Umm, so it's been a year....

I've been gardening, just not blogging. I do still find my blog useful occasionally though, so I'd like to try to keep it a little more up to date.

For instance, this week I noticed my chive plants were finally blooming. I thought for sure they were about a month late, and I remembered that two years ago I'd kept notes on harvest times. So I looked back at that list, but lo and behold, they were right on time. Amazing how your memory can be so wrong!

I'm still living in the same home, although hoping to move. For a variety of reasons, we just haven't put the house up for sale yet. My son is now 2.5 and keeping us busy. Therefore, I'm continuing to go light on gardening and trying to keep things simple.

Here's a few pics I've managed to take so far this spring.

On March 31st I had my first harvest: some baby chives that I used on potato salad for our Easter dinner. They really put this humdrum side dish over the top!

     

And this is my strawberry bed on April 21st. Unfortunately you can only see 2 strawberry plants, and the rest are romaine and buttercrunch lettuces that I'd just planted. The triple digit heatwaves last summer burnt my poor strawberries to a crisp, and this is all that came back. Compared to this photo from 2010 it really is so sad. Hopefully they'll survive and send out some runners for next year. 

I also planted a few flowers in the back, along with some wild violets I'd successfully transplanted from our lawn last summer. 

That's it. Not very exciting, but at least it is something! We'll see how much I can blog the rest of the season.

I'm Not Dead Yet!

Happy New Year everyone! It was a wonderful holiday season for the grow peace family. I hope you enjoyed yours too.

Winter has been especially mild so far, especially compared to the last two years. So we were able to enjoy a salad on Christmas day with fresh cut arugula from the garden! It was very simple, just the arugula, red onions, oranges, almonds and a vinagrette made mainly with fresh squeezed orange juice and mustard.

 

We also had vegan 'goat cheeze' crostini, with fig balsamic jam, topped with fresh garden sage. It wasn't just a pretty garnish - it really did taste better with the sage. Our roasted potato side dish was flavored with fresh rosemary from the garden. Easy yet delicious.

I was really happy we were able to have a few treats from the garden for our holiday feast. It just makes things so much more special when you're grown them yourself!

Cilantro City

Check out my herb garden - it is growing wild!

It isn't the greatest picture since it was late in the day, but that may be for the best since I need to get out there and trim them. I'm not really complaining though -nothing not to like about an abundance of herbs! I am going to try to use as many as possible over the next few weeks, before they get attacked by summer bugs. (I wish I could get them all in the dehydrator, or frozen, but I know I won't have enough time to pick and clean that many leaves).

The cilantro is so tall it looks like a city. Of course that means they're already starting to bolt, but I don't mind. Letting them go to seed last year is how I got this whole crop! I think the frilly tops taste just as good as the larger leaves at the bottom anyway.

Tonight I harvested some cilantro, mint and chives to attempt  to replicate a Peruvian quinoa taboule we had at a restaurant called El Tule in Lambertville over the weekend. (the mint is in another corner of the yard by the ferns, also growing like wildfire) Mine was low fat, and theirs was better, but it turned out pretty well for a first try. Very refreshing, and thankfully cooling since I served it with very spicy chipotle field roast sausages. (we did have avocado too, it just isn't pictured) Keep scrolling for the recipe.

Spring Herb Quinoa Salad

2 cups cooked quinoa

2 tsp olive oil

scant 1/2 cup each chopped cilantro, mint & chives

juice of 1 lime (or to taste)

salt & pepper

avocado slices (optional)

Mix all ingredients except avocado. Mound on plate and place avocado slices on top.

Edible Flowers and Herbs

The herbs are growing like crazy! The chive, sage, lavender, chamomile and thyme have all bloomed, and it looks like the oregano and marjoram will too any day now. I need to trim them and dehydrate a bunch, but I just haven't had a chance yet.

I did harvest some of the flowers though. To the left is a bouquet of sage flowers. I'm not sure what to do with them, but they sure look pretty and smell good!

I also picked some lavender, chive and dianthus flowers. I dried the lavender to save for tea later. The chives made their way onto baked potatoes and salads. Below is a picture of the chives and dianthus sprinkled on a regular garden salad. Unfortunately it was at night, and the lighting isn't the best. But you can see how pretty the petals are - it really made an average salad look beautiful! And I love the mild oniony taste of the chive flowers. The dianthus was delicious too - a slight spicy, yet floral taste. (there's also some of the home grown radishes in this salad too)

 

Tomato, Pepper & Basil Nursery Order

So here are the pictures of my long-awaited Cross Country Nursery order. I picked them up on Sunday May 9th, but it was too cold to plant them so I had to wait. These pictures were taken a week later right before planting on May 15th. I have to admit I'm a bit disappointed, especially in the tomatoes.
This is the Ramapo, Snowstorm and Matina tomatoes. Granted, the bottom leaves are a bit more yellow than they were on the day I brought them home, but they still looked pretty leggy to me right when I got them. It is definitely not what I expected. I actually showed the Ramapo to the woman working at the nursery, and she told me "we like our tomatoes tall, afterall they are big plants" and that the short, leafy ones you see in other stores are sprayed with growth retardant.

I was as nice as could be about it, b/c I didn't want to cause a stink, but I did say I didn't think that's what they look like when you grow them at home. So then she admitted, "Well, we do grow hundreds of them together in flats so there really is no where for them to grow but up" and told me to pull off the bottom leaves and plant them about 6" deep, so that's what I did. She also assured me, "we're so well known for our tomatoes, really it is not a big deal". I hope that's true! I'm actually not that concerned, because I do think they will grow good roots that way and come back as strong plants. But still, for the price I paid I was just hoping for something a little less leggy!
Here's the Sungold, Grape & Black Cherry. The Black Cherry looks the best - I'm happy with that one, and the Grape is pretty decent too. The Sungold not so much though. I planted that one deep.

I was much happier with the peppers. I guess that's their real specialty though, so it makes sense. Lots of them had blooms and even tiny peppers on them already. As much as I hated to do it, I pinched them all off so the transplants could concentrate on growing roots. Above you see the Orange Sun, Ariane, Bell Boy and Lady Bell peppers.

This is 2 Marconi Golden, 2 Cubanelle & the Nardello.
The Little Dickens and Yummy Orange minis.

The hots: Pepperoncini, Ancho Mulato, Thai Hot Dragon and Jalapeno Tam.

Finally, here are the basils. 2 Genovese, Magic Michael, Summerlong, Osmin Purple & Red Rubin. I was happy overall with these, except the purples do look kind of leggy too. After planting I snipped the tops off of them to encourage more bushy growth. Also, ironically, I picked the Summerlong because I read online it is supposed to be a special variety that takes extra long to go to seed. Well, it is the only one that was already full of flowers! So much for that one.

Strawberries and Cilantro

Strawberries! Yay. I'm really happy they filled in so nicely compared to last year. There are tons of light green berries on the plants so I can't wait for June. You can't quite see it in the picture, but they are covered in bird netting for protection.

There were even tons of them that sprouted out the back of the bed. I want to turn that area into a place where chamomiles and borage can self-seed to their heart's content, so I pulled out all the extra strawberries and gave them to my neighbor. There must have been at least 20 plants. I left just a few in back there, outside of the netting - so at least the birds and squirrels can have a little treat.

You can also see the herb garden in the background. I can't believe how big so many of the herbs are, now in their third season. I'm also quite impressed that a pretty decent sized group of cilanto plants all self-seeded this year. Here's a close up of them:
I should have harvested some earlier, since of course they're going to bolt with all this hot weather we've been having. But that's ok, it just means more plants will grow and I don't mind the taste of bolted cilantro anyway.

Spring has Sprung

Well, it isn't exactly spring yet, at least until the equinox on March 20th. But this weekend was gorgeous - in the upper 50's and bright sun all day Sat and Sun. Unfortunately, I was stuck inside working. I managed to get out for a quick walk through the garden today though. Considering there is still about 2 inches of snow on the ground in shady places, I was surprised to see quite a few new green baby plants coming up! Here's a photo roundup of each happy harbinger.

First, I'm thrilled with the rosemary you see to the left. It is too cold in my climate for anything but the hardiest rosemary to survive the winter. Two years ago I bought an unspecified variety from a local nursery and it completely died over the winter. So last spring I got a new variety that was supposed to be extra cold tolerant - Logee Blue. Considering this was the coldest and snowiest winter we've had in about 20 years, I never thought it would survive. But as you can see from the left, it looks pretty good! I'm sure we'll be seeing new growth on it soon.

Here's a couple more that don't need much explanation.

Chamomile that reseeded itself for the second spring in a row (I only planted one plant in 2008!):
Biennial Chard growing back for it's second season:
Black Hollyhock (This will be it's second season. I hope it flowers this year, unlike last summer.):
Chives (I am so looking forward to sprinkling those yummy flowers all over my salads!):
Mystic Merlin Mallow (It produced one pretty purple flower last year. I can't wait to see more.)
These were the first pictures I've taken with my new camera. Its a Canon PowerShot SD780 IS. I still have to finish reading the instructions to learn more about taking manual shots, so these were just taken on auto macro setting. I'm pretty impressed with the quality for quick auto shots though. They definitely look better than my old camera, and its great I only had to take one photo of each - no blurring from shaky hands.

Indoor Winter Setup

I have two plants I needed to bring indoors for the winter - the bay tree and an orange thyme. As you can see above, I set them up in front of a sunny window, and added two regular desk lamps to give them some additional light. The very bright desk lamp to the right has a full spectrum lightbulb to mimic natural light. They seem to like it, and are doing well. I decorated them with some holiday decorations so it makes a nice display.

Here's an indoor plant I have in my front window too. Just because I like happy snowpeople. Haha My mom got me the one on the right because she thinks it looks like my dog JJ. :-)

More Autumn Garden Leftovers

Remember these Acorn Squash? They were an accident in my garden this summer, since I thought I bought yellow summer squash but apparently it was labeled incorrectly. Eventually, I realized, hey! these are acorn squash!

The plant grew HUGE! It was way too much for my small garden, as you can see above. Then, to top it all off, evil Squash Vine Borers decimated the plant in August.

The good news is, as you can see from the picture on the left, the squash were mostly ripe. I picked around a dozen of these.

Two or three of them had those weird scratch marks on them, so I didn't eat those. But the rest had at least a good patch of yellow, so I figured they were ripe enough to save.

Of course, in the middle of summer, I had no idea what to do with them - 90 degrees with high humidity is not exactly roasted veggie soup time.

So instead of eating them then, I gave a few away and roasted the rest, then froze them.

I finally made soup with it the day after Thanksgiving. It was super easy - I just poured the frozen pieces of roasted squash into a pot with the leftover Imagine No-Chicken broth that we used for the stuffing the day before. Then I added some fresh rosemary, thyme and red hot pepper flakes. S & P to taste, pureed with an immersion blender and voila! delicious creamy soup. It really was tasty!


A few days later I added nutritional yeast to the leftover soup and poured it over whole wheat spaghetti mixed with spaghetti squash as a kind of cheesy-ish sauce. I didn't take a picture of that one, b/c I'll admit, it wasn't very beautiful. But sometimes, ugly things taste great! My partner wouldn't touch it b/c he doesn't like squash, but to me, it was delicious! I love squash, any and all kinds.

I still have about 2/3 of a bag left in the freezer, so I'll definitely be making this soup again in the cold winter months.

Big Fall Harvest

Wow, I can't believe how much I picked today, and I didn't even get to any flowers.

Here it is: bell peppers, italian frying peppers, lots of hot peppers, mustard greens, a couple radishes, basil, two kinds of mint and shiso leaf:
The peppers and mustard greens I can handle, but the mint and basil are going to be tough. I've got to pick all of the good leaves off individually, then dry them. That's a lot of picking. Uggh. I better get to it. At least I'll have plenty for the winter.

Also, here's a quick pick of my new dehydrator in response to Chris' comment:I'll be using it to dry everything.

Do I love my garden or what?! Took the day off edition

You might remember this "Do I love my garden or what?!" post from last year's veganmofo. Well, it is kind of interesting to reflect on - things are looking better this year, what with my Agribon rowcovers instead of sheets.

Still, I took today off from work (it was a slow week, so my boss was fine with it) just to work in my garden haha! It is bright and sunny, about as good as a fall day could be. Although we haven't had a frost yet (very unusual) we've had extended cool temperatures so things are starting to show signs of dying. The leaves on the herbs are turning brown, which I definitely don't want since I am trying to dry and preserve them for winter. I have a number of things I want to get done:

1. harvest and dry the hot peppers (habanero & kung pao, mainly. The jalapenos still haven't turned red)
   
2. harvest and dry herbs (shiso, oregano, marjoram, eucalyptus, sage, mint, chives & lavender)
3. harvest and dry the edible marigolds
4. harvest the nasturtiums and make something with them for dinner
5. pull down the malabar spinach. It has spots all over it now, since it is a tropical plant I think it is hating the cool weather
6. sew the extension onto the agribon covering the lettuce bed

Jeesh! It is a lot for one day. I've also got to clean my house since I'll probably have people over for a Halloween party this weekend, and I need to put another coat of plaster/joint compound on a drywall project in the upstairs bathroom. I'm sure I won't get everything done, but, I'll try my best.

Basil Pesto and NYC Style Pasta Brunch

I had this whole epic post about sweet peppers 3/4ths written, and then discovered that the central recipe for the post has disappeared. I have no idea where it is, and it is one of my favorite recipes. Boo!

In the meantime I'll just have to post this quickie leftover from a September Sunday brunch. Which isn't so bad, since this New York style brunch (i.e., it happened in late afternoon) was super delicious.

As you can see above, it was a simple pasta dish. I made the sauce with diced tomatoes and peppers from the garden (bell, italian green fryers and jalapenos), plus shredded carrots, onions and garlic from the store. I slow sauteed these things with my usual herb combination - thyme, oregano, marjoram and bay leaf, then served it over angel hair pasta.

I'd usually put some basil in there too, except this time I made a basil pesto to go with it. That's the dollop on top. It is sort of a funny color since I used purple basil, but wow was this purple basil delicious. I'm not really sure what type it is, since I bought a mixed pack of assorted basil. It was very floral. Even though it had bolted and grown flower heads by that point, it didn't taste bitter at all - just the most wonderful flavor.

Below is the best picture I can find of this mixed basil patch. You can kind of see it behind the Calendula flower bed. From left to right it is green, purple, green, purple. I had no idea what they would end up like when I planted them, or else I would have done it differently. It was basically like a basil grab bag. I think there was definitely some kind of lemon basil in there, which I really didn't like - it tasted medicinal. Also, some kind of really short basil with beautiful flowers. I think there was at least two plants of good old green Genovese - that and the purple (maybe Opal?) definitely tasted the best. Next year I think I'll definitely grow those two.
Below is a picture of the leaves before I pureed them, with a bit of olive oil (not a lot, b/c of the diet again), nutritional yeast, walnuts and garlic. I probably put salt and pepper in there too - I didn't use a recipe, just whizzed it all in the food processor. It's hard to go wrong with these ingredients inmho.Then I also had the italian pepper almond chreeze discussed in a previous post dolloped on top, and on a whole wheat english muffin. See, it involved an English muffin - thus making it brunch. haha

I wish I could have more leisurely sunny Sundays spent in the garden like that September day...

Six Tips for Harvesting

As my husband and I were picking some dinner last weekend, it occurred to me there are a few basic guidelines I follow to decide what to harvest.

Of course, when it comes to things like tomatoes or peppers it is a simple enough thing to know when they are ripe and ready to eat. So this is more for the trickier plants like herbs, lettuce, chard, or mustard greens that continue to grow through multiple harvests.


I never really thought of it clearly before we were talking and picking together, so I think it is helpful even for myself to have them spelled out. That's why I'm now going to record them here, so we can best turn the above mustard green plants into this all season:

1. This one is pretty obvious, but trim in such a way as to optimize the plants growth. For example, never trim too much so it dies back, and try to get the older leaves but leave the smaller ones so they'll soon be big enough to eat.
2. Look for bigger, older leaves that still look good - if they haven't been munched on by a caterpillar yet, they will be any second so time to pick.
3. Cut parts that are growing too close to other plants and taking them over. (I'm looking at you, oregano and shiso!)
4. Trim parts that are growing onto the path or the edges of the beds, because they'll end up trampled and bruised soon enough.
5. Harvest any that are just starting to touch the dirt. Once they start laying on top of it, especially if it rains, they'll end up muddy and rotted anyway. So cut them before that happens.
6. Try to trim them in an aesthetic fashion. Since these plants will keep growing and the garden is small, it's nice to keep an eye for beauty when harvesting. Like, don't cut off all the leaves just from the front, or one side. Try to keep the plant looking natural.

Japanese Purple Shiso (a.k.a. Perilla)

The shiso started out innocently enough.

Here it is on May 29, right after planting.



Cute, right?





And now, here it is on October 6th, MONSTER PLANT!!! It's trying to take over. And this is even after I trimmed off about 1/4 of it. Well that's ok. I've got it back there with the crazy other mint anyway. I left the flowers on it this year too, because it is an annual and I'd like it to self-sow for next year. Hopefully it won't be too hard to control! Guess we'll see..
Mostly I've just been tucking it into sushi. But one night I actually made something with it, and couldn't believe how delicious it was! It looks a little strange, what with the dark purple color, but it has such a lovely delicate taste. I had 2 cucumbers left from the garden so I chopped them, then sliced two big handfuls of shiso leaves into 1/4 ribbons and mixed them in a bowl.

For dressing I whisked together 1 tsp umeboshi plum paste, 2 tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp sugar and about 6 tsp rice vinegar (I like my dressings more on the acid side, plus I'm still trying to keep the oil amounts down for my diet). It was simple but really delicious. I love this plant!

I think I will also dry some to preserve them over the winter.

Raging Mint and Its Best Friend Corn

This is just a quick post to catch up for vegan mofo. Although it is a super simple dish, minted corn is one of my favorite things to eat. It makes the corn so sweet, you barely even need butter (well, Earth Balance).

Unfortunately I don't have enough room to grow corn, but I sure do have a lot of mint! In the lower right of the picture above is pineapple mint, which I planted last year. Right behind it is white mint that grew from one tiny little plant I purchased in June.
For a minute last year I didn't think the pineapple mint was going to grow back. I thought all those people who say mint is invasive were lucky, since mine was so small. Well, obviously I was wrong! It is growing like wildfire now. Some of it jumped out of the bed and started growing all around the gutter's drain pipe. I'm glad I put it in the back corner, so I'm not too worried about it. At least we'll have plenty for mojitos!


To make the minted corn, I just throw a sprig of mint (above you see the white mint) in an inch of two of boiling water, and then put the corn in a steamer basket. About 10 - 12 minutes later, it's done. I still remember the first time I read this recipe was when I lived in Seattle in 1997. I thought it sounded so weird, but I had my first herb garden in the backyard there so I tried it. I've been eating corn this way every since. You've got to try it to believe it.

Even More Squash!!!

I can't even believe it myself, 3 squash posts in a row. And there are two more 3 footers growing on the vine, so there very well may be several more squash posts! But I'm definitely not complaining - I'm happy to have finally reached that 'so-much-squash-I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it' point that so many gardeners talk about. Especially considering it didn't happen until late September/October, and these tromboncino's are so delicious. Above you see two that were harvested on Sep. 26th, along with the rest of the bounty I gathered from the garden that day.

Here are the latest two dishes I made with the squash. First up, the "crab" cakes that I mentioned in the last post. Sorry it is a pretty boring picture, with no parsley garnish or anything, because I'm working on two huge reports for work this week and had no time to do dinner. (Which also means tonight's 1st veganmofo post will be quick. I hope to finish these reports by Monday so next week will be better!) But, it did taste really good! I think the Old Bay seasonings were a bit light though. Next time I think I would add more.The squash that made these cakes was so big, it was enough to make another two batches of the zucchini bread from two posts ago. We already ate one loaf, and froze the other. But that left another small squash to deal with! So last night I made it into a sort of 'kitchen sink' veggie stew - my go to recipe for summer produce.

This time it had the squash plus lots of garden yellow grape tomatoes, green peppers and jalapenos since I needed to use those up, as well as what is probably (sadly) our last batch of the emerite haricot verts pictured above. There will be another post about those this October for sure - I think it may have been my favorite plant this year. Soooo delicious. I also added some herbs from the garden - thyme, fresh bay leaf, oregano and a bit of marjoram.

Plus from the store, some shredded broccoli slaw I had leftover (and since I had no broccoli tops, which I usually like to put into a stew like this), chick peas, carrots, onions, garlic, jarred tomato sauce and shiraz wine (which gave it the kinda purple color). Not my best stew yet, but certainly good. We both sort of looked at it like 'eh, meh' considering how much good food we've eaten lately. But then like 10 minutes later we looked at our plates and it was all gone! Om nom nom. Haha. Must have tasted pretty good! It is really hard to go wrong with this combo of ingredients.

I served it with shells and Joanne Stepaniak's mostarella chreeze, smoky variation. This chreeze takes a bit of getting used to - it definitely isn't quite like mozzarella. But it is so good in its own right, and contains no soy, plus protein from the oats and tahini. We love this chreeze. The following picture isn't that great, but hopefully you can see how it gets melty and creamy on the shells. It is one of our favorite recipes.

Quick Catch Up

So many pictures, so little time! Once again summer has me outside and not on the computer. But, it has been a good month so I'm not complaining. Here's a quick slideshow of some garden highlights:J.J. taking time to smell the borage flowers.

Somehow both pink and purple flowers grew on the same borage plant.

Fresh picked blackberries went into my morning fruit salad for work.

The nasturtiums are doing fabulous in their new spot by the fence. Much better than the tiny one that grew then died in the hanging pot last year!

Just picked all of these kung pao peppers on Saturday. I can't believe so many grew on just three plants.

My partner the pepper lover pickled them yesterday.

This was all but one of the italian frying and bell peppers that I've picked so far. A bit dissapointing, but, with this crazy weather I'm happy I got any at all. Hopefully things will pick up in the next few weeks.

The tomatoes are doing better - not quite as good as last year, but still decent. Here's the first batch of Roma, plus some grapes which have been producing a few handfuls each day now.

The yellow and red grape tomatoes, plus jalapenos and cilantro from the garden got made into this delicious black bean salsa yesterday. You can't quite tell from the pic but the bowl is huge - a few handfuls a day really adds up nicely. The only things we had to add were a can of black beans, a little white onion and some lime juice.

This was the biggest haul yet from two weekends ago. Who needs the CSA! It is beet greens, rainbow and fordhook giant chard, the peppers, turnips, beets, some blackberries, tomatoes, a cucumber and a lone calendula flower that I accidentally cut off.

The Emerite haricot vert were outstanding. This was the 1st batch from earlier in July, and I picked two more even fuller bowlfuls after that, plus about a half a bowl this weekend. This was the second batch of carrots I picked, and even more peppers. I just planted a new crop of carrots this weekend - now I can hardly wait until November!