Insect Control Structures

So I'm trying out new ways to control insect problems this year. Above, you see a low tunnel (at least I think that's what it would be called) that is covering two cavili squash plants, to protect them from Squash Vine Borers. I built it just like I did the others described in this post. In fact, I used the wires from the winter rowcovers and just moved them over. The only difference is this time instead of tying the cover on with rope, I just clipped it on with clothespins and used rocks to hold down the bottoms. I also used the lightest grade of Agribon so they won't get too hot under there.

So far, they seem to be working very well. It was these plants I grew from seed, and now they're very big with 3 squash growing on them. They are supposed to be self-pollinating, so I won't have to take the covers off, or try to hand pollinate them. The fruits have been there for about a week now, and are still only about 3 inches long though, so I'm a bit worried they're not getting pollinated for some reason. I guess we'll see how it goes this week.

The other rowcover experiment I'm trying this year is kind of a crazy contraption.
Underneath this Abgribon are 5 Diva Cucumber plants, that need protection from cucumber beetles. I've already seen lots of them around the yard, so they are definitely a big problem. All my cukes were decimated by them the past two summers, so I knew I had to try something because I love cucumbers! The Diva cukes I grew from seed are also self-pollinating, so hopefully this will do the trick.

The problem is they grow up a trellis, so I had to get creative. What I did was use extra-srength outdoor velcro to attach the rowcover to the fence. Unfortunately, I guess because the fence was old and dirty, it didn't stick very well and is starting to peel off. I'm going outside now for my second attempt - this time I'm going to staple the velcro to the fence.

Otherwise, they seem to be growing pretty well under there. I haven't been able to look at them in over a week since I didn't want to completely pull the velcro off until I had time to staple it, so I'm excited to go out there now and take a peek! Hopefully I'll see some flowers...

Seedlings I Planted Myself

Although I bought most of my plants this year, and direct seeded the rest outside, there were a couple that I started inside and grew under lights.

These are most of them - Diva cucumbers & Cavili squash. The Diva seed packet went into great detail about planting them inside, so I didn't plant them outside like I usually do with cukes. I asked on Gardenweb if that was necessary- and another Diva grower said it wasn't, but would give better germination. Since we were having a cold snap, I figured I might as well do them inside.

Well, he wasn't kidding about germination! I got 100% by just 3 days after planting. I swear, one morning I left work work and nothing was there, then I came home and Bam! they looked like this! I couldn't believe it.

Now here they are 10 days later. I hardened them off for about a week, and planted them after I took this picture.

And here's the Cavili squash on the same day, with the other seeds I planted - Lemon Gem Marigolds - in the back:

The marigolds were a bit of a disaster this year. Well, ok - let's call it a "learning experience". First of all, you can see that four of the cells are empty - those didn't even germinate. That may be because I used the same pack of seeds I bought in spring 09. Also, I planted them sometime in Mid-April but the ones that did grow are still tiny. Maybe that's normal but I'm not sure.

Then, at the same time I planted seeds I saved myself from the red and tangerine gem marigolds I bought from Well Sweep herb farm last year. Not one of those germinated. Once again, I turned to the awesome Gardenweb forums for advice, and discovered that you should save seeds from the plants at different times during the growing season. This is because if there are no pollinators around, or the weather is too hot or too cold, you may not get viable seeds from the blooms. I saved all of mine from the plants at the end of the season, so it was probably too late for pollinators and too cold. I also learned that the different colors will cross-pollinate, so it is unclear what colors I'll get from the seeds I save. One of them might be dominant, or I could get all sorts of combinations.

After finding that out I went ahead and soaked ALL of the seeds I saved last year overnight, and tried to presprout them on moist paper towels. Out of hundreds of seeds, maybe 10 of them sprouted. Unfortunately, as 1 more thing in a comedy of errors, I left them in the paper towels longer than I should have. I still tried planting them even though they had 2 leaves and a long tail, and out of the 5 or 6 I planted, 1 is now still alive.

So I finally gave up and bought a pack of tangerine gems from Seed Savers, since I have room for around 20 plants. They are germinating now. It is a little late to start them, but they'll probably still be blooming by July or so, and will keep flowering into October, so not too big of a deal. At least now I know a little more and hopefully this year I'll do a better job at saving the seeds.

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.

Another Squash Post?!?! You've Got to Be Kidding

Nope, I'm not kidding. Here is squash post #5.

As you can see to the left, I had three more to deal with.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to make anything with them until a week after picking and the big one got soft. Whoops.

But the other two were still good, so I don't feel too bad about letting one go into the compost, with everything I've used them for all summer.

They ended up in a Zucchini, Potato and Cilantro Soup. I found the recipe on epicurious.com, and figured it must be good since it is rated with a resounding 4 forks. But wow, it exceeded my expectations. I hate to hype it up, because then you'll try it and be like "meh", but I can't stop raving about it!! I really am not a huge fan of soup. However this was hands down one of the best I've ever eaten. It was perfectly balanced.

The only thing I had to change to make it vegan was use Earth Balance Buttery Spread instead of butter. I also only used 2 tbsp instead of 3, to make it slightly lower fat. But even without that, it is a low-cal recipe. Plus, it was super easy to make, and also used up some jalapenos from my garden. (Even cooler, if I had my dream half acre of land, it could be made almost entirely from home grown ingredients. *sigh* Someday.)

Here it is sauteing in the pot before adding the broth. Which, btw, was Imagine Organic Vegetable Broth that I got a whole carton for only 99 cents at Jack's in Manhattan! Gotta love Jack's. Wuhoo.And the final product (unfortunately the picture does not do it justice). No croutons were needed.


My partner doesn't even like squash and he ate his all up. It was so good I had two huge bowls! This is definitely my new #1 favorite soup. I look forward to making it in the winter with the squash I dehydrated a couple weeks ago.

I've only got 1 more squash left on the vines. I think they are pretty much done for the season, what with all of this cool weather we've had. (though, no frost yet) So I guess this will probably be the last squash post until next year. :-(

Guess What? Yep, More Super Squash!!

Just look at these things!! They measured a full 32" long. The one on the right I definitely left on the vine too long, but I was super busy with those darn reports (which are finally done!) and just couldn't get to it fast enough.

I made the one on the left into an awesome lasagna. I didn't use any recipe - just made it similar to the way I always make my lasagna for Christmas dinner, except I used a mandolin to make 1/8 inch thick long ribbons, and used those instead of lasagna noodles. Then I layered it something like the following list:

1. Squash ribbons
2. sliced fresh-picked Rutger's tomatoes
3. Italian frying peppers and diced onion
4. fresh herbs including thyme, marjoram & oregano
5. tomato sauce
6. a few big leaves of chard
7. cashew ricotta from veganomicon
8. lentils
9. more squash ribbons
10. Italian frying peppers and diced onion
    
11. more herbs & sauce
    
12. chard again
13. cashew ricotta
14. lentils
    
15. halved grape tomatoes
16. a layer of basil
17. the last of the squash ribbons
18. more ricotta, a couple dehydrated grape tomatoes, crushed black pepper and chreesy almond sprinkles on top
    

Then I slow baked it till everything was tender. It was sooooo good, you could barely even tell it was squash and not pasta. I would definitely make this again.
The rest got dehydrated for later use. It made a boatload! I figure I can puree it into soup. Some I could even eat as chips. Others I dehydrated in the ribbon shape may even be able to be reconsituted and made into another lasagna. I don't have a good picture of the result, except in a group shot with the other stuff I dried. But it will show up sooner or later in another post.
















The best thing of all was when I came home from grocery shopping last Saturday, my neighbors called me into their yard. They wanted to know if the squash that came over their fence was ready to pick! I couldn't even believe it...luckily I had my camera in my bag so I could get a few pics. As you can see, just one huge squash was suspended through the fence. There was only 4 little leaves - it wasn't even a whole vine that had climbed over. Somehow just the squash grew through the slats. Once again, this squash managed to amaze me. I love it! I told them they could prepare it any way they would regular zuchinni. I had already given them some of the bread I'd made, and they said it was really good. I can't wait to find out what they made with 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.

More Super Squash!

These two tromboncino were ripe last weekend. Although not quite as big as the 3 footer from my last post, they were still pretty huge!

Just these two were enough to make squash carpaccio, cream of squash soup, and "crab" cakes.

Unfortunately, there was a boo-boo that ruined the "crab" cakes. I started this recipe by grating the squash and heavily salting it, then letting it drain. Later on, my husband continued it - made it into patties and sauteed them. Then after all that, he tasted one - and said "Ugh! These are really salty!" So I said, "Oh no - did you rinse the salt off?" Whoops, no he didn't.

The good news is, I picked another two squash yesterday. So we're making more bread and "crab" cakes take two tonight. I'll put those pictures up eventually, but for now here is the other two dishes we made last weekend. Unfortunately both of these pictures had to be adjusted since it was nighttime and the light in my kitchen is so bad. But hopefully they are good enough so you get the idea until I can get better equipment.

This was the Carpaccio of Raw Zucchini - based on a recipe by Tyler Florence. The only differences were I didn't have chervil or dill, so the herbs were chives, thyme and mint. Then I used a sweet italian pepper almond chreeze instead of ricotta that my partner made. This is the chreeze recipe - except instead of a hot cubanelle, he used italian frying peppers from the garden. I also used less leeks than Tyler's recipe called for - I didn't want to overpower it with onion.

I made this recipe to play along with Food Network Fridays over at Vegan Appetite. I really like Tami's blog. Right now she's having a contest to win a copy of Love Soup by Anna Thomas. Check it out here.
Here's the cream of squash soup. Really it was like cream of squash/potato/leek soup because I put a lot of potatoes and leeks in there too. I used this vegweb recipe as a base, but played with it quite a bit. First I sauteed 2 leeks, 3 celery stalks, 3 garlic cloves, 2 jalapenos & 2 fresh bay leaves in 4 tsp olive oil. Then I added about 5-6 cups steamed squash, 2 steamed potatoes, 4 cups broth, 1 cup soy creamer, 1 pack soft silken tofu, and 2 cups water and pureed it all with an immersion blender. It was a bit too liquidy so I added another steamed potato (luckily I had cooked extra). That really did the trick. Finally I added chopped fresh chives, thyme + s&p at the end. It was super creamy and had just the right amount of kick from the jalapenos. Delicious! My husband ate it up, and he doesn't even like squash. The leftovers were even better.

Super Duper Mega Gianourmous Squash!

Yes, it deserves that many adjectives. Finally, after no sign of a single squash all summer, my tromboncino squash grew the longest one ever!!

I didn't measure it, but it had to be at least 3 feet long. Here it is still growing on the trellis, close up to the left and a wide view of the whole plant below.








I also had to take the obligitory 'it's bigger than my dog!' shot. (Don't worry, it was on the floor for less than a minute and I thoroughly scrubbed it afterwards.)
Normally, you'd think this would be too large for a squash, but it was nice and skinny. Sure enough, when I cut it open, there were no seeds except in the little bulb at the end, as you can see from the following pics:

















I ended up using everything but the bulb at the end for zucchini bread. It made 3 1/4 cups thinly shredded! I used 3 cups for this recipe, except a low-cal version (and used the extra 1/4 cup shredded squash plus the bulb diced into an Italian vegetable stew). The changes I made were to use unsweetened applesauce for half the oil, only 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and 1/8 tsp grated nutmeg.

This was the first time I ever had zucchini bread. Even though it sounds like it would be gross, and looked more like it should be called Frankenstein bread as I shredded the bright green squash, I was delighted to discover it is absolutely delicious!! I already want to make another batch with another huge squash growing on the trellis right now.

Summer Veggie Stew

Here is another dish to use up all those zucchini!
This is kind of a stew I made, with no real recipe, just threw in what I had to use up from the garden: zucchini, italian green frying peppers, herbs and grape tomatoes. Plus a half a bag of leftover arugula and a half a jar of tomato sauce, some chickpeas, red wine, onions & garlic and it was an easy dinner winner!

Directions:

First I sauteed the zukes, peppers & onion in olive oil with garlic and red pepper flakes. Added a couple fresh oregano and thyme leaves at that point, but saved most until the end.

After those veggies were just about tender and golden (about 10 minutes), I added the fresh tomatoes and sauteed those for a few minutes (2-3). (I'll also put broccoli or green beans in at this point, but didn't have them today) Then the chickpeas, tomato sauce and red wine went in, plus a little water, and simmered it all on low for a while (another 10 minutes or so).

Finally I added the arugula in the last couple minutes of simmering so it got just lightly wilted. Garnished with lots of fresh basil, oregano and thyme, then served it on whole wheat rigatoni.

Late July Garden & Zucchini Recipes

Well, I was going to take my new dog kayaking today, but the weather didn't cooperate. So now I'm stuck inside while it rains, and have a minute to do a quick blog post. Here is a recent pic of the garden. I'll show some more detailed pictures soon, but suffice it to say the grape tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers and herbs are doing fantastic!

There was a little problem with blossom end rot on the peppers that has finally gotten under control. But just look at this bounty, not bad for my first real garden!Now here is my favorite salad treat to make with all of this:
Zucchini with Lemon and Mint

*1 medium zucchini

*juice from 1/2 lemon
*1-2 tsp olive oil
*5-10 mint leaves
*salt & pepper
*nasturium blossom for garnish (optional)

Slice zucchini very thin (a vegetable peeler or mandoline helps). Chiffonade mint (pile all the leaves on top of one another, then roll them up. Slice into thin strips). Mix zucchini slices with lemon juice, olive oil, mint, salt and pepper, then serve. Note: amounts are approximate. Use less lemon or mint to taste.

And look this zucchini is bigger than my dog!
It tasted really good! I made marinated grilled zucchini sticks with it. I swear they were better than french fries (and that's saying a lot).
Grilled Marinated Zucchini Sticks
*1 extra large zucchini (or 2 medium, or 4 small)
*1 large garlic clove, minced and
mashed to a paste with 1/2 tsp salt
*2 tbls fresh lemon juice
*1 tsp white wine vinegar
*1/8 cup olive oil
*1 tsp fresh thyme (more to taste)
*1 tsp red pepper flakes
*salt & crushed black pepper

Cut zucchini in half long-ways, then in half again so you have four pieces. Cut off the seeds (longways, like slicing off a triangle of seeds). Slice again longways, and then crosswise in about 3-4" length, so that they are steak fries like sizes, as in picture above. Place in a dish large enough to put them flat in one layer. Add all other ingredients and mix well with hands or tongs. Marinate for at least 3 hours or overnight. Carefully lay across grill, and cook on low, for about 5 min. on each side. Finished stick should be crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, and look something like this: