Volunteer Pea Shoots
I made this pea shoot salad last night which included all garden pickings – pea shoots plus baby carrots, baby beets, cilantro, red onion and several varieties of cherry tomatoes. The first time I knowingly ate pea shoots was this past summer. We were on a road trip...
Raspberries Galore
It’s raspberry heaven around here. Our ever bearing raspberries have stepped up to the plate, so to speak. They have been enjoying the fantastically wonderful fall weather almost as much as we have. Our warm days here in Wisconsin are quickly coming to a close but...
Tomato Trellis Performs Well
Early in July I posted about a heavy duty tomato trellis I constructed with T Posts and bamboo stakes: T Post and Bamboo Tomato Trellis. I’m happy to report the trellis performed exceptionally well. I’m going to build one again, next year and I already know some...
Tomatillos – Growing and Cooking
This has been a good year for tomatillos (Physalis ixocarpa). Our three plants have produced way more than we need for our few batches of salsa. Tomatillos are also not that easy to give away because a lot of people don’t know what they are, much less what to do with...
Roasted Tomato Zucchini Sauce
We’re having an excellent harvest this year. Of course, this is due to Noel’s diligence in the garden. With the abundance of tomatoes, zucchini, onions and garlic I’m trying something new – at least for us. I filled a roasting pan with chunks of washed and cored,...
Fresh Garden Salsa
Judy made this season's first salsa yesterday. It’s about as local as you can get. Everything in it is from the garden except the lime. Here’s the recipe: 2 cups chopped cherry tomatoes – red, yellow, orange – most any tomato will work, but the cherry tomatoes,...
Summer Veggie Harvest
We spent an extra long weekend in Pittsburgh for the Garden Writers’ Conference, touring public and private gardens, learning what garden writers learn when they go to school, and connecting with old friends and making new ones. When we came back last Tuesday the...
Garlic Scapes
For years we grew soft neck garlic – because that’s what we got started with. It’s only been about the past 5 years that we switched to mainly hard neck types. We found a lot of different hard neck varieties at farmers’ markets and garlic festivals that looked...
T-Post and Bamboo Tomato Trellis
I didn't have the heart to cull out some of my beautiful and healthy tomato starts so I ended up with 78 plants in two beds. My normal planting is 60 plants in two beds so I had to cheat a little on the spacing. I opened up the width across the rows and pushed the...
Plumcot Crisp
A few years ago, I planted a plumcot tree in my front yard. A plumcot is a cross between a plum and an apricot. Two years ago I had a moderate harvest, and last year nothing. But this year, I have an abundance of fruit that I have been eating, preserving, cooking,...
Volunteer Spring Greens
An advantage of our open bed system of gardening and the relatively undisturbed soil system is the amount of volunteers we get. I encourage volunteer herbs and greens by letting a lot of plants go to seed. Here is a picking of lettuces and mustards augmented with some...
Garlic Roasted Potatoes with Parsnips and Sweet Potatoes
We had a nice picking of parsnips this spring so I’ve been doing some experimenting. This morning for brunch I mixed the old with the new, so to speak. Using last year’s potatoes, garlic, and sweet potatoes I added in new parsnips and topped the roasted veggies with...
Asparagus Parsnip Sauté
Last night’s repurposed meal was accompanied by an asparagus parsnip sauté. The main course was left over chili and leftover rice mixed together, topped with shredded cheese and rolled up in corn tortillas. The little burritos were heated in the microwave for a couple...
Asparagus – 25 Years Old and Going Strong
This is my asparagus, which I planted in 1989. The picture was taken just before I cut down the stalks from last season’s growth. A lot of gardeners cut their stalks back in the fall, but I’ve read several sources which say it makes more sense to let the stalks keep...
Open Faced Gorditas
This is my version of a stuffed gordita (masa cake) recipe that I tried with a filling of pinto beans and cheese. The traditional gordita is stuffed like a pita pocket. Though they were very tasty the first time I made them I thought they were much too heavy with...
Using Sweet Potato Sprouts for Starts
Sweet potatoes store well, but they don’t keep forever. Above are the last of our 2012 harvest. These were dug up 15 months ago. They will still be edible, but we need to use them up as soon as possible. They’ve begun to sprout and that’s a good thing. For the last...
Planting Onions in Austin
Last weekend, my dad, Noel, visited me in Austin, so I put him to work helping me in the garden. It was mid-January; that meant onion planting time. To start your own onion seedlings indoors, you should do so 8-10 weeks prior to planting. In Austin, that would have...
Walnut Crusted Sweet Potato Cream Cheese Pie
As soon as I saw this sweet potato cream cheese pie recipe in the local newspaper a few months back I knew I needed to try it. But I didn’t want to use a traditional flour pie crust. I knew that a nutty pie crust would balance the sweetness of the filling, so I held...
Easy Seed Inventory and Storage
This seed storage system is easy and inexpensive. It uses readily available off-the shelf CD storage boxes and zip-lock sandwich bags. It can be expanded as needed. Instructions follow. Prior to starting this system last year, I had my seeds mostly in a file folder...
Heavy Mulching to Defeat Bermuda Grass
I've struggled to keep a corner of my garden free of Bermuda grass. The grass rhizomes keep sneaking under the drip irrigation tubes. They infiltrate the garden bed and reduce vegetable production. This year I decided to take that section of the garden bed out of...