French toast with sliced nectarines and maple syrup
Garden or blog, garden or blog? I’m afraid that gardening almost always wins out, which is why I’m only posting on Harvest Monday these days. Since the garden is producing nicely right now, that also means that I’m cooking a lot. This week’s menus have included a lot of nectarines. And since the hens are laying again, we’re also eating a lot of eggs.
Now that the hens have finished their molt, we're back to three-egg days.
French toast with nectarines and blueberries
I’m also serving on two committees for the Huntington Beach Community Garden (fund-raising and operations), trying to get that non-profit off and running. We are so close to being able to get onto the property that I can almost see my new garden sprouting. Our plots (which are already all spoken for even though we haven’t even broken ground yet) will be 15 ft x 20 ft. Finally, I’ll have some real space in which to garden.
I’m making do for now with three 3 ft x 6 ft beautiful raised beds in my back yard (see photo at top of page), a few Smart Pots in the driveway, and some languishing plants in the Garden of Perpetual Responsibility and the Garden of Infinite Neglect. Despite extensive soil modification, neither of those two gardens produce very much.
In contrast, my three Forever raised beds from Gardener’s Supply Company are the best gardening areas I’ve ever had. They are amazingly productive and easy to care for.
Raised bed #1 has tomatoes, chard, garlic, bell peppers, a cabbage, a languishing yellow squash, and scarlet runner beans.
Raised bed #2 has heirloom tomatoes, hybrid Kentucky Blue green beans, Summertop cucumbers, leeks, chard, Black Beauty eggplant, and savoy cabbage.
Raised bed #3 has Scarlet Runner beans, Blue Lake pole beans, heirloom tomatoes, German white icicle radishes (going to seed), red onions, yellow onions, and purple broccoli.
Some of my vegetables, like the radishes, leek, beets, and chard, are going to seed. I save the seeds of my heirloom vegetables (not hybrids) to grow the next year. Maybe some day I’ll stop buying new seeds. Yeah, right, fat chance of that ever happening.
On to this week’s harvest.
FRUITS
1 oz. Blueberries, Sunshine
2 lb 12 oz. Nectarines, Panamint
Subtotal 2 lbs, 13 oz.
VEGETABLES
3 oz. Eggplant, Millionaire
13 oz. Tomatoes, Better Boy
Subtotal 1 lb
TOTAL 3 lbs 13 oz. produce, plus 14 eggs
If you had a harvest this week, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and post a link so we can all enjoy your harvest vicariously.
It’s been a quiet week in the garden. Henrietta is finished with her molt and is laying eggs again. Chicken Little hasn’t molted and is still laying reliably. Henny Penny manages to lay an egg once in a while that isn’t too thin to survive her big feet, but most of her eggs are still being broken. Today she laid her egg on the table (yes, my hens have furniture in their coop–they’re so spoiled) that holds their watering containers. Fortunately, I got to it before it rolled off the edge or got stepped on. Bottom line is that we got 13 eggs this week.
Three of our granddaughters came to visit yesterday, the twins Allison and Lauren (4) and Megan (2). They fed their leftover french fries and bread crusts to the chickens, who happily gobbled them up.
Spent brewers grain (barley) in my compost bin.
The chickens are getting yet another taste treat. The Huntington Beach Brewery, a micro-brewery downtown–gives away its spent brew grain to people who compost. I put some in my compost pile–really heats it up–and feed a handful each to the hens. It’s nice cracked barley, all cooked and warm. They love it. The grain is a byproduct of beer making, and gets discarded before the yeast is added for the fermentation step. Because barley is lower in protein than wheat, I wouldn’t give it to them as a constant diet, but it makes a nice (and free) feed supplement. It really gets my compost bin heated up and fermenting nicely too. And the more gardeners who take the grain, the less grain that goes to landfills. I’m doing myself and the environment a favor by taking a 25-lb bucket of grain from every brew batch. SWEET!
I often get just enough blackberries and blueberries for one bowl of cereal. But what a bowl!
Here’s the harvest for this week, which is mostly nectarines. There are still some on the tree. I need to figure out what the heck to do with all these nectarines. Any ideas? They’re not supposed to freeze well.
FRUIT
0.5 oz. blackberries
3 oz. blueberries
4 lbs, 4.5 oz. nectarines, Panamint
Subtotal fruit 4 lbs 8 oz.
VEGETABLES
4 oz. tomatoes, Better Boy
0.5 oz. herbs
Subtotal 4.5 oz. vegetables
TOTAL 4 lbs 12.5 oz. produce plus 13 eggs
If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and make a post on Mr. Linky so we can all enjoy your harvest vicariously.
I hope you all had an enjoyable Fourth of July. Happy Birthday America. Another 16 years, and our country will be 250 years old.
Snow Queen nectarine
Henrietta is finished with her molt and is laying again, so we don’t have to be so stingy in our use of eggs. Henny Penny is still breaking her eggs. The shells are just too thin. I’ve upped the amount of oyster shell and limestone that I give the hens, but it isn’t helping her. She seems to be molting too, so I’m hoping that this is a temporary problem. Who knew that keeping chickens would be so challenging?
Depradated Panamint nectarines
Summer is in full swing and my garden is finally producing. But a baby opossum came to visit last night and raided my nectarine tree. I saw the critter and was surprised that something so little could have done so much damage. The tree was loaded with fruit and the little critter broke a couple of branches. Maybe the rest of its family came with it and I just didn’t see them. I’ll set the live trap tonight and see if I can catch it/them. But the critters are leaving me some food too.
Early Girl tomatoes
Better Boy tomato
Chard
The root on the big parsnip was nearly a foot long. I had to dig it out because it wouldn't pull out. Yet it was tender and delicious.
I harvested the first parsnips I’ve ever grown, both of them, and the one carrot in that area that survived the marauding opossum and raccoon of earlier this year. I roasted them along with a whole chicken, some potatoes, onions, and chopped red chard stems, and a cup of white wine, with a little sea salt and thyme for seasoning. I used Heller Vineyards organic chenin blanc. The chicken and vegetables were delicious! The parsnips had a delightful sweet taste like carrots, with a texture between that of carrots and potatoes. Why don’t Americans eat more parsnips? They’re delicious!
The carrot had a double root, but the parsnips are two individual ones.
My first dill pickles.
A fellow gardener gave me some dill just when my first batch of Tendergreen cucumbers was ready to harvest. The cukes looked the perfect size for dill pickles, so I made my first-ever batch of dill pickles. Usually I make sweet pickles, no dill. Two more days in the refrigerator, and they’ll be ready to eat. Today I’m going to make a batch of pesto from basil that another gardening friend gave me. Summer is such an exciting time in the garden, so much abundance.
Huevos Ranchero with eggs from our hens and apricots and peaches from our trees.
French toast with eggs from our hens, homemade Sally Lunn bread, and fruit from our garden.
Here’s my harvest for the past week, ending July 4.
FRUIT
0.5 oz Blackberries
2 oz. Blueberries
1 lb 5 oz. Nectarine, Panamint
12.5 oz. Nectarine, Snow Queen (entire crop)
6 oz. Peach, August Pride (last of crop)
Subtotal 3 lbs 6 oz. (42 oz.) fruit
VEGETABLES
1 lb 2 oz Artichokes (3, last of the harvest)
3 oz. Carrot, Danvers half long (1 carrot, entire crop)
Step 1. Layer 1/2 C lavender flower heads on a glass dish holding 1 C. white sugar. Step 2. Add another 1.5 C sugar to dish, cover with a cloth kitchen towel, and let sit for two weeks with occasional stirring to let moisture evaporate. Step 3. Sift sugar to remove flower heads and store sugar in a tightly sealed glass jar.
After addition of sugar to flower heads.
I really have come to love lavender sugar. It has such a lovely floral/musky scent and flavor. I use it on fresh fruit and cereal mostly, but I plan to make some lavender sugar cookies with this batch, and maybe a lavender cake with the next batch.
Harvest a big handful of English or French lavender flower heads (about 1/2 C) by snipping the flower stem at the base of the head. I washed them the first time I made the sugar, but decided that it was an unnecessary step and just added more moisture that had to evaporate away.
Put 1 C white sugar in a 2 qt Pryex baking pan. Lay the flower heads onto the sugar. Cover flowers with 1.5 C white sugar. Cover dish with a clean dish towel and let the moisture evaporate for two weeks, stirring occasionally. Pour sugar through a strainer to remove flower heads. A few flowers will sift through, but that’s fine. Store sugar in a sealed glass container.
You can adjust the amount of flowers up or down, depending on your tastes. I love the smell of lavender, so I like the taste of lavender sugar. I was expecting a subtle flavor when I first made it, but the flavor is really quite pronounced. And delicious! Use it in your favorite sugar cookie or white cake recipe.
When you don’t post Harvest Monday until Thursday, the next Monday rolls around pretty darn fast.
This past week was a busy one in the garden. I worked on compost bin #1 all weekend, digging out finished compost from the bottom door. The compost was positively crawling with worms, handfuls of them, so I picked some out and gave them to my happy hens. The compost itself went into raised beds #2 and #3.
After adding the new compost, I set up a string net trellis along the long side of bed #2. Then I added some E.B. Stone Sure Start organic fertilizer and planted Kentucky Blue hybrid pole green beans and Summertop hybrid Japanese cucumbers in bed #2, both from Kitazawa Seed Company here in California. I haven’t grown either variety before. This is a summer of firsts for my garden.
I’ve also continued on my garage clean-up and organization project, and found a couple of ancient Russet potatoes on the shelf where I store extra food. They might be able to collect Social Security they were so old. One had molded, but the other had sprouted. I’m not one to waste things, so I cut it in half with a sprout on each half and planted them in the raised beds. The moldy one went into the compost bin. Maybe I’ll get some Russett potatoes from the two cuttings and maybe I won’t.
My German Butterball potatoes in the Smart Pot are doing well, as are the sweet potatoes, Japanese eggplant and winter squash. I like the Smart Pots so much that I just bought a couple of others. I want to grow some King Edward potatoes before its too late to plant them.
On to this week’s harvest, such as it is. Someone or something is getting all of the strawberries. Since I have them in a strawberry pot in front, and I know that the little neighbor boy likes to pick them, it could be any number of human or animal suspects. I certainly don’t begrudge our cute little neighbor any berries, but I’m getting really tired of critters eating my fruit before it’s ready for me to eat.
FRUIT
14 oz Apples, Granny Smith (10 little green ones fell off the tree when a branch broke. Maybe I can put them into jam with some other fruit. That’s a third of my potential harvest.)
2.5 oz. Apricots (the squirrel got the biggest one, and I got the other two)
5.5 oz. Peaches, Babcock (I picked the few that were left so the squirrel wouldn’t get them, but they’re hard and green. Not sure that they’ll ripen)
1 0z. Strawberries (only 3 berries for me)
SUBTOTAL 1 lb 7 oz. FRUIT
VEGETABLES
1 oz. Komatsuna
4 oz. Tomatoes, Early Girl (3 little ones)
SUBTOTAL 5 oz. VEGETABLES
TOTAL 1 lb, 7 oz produce plus 5 eggs
That’s PATHETIC! Even the chickens aren’t laying this week. Henny Penny keeps stepping on her eggs and breaking them and Henrietta is still molting. I sure hope your garden is doing better than mine. If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and post on Mr. Linky.
We just got back from a wonderful trip to Yosemite National Park, so I’m behind in blogging once again. I promised my readers at the Huntington Beach Independent a blog post with videos from that trip, but I need to do my Harvest Monday post first.
The chickens are still molting, so egg harvest is down with only seven eggs this past week. Chicken Little is the only one laying with any regularity, with an occasional unbroken egg from Henny Penny. Henrietta, our Black Australorp, hasn’t laid an egg in weeks.
I don’t know what’s up with the blueberry harvest. Or down, as the case may be. This time last year, I was getting a cup to a cup and a half per picking. Now I’m getting a mere handful. Or a tablespoon full. After being gone for five days, we had zero ripe blueberries. I’m suspecting varmits of some kind, maybe birds, maybe the fox squirrel.
The squirrel has been sampling my Babcock peaches and has eaten parts of a third of them. And he devoured my largest apricot, which was ripe. I picked the other two apricots yesterday so I will get at least a taste of my tiny harvest.
It’s hard being an urban farmer. Maybe any kind of farmer. I had three dozen apples on my semi-dwarf Granny Smith. While we were away, the most heavily laden branch snapped, dropping ten of the unripe apples to the ground. That was a third of my apple crop. I suspect that the squirrel had something to do with that accident.
The varmits left us some things to eat. Here’s my harvest for the week ending on Sunday, June 20, 2010.
The hens are molting and taking dust baths. They’re so much fun to watch.
It’s another gorgeous day in paradise here in Huntington Beach–sunny skies, with temps in the high 70s. My garden is booming and blooming along, with some things newly planted and some things ready to harvest. Here’s a peek.
Raised bed #1 has tomatoes, bell peppers, yellow squash, chard, a couple of parsnips and a carrot. Yep. A single carrot.
Raised bed #1 looking from a different angle.
Raised bed #2 has chard, tomatoes, cabbage, leeks, eggplant and some miserable Snow Wind peas that are past their prime and need to come out.
Raised bed #3 has tomatoes, radishes, Blue Lake pole green beans, a few Scarlet Runner beans, onions, lettuce, a lanky purple cauliflower that shows no signs of making a head, and some spinach that needs to go to the chickens.
Raised bed #3 from a different angle.
The Babcock Improved Peaches are beginning to blush. I wonder what is embarassing them.
The Katy Apricot has only three apricots on the tree, but they're big ones. Looks like they'll be ready soon.
The Panamint Nectarine tree is loaded with fruit this year. I can hardly wait.
The Snow Queen Nectarine is a young tree and only has a couple of nectarines on it, but they look really good. Betcha they look good to the squirrels, possums, raccoons, etc. too. Who will get this lovely fruit?
This is the only peach on the August Pride peach tree, another young tree.
This is the last ripe Eureka Lemon left on the tree.
But my other two dwarf Eureka lemon trees have set fruit.
And the Eureka lemon trees are still blooming. What a lovely smell.
I have three Valencia oranges that I'm saving for a special occasion. I'd better come up with that occasion pretty soon because they won't last forever.
Next year's crop has already set on the Valencia orange. Ditto the navel orange, but I didn't photograph that tree.
The strawberry harvest seems to have peaked, but I'm still getting a berry or two.
I ate all of the ripe blueberries before I got my camera out, so I'll move on to apples. Looks like it's going to be a good year for the Granny Smith apple tree with about three dozen apples set.
Our semi-dwarf Fuji apple is still a baby, so we have only three apples on it. None on the Gala, which is a full-sized young tree.
The blackberries still aren't ripe.
Looks like I have two more artichokes to harvest and then that crop will be finished.
My red and yellow onions are starting to bulb up. I hear that they form bulbs about three weeks after the summer solstice.
My Red of Florence bunching onions are still tiny, but their bulbs are already red. This is a new variety for me so I can hardly wait until they're ready to eat.
This is my first cucumber of the season, a Tendergreen. It has a long way to go before its ready to eat.
I like my Smart Pots so much, that I got two more. I'm growing winter squash, eggplant, sweet potatoes, German Butterball potatoes and sunchokes in them.
I need a bigger pot! These winter squash (mini Red Kuri, mini Green Kuri, and mini Blue Hubbard) are only 13 days old. Check out the size of those cotyledon leaves. Righteous Bovine!
My first attempt at growing sweet potatoes is going well so far.
As soon as the Peruvian Purple potatoes came out, I added more fertilizer to the pot and planted some German Butterball potatoes. So far, so good. I'll add more potting soil to the pot as they grow to encourage layers of potatoes to form.
The Garden of Infinite Neglect has patty pan squash, Millionaire eggplant, Scotch Blue Curled and Lacinato kale, collards, Golden and Lutz Greenleaf beets, Kyoto carrots, loosehead Chinese cabbage, lots of chard, and a row of flowers.
I'm already harvesting Early Girl tomatoes. These are Celebrity Tomatoes.
My first Black Krim has set on a tomato plant that I grew from seed.
This is my first attempt at growing Komatsuna, a Japanese mustard green. A cabbage worm got part of it, but once I dispatched the worm, the plant recovered.
These are the Blue Lake pole beans that I replanted after the raccoon dug them up. They don't seem much worse for the experience.
This is my newest tree, a Haas avocado. All of the fruit that had set fell off. Maybe next year.
I had 6-7 fruit set on the Littlecado tree, but the only avocado left is this one. It may fall off too as it's pretty small. If this tree doesn't produce any avocados next year with the Haas next to it to fertilize it, I'm going to cut it down.
I never promised you a rose garden, but here it is.
I love the color of this rose. It's my best bloomer. Can't remember its name.
My iris bed in back is pretty new. This is the first bloom on my Grandma's Purple Flag, an old time iris.
These yellow iris have been in the ground for several years and are reliable bloomers. The other four varieties did not deign to bloom for me this year. Or last year. Maybe next year.
Most of the front yard is heavily shaded by the two liquid amber trees, but the pink Mexican poppies and blue Lilly of the Nile bloom in June, along with Scabiosa, chrysanthemums, lavender, oregano and marjoram.
My butterfly garden has golden yarrow and Mexican sage in it.
I never got around to planting my gladiolus bulbs this year. This one is a resprout from last year.
So is this lavender gladiolus.
Pots of succulents make lovely drought-tolerant accent plants in our dry climate.
The backyard has been filled with nasturtiums since January. They've dropped a gazillion seeds, so I should have plenty more next year too.
Nemesia is a lovely drought-tolerant flower that bloom all year round for me.
Same with the allysum. It attracts beneficial insects as well, but doesn't self-seed as readily as the Nemesia.
It's time to pick more lavender to make lavender sugar. I've nearly used up my first batch.
Well, once again I’m only close on Harvest Monday. Technically it’s Tuesday since it’s after midnight, but at least this is better than Friday.
I was out of town most of last week, so this is a small harvest for mid June. I harvested my entire garlic crop, 8 oz. They’re tiny heads for the most part, but really tasty. Only one head grew to full size. I’ll have my own home-grown garlic for the next couple of months.
I have to report some results on my Lutz Greenleaf beets that are growing in my Garden of Infinite Neglect. I planted this patch of beets in January 2009 and never got around to harvesting them. Some are going to seed now, and I’m trying to grow a big one for our county fair “big beet” competition. I thinned out some of the smaller ones to give the larger ones room to grow. I’ve heard that Lutz Greenleaf beets are good keepers and don’t get woody even when they’re old. But they’re a year and a half old. I wondered if they could be edible. I cooked them up and they were fine. I’m stunned. Great variety for those of us who don’t get around to harvesting in a timely manner.
News from the henhouse is that Henrietta is in full molt and the coop is full of feathers. Laying is falling squarely on the shoulders (or other anatomical parts) of Henny Penny and Chicken Little. I’ve increased the amount of crushed oyster shells and limestone that I’m feeding the hens. We haven’t had a problem with Henny Penny’s eggs breaking since I did that, but production is still down with only two hens laying.
I got some planting done before we left town. I planted Black Krim, Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter, Roma and Yellow Pear tomatoes, plus Boston Pickling Cucumbers. After the depradation by the digging raccoon (that did not return in my absence, thank God), I’m down to 18 tomato plants, which should be plenty. I replanted the Blue Lake pole green beans that were dug up, and am left with about half of what I planted. That will be plenty.
Good news is that Huntington Beach is getting closer to having a community garden again. The garden committee just signed an MOU with the city to use a plot of land under power lines. Now “all” we need is money for insurance, irrigation lines, and fencing.
Here’s my harvest for the week ending on June 13, 2010.
FRUIT
1.5 oz. blueberries
2.5 oz. strawberries
Subtotal 4 oz. fruit
VEGETABLES
1 lb beets, Lutz Greenleaf
2 oz. cauliflower, cheddar
12 oz. chard
8 oz. garlic
4 oz. squash, patty pan
Subtotal 2 lbs 12 oz. (44 oz.) vegetables
TOTAL 3 lbs produce plus 8 eggs
If you had a harvest, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and post a link to your harvest.
I toil in my garden all day. The critters toil at night. I feel like I’m growing Mrs. MacGregor’s garden.
We could hear them scurrying all night long. Well, at least until 2 am, which is when we went to sleep. This is what I woke up to.
Critters dug up bed #3 last night.
My lovely row of Blue Lake pole beans is no more.
They don't appear to have eaten the beans. I suspect they were after the wonderful worms in the loose soil in my raised beds.
I was worried that they would get my Babcock peaches.
Or the Panamint nectarines.
Or my beautiful Snow Queen nectarines. So far, critters have managed to get the Snow Queens every year and I've never tasted them. There are only four on the little tree, so I may not get any this year either.
They dug up one out of four of the Boston Pickling Cucumbers that I planted yesterday. I quickly replanted it before I took this photo.
Bed #1 is getting densely populated enough that they didn't do much damage here except for the cuke.
They skipped right over Bed #2 with newly planted Black Krim and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes. The miserable looking things on the left are Snow Wind peas. I'm really unimpressed with them.
This is an overview of the back in early June. Looks peaceful enough in the morning.
This is the long view of the back, looking toward the chicken coop, herb garden and three raised beds. Hey, check out those pretty yellow irises!
Here is a photo of one tiny garlic head that I didn't have time to post yesterday for harvest Monday.
Here's another pic that I didn't have time to post yesterday, blueberries and strawberries.
Because the little pond in back was disturbed, and the critters seemed more interested in worms than unripe fruit, I suspect raccoons.
I’ll close on the positive note of how pretty the garden looks and how good my harvests taste. But as for my night visitors–this means war.
Ah, rats. I thought it was still Monday. Somehow it’s gotten to be after midnight, so it’s actually Tuesday. Still, that’s better than posting on Friday. I worked from sunup to sundown in the garden today, and I’m beat.
It’s been a busy week in the garden. I planted Brandywine, Black Krim, and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes this week, all of them plants that I grew from seed. Some of them were tiny seedlings that just sprouted despite having been planted in pots long ago. I guess they’re ready when they’re ready. I couldn’t bear to throw the tiny things out, so they all got planted. Call me crazy, but I now have 25 tomato plants in the ground. Maybe they won’t all make it. But if they do survive, I’m going to be one busy girl come August and September.
As a further mark of my insanity, I also have 10 summer squash plants in various stages of growth. I harvested the first two patty pan squash today, but none of the other plants are close to producing. Again, I just have to hope that they don’t all make it.
A little over half of my Blue Lake pole beans are up, and the first winter squash seedling that I planted in a Smart Pot last Wednesday just poked its head above ground. I can hardly wait for the first green beans, especially since my sugar snap and snow peas are now gone.
I guess the biggest harvest news is that I picked my first two ripe tomatoes yesterday. Naturally, they’re the Early Girls, which went into the ground about a month after my Better Boy and Celebrity tomatoes. Neither of those two plants have red tomatoes yet, but they do have some nice green ones coming along. Those are the plants that were uprooted by the marauding opossum last February. Somehow, they survived.
Here’s the harvest for the past week. Sorry I was too busy and tired to do photos.
Fruit
3 oz. blueberries
3 oz. strawberries
Subtotal 6 oz. fruit
Vegetables
1 lb 12 oz. artichokes
6 oz. cauliflower, cheddar
9 oz. chard
2 0z. garlic
4 oz. kale
5 oz. leeks
2 lbs potatoes, blue
4 oz. radishes
2.5 oz. tomatoes, Early Girl
Subtotal 5 lbs 12.5 oz. (92.5 oz) vegetables
TOTAL 6 lbs 2.5 oz produce plus 7 eggs
If you had a harvest this week, visit Daphne’s Dandelions and post a link to your blog.
Lou Murray's Green World 