Dragon Tongue Beans

We have so many Dragon Tongue Beans producing right now.  Our favorite way to serve them up is stir fried in olive oil and a teaspoon of chili garlic sauce.  It's nice and spicy.  Keep your handkerchiefs close.

It's A Jungle Out There

When July is upon us and muggy heat and torrential rain rear their ugly heads, the plants seem to reach up to the sky as if rejoicing in what we consider miserable conditions.  In the peak sun blazing hours of the day, the kids and I are inside somewhere, sitting in front of the fan playing with Legos.  Or if things are really bad we retreat to the air conditioning leaving all thoughts of the outdoors behind.  Meanwhile, the garden grows and the weeds (snickering all the while) put in place their master plan to take over the yard.  At dinner time new weeds have already grown since the lunch hour when I went out to pick vegetables.  It keeps me busy, but if kept under slight control, it can look pretty neat (if you like the wild look).  We are definitely not neat and tidy gardeners.  Here's some proof.

Full View

Gourds and Zucchini growing out of compost bins

Beans, cucumbers and gourds growing together

Leeks!

Volunteer fennel  popping up between the tomatoes

First Tomato of the Season

Oh happy day!  Our first large tomato has been plucked and it was so worth the wait.  Pictured below is a modest sized "Early Girl" grown from seed started back in February. 

Eliot came running through the back door early yesterday morning with prize in hand yelling, "mom! mom! The first tomato!"  I was almost happier to see my kid's enthusiasm for the tomato than to see the actual tomato.  Almost...

Oh Parsley!

I used to think parsley was a pretty dull and useless herb until I started growing it myself.  Now I have such an abundance of the stuff I feel obligated to find ways to use it and not feed it directly to the compost heap.  This weekend we harvested our first batch of parsley and have decided to do two things first.  1.  Make a heap of Tabouleh.  2.  Grind up some parsley pesto.  Just use your favorite pesto recipe and make parsley the main leafy green.  I had a pistachio pesto that worked very well. 

Because we have so much parsley we are choosing to freeze the pesto.  We found that spooning the pesto into ice cube trays was a great way to initially freeze the stuff and then store the pesto cubes in freezer safe containers.  We can then thaw individual cubes as needed for pasta recipes, spreads, etc. 

I used this same method for freezing fresh ground vegetables and fruits for my children when they first started solid foods as babies.  It's a great way to preserve the food without loosing too much of the nutrients. 

Beets and Arugula

Last week Jason pulled up quite a few beautiful yellow and red beets from the garden.  Here's what we did with them.

I wrapped the whole beets in foil along with a dash of olive oil and roasted them for about an hour and a half.  Their peels practically fell off and then I diced them up and threw them together with gorgonzola cheese and pistachios.  Add a dash of salt and pepper and you have a very simple and tasty fresh beet salad. 

Our arugula patch had also reached the end of it's season so we gathered it all up and whipped up some arugula pesto.  You can really take any pesto recipe and substitute arugula for whatever leafy green is used in the recipe.  A portobello mushroom topped with this pesto and fresh grated parmesan makes for a great sandwich. 

Shoo Whitefly

When we returned from a trip to Kentucky for a week I went to my strawberries to give a hello, since it had been so long, and was greeted with a white cloud of, well, I didn't know what it was.  When I back off, the cloud disappeared.  I bent over slowly and saw tiny white bugs on the leaves.  They looked a little like aphids, only white and they could fly.  Well, I went directly to the mighty Oracle (the internet) and learned that we had a whitefly infestation.  Apparently these little suckers can really do some damage.  My mission now is to take out those whiteflies and figure out why my strawberries are stressed.  Maybe they don't like being in pots, or maybe they just don't have enough companion plants. Here is a link to one of the many informational pages I found on whiteflies and how to get rid of them.   www.getridofthings.com/get-rid-of-whiteflies.htm

What To Do With Those Jalapeno Peppers

If you haven't discovered the genius of Chef Rick Bayless yet, and you have peppers in your garden, now is the time to pick up one of his books and make some fabulous authentic Mexican food.  At the very least, you have to make this salsa that is so simple yet packs quite the wallop in every bite.  Here's what you need. 

-2 Jalapeno or Serrano chiles
-3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
roast these in a skillet for about 10 minutes until their skins blacken a bit

Meanwhile, place 2 large tomatoes on a baking sheet covered with foil and broil for 10 mins (flipping after 5 mins)

When cool, peel skin off tomatoes and garlic.  Now crush the garlic and jalapenos with a mortar and pestle first and then slowly add pieces of the tomatoes until they are all crushed together.  Then add:
-1/3cup chopped cilantro
-1/2 small onion, finely chopped and rinsed
-1/4 tsp sea salt

That's it!  Now if you want to get crazy you can make guacamole just by mashing 3 avocados with 1 tsp salt and add the salsa to taste. 

We had this wonderful meal of Tamales and spicy guacamole plus a summer cucumber margarita for the grown ups.  We were a happy group at dinner tonight. 

You can find recipes for these yummy tamales in Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen

Daily Chore

Yesterday we :
-weeded crab grass
-dug out all the old broccoli plants
-harvested the last of the cabbage heads (3)
-transplanted some peppers
-planted new round of carrots
-planted beans in empty bed

site for the parmex carrots (tiny round carrots-great for containers)

site for large carrots and dragon tongue beans

Tomatoes

Happy to report that the tomatoes are looking much better this year than last year.  We had such horrible blight by this time last year, but (knock on wood) we don't see a sign of it yet.  I'm pretty excited about the "jelly bean" variety we planted this year. 

Rhubarb!!

I took our first cuttings of fresh rhubarb from the garden today.  The result was 4 fabulous quarts.  

I like to chop them at about 1/4 inch thick and put them in freezer safe containers.  We should get another round of stalks to cut before the season is over.

Harvest

This week I dug up all the newly grown garlic heads and set them out to dry.  In a couple of weeks they'll be good to go.  Besides the multiple hands full of peas the kids each get everyday we have managed a few heads of cabbage, broccoli, enough salad greens to eat a large salad every night and many many carrots.  We tried some cute little round carrots that are specifically for growing in pots, but we threw them in the garden just to try.  No real difference in taste, but they are darned cute! 

Progress Report

 This is what the garden is looking like this 4th of July weekend.  Things are growing pretty fast now and it's getting to be crunch time for harvesting and reseeding.  Here's whats growing well right now.


"Wildfire Lettuce Mix"

 Early Girl Tomatoes

 Valencia Tomatoes

 Another Early Girl

Green Beans

Potatoes

Which Peas Popped?

We planted two different kinds of peas this year to see which did better where.  The top picture is the sugar snap pea on the tee pee.  The bottom is a shelling pea.  So if you like low and slow growing, shelling peas seem to be your bag.  Personally, I dig the sugar snaps.  Most importantly, I think they taste better.  They taste just like their name. 

Where's the fruit?

 The air had been so thick with anticipation for fresh fruit you could definitely slice it, but for the past few weeks we have gotten diddly squat out of our strawberry patch.  Just look at what I was able to pick after I had told the kids "lets not pick them and eat them right away, lets wait a week and pick them all at once".  They were so patient.  As it turns out it wasn't much of a test since this is the result of one week's production.

What the hey?  We water them well, cut off the new runners to keep the plant's energy focused on the old plant, not the new.  There is no evidence that any other creatures are stealing the fruit from under or through the netting either.  So, a wise man told me I probably wasn't fertilizing them enough.  Now lets see if that does the trick.  If anyone has ideas that might help....

Praying Mantises

 We had been tending to a nest of praying mantises for a couple months and they finally hatched in the last days of June.  We can't wait to see these little guys grow and go to work in our garden.  They are supposedly very handy for eating all sorts of bugs.  We've seen videos of them actually attacking mice as well as hummingbirds.  I certainly hope they don't go after the latter of the two, but it I must admit it would be very interesting to see! 

We ordered our nest from Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply at www.GrowOrganic.com