Early brassicas and flowers

I am quickly learning that a one year old affords me very little time in the garden. I have to choose my projects very carefully and today I knew I would have one, special hour in the garden. The husband and I have been playing with a paleo like diet so I decided to plant broccoli and cauliflower. Earlier this week the baby and I a couple of hours to kill so rather than go to a park we found ourselves my favorite nursery. I bought three different kinds of cauliflower and two different types of broccoli starts. Broccoli is particularly wonderful in the garden because when you cut off the main head it continues to sprout  little florets throughout the spring and summer. 8 little plants will be way more than we can possibly eat. My  starts ran about $2 for four pack, so $4.00 will amount to  broccoli all spring and summer and I don't have to mess with seeds. Because I'm not a huge fan of weeds I decided to cut a hole directly into the burlap that I had put over the bed to keep them safe last winter, add a little bit of Organic soil amendment, give it a water and call it a day. With my remaining half an hour I planted some peas and cabbage and a couple of flowers. With luck, today's hour spent in the garden will pay off all spring and summer. Stir fry anyone?

January and the Sea Horse.

Well, It's January, and January is in some ways the best and worst time.

It's the best, because the year is a blank canvas.  Any thing is possible.  Do I grow ridiculous amounts of tomatoes this year or 17 different varieties of pumpkin?  Perhaps I will take up a new hobby or discover a diet that will make me look and feel like a million dollars... perhaps I will stick to it.

Its the worst because, here in the northwest, it is dark.  Spring feels like years away, and the holidays are over... and everything is wet.

So I'm planning my garden, and fantasizing about 2014.

And doing some carving. 

Right after Thanksgiving, I got into an... altercation with a jigsaw.  Long story short, I wound up in the urgent care with 3 stitches and a fractured finger.  As a music teacher this was devastating.  I have new found respect for people who get real injuries with amputations, and big bone breaks.  In urgent care, I told my husband "I would make a terrible solder."  After my wimpy injury, I am sure of this.  8 weeks after the injury, I still wear a band aid so I don't have to look at my somewhat kind of healed finger.  I can mostly play music again. I can't imagine a situation where I would be shot at.

I took some serious courage to use a saw again, but I decided to invest in a scroll saw.  I wanted more detail in my Waldorf type creations.

My first project with the new saw was for my mom.  She is awesome, and spends her winters by the ocean.

I made a Seahorse for her.

I looked up images of seahorses on the internet, sketched them out, cut them out of paper, then traced them to wood that I cut out with the scroll saw.

 I took my carving knives and added the detail.

 I took Sharpie markers and colored the seahorse. 

The sharpie looked dumb, so I took white soy paint and added a layer to soften the marker colors.

Last, I added a hook and some shellac so she could hang it where she wanted to, and so that if the baby ever came across it, there would be limited toxins.  (Because he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth, and frankly I worry that there are too many toxins in the world.)



She liked it.

I am pretty sure I've created a little magic with this project. If for no one else but me.  Isn't that why we grow and create things any way?

Harvest Day!

Well, this weekend was rainy...

Really rainy.

So of course it was time to harvest the last of the grapes and harvest the pumpkins from both my garden and our black plastic pumpkin patch.

I used the last of our grapes to make 3 gallons of grape juice!  I am pretty excited about that.

I used the pumpkins... to make me feel happy. 

Here are the ones from my garden.  I devoted roughly 15 square feet to pumpkins this year, and harvested about 25 pumpkins of varying size.
The ones in the front are baby boo, then there are the orange cutie, then, new england pie pumpkin, and last and most dramatic are the cinderella pumpkins.

They are shiny, because they are wet.  I picked them and then washed them off because they had been sitting in dirt... unlike our black plastic pumpkins who needed no such washing!!!  (So many benefits!)

The Cinderellas are my favorite because they are big and really bright, but even in the best conditions, I never seem to get more than one pumpkin per plant.  I am greedy, but I have to admit that the one large Cinderella makes me happy.  It will hang out on display until after thanks giving, then we will eat it most of December.

Then we headed to the plastic pumpkin patch.

Then we picked and picked, and threw the vines in the compost bin.  We want the powdery mildew spores to be composted by a professional so that they don't stick around in our soil and build up to be a problem.

We then admired the pumpkins of our labor.
6 pumpkin holes
2 rolls of black plastic
2 bags of cow manure
5 months to grow

= roughly 35 pumpkins.

Such a great season.  I must admit, I look forward to next year... If you have space in your back yard, I am a comin for you!

Cheers!
-Michelle

Apple Cake

5 ingredients.
21 minutes to prep (and that included peeling the apples)
4 small perfect amazing loaves of apple cake.

This weekend, I found a recipe that blew my mind.  I experimented with it,  and now have to share it.  Here is my original source. (See students?  I am citing it!)

Ingredients:

apples

equal parts:

      Eggs

      Flour

      Sugar

*Optional- cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees


Then, take a mason jar or coffee mug or pint glass, or shot glass, it all depends on how much cake you would like to eat and share.

Fill vessel with eggs
dump eggs into bowl
fill vessel with sugar
dump into bowl
Whisk together, to make yellowy gew.  Whisk to make bubbles form on top.
Fill vessel with flour.  Add to yellow gew.

Mix and add as much cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice as you like.

Peel and core and chop apples.  Or just chop apples.  This is a perfect recipe for imperfect apples because it uses up the ones that won't keep. 

Put them into your baking pan.  I don't think it matters what baking pan you use.  You can use the silicone loaf pans I used, or you could use an old world war 2 helmet.

Add your batter.

Bake until you can smell apples in your living room. (For me, it took about an hour and 15 minutes but if your pans were more shallow, less time, more shallow, more time.)

I had a fantastic teacher once that told me to bake things until they were done.  When you can smell them, they are done.  I almost never set a timer anymore.

Share with friends and neighbors for good Karma.


My mind is blown.
My world is better.
My apples are gone.

Rigging the hunt

I LOVE snap peas.  The only problem is that often it takes a long time for me to harvest enough for dinner because I can't find the little buggers.  They are so well camoflouged that it takes a good eye to distinguish them from the leaves.  I found a solution.  Purple (well, the packet calls them blue, but I think they are purple) peas!  The flowers are beautiful, and it is obvious where the silly peas are! And they taste good too!  The variety I found is called Blue Podded Blauwschokkers Garden pea.  I planted them in Late July so that I would have a autumn harvest. Often I don't plant peas for the autumn.  By the time June rolls around, I have eaten so many I am sick of them, but this year was all about moderation, so now I am a very happy pea eater!  Stir fry for dinner!  Yum!

Such a Grape time to be in the garden!

Grape vines are cool.

They are easy to grow, very versatile (you can make them go where you want)  and cheap... well if you are me they are cheap.

Right now is the perfect time to do some scavenging around the city.  Check out which grapes are growing where, wander through the neighborhood, and sample fruit.  Why?  Because grapes are exceptionally easy to graft. 

What does this mean?

Grapes don't grow true to seed.  If you plant a grape seed, most likely, it will be nothing like its parent.  The fruit may be tasty (unlikely) or it may be icky, roll the dice.  So to get around that, we take cuttings from the grapes we like, and put them in the ground to make new vines.  They will sprout roots in the dark days, and in the spring if you are lucky, you will get a new plant.

So, this means that Concord grapes all came from the same plant in France. 

We are all connected.

I'll show you how to do this, this winter.

So back to my crop, I have done this with about 5 different varieties.  I find a grape growing that I like, and I ask if I can have a cutting when the owner is cutting it back in the winter.  In a few years, voila!  A new grape lives in my house!

My grapes are beginning to come ripe.  Because I wasn't picky about the names of the grapes I stole/scavenged, I have no idea what they actually are... so I name them.

Right now, the concord like purple grapes are ready, and the delicate pinkish grapes are ready.  All of the other ones are not.   I have harvested about 20% of the grapes, and let me tell you there is ALOT of fruit on the vine!  (If you ever see a grape variety growing in my house that makes you excited, you are welcome to a cutting!) 

So far, I have frozen a gallon bag of grapes for smoothies later, and used my concord grapes to dye a little bird I made.  (oddly enough, I've gotten really into carving little animals.  random I know.)   Super easy to dye wood it turns out.  I just boiled the grapes until I had a purple mess, then put it in a zip lock bag, then added my figurine to soak over night.  Then once it was very dry, I added a coat of shellac to it, and we have a non toxic baby toy!

Oh... and I have eaten grapes... lots and lots of grapes...so good!

Today, if time permits I think I might just make grape jelly.

There is beauty in the ending.

Well, it's the end of the summer, and this will be my second to last update about this year's black plastic pumpkin patch.

The leaves are lookin a little... yellow and mildewy.  Not to fear, this is normal.  It is called powdery mildew, and while you can try to fight it, in my humble opinion, you will never win.  As long as it stays away until the fruits are pretty established, there is no need to worry.

If it hits in July, you can pull off the affected leaves.  Put them in the yard waste bin, not your compost!  The spores build up in the soil, and will hurt next years crop if too many spores build up.

This is why we rotate crops.

Pulling affected leaves will slow it down.

The pumpkins are effectively grown up.  They are bright orange and will not grow any larger.

But we are going to leave them for a few weeks yet, because what is happening is that they are curing.  The weather is hardening the outer shells so that they will last all winter and into the spring if need be.  (Although if we wanted to harvest one for cooking now, that would be fine)  We will let them hang out on the vine until we feel a snap in the air, and until their stems are brown and hard.

My guess is that there about 20 pumpkins in this patch, although who knows what the final number will be.

I have a feeling there will be one heck of a Halloween party at my friend's house :0)  Until then, it's time to prepare for the new school year.

This is such a bitter sweet time of year, don't you think?