Summer Celebrations

Hmmm Honey, where did I stash the camera battery recharger??? Apparently this item is currently in electronic witness protection for overused devices. So sorry, no pics today.

Last Thursday, I went to hear a great local singer/song writer, Jean Mann, in one of my favorite venues, the Kirkland Backyard Concert Series. It was a very cozy evening with lots of great food, and Jean played "The Dance" one of my all time favs to listen and dance to. Many congrats to Jean for being commissioned to write a song for a movie!

And speaking of reasons for a celebration, it was Ari's birthday over the weekend. The mighty petite turned twenty three! She had a day out with her pal, Tony,and the next day we had a garden party with friends; Lisa, Shanie, and Jean. There were grilled garden veggies, a big salad, basil lemonade, raspberry ice tea, and truly decadent French chocolate cake. Lisa added Hoppin' John, Shanie some delish curry croutons for the salad, and Jean's wonderful salty sweet and sour homemade chocolates completed the feast. The weather was gorgeous. We ate, laughed, did a craft, and planted some herbs. Now, when's our next excuse to celebrate?

A few folks have been asking some gardening questions. I'll attempt to answer a few:

1) How do you supply nutrients to your organic garden?

We use a variety of methods, the biggest being compost. We compost all our plant based food scraps in a 3 tier composting system. By the time, it hits the 3rd box, it's ready to go directly onto the garden plants. We also use worm casings (poo) from the worm bin. Tomatoes love this, and finally for our acid loving berries, I use an organic fertilizer with a low pH.

2) How do you control pests in the garden?

Again this is a multiple step process. First, we don't plant in rows. We lasagna plant. A typical raised bed has a squash of some kind, a tomato or two, leeks, lettuce, marigolds, chard, nasturtiums, an herb plant or two, and more marigolds. By not planting in rows, if bugs attack that can't take out all of any one type of plant. Nasturtiums act a bug traps for a couple of pest drawing them away from your zucchini, squash, and pumpkins. Marigolds help keep cut worms away from root veggie such as carrots, radishes, onions, and potatoes. Lettuces grow quite happily in the shade of tomatoes which seems to help keep the dreaded NW slugs away. Lots of bugs don't like the strong odor of herbs such as basil, lavender, rosemary, and oregano. If rodents are pesky in your garden, plant lots of mint! We have two chickens, Henrietta and Claudette, they do a great job taking care of ants and earwigs.

When bugs do attach, I spray the plant with this mix: 1 cup warm water, 3 cloves of minced garlic, 1 tsp castile soap (like Dr. Bonner's), and 1 Tbsp olive oil. Put everything in a blender and whirl. Let sit 1 hour and shake. Put in sprayer bottle and spray plants after they've been watered for the day. Keep extra in the fridge for up to a week. Lots of bugs don't like the garlic and the oil helps gum up their larval stage, protecting your plants. A word of caution: don't use on foods non compatible with garlic, such as berries, unless you enjoy the subtle tinge of garlic with these.

3) Exactly, what are you growing this year?

Oh, the toughest question of all, because I keep starting seeds and adding new plants! So far, we have 21 tomato plants, mostly heirloom, 4 gypsy peppers and 2 jalepenos, 4 garden cukes and 2 lemon cukes, 7 pumpkins, 4 zucchini, 3 pattypan squash, 3 butternut squash (thanks Lisa), lots of leeks, 5 kinds of lettuce, marigolds, nasturtiums, runner beans, peas, pineapple, purple and common sage, Greek and Mexican oregano, lemon balm, lemon verbena, purple, white, and red potatoes, rhubarb, camomile, borage, dinosaur kale, rainbow chard, mustard greens, zinnias, Gerber daisies, Icelandic poppies, Asiatic lilies, rose geranium, red geranium, black eyed susan, sun flowers, corn, garlic chives, common chives, chocolate mint, citrus mint, French and English thyme, begonias, snapdragons, calendula, sweet and Thai basil, eggplant, curly and Italian parsley, rosemary, pasque flower, bleeding heart, tea rose bush, black currants, jostaberries, marionberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, boysenberries, blackberries, grape, coleus, radishes, fuchsias, maple flower plant, aloe plants, cyclamen, an orange tree, canterbury bells, pansies, and lots and lots of dandelions (I count these as a garden crop since I eat them!).

Reader Q and A

Responding to a reader questions:

What's growing in your Northwest garden currently?

The last of the spring lettuce is ready to be replaced with the mesclun mix.
The peas and strawberries are going like gangbusters.
The runner beans are just starting up.
The tomato plants are getting lots of green tomatoes (think sun!).
The tomatillo and potato plants are flowering like crazy.
The zucchini plants are churning out 1-3 a day!
The Russian kale is extremely prolific! We harvest at least 12 leaves a day!
The purple cabbages are heading up.
The chard produces a handful of leaves a week.
The celery, peppers, cucumbers, onions, leeks and winter squash are all still growing.
All the herbs (sages, thymes, chives, cilantro, savory, rosemary, lemon balm, parsleys and basils) and edible flowers (pansy, viola, nasturium, squash blossoms) can be harvested daily.
The garlic is ready for harvest as we need to use it.

How do you fertilize and pest control on the Funny Farm?

We use vermicompost (worm casings) form our worm bins, compost from our bins, and alfafa meal as amendments to our soil. To control pests, we use bird netting, beer traps for slugs, and hand inspection for caterpillars. We also use companion planting to discourage pests in the first place.

How do you preserve what you harvest?

Usually, we try to eat and share while the produce is fresh. Tonight we had a stirfry with veggies that were still in the garden a few minutes prior to being cooked! Occasionally, we flash dip veggies in boiling water and freeze for later use. Later in the season, we'll make more jams, jellies, fruit butters, chutneys, pickles. and sauces when the cukes, tomatoes and fruit are ripe.

What is your harvest strategy?

I'm not sure we really have a strategy. We walk through the garden daily and harvest what's ripe from each bed. This seems to give us a wide variety of veggies across the week. As a particular type of veggie is finished we replenish the soil and replant with a different variety that's compatible with the other veggies growing in the bed. One thing we are trying to do is harvest the zucchini daily. We don't want a counter full of zucchini troll clubs.

Keep the questions coming, and we'll keep trying to answer them!

Feeling Inspired

A Field of Trees on a Gray Day

Anni walking down the trail

A snaggly tree with a Medusa-do

Today was a very grey morning, but the sun broke out this afternoon - glorious! We did some holiday decorating around the house. We are incorporating rosemary sprigs from the two bushes out front and a few of the remaining roses from our garden.

A reader asked, "Are you going to have a green holiday?"

We are going to have a greener holiday. We've been saving the newspaper comics and store protective paper to use as wrapping paper. We also have saved some packing material that have arrived on our doorstep. We're skipping the cut trees and opting to get a real tree the last few days of the holidays so we can plant it in the backyard. We are making our own cards this year. We are also buying much less. We've decided to third our holiday fund. One third will purchase a couple of family gifts and one individual gift for each family member. The second third will be used for a donations to our favorite charity and to make a gift for each family member. And the final third will be used to purchase holiday experiences; theatre tickets, festivals, etc.

Alex made a terrific noodle soup for lunch today. He put in seven different veggies! For dinner, we made turkey gravy with some of the left over turkey breast from Thanksgiving and served this over mounds of mashed potatoes (or smashed potatoes as Anni likes to call them), along with caramelized baby carrots, and cranberry sauce. For dessert, it was mini pumpkin bites, yum. So far, one small (3.25) free-range, chemical free turkey breast has provided the basis for 3 meals (Thanksgiving, turkey noodles soup, and tonight's.) We froze enough to have turkey enchiladas, turkey potpie, and turkey noodle casserole at a later date. Not bad for a little bit of bird.

This evening I got to rejoin the Earth Institute group which I'm very happy about. We got to enjoy the most incredible slide show of photographs taken by two members on their 11,000 mile journey all across the US and back. They stayed in a tiny pop-up trailer for much of the trip in the most amazing campgrounds! I'm feel inspired to start thinking about our spring in-state travel itinerary.

Starships, skeletons, and a misplaced toilet

Alex's latest lego creation, a star battle cruiser.

Our Dias de las muertes bulletin board complete with paper marigolds.

Honey, why is the toilet in the tub? David loves to rearrange the furniture whenever the rest of us are out for the day, but this is riduculous! Seriously, David was busy plumping, patching, painting, and flooring. Now about that toilet...

Today was rainy, cloudy, and sunny. Ah, Autumn in the great Northwest. We decided to leave Ari to her studying and David to his fix-its. The little folks and I ran lots of errands. We took some favorite picture book copies to be laminated and found a keyboard for Anni on sale for $9! We went searching for long sleeved t-shirts for Anni, and she found a few to her liking. Then we went grocery shopping for a few pantry staples.

Now that summer is over, it's getting harder and harder to get find all our foods within the mile limits. We are finding much more difficult to find fruits within the 100 mile limit. Luckily, we froze and preserved lots over the summer, and we do get some from further afield via the CSA box. Now what to do with that persimmon???

We are finding that our monthly exceptions have stayed pretty consistent, usually an oil of some type (peanut for Nov.), a citrus fruit (mandarins), and hot chocolate. Our individual weekly exceptions can vary widely. Alex had to have ramen today. Anni wanted peanut butter. Ari (of course) needed coffee. David is currently craving a burger, and I had to have a veggie sushi roll with wasabi.

Responding to a question: Are you still buying organic given the current economy?


The answer is a matter of availability, health/cost ratio, and quality. Overall we do buy organic if at all possible. With the end of the seasonal farmers' markets, it's a bit trickier finding all the organic goodies. We are lucky enough to have a couple of great organic supermarket chains in the area which I hit often, and now even some of the 'regular' supermarkets have an organic section. We do buy less organic food due to cost, but since it's more nutritionally dense, we figure we come out even. Occasionally, we will buy some of the safer non-organics if the organic item is looking particularly poor that week.

Meat is an especially tricky issue, the organic free range or pasture fed meat is extremely expensive. So, we eat veggie at least four times a week now. At first there was much grumbling within the tribe, but now they've adjusted and don't usually ask about the missing meat. And when we do spring for the meat, it's usually part of a casserole, stew, etc with a whole bunch of veggies and grains.

Dinner tonight was tostadas with tiny crab cakes (Whole Paycheck) on a bed of cilantro-cabbage (CSA) slaw, with tomatoes (garden), green onion (CSA), and radish (CSA), and topped with jalapeno (organic from regular supermarket) cream. We served this up with roasted pumpking seeds (garden), black beans (organic from regular supermarket), corn (CSA), and a platter of fruit (mandarins ((monthly exception)), kiwi ((CSA)), and pomegranate seeds ((CSA))). The kids were so thrilled about the miniscule amount of crab that they didn't even realized they'd just eaten eleven servings from the fruit/veggie group.

And the rain goes on!

Anni in the outfield. Anni played baseball this year with the miracle league. She had a grand time hitting and throwing the baseball. Her helpers had a grand time guarding their knees from her bat. We like this picture as it reminds us of sunny days. Sun that giant glowing orb in the sky. The one we can't see through the rain clouds!

We could use a few sunny days. It's pouring again! We did get a brief respite from the rain. We used it to rid the garden of slugs and dandelions which both happen to love this rainy weather.

We have very unhappy tomatoes! We're busy scouring our collection of cookbooks for green tomato recipes. Speaking of cookbooks, we've had a couple of e-mail asking which are our favorites for all the veggies we've been consuming. Our top two are Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon and Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant (ethnic & regional recipes). Both have tons of great recipes as well as lots of wit.