tomatoes

We got those.
Romas-

And Green Zebra.

Elsewhere, we are suffering a lack of squash and zucchini after a severe vine borer attack. We uprooted all the plants and killed all the larvae we found. Hopefully we got them all, and next year we will grow our squash under row covers until the threat of aerial attack has passed.

Also steadily rolling in: cucumbers and string beans. And oh, there's lots of taters to dig.

more beans, please!

I wanted to mention a new book I picked up recently called Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman. Andrea has written several books including The Roasted Vegetable and The New Vegetarian Grill, and has contributed to The Classic Zucchini Cookbook-all new favorite cookbooks of mine with many amazing options (the roasted kohlrabi has convinced me to grow this veg in the fall).

Yesterday we tried the roasted green beans recipe which is in Serving Up the Harvest and The Roasted Vegetable. You can search either book for the recipe on Amazon and I highly recommend you do-it's simple (2 lbs of beans, oil, salt, an oven at 450 for 15 mins) and oh so delicious. It takes the grassy edge off the beans and makes them sweet and juicy. Having picked our plants clean to make this, we are now waiting for them to produce more (and contemplating hitting the farmers market in the meantime). The recipe is correct-there are never enough green beans once you've tried this recipe.

today: 27 June

Today we have potatoes. Purple Peruvians.
Steamed and mashed, served with fresh dill, salt and pepper. Yum.
It's hot here, hottest it has been all year, but you won't find me outside in less than jeans, knee high socks and long sleeve shirt to garden anymore. The mosquitoes find me quite delicious, apparently, and somehow manage to bite me even through all this protection.

Yesterday's haul: 2 zukes, lots of chard and green beans. Today's haul looked like this, but 2 cukes and 2 yellow squash included. We are not sick of squash....yet.
Lots of stuff growing and growing and growing. Here the cherokee moon and stars watermelon is climbing high. There's already one melon the size of an orange and several more starting to grow. Think we'll start pinching back the vine to focus on three or four good melons. We will slip these melons inside old nylon stockings and support them on the trellis. This way should keep the birds away. I won't believe it until I see it, for we have several fearless deep crows hanging around the yard. They've already attacked the neighbor's tomatoes...

the squash are in

....seven weeks after planting. It's nice to keep records so I can determine this sort of thing for the future. Now if only we had written down the day we planted the potatoes. I'd like to say it's almost time for them to come out, but all I see when I dig around in the dirt are tiny wee taters that seem smaller than the seed pieces we put in. Any advice?

hidden treasures

The fun part about gardening, especially if you are trying it out for the first time in years and have forgotten all the cool bits, is going out each day to see what nature has created for you.

Our first snap beans! mmm... purple.

To think that Nature has created this bounty as a byproduct of normal plant growth, and my family will harvest and sustain ourselves from it is incredible in its synergy. Particularly when warped ideas about where food really comes from abound in today's removed society.

Our favorite part of the garden has been tooling around first thing in the morning, still in our pj's, cultivating what's here, dreaming about future plans.

Having a snack or two to munch on is helpful, of course. The bean with a bite taken out of it was nommed by the C-bear. If I told you none of the peas we harvested this year ever made it to the table, barely into the house, would you be surprised?

a favorite passage

Removing the weeds
putting fresh soil about the bean stems
and encouraging this weed which I had sown
making the yellow soil express its summer thought
in bean leaves and blossoms
rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass
making the earth say beans
instead of grass-
this was my daily work.
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

fast grow the weeds

First, a question for you uber gardeners out there: I have read that tomatoes actually enjoy being planted in the same place in the garden year after year. Fact? Or Fiction?

I am always surprised at how fast the time rolls by, and with a small child the adventures are ... new! Yet the garden, it never sleeps.

We started out this year with the Square Foot Gardening method. I'm sure you might have heard of it. While the book sells like a Ronco infomercial, the logic behind it seems sound. Yet we have discovered that having plants spread out among six beds and the upkeep of the "squares" just isn't our style.

And that's okay.

We are drowning in a sea of lettuce and spinach, chard and kale. The cabbage worms have struck, the thunderstorms have pelted, and now the sun shines brightly. Even as I become tired of all the greens I am eating the tomatoes and squash eagerly shoot out of the ground, promises of the summer harvest.

did you have a good easter?

We did. And a good vacation to Florida, my birthday was awesome, and oh, mother's day. Check and check.

So, how's things with you?

It has been crazy around here. I'm excited that we are heading into summer and the garden is picking up full steam. I have never grown a full blown vegetable garden from seed on my own before so we're learning this year what to plant when. The chrisasaurus has described the current state of it, and I have just realized my last pictures of the garden were from oh, March? Clearly outdated. We're expecting a thunderstorm soon so I'll take myself outside here with the kiddo in a few.

For now, back to the jamming that's going on in the kitchen. Not the musical kind, the strawberry kind. We went berry picking with the small one and are now knee deep in strawberries. As soon as we got there I realized we took her strawberry picking for the first time ever and I. Forgot. The. Camera. I wish I could say this bonehead move was an isolated event but it seems that it's just par for the course for me these days.

working hard for the veggies

With a 60 degree day on the weather radar we knew that this would be a good one for getting a jump start on our gardening plans. We are essentially starting at square one as far as food gardening, and part one of our Plan To Grow A Crapton of Veg started with building some raised beds. And 8 cubic yards of dirt!


Luckily, wonder hubby has been coming home early-ish from work to get outside every day this week and level the ground to install these beds. It wasn't all 60 degree weather these past few days-it was more like 40s and 30s in the early evening that he braved the cold.

But get them done he did-all but the fifth, which requires another run to the lumber department.
Now for the compost-y filling. And just in time for a large amount of rain this weekend. Woot.

The tomato seedlings are sprouting, coming back strong after a small over watering mishap.
And everywhere else spring it bursting onto our mild climate already. Buds on trees, flocks of robins, fields of daffodils.
This is my favorite part of the year.

the garden, stage 1

Seed to Seed challenge update:


Somewhere here in the near future there will be raised beds and compost going in. Right after some of the smaller trees come out. These little guys are giving up their lives, though I promised each one we would be planting two more to replace it. Dwarf fruit trees, in the fall. That's the plan anyway!

Reason: Gardening.

I am a bit of a transplant. Born in New England, I have lived in several different states and overseas while my military family followed my dad around the world. It was good times and gave me life experiences that some kids my age will never have.

A predominant chunk of my childhood and life was spent in the Pacific Northwest, and it is there that I realize now I truly feel at home. I am a lush green forest kind of girl. But one of the biggest things I remember from my home in Washington was the garden my parents tended. I have pictures somewhere, and I'd love to share them someday. This backyard has super status in my memory as the coolest backyard ever (well, until we moved to California... then I had a naval base for a backyard and that was pretty cool too).

Lately I have felt disconnected and removed from things like my community and the passage of time, particularly the seasons. I realize now that gardening has a lot to offer me besides heavy sweaty work in the buggy, humid summers. It can offer me a new outlook on the life that I sometimes think of as drudgery. It can help me reconnect to the girl that used to hike alone in the woods without fear of spiders, bears, or snakes. It can help me be a better mother to my daughter, wife to my husband, and steward to my land.

Long story short, I want to give my daughter the gift of garden related memories, like the kind I remember with such fondness. As part of this, I'm signing up for the Growing Challenge from Seed to Seed over at One Green Generation. I had already planned to start a basic veg garden this year, and the idea that I can then save the seeds from successful plants and use them next year will motivate me. Also, having to answer to someone else about what I'm doing will keep me honest. So, I suppose I should get to planning what seeds I should buy this year...