Mistress Mary quite contrary...

The best part of gardening is gathering in the harvest. I love the shallots and garlic especially. The butter lettuce and arugula are the best I've ever tasted. Lovely little carrots and the ubiquitous zucchini.

Peter piper picked a peck of pickles

My lemon cucumbers are planted in a raised bed. They are cascading over the 5 foot trellis. Beautiful ladies, green, almost perfect with gorgeous yellowy fruit.The picklers... well not so pretty but producing. At first just a few curly, crazy, cukes good for nothing but a quick bite or two with a dash of sea salt. But today was the day. 3 decent sized picklers and 4 lemon cukes.

I harvested a single, grumpy looking, white wonder cuke and there was just enough.

Pickle time!!!!

For those of you who do not like pickles, I pity you. I opened up the jar of pickling spice and had a few moments of sweet, spicy heaven. Quickly I gathered the jars, the vinegar, garlic and onion harvested from the garden. I could hardly contain myself. Should I can them in a hot water bath and keep them on the shelf for a few weeks before eating them? Nope. This first batch was destined for a brief refrigerator existence, with near instant salivatory gratification.

15 minutes after making the bread and butter pickles, I was fishing in the hot jar and slipping a few beauties between slices of ham, cheese and whole wheat bread. No decent sandwich is complete without homemade pickles. If the juice is good enough, you don't even need to blot the pickles before slapping them on a sandwich. The juice is that good. I could die happy with a half eaten ham sandwich in my fist as long as a good pickle was in attendance. Insert sigh of contentedness here.

Someday I'll be perfect...

Someday I'll be the perfect gardener. I'll be able to time the harvest of my vegetables so I can eat the perfect salad with all it's individual parts harvested at the same time. Until that perfect time comes I'll just have settle. I can have butter lettuce, peas, carrots, arugula and onion from my garden, throw in a few things from the store, and voila... almost perfect salad.

My garden is coming to the end of the spring vegetables I'm on the last of the peas and lettuce and the first of the zucchini and green beans. The carrots are small but yummy. I've been too impatient to let them get any bigger.

I love my little baby peas in a pod. I like to zip them open and eat them in the garden as I'm watering. It's luck alone that these babies made it to the bowl.

My tomato plants are huge. Tons of flowers, a few black crim tomatoes forming, lots of green cherry tomatoes and noth'n else. Hmmm. I'm sure they will come around. (Threats of being tossed into the fiery furnace should do the trick.)

This morning I discovered a new love. Garlic blossoms. Also known as scapes. The scapes form when garlic is just about ready for harvest. A long green stem grows from the center of the leaves. It can have a couple of flirty curls/loops to it before ending in the blossom. The whole stem and unopened flower head is edible.


Boy howdy is it edible. I made a breakfast omelet with the scapes and zucchini.

Mellow, roasted garlicky goodness. Topped with a little fresh basil and swiss cheese.

Would sour cream be over the the top? Since I didn't have any I guess we'll never know.

Chard Tacos?... Oh yes I did!

I asked my self, self what should I do with a gorgeous bunch of neon lights chard. So I googled, "What to make with chard". I found a recipe on Martha Stewart for tacos with garlicky Mexican greens. Hmmm, sounds intriguing. The original recipe was meatless and called for feta cheese. My carnivorous, cheese nazi wasn't going for it, so I added ground beef and stuck with less stinky shredded Mexican style cheese.

Garlicky Greens

12 oz of chard
salt
1 tablespoon of oil
1 diced onion
4 cloves of garlic finely chopped

Boil the chard in salted water for 1 to 2 minutes.
Drain the chard and let cool on a plate. Heat oil on medium and saute onion for 10 minutes until golden brown. Add garlic and saute another minute. Chop up the chard and saute with onion and garlic for another 1 to 2 minutes.


Outstanding colors and texture and tasted great by itself. I piled it on warm corn tortillas with all my favorite taco fixings. Homemade roasted tomatillo salsa sealed the deal on a great meal.

Oatmeal, fresh strawberries, raw milk...ecstasy

My strawberry patch is yielding about a handful of strawberries every other day. Not enough for much jam but enough to add to a salad, make a strawberry milk shake or throw some in my oatmeal. A lovely little addition that adds zip to a simple meal. Plenty of berries never make it out of the garden. It's too hard to resist popping a couple in your mouth as you go about gardening duties.
I have recently discovered that my lactose intolerance is completely cured by consuming raw, unpasteurized milk. I had not had a glass of milk with my cookies or milk with my cereal in years. Ice cream was a lost lover, achingly missed but avoided like, well, a literal case of the runs. After reading "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon, I decided to give raw milk a try. I read all the warnings from the USDA et al but hey, you only live once. Giving up ice cream and cookies and milk for the rest of my life seemed like too high a price. Quality of life issue!!! I've been consuming raw milk products for about 3 weeks now. Voila! A new lease on milk drinking life.
I'm not sure if I want to join the raw milk evangelists. There are genuinely good reasons that milk is pasteurized. E coli, listeria etc. For me personally, I think the benefits out weigh the risks. I just love raw milk with my strawberries.
What do you think?
For more on the raw milk debate click here:

Against raw milk http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/01/raw-milk-debate-helping-parents-wade.html

Raw milk compromise http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2010/04/the-raw-milk-debate-dont-have-a-cow/38730/

In favor of raw milk http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/index.html

Lan and Moiraine, Save us from The Blight!

Describe a land that is foul and evil smelling. Where green plants yellow and the beautiful fruit rots and becomes a malodorous mushy mess. No, I'm not writing about "The Wheel of Time" (book 14 not coming out until 2012, grrrr). I'm talking about my own personal potato famine. The unusually cool, wet, spring has spread the dreaded fungus, phytophthora, to my yukon gold potatoes. A late frost killed the top growth of these plants but they came right back. Then black spots appeared on the leaves. This is my first year growing potatoes so at first I thought it was more damage from frost. But nooo... some of the plants started to yellow. I pulled one of the offending specimens and the potatoes were still good. We had fried potatoes. Man were they yummy.

So I decided to wait for the other plants to go ahead and keel over in order to maximize my harvest. Bad girl, no, no, no! I pulled a particularly sorry plant and the stinky, slimy, disgusting mess was amazing. Truly blighted instead of truly scrumptious. (Thank you Robert Jordan, I now know what "the blight" is all about.) Next, I tried a fungicide... all to no avail. Insert sigh of utter despair here. My new plan is to pull the plants in between beginning to yellow and rotten slimy stinky mess. Good Plan!
I pulled 3 plants today and harvested the potatoes. They are quite lovely. The green parts are going into the green waste. I don't want to infect my compost with blight. Looks like salad and fried potatoes for lunch. Muy delicioso, Oishi desu, hao chyr, yum.

Backyard Orchard Culture

My new favorite way to grow fruit trees is with the backyard orchard culture method. You can maximize your space by planting three or four trees close together and keeping them pruned small. When you plant several varieties of fruit with different ripening times you can stretch out the harvesting time. Instead of two or three weeks of harvesting peaches, you can harvest peaches for six to eight weeks. The trees are cross-pollinated more effectively and you get more consistent production.


I have three varieties of peaches planted in one raised box. (I put them in the raised box because my yard has a problem with drainage.) There is an Elberta, a Babcock and a Hale Haven. I can't wait to harvest peaches. I keep thinking of homemade vanilla ice cream, fresh sliced peaches and hot fudge poured on top. If you haven't tried it, you haven't lived---groans of immense pleasure abound.

Last week when I was shopping at Whole Foods, they had a plant display in front of the store. Local trees for $7.99 each!!! A total steal. I bought cherry trees, 2 Rainiers and a Lapin. The Lapin is self pollinating and is also a good pollinator for the Rainiers. It will be a few years before they will set fruit but it's well worth the wait. There might be a cherry pie in my husband's future.

If you are interested in learning more about backyard orchard culture click here.
http://www.davewilson.com/homegrown/BOC_explained.html

1st Jar of the Season

We have been eating our strawberries, a few at a time, for a couple of weeks. Today was my first real harvest of berries. About 12 ounces, nearly a pound of berries in one day. Woohoo. I made my first jar of preserves of the season.

12 ounces of berries make about one cup of crushed berries.
1 cup of sugar
1/8 cup of lemon juice
Boil until reaches about 220 degrees F or until desired thickness.

I didn't bother processing the jar in a hot water bath. I plan on making a pbj sandwich for lunch and then pouring the strawberry preserves on vanilla ice cream for dessert... yummy! Survival prospects for 1st jar of strawberry preserves- one very sweet, delicious second.

Today's Harvest

The artichokes are still producing. Butter lettuce and a bouquet of cherry belle radish will make the basis for tonight's salad. The radish seed packet listed 22 days from planting to harvest. We started harvesting at 25 days. I also collected about 12 ounces of strawberries- just enough for a small jar of jam.

Modest Garden Harvest From May 12, 2011

Several radishes and some lettuce were harvested from our garden a few days ago. We made a tasty salad for supper from these.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!

For all of us who mother, whether we are called auntie, grandma, mom, sis, or stepmom.

Motherhood

They smell of green.
The beauty of a breeze in their eyes.
From their toes and the toss of crisp curls
Sunshine invades our souls.

They taste of purple.
They are the heirs that breathe
The mysteries of humanity's story.
Directions toward divinity.

Today's Harvest

Marinated rib eye , asparagus and artichokes for dinner. Will I get tired of artichokes before the plants get tired of producing?

Sweet potato slipping

Sweet potato slipping sounds like a 1950's dance move. It's actually a fun way to propagate sweet potatoes. I took a sweet potato from my cupboard that had been shriveling and growing sprouts. I cut off the top third and stuck it in a canning jar with water, supporting the potato with tooth picks. I threw in a little bit of fertilizer. Now I'm just watching the sprouts grow. After the sprouts grow into little plants you gently twist them off the potato and then put them into a glass of water and let roots develop. Then you plant them in the ground. Hill them up a bit or plant them in an old tire. Let them grow all summer and dig them up before the frost hits in the fall. Sweet potatoes store well if they are unbruised and are kept at 60F. Sweet potato plants are heat lovers, they can be planted in our area through June. I can't wait to get them in the ground.

On a spring evening in May, grilled artichokes are divine. Cut in half, scoop out the choke, chop off the top third and trim any stems that are prickly. Peel the outer part of the the stem and pull off any loose leaves. Thoroughly clean (home grown artichokes attract aphids and ants like crazy). If desired, dip in lemon water to keep from browning. Steam for 15 minutes or until the stem is easily pierced with a fork. Brush with garlic infused olive oil and sprinkle a little salt. Grill on the barbecue for 10 minutes or so on the lowest setting. Magnificent! The grilling gives the artichokes a smokey undertone that blends well with the nutty flavor. In my book garlic takes any vegetable to a higher plane. I sprinkled my artichoke heart with a little Parmesan (absolutely verboten to my husband the cheese Nazi). I have to admit its great even without the cheese.

Enjoy these pics

Today's harvest. One small head of red leaf lettuce. It appeared in the beets we planted last fall. A volunteer from last years crop . Two giant purple artichokes and four small radishes. We ate a small salad for breakfast and will eat the artichokes for dinner (or supper if your from the midwest like my husband). Its the first full week of good weather. Will be over 70F all week and today should reach 90F. I stepped into the garden expecting to harvest a dozen strawberries that I've had my eye on for days. I figured the last few days of warm weather would sweeten them up and we could eat them for breakfast. Instead I found complete and utter carnage in the strawberry patch. Pillaged by birds!!! All that was left of the ripest berries were stems and hollowed out berry carcasses. We put some pea netting over the patch to protect them from further raids. I might need to purchase a BB gun and a laser sight.