while we were away...

the garden exploded! we are now maintaining gardens at two locations: our old place, and our new place. luckily, they are across the street from one another. we came home to beans galore, more husk cherries than cosmo can eat in a setting (more on those in another post), and cherry tomatoes out the wazzoo. the tomatoes that cosmo started, in his little dixie cup at pre-school in the spring, the ones i planted in our new back yard in april? a jungle i tell ya! man! woman! child! all are up against THE WALL OF TOMATOES!



photos don't do it justice. we have to send cosmo into the tangle to harvest!



i pulled up most of the potatoes. the yield wasn't quite what i expected, but it was a lot of fun digging for them. like a treasure hunt.


the carrots blew me away. lots of them, and bigger than last year. we even harvested our very first cabbage!



carl made a delicious braised cabbage with poppy seed, and we roasted some of the carrots and potatoes. yummy.




last night i made this velvety carrot ginger soup, which couldn't be easier to make:

carrot ginger soup

2T butter
1 T finely mince ginger
4 medium carrots
3 cups stock or broth
1 cup milk or cream

sauté ginger in butter, add sliced carrots, stir-fry for a few minutes, add broth or stock and cook 'til the carrots are very tender. purée in a blender or food processor, then add some milk or cream, warm and serve. (adapted from superfoods, by delores riccio).

the fall garden in the new place is growing like gang-busters. the soil may not look like much (kinda crusty, not a lot of organic material, or worms), but the landlord says it's "river-bottom." not sure what that's supposed to mean, all i know, is the plants like it here. could be all that full sun too.



the lettuce, arugula and cilantro are all mature, and ready to eat. the tomatilla plants are loaded, and the bush beans already have blossoms. the peas got munched by rabbits, but i have protected them now, and hope they can recover. even the leeks are beginning to fatten up.



we also harvested our first peppers: sweet red peppers (carmen) and one hot paper lantern. we haven't tasted them yet, but aren't they gorgeous?

potatoes for earth day

yesterday i spent many glorious hours in the garden. can't think of a better way to celebrate earth day. legend has it, potatoes are to be planted during the waning of the moon. i consulted the farmer's almanac, and noted that yesterday was a good day for planting root crops. it happened to be sunny and fairly warm, so, it all worked out.



i dug three large holes for them, in two different beds. mixed in a little compost at the bottom of the hole, then set in the seed potatoes, cut side down. cosmo helped. we covered them with about 4 inches of soil, and when they sprout, we'll keep mounding soil up around their stems, since the potatoes apparently form in that space between the seed potato, and the top of the soil. this is all new to me. i thought you just plopped a potato in the ground, and it made a bunch of little potatoes. had no idea it was so involved. but, i like involved. that is why i am trying leeks this year too.

i may not have mentioned that i started 3 new beds along the property line. since we are renting, i wasn't sure how much lawn i could really get away with digging up. so, our neighbor jack (and his son, the farmer, shawn) who own the place next door, offered a strip between our houses for me to garden. it gets lots of sun, and the soil seems nice. i've got potatoes there, and plan to also have tomatoes, green beans and edamame.

yesterday i fashioned a bean arbor out of bamboo. ideally, the beans will climb the poles and string at the ends of two separate beds, and then climb across to form a lovely green arbor overt the path between beds. i may have made it too tall though, and i may need to go fix that.



this weekend is the annual neighborhood plant exchange. i can't wait. i also plan to do a lot of sowing and transplanting. better consult the farmer's almanac. i am convinced that they list some days as infertile, or bad for planting, just to give farmers a rest in the spring...

the good kind of tired

i just came indoors from over 3 hours of working in the garden. it's been around 90 degrees for the past couple of days. earlier this week i dug up a 6'x7' bed in our backyard. yesterday i turned it, added compost, and turned it some more.



today i took the hoe to it, formed it into 4 rows, and planted edamame. i was inspired last week by the most recent issue of organic gardening. it sounded so easy, and cosmo loves edamame (as does the rest of the family). i quickly ordered seeds and inoculant (from johnnyseeds.com) and planned out the plot (the inoculant is a soybean specific rhizobial bacteria that helps the plants capture and fix atmospheric nitrogen in a form the plants can use. --source: organic gardening, july 2008, p.32). i didn't bother asking the landlord for permission. i was afraid he'd say no. fait accompli, facts-on-the-ground, whatever you wanna call it; the bed has been dug, the seeds have been planted. in about 90 days, we should have fresh edamame. many acres of soybeans are grown in this country, but like the corn, most of it needs to be processed to be eaten. it seems to me that the best way to consume soy, is to eat the fresh beans.



in the process of digging up the yard, i found many treasures, including a small gold chain, a bunch of bottle caps, rusty bent nails, a marble, a bone, rusty swing-set chain, eyeglass lenses... i've been told by several neighbors that a circus used to be located on, or around, the spot where our house is. i was hoping to unearth some circus artifacts, but i'm pretty sure what i found was mostly household debris.