May Planting Time

May Planting Time

May is the month of plants and my busiest month in the garden. I have beds to prepare for seeding and planting, and I’m trying to get as many live plants and seeds into the ground as I can. Like every year, I’m way behind where I would like to be at this time, but I always end up with a decent garden so I just keep plugging along and hoping for the best.  Here are a few things I’ve been working on. Pea Trellis Peas and Lettuce The peas are looking very...
Rhubarb Ginger Pie

Rhubarb Ginger Pie

The rhubarb plants are big and strong this year.  I have already made our favorite rhubarb crisp, but this time Noel wanted a pie.  I don’t usually bother with pies because they’re too fussy, though I suppose if I bought the crust it would be a lot easier.  But then I don’t think I would have received 5-star ratings from all of my usual tasters! Here’s my recipe: Crust 2 cups unbleached flour (I used 1/2 cup soft whole pastry...
Sweet Potato Black Bean Avocado Salad with Lime

Sweet Potato Black Bean Avocado Salad with Lime

Sweet Potato Black Bean Salad After looking at Noel’s beautiful sweet potato starts for this season I thought I’d better see what we have left from last year’s harvest.  After setting aside the two biggest sweets for next year’s sprouts we still have about 10 lbs left to use.  We have good luck with individually newspaper-wrapped potatoes kept in a cool room temperature basement setting.  They don’t like to be too cold so root cellars...

Off to a Good Start

Sweet Potato Starts Last month I wrote about a failure of my own making with some onion starts. This month the news is much better. I have a healthy and happy box of sweet potato starts that should be large and strong when it comes time to put them in the ground at the end of May. I get my starts from 2 year old sweet potatoes that I’ve allowed to sprout in the basement.  I’ve talked about this method before: ...
“Fried” Onions

“Fried” Onions

I’m usually pretty good with my seed starting.  I’ve got a light and heat setup that I’ve been modifying over the years and I almost always get good starts from my seeds, especially onions. This year I messed up.  I had two flats of yellow onions under a grow light and over a heat mat, and I didn’t pay attention for one day.  That proved costly.  The onions were just starting to sprout, and they got too dry and too hot.  I killed off most of them.  I wasn’t sure...
Veggie Fajitas with Seitan

Veggie Fajitas with Seitan

3 T. Olive Oil, divided We were lucky to have a bountiful pepper harvest last year due to Noel’s diligence in the garden.  Not only did we have more hot peppers than we could use, we had enough sweet peppers to freeze in strips which is what I used in the recipe below. 3 sweet bell peppers (Green, red or purple, Yellow), sliced lengthwise into 1/2″ strips. I used frozen pepper slices from last year’s garden. 3 T. olive oil, divided 1 large...

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