Un potager à Detroit

the view outside my kitchen window

2008-08-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

So you see why i have no tomatoes. I love the way that it's not enough for the squirrels to take them and eat them...they have to mock me as well. Fuckers have an attitude!

wow i have not been updating this blog

2008-08-06T08:26:00.000-07:00

Actually it is because this is such a depressing year in the vegetable garden. The only thing which grows well are the zucchini & the pumpkins. It is August and i have almost no tomatoes. Part of the reason is that the damned squirrels get them first....that is a story in itself. Oh, and do you know what else grows well? Those MARIGOLDS. They are TAKING OVER THE GARDEN. It is insane, i have never seen such marigold plants. Not much in the way of flowers, but lots of leaves. Indeed i don't have many bugs on my tomato plants. Here is a picture of the mess:
Can you believe it? They are even bigger than the zucchini plants! I should take a different picture so that you can see the scale. Maybe i will....sigh.

i should be sleeping

2008-07-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

I suppose i will try that again in a few weeks, see how it looks. Hopefully, a little redder!

2008-07-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

I was looking back through things here -- last year of course is a wash, what with the birth of the twins. But the year before i do have things documented nicely enough. I found that by this point in the year, i already had beans, cukes, and even the occasional tomato.

This year, i have none of those things. I did plant them, and they are sprouted but no food yet. So far all i have this year is (bolting) lettuce and zucchinis. And those damned marigolds which i swear are taking over the place.

The squirrels are starting to steal my tomatoes, too, even though they are still green. I found a half-chewed green tomato on the steps this morning. See, not only are they stealing them, they are rubbing it in my face. I really have to get a gun.

idiot

2008-07-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

I knew i didn't have the space to grow pumpkins. So then why on earth did i plant them??? And not one plant even but two. Actually i know why i planted two -- the seeds weren't germinating well, i think i actually planted 3-4. But i was supposed to cull, and i didn't...i went to visit my mother instead. So now the whole space alloted is already completely taken up by these two already huge plants.

I know i will have to kill one. I hate to do it. It seems so evil. Why didn't i pull it up when it was little, somehow that seems so much less destructive. Oy, i have to learn to be more hard-hearted towards plants.

I am leaning toward letting them take over the lawn, which is nothing but weeds (and a play structure) there anyway. But i think dh would be very unhappy about that. He likes things neat. I wonder how he ended up with me?

zucchini grows fast

2008-07-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

I left this baby zucchini on the vine when i picked the other baby zucchinis on tuesday to make that zucchini & basil thing. This one was very small, but 2 days later it is bigger than most of the ones i picked.

Yeah, news flash, zucchini grows fast. And the sky is blue. And the garden is full of weeds.

a nice recipie

2008-07-15T18:26:00.000-07:00

I made this tonight -- Fettuccini with walnuts and zucchini. I really liked it, but noone else in my household did. A flatly refused to eat it at all, and dh said 'don't make it again, these walnuts are terrible'. C refuses to eat anything green at all, so her opinion is moot. The babies would've liked it, but they were asleep already/ But actually i might try to make it again, because i like it. I like the concept, which is sort of a pesto with zucchini. I like the fact that i can make it with zucchini (i have the stuff growing in the garden but dh only likes it fried, well that is not very healthy kwim?) and it has a really nice fresh taste. (Due to the fact that the zucchini isn't even cooked) Plus, it is easy & done quick.

I used baby zucchinis & fresh basil from the garden, which was nice. I left out the mint (i don't have any mint, hate the stuff) and i probably used too much basil because my version tasted like a pesto with some zucchini thrown in. But i didn't have enough zucchini to do it right. "I like regular pesto better", said dh...."do i have to eat this?" said A. In fact, he refused, and i made him clean the kitchen in consequence.

Next time i will use more zucchini and less basil, and no walnuts (they were bitter. Pine nuts might work, or no nuts at all -- that would certainly be cheaper). I probably wouldn't do it with mature zucchini rather than baby ones -- the baby ones are tender & have a nice sweet taste.

basil seedlings, for zoey

2008-06-27T08:54:00.001-07:00

I have been waiting for my basil to sprout, and a bunch of stuff sprouted but i couldn't tell if it was basil or weeds. Finally, today you can tell.

these are basil
these are weeds
this is a basil seedling surrounded by weeds.The variety of basil is 'Sweet Genovese' so i imagine different varieties will look different.

pictures

2008-06-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

Zucchini leaf. I am not sure if the white coloring is just the variety or if it is some kind of disease. Because, you know, i always think positively like that.
Pumpkin plant, and some baby leek volunteers. The pumpkin plant that we started inside met a bad end (somebody broke it clean off, stepped on it i suspect) so i threw in some seeds. They have grown relatively quickly but i am still not sure we will have time to actually get pumpkins from this variety. 120 days to maturity, blah.
I staked my tomatoes. I am attempting to prune them this year, i am hoping to keep some order in the garden with this pruning thing. Some of them have a blight already, like the one on the right in the picture. That is a marigold in the front.
Here is the flower of the marigold. This is an heirloom variety named 'Harlequin'. The flowers are very beautiful but you sometimes learn why things have fallen into 'heirloom' status. The plant is huge & bushy with just a few small flowers....like this one for example.
That's fine for the vegetable garden but i wouldn't want it in my flower border. Maybe they will bloom more later in the summer?
Dill is very pretty.
I didn't actually plant it, these are all volunteers from last year's dill.

proof

2008-06-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

This is a lousy picture because i took it out of the back bathroom window as C got ready for bed, but i put it here as proof that at one point in the summer the garden was actually *weeded*. In fact i weeded two Sundays in a row. This is big.

I have not posted here this summer. I have been working in the veggie garden but i have not been happy about it. The raised beds were nearly gone after last year, so they not only needed to be weeded, but also redug, reshaped, and have compost added. Which doesn't sound so bad but somehow it took me, like, weeks. I swear. I don't know *why* it took so long -- i actually stayed home from work for a few days to do it and it *still* didn't get completed.

Somehow it seems like this vegetable garden is a full-time job. Well, i already have one of those, or two if you count the kids. I am doing my best to keep it up this year but i am considering just plowing the whole damn thing under next year. I hate it when it gets away from me and is a total mess. My husband hates it. I hate my husband. (no, not really, just sometimes).

On the other hand, for the kids, i do think it is really good to grow vegetables. Especially when they are growing up in the city -- they have so little connection to the land. The twins, at a year old, have never even seen a cow. That's pretty crazy, huh? We don't get out much. Next week we are going to visit family in PA and they will surely see some cows there. My mother will think i am insane -- "let's go look at some cows!"

So i am torn about it, really. We will see how it goes this year. Weeding two weekends in a row is promising...i hope i can keep it up.

seeds started!

2008-03-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

I actually managed to start seeds this weekend, with C as my little helper. New this year, she didn't want to get her hands dirty (!!??) so she wore some ridiculous gloves of mine -- i will have to see if i can pick up some kid's size gardening gloves.

We started:

Tomatoes: Aunt Ruby's German Green, Great White, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, St. Pierre (that is this year's novelty! ) I am sick of cherry tomatoes so i didn't plant any this year. I hope my Cherokee purples sprout because the seed was several years old.

Eggplant Thai Long Purple

Chile peppers "Ancho Grande" (a freebie)

Marigolds -- "Harlequin", a striped heirloom, and a variety of tiny ones that i saw at Greenfield Village and stole, uh, collected some seed from last year.

Pumpkin "Musquee de provence" which i think from the picture are the very tasty ones we used to get in France.

Yes, i started pumpkins inside, because the 'days to maturity' of this pumpkin said '120' which seemed like a lot. They are in those peat cups so we will see how that transfer goes.

Yes, we started marigolds inside also, for C's pleasure. Because "i no yike 'matoes."

All seeds were from Baker Creek this year.

I still have not done a garden plan. Hell, i still have not taken down last year's tomato cages. So i don't know what else we will plant. Lettuce, beans, basil, sunflowers, summer squash likely. Beets maybe. C wants corn which should be popular with the squirrels. So we will see.

Next week is our spring break, and i hope the weather is temperate enough so that i can get out there & clean out all my gardens & mulch....

seeds 2008

2008-01-10T07:05:00.000-08:00

It is January. I guess i should start thinking about what seeds to start, and if i need to order any. Maybe i will do that.

tomato tastings 2007 postscript

2007-10-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

So here it is mid-October & i was cleaning out the flower garden. Lo and behold i noticed that my 'Persimmon' tomato, which had previously produced two dry, rock-hard items that could barely be classed as tomatoes, was now laden with huge juicy offerings. I mean really big ones, and very tasty too. Not sure what happened there, but i did enjoy them! I would say now that i would grow it again, if i wanted an orange tomato.

Also the green tomato, 'Aunt Ruby's german green', got some sort of blight & dried up. So though it was prolific before then, it is a mess now.

from August

2007-10-19T05:27:00.001-07:00

We grew a giant zucchini! It was so big C could hardly lift it. The neighbors said we should've entered it in the state fair...however we were really hungry so we ate it instead.

kate's tomato tastings 2007

2007-08-31T13:19:00.001-07:00

If you recall, i was too busy being pregnant to actually start seeds, so i got all these from a local plant sale. The twins arrived safely and now i am too busy being mommy to actually weed the garden. However in the intervening time i was able to throw some plants in the ground and eat some tomatoes. Here are my (albeit brief) impressions:

-Arkansas Traveler. My hubby picked the first one of these and i didn't believe him when he said it came from our garden -- it looked like a storebought one. They are about the size of a peach and perfect perfect perfect looking red tomatoes. The taste is kind of average though, i wasn't impressed. Probably be a good tomato to sell or something, but i like a tomato with some kick.

-Aunt Ginny's Purple -- not much kick here either, and the plant wasn't very prolific. Another average one.

-Aunt Ruby's German Green -- OH MY GOD I LOVE IT. This is my favorite this year, i will have to find where to buy the seeds. These are huge and flavorful and there are alot of them. They really are green when they are ripe, though, so you have to keep checking and feeling them. They look lovely in a tomato salad or as pasta fresca. Here are some pictures:

-Black from Tula -- another good one. This one almost made up for the fact that i didn't have any Cherokee Purple this year. Prolific and tasty.

-Great White -- another good one! OK, all the good ones are together in the list. A big tasty sweet yellow one! It is now my favorite yellow tomato. Well, ok, 'white', but can i say in the yellow family? I will grow it again and again and again and again....the pic is of Great White & Black from Tula.

-Mortgage Lifter -- this plant got choked out by weeds so i got nothin'. Dommage....

-Paul Robeson -- the squirrels love it. I had one not-quite-ripe tomato from this plant, that i managed to pick first. I did not think it was as good as 'Black from Tula' but it is hard to compare....simply not enough data. Maybe it just wasn't ripe enough. Thieving bastards. I swear one day i am going to get a gun.

-Persimmon -- not sure what happened here. Partly the plant was choked by weeds.... but i did get some tomatoes. They were kind of hard & leathery, and didn't taste very good. Looks pretty chopped up with others though. I think something went wrong, i don't think it was the fault of the variety.

-Yellow Pear -- was mismarked & was in fact Red Currant (or some related variety). Well, screw that. The squirrels liked these too, and they are welcome to them. I mean, they are cute as a salad garnish but other than that i don't have a lot of use for currant tomatoes.

My garden, though, is chock full of them -- the 'White Currant' from last year seeded themselves with a vengeance. I didn't quite manage to pull them out and as a result they are everywhere. Which is in fact kind of convenient, because i have plenty of tomatoes to give away and i didn't do anything to get them. Saves face, somehow.

sunflowers

2007-08-31T13:17:00.000-07:00

just a cute pic. All the sunflowers are volunteers, coming up in various places in the vegetable garden. The sunflower on the right is 'Lemon Queen', a 'decorative' variety that i planted last year. The one on the left is the one from the birdseed. C loves to fill the bird feeder but tends to drop seed everywhere, so these are coming up all over the place. Oddly enough, i think they are alot prettier than the so-called 'decorative' ones.

bastards

2007-06-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

Something ate most of my squash seedlings, and a few of the others. The basil has not sprouted at all. The weeds are growing just great.

Gardening sucks!

my seeds sprouted!

2007-06-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

summer squash, cukes, beans, zinnias, and lettuce did, anyway. Still waiting on the rest of the stuff. Hopefully we will see more of them after this weekend's gentle rains (because i have not yet managed to set up a sprinkler, so nothing has been watered since i put it in, oops) Of course, more weeds will sprout too, but whaddya gonna do?

i did plant veggies after all

2007-05-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a lousy picture, i mean i could explain the thing of the leaves-as-mulch and all that, but i will keep that for another time. I will try to get better pics soon. None of the seeds have germinated yet so there is nothing to really see, except some tomato plants and whatever is left over from last year.

I got some heirloom tomato plants (9 in total) from a local plant sale, i will have to look up what i got because i don't even remember. It was not what i planned to get.

So what is in there?

-Those tomato plants and a bunch of volunteer tomatoes from last year. We will see what actually comes of it.
-Leeks from last year (they are getting kind of fat finally).
-Beets (mix of three kinds, will list later...they were planted too late though)
-Rainbow Chard (ditto on planted too late, i guess we will just eat the baby greens)
-Lettuce -- merveille des quatres saisons & black-seeded simpson, like last year, also planted too late. But actually we have some volunteers from last year that we are currently eating at dinnertime
-Arugula volunteers from last year
-bush beans, royalty purple pod
-cucumbers, white wonder
-summer squash, blend of 7 varieties, will find & list later
-basil, sweet genovese
-dill, i forget which variety
-silver thyme & greek oregano plants
-some sunflower volunteers
-flowers for cutting -- cosmos (seashells blend) and zinnias (state fair mix)
-marigolds, for keeping off the bugs. This year i got a flat of the orange two-toned ones, called 'disco queen'...just to be different from last year.

Nothing is planted in the center oval, just some marigolds, because C loves to fill the birdfeeder & watch the birds. So we will keep the shepard's crook which refuses to stand straight and the tiny birdfeeder there (so she can fill it every day! Oh the fun!)

How am i going to keep this garden from getting away from me, when twin boys arrive in three weeks (knock on wood)? I won't, it is not possible. But my neighbors needled me until i planted veggies, because they want enough to share, and promised to help with the watering & weeding. So, when it all goes to hell, i can blame somebody else, and that's really the most important thing.

***********

Edited to add -- if anyone actually reads this anymore, i should answer the question that will undoubtedly be asked: how do you plant a garden when you are 34 weeks pregnant with twins, and thus cannot bend down? The answer is you crawl around a lot, and hope noone is watching you. You may laugh, but it works...

Tomato varieties 2007

2007-05-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

I have to list the varieties i have here and now, before i forget and it is never done. So we have one plant each of:

-Arkansas Traveller
-Aunt Ginny's Purple
-Aunt Ruby's German Green
-Black from Tula
-Great White
-Mortgage Lifter
-Paul Robeson
-Persimmon
-Yellow Pear

I have actually never had any of these before (except the ubiquitous Yellow Pear) so it will be interesting. I hope i will have time to record my reflections on these tomatoes here. I am upset because i have no Cherokee Purple, which is my all-time favorite...they did have them on the list at the sale but by the time i got in, they were all gone. We were there, in time, before the opening even....but some people had already gotten in the day before because of an error in the paper. So i was really annoyed. But i am hoping that either Paul Robeson or Black from Tula will prove an adequate substitute. I have little expectation for 'Aunt Ginny's Purple' which is described as 'deep pink productive beefsteak'. Well, if it's pink, it ain't purple. Maybe Aunt Ginny couldn't see very well...

The volunteers i have in the garden are probably from the White Currant tomatoes from last year, and i see one Brandywine volunteer. There is one that i am hoping is a Cherokee Purple but i am not holding my breath. I am surprised there are no Yellow Bell volunteers, but maybe the leaves on that bed were just too thick....

strawberries

2007-03-31T05:41:00.001-07:00

"C, do you want mommy to plant strawberries in the garden this year? So you can have strawberries in summertime?"

"No, I no yike it."

"You don't like them? Really? Well, ok...."

"I want cookies."

"But I can't grow cookies in the garden."

"Candy?"

"No, not candy either, sorry."

"M&M's?"

More planning

2007-01-22T10:25:00.000-08:00

Well, dh and i had a small discussion about the vegetable garden. Ok, it became more of a fight, and rather an unpleasant one at that. He seems not to understand why i (1) want to plan it now and (2) don't think i can just do everything. Let's not go there.

"Why do you have to start seeds anyway?" he says "it is just a mess and takes up space. Why can't you just buy some plants and put them in, they don't have to be heirlooms and all that you know, and A can take care of it if you are too busy"

Heh, where do i start with that??? I had to leave the room in sheer disgust.

Men.

It occurs to me, though, that if i *do* grow just a few tomato plants, i will then have a supply of vine-ripened, bug-ridden, half-rotten tomatoes available to throw at my husband if necessary. Hmmm......

seeds

2007-01-15T07:17:00.000-08:00

Ordinarily, it being january i would be spending hours perusing seed catalogs trying to decide which tomato seeds to buy this year. But so far so good on the pregnancy front, and we are expecting two babies in June. So i don't foresee doing a vegetable garden this year, unless for some odd reason my husband agrees to take it over.

So, my garden plan is the following: In March, or as early as humanly possible, the boy and i will throw a very very thick layer of mulch all over everything -- flower beds and vegetable garden alike. Thus hoping against hope to keep down the weeds. Then, in early May, we will plant a geometric, victorian carpet planting of annuals in the veggie garden, and simply ignore it for the rest of the summer. I promised C some strawberry plants, so i *may* plant those in the center.

But now, actually thinking about paying for the number of annual plants necessary to make such a planting is rather daunting, even if you can get 3 flats for $21 around here. I didn't actually compute it but i am thinking like 20 flats might be required? Not, ahem, cost effective. Especially with the upcoming big event (knock on wood). And all that mulch is going to cost me a bundle already, but i can't do anything about that, because if i don't mulch i might as well just forget the garden entirely.

So i will have to start the flower seeds....and that is what this blog will be about this year, an annual flower garden, planted in garish Victorian carpet planting 'spendor'. Did i mention i hate Victorian carpet plantings? But i honestly can't think of what else to do with that space, except let it run to weeds. So i am open for suggestions... I will not change the title of this blog, hoping for a nice vegetable garden in the summer of 2008.

Undoubtedly there will be volunteers from all the tomatoes that rotted last year, so...perhaps my carpet planting will have tomatoes growing through it. That should be....interesting...uh, we'll call it 'eccentric'.

abandonned?

2006-11-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

Ah, this blog joins the long list of abandonned blogs sitting around in the blogsphere. Perhaps not totally abandonned...but how can you really blog about the vegetable garden when it is winter? And i do not know what the plans will be for it for next year, if i will do a vegetable garden or not. That will depend on the outcome of a new venture. We will see.

So perhaps next year i will just use the template of the vegetable garden and plant a bunch of colorful annuals in obnoxious patterns. I hate that, but it's certainly quite Victorian....

just a few green tomatoes

2006-10-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

Anyone have any clue what i should do with all of these? C seems to enjoy using them as projectiles...

first frost tonight

2006-09-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

Crap!

marauders!

2006-09-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

A few days ago:

Today:

Look at this mess!

I noticed this as i was leaving for work this morning, and when i came back in the afternoon i thought i would take a picture of the damage and spend some time speculating as to the culprit. However, when i went back there to take the picture, the identity of the culprit was immediately clear.

The damned things don't even run away anymore when they see me coming. They just saunter, slowly, because their bellies are so full that they can't actually move fast. It is really irrirating. I am going to have to break the squirrel trap out again, and trap them all before the cold weather comes and they take refuge in the attic. Yuck, what a chore. And sorry, Catherine, i was going to send you some sunflower seeds but i think they ate them all.

Perhaps i will take up my neighbor on his offer and just borrow his pellet gun...

a recipie

2006-09-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

I did mention earlier that i would be putting up some recipies, so without further ado i present for you

Kate's twice-burnt yellow tomato sauce

for 4 people

Ingredients:
-about a dozen yellow plum tomatoes
-some leftover red onion (about half an onion)
-6 garlic cloves, minced
-thyme
-fresh basil
-salt
-parmesian cheese
-juice of one dessicated lime

1. Saute onion & garlic in some olive oil until soft.

2. Here i thought i would be clever. I hate blanching tomatoes to peel them, so i thought i would just throw them in with the onions, turn the heat up to high, and wait a very short time. Thus, there would be enough heat to peel off the skins without having to go through that blanching routine. In theory.

3. Answer ringing phone and immediately find yourself deep in a conversation with a friend

4. Strong smell of burning onions wafts through the apartment. Uh, oh, strike one. Burning onions are not pleasant, but i thought -- hmm, maybe they will lend some flavor of caramelization to the sauce, i'll go with it.

5. Peel tomatoes, using tongs and fingers. This worked fairly well, though the blanching thing does work better. When the tomatoes are peeled, turn the burner on to low and cover the pot -- they need to stew and become sauce.

6. Check your email.

7. Recieve email you have been waiting for for 2 weeks!!! (in my case it was a file from my colleague which hopefully will enable me to finish up our joint paper. So i immediately launched myself into doing some math....)

8. 45 minutes later, strong smell of burning tomatoes wafts through the apartment.

9. Oh shit!

10. Gently scrape what looks like a scant handful of smashed yellow tomato pulp off of the thick black burnt layer on the bottom of the pot, and put it into another pot.

11. Desperately attempt to salvage the situation by throwing anything and everything available in this new pot. This includes, but is not limited to -- water, olive oil, parmesian cheese, thyme, basil (fresh), and a little juice that i managed to squeeze out of an extremely old lime that was on the bottom of the fruit bowl. (the yellow tomatoes are very sweet so the sauce needed a touch of acidity).

12. Serve on top of angel hair pasta, with a sprig of basil for decoration, and when they ask what it is, don't tell them.

My dh ate three servings.

hyacinth beans

2006-09-05T11:14:00.000-07:00

These are purely ornamental, i think you can actually eat the beans if you want but they don't taste good. I planted them in the middle of the garden and they are finally starting to do something. Next year, i will start them inside or something, because they took too damned long. Anyway, the flowers are pretty.

melon picture

2006-09-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

[photo removed]

Here is A with one of our melons. I let them ripen more and they are good now. They still sound the same to me, but they seem to be nice and yellow inside. I have one left, when we cut that last one open i will take a picture of it for you. A was very disappointed that they were yellow -- 'YELLOW watermelons? Can't you grow anything NORMAL?'

Uh no...why would i grow it if i can buy it at the store....duh.

kate's tomato tastings 2006

2006-08-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

This post idea is blatantly stolen from Hanna but she did ask us to post our own so i am doing so. Not in as great a detail as she is doing, though, for which i thank her! The penny in each picture is for scale -- i could not find a quarter....

This is 'Cherokee Purple', currently my all-time favorite tomato. 'Purple' in tomato-speak seems to mean very dark pinkish-red. These are meaty and juicy and very very flavorful. They are, in fact, the veritable embodiment of what i think of as 'tomato'. This is the archetypical tomato that i have been searching for all my life.

That said, i am a little displeased with the quality of the seed that i got for these this year. I ordered most of my varieties from Baker Creek and i have been happy with all of them but this one. (in years past, when we lived in Virginia, i ordered everything from Southern Exposure.) The resulting Cherokee Purple plants were really kind of spotty -- most of them were true to what i know of as 'Cherokee Purple' but at least two plants (out of 12) are producing tomatoes which are not 'purple' enough. They are still tasty -- but even my dh (who is not particularly interested in gardening per se) said 'but these are not Cherokee Purple!"

So i am hoping that was an aberration, because all of the other tomatoes i got from them were fine.

These are 'Yellow Bell' that i ordered from Southern Exposure. They are extremely prolific and a favorite from many years of gardening in Virginia. Here in MI though i admit to some real disappointment. They are not anywhere near as sweet as they were in VA. In fact they are kind of tasteless, suitable perhaps for canning or yellow ketchup or a sauce -- but i swear i used to just pick them off the vine and enjoy them straight and they were my favorites, when we lived in the south. So maybe they really need the hot humid weather to be good. Of course we had hot humid weather in spades this summer (hotter than i remember ever in VA even!) so i don't know what is up with that. Maybe they need hot weather EARLY in the season. Anyway, regardless of my worry about blossom end rot earlier, i have these blasted tomatoes coming out my ears now. I do not think i will plant more than 2 plants of it next year.

New this year, here are the 'insurgent tomatoes', Rouge d'Irak...i try to stay away from politics on my blogs but when i read this description in the catalog of course i had to order these tomatoes:

Medium-sized fruit are finely flavored; good yields, too. This variety is endangered even in its own country, where saving seeds was made illegal under the "Colonial Powers" of the United States. Under the new law, Iraqi farmers must only plant seeds from "protected varieties" from international corporations. Is this our unique way of making democracy?

Don't know if that is true but if so it will not do....however the tomatoes unfortunately will not do either. They are even and globular and red and blemishless and produce wonderfully -- every visitor to my garden wants one. Half the time when you cut it open there is some rot inside. If there is no rot, it looks pretty but it still doesn't taste any good. I think this is a the great-grandchild of a Monsanto product masquerading as an 'Iraqi Heirloom'. Which brings up the question -- have the people at Baker Creek had much experience bartering for goods in Muslim/Middle eastern countries? Because i have tried this myself, and even with good knowledge of what i was buying i still got fleeced from head to foot (compared with the local economy). This is not an easy thing for westerners to do, the culture is totally different over there.

Brandywine. The ubiquitous heirloom -- when we were down in VA you could even get Brandywine plants at Wal-mart. I personally don't particularly like them, but i got a free packet with my Baker Creek order so i started a few plants. Other people do like them -- they are tasty and big and funny-shaped. It is a pink tomato, not quite 'red' but still very flavorful.

'White Currant'. These are lovely, though they are not 'white'. They actually start out whit-ish but if you leave them out there they turn properly yellow. They are very sweet, prolific and flavorful currant tomatoes and i am very pleased with them. Definitely a keeper.

Finally, at the last minute i went to a sale and bought two other tomato plants. One was mismarked and i have no idea what it is and it sucks anyway so never mind about that. The other is 'Black pineapple' which i totally love and will grow next year. It is beautiful -- color goes from green to deep purple on the same tomato, it is very flavorful (though a little on the 'green' side of tomato flavor) and the few i had grew nice and big...

melons

2006-08-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

How in the heck do you tell when watermelons are ripe? I followed my mother's advice of 'knock on it, it is supposed to sound like your hardwood floor'. So i have been knocking on these melons regularly, and recently one started sounding like my hardwood floor, kind of. So we excitedly picked it and cut it open.

It was nowhere near ripe.

So apparently i need further direction...

sunflowers

2006-08-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

The sunflowers have finally started to bloom. So i took a picture for you, Catherine.

I made this arrangement with whatever was at hand. I was suprised it turned out pretty because really all the colors clash. This is the first time i cut FLOWERS from my GARDEN, except when i brought roses to my mom. But it is too hot to go outside to look at them!

The heat is doing wonders for the tomatoes, though. Around here it is tomatoes for dinner every night! Yes!

melons

2006-08-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

got a baby one

and three 'big' ones. They are much bigger than this already (by the time i uploaded the pics....) One is growing in the lawn.

A new low...

2006-07-29T05:09:00.000-07:00

....is reached when your husband is apologizing to the insurance man for the state of the vegetable garden.

I will try to weed and tidy this weekend, really i will.....sigh.

my bad

2006-07-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry, i should have written 'i know nobody but Catherine reads this blog'. Because i know you read it! And welcome to my blog, FarmgirlCyn!

I know i am supposed to be on hiatus but i logged on here to share photos of a minor miracle -- it looks like we will have melons! But i can't find the USB cable so i can't download the pics from my camera...ridiculous!

Another day, though...

Eggplant 'Rosa Bianca'

2006-07-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

Has no eggplants yet but it has beautiful hairy purple flowers.

Not that anyone actually reads this blog but i will be off for a little while. I will try to post more pictures when i have them though...

gardening with small children

2006-07-23T20:15:00.000-07:00

...is very rewarding, to someone anyway -- not sure who that is. I submit that it takes a great deal of patience. They run the other way when you try to suggest an activity...
...they seem to enjoy picking the green tomatoes and ONLY the green ones....
...they won't hold still when asked to pose with that first big tomato...
and they would rather smash the foods than eat them.
okay, i don't have a picture of the actual smashing process, but you can rest assured that within several seconds the small tomato pictured near her hand was pulp ground into my french tablecloth. Well, c'est la vie...

I look forward to next year, when she will be a little older and even more inclined to 'help'!

PS. please don't inquire about the choice of rain boots with a miniskirt. C is very headstrong about certain things, and in the matter of dress i sometimes figure it is easier not to argue...

Turkish eggplants

2006-07-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight, the dh was grilling, so i picked the most orange of the 'Turkish Orange' eggplants for dinner. They are still the size of golfballs or, well, eggs. They never got any bigger. Here they are on the plant
and on the table
and in the pan ready for cooking.
What he does is put the vegetable in the iron pan, drizzle with olive oil and salt, and put it on the grill. Some magic happens which i cannot reproduce (one time A & i tried to turn on the grill when the dh was away, and managed only to make a fireball which burned A's eyebrows off. So i won't touch the damned thing now.) and we have grilled eggplant for dinner:
We have yet to find the vegetable that is not good prepared this way. Broccoli, for example, is completely scrumptious. These eggplants were overall good, but one piece was very bitter and unpleasant. So it must depend greatly on 'how' ripe they are. Of course they all look equally ripe to me so it is a crapshoot, really.
C didn't like them at ALL and demanded steak and potatoes instead.

oh, those red ones

2006-07-23T19:50:00.001-07:00

I forgot to mention those red tomatoes. I have no idea what the hell they are.

At the garden sale aforementioned, i bought two tomato plants. The 'black pineapple' and a plant of 'yellow pear'. I thought it would be cute to grow the yellow pears in a pot on my balcony, so that Chloe could go out and pick them and eat them. This is what i got from my supposed 'yellow pear' plant:
So i don't know what they are. Also they were not entirely ripe when i picked them...but some animal had discovered them and was pecking at them, so i didn't have much choice. The taste of these mystery tomatoes was insipid at best. Kinda tasted like supermarket tomatoes.

Now THAT was a nice waste of two dollars, if you ask me.

and here we have....

2006-07-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

The first pile of tomatoes of the season!

You will notice i have artfully arranged this pile so that you cannot see the blossom end rot on the yellow ones...ha ha.

This is how they looked cut up for dinner...we just ate them straight, with a little salt.

That one which looks greenish is the dark one on the right in the first photo. It is a variety called 'Black Pineapple' that i got at a local garden sale. I am very very taken with it, it was by far the best tasting of the bunch. (though i must admit, the yellow ones were nasty because of the rot, it is not their fault really). I will surely grow this variety from seed next year.

Anyway, i am always interested in the comments of others, so there i am at the dinner table badgering my husband -- 'so what do you think of this black pineapple tomato? How do you think it compares to the other varieties that we usually grow? Isn't it wonderful?...Don't you think it is good? Do you not like it!?!?' .... he is sort of poking at his food in a desultory fashion and staring into space....perhaps i should not attempt to get a proper critique out of a guy who just came back from India the day before and is totally jet-lagged to hell....ya think??

zucchini

2006-07-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

I am not growing zucchini in my garden. My family likes it but does not love it, and it seems that somehow someone is always growing it and there is more than enough to go around. So that was the case this year as well, when i found myself with three huge zucchinis to dispose of. So i found this recipie for Zucchini and Rosemary Soup and we all really enjoyed the result so i thought i would link it here. It is easy, tasty, and fresh...and uses up ALOT of zucchini. I recommend it.

Maybe next year i will even grow zucchini, for the flowers.

Oh....mid-july

2006-07-23T19:28:00.000-07:00

I am very behind in my posts, i am going to try to post them all today and catch up. Ha! Just wait until august....

really this time

2006-07-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

First tomatoes!

These are the 'White Currant' tomatoes. 'White' in tomatoes apparently means very very pale yellow...actually i think these are still slightly unripe from the flavor but i could not resist.

I also have several which are starting to turn the right colors nicely, i will take pictures in the next few days. Maybe the dh will have some fresh tomatoes waiting for him when he comes back from his trip!

culinary notes

2006-07-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

I was just flipping through the pictures of the garden from before and thought i would make a few notes....

- the rocket bolted like, nearly instantly. It is amazing to look at it now in full flower and recall that it was baby rocket a mere month ago. I cannot eat it straight now. However, it is still very good to put a few pieces in with the other salads (they are working on bolting but have not gotten there yet). It is still bitter, but there are several things which have worked. One is to pair it with a vinagrette made with lemon-infused olive oil and with parmesian cheese. That works fairly well (of course when Catherine & Sarah came over i forgot the cheese....oops). The whole lemon-infused olive oil was an accident too -- we ran out of ordinary olive oil and dug up some specialty stuff that had been a gift. I think it would also taste very good with some nut oils, like walnut oil or pistachio oil. Not that i know where to get those in the States. Another thing which works is to put it with a sweet dressing, like a raspberry vinagrette. If you like sweet dressings, that is (the males in this household give them a big thumbs down).

- the 'White Wonder' cukes make great pickles (we know this from a few years back) but they make lousy table cucumbers. Or to be clearer -- the skin is very thick. So if you want to just eat them, you have to spend the time to peel them, and then they just look like regular cukes, nothing exciting. But i suspect the thick skin is exactly what made them such excellent, crispy refrigerator pickles. I really hope i can reproduce this effect this year, if we eventually stop eating them all at the table so there are some to pickle.

- maybe we should try a green tomato recipie, we seem to have tons. Well, when dh gets back...

Actually, there is one tomato of 'Cherokee Purple' variety which is starting to turn! It is now a pinkish color, they are very dark (almost purple) when ripe. I will be watching carefully...

more pictures

2006-07-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

We picked our first cucumber (sorry for the lousy picture)
and i gave C a basket to pick beans but she lost interest after picking two.
Apparently she prefers to play with Nicolas' pinwheel.

These are not tomatoes, they are the 'Turkish Orange' eggplants. They seem to be starting to turn color, but they are very small -- just about golfball size. I hope they grow bigger!

The other eggplants ('Rosa Bianca') are alot further behind -- they JUST put out some flowers. So...i guess it will be awhile.

a disappointment

2006-07-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

I saw a lump of yellow in the tomato patch and thought i had my first ripe tomato! Unfortunately what i had was my first case of blossom end rot.

Further investigation revealed that it was not at all the only case.

Stupid rot! I then remembered i had this problem before with this variety -- these are 'Yellow Bell' and they are very susceptible to it. It is a yellow plum tomato. I also remember that when i had it before, i still had more than enough Yellow Bell tomatoes to go around, because the plants are quite prolific. So here's hoping that is the case this year also...

success!!

2006-07-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

Beans! I have beans!! It was a big suprise when i saw them!

I guess i was not expecting them yet. I was dancing around waving my handful at A, he said 'gee that's great mom, now can you come put C to bed?'
I tried to get her to pose with the beans, before going to bed -- but she was more interested in the latest DVD to come from Netflix. Ah, the younger generation.

These beans are called 'Royalty Purple Pod' and they are quite tasty. They are quite pretty too, the shade of purple doesn't look right on my picture -- they are a really eggplant- like purple. The seed catalog says they turn green when you cook 'em, but i did not bother to cook 'em, we just ate them fresh and raw. I say 'we', because A did try them, and in fact he must have liked them because he ate about half of them (well, okay, he ate three -- there weren't that many yet). This is unusual for my vegetable-disliking children. We will see if C will eat one, tomorrow.

And, further investigations revealed an almost-mature cucumber! Hmmm, we might just have an interesting salad with our pizza this weekend ;)

before leaving

2006-07-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

i took this last picture, please excuse the state of the lawn. I broke the lawn mower several weeks ago.

I took it mostly to show that i DID weed, and also i tied up the tomato plants in my own extra-special way. I had originally planned to tie each plant very carefully to it's stake, like a proper person should do. But since it was so out of control when i got back that i could not even see the path, i instead did it differently -- i tied rope around the perimeter of each bed, in effect making four giant tomato cages.

It seems to have worked. So far.

Look, proto-eggplants! These are that Turkish Orange variety.

When i was away, my neighbor came and ran the sprinkler for my tomatoes, and on one occasion she brought her father-in-law. Apparently he was really eyeing my tomatoes, with comments like 'wow, i have not had a good home-grown tomato in ages'. Uh-huh. Good thing i planted around 50 plants -- there should be enough to go around...

overgrown

2006-07-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

i go away for a week and the whole place goes to hell in a handbasket
and this is the after picture. After some hours of weeding, that is. Not enough. You see i still need to go back and tie up the tomatoes some more, before i leave town again. This summer travelling stuff is not really a good idea for gardeners i guess. And don't even ask about the state of the grass!!

Lots of tomatoes though....

I hope some of them will be ripe next week when Catherine comes to visit. Maybe that is asking too much, but i think it would be nice. Or we can always make fried green tomatoes...

Bush beans? These are supposed to be bush beans? Looks like someone messed that up...i will have to stake these too.

The cucumbers are growing well. The melon vines are growing but more slowly, i don't think i will have melons this year. I should have started them inside...

Also the eggplants have set some teeny tiny fruits! But i forgot to take a picture. Next time...

This is just another gratuitously cute picture. Though there are some vegetable plants in the background.

yesterday's lunch

2006-06-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

Baby greens (Black-seeded simpson & merveille des quatres saisons) with mini-mozarella balls, bresaola (the store was out of prosciutto), and a balsamic vinagrette....eaten outside in the garden.

Today's lunch was similar, except without the fancy meat -- because A sat down and ate the whole damned package as a snack (he was supposed to be feeding a little bit to his sister). 'What, you couldn't even save me two pieces to put on my salad?' I said. 'Well, C threw some of hers on the floor, you could eat that', he said. What a nice kid he is, eh? I swear to God, i will have to think up some appropriate punishment...ideas?

(i think he was really kidding about eating the stuff on the floor, but i did eat it -- that meat is too expensive to waste...and a little dirt never hurt anyone anyway...)

rocket!

2006-06-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

Baby roquette salad with parmesian cheese curls -- the first 'fruits' of my gardening efforts this year. The dh decided he did not want prosciutto on his salad...

I am happy to report that the rocket seems to be the right kind of lettuce. This was a big to-do here -- in France they have something called 'roquette' which is really a type of arugula, and my dh loved it. But the arugula they have in the stores here is a different variety, so once we moved back to the states he could not find his favorite lettuce. And when i was ordering seeds, it was quite difficult as well. I made the best guess -- this stuff, called 'wild arugula' in the Baker Creek catalog. And it seems that i was right. I do admit it is pretty bitter stuff -- even the baby greens are bitter. I am kind of afraid of what the full-grown one will taste like.

gratuitously cute

2006-06-12T18:01:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of Miss C running around the big ellipse...
This was a few weeks ago, when we were planting the seeds.
Now the tomato plants are taller than her, i think!

let's try this again

2006-06-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

Proto-tomatoes!
Ok, i admit, this is a cheat. The one plant that has tomatoes is 'Black Pineapple' which i bought, it was greenhouse-grown. The ones that i have grown from seed are not that far along -- they do all have flowers though.

Lettuces -- Black-seeded simpson and mervielle des quatres saisons:
I love the colors. They need to be thinned, yum yum! The roquette is even tighter. On tonight's menu is a salad of baby roquette greens with prosciutto, balsamic vinagrette, and parmesian cheese shavings -- the first food from the garden! I will have to take a picture.
C planted her carrots too close together. Well, it was her first time planting seeds...
Here is eggplant 'Rosa Bianca'. I am showing off my beautiful plant while i can -- before the bugs turn it into a stick. At least that is always what happened to my eggplants in the past...most of them have outgrown their milk jugs now and are beautiful big leafy things. Hopefully they are big enough to withstand the insect onslaught -- and maybe having the marigolds planted right there will help a little too. I don't know that it is really true that marigolds keep away the bugs. They do make the garden look cheerful, though.

Watermelon plant! I have high hopes.
Bush beans...

and 'White Wonder' cukes. The other ones (mexican sour gherkins) are up too, they are very small though and not much to see.

Overall germination this year, for all the seeds i planted in the garden, was somewhat poor -- maybe 60% or thereabouts. I also had had a nighttime marauder in my garden though (Critter Ridder seems to have helped) so i don't know if the seeds didn't sprout or if, as is more likely, they sprouted and were immediately eaten for somebody's midnight snack.

varieties i am growing

2006-06-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes: Cherokee Purple, Yellow Bell, White Currant, Rouge d'Irak, Brandywine. I also have one plant of 'Black Pineapple' and one plant of 'Yellow Pear' that i bought at a local sale. Yes, i know 'Yellow Pear' is boring but i like them anyway. I have it in a pot on the patio, i thought it would be fun for Chloe to watch and pick them.

Eggplants: Turkish Orange & Rosa Bianca

Cucumbers: Mexican sour gherkin & White Wonder

Lettuce: black-seeded simpson, merveille des quatres saisons, and roquette

Carrots: St. Valery

Leeks: American Flag

Watermelons: Petite Yellow

Bush beans: Royalty Purple Pod

Basil: Sweet Genovese

Ornamentals: Hyacinth bean, Sunflower 'lemon queen', and marigolds ('safari yellow' i think? Some common ones that i bought a whole flat of. These are the only thing in the veggie garden that i did not grow from seed myself.)

I got my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I will put these links (and others) in the sidebar when i get a chance.

they grow, they grow...

2006-06-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a current picture. Things are growing nicely. I should have all the tomatoes staked by now but i don't -- i am really bad about that, and they are a mess. I do not find it a fun job.

I have a bunch of pictures but blogger is taking forever and a day to upload pics today so i will save them for another time.

weekend 'work'

2006-06-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

We found C a child-sized wagon for $3 at a yard sale.

We finished planting vegetable seeds -- C planted some too.

I went to 'flower day' and bought roses (and some marigolds). Look what i got -- a rose actually named Nicolas! With the right spelling too. Of course it is red, so i didn't put it in his garden!! Perhaps that was bad of me, because the rose pricked me twice while i was planting it..maybe i should move it? Maybe he is sick of this white theme. It is possible, we will see....

For Nicolas' garden i bought two roses -- Rosa rugosa alba and it's double form, Blanc Double de Coubert. Neither of them are blooming yet so i will not post pictures until then. I couldn't decide which one to buy, so eventually i bought both...the perfect solution, eh?

This was today's impulse buy...i could not resist the color and the fragrance. It is a 'Renaissance Rose' (whatever that is), named 'Amelia'. In any case it is some new development in the world of roses. I am just pleased with how pretty and fragrant it is....

Here is another picture of C, 'helping' in the garden...

a geek in the garden

2006-06-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

I didn't put these pictures on the main blog because they are very hard to see but i am going to put them here just for completeness. This is me doing the ellipse. The second thing i learned from this process is 'don't ask the carpenter to take a picture that is related to math'. Not that Randy doesn't know math -- you need alot of math to be a carpenter. But you see, for some reason it did not occur to him that the picture i wanted was the one where both foci were in the picture. Something like this, but with me in it.
If you recall, an ellipse is the curve that is traced out if you take a loop of string and two points (called the foci). Put two pins in your paper, loop the string around the points and pull tight with your pencil. If you then trace your pencil around the two points, you will have an ellipse. A circle is just an ellipse with the two foci in the same place, the center. Planets (and comets) rotate around the sun in ellipses, with the sun at one focus.

Now, the first thing that i learned from this process is something i know already -- always check your math. I carried wrong, twice in fact and it took me really a long time to get the length of the string right. The whole day was gone by the time i was able to dig the beds...

Garden beginnings

2006-06-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, so i finally finished putting in the raised beds of my vegetable garden. In fact as of now i have even planted all my seedlings, and was hoping to have planted all the seeds...but we did not get so far. I do want the kids to help with the seeds, and it was a busy yard-sale-ing type of day today.

Anyway, so i will put up some pictures. These are pictures taken before the seedlings were put in, and unfortunatly right after the maple tree dropped a million 'helicopters', they litter the place.

So i must explain myself a bit. I love tomatoes...a lot of tomatoes....a lot of heirloom tomatoes. And of course other vegetables too, i like them very much...when you decide to plant like 40-50 tomato plants though, plus lots of other stuff, in your backyard, it takes up a lot of space. And they aren't that particularly nice to look at or deal with. The standard vegetable garden is not, in general, something you would necessarily want to spend alot of time admiring. But if it takes up a third of your yard, you can't exactly ignore what it looks like.

Eventually, i found my solution to this problem when we visited the gardens at the Chateau de Villandry. The kitchen gardens (potagers) were of particular interest -- in fact i utterly dislike flowers planted in the French style. But planting vegetables this way -- in raised, shaped beds, edged with boxwoods, and beautifully-raked gravel paths allowing access to everything -- now there is an exquisite idea.

So my vegetable garden is the poor woman's version. Not enough space for a square, so i chose a rectangle. Not enough boxwoods to edge all the beds, they at present are only seedlings (supplied by my mother, thanks mom) that go around the perimeter. Can't afford pea gravel for the paths, so i used mulch. Plus it's a bitch to photograph because the perspective is all off. But you get the idea -- this is the view from the third floor balcony. You see, the beds form an ellipse.

Behind the veggie garden (and in front, but you cannot see that in the pic), there will be eventually more lawn -- it has been seeded for a week but nothing is showing up yet but a bunch of pigeons who seem to enjoy snacking on the seed. So i cannot say that my hopes for that one are particularly high...

This is the view from the second floor back window, so you can get some better idea how the whole thing works. See, i finally got that table & chairs out. The livable part of the yard essentially is that small lawn right now...you see it degenerates in the corner there and turns to construction debris.

This is the degenerate corner, as you see. It was a great victory, though, to be able to pile all this junk in one corner of the yard. Since it used to be everywhere....one day, it will all be used up, or put away, or thrown away. And the flower bed will continue around in a circle, to a shady, sheltered, green quiet nook with a bench. One day.

This is the view from the ground level. If you are very perceptive you will notice that the lines seem ever so slightly off. They are -- i would say about 5 degrees...

See, it took me hours to measure and triangulate the vegetable garden, and to make the big ellipse in the traditional way using a string and the two foci. (i am not good at measuring things exactly) And then it took me a good long time to dig out the paths and build up the beds. At this point i noticed that it was not exactly quite right, but i was not sure if it was an illusion because the right-side fence is not straight. Eventually, looking from the third floor, i could see the problem. The whole construction does not go perpendicular to the garage like it should. There is a slight angle (5, maybe 10 degrees). And this is because last year, when i first made the line (the line you can see as the line of the grass), i just eyeballed it, i did not check that it was truly perpendicular to the garage. (you can imagine that much cursing ensued upon this realization).

At this point i was not about to redo this whole thing, especially considering we might demolish the garage ANYWAY.

I have, however, been waiting for my husband to give me hell about it. His last unfortunate comment about my landscaping techniques was last year, when i just told him to buy any grass seed that said 'sun/shade mix' and he gave me a long lecture about how i needed to use exactly the same brand of the same mix throughout the lawn because otherwise it would look 'half-assed'. So certainly this particular screw-up merits even more descriptive language.

First post!

2006-06-12T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is a blog dedicated to my kitchen garden. I just thought it would be a convenient way to journal the process and keep it all in one place, separate from my main blog. I wanted to see the pictures of the vegetable garden as it grows up and out (and out of control no doubt). I tend to grow heirloom varieties and use organic gardening techniques, and the garden itself is laid out in a quasi-formal French manner (hence the title of the blog). Of course, with vegetables you simply can't be too formal.

The first few posts will just be repeats of the ones on my main blog...