Dinner from the Garden

The time has finally come.  The tomatoes are starting to ripen, the eggplant are still doing their thing, and we can actually make a meal out of things from the garden.  Those are Brandywine tomatoes at the top, a few Black Cherry, and a couple not-so-big Big Boys.  There's also a pale Fairy Tale eggplant, a couple of Orient Express eggplants, and plenty of basil.  We've still got lots of varieties of tomatoes to try once they're ready, and I'm looking forward to lots of tomato salad and BLTs over the next month, and hopefully longer.

Last night I made a very simple sauce by sautéing a few cloves of our homegrown garlic in a puddle of olive oil, adding eggplant, salt and pepper, and toward the end, fresh chopped tomatoes and basil.

It looked like this:

And we ate it over raviolis, topped with parmesan.  Parsley would have been a nice touch, but I'm just thinking of that now.  Fresh and delicious.

Have a happy weekend!

The Mid-August Garden

Everything is in full swing.



The Upper Garden

There are 8 tomato plants in there, the tallest of which (Black Cherry), is over 7 feet.



The Lower Garden

There are 5 tomato plants on stakes in the back (the tallest of which is, again, Black Cherry).  The basil on the left is elbow height, and in front of that there are 3 peppers (2 out of 3 with one pepper growing on each so far), and then our two prolific eggplants in front of those.  The zucchini on the right overcrowded and shaded the cucumbers so they never grew, but they probably never stood a chance, because they're prone to the same sad disease(s) the zucchini harbor.  The plants look healthy from a distance, but we haven't eaten a zucchini yet, and we probably won't.  Some would say I should have pulled the plants, but I'm still hoping for a miraculous come back.  I think it's bacterial wilt, brought on by the yellow and black striped cucumber beetles I just can't seem to shake.  Little zucchini do form, but then they rot before they grow.

The Good:


Black Cherry



Ripening Brandywine

The Bad:


Sick Zucchini



Bacterial wilt?

And, the Future:


Arugula



Scallions

I also planted carrots, beets, cilantro, kale and swiss chard.  We'll see what happens!

Surprise Plant Tricks

Once upon a time, my sister brought me an abandoned plant that she found on the side of the road.  I accepted it into my home, but sentenced it to a not-so-bright corner of the dining room, far from other plants, in case it carried bugs or disease. 

A few months later it bloomed.

I used my internet sleuthing capabilities and advice from family members to determine that it was possibly an orange jasmine. 

A leaf close-up:

For a couple of years now, I've kept it alive by watering it once a week, and periodically wondering if there's a better spot for it, but ultimately deciding that it's just too big for any place where it would get a good amount of light.  And in another week, I'd water it again.

But now, it's got my attention. As if to say, "Hey, I'm not chopped liver, look what I can do," the sad looking plant produced this last week.

Is it a lime?  A lemon? More internet sleuthing has found lime and lemon trees that look very similar.  But I've also found that the orange jasmine (a healthy one, anyway) produces little red fruits, which start out green.  This thing is half the size of a lime, though, so I'm hoping it's something edible.  And I'm starting to think that the leaves and blossoms look more like those in the lime and lemon tree link above, than an orange jasmine.  I guess we'll have to wait and see. 

Of course, now we're going to need to build a greenhouse to give this plant a proper spot. 

I hope you have a weekend filled with fun surprises!

Cooking with Japanese Eggplant

Much like last year, the eggplant and tomatoes are doing well, but the cucumbers and zucchini are not.  I'll discuss the woes another time, but right now, we are enjoying the eggplant.  We're growing two varieties this year- Orient Express and Fairy Tale- after having great success with our first year of little Fairy Tales in 2011.  Both plants are looking great, and producing eggplant that needs to be picked every few days. 

Orient Express

Fairy Tale

For no good reason, I feel the need to use the Fairy Tale in Italian recipes, and I'm trying to experiment with the Orient Express in Asian fare.  Last night I pulled out a recipe a friend once gave me, from her Indian cooking class. 

Bengan Bharta

1 large eggplant (I used 2 Japanese)
1 onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 green chilies, diced (I removed half the seeds and ribs)
1/2" piece of ginger, minced (I was more generous)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon chopped cilantro (I was more generous)
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 Tablespoon dhana-jira power (1/2 cumin, 1/2 coriander)
1/8 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons oil

The recipe calls for peeling the eggplant, but I didn't because the skins on the fresh picked eggplant are really tender.  I cut it into bite-size pieces, and steamed it for about 4 minutes, though you can roast it for a smokier flavor, and then mash it.

While you're cooking the eggplant, chop the vegetables.

Heat the oil in a frying pan.  When hot, add onions and green chiles. Stir for half a minute.  Add ginger and garlic and stir for 2-3 minutes.  Add tomatoes and half the cilantro and cook for one minute.  Add all the spices and mix well.

Add the eggplant and cook until it is completely heated through.  Sprinkle remaining cilantro on top.  It can be served with hot bread (someday I'd like to try making this homemade naan), as a dip, or I serve it with basmati rice.

I'm on the lookout for more eggplant recipes.  This won't be the last one you'll see.  If you have suggestions, send them my way!

P.S. I'm hoping we'll soon be able to cook with our own garden tomatoes alongside the eggplant.  The first is just starting to ripen.  These are "Big Boy" though they are not very big.

but there are plenty more of all colors and sizes, coming soon.

Black Cherry

Rosso Sicilian

Green Zebra

Hibiscus in Bloom

We split this plant from my in-laws last spring.  It's huge and very reliable with its gigantic flowers in August.

These flowers are bigger than my hand.

I was told it was a hibiscus, but I have no idea what kind.  I went online to try to identify it and some of the images I found of Swamp Mallow looked the same.  A lovely name. 

It seems there's two types of hibiscus we can grow here in Zone 6.  One is a shrub- Althea or Rose of Sharon- and the other is a hardy perennial that dies back to the ground every winter.  That's what we've got. 

The buds look like this

and the flowers last only a day or so before they fall off, but just as many are opening as the others drop.

 

What amazes me is how big it gets- approximately 6 feet by 6 feet- starting from scratch again every year. 

Swamp Mallow can also be called Rose Mallow, which I think I prefer.  More flattering, don't you think?

We've got a second plant near the lower vegetable garden, but it's more shaded and doesn't grow as big.  I think I'll move it to a sunnier spot for next year.

I hope you all had a beautiful weekend!

Saving Scallion Seeds

We were harvesting scallions all spring after they survived the mild winter. 

I kept them around until they formed seed pods, and when the flowers looked mature enough that I could see the little black seeds



I lopped off their heads.

They've been sitting in a paper bag on top of our refrigerator, drying out for several weeks.  After giving the bag a good shake, I could hear that lots of seeds had come loose.

And, now we're going to plant them, to harvest in the fall, and maybe through the winter and spring, if we're lucky.

I use scallions all the time and have hated to buy them at the store the last couple of months.  Now I realize that I should have planted more first thing in the spring to harvest throughout the summer.  And if we continue to let some go to seed, we'll never have to buy scallions, or scallion seeds again.  The best part is that insects and animals want nothing to do with them, and they don't need any fertilizing or pruning.  They just grow. Easy stuff!

The Garlic Harvest

Half of our garlic looked like it should have been harvested weeks ago, but we finally got around to it last weekend, when it all looked ready.  You're supposed to harvest when the two bottom leaves start to look brown.  These were screaming to be pulled out of the ground.

Side note: When we harvested the garlic scapes, it looks like we missed one.  They're supposed to keep the bulbs from growing bigger, and this one (on the left, if it's not obvious) was in fact small compared to the best looking bulbs.  But there were a few other small ones, too, so it might have been doomed from the start for other undetermined reasons.

We planted three varietes last fall- German Extra Hardy, Persian Star, and Russian Red, but I can't tell which is which now.  Maybe next time we'll label them.

I read somewhere that someone (I can't find what I read now, of course) harvested garlic a few weeks ago and had the biggest bulbs ever after fertilizing them when they sprouted for the first time this year.  Some people say it's not necessary, but I think it'll be worth trying next year. 

The Vegetable Gardner's Bible says to remove the outer two leaves and cure the garlic in full sun for two to three weeks, but most other instructions say bright shade, where there's plenty of air circulation.  We've got ours on a pallet on a wheelbarrow so we can move it around, and we roll it into the shed when it's going to rain. 

A few weeks like this and then we'll trim them and store them in the basement (the coolest place we've got) in a mesh bag.  The hope is that, if properly cured, they will last for many months. Once they sprout, they start to loose their eating quality. 

Of course, we don't have to wait for the garlic to cure to enjoy it.  I've been using the smaller bulbs since we ran out of store-bought garlic last week.  Last night, we had shrimp scampi with fresh garlic and parsley from the garden.