In the Garden, Week 13

Unbelievable. Here we are at week 13, and I just dropped my boys off for their first day of school. How can that possibly be? But it is, and here we are, two weeks before Labor Day. My oldest is starting 6th grade and my youngest is a new 4th grader. I couldn’t resist including a first day of school photo here. Look at those happy faces!

Needless to say, last week ended in a flurry of activity. The boys returned from the end of summer camping trip with grandpa and grandma and within an hour we whisked them off to the school open house where they met their teachers and got their schedule for the coming year. This weekend, my youngest also celebrated his ninth birthday, so we hosted a water balloon battle for ten 4th grade boys. Whew! But I digress.

With all this going on late in the week, I planned ahead. On Tuesday I walked to the garden with Emmy Lou, where I picked raspberries in the rain and pulled a few weeds. I read an essay once by a gardener from the Northwest…I think it was Ann Lovejoy…who loved to pull weeds in the rain. Now I understand why. With the rain to loosen the soil, pulling weeds was so easy it was almost fun (almost). Anyway, I came home with a pile of tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, celery, and a beautiful green bell pepper. It’s been unseasonably cool, so on Wednesday I decided to devote the day to canning.

My kitchen is small with not much in the way of ventilation. This means that when I see a handful of cool days in the forecast I know its time to pull the canner from pantry and start boiling water. With an abundance of tomatoes, peppers, and celery, I had the makings of the perfect batch of salsa. My favorite recipe is from The Fresh Girl’s Guide to Easy Canning and Preserving by Ana Micka. I also made a few more jars of raspberry jam, two jars of pickled jalapeno peppers (my boys love homemade nachos!), two jars of pickled beets, and, while I was at it, a jar of pickled red onions using the recipe from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. It was a busy day, but it was well worth the effort. Of course we polished off the first jar of salsa over the weekend, but I know there are a ton more tomatoes to come. In fact I have to get back to the garden before they begin to fall off the vines!

I leave you with a peek of what’s to come…I think we may be harvesting these beauties (Honeycrisp Apples) next week! Until then, check out some of the fall activities in The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book, available through Mother Earth Gardens, Millbrook Press, or Amazon. Pretty soon it’ll be time to begin forcing bulbs!

In the Garden, Week 12

This week I find myself in the happy position of figuring out what to do with an abundance of raspberries. When temps rose into the 90s on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I knew it had to be ice cream. Yum! This recipe is fast, easy, and delicious. Best of all, it includes no eggs, so no cooking is involved.

Tomatoes are continuing to ripen as well, and I returned home with an armload of them a couple of times this week. I added chopped tomatoes to a swiss chard and bacon quiche and a Greek salad for Monday’s dinner, enjoyed them in a caprese salad with some basil from the backyard on Tuesday, and made the first batch of gazpacho on Saturday. All were so good! I’m getting to the point, though, where the tomatoes are beginning to pile up. I can freeze them, of course, but I think it’s definitely time to make some salsa. And, with temps in the 60s this week (Only in Minnesota do we go from unbearable heat and humidity to cloudy and autumnal within a 24-hour period!), I should be able to process the jars without sweltering in the kitchen. Stay tuned.

Although I’m harvesting beautiful tomatoes with very few blemishes or cracks, my tomato plants don’t look so hot. I continue to remove the dried leaves from the plants, and we’ve been watering regularly, using a watering can, not a hose. I think next year we will have to mulch, but please let me know if you have any other ideas!

Remember my worries about the eggplant and Brussels sprouts? Well it looks as though they are doing just fine. I spotted this lovely eggplant earlier in the week, with many more blooms beginning to fade into fruit. Both Brussels sprouts plants now have tiny sprouts growing up and down the inner stem. Yay! My uncle pickles them, and they are delish, but I doubt I’ll have enough to make it worth the work…I do love roasted sprouts with olive oil and plenty of coarse salt.

Before the heat set in I managed to make a batch of raspberry jam. I know I’ve raved about this recipe before, but it is so dang easy, I simply can’t resist touting it again. It’s from the Food to Live By Cookbook by Earthbound Farm. I love it and we use so much jam around here that I’m sure I’ll be making it again before raspberry season comes to an end.

Until next week, I leave you with these asters blooming in my community plot. The bees are loving them! For more ideas on how to attract bees and other pollinators to your garden, check out The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book, available at Mother Earth Gardens, Millbrook Press, and Amazon. And don’t forget to “Like” us on Facebook!

In the Garden, Week 11

This has been an amazing week in the garden. I mean it’s been one of those weeks that makes all the back-breaking work on the front end of the season really worthwhile. This is the first week that something from the garden made its way into nearly every one of our dinners. I made another batch of pesto; baked a peach-raspberry-rhubarb crisp (raspberries and rhubarb from our garden); sauteed our first zucchini and tossed it with pesto, shrimp, red peppers, tomatoes (also from the garden), and pasta; threw together a yummy salad with beet greens, roasted beets, avocados, and blue cheese; and made BLTs with the first of the season’s ripened tomatoes.

No doubt about it, the tomatoes definitely stole the show. Three quarters of my family actually steers clear of tomatoes, but I still grow them because they are just so much better than the flavorless ones sold at most grocery stores. And there’s something magical about arriving at the garden and seeing those first big, red tomatoes in among the greenery. And there’s also something–something not quite magical–about realizing that one of the tomatoes has actually grown around its cage. Oops. Next year I’m going to be more diligent about installing sturdy cages right when I plant the seedlings…instead of trying to retro-fit them when the plants are toppling over and threatening to take over the entire garden.

But anyway. So far we’ve been able to keep up with the produce quite well. I have frozen a few tomatoes and I do have plans to make at least one batch of salsa…that’s something everyone in the family will eat.

Raspberries and beets are ripening as well. And cucumbers! I made these lovely jars of refrigerator pickles this past weekend, using the recipe from my cookbook for kids, Terrific Veggies on the Side. It’s so easy and they are really great on sandwiches or straight from the jar. Next week I’ll be making a batch of pickled beets…my oldest loves them!

Stay tuned for more news from the garden! Until then, check out The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book, available at Mother Earth Gardens, Amazon, or through Millbrook Press.

In the Garden, Week 10

Here we are at week 10 and the morning glory vines that climb the fence in the backyard are in full bloom. This means that the first day of school is right around the corner, which always makes me a little sad. But I love them anyway, and morning glories are really easy to grow. I simply let them go to seed and they sprout again the following summer.

 

I was surprised to see that my wisteria was blooming again this week. A second bloom doesn’t usually happen until mid to late September, so this must mean we’ve had a great growing season with plenty of rain. The hummingbirds and bees, including the busy bee shown here, love the blooms as much as I do, which gives me a good reason to leave the vine growing on the pergola. At one time I thought we should really be using the vertical space to grow something “productive” like concord grapes. But if the birds and bees are happy with this arrangement, I’m happy too.

In the community garden plot, I reserve space in the corner for growing flowers to please the pollinators (above, right). This year I sprinkled some cosmos seeds in among the perennial phlox and lilies. I love the cheery splash of color they add to the otherwise all-green garden.

The garden finally got the attention it deserves this week. Brian and I were sans kids, as they were out of town camping with the grandparents. With a little extra time on our hands, we actually walked to the garden twice to weed, water, and harvest. Brian took on the daunting task of weeding the strawberry patch, which looked as if it had been taken hostage by crab grass and dandilions. Here’s a photo of him hard at work, while I’m slacking behind the camera (aka the iPhone).

I also found an evening to try that pepperoncini recipe I mentioned in last week’s post. These are supposed to sit for 3 weeks, but I’m not sure they’ll make it that long…they are chilling in the refrigerator as we speak. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

Until next week, check out The Nitty Gritty Gardening Book for fun and easy garden projects. Happy growing!