Father's Day Harvest

I harvested our next-to-last serving of beets out of our garden, and I have to say, they were delicious. My cousin swears her favorite way to eat beets is "Harvard Beets," so I gave this recipe a try last night. Meghan says they're "candied beets," Michael will eat one or two bites, Matthew says, "bleh" with the obligatory stuck-out tongue, and Craig and I both agree, they are "top of the class," hence the name, "Harvard Beets."

Here's the recipe....

16 oz. can of beets (or use fresh beets, peel them, boil them and reserve the liquid)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
butter
salt to taste

Add vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, butter and salt to beet liquid, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium, stir in beets, and heat through.

Cousins & Zucchini....

So, I'm enjoying my 2nd annual Cousins' Reunion at my cousin's place in the mountains yesterday. My cousin and his girlfriend arrive bearing a huge amount of yellow squash and zucchini and even a cucumber from his Mom's garden, and I'm immediately jealous. My cousin (and my sister of the heart) gets that gleam in her eye and starts planning what she's going to can with it all, and I realize that I'm having dinner with a Southern States store owner and a County Extension Agent. Woohoo! I'm finally able to ask someone who might know WHY my zucchini plant hasn't produced anything yet and the blossoms keep falling off.....here are the answers I heard.

"What'd you plant it in? Potting mix?"
"Well, how 'bout phosphorous?"
"Actually, my specialty is animals, so I'd have to look this one up."
"The old people would tell you that you planted it during the wrong phase of the moon."
"Honestly, I think you should just ask Momma."

So, I took the Extension Agent's recommendation and looked it up....the answer is that the blossoms that have fallen off are male blossoms, and the blossoms still on the plant are most likely female blossoms.

Here's a wonderful resource: http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/vegetable/why-zucchini-blossoms-fall-off-the-plant.htm

Are your ears burning?

$3 "Grub Club" today at Latta Plantation from 3 - 4 pm

"Gardening can be exciting....Join us for this hands-on monthly offering in which we will learn about different aspects of vegetable gardening. Each month will be a different topic, but the first month we will be planting seeds and the last few we will be harvesting the vegetables."

My friend Shannon says the Montessouri method is to let kids harvest something and THEN teach them the seed cycle....well, I figure my kids have harvested enough strawberries and onions this year that this is the next logical step in their garden education.

Luckily, there are still 10 out of 12 spaces available today, and this class is only $3 per kid. Come on out and join us!

http://parkrez.co.mecklenburg.nc.us/Activities/Activities.asp?SCheck=887325182&SDT=40708.3363033218

Some interesting info on tomatoes from Southern States

This article shares some interesting information on common tomato problems. Seems like mulch and regular water are key to a bumper crop.

http://www.southernstates.com/articles/lg/controltomatoes.aspx

Last Day of School Harvest

To celebrate the last day of school, I cooked Michael's favorite dinner (well one of his favorites) of meatloaf and potatoes and our very first serving of homegrown squash. What a hit! I roasted potatoes and the squash in Italian salad dressing in the oven at 350 degrees for the whole time the meatloaf was cooking--super simple, and delicious! Meghan and I have also enjoyed our very first homegrown grape tomatoes this week--definitely worth the trouble and the wait! After I harvested all of our lettuce, I was left with an empty bed....so I experimented with taking cuttings from squash and from tomatoes and planting them in the new bed to try to make new plants. While the squash experiment didn't work, the tomato plant experiment did! I now have 3 new Mr. Stripey tomato plants growing! Since I'm training the tomatoes to grow vertically on a trellis, I have to do a pretty serious pruning every couple of weeks. I'll be planting a couple of pruned branches every couple of weeks, and will hopefully have tomatoes through Thanksgiving! :) See, squash and tomatoes are a lot like kids in kindergarten. Once you get them started the right way and in their routine, they just don't stop until it's all over! And, as Meghan put it, "there's nothing like a homegrown tomato." So, our end-of-the-year teacher gifts were 4 tomato plants with a card that read, "Let's "ketchup" sometime" and included our blog addresses. Hopefully, these fabulous ladies who took care of my kids and got them started the right way this year will think of them and smile every time they pick a ripe tomato this summer. Enjoy!

June 1 Harvest

Meghan was checking out the carrots as I worked on weeding the flower bed, and discovered a few were full grown. Matthew then proceeded to pull up each and every carrot, totaling in a harvest of 7 full grown carrots, and 5 partially grown. Surprisingly, Matthew didn't harvest any of the surrounding beets or onions...proving that my son who is unable to drink water without spilling it can successfully maneuver an overcrowded garden of full grown carrots, beets and onions without any sacrifices. Go figure.

I was able to pick the "fruit of my labor" and harvested my first yellow squash, along with a spring onion that's looking suspiciously like a sweet onion you'd buy in the grocery store--something or someone helpfully knocked it out of its hole for me overnight.....that or it just got so gigantic that it fell over from its own weight.....that's what counts as a "fish tale" in farming.

Speaking of fish tails, I don't have much trouble from rabbits, my total casualty list consists of one head of romaine lettuce this year. Truthfully, I'd bet money that had more to do with Matthew (my two year old) than with rabbits, although we do have plenty of chipmunks. We have a champion mouser named Bob who has the run of the place, and he's doing a pretty good job of hunting down our chipmunk population--the babies that is. I've read that the Native Americans used to plant a fish in each corn hill to increase the nitrogen or something....wonder if I could teach Bob to bury his kills in my garden for me? That would be a LOT better than another dead baby chipmunk left on the sidewalk for all to admire.

We also have a barred owl who hunts in our backyard--at least I hope it's hunting in our backyard what with all the noise it makes. There are two red-tailed hawks that roost on the steeple of the church behind my house as well. Between the raptors and the cat, like I said, we don't have much trouble from rabbits.

Memorial Day Harvests

Last week, the forecast called for insanely high temperatures, unusual for this time of year. I'd been putting off harvesting my ridiculous amount of lettuce http://back-yard-farmer.blogspot.com/p/2011-garden-plans.html resulting from my overzealous planning back in February, when all this food was just a dream......however, I knew that the high temperatures would cause my lettuce to bolt, resulting in a bitter taste, and wasted effort. So, instead of packing for our camping trip, I spent two days harvesting lettuce, rinsing lettuce, bagging up lettuce, and finding spots in my refrigerator and in my friends' refrigerators for all this lettuce. I gave lettuce to my kid's teachers, to the occupational therapist, to the OT's receptionist, to some unsuspecting neighbors.....all with the promise to bring more produce if they returned the bags. ;) My family had vegetable dinner that night--roasted baby beets, roasted spring onions, baked potatoes with spring onions and a great big salad. We all feasted, and fell in love with our backyard farm.