Xmas dinner from the garden

We ate many things from our garden on Christmas day. The menu featured lentil soup and oven roasted root vegetables.
I headed out to the frosty garden for kale and parsley to put in the soup:

The leaves at the center of this patch of kale and parsley were still fresh and green even without a row cover:

The soup also contained home grown onions and garlic -- here's the pot simmering:

The roasted vegetables were all mine except for the addition of two store bought sweet potatoes. I added our own delicata squash, fingerling potatoes, sunchokes, garlic and rosemary. Here they are prepped for  the oven:

I parboiled the pots so that the vegetables would all be done about the same time. Here's the final result just before I devoured it:

I also used a warm hour midday to check for any overlooked sunchokes in the bed I cleared the week before-- and I dug out another pail full! There were lots of broken pieces, so I've been eating fried sunchokes and scrambled eggs for breakfast almost every day, and I'm not tired of them yet.

Sunchoke Harvest part 1

It was a beautiful day - sunny, no wind, temps in the high forties. I headed out into the garden after lunch, pitchfork in hand, to harvest sunchokes. The other common name, Jerusalem Artichoke, is a mispronunciation of the native American name for these perennial sunflowers.
I knew the harvest would be substantial, because the flower stalks were lushly leaved and shot up to eight feet before blooming in late September.
But I was amazed by the masses of giant tubers I uncovered in a two foot square bed. Rabbits love sunchoke foliage, and for the past three years I'd fought a losing battle to keep them from gnawing the plants to the ground. I finally realized they were planted too close to the fence line. My basenji Sol keeps the bunnies on the run near his doghouse at the center of the yard, but out on the perimeter of the garden they can sneak in and out under the fence.
After eight months behind a fence, the tubers were, as the British say,  'chock a block'
Here's a pic of the first clump I pulled up:

And here's the final pile of tubers next to the bed they came out of:

Here they are washed-- at least 30 pounds-- I had trouble lifting this tub:

I took a big broken tuber in and fried it up in butter and olive oil with a bit of onion, and it was delicious, with a gentle sweet flavor, and a nice textural contrast between the soft center and crunchy exterior.
Then I waited for the gas. Sunchokes have a nickname - 'fartichokes'. The inulin in them can cause a lot of gas in people without the right probiotic gut bacteria.
Do I have the right stuff, intestinally speaking? It appears so. This modest portion caused no more that some mild 'wind'. Apparently sunchokes dug later in the winter cause less distress because they gradually change chemically in the cold soil. After all the dire warnings on the internet -'do not grow these', 'I put them all on the compost pile'- I am optimistic that I can eat my way through my harvest of sunchokes this winter.  Did I mention there is another big patch of them elsewhere in the garden? Hmm.. any one want some sunchokes? Updates to follow.....

Back to the garden

I've hardly touched the garden in a month. It is a quite ragged and forlorn, though not actually damaged by my absence-- it is, after all, December.
In past Decembers I have done some clean up and some construction, as well as tended fall plantings. I made a conscious choice not to plant for this fall. Instead of working in the garden I worked in my garage, rebuilding the home rock climbing gym that was dismantled two years ago when the garage roof was reinforced to accomodate solar panels.
That project ended two weeks ago, but I have not begun to clean up the garden. Tendonosis in my wrist and shoulder intervened, and I have spent restless days of recovery watching movies with ice packs draped over my body.
But the garden calls. It has been mild and snow free, and weeds are still spreading their green tentacles across the beds. The grasses need to be cut back, and their straw spread over paths. The cold frames need to be dug and assembled, ready for the february planting of spinach. I'm a doer, not a watcher, and I'm tired of movies. I want to be in the garden, listening to an audiobook as I clean and prepare for spring.
Here's a picture I look at to remind me that the garden will be coming alive again soon:

Storing and eating delicata squash

I grew a nice crop of delicata and butternut squash this year, despite the fruit lost to nibbling rabbits.
Storing squash is a bit tricky-- it needs different conditions from potatoes, my other major winter storage crop. Potatoes want cool temps just above freezing, and some humidity.
The squash store best at higher temps, between 50 and 60, and in drier conditions. This year I'm storing them in my upstairs back bedroom, in a handy wine box.

Here's a pic of the squash crop:

And here they are tucked into the box:

Delicata squash does not last as long as butternut in storage, so I've been using it in a dish or two every week.  I really love that the skin is so tender that it does not need peeling, which makes prep easy- split the squash, scoop out the seeds, and chop.  

I have oven roasted the squash tossed in olive oil with sweet potatoes, turnips and garlic -- about 45 minutes in the oven at 450 degrees results in roasted vegetables that are crunchy and brown outside and soft and sweet inside. 

 I also pan braised the squash and added chickpeas and my own pesto. Delicious with pasta!

November garden surprises -- cilantro and raspberries

Although I did not plant any fall crops, the garden had other ideas... including this nice crop of self sown cilantro by the deck, which I found while cleaning up the garden:

A handful of fresh cilantro was  delicious on my beans and rice tonight.
I also found a handful of late raspberries for my husband:

Just more proof it pays to keep the garden tidy.

Early Frost and beauty at the BJ's parking lot

We had an early hard frost last week. According to my records, the first frost was on October 31st in 2011, but this year it hit a full two weeks earlier, on October 13th.
I'd just harvested a big bowl of assorted peppers, as well as some small squash and a handful of Goldmarie pole beans the day before, so the sight of these peppers wasted on the plant was not too painful:

Since then we've had an indian summer, with lots of rain and warm temps. I took this picture in a parking lot while I was shopping -- this just proves you can find beauty anywhere if you look!

The vines shake before the fight --moonflower and trombone squash

It finally happened-- my 40 ft trombone squash vine and 20 foot moonflower met and began there wrestling match for dominance of the fall garden:

The squash made the first grab, and a couple of days later the moonflower went for a reverse pin:

My simple wire fence is the perfect place to let these two heavyweight vines battle. Tonight will be the coolest night of the fall so far, with lows in the 40's, which may finally slow down these two tropicals.

Trombone squash still going!

When all all the other squash have succumbed to fungus the trombone squash is still going. It is a bit ragged near the roots, but thirty feet away, at the growing end, it is still bright green and making more fruit:

So Happy Separate -- morning glories and pole beans

As summer ends the morning glories are finally blooming -- this season not sharing a structure with the beans like last year (a bad idea, the beans were overwhelmed!).
I have grown many different colors and patterns of morning glories, and they are all beautiful, but the blues are my favorites. Last year I grew a swirling white and blue variety, but this year I went back to the classic 'Heavenly Blue'.  They look so clean and fresh in the ragged late summer garden.

Nearby, happy alone, is a  planting of 'Goldmarie' pole bean:

And also nearby is a new variety, the productive and tender (even when large) 'Rattlesnake' pole bean, which in this picture has escaped it's poles and is climbing up the adjoining 10 foot tall Sunchokes:

Here's the  beans I picked yesterday - a mix of both pole varieties and a few 'Dragon's Tongue' bush beans. They were  delicious cooked five minutes (until  just tender) over a bed of mashed 'Yukon Gold' potatoes (my own, of course).

The harvest continues, and fall cleanup

Many gardeners (and I know because I used to be one) let the late summer garden get ragged. They harvest the fruit, but don't clean up the remains of the plants for weeks, and sometimes not until spring. This looks awful and can harbor disease.
This year I'm working hard to be different. In the morning I mostly harvest, and in the afternoon I remove dying or dead plants and compost them on the other side of the house, in an isolated pile just for suspect foliage. I also plant late summer flowers, including moonflowers, morning glories and Jerusalem artichokes to keep my fall garden cheerful.
Here are crops from the Thursday morning picking-- I had the day off and could take my time, what a joy!

The Mortgage Lifters were dying back, probably because of several different fungus infections. I pulled them up -- check out those roots!-- and harvested all the tomatoes, then brought them into the garage to ripen. These are the fruits of just one plant, and I had four more in this bed. I could have tried to spray fungicide, but I was ready to let go of these plants, who had done their jobs well.

I dug the last patch of potatoes-- Yukon Gold.

And I picked lots of other fuit to keep the plants producing, including trumpet squash, which is still growing when all other squash has succumbed to fungus!

Carrots:

And  peppers, beans and raspberries.

Here's a shot of the cleaned up garden this morning:

Tomatoes everywhere -- Celebrity and Mortgage Lifter in abundance!

What a year this has been for tomatoes here in southeastern Massachusetts. Here are pictures of the tomatoes I had on hand yesterday. These were ripening in the dining room on the sideboard:

And in the garage, sharing company with some Red Zeppelin onions:

And in the wheelbarrow,  stripped off four plants I'd just pulled up (they were  yellowing and dying back).

I sorted through all the ripe Celebrity tomatoes and blanched and froze a batch.

Here's how I did it. First I cored then, then I put them in rolling water for about a minute:

The skins slipped off easily after this hot bath, and I laid the whole skinned and cored tomatoes out on a sheet pan to freeze:

The next morning I stacked the frozen tomatoes into a sturdy rubbermaid container. I'm looking forward to a winter of delicious tomato sauce and chili!

Meanwhile, we are eating fresh Mortgage Lifter tomatoes morning, noon and night. We're not sick of them yet, but there are a lot more on the vine. When it gets to that point, I bring them to work and share them with my customers and co-workers. Most people don't want squash, but they are happy to get a vine ripened heirloom tomato.

August video tour of the kitchen garden

I'm planning on picking lots of tomatoes and basil to make sauce, so I shot a video tour of the garden yesterday while the tomatoes were still on the vine and the basil still flowering with the moonflower.

Moonflowers, finally!

Adirondack Blue potato harvest

As readers of this blog may have noticed in previous posts, I really want to grow blue potatoes. They are just so cool, and since they are also expensive, I figured I'd get a good ROI (return on investment-- sorry, I'm currently taking an online business course....).
When I finally got a shipment of Adirondack blue seed potatoes this spring I was saddened that many of them were rotten. I called Pinetree Garden Seeds, and they promptly sent some fingerling seed potatoes as replacements, since there were no healthy blues left in stock.  I planted the few salvaged  tubers without much hope, thinking I'd have to wait yet another year for my blue potatoes.  To my surprise they sprouted in a couple of weeks.
I weeded and watered the potatoes lovingly all spring and into summer.  Last week the foliage died back, and last night I harvested.
First I removed all the withered foliage, and any remaining weeds. The adjacent planting of fingerlings  is still growing, and the vigorous vines were lying across the bed of blues, so I carefully moved them aside. Here's the potato patch before digging:

I gently forked under the potatoes all through the bed, working from the outside in. I didn't poke one potato!

Here's the bed afterwards with my harvest:

Not a vast haul, but enough for a few meals and a good stock of seed potatoes for next year.

There were a couple of giants--here's one:











And here's a closeup of the harvest -including a few fingerlings that strayed.















As I headed into the house for the night I took this shot of the flower garden side of the yard in the evening light. The two tall yellows are Rudbeckia nitida, a tough as nails and spectacular native flower.

Mortgage Lifter Tomato and a bit of stonework

I always wanted a property with a real New England dry stone wall, and I love the old wall that was carefully rebuilt to make a space for my driveway. But it's  always been a tight space, especially on the right. Twice delivery trucks have hit the wall, and I've paid craftsmen to rebuild the same section.
But I was proud of my ability to avoid the wall.
Until last Friday, when I scattered stones for several feet turning my Tacoma too sharply as I backed up the drive from the garage. When I saw that the only damage to the truck was  some scratches on the wheel well and a bent mudflap, I felt very lucky.
I piled the stones into the now crushed bed of stella d'oro daylilies and went to work. By the time I came home that night, I had a plan. I would rebuild the wall myself, but finally move it further back. And I would make a path through the shade garden with the extra rocks.
And so I did!
Here's the wall before:

And here it is after:

 These pictures show each end of the new path:

And today I ate the first ripe full sized tomato from the garden, a funny looking and delicious Mortgage Lifter.  A wonderful sweet rich heirloom, perfect cut up into chunks with a sherry vinaigrette featuring my own finely diced garlic.

Happy Together: flowers and vegetables

It's late July, and the many annual and perennial flowers in bloom bring lots of bees to the garden, which in turn pollinate the vegetables. My only question is how do people harvest squash blossoms? Mine are always full of bees! Sometimes they get trapped inside the flowers when they close at dusk, and I find and release them (now a bit groggy from the cool night air and lack of food) in the morning when I pick the squash.