Backyard Garden

The backyarden is looking crazy, lots of things did not like the heat last week, myself included. So some plants are starting to die back and late season plants are hitting their stride. Finally we are getting lots of giant and delicious tomatoes. Plus we are inundated with all the sweet cherry tomatoes. I returned triumphant from the Sumner gardens with boxes of yummy San Marz, Nepal and Brandywine tomatoes. Not to mention a box of cabbage, beets, and basil. Lots of tomatoes....before the dreaded food mill... The final product cooked down for 6 hours and reduced the liquid to half resulted in five quart jars and two pints. Ready for use on or in anything! We made a delicious tomato soup from it by sauteing onions, and adding salt pepper fresh basil and a bit of cream.

Other than the fact we need to mow the lawn the backyard is happy and lush. All the rain that came down last night soaked everything thoroughly and it all looks good. From the other side... The pumpkin patch may need to be thinned soon! Salad second cuttings are ready... The tomatoes are growing like mad and I am optimistic about the harvest. Hopefully all is going well up in the big garden where we have twice as many tomatoes!

So the tomatoes are loving all the hot weather we have been having and getting big and thick and flowering like crazy. I noticed that some of the flowers are giving way to tiny tomatoes which is so exciting. This year I have several types in the garden Nepal, Brandywine, San Marzano, early girl cherry tomatoes, and an heirloom mix of cherry tomatoes. When I finally put these seedlings in do you think I marked them? Nope! Too much rushing when things had to get into the ground and I grabbed the best plants of each and threw them in. My logic at the time was this, I just want tomatoes, and at the end of the season I will know what they are. Then I also have all these funny tomato plants that are coming up from seed in the compost. They could be any kind, cherry, beefsteak, last year's Nepals, I have no clue! They look healthy and so I left several plants. Now I have a tomato free for all. From the looks of these little green starts we have a cherry tomato (top) because is is perfectl

So our garden here is doing okay... and I say okay because we got everything in late, the cabbage worms have been at the cabbage, some tomato plants showed early signs of blight and needed to be removed, and the groundhog that disappeared is back, or another has taken its place. That said here it is! The big tomato plant here in the front looks good..note that all the red cabbage in this first box was chomped by a groundhog... Salad needs to be picked in this front box, this being the second time, we have a bunch of mixed carrots and lettuces here. After our first planting some animal tore up the whole bed mixing it all  up and tearing up the seed. The herb boxes in the back are coming along nicely, there is a big tomato here that came from the compost...which means our compost is not getting hot enough, but I will take it because it looks strong and healthy! Some of the big terra cotta pots just have flowers, I love these "Love Lies Bleeding", beautiful flower with a gru

The lovely tea roses at the top of the garden...                                                 Scarlet runner beans and purple basil mulched... potatoes that need mulch and to be weeded still... mulched rows with cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, cucumber, swiss chard, beets, carrots, onions, nore basil... Tomatoes! Nepal, Itailian paste tomatoes, and brandywines... Another shot of the mulched rows. We are using newspapers and dirty hay from the sheep infused with tiny little dry poops. Makes great mulch and fertilizer. Hopefully it helps keep the weeding and watering time down!

It is that time of year and this year it is early. We went strawberry picking on Sunday and got 35 pounds of pure summer. They are the most lovely fragrant strawberries and not like anything they pass off for strawberries at the supermarket all other times of the year. We froze half and made jam from the other half. I broke our white sugar fast to make jam, which takes a lot of sugar and it needs to be subtlety flavored so you can actually get the flavor of the fruit. There is something magical about jam in January when you crack open a jar and can smell and taste the fruit as it is the day you pick those berries. I think I will always fall back to plain sugar for this process, because of the amazing results. We went to Stevenson's in Wayne, Maine again this year because they consistently have good berries every year. Although I almost went to a new place that opened and is organic. I am hoping next year we have time to try them and see what they have to offer for the extra dollar

We picked up this new cookbook becauseI had heard about it and I happened to see it at a bookstore (that unfortunately is closing). I have skimmed it several times, finding some great looking instruction, beautiful pictures of delicious food and simple looking recipes. I am very excited to learn some new techniques for cooking different foods as each section has a "guest chef". Already I would suggest it to anyone wanting to be a better cook and to lean toward seasonal and simply good tasting food.

I wanted to show off some other pictures of completely successful tasty bread from the 5 minutes a day bread book. I did the Brioche recipe which is full of eggs and honey. Very moist and lovely bread, the plain loaf was good and the one with the chocolate ganache swirl was out of this world. Next time I will work on the swirl being better centered but other than that it was amazing.

Don't miss out on rhubarb, even though the flower buds look like some kind of alien egg pod, it is very delicious. I was introduced to raw rhubarb sticks dipped in sugar for the first time this year and it is lovely. Things to keep in mind: do not eat the leaves, do not eat the roots, only the stalks. if you eat it raw peel the skin off the stalk. I had always had it cooked and honestly that has been fine with me, it tastes just like another fruit, which is kind of weird because it is a stalk. It is full of vitamin C and Calcium so take advantage of it while it is around!

The front porch was taken over by my seedlings. I brought a truckload up to my parents over Memorial weekend to plant in the big garden. We got a lot planted, but still need to do more. We also need to fill our beds here in the backyarden. I hesitate though because we have groundhog around again and I know it will demolish my yummy cabbages. We need to utilize the have-a-heart trap soon!

So in the name of cutting back on sugar we bought 5 gallons of honey. My parents know a beekeeper and they picked it up for us at a decent price. Not many people buy honey by the 5 gallon bucket. When you open the cover the smell is intoxicatingly sweet with of flowers and spice. So the next step of course is mead! Just add water and...  The entire kitchen smelled of very good flavorful honey as Shawn stirred up the wort. He felt a little like a magician in a renaissance fair, so I fixed his picture up for him. We will post a recipe later and hopefully a nice picture of the terrific and "magically delicious" mead.

So for my birthday I got the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, and so far I love it. Although I question Shawn's motives because I think it was just as much for him as it was for me. I make bread every week and have for a while now when I decided I could make better tasting bread that cost less and had less garbage added to it. I also make my own pizza dough, and we have tried to get a sourdough started and failed. So this book has been intriguing to me, and now I know why. If you buy the artisan bread at the grocery this book it is. You can make all kinds of wonderful different types of bread and it is super easy. So far I have used it for pizza crust (which is superb), we made a boule (again superb), and sticky buns that were out of this world. I cannot wait to try the brioche (very eggy and honey sweetened bread) and some of the other options. In a nutshell you make a very wet batch of dough, it rises at room temperature, you put it in the fridge, and cut off pieces for d

 So we were visiting today and dug up some ramps, we also came across some checker berries which are fun. They have the same taste as Teaberry Gum. Apparently checkerberries have an asprin like quality to them so I guess if you are hiking and sore you can eat them to help or use the leaves to steep a tea. Ramps are delicious in anything you would use onion and we used some tonight for some hummus instead of garlic, very mild and tasty. If you come across them keep in mind you have to dig well below the bulb to get it out intact which is about 4-5 inches down. Also keep in mind to leave some behind for the next year.

So now the seedlings have a light source to help the stay upright and not reach for the windows. I did contemplate the fact that we may be visited by the police because we have a fluorescent light out over a bunch of green on on front porch, but I doubt it. All they would have to do is peek in the window to see that it is nothing illegal. So any way I am running the light only in the daytime just to help the legginess of plants. Yesterday seemed to work already. Some of the seedlings are starting to get there real leaves and are starting to crowd each other out, just in time for our vacation next week when I break them up into separate containers...not sure I have enough room for that part though!

Yes we are a little crazy, but really how crazy is it to make the move away from processed sugars? We started thinking harder about our sugar consumption after reading Michael Pollan's book 'In Defense of Food'. Without entirely just consuming the same amount of sugar as honey we did want to move to more natural and unrefined sources of sweetness. Shawn woke up on Monday and decided that this was the week stop eating refined sugar.  So I pulled out an old 1970's booklet on cooking with honey to see what we could do for some sweetness. My father was a beekeeper in the late 70's and 80's, his hives were destroyed by mites and he gave up the hobby. At one point in my childhood we had a wooden sign hanging from a pole in front of our house that said "Honey for Sale", and a huge store of honey in the basement along with all the tools for extraction, which as you can image was my favorite part. I made the Honey Butter cookies form page 3 in the PDF and this

I planted some more seeds today... some summer squash, zucchini (so it will be a little staggered from what is planted directly in the garden), eggplant, parsley, sage, honey bear acorn/winter squash just to get things started in case the season is not perfect. I need to do my marigolds still, but otherwise most of the rest of the seeds will be directly in the garden. Now is not a bad time ot start lettuces, kale, and spinach. Although the weather here is going to be cold (40 degrees F as a high this weekend). I will be planting those outside soon. Very exciting. The other seedlings are doing well, the cat took out some of my cilantro so I have to have a gate up in the doorway to the porch, but not too much damage. We still need to set up a light although the seedlings are not too leggy yet some are getting close, like the cilantro and brussel sprouts. Now off to cubeland.

Just in the last year or so we became more interested in what there is for wild plants here in Maine. Mostly up at my parents house because we are here in the city. Interesting none the less and actually there are some things I want to try this year if we have time and can find them. Last years fun discovery was that of ramps, or wild leeks. You pick them in the spring for the shoots, which are extremely flavorful for there tiny size and can wait for fall to harvest the bulbs. We will be searching for these scrumptious little things again this year. Fiddleheads will probably up sooner than usual due to the crazy warm weather and this year I want to go picking them before we get too many black flies.  To help with looking for new edible plants we picked up a seemingly decent book, I like the fact they show many of the plants in varied stages and seasons (so if you see something in fall you could still identify that you should get it in the spring). I have an image of a cover from amazo

The seeds are coming up great, we need to get a light on them before they get more leggy. Hopefully it is not too late, tomorrow is Saturday and we should have time to get the light set up and hung.

other than the fact they need water the cabbage and morning glories are going very well! How exciting to see the new growth.

We undertook the semi big task of moving compost this weekend. Over the winter we left our summer compost alone and started a winter compost near the door and porch to ensure continued and plentiful composting. Now that the weather is so nice the winter compost was ready to be moved away from the door! I started by emptying the summer one out, and here is the winter compost. easy to take apart! when it was half frozen the vegetable clippings and hay were halfway up the structure. Just since the weather has been nice it decreased significantly. Shawn is hosing down the summer compost, it needs just a little more breaking down before we can use it in the garden. we will leave it in a pile and cover it with a tarp, this way we can turn it often and speed up the last stretch of composting. So I got half of the compost moved. The whole time I am layering the compost like a lasagna, a gross lasagna mind you. we had a high concentration of vegetable clippings and needed to break them up