What's growing?

It's already summer and I've not done a garden post in a while. In fact, I can't remember when I last did one, but, then again, I can't remember what my kids birth dates are either sometimes.

So, here are some random photos of the garden.

lots of garlic (right) and onions (left) with tree nursery in front

kale in the foreground

alpine strawberries that some people claim are full of flavor, but I think they mealy

various lettuces

trying out a special weed cover made from paper

banana peppers

eggplant in the greenhouse

nopal (that we hope will grow big enough to eat one day)

Asian pears in the orchard

black raspberries

These photos were taken over a couple of weeks of end of spring and beginning of summer, so there's a mix of spring and summer veggies.


And finally, because I've preempted "My Favorite Scene" today, I feel like I should at least have a video, so here's one of the guys and the chickens:

So, how about you? How does your garden grow?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Children of the corn...and tomatoes, and eggplants, and...

It was a good summer for green beans, even with the deer mowing down an entire bed of it. We froze many, many quart bags, and canned 14 quart jars of it so far. And there are more to come! It's exhausting work, even with four of us, but we'll be so happy to have it in the winter.

Canned green beans and tomato sauce

And if you hadn't guessed yet from the photo above, we're having a good year of tomatoes too, which is kind of surprising since it's been a generally cool summer. Yes, the white lids are Tattler lids. Now that hubby has read the directions and used them properly, they work great and no BPA!

More gratuitous photos of canned tomato sauce

We also had a bumper crop of wild blackberries (not wild black raspberries though). I froze a bunch and made my first ever blackberry jelly using Robin Edmundson's A Simple Jar of Jam e-book!

Beautiful blackberry jelly

Not everything from the garden was processed for future use. We ate a ton of stuff too, mostly summer squash and eggplants.

Scrambled eggs from our chickens to go with the squash-eggplant medley 

I'd forgotten we had a great crop of strawberries too this year, but while adding photos for this post, I found a picture I took in the spring of one of our many harvests.

Red and delcious

How did your garden do this year? Was it a good summer for growing where you live?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Marmalade and syrup and knitting, oh my!

(As you can see, my internet connection, and therefore my pictures, are still messed up. They're all vertically challenged. *sigh*)

I am so excited! I made a couple of firsts in the last couple of weeks. First of the firsts, I made orange marmalade:

Not actually a squat jar...

I bought the gorgeous new jam e-book from my friend, Robin. It's called "A Simple Jar of Jam" and it's as much a work of art as it is a how-to-make-jam book. You can get it (PDF) at Robin's Etsy site.

We were buying jars of marmalade that Robin made and got so addicted that I had to make my own (while it's citrus season) just to keep up hubby's demands. Now if I could only figure out how to make Vegemite, he would be the happiest guy on earth.

If you like to make jam, you should add "A Simple Jar of Jam" to your library (or e-library). If you don't want to make your own, Robin will soon be selling her canned jams on Etsy too. Go to her blog to contact her!

I'm very happy with the marmalade I made (a total of 11 8-oz jars, I think); I just wish Mom were still alive for me to share with her because marmalade was one of her favorite things.

My second first (is that oxymoronic?) was strawberry syrup!

I'd canned strawberry jam before but never made syrup. Hubby's been wanting a lower glycemic index sweetener for our waffles and he thinks fruit syrup is the answer. Who knows if he's right about that, but we only have one, spindly sugar maple on our property but we had a ton of strawberries to do something with.

I used the recipe for strawberry syrup from the "Food in Jars" book but didn't can it. I also consulted these three books below when I was making marmalade, but my favorite was Robin's e-book because of the scrumptious photos.

Let me know if you want to know the authors...things are hard to read in this photo.

Now that I'm armed with tons of books and some experience, I hope we get a bumper crop of wild blackberries, wild black raspberries, and blueberries so I can make tons of jams and syrup. If anyone has ever made jam with persimmons, please let me know how it went.

What about you? How do you preserve your fruits? Or do you just eat them all as you get them (the grasshopper method of food preservation)? ;)

EDITED TO ADD:
Well, genius here (*squirrel!*) forgot to talk about knitting. My buddy Michelle sent me a washcloth pattern and some gorgeous yarn so I started making a funky washcloth:

looks like the squashed pic problems are solved...yay!

This has been so much fun, I might make a bunch for gifts!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

A taste of spring

(Some of the photos may appear squashed. This is likely due to our bandwidth being messed up and the pictures being loaded oddly. Our slowed/downgraded bandwidth is also why I may not be able to answer your comments quickly; the dial-up speed we're reduced to half the month prevents the Disqus comments from being loaded.)

Nothing says spring to me like strawberries, and this year, we have a bumper crop. We must have picked at least four times this amount already:

Aren't they total beauties? And they all came from just one bed (behind my hand). We should start another bed.

What's a gal to do but make a lot of strawberry goodies? So, I made strawberry mousse!

I used the recipe that I think I got from my friend, Grace. It's so good, I knew you'd want to have the recipe too. I'm actually including two different recipes. I made the first one, but if you like lemon zest and more whipped cream, you can try the second:


Strawberry Mousse
makes 6

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup cold water
2 cups hulled, sliced strawberries
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup heavy cream, chilled
3 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
Whole strawberries for garnish

Sprinkle gelatin over cold water in a small saucepan; let stand I minute to soften. Stir over low heat until gelatin is dissolved, about 1 minute. Remove from heat.


Place strawberries, granulated sugar and gelatin mixture in a food processor or blender. Whirl to purée. Pour into a bowl. Chill until mixture mounds when dropped from a spoon, 1 hour.


Beat cream and confectioners' sugar in a chilled bowl until soft peaks form. Stir one-quarter of cream into strawberry purée to lighten mixture. Fold in remaining cream.

Spoon into 6 stemmed glasses or dessert bowls, dividing equally. Chill 2 hours. Or, after lightening purée with cream, layer remaining whipped cream with strawberry purée in stemmed glasses. Garnish
with whole berries.


-----------------

Strawberry Mousse II

Light and airy, this fruit-based treat can be whipped up in minutes and kept on hand for an afternoon snack. Garnished with additional strawberries, whipped cream and mint leaves, it makes an elegant dessert.

 1/4 cup cold water

 1 pkg. unflavored gelatin 
 1/4 cup boiling water 
 2 1/4 cups strawberries 
 1 tsp. lemon zest  
 1/3 cup sugar 
 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 
 4 to 6 mint leaves 

1. Pour the cold water into a small bowl and sprinkle with the gelatin. Let stand for 2 minutes. Pour the boiling water over the gelatin mixture and whisk or stir with a fork until the gelatin is dissolved. Set aside 6 perfect strawberries for the garnish. Place the gelatin mixture, lemon zest, the rest of the strawberries and the sugar into a blender or the bowl of a food processor and puree until smooth.

2. Meanwhile, whip the cream with an electric mixer until it forms soft peaks; set aside a few dollops for the garnish.

3. Pour the strawberry mixture over the whipped cream and gently fold the ingredients together. Spoon the mixture into 4 parfait or stemmed glasses, cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Just before serving, garnish each glass with the additional whipped cream, a whole strawberry and a mint leaf. Makes 6 servings.


I also made strawberry pie:

We ate that whole thing in one day! Guess I might be making this one again. :)

Do you grow strawberries? Do you like strawberries? If not, what says "Spring" to you?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

How does our garden grow?

Before I get into blathering about our garden, I want to give a shout-out to Product Body's fantastic Giveaway! Head over to The Soap Bar blog to find out how to enter; Joanna's products are incredible! You can thank me later.  ;)

Thinking about the nursery rhyme leads me to suspect that Mary wasn't the one being contrary; it was probably the garden pests who were contrary!  (Unless, of course, you take it as the political allegory that it is and from the view point of Elizabeth I, Mary was rather contrary; but I hate talking politics.)

All sorts of things conspire to make your garden a failure: rabbits, voles, aphids, caterpillars, chipmunks, and, yes, even birds.  They blithely nibble on your plants and berries, snipping off and killing young shoots before they have a chance to realize their dreams of becoming a full-blown plant.  The garden is a sad, rough place to raise a seedling.

Still, we persist, year after year.  Or hubby persists, and the kids and I help to nurse his eternal optimism.

So to answer "how does our garden grow", I thought I'd show some photos of the progress.  I think I took these photos Tuesday morning (June 7th).  These are by no means all of our garden beds.  Some are still empty (well, maybe just one or two are), and some I just didn't take close-ups of (example, cucumbers, squash, grapes).

A sweeping view of the south garden, outside of the main fenced garden. Our dilapidated chicken tractor is at the left-hand side. Hubby fixed it now though, so I'll have to show a photo of his handiwork some other time.

Looking inside our main fenced garden...it's hard to take in all 27 beds in there at once:

The bib lettuce, co-existing with the frisee:

The lettuce, nearly bolting, with some beets in the foreground, not quite big enough yet. Interspersed are dill that keep self-seeding in our garden.

Speaking of self-seeding, here's a volunteer lamb's quarters:

The cabbages are doing beautifully...

In fact, dh used one for cole slaw:

...but the broccoli is just getting started:

One day soon, we'll get some peas:

More frisee, cohabiting with the celery this time:

The asparagus are still going strong, amazingly:

as are our garlic, which won't be ready for harvest for another month:

Our strawberries are pretty much done:

But other things are just getting started, such as eggplants:

and sweet potatoes:

Regular potatoes:

Lima beans:

Peppers:

Tomatoes:

And green onions - front - (this is the half bed inside the main garden, and not the six beds outside the fenced area) and basil - back:

Dh made some yummy meals again. This was a faux gyros with brown rice instead of pita, and our tomato sauce instead of chopped tomatoes (since our tomatoes haven't ripen yet).  Complete with my homemade Greek yogurt and homegrown asparagus:

This was just using up some left over dilly new potatoes.  Dh made a homefries sort of concoction, topping it with one of our eggs.

We're actually low on eggs right now.  The heat shut most of the chickens down, and one hen went broody so she's not laying.  *&^% freeloaders.  We might have to dispatch with this current group and get a bunch of new ones.  Unfortunately, ds#1 is rather attached to one of the hens, Licorice...actually most of the hens except for Four of Five...so we may have to keep them for longer.  I never knew he was quite so sentimental. 

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

I know why Elmer Fudd hates Bugs Bunny

There's a curse on our garden, and its name is Rabbit.

I thought hubby was going to cry.  He planted 6.5 beds of onions and when they were tender little sprouts, rabbits went through the beds outside of the fenced part of the garden and systematically nipped off the stems of each one.

You can picture it: the *&^% critter nipped off one, went "YUCK!" and dropped it, then moved on to the next, nipped that, went "YUCK!" and dropped it, and so on down the line.  It's like the scene in Chicken Run where Rocky fell into every single pie, except you sub in rabbit for Rocky, and decimated onion for pies.  And it's not funny.

Here's one example of an onion that never recovered.  You can see the part still in the ground at the tip of the circle hoe.

Luckily, some were hardy enough to come back.  You can see the nipped part and the healthy part in this photo:

But before you think it's all drama in the garden, we do get some chuckles out of it...e.g. this funky clover-shaped strawberry!  Sight gags never fail to elicit some laughs.

After you finish laughing, you can try drooling. ;)  I'm so grateful hubby is a good cook!  Here's a sardine penne with sun-dried tomatoes and green beans, served with a salad in a sun-dried tomato vinaigrette.  Except for the sardines and the penne, everything came from our garden.

This meal features less stuff from our garden (only the dill, the asparagus, and the celery in the crab cakes are grown by us).  But it's oh-so-good, nonetheless: crab cakes, dilly new potatoes, and asparagus in a light butter sauce.

And speaking of tasty stuff, hubby is addicted to Vegemite.  We just ordered two 400g jars from Simply Australian.  I have to wonder how many non-Aussies are buying huge jars of Vegemite??

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams