Multiple Garden Friday Updates: September 10

As soon as June rolled around I got totally and completely lazy with the garden updates. The good news is that everything grew remarkably well. In fact, it was better than I had planned it would be. The abnormally cool July (the average temperature for July was 18º C/ 64º F) kept things from drying out, and extended the life of my sugar snap peas. The sugar snaps were over run by pole beans, but before I could notice any of it, the beans were growing like weeds. The garden grew despite weird weather, lack of attention due to many vacations, the abundance of snails, and my irregular watering schedule.

Gardening is a full-time job, but the rewards are plentiful and better than you can imagine; even if you grow food in small spaces and only have room for containers.

Here were the "harvests."

Remember the garden looked like this at the end of June.

The first week of July I was collecting many delicious looking veggies:

There's mint, chard, snow peas, lemon cucumbers and bush cucumbers, and broccoli. 

If you ignore broccoli it grows fibrous and tough, but it looks pretty with flowers:

and since you grew it, you'll eat it, and mmm the fibrous tough broccoli is so good in risotto:

Strawberries make a small come-back with the cooler weather of July:

In August, I failed to take pictures of the garden, but I didn't fail in taking pictures of all the garden produce making it's way into various meals:

Remember pesto with gnocchi? Tomatoes placed strategically:

While my outdoor basil was destroyed by slugs (or lack of watering), my indoor gave a steady supply (as pesto!):

it also dressed up potatoes and garden grown green beans:

And then when you go out of town, but you have too many cukes lying around, refrigerator pickles:

Get your friends to make fresh homemade cheese croquettes and then sit outside for al fresco dining and then oooh and aaah at how overgrown and crazy the garden looks (do you see the cabbage still growing, and the pole bean takeover of the fence?):

The best part of going out of town is coming back to a garden bounty. I'm just in time for a new month of photogarden documeting:

beans, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, mint, lemon cukes (not pictured, bruschetta made from huge handfuls of deliciously overripe (as if there is a thing) tomatoes.

Now, it's time to dust the seed packets off and get to the fall plantings. 

I Love Tofu

Have you ever visited the Foodgawker website?  It is a serious collection of food photography from many talented food bloggers.  I spend hours searching through the images and coming up with lists of foods I want to prepare, and it has introduced me to many creative bloggers.  This recipe and blog post from Beyond Kimchee, invited me to fall in love with tofu again.  Such a simple, perfect, delicious recipe.  Karl and I have made this at least five times.  We always eat so quickly, briefly pausing between our next bite, to remark how perfect the tofu tastes, and how delicious and fresh the sauce tastes.  It’s made of soy sauce, garlic, red chili, sesame oil, chives, and sesame seeds, but it makes you feel like you are eating so much more.

This is perfect to serve as a starting appetizer, or to be served over rice as the blog author suggests, or really however you wish. We cook up some Chinese-style noodles, then saute red bell peppers, mushroom, snow peas or Napa cabbage, and add the golden pan-fried tofu on top and spoon the sauce over all of it.

First we were ga-ga over Mainly Veggie's spinach veggie burgers, now it’s all about Korean-style pan-fried tofu.  Click the links to take you to the author’s sites. I will write what I did with the recipe here, but the pictures should be pretty obvious, eh?

Pan-fried tofu served with some sauteed vegetables on top of noodles. 

Tofu waiting to be golden. 

Golden pan-fried tofu

Chinese-style noodles
Ingredients:
1 block extra-firm tofu
3 tbsp soy sauce (I used 2 tbsp plus 1 tbsp water)
1 green onion, chopped
1 tsp sesame seeds, toasted
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp red chili flakes
½ tsp shrimp powder (I used ½ tsp Thai panang curry paste)
2 tbsp peanut oil to fry up tofu

Prepare these ingredients with directions from Beyond Kimchee’s blogpost. Her pictures are really wonderful.  

I followed her directions exactly, but I served them with a vegetable stir-fry over noodles. 

More ingredients:
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 cup mushrooms, wiped clean and cut up however you want
1 red bell pepper, cut into strips
1 cup snow peas, or 2 cups Napa cabbage chopped (or include both)
12 oz uncooked pasta (such as Chinese noodles, or linguine), or prepare rice instead of pasta.
water for pasta

Directions:

1. First, you can toast the sesame seeds in a non-stick pan without any oil over medium heat. Watch them closely so they won’t burn.  While you are cooking the sesame seeds, prep the tofu (drain, cut it up, then salt it lightly).
2. Bring a large pot of water to boil.  Add the noodles to the boiling water once you start cooking the tofu. The veggies will take about 15 minutes or less, and the tofu will also take about 15 minutes or less.  This way you’ll have hot noodles.
3. Remove the seeds and add them to the sauce.  Turn heat up heat to medium-high, and add 1 tbsp of peanut oil to the pan. Once hot, add in mushrooms and saute 5-7 minutes.  Jerk the pan in small controlled horizontal movements to toss the mushrooms around. Continue doing this when you add a new ingredient to the pan. You can also stir them around, but it looks more sexy doing it this way (especially if you are wearing an apron).
4. Next, add in bell pepper strips, and continue to saute for another 3-5 minutes. Add in cabbage and snow peas and continue cooking another 3-4 minutes. Then remove to a plate, and prepare the same pan to cook up the tofu.  You can start heating up 2 tbsp of peanut oil while you go get the tofu, and start pan-frying it up.
5. Once you have cooked the tofu, you can add the sauteed veggies to the pan to heat them back up. Remove all of this to a plate. Meanwhile, drain the pasta, reserve ½ cup of boiling water.  If the noodles stick, add about a teaspoon of oil to the noodles along with the water. Divide them up between 4 plates and add about 1 cup of veggies plus 4 pieces of tofu on top. Pass the sauce at the table.

This is a super fast weeknight meal and I’m sure it will be among your favorites.

Seedlings

Some pictures of the seedlings:

Seedlings soaking up some sun

Eggshell seedling

Where are my catnip seedlings?

Patio yellow tomatoes in rolled cardboard

Patio red tomatoes

Patio eggplant and sweet red peppers

Leggy patio yellow tomatoes

Basil

Fall plantings & summer ramblings

In my 3rd season of gardening, I've just given in to drawing out what will be planted where. I also had no idea that planning fall vegetables takes place in mid-summer. Jebus! I'm late! I think the single best thing to do is draw and write out everything. Farmer's at the farmer's markets are always helpful. I also checked out a dozen gardening books, and made sure to properly bookmark useful web sites. I could list out the many amazing books I found, but honestly just head to your library and see what you have available. I was mostly interested in when to plan what. The NC Piedmont falls in Zone 7; NC Cooperative Extension was useful in it's fall planning guide.

Since I have space for containers, I checked out some container gardening books. Needless to say, they were more creative and logical than I had intended they would be. I wrote down everything that I could glean from the pages in pursuit of better fruit next time, and hopefully a better and more abundant yield. I didn't have a gardening notebook/journal, but
I sure do now.

I think the raised bed did well enough after most of the plants matured. Things grew slowly and it was difficult in comparison to last year where things took off. The biggest differences were that I used the same potting soil but mixed in home compost and commerical compost and fertilizer that I had from the previous year. Last year I had bought those amazing 9 dollar bags of miracle soil and I think that probably had something to do with the speed and growth. In my feedings, I used compost and some plant foods, but next year I will test the soil, and adjust as needed with other organic soil amendments. We had a mild and rainy June-July with a much hotter and drier mid-July through August.

These things survived and did well enough:
Tomatoes: the bush variety in the raised bed, did well. I planted yellow pear tomatoes in the wooden barrel (without drainage holes) and they grew poorly. I had some roma grapes(?) in the raised bed, and they wouldn't grow at all. Finally, I had planted a tomato plant in early July and it was attacked by deer and has suffered from either shock or something else. When I dumped out everything from the compost bin, miraculously (to a new gardener) a grape tomato or some other cherry varietal survived and was growing outside of the raised bed. I mostly ignored it because I thought it would produce weird fruit or no fruit, until one day I realized the vines were collapsing under the weight of MANY little grape tomatoes. This plant is doing the best.

Basil: so much basil. I planted it 2 weeks apart over 6 weeks, and it has been the gift that keeps giving.

Mint: Cut from my friend Courtney, it was a straggler and has grown into a wonderful plant.

Flower pots: all have done wonderful (zinnias, marigolds, dwarf zinnias, purple lantana, medusa pepper and nasturtiums (with few flowers) nasturtiums did best in the raised bed, and worst in containers.

Carrots: the deer spared them, and they have grown in their pot almost all summer.

Swiss Chard: the deer wolfed them down. The bright lights did well in June-July if kept watered. I had some heirloom variety of swiss chard (given from me from a girl at Heifer Int.) that was heat tolerant, that survived the winter last year and is doing lovely in the raised bed.

Peas: Courtney shared some pea seeds with me, and these did awesome. They gave up in the heat, but my did they look lovely in June.

Cucumbers: Planted in early July and is a constant deer target. Grows almost 1/2 foot a day. Lots of flowers, 2 fruits. I look at it longingly day after day to will the plant to produce more fruit.

Canteloupe: Planted in early July and has survived the deer and borers. No fruit, tons of blooms. The plant is in a pot that is low to the ground so I stuck some old badminton rackets to support the weight of the vines. COME ON MELONS!

Here's what didn't grow well:
Eggplant: Deer took bites out of this plant, the marigolds took over because they were planted in the same pot. So it's either the deer, or too much in the pot. Last year, the eggplants did the best. Next year, I will plant 4 or more just in case. Every garden should have eggplant.

Jalapenos: Did poorly. They are in the wood barrel and this may be due to the soil being too wet. I have gotten a few jalapenos.

Peppers: All have done remarkably poorly. I planted 3 in hopes that one would survive, and they are now flowering. It may have been too hot for them earlier, but they have a dozen buds, so I'm hopeful they will get some catch-up growth.

Squash: both the crookneck and the zucchini got knocked out by borers. Next year I will cover with foil or cloth until large enough to fight them off.

For fall, I set out many seeds from spring. I tried to plant them according to my local area's suggested time frames.

Here's what I set out:
Carrots and radishes
Arugula
Spring bunching onions
Lettuce
Beets
Swiss chard

Radishes

Today in the garden

Summer plantings are up. The raised bed has been placed in the backyard (4 ft x 4 ft x 12 in). I added 6 bags of topsoil and 6 bags of good compost. Lined the bottom with newspaper and flattened paper grocery bags. I'm aware of the proximity to the A/C but the bed is on a slight incline, so the water drains towards the grass instead of towards the A/C or the apartment.


This year, I went ahead and staked and caged the tomatoes so that I could prevent any root disturbance from staking later. I also put parsley and nasturtiums between the plantings as I've read from other online sites, and suggestions from the seed packets. The spring garden vegetables keep growing, but they are slowing down with the rising temperatures. Carrots and beets are growing painfully slow. The mesclun, radishes, lettuce, spinach and chard have done exceptionally well in containers. From a broken pot last year, I painted the remains into plant name tags. These have been placed in the garden along with the plantings.




Here is what went into the raised bed:

• Tomatoes (roma cherries & better bush)
• Black beauty zucchini
• Crookneck squash
• Swiss chard (found these growing in a waste pile so I just put them into the bed, I had weeded and dumped out a bunch of pots earlier in the spring and the swiss chard survived.)
• Marjoram
• Basil
• Oregano
• Parsley
• Nasturtiums
• Marigolds

Here is the work-in-progress garden. The squash and chard are looking a little sad.

Potted wood barrel with jalapeno peppers and tomatoes. Basil seedlings are at bottom of photograph here. Nasturtiums are finally popping up.

Eggplant with marigolds below:

Summer Garden Plantings

The latest new additions to the patio backyard garden pretty much max out the available space so that the area surrounding the walk out space is entirely committed to growing food and plants or composting them for plant and vegetable food.

The spring veggies have been producing for almost 3 weeks. Lots of lettuce, spinach, and radishes. Cilantro finally took off, and beets, carrots, and spring onions have all gone slow. There was a heat wave in late April and I think it slowed down the growth of many items. Anyone out there have luck with arugula? My neighbor and I have been comparing our veggies, and we both have found arugula to grow painfully slow. Next time, I'll start the spring seeds indoors in early February, and set them out early to mid-March.

Enough babble. On to the new stuff:

• A newly constructed raised bed
• A donated wood barrel
• Summer veggalies including Texas A&M jalapeno peppers, yellow pear tomatoes, ichiban eggplant, better bush tomatoes, black beauty zucchini, and crookneck summer squash (all starters from a mega giant store and one local gardening store).
  
• Flowers including zinnias, marigolds, nasturtiums, and aster (all from seed)
  
• Herbs including Genovese basil, red basil, oregano, marjoram, and thyme (all from seed).

Last year, I tried growing squashes in containers, and they grew amazingly all through the first month only to become weighted down and die. Sad face. Maybe they will do much better in the raised beds. There are so many online resources for how I learned about raised beds and container gardening. Texas A&M University's Cooperative Extension site helped me figure out how to put in raised bed. Other sites that were equally helpful include:
The WikiHow page
This Texas A&M Container Gardening site &
This Colorado State one

See now you have all the resources for a raised bed and container gardening!

This is the site for the raised bed:

these are the walls:

these are the joints to connect them, they were screwed in on each side

Finalized product: a 4x4 raised bed

Here is some new stuff in pots and the wooden barrel:

tomatoes, jalapenos, basil & nasturtiums

Eggplant & marigolds

Spring Garden

Spinach in a windowbox

Backyard Pots


Buttercrunch Lettuce

Easter Egg Radishes and Carrots

Mesclun

Earth Machine

Fenugreek leaves (Methi)

Carrots and beets

Arugula