasturtiums

Last year my nasturtiums had a hard time coming up.  It was too cold in the basement, it was such a long and cold winter.  This year is completely different - the nasturtiums are growing great!

I love the spicy leaves and the touch of sweet in the spicy flowers.  And the flowers are so beautiful on top of every kind of dish - they make it.  I even freeze the leaves in the fall, and use them all winter long (no blanching necessary).  In fact, dinner tonight is quesadillas with home-made green tomato salsa and nasturtium leaves.  Nice.