Three motivations that drive me as a "farmer"

These are not all the motivations, but they are contradicting ones that battle for primacy in the hierarchy of vegetable garden planning. I stumbled over three articles in the same online publication and thought it odd that the ideas compete with each other to some degree.

Volume of Calories Grown
Beyond Salads: Planting a Garden to Feed a Family

vs

Most Nutritious Options
Top Ten Most Nutritious Vegetables and How to Grow Them in Your Garden

vs

Quick Growing and Producing
Quick Growing Vegetables for the Impatient Gardner

The first person to say "You don't have to sacrifice those things" will get a boot to the head. If I had one square foot to plant in, I would have to make a decision. One corn plant...one sweet potato slip...two crops of spinach....or early radish and late beets. There are always decisions and they do weigh on people, especially beginning growers.

Identifying your own personal goals is probably more fulfilling than ignoring them. My roommate likes variety. I tend more towards the quick producing and volume. I am far more interested in doing back to back crops of early and late vegetables than growing Mint or Basil.

My green beans are quick, prolific, and voluminous (in fiber, but not calories really). Probably why I like them.

Final Harvest - Leeks

The last thing out of the ground were the leeks. Started from seed, they took forever to look like something worth picking. I would have never chosen to start from seed, but then again these weren't my project so I won't complain. They were nowhere near the size of leeks from the grocery store, but as an experiment any produce is worthy of praise.

Garden Journal #12

Late October (and a mid-November edit)

So October 28th seems late for a garden, right? Especially considering I didn't plant winter squash or pumpkins or brussel sprouts or cabbage or beets. It really should be over with, right? Nope.

As late as just September 3rd the experimental sweet potatoes were shorn off by rabbits. And all the guides say sweet potatoes need a long season, like 120 days at least. I think they went in July 1st and got eaten off twice so they got far less than 120 days of foliage. Well guess what? Booyah! I am totally doing these next year, but the proper way...earlier and way more of them.

That's right...ever-bearing strawberries put on just a handful late in the season.

But the biggest surprise came 19 days later...nearly Thanksgiving folks. What was it?

Wait for it...

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Wait for it...

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A Thanksgiving surprise! When I went to mix in some primo compost (you'll hear about that in a minute) I found the lost little guy.

Garden Journal #11

Mid-October Harvest

These three pictures of radishes do my heart well. The fall radishes were a whim...I realized there was still plenty of heat and there was leftover seed. They went into the ground mid-August (or was it late August?). Anyways, they performed very well. Of course they were bitter and nasty and spicy, but a beautiful nonetheless. I ate the greens though and those were nice and spicy.

One last carrot and one last eggplant.

Remember that huge pepper-fest? One more round had to come off with the first frost.

Garden Journal #10

Edition Peppers! Some known as chilis, chiles, capsicums. Spicy peppers. Red peppers. Everyone seems to call them something different.

Our peppers produced all summer and into the fall. We basically planted one box with a huge assortment and we got a little of everything. Look at the spread we picked last week and then a few examples of each kind:

Anaheim: we only had one plant and it barely produced.

Mystery peppers: we have no idea what they are but they have NO SPICE!

Jalapeños: they just keep coming. They start green and turn red on the bush.

Cayenne: we think....or Mexican chilis....not sure....either way, plenty of spice for dried seasoning, whole or crushed.

Bell: did not produce very well, before they got big they turned dark and had thin flesh.

Bananas: surprising good producers but we had little use for them.

Garden Journal #8

Late summer in the garden has been a little slow compared to some of the busy weeks in midsummer. I will try to post some pics from back when the produce was really cranking.

Learning: I never would have thought that okra plants would grow 5 feet tall. They started out as the tiniest little things and it took until the heat came on for them to really start growing. They ended up being quite woody and had a very well developed root structure.

Confusion: I have no idea what kind of peppers these are. They have absolutely no heat to them but they don't look like any of the others we grew. It was a mix called "salsa peppers" so who know what they are. Do you know?

Fall Reprise: The idea of a fall garden sounds neat but it terrifies me. I went a head and took a leap of faith and emptied out the packet of radish seeds leftover from the spring. They popped right up and continue to grow. (I was able to use some of my second batch of compost in the soil!)

An Old Enemy Returns: The rabbit(s) that live(s) under the deck previously feasted on the soya beans though we got a good crop out of them. Now the food of choice is a fall batch of Kyle's "granny" bean and my very late experiment of sweet potatoes. I worked in some of the second batch of compost into this late planting.

Fall Surprise: We pulled our onions after heavy rains when the tops started looking really bad. One box had some onions that a friend planted and they never got as big as the others, but they just kept growing. The tops had rotted off and I decided to pull whatever remained. Most small, but a few bulbed out. I was not expecting them at all!

Garden Journal #7

Carrots and soil conditioning

That's the same bunch twice. This is the first harvest of anything that grew in my own compost. The deep soil was good for growth, but these babies were shaded out by huge and leaning asparagus that will actually be harvested next spring.

What do you do when stuff starts coming out and you have nothing to do? Go ahead and condition the soil. This was a little bit of compost that was almost ready.

Half a bag of manure left over from this spring.

Dog Days of Summer Garden

August...hot..lot's of stuff coming out of the garden.

Yes, these are supposed to be yellow...beautiful.

Okay, those five beauties on the right did not come from the garden...here's to hoping for next year!

Crap...I should have a recipe for those eggplants....like the baba ganoush I made with them. Then again it's pretty simple. Roast, fry with olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and a dash of salt.

That apple tree didn't do that well but there is one. Bananas did well but were useless.

Chili Mac

So...chili-mac. Someone told me that every knows how to make this. I disagree....if everyone knows how to make this, why don't more people cook it? It seems everyone has some bad memory of too much of this as a kid, but there is probably a reason: it's easy, and if you try you can make it pretty healthy as well. My chili-mac is never quite the same, but I am committed to two absolute things: add vegetables and spice.

Sometimes the base of my recipe is a box of store brand macaroni and cheese. Sometimes its dry noodles. Either way, I always add Velveeta as well. I know it isn't real cheese, but this is one of only two dishes I ever eat Velveeta in. Give me a break.

This time, I had whole wheat shells to start with. The homegrown contribution to this meal was tomatos, garlic, bell pepper, jalapeno, and cayenne. I am kicking myself for not having grown more onions! So this is what the ingredients looked like:




Peppers (of all sorts) and garlic started off in just a bit of olive oil.

Then fresh tomoatos.

This is where my method probably breaks from others': I add the chili and cheese to the vegetables. (yes, I know, it looks like a typical chili cheese dip)

If you can't cook noodles, you have a problem.

Then it all comes together for a hearty meal. I recommend more onions and bell pepper, but I was short on these. If you eat it with a nice salad and keep the portion small, it really is a nice, healthy meal.

Garden Journal #6

Okay, prepare your self for pictures and short explanations. Nothing amazing, but do skip down to the bottom and read about my garlic! I am so proud!

Normal view of our counter
This summer there has always been random vegetables just sitting on the counter.

Okra
I am still amazed by the flowers. And they have been producing very steadily. Did you know theses plants grow 4 to 4 ft tall? I made gumbo..........mmmm.

Eggplants
We had quite a bit of difficulty with these. The started off very slow and were totally eaten up by these very small bugs that looked like fleas or something. We finally powdered them with a pesticide and they finally started to grow. The eggplant fruits looked beautiful, though small. That is what they looked like a week ago. After some heat they have started to wilt. They have lost their firmness and shine. We are trying to salvage them with heavy watering. Perhaps they will just end up as baba ghanoush.



Cayenne Peppers
These have been producing prolifically, but we have done NOTHING with them. Some are rotting on the plant and a few have rotted inside the kitchen. I used a few in a few dishes, but we have yet to really dry them. So I gave a bunch to my friend Fillan. He is better about things like this. He will dry them and crush them I am sure. We may actually give them ALL to him and let him process them and get some back from him. It will be nice to have dry flakes for all kinds of cooking.

Garlic
Okay, this is something I am truly proud of. Though they didn't get a full 220 growing season, I pulled the garlic up last week. The tops were turning brown and the necks had gone soft. They are small, but they are as done as they will get. Tried some the other day and it tasted just fine....in fact it smelled great! In searching online how to braid garlic, I discovered the BEST blog about gardening and cooking. Thy Hand Hath Provided is a blog written by a early 30's Mennonite (though modern) mom. They grow and preserve almost all their vegetables and cook so much amazing food. I am very very jealous. Strange for me to feeling such long distance, anonymous friendship with a conservative Mennonite family, but I devour her blog. Thanks for the lesson on braiding garlic, though mine did not turn out perfectly.

Garden Journal #5

That's right people...drool...experience envy...hate me if you want.....but that is from my garden! I have been away from it for nearly two weeks and it's killing me that I can't see and pick and eat it. Kyle actually harvested that haul and posted it on Facebook. He managed to completely leave out my participation in the garden....out of sight out of mind I guess. Oh well.

Onions, tomatoes, squash, soy beans, jalapeños, banana peppers, pears, fennel, cucumbers zucchini, tomatillos. I wanted the onions to get bigger, but Kyle tells me that a week of rain while I was gone really challenged them. If only all that rain would have come in June when we had to water almost every day! For now I am not eating the fruits of our little piece of earth......if Kyle is letting this stuff rot I will kill him. At minimum he should be giving this stuff away.

Garden Journal #3

I guess all the garden really needed was the heat to turn on...and turn on it did! Though I had some faith that these things work themselves out, I was skeptical that my yard was going to produce something worth eating. Some things have not worked out the way we envisioned, but other things have surprised us.

Green beans are surprising me right now. Kyle "let" me have a 12 foot row in the yard. He doesn't care for green beans, but I think they are the perfect reason to garden. I will eat green beans out of a can, but nothing beats the fresh ones. They are pricey at the farmer's market, so it makes sense to grow them yourself. Green beans are BUSH beans, not pole beans. And no, they are not string beans...breeders bred the strings out years ago. We turned over a 1 foot by 12 foot strip of yard and worked in a bag and a half of Scots garden soil amendment. That's it. Stuck the beans in the ground. Watered. That's it. We didn't even weed the row, as the beans grew faster than anything could have tried to get into the good soil.

Result?

That's the first picking. 14oz and pretty good looking. The second picking had ever better looking beans and was 3lbs. The next was 2lbs and was a little rougher looking. There is probably one more good picking out there. If I had known how easy it was going to be, I would have planted three times as many and provided everyone I know with beans. I did give some to my mother...after all, it was her mother that was big on growing beans and making great dinners out of them. Speaking of dinner:


This is why God created the green bean. Green beans and potatoes. I cannot think of a better way to eat green beans. This was always one of my mothers's best dishes and my grandmother's as well. It is pretty simple. Unlike my girl Misty with her detailed recipes over at Popcorn on a Skillet, I only give rough estimates of what went into my dishes.

1 pound of fresh beans
Some potatoes, peeled and quartered (I was trying to get rid of old ones and used too many this time)
4 oz black pepper ham (the nice stuff...like $7 a pound nice)
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Water

Clean and snap beans. Put beans, crushed garlic, and enough water to half cover beans into a wide skillet. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Add diced ham, potato, salt, and pepper. Add more water if you need. At this point I went out for a run, and came back about 45 minutes later to a perfect dish. The potatoes should be cooked, but not to the point that they totally fall apart with a fork. Now, in my family we eat this as a complete meal, so this amount should only feed two people.

So my little bean row has done me proud. Nearly six pounds so far, and more to come. Because I have been too busy to cook lately and because Kyle doesn't eat them, I actually had too many to eat. Though I hate the texture of frozen green beans, I did freeze a pound or so. Clean, snap, and blanch for three minutes, then three minutes in an ice water bath. Into the freezer in a ziplock. They will be stirfry I suppose.