Weekend Heat Wave

Whew. This heat wave is something else. We have a thirty minute window in the morning during which the heat is tolerable and we water the garden and trees and let the boys play outside. Then, it's indoors for the rest of the day. Joe brewed his first batch of beer (it will have nice sweaty overtones), and I got the heck out of dodge and went out with a friend to shop for clothes I don't need and eat food I shouldn't.

And here are pretty pictures from earlier in the week. Top to bottom: cone flower, Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes, Toma Verde tomatillo, watermelon. This just might be the first summer I successfully grow watermelon. Usually they shrivel up once they reach a golf ball size.

Single Serve Garden

As a harvest of beans has been steadily coming in for several weeks now and the heirloom tomatoes are starting to blush, I've been thinking on the idea of a single serve garden. Some days we haul in a grocery bag of beans, squash and cucumbers, and other days it's just a handful here, and a sprig of something there. Several weekends ago I wanted to saute squash for guests and didn't have enough for everyone, so I threw in some beans, cabbage, garlic and onions. We got to sample the garden fare, and the combination of textures and colors was much more exciting than if I'd only used squash.

In the small home garden, if you want a large variety of vegetables, you have to compromise on how much of each thing you grow. This is the first summer I've grown Queen Anne Peas, and now that half the harvest is in, I have one cup of dried peas. The crop was limited to one short row in front of the perennial herbs, and a small cluster mixed in with carrots and strawberries. There's a patch of October beans next to the butterfly garden, a strip of calypso beans at the base of the bean tunnel, and burgundy beans mixed in with the Adirondack Blue potatoes and corn. When fall soup time comes around, there will be a nice blend of beans and peas to work with.

The single serve garden serves as an artist's paint pallet where dabs of different colors of paint are blended. It makes the landscape and the dinner plate quite lovely, ensuring a tasty treat for each person in the family, no matter what their preference.  It is a place of biodiversity, varying habitat, and as a result - higher resistance to pest and disease. It provides exploration and experimentation and is a perfect garden for the habitual seed-swapper and attender of locavore potlucks.

So, I'm starting a tag titled "Single Serve Garden" where I post exciting edible cultivars, interesting home vegetable garden designs, and space saving ideas. Be sure to follow along!

Harvesting Beans with Kids

Daily I am learning that my four-year-old is capable of much more than I ask of him. I find that the more responsibility and tasks he is given, the less he whines and the more he takes pride in his abilities and being helpful. I suppose preschoolers do have something in common with Thomas & Friends - they want to be very useful!

This brings us to beans. Our garden is jam-packed with bole beans, bush beans, edamame, peas, and a variety of other beans we plan on harvesting to dry. I like that the legumes return nitrogen to the soil, and I like that they are easy to enjoy. They also make for tantalizing picking for the boys. Their garden dome is now fully draped in bean vines, and new pods dangle down every couple days.

With a little help, Daniel quickly learned which beans were ready for picking and which needed to grow longer. After picking his first batch of beans, he informed me that his beans were for looking at and not for eating. This reminded me of the Curious George episode where George grows a humongous carrot and stores it in a trumpet case like a trophy - at least until he had to sacrifice it to save Bill's bunnies.

After explaining that food will ruin unless we preserve it properly, he was on board with freezing his batch. He washed them, snapped them, and looked on as I blanched them and put them in the bag.

I love how proud he is holding his bag of beans ready for the freezer!

In Bloom: Climbing Rose

Late Night Bread Baking

On Sunday afternoon, I decided I'd love a loaf of homemade bread. Only this time, I didn't want to use the bread machine. I'm not a baker type, although I've ventured into it slowly with the scones and dabbled in baking brownies from scratch (just stick to the box, Paige), and I decided to experiment. In the early afternoon, I filled a measuring cup with just over one cup of warm water and added 2 1/2 teaspoons of yeast, 2 tsp of sugar, and 2 tsp of white flour. I mixed it all with a whisk and let it sit until the evening. Around 9pm, I decided it was time to bake bread, so I found a recipe online, and made my own tweaks, since I didn't want to stay up past 11pm waiting for the dough to rise and bake. Here was the gist.

3 cups bread flour
3 tbs sugar (it was less than 1/4 cup but might have been more than 3 tbs. Just sweeten it to your personal preference.)
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbs olive oil
1 cup of my yeasty water

I mixed all the dry ingredients before adding the wet and then mixed it all with a giant fork. When the dough was still to sticky, I added more flour one tablespoon at a time until it wasn't sticky to the touch, but wasn't dry either. I then let it rise for about 40 minutes in a warmed oven with the door open and a damp towel on top. I kneaded and then transferred the dough to a loaf pan sprayed with Baker's Joy and once again let it rise in a warm oven with the door open. Once the dough was about an inch below the top of the pan, I took out the pan, heated the oven to 350 F and baked the bread for 40 min.

The bread rose nicely while baking and had very few large bubbles. It had just a hint of sweetness and great texture. It wasn't too fluffy or too dense.

Last night I made up a new starter using the same mix as before, but added an extra tsp of sugar and let it sit covered overnight. This morning, there was evidence of a middle-of-the-night starter explosion in the kitchen. I split out the mix into two jars and added warm water to bring each jar to the 1 cup mark and mixed in 2 tsp of sugar and 2 tsp of flour into each and mixed.

Friday Foto Montage

tomato trellis

teepee

cucumber and tomato trellises

garden path

corn next to the bean dome

aerial view

french climbing beans work their way to the rooster

purple cone flower

Matt's wild cherry toamtoes

In Bloom: Crown of Thorns

What can I still plant?

The end of June is just around the corner and you are wondering if it is too late to plant. This depends on where you live. If you live in the Northwest, your season is just getting started. If you live in the Southeast, your growing season is well underway and will just keep on going. Here in downtown Raleigh, NC, I use the weather station "Raleigh NCSU" to determine the length of my growing season. The average first frost is November 5, with a standard deviation of 13 days. I feel fairly comfortable considering my conservative first frost date to be October 23.

Counting back from October 23, there are 124 days left until the first frost. Therefore, nearly anything that takes less days than that to grow and produce harvest and is known to grow well in my region is reasonable to plant. Most summer seed packets (those crops that do not tolerate frost) will specify when you can start sowing and how many days before the first frost it can still be sown. Those plants that like cooler weather typically have a late spring cutoff and then a late summer second plant date. If you try to plant those in the heat of the summer, the sprouts will likely wither. I've found some lettuce mixes this year that state they can be sown all summer long.... results yet to come as many of the sprouts are choking off in the heat or then the very top of the soil crusts over. I must remember to mist seed beds every morning and afternoon!

So, there is plenty you may still plant. Some can be planted now, and some are best waiting on until mid July/ mid August.

Midsummer Planting:

Snap beans: 50-55 days
Pole beans: 65-70 days
Tomato and Pepper transplants: 75-85 days
Okra: 60-70 days
Basil: until July
Corn: until July, ~85 days

Fall Planting (planting starts in July or August depending on the season length):
Mesclun Mixes: ~ 40 days
Lettuces: ~ 70 days
Carrots and root crops: 65-96 days
Kale*: 40-50 days.

*Kale is a biennial and will survive our winters here in Raleigh. This past winter was so mild, I had carrots and some lettuces overwinter. I start my onions and garlic in September.

Here are some other little secrets of mine.
As lettuce and herbs go to seed, I pinch off seed heads and rescatter them, no matter the timing of the season. Those that survive will be enjoyed in the fall. Some will even overwinter if the conditions are right. As plants die, I fill in the garden gaps with more beans. My lettuce beds are done and have been replaced by a variety of beans, which I will keep planting every one to two weeks. Because during the peak of summer is difficult to get seeds to germinate, I just give it a rest and enjoy eating the tomatoes.

The importance of interplanting and biodiversity in the vegetable garden

Companion planting, or interplanting is the practice of growing crops together so that one or both may be benefited by the presence of the other or planting crops together that at the very least won't commit unspeakable crimes on each other. Conventional home garden methods are to plant crops in orderly blocks or rows, which makes navigation and harvesting much simpler. Here's the problem, when you don't interplant, your rows are essentially a buffet for whatever pest or disease takes a liking to that specific crop. When we planted a garden at a nearby school using conventional methods, squash bugs absolutely ravaged the patch of squash and zucchini. When I planted tomatoes closely in a raised bed years ago, they all caught the same diseases because the leaves of the plants were rubbing up against each other.

If you walk into a forest, rarely will you see a monoculture of plants. Instead, there is a diversity of trees, shrubs, and even grasses in the sunny patches. This is nature's way of healing itself and preventing disease. In the home garden, the more diversity we add and the more we interplant various species, we create a line of defense against pests, diseases and even weeds. Another benefit is that mature plants can provide protection to younger ones and shade to cool down those crops that can't tolerate high heat. I've got a patch of arugula seedlings just hanging out under the Queen Anne peas that I suspect will take off once the peas are harvested and plants are composted. That ground will never totally be bare, which also prevents opportunist weeds from moving in.

This summer, I've had far less weed problems as I've mixed corn, beans, and potatoes. The early planted potatoes sheltered the young bean seedlings from the bugs that have historically shredded their tender leaves. Last year, every soy bean plant that sprouted was soon eaten. This year, I doubt I've lost a single plant and the harvest is coming in abundantly. The corn with its shallow roots and narrow foliage made use of the top layer of soil and filled in the gaps between plants without hogging too much sunlight. The beans, once they are done with production will return some of the nitrogen they have fixed from the air into the soil. I have even managed to tuck in a few squash plants to this mix.

The largest pest problem we've dealt with over the years is squash vine borers. This year I've planted at least seven varieties of squash and zucchini. We have lost the birdhouse gourd vines already, but several of the other varieties including the Trombetta squash are thriving. By spreading the squash out all over the garden and planting over the course of several weeks, we've helped slow down the egg laying of the vine borer moths. Squash bugs tend to have two peak breeding times in our region, one of which is mid June. Planting new seeds just before then can gets a new crop started in preparation for any damage they do. This year, thanks to heavy use of duct tape on the eggs and bugs last season, the numbers have dwindled.

So here's the rundown in bulleted format for those of you who love lists. Interplanting with a diverse selection of plants, at the same time and in succession:

• Increases the number of plants you may grow per square foot if you pay attention to root depth and leaf spread.
• Can slow down the spread of disease as there is a natural barrier between carriers of the same disease.
• Can slow down the damage from pests as there are other plants to act as a distraction or deterrent from them finding their desired food.
• Enables a longer growing season for cool weather crops when interplanted in the shade of taller plants.
• Reduces the amount of time spent weeding as more of the ground is covered by crops.
• Reduces the risk of complete and utter failure in your attempt to grow your own food.

I highly recommend the book Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway. His first chapter on ecological gardening has some beautiful examples of how people have used ecological principles to restore habitats while producing a bountiful supply of food.

The way cheaters make fancy pancakes

My two blackberry bushes have started producing a couple of ripe berries here and there, and since they are rather tart and I'm not a fan of the seeds, I've decided to tuck them in to Matthew's birthday peach cobbler. It was pretty yummy in my biased and rather uncultured opinion.



Having fun with berries brings me to my faux crepes craze. We had a pint of strawberries last week, and after watching a PBS program which the scent of the crepes was pouring from the screen, I needed a quick fix. I sliced my strawberries and sugared them, mixed them and let them sit a few minutes. I already had a humongous bag of pancake mix, so I used a cup of dry mix with enough water that the mixture was runny enough to spread out thin on the pan. Walla. Faux crepes. If you are a true crepe lover, these will not compare, but if you are just looking for something to hold the berry and chocolate treasure, "That'll do, Donkey. That'll do.." Equal parts mix and water makes them too thin causing them to tear easily, so make sure your batter can still bubble and have some consistency to it.

I buttered the pan over medium heat, and poured out the mix, rotating the pan to let the batter spread out. One the batter appeared somewhat cooked through to the top, I dropped on some semi-sweet chocolate chips and spooned out the strawberries on one half of the pancake. Then, as if I were going to flip the pancake, I used the spatula to fold it over on itself. After a minute, I flipped it to the other side for another minute. After sliding the faux crepe out of the pan and onto a plate, I sprinkled the top with powdered sugar.

You could easily use any of your garden berries in this, though some might require a little cooking down first depending on the texture you prefer.

Friday Freak Show

Friday morning, and the boys are still in their beds. There's a five hour countdown until the appraiser comes, and from what we know, there's a 50-50 chance he will actually come inside the house. We aren't moving - just refinancing, hopefully.

On the 50% chance he does, I painted the master bath. What's even more amazing than the fact that I waited five years to paint, is that I still liked the color of paint I picked out. This was excellent because I had two gallons of it in the closet for five years waiting to be used. The one that was already open had rusted shut, so I had to jam holes in the lid with a screwdriver to get at the paint.I had to put up a makeshift curtain from leftover fabric since the temporary paper shade (at least five years old) was begging to be thrown in the trash.

Well, I hear the boys now. I have five hours of distraction to do so that the house remains intact in case the appraiser does come inside. Wish me luck!

Orange Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Scones

Over the past couple months, I've developed a scone fetish and I've been plotting my first attempt at baking scones on my own. To pay $3 a scone every weekend at the Farmer's Market and on weekdays when I get overcome by a hankerin' would be too much damage to the bank account. After browsing Pinterest and Allrecipes, I pieced together the following recipe that resulted in flavorful, fluffy, moist scones. Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 8 tablespoons salted or unsalted butter, chilled
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup half and half
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon orange citrus oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, and move the rack to the middle. In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients together and grate the chilled butter into the bowl using the large end of a cheese grater. The butter doesn't need to be frozen, but make sure it isn't getting soft or grating will be messy. With your hands, mix in the the butter and crumble the mixture until the butter is evenly distributed. Add in the chocolate chips and mix more by hand. In a measuring cup, beat in the large egg to the 1/2 cup of half and half. Add in the orange oil. If you don't have citrus oil, you can use orange zest and a little orange juice. Make a small well in the middle of the dry mixture, pour in the wet ingredients and fold in the dry. Once it begins to form a mound, transfer onto a flowered board and shape it into an 6 - 8" circle just under 1" thick. Using a sharp knife, cut the circle into 8 wedges. Place on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper, leaving 1/2" space between the wedges. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar over the tops. Bake for 15 minutes or until the tops begin to turn golden. Remove the scones from the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

One confession - I didn't measure the cinnamon or citrus oil that I used. I just used a joyful shake of each and guessed about how much it was (or should have been) based on other recipes. Next time, I hope to add orange zest and a cinnamon on top to give them a more visual interest and immediate flavor to the tongue.

In Bloom: Cucumber

I wish I could tell you the exact cultivar, but I planted three or four different kinds and didn't remember to label them!

No space in the garden?

When space gets tight in the garden, the good news is that your crop has a time limit. Whether it's a 68 day carrot or a 150 day garlic, the time will come to harvest. However, I have a packed garden with nothing quite ready to be scrapped, and five more sweet potato plants ready to be put in the ground. I did manage to get four of the nine planted under the boys teepee along the fence, and now they thing they have a fun new garden bed just for them.

So what to do when the space is gone? There are always more options!

1. Grow up! Perhaps your cucumbers are sprawling on the ground. Train them to grow up a trellis and save tons of space. I even trained a cantaloupe vine up a dome last year. Trellises don't have to be expensive. I'm always rigging old tomato stakes into new vertical growing contraptions.
2. Pot it! There's no reason why you can't grow veggies in pots when your beds are completely full. So long as you regularly water and pay attention to root depths and give the plants enough room, they will be happy. Pair plants with extensive roots with those with shallow roots to make the most of your potted garden.
3. Tuck it into a flower bed! Many vegetable plants can be quite lovely, and there's no reason why you shouldn't mix your pleasures. If you have a shady perennial garden, it might be a great opportunity to grow extra lettuce that tends to bolt in the heat of summer. Swiss chard doesn't mind a little shade, and mine has thrived when it gets afternoon shade.
4. Box it! If you have a deck, you could build boxes for the rails. Plant foods you like to pick regularly and have quick access to. This is especially a convenient idea for a culinary herb garden. While you are prepping dinner, you can run out and take a quick snip to spice up your dish.
5. Interplant! If you spaced out your tomatoes according to the seed packet, there is a good chance you have extra space at the base of the plants for lettuces and root crops like carrots or beets. If you prune off the bottom branches of the tomatoes, you'll find you have tons of space to work with.

Cucumber Sandwich!

I had never tried a cucumber sandwich until last year. With all the wedding and baby showers I've attended in the past 8 years, and being a southern girl, it's amazing I was able to dodge them for so long. Essentially, I have an irrational fear of what I call "old lady foods".

Allow me to expound. Fruit salad, tuna salad, potato salad, coleslaw, chicken salad, pimento cheese, jello with things in it, frozen jello-fruity-pink salads, pasta salad, sandwich pinwheels, deli meats, pickles, AND cucumber sandwiches all make me uneasy.

However, during a play date last summer, my friend Erin made a very simple cucumber sandwich that I loved and went home and made my own - over and over and over again.

Here are the ingredients to serve yourself up a simple snack that even I can enjoy.

• 1 cucumber sliced thinly (or thickly if that's your preference) 
• 3 slices of artisan bread halved 
• 1 ounce cream cheese 
• several sprigs of fresh dill 
• garlic salt 

Warm the cream cheese just enough so it will spread easily, mix in the fresh dill and season with garlic salt. A shake or two should do the trick. Spread the cream cheese on BOTH pieces of bread and then sandwich in those cucumber slices. Enjoy!

Saturday Assassins

I've posted these assassin bugs in the past, and they have appeared in the garden this year. I found a cluster of their offspring on a cluster of coriander seeds that I was waiting to dry so I could replant them or save for the fall. Assassin bugs prey on flies, caterpillars, beetles, and mosquitoes, so they are welcome inhabitants in my garden.

Detailed Garden Schematic

A friend requested I share this, so here it is! If you open the picture in a new browser window, you should be able to zoom in on it.

The plants shown are what was growing as of the beginning of June. There are far less carrots now after a week of picking a daily one for the baby. The teepee is in the bottom right corner, the herb garden is on the left, and the beds just outside the fence are not pictured. More lettuce has been planted in the various bare spots.

Taking care of the bumbles

I've always been skittish around flying insects with stingers. I blame my parents who potty trained me in the buff on the side porch, during which I was stung on the bumkin by a bee. When approached by a yellow jacket, I will actually take off in flight until I lose him. However, in the garden, there is one stinger I've found peace with - bumble bees! Mind you, the carpenter bees are still evil assassins that chase me for no reason, but the bumble bees are my friends

After reading that bumble bees are essential for pollinating many of my garden vegetables, such as the tomato which they pollinate by vibrating the flowers, I started incorporating more flowers and colors into the garden to attract them and keep them steadily supplied throughout the growing season. Their current favorites are English Lavender, Liatra Spicata, Borage, Blue Meadow Sage, and Black Oil Sunflowers. They have demonstrated a blue and purple bias, which is my own personal preference as well.

bee on borage

I also read that the bees need to drink water, but tend to drown in open water surfaces. So as part of the lizard habitat we created, the broken birdbath is filled with pebbles and rocks to give them safe landing.
 
Since my boys were also afraid of bees, we've spent time quietly observing them and getting a closer look. Matthew likes to find them and point them out to me, and he knows not to get too close or try to touch them. It's funny seeing the all-knowing expressions on his almost two-year-old face as he tries to tell me about them in his toddler chatter. The words I make out are "bee" and "ouch" and "come on!".

Last night, Daniel and I spent time in the garden watching the bumbles on the flowers. He knows now that the bees are slower and friendlier when it's not as hot outside, so early evening is the perfect time to get up close. Before encouraging him to get up close and personal with one bee we were watching, I explained that it's important to stay very still and not wave his hands around if the bee flies towards him. We were within inches from one on a borage flower and listened how his buzzing changed, even jumping back a little at the sharper sounding buzz. Since he's four and believes everything I tell him, I had him talking to the bee and thanking him for pollinating our flowers. Daniel later reminded me that bees die after they use their stingers, and we talked about how they don't really want to sting us.

talking to a bumble

Tomato Problem - Help!

This evening I discovered that the newest leaves on one of the main stems of a Brandywine tomato plant had dark brow speckles and blotches. Some had turned almost fully brown and crunchy. The rest of the plant looks healthy, save for some curling of the oldest leaves. The foliage is dark green and perky. The fruit are small and don't appear to have any problems, and only the stem of the worst leaf had some brown legions on it. Identification is proving difficult because there hasn't been any yellowing of the leaves or a halo around the spots.

Any ideas what this might be? Do I need to pull out the whole plant? I removed all foliage that had even a hint of freckles forming.

In Bloom: Scaramouche Daylily

Woohoo! It's two Wordless Wednesday posts in a week. I accidentally posted this week's on Monday and took it back down. Lest you feel cheated, and lest these are no longer blooming next week, here is our latest daylily addition: 'Scaramouche'.

In Bloom: Black Oil Sunflower

I planted a handful of black oil sunflower seeds straight out of the birdseed bag. I doubt I will eat them since I don't know the history of the seed and whether it was treated or not, but I will at least let the flower heads dry and set them out for the birds at the end of the summer.

Leave a comment with a link to your Wordless Wednesday post!

When the shovel hits the rock

Lazy workmanship during construction means a headache for the homeowner down the line. We've been building up a small garden area around the mailbox, and when I attempted to add one more plant, I hit a rock. No matter where I dug, I hit this rock. As it turns out, whoever built the house disposed of their extra concrete, asphalt and bricks at the corner of our driveway and covered it up with dirt. Thaaaaank you so much.

It took a chain and a Ford truck to drag this slab to another spot in the yard. We aren't sure yet what we will do with it, and I've considered working it into the yard as a garden feature, but it is currently ugly side up.

Daniel looks like he's grown a couple inches this past week. Maybe it's just the rock.

I dug up the Japanese Maple in the front and moved it over behind the mailbox where it should get a little more sun and have less competition from other trees. My back hurts, but the mailbox sure is looking fancy. A layer of mulch would add that last touch it needs.

From Pest to Plate

Not one to shy away from sharing nasty pictures with you, here are my latest pest discoveries. The first are slugs. After growing cabbage and watching it sit in the garden and contemplating sending it straight to the compost, I needed another vegetable for the sautée we were fixing for lunch guests. I picked every last bean,two small squashes and several green onions, so I thought, "Why not the cabbage?" It was ready and basically flavorless. After I peeled back a couple leaves, I found these juicy guys. YUCK. I kept on peeling until there were no more slugs then washed it all very well.

Now doesn't this look much better? I supposed one of the things about growing your own food is you have to somehow block out from you mind what might have been munching on your food before you got it and what you might have done to said munches. As a side note, I've read that a shallow bowl of beer is an excellent trap for slugs.

The rest of the sautée was made up of green and burgundy beans, white and red spring onions, garlic, and two kinds of zucchini all from the garden.

Of course, in order to keep getting lovely zucchini, I have to deal with these pests. I have not figured out how to prevent squash vine borers, and the moths that lay the eggs are hard to catch. Whenever I see a small hole with cornmeal looking stuff coming out of it (borer excrement), I use a metal grill skewer and a paring knife to open the vine at the hole and pull out the borers and squish them. The holes are usually at the junction of the leaves and the main vine, but they really crop up anywhere I then lay the vine on its side and cover it with soil just pat the excision mark.

Last but not least, the salad! I used a mix of garden lettuce and store bought Romaine. Check out the borage blossom garnish.