Potted Farm

Harvest Recipe

2011-08-06T08:30:00.000-04:00

So what do you do with an over-abundance of cherry tomatoes? Make bruschetta, of course!
One of our new favorite restaurants makes a really good one so we combined parts of that with some recipes we found online.

First, take all those wonderfully ripe cherry tomatoes you harvested yesterday...
Then cut them up, the big ones in quarters and the little ones in half. Add a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar to the bowl then very gently fold it all together. Set it aside to sit and meld while you work on the other stuff.
In a little skillet over very very low heat put some olive oil and minced garlic and fresh basil (also from your garden obviously) and let it all warm up. That will let some of the basil and garlic oils out to mix. Don't let it boil, just simmer a little. Let that sit on the low heat while you work on the next part.
Grab a good loaf of Italian bread, or whatever denser bread you'd like. Slice it into about 3/4" slices. Nothing too thick yor you won't be able to bite into it. Too thing and it'll burn when you put it under the broiler.
Yummmmmm... toasted bread. Now use that garlic/basil oil you had simmering and brush it over the bread. You don't have to use all of it. Any you don't use just add to the tomatoes, it'll help to warm them up and soften them just a bit.
Then put the bread around the edge of the platter, pour the tomato mix in the middle and crumble some goat cheese over it. Oh yeah, it's best to get the goat cheese out at the beginning of all this so it warms up and softens a bit. Cold goat cheese is gross.
I'd recommend a nice glass of wine with it. Smear some goat cheese on a piece of bread, spoon some tomatoes on top and dive in. Delicious!
And that's what you do with all your ripe cherry tomatoes!

I'm Baaaack

2011-08-05T17:37:00.006-04:00

Contrary to popular belief, I did not take a cross-country hot air balloon trip. I can't believe how long it's been since I've updated the blog, but the end of class and then some visitors and then work and then buying a car (!) all got away from me and somehow it's August! When did that happen?
And with the end of summer comes harvest! Sadly, our container plants are not doing quite as well as I'd hoped. The only thing we have in over-abundance is tomatoes. And lordy to we have LOTS of tomatoes!
We have cherry tomatoes, and big beefy tomatoes, and heirloom wrinkly tomatoes.
The cherries are all ripening fast so we're enjoying them.
Check back tomorrow to see what we did with the harvest.The biggest problem we're having is blossom-end rot. We've been really careful to keep even watering and we planted the seedlings with some eggshells for calcium, but we stopped at our local garden store and the guy said our weird weather (hot, cold, warm, WET, cold, dry, HOT) means that he's seen it a lot. He recommended some of this:
I've sprayed it on twice and we're hoping for the best. Any other suggestions for ending blossom end rot?

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T10:42:00.003-04:00

In honor of Father's Day here are some photos of my dad working in his garden. It hasn't been that long since I helped plant it and I'm shocked at how fast everything came up!

The bean and corn seeds are already up and looking great. I'm jealous. I don't have any corn and my beans definitely don't look that good.
They're using straw as a mulch this year. One perk of container gardening on a 2nd floor balcony is a fairly distinct lack of weeds.

My mom was hoping I could ID this flower, but I'm not sure. It looks like a giant buttercup. Does anyone know what it is?

Storm Clouds

2011-06-17T08:30:00.000-04:00

Harvest!

2011-06-16T08:30:00.000-04:00

We were able to harvest 2.5 different things this week!
The first was a strawberry. That's right folks, just one. But it was good. Tiny, but tasty. We split it.
Very exciting to see one in our garden.Then I had to thin our carrots again so we got some mini carrots. J is the carrot connoisseur in our house, so he tasted them. Said they were just ok. I'm hoping it's because they were too small. But they did smell like carrots.
And we had a lovely spinach salad one night with some bacon vinaigrette J made. Yummy!

Scenes from Mom & Dad's House

2011-06-15T08:30:00.000-04:00

Ohio Visit

2011-06-14T08:30:00.000-04:00

So the first weekend in June I headed to Ohio to surprise my father for his birthday. The surprise definitely worked. And he was so happy to see me so I could help in the garden! Scenes of this manual labor are below, but there are three things I learned/was reminded of during this adventure:
1) Container gardening is WAY less labor intensive than in-ground gardening.
2) Bugs are a pain. A really really itchy pain.
3) I can't wait to have a house and big yard with giant garden of my own. :)

Saturday we tilled the garden, added several (very heavy) wheelbarrows of compost, and then planted.
We got all the seedlings from a local nursery that had a pretty decent selection. Now my parents have tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans, watermelon, acorn squash, zucchini, yellow summer squash, and potatoes.
Then we installed the GIANT enclosure my dad had built for the blueberry bushes. I had fond memories of picking pounds of blueberries off the bushes, but apparently they'd outgrown their previous netting.

Like I said, this thing was massive. We put the netting around it on the driveway, then trapped my sister inside.
And then installed it over the blueberry bushes. I fit surprisingly well. So maybe dad didn't overestimate the size!
And the day after we planted we installed (for the first time ever) a fence around the garden to keep deer, rabbits, groundhogs, raccoons, cats, dogs, etc out of the garden. How have we never had a fence around it before?Lots of gardening during the visit - which I certainly wasn't opposed to. Mom and Dad have promised photo updates of the garden, so I'll hold them to that!

Orchid Reblooming

2011-06-13T08:30:00.000-04:00

I finally got my orchid to rebloom. I've only owned it about a year and a half, so I feel like that's pretty good.
I love orchids. They're just so beautiful!

Random

2011-06-12T08:30:00.000-04:00

So I'm a little behind on getting photos up, so I thought Sunday would be a good day to put up random photos.

The potatoes are still taking off like rockets! You can see a hint of purple in the leaves. I wonder if the flowers will be purple too.Our Ruby Chard is so pretty! That color is amazing - especially when the sun hits it in the evening.
J is wicked excited about all the peas on our plants.
And the passionfruit has been put outside and really seems to love the sun. The leaves got a lot darker.
And two weekends ago, we undertook our first adventure in canning - strawberry jam. It turned out pretty well, but I don't have many photos. Since it was our first time trying, it was mostly us running around and reading the instructions and making sure the jam didn't boil over (note to self: use a bigger pot next time).

Now we've got a boatload of strawberry jam. So if you're friends or family let us know if you want some and we'll mail it out!

Kale Harvest

2011-06-11T08:30:00.000-04:00

I apologize for my extended break from blogging. Last weekend I flew to Ohio to surprise my dad for his birthday! It was a great weekend, but I got back mid-morning on Monday and it was a crazy week at work since one of my co-workers was out so I was doing two people's jobs and the board of trustees was in and I had class two different nights. So I've been playing catch-up all week and now that the weekend is here I'm actually starting to make some headway.We harvested some of our kale forest and had a delicious side dish. J moved a little faster than i thought and had hacked off the whole thing instead of just cutting the outer leaves. We won't get any substantial grow back, but that's probably ok, since we'll be searching for recipes to eat this all. I went to pull the stem out so we could reuse the pot and soil, but then this happened!
I guess it got a little root bound in that small container, which makes me wonder what it would have done in the ground!! I've never grown kale before, but this stuff was already huge!We harvested in the morning (right after my run, hence the awesome outfit and huge Garmin on my wrist) because it's starting to get warm here and by late afternoon the kale looks sad. Since we weren't eating it right away it was brought to the kitchen...Then ripped into smaller pieces and cleaned in the salad spinner.
All ready for dinner! Nice to finally be harvesting things!

Indoor leaves

2011-06-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

Wordless Sunday?

ATK

2011-06-04T08:30:00.000-04:00

At the end of May, J and I got the opportunity to visit the offices and studio of America's Test Kitchen to watch a taping. We're HUGE fans of the show and had previously been to a book signing, so this seemed like the obvious next step. Luckily, their offices are T accessible - ah the joys of not owning a car. (The T is Boston's metro service.)
We were hoping they'd be cooking something delicious, but the day we visited they were taping the science segments. It was still interesting to see how the show is made though.

We also got an informal tour of the kitchens. It's all so organized - YAY!
And the kitchen. It's a LOT smaller than it looks like on tv.
There's Chris Kimball.
And Erin and some of the test chefs. There's a lot of people that work on recipes all day every day to be able to come up with recipes for two different shows, two different magazines, and a host of cookbooks. How do I get that job?
It wasn't what we'd expected, but it was still a great time. If you aren't familiar with the show, check it out here - you can watch episodes for free I think. And check PBS for listings. It really is a great show if you have any interest in cooking/baking.

New Hankering

2011-06-03T11:12:00.003-04:00

Uh oh... J's gonna kill me.

I read It's Not Work, It's Gardening! today and now I want a plumeria plant.

Apparently they're low maintenance, which is nice.
And the flowers are so pretty.
And they smell lovely.
And they can be grown in containers.
And now I have to find room at home for one...

Potatoes

2011-06-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

When I first started out with the container garden, J was very upset that potatoes did not seem to be in his future. As a good midwestern boy, he loves him some potatoes and since moving to Boston and discovering Russo's, he's made it his mission to try every variety under the sun - and there are LOTS.

So you can imagine how excited he was when I read Stuckey and McGee's book and found a way to grow potatoes! Then again, that raised the problem of which type.

But he eventually settled on All Blues, and we placed the order and waited. In April we received a small paper bag of starter potatoes. We followed directions and put them in an egg carton and sprayed with a mix of water and liquid seaweed and let them sit.

When they sprouted long eyes we got out the trash can... Essentially this method consists of planting your seed potatoes near the bottom of the can and then filling it up over the plants as they grow. Since the potatoes aren't actually the roots, they're tubers, they grow off of shoots off the stem so you want to cover as much stem as possible to get more potatoes.

So far it's going really well! Our potatoes have really taken off - I had no idea they would grow so fast. It seems like every 4 days or so we have to go out and add more soil to the can. The photo below is a bit old, but as of today they're above the rim of the can. I'm not sure how much more soil we can add!
Can't wait for delicious potatoes from our own garden! And the plants are so pretty. I hope the flowers will be too.

Strawberries

2011-06-02T08:30:00.000-04:00

What was that weather last night?! Luckily Boston didn't get any of the tornadoes that central Massachusetts saw, but I've never seen lightning like that before. There were the usual big bolts and cracks of thunder - some closer and louder than I've ever heard before, but the freaky part was the sky. It was constantly lit up with between-cloud lightning. Seriously, it was ALWAYS lit up. It felt like something out of a bad SyFy tv movie about weather.

But in other news, it's June! I always associate June with strawberries, so I'm really hoping my plants will give me some fruit. It's only their first year, so I won't be totally surprised if they don't though.

A million years ago (or so it seems) when we went to the greenhouse supply store I saw this container, and it looked like a good one for strawberries.
I've filled all three layers with strawberries, but with lavender in the center on top. So far they seem to like it. There's lots of new growth on the seedlings I bought.
And even a few blooms! I also started some from seed and I put them in the top layer to get some extra sun, but they're still pretty small. For some reason I didn't take any photos of those. I'll have to do that this weekend.I know strawberries are a popular fruit, does anyone have a favorite variety?

Containers

2011-06-01T08:30:00.000-04:00

So this is a quick post. I really am going to get my stuff together one of these days and get my posts in a row.

But here are a few photos of some of the containers on the deck. I don't have a very wide variety of containers, but they all seem to be doing well.

These photos were taken about 2 weeks ago and it's amazing to see how small they were then in comparison.

We're scheduled to get some major storms today in Boston, but hopefully the weather west of here is better for my DAD'S BIRTHDAY! :)

Aerogarden Tomato

2011-05-31T08:30:00.000-04:00

Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. It was also my birthday this past weekend, so it was nice to have an extra day off. The weather was beautifully sunny, which was much appreciated, but temperatures in the upper 80s with very high humidity made for a very sweaty weekend.

The poor outdoor plants were torn. The tomatoes are taking off and loving this hot weather, but the kale and chard are not happy campers. We actually harvested some of the kale (photos to come) and had it for dinner with our cookout last night. So good!

But today's post is about an indoor plant - my Aerogarden tomatoes.

There's nothing like a homegrown tomato and even these Aerogarden ones taste delicious, but I think the plant may be reaching the end of its life. I'm hesitant to end it, but J wants to rip the whole thing out and get started on something new. His bigger Aerogarden currently has some jalapeno peppers in it, so I think he wants to get the golden cherries going in mine to make some salsa.

You can see that the growth on it is getting a little straggly and it hasn't grown much in a few weeks. The leaves at the bottom are brown and dead, they probably should be snipped.

This photo is from about a week ago. Those tomatoes were great on salads, but the green ones already turned and we had those this past weekend.
I think tomatoes are just so pretty!

So there's the photographic ode to the Aerogarden tomatoes. Something tells me J's going to get his way pretty soon and I'll be washing out an Aerogarden this week. I'm interested to see how the root system looks!

Answers

2011-05-28T08:30:00.000-04:00

And now the answers to yesterday's guessing game!

#1 is...summer squash

#2 is... basil

#3 is... strawberry

#4 is... kale

#5 is... swiss chard

Did you get them all?

Are you growing them all too?

Guess the Leaf

2011-05-27T08:30:00.000-04:00

Last week I put up a post and had you guess the plant by its flower. In all honesty, they were pretty easy. Last weekend (seriously, where has this week gone!?) I was out in the garden and noticed how pretty the leaves of a lot of my plants are.
So let's try another guessing game. Guess the plant by its leaves! I'll post the answers tomorrow.
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5

The past few days here have been hot. Not just warm, but hot! I don't think my cool weather plants, like yesterday's kale, are loving it. But that just means now I get to eat them before it gets too hot and they bolt. Where did that term come from anyway? It seems so odd.

Lots of plans for the weekend. The place I work closes at 3pm on Fridays in the summer, and that starts this week and we have Monday off for Memorial Day... though I like to think we get the day off to honor my birthday, which is Sunday.

My garden is mostly planted for the year, but I promise to get some good photos of it. It's difficult because the deck is only so big and there's no place to stand and get a photo that isn't covered with a container filled with vegetables, or fruit.

I'll also attempt to get a photo of the garden I created here at work too!

Anyone have fun plans for the holiday weekend?

Kale Forest

2011-05-26T08:30:00.000-04:00

My kale started off not looking so good earlier this year, but it finally took off a few weeks ago when the cold, wet weather started. It must like that because now the corner of my balcony is a kale forest!
How do you know when it's ready to harvest and eat? It looks delicious!

Cuttings

2011-05-25T08:30:00.000-04:00

Spring is such a great time of year. There's new growth everywhere, things are blooming, baby animals are out and about, and it seems like a great time of year to take some cuttings from my indoor houseplants.
The spider plant my mom gave me when I moved has gone totally insane. I attribute it to the liquid seaweed I gave it, and I haven't given it any since. (I'm afraid it will grow legs and start wandering the apartment.) There's a TON of little babies at the end of shoots, but I took the biggest one and put it in some water, with a little bit of liquid seaweed since the plant seems to love it so much) and set it under the plant light. I'm planning to put this one in the kitchen when it gets bigger.The golden pothos is the other plant I took a cutting of. It's been taking over the mantle, which I love, but the original pot is looking a bit bare, so I'm hoping to put it back in there to fill out the pot a bit.
Besides my african violet (I actually just typed "african violent" by accident, but I'm pretty sure it's a peaceful plant), those are the only two "traditional" house plants I own. If I were to add to my collection, what would you recommend?

Oh, and what I'd really love for my cuttings is one of these. How cool is that?

Shhh... don't tell the others

2011-05-24T13:49:00.002-04:00

I just commandeered a plot here at work. I didn't really ask, I just threw my leftover seedlings in. 3 tomatoes, 1 pepper, 3 summer squash and 4 bush delicata squash.
I'm hoping no one notices and rips them out, or realizes it was me and gets me in trouble.
I feel like a guerrilla gardener!
Photos to come...

Avocado Pruning

2011-05-24T08:30:00.000-04:00

My avocado pits are finally showing signs of growth. I planted the pits several months ago, but they're finally taking off. Not really sure what I'm going to do with all of them. Anyone want an avocado?

So first the pit splits and you can start to see the shoot.

Then it comes up as this sad little oddly colored shoot that's just totally straight.

After it's grown a few inches (about 9" or so) and has some leaves you have to do the hardest thing to it. You have to chop it off!!! I couldn't bring myself to do it, so I made the heartless J cut it.

The pruning will help it branch off and be healthier, I realize this, but it still breaks my heart to hurt my plants.

I'll feel better when it starts growing back.

Elephants

2011-05-23T08:30:00.000-04:00

Way back in February I bought an elephant ear bulb and put it in a pot in the living room. For months it just sat. There was absolutely no action going on that I could see. About two weeks ago I had given it all up as a lost cause, so I dug up the bulb. To my shock there was quite a bit of root structure!

I'm not sure if the plant was angered by my uprooting of it, or if it was indignant in my lack of faith, but about 6 days after my attempted planticide, it started growing. And now it's really going good!These leaves are tiny compared to what I'm expecting out of it, but they're very pretty! I'm hoping to get lots of growth out of it so that it will fill the pot.

Does anyone else have an elephant ear plant?

Nasty Gnats!

2011-05-20T08:30:00.000-04:00

The moistness of the banana plant's soil is attracting some pretty serious gnats. I hate them. With a passion. I may run around the house randomly clapping like a seal at the aquarium just trying to send them to their graves.

But that makes me look bizarre. So I'm trying something new. It's apple cider vinegar in a bowl. Supposedly they're lured in by the smell and then they land in it, but that's when the tiny bit of dish soap I mixed in gets them and they're stuck and they die horrible horrible deaths. Ah ha ha ha ha ha. Wow, that's a lot of anger towards something the size of a large pencil dot.

I'm hoping it will work. If it doesn't, do you have any better ideas?