Fast grows the watermelon

Friday, June 29, 2007

Of the two little watermelons I showed in a previous photo, the first one fell off the vine, I'm sad to say. I guess it was an unfertilized ovary, if I recall correctly what I learned about squash blossom fertilization last year. The good new is, the second watermelon is growing like crazy! It's gone from thumb size to bigger than my hand in just one week. At this rate, I'll have watermelon slices in no time. Sweet!

Blogging elsewhere today...

Thursday, June 28, 2007

I'm guest blogging over at DC Urban Gardener News today. Head over there to read my post (which includes photographic proof that I really do get dirty fingernails).

Thanks to Susan, a.k.a. fellow DC Urban Gardener, Takoma Gardener and Garden Ranter, and Ed, The Slow Cook and DCUG president, for inviting me to share my story.

Welcome new readers who are coming here from over there. Stick around and watch me figure out how to cook the loads of squash my garden is producing. And beans. I think I'm in for a lot of beans...

Sage plant wilting

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I've been celebrating merrily my triumph with the zucchini and baby watermelons, but now this: my sage plant appears to be croaking. Good grief. Can't everything just stay happy and flourish all at once? (No. I realize the answer to that is, unfortunately, no. The garden constantly throws me curve balls. And that's what keeps it interesting, although sometimes -- like now -- it's darn frustrating!)

In the spring, this plant exploded with soft, fragrant new leaves. I'm now regretting that I didn't cut any of them to dry. I wanted to set some aside for our Thanksgiving dinner. But since the plant grew so effortlessly and rapidly, I didn't feel any urgency to harvest the leaves. I thought they would be here. All. Summer. Long.

My sage plant on April 25, 2007 -- Alive!

So what's going on with it? The leaves are wilting and curling and turning crispy brown. I think the plant had plenty of water. Could it be too much water causing this? Is it going the way of our rosemary?

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Related Posts:
Harvesting Sage
Chicken with Olives and Herbs
Brine a Turkey with Sage

First Zucchini!

Saturday, June 23, 2007

My first zucchini is here! Ta-dah! OK, I realize the more experienced gardeners among you are probably thinking: What's the big deal? Zucchini is notoriously the easiest vegetable to grow in large quantities. Most people have trouble finding enough ingenious ways to give it away.


If you've been following my blog, though, you know I had to deal first with the yellowing leaves and split stem, and then the implementation of the Band-Aid patch-up job. It worked!


Michael and I were out at the plot a few days ago and I squealed at the sight of two tiny zucchinis forming at the heart of the plant. On Wednesday, I went back to take photos and found one zucchini already large enough to pick. Fast growers, they are indeed!


I grabbed a few herbs -- parsley, oregano, and oregano thyme -- to accompany my zucchini in a celebratory dish. I diced the zucchini and marinated it for a few minutes in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt & pepper, and the chopped herbs. With a few dices of farmers' market tomato, I sauteed everything just long enough to heat through. Then I put it all together with orzo pasta and one final flourish of parsley-confetti.


With all the herbs in this, it tasted like pasta with marinara sauce, without the actual sauce. So flavorful, so simple, and just... so good.

I'm now looking for ideas on how to cook all the zucchinis I hope are yet to come. Michael asked if we could let at least one of them grow to be gigantic, so we can make the requisite zucchini cake. The rest I'm going to try and harvest when they're small. I'm looking forward to trying Aunt G's zucchini pie and some zucchini fritters, among other recipes.

What's your favorite way to eat zucchini?


This post is part of Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Astrid at Paulchen's Food Blog. Check her blog on Monday for a roundup of herb- and veggie- themed posts from all over the world.

Nothing says summer like...

Thursday, June 21, 2007

...Watermelon!

They're only thumb-size right now but I'm sure they'll plump up soon enough. Aren't they the cutest little watermelons you've ever seen? Happy Summer!

Kids playing outdoors -- or not

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Did playing outdoors as a child lead you to become interested in gardening as an adult? I raise this question after reading an article in today's Washington Post, which addresses the question of what we should do now that America has so many "indoor children" who are disconnected from nature. I was surprised to learn there is a national effort underway to promote a "green hour" for kids, to encourage unstructured outdoor playtime and help prevent nature-deficit disorder.

I know my love of nature -- and gardening -- stems directly from my experiences in childhood. It was actually fun to climb trees and go searching, barefoot, for bright orange salamanders in a nearby stream. But I realize not all kids get to grow up in a safe and beautiful rural place like I did.

This is an issue I've been thinking about for a long time: If kids today aren't spending much time outdoors, will they care about the environment when they're all grown up? If they don't have any experience with real dirt and bugs, plants, and fresh (edible!) fish pulled from clean waters, what's going to make them care about protecting these things for the future? Is this how we get people who drop thousands of dollars on outdoor rooms full of... stuff... only to realize they'd rather stay indoors so their toys don't get - gasp! - dirty? And is a "green hour" the best we can do for kids?

Read the article: Getting Lost in the Great Indoors: Many Adults Worry Nature is Disappearing from Children's Lives.

Green Thumb Sunday

Sunday, June 17, 2007

My green thumb is showing up a little yellow this week. This is my bolting, buggy spinach. I sowed the seeds during the first two weeks of March, thinking they would do well in the cool weather, but the plants just never got going for me. I guess I need to do more work on my soil. Doesn't it always come down to the soil?

Join

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers share their photos on Green Thumb Sunday. See who else is participating.

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Friday, June 15, 2007

When I was I kid, I was taught the name ROY G BIV as a way to remember the order of colors in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. My garden is showing the complete spectrum of colors this month, but I would have to say it represents something more like ROYYYYYY G BIV, for all the yellow flowers it contains. Why do so many edible crops have yellow flowers? I wonder.

With so much blooming in the garden right now, I had to give myself a jump start on this month's edition of Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day; I started my photography for this post three days ago. It's a good thing I did, too, because the weather has been a real challenge lately. In each of the past two days, I started taking photos out at the plot and then had to run back to the apartment in advance of severe thunderstorms. Standing in an open space holding a metal tripod is not exactly where I want to be when the lighting starts crackling on the horizon. But I managed, over the course of these past couple days, to steal a few sunny spots. And as the rumbling gray thunderclouds parted, there was my rainbow.

Red Poppies

Calendula

Zucchini

Marigolds

California Poppies

Butternut Squash

Cucumbers

Yarrow

Tomatoes

Watermelon

Bell Peppers

Bachelor's Buttons

Larkspur

Iris

Lamb's Ears

More Larkspur

Onions

Curious about what's blooming in other gardens today? Visit May Dreams Gardens to find out who else is participating in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day.

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Related Posts:
Bloom Day, May, April & March.

Eating the peas

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Behold the bounty! This is what we harvested yesterday from the plot: two onions, dill, two kinds of lettuces (Red Salad Bowl and Butterhead Marvel), mizuna, garlic scapes, and peas. Glorious peas!

I'd been looking forward to picking these peas all day. Michael and I thought they would be great in a salad of greens topped with salmon. Then I remembered the dill was ripe for picking too -- a perfect accompaniment for the fish.

This is our best yield of peas ever. We had all of about six pods last year, and just one lonely pod in the first year (yes, really, just one) because I sowed them too late. Clearly I've become a better pea farmer now; I've grown enough to make an actual portion for two!

Beautiful green pearls... stripped from their perfectly aligned rows... blanched for a few moments in a boiling bath... then chilled in a bowl of ice water to preserve their sweet freshness.

The peas were the jewels of our dill-accented dinner salad topped with honey-mustard glazed salmon.

I've been so inspired by the goodness of peas; I plan to try growing another batch this fall.

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Related Post: Time to Plant Peas

Welcome...

Flowers on Edible Sage

Welcome to the new readers who are visiting as a result of the mention on Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space. This is my fourth year tending to a community garden plot in Northwest DC. More than anything else, this garden and the community of people who share it and care for it have given me a true sense of place in this city. I hope you will be back to follow my adventures here. Fresh food, plucked straight from the ground just a few blocks away, makes for the best eating.

The Larkspur Meadow

Monday, June 11, 2007

Front view of the plot on 5/25/07

Last year when I first had success with growing larkspur flowers, I was very diligent about scattering the seeds so they would come back again this year. And come back they did...

Same view now

Michael just shakes his head. "You are your mother's daughter," he says, referring to the way my mom likes to grow things in a very natural, let-the-seeds-fall-where-they-may kind of style. I mostly have purple ones in there (they're my favorite, and most likely I was more assertive with my re-seeding effort when it came to those), and there are a few white and pink ones mixed in as well. The yellow spots in the back are yarrow flowers, and there are a few self-sown red poppies off to the left. This whole section of the plot is humming with the buzz of happy bees. I call it "the meadow."

How I repaired the zucchini stem

Friday, June 08, 2007

Earle Dickson probably never imagined that his invention would one day be used as a zucchini stem repair mechanism. But a Band-Aid is exactly what I employed to perform first aid on my ailing plant.

The leaves that were spotty-yellow two weeks ago have since dried up and fallen off. The rest of the leaves seem to be staying green, and a few of the blossoms have opened up now. Hurrah!

It appears that my strategy is working; if not to heal the stem, the Band-Aid is at least keeping it from splitting any further. I also mounded up the soil around the stem to give it more support.

One reader left me a comment asking if the plant might be afflicted with mosaic virus. Having never heard of mosaic virus, I did a bit of research and found Cornell University's Vegetable MD Online. This site has a tool for diagnosing diseases of cucurbit plants. It's particularly helpful in that it shows actual photos of problems that affect different parts of the plant. The downside, though, is that when I look at these kinds of photos too much, I start to think my poor zucchini plant has any number of diseases!


Since it seems to be doing better now with the patched-up stem, I don't think it was a virus issue. I think the top-heaviness of the leaves caused the stem to burst, and now, with a little extra support, the plant is able to hang on.

No sign of any zukes yet, though.

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Related Posts:
An Ailing Zucchini Plant - Already?
C for Courgette, Z for Zucchini
It's not a zucchini (2006)

First peas harvested

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

"How luscious lies the pea within the pod."

~Emily Dickinson

Mostly Mizuna

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Mizuna and Garlic Scapes

If you've ever seen the movie, Mostly Martha, you'll recall the scene when Martha, a German chef at a gourmet restaurant, sits alone at the end of the day in the quiet of her own kitchen, preparing to eat a piece of fish. With the help of the subtitles, we hear her contemplate how the talent of a chef is often judged by the quality of their simplest dishes; in this case, fish in a light basil sauce. It needs just the right amount of salt and pepper, she says. "No design. No exotic ingredients. Just the fish. And the sauce. The fish and the sauce."

My husband teases me sometimes, saying I'm just like Martha, because my favorite way to eat salmon is simply broiled with salt and pepper. "Just the fish." His palate, on the other hand, is much more demanding and adventurous. When I asked him this weekend if he would be willing to eat sauteed spinach as a side dish for Sunday night's meal, he said "Yes, but only if it has more than salt and pepper on it." In other words, not just the spinach.


My thoughts turned to the garden and I remembered that I have a good amount of mizuna ready for picking. Mizuna has a delicate mustard flavor, and it can be eaten raw or cooked. Since we only had a small amount of spinach (store-bought, because mine in the garden is seriously ailing), I decided to supplement it with mizuna for a flavorful kick.


The mixture of greens made a simple but delectable side dish to our meal of Chicken with Garlic Scapes and Capers. After Michael downed a few forkfuls of the lightly sauteed leaves, he asked me, "Did you put mustard in this?"

"No. No, I didn't put any mustard in there," I said. "It's just the mizuna."

Wild Ramps from West Virginia

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Today we are getting a much-needed rain storm in Washington; up to two inches of rain is expected. Michael and I decided, due to the weather, to cancel our planned trip to the farmers' market. Instead, I decided to catch up on writing about a new vegetable we discovered at the market three weeks ago: ramps, or wild leeks, from West Virginia.

One of the vendors had a table piled high with bundles of these small white vegetables. We had never seen nor heard of them before. They looked like a plumper version of scallions, with wide leaves that resembled the foliage of lilies of the valley. The sign said they were grown in the wild and have a flavor that crosses between garlic and onions. They were the most unusual thing I saw at the market, so I wanted to give them a try. We bought one small bundle at the last-hour sale price of $2.00.

Back home, I went on the Internet to learn about ramps. Also called wild leeks, ramps grow in damp forests and are native to the Appalachian mountains. There are a couple of theories as to why they are called ramps; my favorite is that "the English folk name 'ransom' (son of Ram), referred to the plant's habit of appearing during the sign of Aries... on the zodiac calendar." Ramps are only available during a short period of time in the spring, and they're the subject of numerous festivals throughout Appalachia. I learned that the increasing popularity of ramps in recent years -- for festivals and as an ingredient sought by gourmet chefs -- has led to concerns about over-harvesting. (While eating local food seems to be all the rage right now, this opened my eyes and made me realize there can be negative consequences of the local food movement, too.) The U.S. Forest Service has created rules to help protect ramps in their natural habitat.

In Appalachia, ramps are most commonly fried with potatoes, bacon, and eggs, and so that is exactly how I tried them. More like onions than garlic, they were a little different than any onions I've ever tasted. Their flavor was notably more earthy than regular onions. I liked them. I'm glad I had the chance to try them, and I enjoyed learning something new about a wild, edible plant that grows in our own nearby West Virginia.

Ramps in an Appalachian-style breakfast... for dinner.

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P.S. -- Thank you to Alanna at A Veggie Venture for providing the farmers' market icon used above.