Sound Harvest & Garden

Grab hold

2013-05-19T09:45:00.001-04:00

Pole beans find the old fish trap pole that washed up in our marsh and that has been put to work in the garden. It is a spectacular day.

Making way

2013-05-14T09:05:00.001-04:00

I had planted my tomato plants in among the lettuces and the spinach. I knew that the weather would warm and the greens would bolt to seed, just as the tomatoes started to put on some size. That all happened this weekend, so I pulled out the last of the greens.

The good leaves made a trip to the kitchen. The stems, flower buds and any damaged leaves made it into the coop. All were delicious and enjoyed!

Now the bed has 6 tomato plants and one mega chard. The chard is 4 feet tall and wild looking, and I have not yet been able to let it go. Soon though, so the tomato roots are not damaged by it's removal.

Something to hang on to

2013-05-07T19:56:00.001-04:00

So, it has been a frustrating spring. It has either rained or blown full gale force winds practically every day. My peas have been blown down, then pummeled by rain into the muddy bed. The potato leaves are brown and battered on the edges. The birds even plucked half the blueberries, even though they are still tiny and hard and green. But am I whining? Well, yes, apparently I am.

But, these flowers are in bloom in my front yard, and I ate strawberry shortcake for dinner. I'll hang on to these bits of spring and hope that soon we will see sunshine and will even be able to push open the north east facing back door!

Delayed summer

2013-04-28T12:51:00.000-04:00

Well, the weather has stayed cool, delaying the summer seed germination. My beans have not peeked out, and may have rotted in the cold soil. I will check soon and replant if needed. Transplanted seedlings of tomato and hot peppers are fine, just sitting still instead of growing!

In the meantime, the potatoes and garlic look amazing! The garlic is huge. I hope the bulbs below ground look as good as the greens above.

Finally, tiny blueberries forming, and farm stand purchased spring onions, steamed in the microwave for 3 minutes and then grilled. Oh my.

Celebrate!

2013-04-10T18:45:00.000-04:00

Today I ate a delicious, fresh greenhouse tomato and a fresh crispy greenhouse cucumber from Simpsons farm, and grilled the fattest, most tender, sweetest wonderful asparagus spears from Garner Farm's field. Spring crops are in and it is time to celebrate with amazing food!

Spring salad

2013-04-07T10:00:00.000-04:00

Finally! I have been watching and waiting for a mixed greens salad from the garden, but our late, cold, gray spring was holding everything back. Now, after a two inch rain and a few slightly warmer days, the spinach, arugula, chard, and four kinds of lettuce have jumped up, and I finally could make and eat this beauty.

It has been almost painful waiting for spring to get here. I don't want to be cold any longer. Now I know those of you further north may have no patience with my complaints about weather in the 50s, but I am weak, and I want to go out in the boat.

Making room

2013-04-02T11:04:00.001-04:00

The ladies enjoying a lactino kale plant pulled from the garden to make room for more spring planting. We have had just about all the kale we can take, at least until next fall, so don't mind sacrificing still healthy plants.

Happy Easter

2013-03-31T08:05:00.000-04:00

Colored eggs and tulips. Yep, it must be Easter. Now if only I had croquet wickets and my extended family from past generations here.

My potatoes and peas are peeking out as well, so that confirms it: chilly or not, spring is well underway. I truly hope for rain today so I don't have to water the vegetable beds, but not until after I have cleaned the chicken coop. I sound a bit demanding weather wise, don't I?

Hope you all have a lovely spring day too!

Got to use those eggs...

2013-03-23T09:25:00.001-04:00

Sticky buns made with challah dough full of the ladies eggs and yolks. Goo made with our honey (I still have some even though the hives are gone). A trick i learned at ICE baking class: a toping of half honey and half brown sugar tastes amazing and stays somewhat soft. Oh, and the pecans are from only one state away! These were a three full inches high this morning, and so very very good.

Shady blooms

2013-03-16T13:27:00.001-04:00

Spring comes to the heavily shaded garden bed under my house. That is the worm bin beside the holly fern.

Best dinner ever

2013-03-11T19:09:00.000-04:00

Lactino kale and eggs, straight from the backyard to the pans. Amazing, fresh, homemade sausage, a gift from a friend. Yum, yum, yummm.

I was able to get lettuces, arugula, and peas planted just before dark this evening. I hope it rains tomorrow, as forecast! If it does, these new plantings will be jump started, and those potatoes from last week may pop through the soil even sooner.

Spring planting begins

2013-03-05T10:19:00.001-05:00

I'm a little late for planting potatoes here, but still within the planting window. I tend to be a bit flexible, within reason, and not too hard on myself on planting dates, as the garden is not the only thing going on in my world. The important thing is that spring potatoes and spinach and lettuce are now out in the garden beds!

I cut the potatoes into chunks two days ago, making sure each piece had at least one eye, where new plant growth will begin. The cut piece in this photo has two visible eyes: one is the huge, obvious one where growth has started in ernest, the other is tiny, just beside the cut edge down near the bottom of the photo. Seethe little bumps, just lightly green, just above the tear in the skin? It would have been fine even if only the tiny eye had been present, it just would have taken a bit longer before the new plant emerged.

Here you see the three slightly trenched rows I dug in the bed for the potatoes. The rows are about two feet apart, and the seed potatoes were placed about 10 inches apart within each row. In the photo they were placed just for spacing, when I went back and buried each (about 3 inches deep at the bottom of the trench; I will then cover them with more soil as they grow), I made sure that the cut side was down and the skin side, and eyes, were facing up.

I also planted two types of lettuce, buttercrunch and a nice red leaf lettuce, plus spinach transplants. They are in the bed with one of the remaining lactino kale plants and one chard plant. It wasn't until I looked at this photo that I realized the kale is preparing to bolt ( go to seed). See the tiny flower head forming in the very center at the top? It will have to come out soon, leaving room for a second planting of lettuces.

Is parsley a vegetable?

2013-03-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

My volunteer parsley, seeded naturally by plants of prior years, has gone wild. I have a full bed, 4x8, full of parsley. It is two feet deep! That's a lot of garnish, so I have to think of some better uses. Now parsley is by far the freshest tasting of any leafy green I grow, and with spring in the air I want that clean, new taste. My first effort: tabbouleh! I jazzed it up with raw garlic and red pepper flakes, and used my own orangequat juice in place of lemon. It was great!

Winter spring

2013-02-20T16:19:00.000-05:00

We are in that in-between time. I know that weeks of cold weather remain, but the longer hours of daylight and stronger sun have me thinking "spring." Apparently the garden feels the same. Here is a quick shot of lactino kale, a winter crop growing well right now, sautéed for dinner, and one of a rosemary bush in full, purple bloom. Both are from this week here on the coast.

Blue, baby blue

2013-01-31T16:02:00.000-05:00

Diana is laying again, adding a pale bluish greenish egg to the mix. With the longer days of sunlight we are back to three or four eggs a day. I need to share.

Creepy Yummy

2013-01-21T14:43:00.000-05:00

Today, against all odds, we had yet another warm, sunny day. Not even a breeze, so every speck of sunshine warmed the garden. I used the day to pull out all the winter annual weeds that had filled parts of the beds, and to loosen the soil beneath.

As I worked the soil with my fingers I began to notice white grubs. Every handful of soil held at least one. These larvae of beetles eat plant roots, and a large infestation can weaken plants. So, I fished them out and found the perfect use for them: the ladies were happy to turn the pile grubs into eggs.

Citrus pasta, yum

2013-01-20T13:02:00.000-05:00

What do you do with 20 pounds of orangequats? Everything you can think of! Here is pasta with olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, spinach and...orangequats! I adapted a Giada De Laurentis recipe (spaghetti with lemon, basil and salmon) substituting my fresh citrus for the lemon juice and zest, increasing the quantities of both, and chopping the whole rind and pulp since orangequats rinds are sweet and the juice, though tart, is milder than lemon. It was an amazing lunch, served with local Spanish mackerel.

Citrus and Fungus

2013-01-18T09:09:00.000-05:00

My Nippon Orangequat has a bumper crop this year. I have been enjoying the golfball+ sized fruits in both hot and cold drinks, with water and honey. The pulp and juice are like lemons, the pith and skin are edible and sweet, with a little citrus bite. The freeze coming tonight means I must pick the lot today. I'll have to make marmalade!

I had to remove all the broccoli plants and residue from the garden, as a nasty fungus was rotting the stems. See the rotting gray area on the stem, and the white fluffy dots of fungal fruiting bodies emerging? That disease easily could overwinter in any stem, leaf it other tissues left on the soil, so I cleaned it out completely (I hope). I harvested a dozen side shoots first, so nothing was lost.

Seasonal colors

2012-12-14T11:01:00.000-05:00

Although my garden is full of seasonal green, it is substituting carrot orange for the traditional holiday red. Here you see this year's unusual broccoli plants, putting out side shoots at the same time as the primary head. These huge, sweet broccoli heads cook up really fast, in less than half the time of grocery store heads that have been in storage. I have to be careful not to overcook, and therefore ruin, them.

I get home after dark now, so the vegetables wait till the weekend for harvest. My basket remains full, every weekend, here in mid December. Especially beautiful this week were the carrots. I love the garden season colors!

1 x 1 = 4

2012-12-08T08:03:00.000-05:00

I have one houseplant. It lives in four pots and is beautiful once a year. Meet my holiday cactus. It gets ignored and abused. In the summer it lives outside, and each time a storm or the dogs knock it out of it's pot and break it into pieces, the pieces become new plants.

The original plant came from a friend 25 years ago. Every year it (all versions in all pots) puts on this show, despite my lack of good care. It apparently has great holiday spirit!

Abundance

2012-11-28T16:27:00.001-05:00

For those of you who think summer is the time for high garden yields, let me introduce you to fall in coastal North Carolina. I am buried in produce. I pulled up the one pepper plant, as a freeze was predicted, and found a heavy yield of late fruit hidden in the leaves. My first broccoli head was a full 10 inches across. I have fennel, lots and lots of fennel bulbs. Not shown here: two kinds of kale, arugula, and those mixed lettuces, plus a bed full of volunteer (self seeded) flat leaf parsley and a happy thyme plant! All I have to do is remember think of all this in August and September, planting time for my fall garden, and the rewards are great.

Oh, and now both of the young hens are laying. We are getting two eggs a day, as the ladies seem to be alternating days. What a thrill, but now I am back to figuring out what to do with 14 eggs a week.

Inspired Response

2012-11-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

In response to the new hens' inspirational production of cream and green eggs, one of the pullets has graduated to hen! The first small pullet egg is on the right. It always is so much fun to get the first egg from a young hen. I am not sure, but I suspect this is from Frederica, who is a bit larger and more mature than Petronella. Soon we will see 4 eggs a day; well not too soon, but when the days lengthen.

Egg report!

2012-11-18T09:08:00.000-05:00

Diana's eggs are pale greenish blue, and Michelle's are creamy beige. Now that we have two laying hens in the coop, maybe the youngsters will get the hint and start laying!

Let me introduce you

2012-11-17T07:59:00.001-05:00

Before the big news from the garden, I have to mention that it is pecan season, and I purchased my annual 5 pounds yesterday. Sadly, I found that Mr. Gooding, the gentleman that I saw each year for this purchase, died last winter. These are not quite as perfectly shelled and picked over, but the new owner of the equipment is learning. I toasted them in a 350 degree F oven for 15 minutes, and will freeze them after they cool. Both processes keep the natural oils from going rancid.

So, now the big news: I was offered some beautiful hens. Not just averagely attractive, but gorgeous and just under one year old. I could not pass this up! So I asked a friend who told me that a lovely gentleman that I know would take my older ladies to his little farm. For now they will join the laying flock, especially Lena and Pauline, who still lay regularly. They will free range and make friends with the other hens and goats.

In their place, let me introduce Michelle (the black and gold) and Dianna (the "blue" Americana). As soon as I see what color egg each lays, I will share it with you!

I sneaked the new ladies into the coop and onto the perch in the dark of night, when all 4 were in that dopey stage chickens go into at night. This morning is going pretty well so far!

Salad Days

2012-11-15T09:54:00.000-05:00

The salad days of fall are in full swing in my garden. The bed of mixed lettuces is thriving, and we have a salad every night now. The leaves are so tender that I must take extra care not to bruise them when I wash off any grit! Fresh chard leaves (from the ONE plant that survived) fit in perfectly.

Here you see freshly washed and spun lettuces, the 4x3 bed where they grew (more than enough for two and for occasional gatherings), plus my first ever fennel and celery salad from that beautiful fennel you saw in the last post. It was spectacular: very mild and crunchy and fresh tasting.

There is not much else going on in the gardens. The tide came up around the beds during the storm, but the soil was already saturated, so I am not seeing any signs of salt injury. The hens (and new pullets) remain on strike due to short daylight hours and fall molting. I am starting to really miss fresh eggs, so I hope the new girls, Petronella and Frederica, get in gear soon and don't wait till spring. All in all, it is a lovely fall in the gardens and coops.