My Cactus is Blooming!

I bought this little guy when we went camping in Balmorhea. It stayed inside for quite a white because I couldn't figure out where to put it where the kids wouldn't be messing with it all the time. It started to look a little unhappy so I finally put it out in the front flower bed and lo and behold. It started blooming! Pretty!

Dinner from Scratch

I was feeling a little bored about 2:30 this afternoon and decided to make some marinara sauce from scratch using all the tomatoes I had ripening on my counter from the garden. This is quite a lengthy process, the longer you cook it, the better the flavors. Last summer was my first attempt at this, and it turned out ok but not great.

First, blanch fresh ripe tomatoes for 1 minute. Cool in ice water and slip the skins off.

Core and cut out bad or tough spots, cut tomatoes in half or quarters and squeeze out seeds and juice. Crush the meat. This is a pretty messy process.

Yep, all over the floor and myself too. I'm happy this year I can put all the "waste" into my composters to go back into the garden. I love my composters.

Saute some onions, peppers (from the garden), and garlic. Add the tomatoes and cook for 30 minutes at least. Add some fresh herbs like basil, oregano, rosemary, and thyme from the garden.

Keep cooking! You can finally see a reduction of liquid. Add salt and pepper and taste and adjust.

Once it has reduced enough to start sticking if you don't watch it, puree in a food processor. I only did about  90% cause I wanted a few little chunks of seasoning for texture. Add some more fresh herbs and cook until you're ready to serve.

Serve with some oven fried eggplant (also from the garden) and fresh bread. Yummy Yum. It still is hard to believe this is the end result of tomatoes from my garden. Lots of work but very rewarding!

Do I Ever Stop Talking About my Garden?

Nope! We've had lots of produce from the garden. Several bags of green beans are in the freezer and we've eaten loads of zucchini. It's so delicious just sauteed until soft in some butter. yum! The okra is really picking up and I'm looking forward to making some pickled okra. Surprisingly the strawberries are actually producing a small handful each day, which Zoey loves to eat. I have high hopes for them next year. We harvested the corn and had about 30 "full" cobs and another 20 or so half or smaller cobs. I guess I must be planting too close, I can never get full pollination of the cobs. This was probably the best turn out of cobs over all years past so I can't be too disappointed.

Tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, now that the cucumbers are slowing down :-/ One of these years I'll get them to work together. We've been eating pounds of cucumbers for weeks. For a while the stink bugs were happy to hang out in the corn plants after I harvested, but once they started to dry up they've been migrating and I have to make rounds a couple times a day and scare them out of my tomatoes. Wretched little critters. Brandon bought a giant pumpkin seed growing kit for Zoey so we're going to forego a second round of corn and plant giant pumpkins there this year. The second season of corn has always been a little disappointing anyway. With any luck our baby watermelons and cantaloupes will thrive and be delicious. Last year was a flop for cantaloupes.

Top: partially pollinated corn

Bottom: stink bug damage

The sunflowers, though they have all been treated the same seem to be successively weaker from back to front. The tallest is about 9', far cry from the 12 or 16 I was hoping for. Maybe next year.

Baby watermelons

Eggplant, always a success

Ripening tomatoes, already marred by those stupid insects!

And for your enjoyment, the blurry caterpillar dance. Sorry I hate video editing, so you can skip to about halfway when he actually starts dancing. This little guy was pretty annoyed that he got sprayed with water while I was watering the plants. He danced for quite a while. Anyone know what kind of moth or butterfly he'll grow into?

Garden Update

Just because I love seeing my garden grow and talking about it. Some more pictures for you to enjoy.

Strawberries, peppers, and okra

cantaloupe, sunflowers, watermelon

lima beans and green beans (we've picked a couple pounds of green beans so far)

Tomatoes and cucumbers. We've eaten 4 cucumbers and I think I've finally gotten Ian to stop picking the green tomatoes.

Herbs, eggplant and zucchini. Pretty sure there's a nutrient deficiency in this bed.

A Growing Garden

So it's been I guess a little over a month since I posted about the garden. It's really ramping up now and soon will be producing fruits and vegetables.

The whole garden

Strawberries (back), Okra (left), Peppers (right). My new garden beds always seem to straggle behind, the dirt just isn't the best until the worms get in there and process it. Plants will probably do better next year, but we'll see how it goes anyway.

Cantaloupe, Sunflowers, and watermelon. All seem a bit stunted :-/ like the other new bed.

Corn. Growing and thriving. We must have had some pretty heavy wind while we were gone, much of the corn was blown over and I had to  mound up the dirt and re stabilize the plants. I wonder if I'm not planting them deep enough. They seem to do really well otherwise.

Lima beans (front), green beans (back). Green beans are full of flowers. One of the plants snapped in the wind and yet is still flowering and surviving along. Limas seem lanky and struggling, but maybe they are just that way, we'll see how they do in a few more weeks.

Cucumbers (left), and Tomatoes(right). Lots of male and female flowers on the cucumbers already. Tomatoes have a couple green ones already set. Those Jetsetters sure are early! I'm trying a different pruning method this year on the tomatoes to keep the growth in check and perhaps have larger but abundant tomatoes this year. I'll be glad if I can keep the cukes on their side of the trellis, they always end up all wrapped in the tomatoes.

Zucchini (front), eggplant (left), herbs (right). Zuchinni flowers just opened today, they produce fast and we'll probably be eating them by the weekend. Herbs have exploded, already made an awesome egg salad with the dill. I'm dying to make pesto, there's enough basil now. Eggplants are slow but steady, they'll get there.

Fig tree really flourished out with lots of leaves. I wonder if it drops the few fruits it had, I can't find them anymore.

Asparagus seems to be pretty happy here.

Blackberries are coming back strong, starting to flower too!

Pretty sure my orange tree is dying, all the little fruits it had all fell off, the leaves are yellow and curling. I think it's a root problem from too much rain. Maybe fungus or rot. Short of digging the thing up, I don't know what else I can do to help it bounce back :-/

Rosemary always so happy, Stevia happy and strong, gonna try extract this year. Onions are super happy and I think the asparagus like it in this spot too.

Our hiding little friend. The kids love spotting these all over the yard. Lowla too, they drive her mad that she can't ever catch them.

Can't wait to start eating fresh veggies from the garden. Soon soon but not soon enough.

The Garden Season 4.0

Since last year we moved the fence up, we gained a lot of new garden space. So this year we've added two new beds mostly dedicated to fruit production, something we haven't gotten much out of the garden in the past. Most of the plants are pretty small or barely emerging at this point, but I'm always excited to show off what I'll be growing each year.

Strawberries, peppers and marigolds. A couple open spots here.

Watermelons just starting to emerge, also cantaloupe and sunflowers in this bed.

Corn, as always. It's taken 4 years to figure out how to keep the squirrels out. If all goes well, I should produce ~70 ears of corn.

Green beans, lima beans, and marigolds, two of which have already been decapitated by Ian.

Eggplant, lots of basil, some dill, sage, tarragon, and zucchini.

Tomatoes and cucumbers. Jetsetters are doing well, still have my new variety Rutgers growing inside, probably another week before they're ready for transplant.

The fig tree is finally starting to see some height. Plenty of little figgies starting to appear.

This bed was extended this year and I've added some asparagus (that weedy stick on the left) but we can't harvest from it until next year, they have to establish the first year.

Blackberries had a rough time last year, so we'll see how they bounce back this year.

Rosemary, Stevia, yellow onions and marigolds. This bed was also extended this year.

Orange tree is finally well established. it had lots of blooms about a week ago. I can't tell if any have set yet, I'm hoping this is the first year for at least one orange!

A view of the whole garden. The kids were helping me transplant a bell pepper plant from the Aerogarden.

So there's a few spots left in the garden, but those will be filled once I go to the Mercer Arboretum plant sale this Friday! I'm going to pick up some thyme, cilantro, parsley, and some other vegetable to put on the other side of the peppers, not sure what I want yet, I'll know it when I see it.

I don't usually put in marigolds but one of Zoey's favorite Max and Ruby episodes is when Ruby plants some Marigolds in her dolly's garden so I figured they'd be good for attracting bees and Zoey would enjoy planting them. She really did. Ian has also enjoyed decapitating them, which severely upsets Zoey. Can't win 'em all! I'm really hoping the sunflowers (Kong Hybrids) do much better than last year being in 100% full sun, in the center of a regular water and feed schedule, and started from seed. I just worry they might cast too much shade on the corn. We'll see. I love trying new stuff!

More pictures in a couple weeks when everything is really growing!

A Rabbit's Feast

I'm finally getting around to preparing for planting my spring garden. Even though it's barely the beginning of March, since the winter was so mild, planting sooner is probably better. We might have another really hot dry summer like last year, it was really hard on the plants. I typically just let the carrots that I plant stay in the ground until I'm ready to use them. The Danvers that I plant don't seem to get too woody as they get bigger and the flavor is always so sweet and delicious. But in order to plant corn, I had to take them up and I had so many more carrots than I expected.

These completely filled my deep kitchen sink. These things have got to be the most labor intensive vegetable to store long term that I've grown so far:

1. Pull out of the ground
2. Tear off the tops
3. Wash
4. Wash again
5. Wash another time
6. Trim the ends
7. Peel...soooo time consuming!
8. Wash again
9. Cut into circles, sticks, or cubes
10. Blanch
11. Cool
12. Pack
13. Freeze

If I had the energy I might have frozen them individually on sheets and then packed for easier usage, but my feet were killing me by the time I got to the blanching. I kept some unprocessed past peeling and washing so I could make carrot cake today, and it is delicious! If you have any favorite carrot recipes, I'd love to know I've got 8 quart bags packed with carrots in my freezer!

From Garden to Garden

I've been doodling with the idea of learning to compost for a while. It seemed intimidating, although on a level I was already doing it since I would throw garden scraps and yard waste behind the electrical box in our yard and it was composting away happily back there. I was going to have Brandon build me a three stage composting box just so he would have a project. To get really good compost fast you have to aerate and turn the pile often, which is a lot of work. I might do it in the summer when its nicer outside, but chances are if it was too much work I'd stop doing it. I did some research and decided to buy some compost tumblers to make the whole process easier. I decided on this one: Envirocycle Compost Tumbler

It was reviewed well, seemed big enough for what I needed, easy to rotate and collects the compost leachate I can use in my garden sprayer instead of miracle grow. Win win win! I decided it would be necessary to get two of them, one to be adding matter to actively, and one untouched to allow to cook. Amazon two day shipping and they're here and I love them already!

Just arrived, I knew they were big, but somehow they just seem huge once they got here. Capacity of 7 cubic feet each, about 52 gallons.

Zoey is excited to start composting. I don't think she really gets it yet, but she knows I'm throwing stuff inside of there. Before I put a significant amount of stuff in the thing Ian was able to rock it off the base and roll it around the yard.

Added some greens, garden and kitchen scraps, and some browns, shredded newspaper and credit card offers. Gave the whole thing a good tumbling and its ready to sit for a while. It's only about 1/4 full right now, so I've got another half of filling to go before I let it sit and cook. The instructions say 4 to 6 weeks to finish. I hope I'll have some in time for my summer garden. We'll see

Here's the pair. I put them pretty close to the back door. most reviews said they didn't smell (shouldn't if you compost right) and didn't have problems with critters. I wanted them to be easily accessible from the house and the garden so I wouldn't be a bother to add scraps and give them a turn. I hope to update in a couple weeks on how well they work!