Harvest Monday

I finally did it. The shallots have been pulled... Here is what one bulb grew.

I'll weigh the harvest later this week when I have a chance...

The oranges have all come off! I decided to remove them since the new blooms are really bursting forth.

The citrus bounty... Sorry for the lame pic. Explanation below...

I've been thinking about this part of the post all afternoon, and had great motivation and plans for using my oranges, but then I cut my thumb while grating cheese--bad. It's nasty. I took a picture of it, it's so nasty (yea, I'm weird like that). Wanna see it? Just kidding! I'll spare you. I'm surprised it doesn't hurt more than it does but my former professional cook husband whose almost lost a pinky tip twice told me to give it a day or two. Great... Anyway, I'll have to work with the oranges later this week, and will talk about it in a later post.

Harvest Monday; Finally Substantial

I'm so proud to finally have what feels like a substantial harvest come from my garden. Here are the highlights of our homegrown goodies from last week.

These shallot shoots were technically harvested on the 16th, but I didn't use them until the end of last week, so I'm counting them in my harvest now. These shoots went into a vegetable quiche which you can read more about on my cooking blog.

I was kicking a ball in the yard with the Little One (LO), and on a whim I pulled one of the few remaining oranges off the tree, peeled, and ate a slice. Wouldn't you know it?!?! They were sweet! I mean, they weren't bitter at all, and they weren't all dried up inside like they were this time last year (maybe all the rain helped in that regard). Anyway, I'm proud to say we had mouth-wateringly sweet oranges with several meals last week, and I'm sure we'll be having them throughout this week too. Yay!

On Wednesday, I trimmed my three Cameo Basil plants for the first time. Besides smelling the leaves until I felt intoxicated, LOL, I threw the leaves in a spaghetti sauce. Nom!

I also harvested the rest of my Green Arrow peas throughout last week. Not the best picture I took, but look at those little fingers trying to sneak more peas while I was taking pictures! LOL. The LO couldn't get enough of them, and kept asking for more, like he does with cheese (He's a little cheese freak. His favorites are Feta and blue cheese. Weird for a 2yo, right?).

We had some pretty high winds on Wednesday night/Thursday morning which blew many of my pea plants off their trellis. This worked to my advantage by revealing another batch of peas, about the same size as shown above. Today I removed the pea plants and the remaining mature pods. The grand total for this week's pea harvest was... You ready? 8.2 ounces. HAHA... Well, it's enough for us all to have as a side...

And for my grand finale, my Short & Sweet carrots from the salad table. I pulled these yesterday.

Below, the carrots on the left side were the few mature carrots that grew in front of the peas...

Without the tops, the carrots weighed in at just under 11 ounces. Woohoo!  I'll make these into Honey Glazed Carrots.

I probably won't grow peas again simply because they take up so much space for so little harvest, and I had to throw a lot of immature pods away since they can't be eaten. I have to say though, that I love the resiliency of the peas within the pods. The peas ended their season covered in aphids, and there was evidence of something laying eggs within the pod walls, but the peas themselves made it through unscathed.

I'm happy that I finally grew carrots, and I'll definitely grow them again this fall. Production for the space is great, and they're fast growers when grown under the right conditions. Fresh carrots are so scrumptious, and the LO can eat them because they're slightly softer in texture than regular store bought carrots.

Each week Daphne hosts Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions. Check out her page to see what other's have been munchin' and crunchin' on this week.

My Oranges

Remember that beautiful orange tree I showed you the other day? As beautiful as those fruits may look, they are some lip puckerin' sour oranges, my friends. I've come to the conclusion that this can only be a Seville or "bitter" orange tree. What good are sour oranges when you're trying to feed your family?

According to Wiki, I can use it to to make a Belgain beer "The Belgain Witbier (white beer) is a beer made from wheat which is spiced with the peel of the bitter orange." (making a note for future beer making adventures). But even then, this only uses the peel...  Oh! Perhaps I should corner the market in dietary supplements!

"The extract of bitter orange (and bitter orange peel) has been used in dietary supplements as an aidfat loss and as an appetite suppressant, although in traditional Chinese medicine it is always prescribed in concert with other support herbs, not in isolation. Bitter orange contains synephrine, a substance similar to ephedrine, which acts on the α₁ adrenergic receptor to constrict blood vessels and increase blood pressure and heart rate."

Nah...

That only leaves me with one choice. The choice which majority of the world choose... Marmalade! Sold! I'd been wanting to try canning, and what better way to get a grasp on the concept than try putting up a food item I have plenty of!

I found a few recipes online (I'm waiting for the Ball Book to be returned to the library), but chose to go with the one from www.pickyourown.org because they provide great step-by-step pictures, the recipe uses pectin instead of making my own from the seeds and pith of the oranges, and it's the quickest to cook down.

• 8 whole oranges, thinly sliced (4 cups cut) My oranges must be small, because it took 12 to get 4 cups
• 3 whole lemons, thinly sliced (1 ½ cups cut)
• Orange juice or Water - 4 cups of either. Orange juice adds extra flavor.
• Sugar - about 7 cups of dry, granulated (table) sugar
• Pectin - 1 box
  

The marmalade looks pretty, doesn't it? Well unfortunately, my first try turned out horrible! It didn't set so it was super runny, and it tasted extremely bitter! So, I trashed that batch and made again. I'm not sure if I missed a step the first time, if I picked under ripe oranges, or if a week of rain did the oranges some good, but my second batch came out great. I chose to leave the rind out to avoid risking total bitterness again, so it's more like orange preserves...

Now what to do with the 3/4 of oranges that remain...

Starting 2010 With Rain, Growth, and Blogging

First, thank you to those of you who contacted me to make sure everything is ok, and to those of you who have encouraged me to get back into writing. After being gone for two weeks back in October, I fell out of the writing and gardening groove. Having the holidays thrown in there didn't help much either! One of my New Year's "Do Better's" ("resolutions" seems so extreme, and tend to drop by the wayside faster than "do-better's") is to get back in that groove!

So, here's what have been growing around the garden. I have two sets of most pictures. The first of each are from 1/11, and the second from today, after we've had a week of rain (gasp).

Below: Salad table, and current hot spot for producing life! Left (sown 11/5): Summer Crisp Lettuce. Right, back to front (sown 11/23): French Breakfast Radishes, Short & Sweet Carrots, loose-leaf lettuce mix.

Cilantro. After all the rain, I have fungus gnats--bad. I drilled more holes at the bottom, and will treat with BTi once the rain tapers.

SFG, right side: Peas and broccoli, and hidden behind the broccoli, under the peas are carrots. The carrots were more of an experiment after my carrot seed mats sown in my west-east running raised bed failed due to lack of sun, and slugs. The peas are taking up so much more space than I anticipated. I added a wire "fence" to try containing them, then I added more trellis string I had and tried tieing them back, to no avail...

At least the peas are beginning to bloom.

My broccoli is beginning to flower! YES!

SFG, left side: Looks like a bunch of weeds, yeah? Garlic and onions are in the back, with soggy onion scapes taking over the empty spot on front right. Shallots in the front left. I dug down in the dirt to see what's happening, and nothing is happening. Nothing to match the growth on top at all. I'll give them until April when tomatoes need to go in (yes, tomatoes, but more on that another time) to show me they're worthy, or they're gone.

 

The orange bush/tree is doing really well. This year there are a lot more but smaller fruits growing than last year... Interesting...

My hyacinths and crocus' (croci? hehe) are coming up. Early I think? They aren't very picture worthy at this point since the flowers that haven't been decapitated by slugs are spread far apart...

Hope you've enjoyed!

PS Many thanks to Mom and Dad for my new camera! Now I just need to learn to use it to it's full potential!

Fruitiliciuos!

With the exception of snipping off an okra pod every day or so, and a few more green beans, it's been pretty quiet in the back yard the past week & a half. I was able to get about 10 more beans from my plants, but I think that will be it for edibility. The rest of the beans are pretty curled (we're talkin' 360* here), are smaller, and lumpy (seeds). I am concerned they'll taste the way they look. Funky. Here are a few sweet & spicy developments: My Dwarf Meyer Lemon tree has finally settled into it's new home. I moved it to the west side of the yard where it enjoys spending it's afternoons in the shade of our neighbor's trees. Hopefully we'll be able to enjoy some lemons from this round of growth! I counted 8 buds that are close to opening... On the east side of the yard, our pear tree is bursting with fruit. Well, the part of the tree that is still alive... I don't know why, but this spring after the fruit started growing, the top of the tree just shriveled up and died! I noticed this occurred where the tree had previously been trimmed (by someone else, not us!), and the new growth is what perished. The orange tree is finally producing some sour oranges. Here's a cluster of fruit that is much smaller than what we harvested last fall/winter. Hopefully they'll taste as yummy! My Fresno Chili's are still growing strong! Look at the red one I discovered at the bottom of the plant. DH and I might be fighting over this one! My cherry tomato plant is about 4 feet tall, and producing more and more fruits, but none have turned red yet, so I won't take a picture until then... It just looks like any other green plant right now. lol I've had a visitor hanging around my SFG today... It's a Gray Hairstreak. I love butterflies, and since I haven't seen many around here, this was a welcome visit. Wait a minute... I did some reading on gray hairstreaks, and now I think I know what's been helping the grasshoppers put holes in my bean leaves! Looks like they like my okra too (it's in the hibiscus/mallow family). That's ok... They're a welcome bug in this garden.

...As Visions of Gardening Dance in My Head...

The lawn guys came yesterday, and I was able to get a few (literally) clippings in my bin. I knew I wouldn't have a lot, but when I went to take a look at what they dumped, I guffawed at my "reward." Oh boy... I better get creative, or move on to vermicomposting the kitchen scraps I've been saving. During my walk yesterday I noticed the city lawn service collecting the park's lawn clippings in a truck. I may stop by next week with an empty container or two and ask if I can take a load. I'm sure they put them back into keeping up the city's parks, but maybe they'll see giving me some clippings as less work they have to do for the day, hehe. I don't know my neighbors well/yet, but maybe a good introduction could be interrupting them while they're all sweaty from mowing their lawn to ask for their clippings... I have visions of a steamy bin and want to stick with this project. Cross your fingers for me! I think this section of the yard will be my next project. It's a 24'x2' section running along the deck, and as you can see, the CA poppies are about done and looking pretty gnarly. Also in the bed are random weeds, a stump, and ugly black wood chips. It'd be nice to remove what is there now, and make a raised bed. I'm thinking of 4-5 sections, and the two below the bars for the canopy on the deck containing a few vine vegetables. Perhaps sweet potatoes in the summer, peas in the fall. The vines would look nice growing up the canopy bars. The other sections would either be filled with bulbs/wildflowers, strawberries, or more vegetables... I'm hesitant to have food growing there because of the boys playing in the yard. I'd be ok if flowers were accidentally broken, but probably more upset if food crops were hurt by flying balls, falling bodies, or a curious toddler. This is another project area on the right side of the lawn that I have planned for the spring of 2010. This is the spot where I want to put a 4'x'4 bed of strawberries. I think it'll end up being a little bigger than 4'x4' because I want to have the strawberries bordered by herbs and flowers. After my first experience I previously mentioned with strawberries not being pollinated, I want to encourage as many beneficial bugs as possible to visit this bed. The two issues I foresee with this spot are the shade to sun ratio (haven't payed a ton of attention to yet), and the tree that shades the spot. I don't know what kind of tree it is, but it's in the neighbor's yard, and in the spring, it drops a *TON* of pollen and fuzzy seed pods in that spot. We're already planning on cutting it back this fall (don't want to kill the neighbor's tree by pruning at the wrong time, ya' know?) so hopefully that will help the pollen count. I thought I'd share a few pictures of our orange tree today. The orange oranges are actually from last November's blooms. I pulled a few off over the past few weeks, and although they're very sweet (or so DH and Boy Wonder tell me--I don't like them), the insides of them are about halfway hard or containing just pulp now. The green oranges are also from November's blooming, but they didn't start growing until around February I think. The small babies in the third pic are from blooms we had two weeks ago. I need to do some reading and asking about how to care for the orange bush/tree, but it's not one of my top priorites right now. Probably because I don't much like the fruit. I spotted this grasshopper chillin' on my containerized Yolo Bell peppers. He's the biggest I've seen so far so I scared him off. The little babies I've spotted have been squished (sorry guys), but he would've been a little too gooey between my fingers. blegh. I also spotted this caterpillar (you'll need to click the pic to see) on the underside of a bush bean leaf. I think he along with the growing number of white flies, are the ones making holes in my leaves. He's gone now too, but I didn't squish him with my fingers like I do the other little pests I see... Plucked him off with tweezers. I am finally seeing some little bees on my snapdragons. I haven't seen any buzzing close to the house before, so it's nice having them visit. The window box overlaps one of the kitchen windows, so I can get nice and close without scaring them (or myself) off. Laslty, a quote I like to remind myself: "There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." -Janet Kilburn Phillips