Tag Archives: gardening

In the vegetable garden

Posted on August 4, 2012 by | Comments Off on In the vegetable garden

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While the zucchini and summer squash have not done well this year, the rest of the garden is doing quite nicely. We have oodles of serrano peppers with habaneros not far behind. The tomatoes are just beginning to ripen and the onions look ready to use as well. Chard continues to produce enough to harvest every couple of weeks and the savoy cabbages are gorgeous. The second planting of green beans is looking good out back. I let the first crop go because there were ladybugs in several different stages all over them.

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Lessons I’ve Learned from Growing Corn

Posted on August 3, 2012 by | Comments Off on Lessons I’ve Learned from Growing Corn

About a week ago, I tasted one of the most wonderful delights of summer. From our county’s Farmer’s Market, Susan had brought home a half-dozen ears of picked-this-morning corn. They were cooked as simply as possible: grilled, with butter, salt, and pepper. These ears were so deliciously sweet that, I swear, instead of corn, I tasted coconut, and toasted hazelnuts. These ears of corn were outrageous in their perfection, and I was happy, because I knew that our homegrown corn would be ripening soon, and that we’d enjoy days and days of the same delights.

However, there’s something I didn’t realize.

The variety of corn that I had tasted, despite being sold at the Farmer’s Market, was undoubtedly one of the modern-day super-sweet hybrids (not the hybrid feed-corn variety maligned in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but just as guilty, I suspect, of being genetically tampered-with). The variety that we grew this year, Golden Bantam, is an heirloom variety, suited for those who a) want to avoid GMOs and b) are tired of super-sweet corn, and just want that “real corn” flavor.

As someone who grew up on super-sweet corn– actually, on microwaved packets of Green Giant Extra-Sweet Niblets in Cream Sauce– the taste of real corn was a bit of a shock. I was disappointed in myself when I found that I didn’t like it as much.

The real disappointment came, however, in how the corn looked:

Those empty kernels are places were the corn wasn’t pollinated. A bit of corn pollen has to fall on ever tip of every strand of cornsilk– since every strand of cornsilk leads back down to a developing kernel– in order for the corn to fill out properly. They advise that you plant your corn in blocks, not rows, so that the pollen has a better overall chance of landing on the silk. “At the very least,” they advise, “plant your rows of corn 3 plants deep,” which is what I did, thinking that that would be enough.

There are definitely good-looking ears of corn out in the garden, but they’re not the golden and paradisaical crowning glories that I had been imagining.

It’s disappointing (and embarrassing? But I figured I ought to go ahead and tell my story.). I’ve definitely learned a few lessons about how to plant corn (in blocks!), and a very obvious lesson about which varieties of corn to plant (the kind you want to eat, not the kind you think you ought to grow).

I threw the ears out as a rare treat to Charley & Churchill, who, having no prior experience with corn or built-up expectations, chowed down with a pure and piggy joy.

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Everything again?

Posted on July 30, 2012 by | Comments Off on Everything again?
 rudbeckia explosion

Can't seem to get enough of one sort of thing done around here to have a post that makes sense, so here's everything I guess.

 first harvest

That was my first "pesto garden" harvest a while back. My Memmy gave me a still-in-the-box food processor that she never used (her old one is still kickin' and then somebody gave her this one for whatever reason and it just sat around). Anyway, what? Oh yeah. I chopped up those piles of goodness and smooshed them into a little bitty container and stuck them in the freezer.

And now I'm ready to do it all over again.

herbs

I just wish my 'maters were as fruitful (literally).

tomatoes

They got nice and big, but are just now really blossoming and I've had very little fruit so far.

Ah well. At least we've been finally getting a little rain here and there.

rainbow

Our area was/is not in drought, but it still had been so dry for so long.

A nice thing:

real eggs

Even though we are not allowed to keep chickens in our borough (and honestly? I don't have the energy or money for them at this point in my life anyway), we have plenty of local sources for fresh eggs, and my neighbor Linda surprised me with a dozen the other week. Of course, we had already devoured half of them before I managed to get a picture.

Now. Remember this?

the $20 former kitchen hutch is slowly getting a makeover

I finally picked a paint color and put a better back on it:

$20 hutch - finally repainted

$20 hutch - finally repainted

Hooray! Now I love it again!

And speaking of loving things again... The mystery shawl from my last post? It got weird.

mystery shawl progress

It's hard to explain -- no wait, let me rephrase this. It's actually very easy to explain, and at some length too, but I will not bore you. Basically, the design of the shawl in the second clue proved to be something that I feel does not benefit from a self striping yarn and is much better served by a solid, tweed, or very slightly variegated yarn instead.

Luckily, I had these already on hand.

new yarns for mystery shawl

The brown and tan is undyed alpaca from Ideuma Creek (the ball's worth was purchased at Rhinebeck and the two cakes were purchased online much later), and the white is Juniper Moon Farm cormo that I grabbed on sale a few months back. They are both so soft! And knitting up beautifully together.

"Wool-paca-feller"

Because the pattern name is "Rockefeller" and my yarns are now alpaca and wool, I have dubbed mine, "Wool-paca-feller." ... Isn't it sad that I amuse myself so.

Now some cute things:

the whole family: dashboard version

A few years ago, my friend gave me the Little Miss figurine on the far left for no particular reason except that she was cute. After a while, I got the bright idea to affix her to my dashboard with a little adhesive square; sort of a fun little mascot for our trips. Fast forward a bit and the same friend sent me the pipe smoking bobble headed Pappy in the center, so I stuck him up there too, joking that the little figures were Mr. Ambry and me. This fabulous idea then sent me on a quest to find figures to represent the kids too.

A little while after that, my friend Michele sent us some wonderful baby gifts and just happened to stick that little Kewpie doll on the outside of the package, and I practically bolted out to the car to stick it in its place. All I needed were the boys and after several failed attempts to find the Blockheads from Gumby in an appropriate size, I settled on Mario and Luigi. Even though I am not a gamer, the boys love them, so that's that.

And now, every time we get in the car we have to smile at our little dashboard family up there. :)

Also cute was this terrified leaf friend that John found outside the other day:

Oh noes! :0

Still with me?

I am going to attempt to pickle some things this week. I have dabbled in canning in the past, but not much, and I have never pickled, so this might prove to be horrible. Or not. We'll see.

pickling spices

I mixed coriander, allspice, cloves, turmeric, celery seed, yellow mustard seeds, bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, and mixed peppercorns in there and it smells quite delightful. I have a bunch of dill in the freezer and must grab some garlic, and then I can do half batches of each item in spice blend thinger and also in garlicky dill.

Believe it or not, I could keep talking indefinitely, but I have decided to cut myself off here. Cross your fingers for cooler weather so I can get up in the attic really soon and have a real project to share again!

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My New Greenhouse!

Posted on July 28, 2012 by | Comments Off on My New Greenhouse!

Last Saturday, I celebrated my 24th birthday and got an inconceivably wonderful birthday surprise.

Let me first give you an important piece of information. Ever since a field trip in college to Dumbarton Oaks, I have wanted nothing more than an orangerie. This– Caroline and her longed-for orangerie– is something we joke about on the farm.

So, last Saturday, I’d woken up late and was having coffee on the front porch with Zac. I looked out at the yard.

“It looks so much nicer than last summer, but I keep thinking about how much better it could be next year. If we had a greenhouse, maybe.”

“Sure, maybe.”

Around noon, Susan was going to take us all out for a birthday lunch. On the way to town, though, we needed to swing by Virginia Custom Buildings (the place we bought our chicken coop) to check up on something– it would only take a few minutes. Maybe we wanted to look at all the different sheds while Susan ran in to the office?

I spied a greenhouse off to the right and made a beeline for it (not knowing that Susan was beelining across the lot to the other greenhouse, birthday ribbon in hand!). I walked in and turned around.

“Wouldn’t it be so nice to have one of these one day, Zac?”

“Well, yeah, sure it would. Let’s– um, hey, we really need to go look at the Adirondack chairs across the way.”

And that’s how I got talked out of one greenhouse and into another one. I was absolutely floored when I saw the bow!

You guys. She got me my orangerie!

When they delivered it yesterday, I still kind of couldn’t believe that it was for me. Susan and Zac worked like crazy to find a way to get me a greenhouse (I think they were the ones who convinced Virginia Custom Buildings to offer them in the first place!), and I just hope that I can live up to all the newly-opened potential it offers. It was the perfect present, and I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten anything nicer as a gift.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much this is going to change our lives. Next year, we can start even more seeds even earlier. We can have flowers in the winter! We have anything in the winter!

Now, just one thing: I have a feeling that greenhouse gardening is a whole different animal than outdoor gardening. Do you all have tips, suggestions, favorite books, crazy ideas, or general advice for a newly minted greenhouse gardener?

The first step, though, I know. It’s orange trees.

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Melons of All Sizes

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | Comments Off on Melons of All Sizes

Whenever I get too down about summer in the South, and long for a perfectly cool New England summer garden, with nothing crisped up or frizzled or killed and brown, I remember melons– those awful, sticky summer nights are what allow us to grow piles and piles of delicious subtropical wonders with complete ease.

With fruit like these, it might all be worth it (and with central A/C, it definitely is).

Those Petit Gris de Rennes melons I was so excited about have finally came to fruit around the beginning of the month, and our CSA members have gotten them in their baskets for the past three weeks (yesterday, they each got two!).

This might be analogous to hearing your children complimented, but it was the most gratifying thing in the world to hear that these melons were the best they’d ever had.

And, honestly, I agree.

They’re perfectly sweet, delightfully perfumed, and, on the whole, small enough to make a meal for a single person (for all their good qualities– or, in fact, because of them– these melons are not for sharing).

There is really nothing more decadent than bringing a whole, warm, luscious melon straight in from the field, and enjoying it as a slow breakfast.

However, all the rain we’ve had– right on the heels of a considerable hot and dry spell– has caused a few of them to split and crack wide open. Once the yellow jackets have found a melon, it’s a little too risky to try and pick it up and compost it, so I’ve just been leaving them to compost in place.

 Over on the other side of the garden, we’re growing Mexican Sour Gherkins.

 They’ve apparently been on the hip vegetable radar (?) since 2007, when New York Magazine ran a story about them, although I learned about them in last summer’s Bon Appetit (at which point, of course, I had to wait until the next summer to grow them).

They’re literally the size of a jelly bean. They look like watermelons and taste like a sour cucumber. We haven’t been able to keep them around! Despite the fact that the vines are prodigiously prolific, and seem to thrive in the heat, I snack on a handful nearly every trip out to the garden.

Which is why we don’t have so many left.

 Luckily, though, the vines are putting out more. See how absolutely tiny they are when they start out?

The most adorable thing about these adorable little guys, though, might be that their name in Spanish– sandia de raton– translates to Mouse Melon.

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Carrots and Beets

Posted on July 19, 2012 by | Comments Off on Carrots and Beets

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I’ve never successfully grown carrots and beets in my garden but this year I experimented with some grow bags from Gardener’s supply. I did plant a little thickly and these are very delicious thinnings. I would say the experiment is a resounding success and I plan to get a few more grow bags next spring. I steamed them up and served them atop grits with some chicken/spinach/feta sausage. Delish!

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Garden Concerns in High Summer: Fall Planting

Posted on July 17, 2012 by | Comments Off on Garden Concerns in High Summer: Fall Planting

Holy cow! I have a feeling I might be super-late to the party on this one– and we’re not even going to talk about favorite gardening apps, because, hello, flip phone held together by duct tape– but have you all seen the neato planting calculators available (for free!) at Johnny’s? I nearly died of happiness when Susan forwarded them to me!

You can plant your fall garden by backtracking from your fall frost date, plan out succession plantings, and even figure out how to have [x] amount of [y] crop by [z] important date. The one I’m especially in love with is the Fall Planting Calculator. You enter your fall frost date, and it tells you the date by which you need to have your plants in the ground, either as 4-week-old transplants or directly-sown.

We’ve been doing the usual round of high summer garden maintenance– tearing out the peas and transplanting in young tomatoes; harvesting the last of the beets and carrots and putting peppers in their places; digging up the last of the potatoes and throwing down squash seeds– but, at the same time, we need to start thinking about which plants will succeed the ones that are currently producing at full tilt.

A few beds have already been planted with cover crops that will protect and nourish the soil all through the fall and winter. But the rest of the beds– the corn, beans, tomatoes, and cucurbits,  which are currently producing heavily– will need to find new tenants in the fall. In fact, they’re giving us so much, they might wear themselves out over the course of the next few weeks.

Having played around with the calculator, I’ve learned that we need to get a move on our brussels sprouts, peas, broccoli, and cabbage. Since these crops need cooler temperatures to germinate, we’ll be setting up the greenhouse indoors, in the air conditioning (or, at the very least, in the garage). Unfortunately, these crops need lots of extra attention (and water) to keep from frizzling when they’re transplanted in early August– exactly when one doesn’t want to spend any more time outdoors than strictly necessary.

I still have to work out a full rotation plan, but the past few hours of paging through the catalog and dreaming of Fall have been a wonderful respite– a close analog, I guess, to sitting by the fire in January and dreaming of July.

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Potato bags get an A+

Posted on July 14, 2012 by | Comments Off on Potato bags get an A+

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This year I replaced my plastic potato bags with these fantastic felt ones from Gardener’s Supply and this year my wimpy potato harvest has tripled. The bags nearest the house that get shade part of the day look better so I’m expecting even more from those. This bag yielded 6 1/2 pounds which is not great but it’s far better than the pound or two I was getting last year and we did pull them early because the foliage was nearly dead. I’ve started harvesting the garlic but my markers are unreadable so I have no idea which is which. The copper markers are covered in a lovely patina rendering them unreadable and the plastic markers with sharpie just fade. I clearly need to continue my search for good markers that will last.

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Tomatoworld

Posted on July 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Tomatoworld

Yesterday morning, I went outside and picked 30 lbs of tomatoes.

Remember the last time we picked 30 lbs of tomatoes? Less than a week ago?

Just like last time, I brought them in to Zac. He ran them through all the food mill, made a sauce, let it reduce all day– I can’t even tell you how wonderful the house smells right now– and he’s canning it as I write.

Our tentative total for canned sauce is, thus far, 3 flats of 12 quart jars. That is to say, we have canned NINE GALLONS of tomato sauce.

Luckily, we’ve got some serious cookware:

And here is the grisly aftermath:

While Zac was boiling away, I was pruning the vines. Since all the heirloom varieties we’re growing are indeterminate– the few store-bought commercial plants were determinate, and have already crisped up and passed on to tomato-heaven– they require a little management every now and then.

Since indeterminate plants grow continually, throughout the season, we can expect to have tomatoes until mid-October (although, with as many as we’re getting, we might not want them in mid-October!). The vines will continue to grow taller, so all we have to do to keep them fruiting part at a manageable height is is lower the vine down to the ground. This ingenious method, used by commercial tomato growers, I learned about this past January during my marathon dreaming sessions with The New Organic Grower.

The two main objects of pruning are to maximize tomato production by giving each leaf enough room to photosynthesize as efficiently as possible, and to prevent disease by keeping leaves and fruit off the ground.

I honestly thought the job would take a few hours– the rest of the morning, at most. Friends, I was hauling mulch, ripping back and composting dead vines, and tying up all the stragglers until the sun went down. And although I am usually very prone to wax rhapsodic about that fantastic tomato-leaf smell– I’m always asking Zac if he couldn’t make me a Cream of Tomato-Leaf Soup– I was a little disgusted by it by the end.

I’m quite proud (I also woke up a little sore, and am in serious denial of the fact that there’s a whole other bed of tomatoes that needs the same treatment, and that I’d better get it done while the weather’s this cool).

Anyway, I bet you’ll never guess what inspired our sock club’s July installment.

ETA: I just realized that the title of this blog post (unintentionally, I promise!) refers to this book about the dark side of Tomatoes. In case you were wondering.

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Echinacea

Posted on July 13, 2012 by | Comments Off on Echinacea

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