CSA Week 17

The CSA week 16 produce was packed in ice chests and taken with us on a trek to Newport RI where we have been tourists this week. We knew we would have a kitchen so planned meals around the veggies. We ate well!

TheCSA  week 17 share may be the last of the tomatoes….but we have cauliflower! The collection of veggies each week always prompts meal ideas. My challenge this week might be how to use all the poblano and padron peppers!

Veggie Beauty

Over the past month - I have been noticing the beauty in fruits and vegetables while I prepare meals. I’ve collected some of my favorite ‘closer looks.’

The spiral of white veins around a seed in a ‘seedless’ watermelon

The raised ridges in a freshly cut cross section of a leek

A cross section of a banana pepper

And the 10x magnification of the seeds

A cherry tomato cut in half

A cucumber cross section (I have to many of them waiting at home that I should try a couple of slices on my eyes before cutting up the rest for a salad or smoothie)

The red ridges of an onion (10x magnification)

A beet leaf with its bright red veins through its green - it was tender enough to put in a salad rather than a stir fry.

The Deck Garden - July 2014

The deck garden is growing vigorously. My favorite plant this season is the sweet potato vine. It was started last winter when a sweet potato sprouted before I got around to eating it. I cut the sprouted end off and planted it in a pot. It did not grow very fast until it to outdoors in this summer. The soil in the pot is already being pushed upward by the tubers underneath - and the plant has two other appealing characteristics: the foliage is purple and it has occasional blooms. I’m going to root some clippings from this plant to take through the winter indoors in pots so that I’ll more the plants next summer for the deck.

Several of the other veggies have been an interesting experience but I probably go back to growing flowers on the deck next year. I get plenty of veggies from the CSA each week. The tomatoes are good picked fresh and eaten immediately. They might be worth it.

I have a spaghetti squash that is starting to grow. Watching it mature will be a learning experience. I also have a pot full of pepper plants that came up when I stirred some kitchen parings (including the waste from bell peppers) into one of the pots before I planted a squash plant in it. The squash has not done so well but I have several small peppers.

The cucumber plants are the ones that scream ‘water’ the fastest. I planted them in a pot that is too small. They need water every day - and more than that on very hot days.

And that leads me to the big lesson learned from the past 4 weeks: my shoulders hurt after only a few days of carrying big jugs of water out to deck to keep the plants hydrated. I’ve maneuvered a hose from the faucet below the deck to water the plants from now on!

CSA Week 7

I’ve managed to empty out the crispers from the week 6 CSA share and even finish off from beet greens that I froze from an earlier week.

The share this week was handled very differently; I am traveling this next week and my husband is not a big veggie eater. So I ate a few tomatoes, half a cucumber, and a banana pepper as a salad..my husband and I finished off the watermelon…..the jalapeno and padron peppers are in my luggage since one of the people I’m visiting likes peppers….and everything else is processed and in the freezer!  I am already anticipating the great stir fries and soups.

My Deck Garden - June 2014

The deck garden has changed quite a lot since my post in May. The sweet potato has a lot more leaves ad may be overwhelming the bell pepper plant in the same trough pot; the pepper plant has a small pepper …. but will it grow big enough to be edible?

The watermelon and cantaloupe are blooming - I look each day for a small melon beginning to form but it hasn’t happened yet.

The tomato plants have a lot of green tomatoes. In the pot next to the peacock pot, a lot of peppers that sprouted from kitchen compost are overwhelming the cilantro that I’ve already harvested once. The spaghetti squash in the peacock pot has been blooming but I have not found any small squash forming yet.

It’s the same story for the zucchini squash.

I’ve harvested mint for the second time this year - from the big round pot and the turtle sandbox. The harvest is already dried and in the crock beside the tea maker.

In the meantime - the beans are growing rapidly in the jug that originally held cat litter and the cucumber that was severely damaged by hail is hanging on - blooming! The shallow bins with miscellaneous flowers are just beginning to bloom. The morning glory has quite a ‘glow.’

Garden Dreaming - March 2014

Spring is getting a late start this year….more time for garden dreaming.

• The racks of seed packets are hard to pass by. I bought colorful beans and carrots…and decided to start chives and cilantro indoors immediately.
• I’m always on the lookout for items that can be turned into ‘pots’ for the deck. The big plastic containers from cat litter are my latest target. We buy the big jugs of cat litter so I’ll have to cut off the top but that means I can make the ‘pot’ the depth I want. The maximum depth would be enough to grow sweet potatoes or carrots on the deck!
• It seems like freebie seed packets are coming from all directions. So far I’ve collected sunflowers and marigolds….cucumbers and tomatoes!
• It is pretty obvious that garden success will require some control of the deer browsing in my garden area (fortunately the deck is not accessible already). I’m going to try a ‘liquid fence’ repellent for my garden (and right away from my ornamental shrubs and bulbs coming up….the deer are starving….eating everything right now).
• I had to cut the sweet potato back in the pot I have growing indoors….and it is rooting in a glass of water. Now that it is putting out fresh leaves I probably will need to plant it soon but I need a pot of it (may be the first thing planted in an empty cat litter jug will be the sweet potato)!
• I’m thinking about what will go in the garden plot. It gets a reasonable amount of sun on one side although a young sycamore is shading part of it late in the day. The veggies have priority and I’ll try to start some indoors to give them a head start. The sunflower may be too large for my garden so I’m contemplating planting them along the sunny side of the house - which is not even a flower bed right now.
•  I enjoyed the cardinal flowers and zinnias in the pots on the deck last summer. This year I am getting more organized and thinking about combinations in the larger pots; the thriller - filler - spiller idea appeals to me. The first and last on the ‘dreaming’ list below is already started - assuming the cardinal flower survived the winter in its pot and the pot I have growing inside now makes the transition to outdoors after the last frost.