A New Garden is Built

It turns out my original vegetable garden plot was surrounded by creosote soaked railroad ties. So we relocated the vegetable garden to a sunnier spot in the yard and made it a raised bed. The old spot will be used to grow hummingbird-friendly plants.

The first design for the new raised garden didn't seem quite right.

So we tore it down and stacked the bricks three high.

Husband spent a day in near-freezing temperatures finishing the garden walls. The finished size is 8 feet by 23 feet. Then I covered the grass inside with newspapers and lined the walls with black landscape plastic sheeting.

Next, husband spent a night hauling garden soil from the front yard, where we had it delivered, to the backyard raised garden. The best Valentine's gift ever. A new, raised garden. Now it's just going to sit and wait for the worms to come cultivate. I plan to start some peas in March.

The Harvest

Kale harvest on December 1st

We had a record low of 14 degrees (F) on November 24th, 2010. December 1st, I harvested a good bunch of this Dwarf Siberian Kale from the back veggy garden. No, it's not growing under a sheet or plastic. It was insulated by about 6 inches of snow at the time of the record low. They say kale is sweeter after being touched by a light frost. I wasn't sure it would survive such cold, but it did. I used the leaves to make a kale pesto. You know, so the kids would actually eat it.

Here's my "December kale pesto pasta with peas and chicken" recipe:

Ingredients:

Kale, roughly chopped, enough to fill a 2 quart pot
2 Tbsp. dried basil, or 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic
salt to taste-I like it salty so about 1/2 tsp.
Cooked pasta from 12-16 ounces dry pasta
1 cup warmed peas (from fresh or frozen)
1 pound chopped, cooked (warm) chicken, if desired
fresh ground pepper
extra Parmesan

Directions:

1. Steam chopped kale. I used the steamer pot over my 3 quart sauce pan and steamed the kale for about 15 minutes. I steam the kale because if you don't, it is a gritty pesto sauce.
2. Place steamed kale, basil, Parmesan cheese, salt and garlic in your food processor and pulse. Drizzle olive oil in a few batches and continue to process until it is smooth. Now you have pesto sauce.
3. Put half of the pesto in the fridge or freezer for later. Mix the other half with hot cooked pasta (from a full package of about 12-16 ounces dry-I used a gluten-free quinoa/corn flour macaroni). Add warmed peas and cooked chicken and mix. Add more olive oil if it looks dry. Serve with freshly ground pepper and more Parmesan cheese on top.

The great thing about the macaroni and peas and feeding kids is that the peas get stuck inside the macaroni, so the kids can't pick the peas out. : -)

October 25, 2010 Gypsy and Miniature Bell Peppers

October 25, 2010 Kohlrabi and Spaghetti squash. It was the year of the tiny squash.
Kohlrabi tastes like a cross between broccoli and green cabbage. I peel, slice, and stir-fry.

Sugar Pie Pumpkin and Jack-be-Littles. October 25, 2010

Kale, tomatoes, peppers, Rosemary. October 25, 2010. It was a good day for harvesting. I have lots of 12-ounce bags of chopped tomatoes in the freezer, just waiting to be made into Mexican rice for the coming year. Should be enough cilantro stored away too. That recipe is worth sharing too. Maybe next time!

Gypsy Pepper

Yes, we have some peppers this year! The gypsy peppers are turning from green to orange to red. We had this one last night, sliced into a taco salad. I made the salad with organic romaine lettuce (from the store), my Oregon Spring tomatoes, my Gypsy peppers,my sliced green onions and my cilantro. I finished off the salad with re-fried pinto beans, tortilla chips, organic non-fat plain yogurt, Mexican shredded cheese blend, Pace picante sauce and a bit of hot taco sauce. It was a great dinner, and so fun to see that so much of it was from my garden.

More great news is that there are six healthy Gypsy pepper plants outside and more are beginning to ripen up. I'm hoping to have a bunch to freeze. I might have to pick some still green if a frost gets into the forecast, but we will see how many red ones we can get before then.

In tomato news, I have baskets of Honey Bunch grape tomatoes on the counter along with a few Oregon Spring tomatoes. The Roma VF's are being really slow to ripen and the plants don't look very well, but we will take what we get.

The kids still get a strawberry or two each day and have even started "grazing" on the green onions...hmmm. I get a handful of green beans every few days and the chest freezer has lots of sliced zucchini stored.

We picked one cucumber last week!!! It was a great day for preschooler, who ate the whole bowl of sliced cucumber before anyone else made it to the dinner table. So, it's the summer of the lone cucumber.

We have lots of kale sitting in the garden. It's fun to chop it up into any soup. I even made a pizza with kale pesto sauce. It takes a lot more cooking than you'd think by looking at it. Cook it as long as you would carrot slices, at least.

I continue to be amazed by the production of my little garden for such an off year. We are getting more than we can keep up with each day, and we are eating more vegetables than ever. One of my lessons this year is to always grow a small tomato. Those Honey Bunch grape tomatoes are producing just like it's been a hot summer. They don't care about the rain or the cold. They keep growing and ripening up and looking healthy . They're so much fun, and they taste great!

There's Always Something

This year, the garden may seem slower than usual, but since the harvesting began, there's always been something from the garden for dinner. Last night we had turkey cakes (mini turkey meatloaves broiled like burgers) with a big Oregon Spring tomato chopped up and mixed in. On the side we had sliced fresh zucchini with ranch dip. The only veggies we are buying are potatoes and slicing onions. Those are too cheap at the market to be worth the space in my little garden.


We are loving our Honey Bunch grape tomatoes! They are so sweet, I barely recognize them as tomatoes, which is a good thing for the kids and I. We can just hang out by the plants and have a tomato snack. The plants are also staying especially healthy. Only one has yellowing leaves, and that one is in a pot, so I don't know if that is part of the problem. The other three, planted in the ground against the south facing wall, are beautifully green despite being surrounded by other sickly looking tomato plants. The Honey Bunch tomatoes are listed as resistant to verticillium and fusarium. The funny thing is, my Roma VF tomatoes are listed the same yet they are the ones looking the most sickly this year. Could it be late blight? I am trying not to let the sickly plants bother me. They are still producing tomatoes so really I need to let it go!


You have to take what the weather gives you. This year we got a cold and wet June and yet we have plenty to harvest. We just have different vegetables than years past. Still no cucumbers, but plenty of Kale! I am so glad I planted a variety of vegetables. Crop diversification is keeping dinner fresh.

These Gypsy sweet peppers are getting pretty big. I wonder which will be the first to begin to turn red?

Honey Bunch grape tomatoes.

The main vegetable garden. View from our rooftop. As usual, the zucchini is taking over and feeding us well. The "Eight Ball" zucchini is fun, but we've decided we like the regular green zucchini better and next year will try a yellow variety as well. There is a pumpkin growing in there. It's fun for the kids to have a pumpkin patch in the back yard. I enjoy having plenty of green onions to cook with. I've planted a second set of dill and cilantro. The kale is supposed to keep into winter, so we will see how long we eat out of the garden this year.

The main vegetable garden. Here you can see my second planting of kohlrabi, center front, and of kale front left.

The First Tomato

This afternoon, I was outside with preschooler watering my potted tomato and pepper plants. She was playing on the patio near me and I asked her to come over and see the pepper plants. She asked me if they were red and I told her they aren't yet, but they will be after they grow some more. She exclaimed happily, "I know where there's red!" I didn't really pay attention as she ran off to the other end of the yard. I still didn't pay attention as she came running back, "It's red! It's red!" Until she got closer. What I thought at first was a red strawberry, which the kids are allowed to pick at will, turned out to be the year's first red tomato. Which I had been watching and waiting for, waiting so it could fully ripen in the sun for best flavor. Well there it was, a little red grape tomato being proudly held up to the sun by my little preschool garden helper.

OK, so finder's keepers. After explaining that she must ask from now on before picking any tomatoes, I told her, "Well, you picked it I guess now you should eat it." She did, but later said it made her throat sore. It probably needed a few extra days to sweeten up, but the good news is that the tomato harvest has begun in our little garden!

Snap Peas in August

Oregon Sugar Snap II Peas still producing in August! Yes, it was a cold start this year. I am very glad that I am growing a variety of vegetables. I am especially glad that I started a good amount of peas. We had Wando shelling peas for several weeks and even had enough to freeze a few bags. I tore out the Wando peas last weekend and re-seeded that spot with Siberian Dwarf Kale. I decided to leave the snap peas because they looked like they were still producing. Glad I did because tonight we had a stir-fry with snap peas and Eight Ball zucchini. So, while we are still waiting on the pole beans and cucumbers to catch up from the cold June, at least we still have peas. We also still have lettuce going just fine...in August.

The warm weather plants might do OK. I saw a Honey Bunch Grape tomato that looked close to being ripe today. The Oregon Spring tomatoes look great but still green. The Roma tomato doesn't look very good, but I'll take what I can get. I do have a few Gypsy sweet peppers starting to form some nice-sized fruit. Given that we still have a full month of warm weather, and another month at least after that before any frost, and I have hopes for lots of tomatoes and peppers yet this year.

The strawberries are putting on another set almost ready to eat, and the blueberries out back might be ready in a week or so.

Something I have learned this year, is that when a gardening how-to book says that something is a cool weather plant, that does not mean that I should plant it in early spring. So-called cool weather plants are doing a lot better for me in full on summer. The radishes I planted back in March and April were full of trouble, but the set I put out in early July grew just fine with no root maggots and no woodiness to them. The Kale didn't take off until now, and the Kholrabi I started back in April never took off. I am starting to accept that I live in a land where spring is just a warm winter, and summer is a just a dry spring.

Starting to Grow

I wanted to show you my vegetable plot. It is slowly filling in. The peas enjoyed the cool spring and we've had handfuls of snow peas daily for a while now. The "Wando" shelling peas still need a few more days to get to a good size. I don't notice many new blossoms so I think our heat wave may have told them to stop producing. The zucchini are doing OK, just a bit behind previous years. Some of the zucchini appear to have vine borer damage. I just learned that you can bury the stem of squash if it gets damaged, as it will grow more roots along the stem. I will try burying the damaged areas. The plants themselves look great and leafy. We have had some lettuce to eat, though not nearly as much as last year. The kale is starting to look respectable. I think I'll plant more kale where the peas are when the peas are all done producing.
The sweet peas have finally woken up and started blooming. We've had enough to bring in two full bouquets already. They say the trick is to keep them well-picked so they will keep blooming, and to keep them cool. They've been sitting out there waiting to grow since February, so I hope they've put in a good root system to keep themselves cool and watered on our few unusually hot days. I wish I could post a scent for you. They are just lovely.

My Oregon Spring tomatoes are looking pretty good. I don't think we'll have any in July as these are advertised to do, but it's been a strange year with the weather. I'm just happy to see a tomato!

The scarlet runner beans are climbing up the trellis very quickly with huge leaves. The Kentucky Lake Pole beans, on the other hand, have had a hard start. We had a lot of rain and cold weather when I first planted the seeds, and most of the first set got eaten by slugs. I bought more seed and tried again, with the addition of slug bait every other day. That sounds excessive, but the slugs have been out of control this year. I finally have a good bunch of pole beans going and husband added more slug bait last night. In the middle of the picture is a Sugar Pie pumpkin volunteer plant. I threw our pumpkin out there last fall just to see what would happen. And now I know! I don't think slugs like pumpkin leaves. They appear to be untouched.

I ran out of cultivated, non-lawn ground, so I'm growing four tomato plants and four pepper plants in pots. The tomatoes are in 5-gallon buckets. They are looking pretty good for the most part. They are in a nice sunny spot and I have a few green tomatoes growing. The peppers are starting to blossom. It's a late start because of our cold spring. I hope that with the number of plants I have, I will have a respectable harvest sometime in August.




Our Berkeley blueberries are getting bigger but we still have a while to wait till they are blue and ready to eat. We put up some netting in the hopes that we will eat the berries before our resident robin family gets to them.

Sorry, no pictures of the strawberries. The kids eat them as soon as they get red. Few make it inside the house.