Harvest Season

The seasons are on the brink of change again, and harvest time is in full swing at my garden.  Let's take a quick look at what I've gotten thus far:


Cilantro.  Granted, I didn't know what I was doing with it, and didn't harvest often enough when it was a small plant.  Then the weather warmed and the plant began flowering.  When cilantro flowers, it's then called a different name entirely:  coriander.  It's still edible at this point; now it's just the seeds that are harvested and used in Indian dishes.  You could still use the leaves, I suppose, but I'm not sure how good they taste.  I need to research that some more.  But it hardly matters at this point; the stems have dried out and I tossed the whole thing into the compost.





Basil.  I've learned a lot from this herb, also:  harvest early, and often.  Clipping it back aggressively every week or two doesn't appear to hurt it in the slightest.  In fact, the leaves become more vigorous and bushy with every cutting.  Though when basil flowers, the plant does wonders to attract pollinators.  But watch out, because you'll get good ones along with bad.  I've used my basil in soups, in pesto, dried it, and I've still got it coming!

Mint:  same rules as basil.  Not surprising in the slightest, really; they're in the same botanical family.  They grow in a similar fashion and location, are harvested the same way, and have similar pests that like to eat them. (Including humans).

Onions.  These were one of my favorite things to grow!  Vigorous, having little insect damage, and edible at any stage of its life.  We ate bunches of fresh green onions this year, and STILL had enough bulb onions left over for harvest!  We got 10 lbs out of our garden, easy.














Corn.  Though tasty, I probably won't grow this again.  Corn is quite a needy crop, flopping over during a windy day, vigorously sucking every available nutrient from the soil, not growing well next to other plants, and needing WAY more fertilization mid-season than I was willing to provide.  But I got 2 lbs of corn off the cob and safely stored into my freezer, so I count that as a success.

Jalapeno.  My bell peppers may have flopped this year, but these are doing pretty well.  I've gotten some green ones, and then forgot about them for a bit and harvested some red ones, also.  Did someone say salsa?

Tomatoes.  These are my babies; that's why I saved them for last.  I didn't expect to love them as much as I did.  But now I know why the tomato is America's favorite crop...tomatoes are easy and fun to grow, vigorous producers, and gorgeous.  I often found myself making excuses just to go out and play with them:  pruning branches, training the vines, cutting out blighted leaves, watering, fertilizing, weeding, stabilizing trellises, tying additional supports for sprawling vines...the list goes on.  And apparently my work paid off; I've harvested 60 lbs so far...and the plants are still going strong!

Tomato Season!

In my world, August is the season of the tomato.  For some gardeners, the season starts earlier...but I decided to use heirloom varieties this year instead of the plethora of hybrids available as seed, or as transplants at most garden centers in our area.  That means my season starts later than that of other tomatoes.

Nothing against the popular Big Boy, Better Boy, or Early Girl varieties - my garden neighbors have allowed me to take enough of these cultivars to be quite familiar with them - but my garden's goal was canning.  The transplant-ready beefsteak varieties would have worked, but I had loftier goals.

I wanted local, heirloom, uniquely named, canning-style tomatoes.  And for the most part, that's what I got.  But then, the romantic names such as "Green Zebra" and "Red Brandywine" and "Pineapple" distracted me.

"What fun it would be to grow these," I thought.  And indeed, they were fun...but as fun as they were, these cultivars weren't exactly ideal for canning.

Now, just because a variety isn't "specially selected" for canning doesn't mean you can't use it for that purpose.  A Brandywine can find its way into a pint-sized canning jar just as well as a Roma or Amish Paste.  But as I found out the hard way, it just means that you'll have a lot more juice, and not a lot of "meat" in the tomato's wall lining.  In other words, a lot of work to peel and seed the tomato without a lot of reward for the effort.













Great....that means that nearly 26 pounds of tomatoes harvested in a single week boiled down to 5 pints of canned diced tomato.

But on the up-side, they look AMAZING!

There would have been much less work for me had I grown more of these:

This mango-sized beauty is the Amish Paste.  It originally hails from the great state of Wisconsin, and I LOVE THIS TOMATO!!!  Very few seeds, thin skin, and all meat.  Pretty disease resistant, too.  I've had some trouble with blight and insects, so every little defense counts.

But isn't that what gardening is all about?  Learning from things that didn't work as well as you'd hoped.  And it's been fun, seeing the little plants poking their heads out of the soil, then sending out the yellow flowers, and finding tiny green tomatoes hiding within the foliage.

And harvesting!  It's like an Easter-egg hunt, only better...because you can come back to the same hiding place again and again...and always find another ripe tomato, just waiting.

Battling Bugs

So I'm becoming something of a fledgling entomologist in pursuing this organic gardening thing.

The first thing to know about bugs in the garden is that there are good ones (ladybugs and spiders) and bad ones (squash bugs).  Then there's also the neutral ones that act as indicators of overall environmental health, like this Bluet Damselfly I caught perching on a leaf.

Confused yet?  Good, me too.  But that's what we have Google for, right?  I don't know what I'd do without the image search and the wealth of information found in the multitude of gardening forums.

Anyway, the good insects help pollinate flowers and devour pests.  The bad insects, on the other hand, devour plants...and then hatch villainous offspring who continue to finish the task their dastardly forefathers failed to complete:  killing my plants!

Obviously, any gardener is NOT a fan of bad insects in the garden.  But where a conventional gardener heads to the nearest garden supply center to purchase a broad-spectrum insecticide, I'm at a loss.  What's an organic gardener to do when faced by a seemingly endless army of ravenous six-legged creatures?

1:  Learn to identify the insects who crawl, climb, hop, or fly around your garden.  All is NOT what it seems!  For example:  this little guy I caught pollinating my basil:

Contrary to popular belief, this IS NOT a bee!!  This is a syrphid fly, also called a hoverfly.  Like bees, the adult likes to pollinate flowers.  But unlike bees, this fly species eats garden pests during its larval stage.  Then, when it metamorphoses into an adult, it mimics a bee's coloring to protect itself from predators...and becomes a pollinator.



2:  Keep it clean.  As is said in any athletic sport, the best offensive strategy is a good defensive one.  The same can be said of gardening; healthy soil begets healthy plants, which are less appetizing to detrimental insects and their voracious offspring.  This means pulling weeds and  keeping mulches away from the base of the plant; as weeds, grass, mulch, and cracks in the soil surface offer protective places for the bad insects to hide.




3.  Never underestimate the power of mechanical controls.  Yes, by "mechanical control" I mean hand-picking the insects/eggs/larvae off the plant and squishing them.  Or drowning them in soapy water.  Either option works; it just depends how much time you want to devote to bug hunting and their systematic assassination.  :-)

HOWEVER...if the infestation gets to be too much for your plants (as what has happened with my squashes), there's always home-made insecticide.  Just be careful with it; even the home-made stuff can kill the beneficial insects in your garden!

I'm testing a garlic spray now, made of a garlic/castille soap/mineral oil concentrate diluted in water.  More on how that works later.

So how do I know about those little bits of advice?  Easy...I didn't follow the first two, which led me to know the value of Tip #3.  I let my weeds grow up around the edges of my squash, and am now faced with an offspring of these guys:

Squash bugs.  Horrible little monsters!  The adults are immune to just about everything on the market, even stomping with your foot.  Squishing by hand is effective, but very stinky work and only as effective as your ability to catch them.  Squash bugs make a perfectly healthy squash plot go from this:

To this...nearly overnight.  And actually, my plot looks even worse now.  :-(..  

So now I'm stuck with the end option of spraying my squashes with garlic.  After all, I've got nothing more to lose at this point.  Check back for an update about how that works and a recipe in the next few weeks!

Mmmm...home-made tortillas...

So, I'm a baker.  A bread baker, actually.  It started off simple enough, with your banana and zucchini breads...but then, I fell in love.  And of course, as with any new relationship, the inevitable infatuation came along with it.  My progression was slow; experimentation with dessert breads progressed to cookies and muffins, which morphed to sandwich breads, which led to shaped loaves and buns, which expanded to pizza dough, and finally...to tortillas!

I've not purchased a single baked good from the store in 3 years.  And happy to say, I'm still in love with baking.  Imagine that.

It always surprises me how easy bread making is.  The easiest of them all are the tortillas.  Go figure that I tried them last....oh well, c'est la vie.  

Because making tortillas is so incredibly easy - even fun - and cheaper than anything you can find in the store, I decided to post my tortilla recipe and technique here.  

Enjoy!

Home-made Tortillas

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour/cornmeal
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp olive oil
• ¾ cup warm water (about 15-25 seconds in the microwave)

Directions:

1. Combine flours, salt, and baking powder in a large bowl.
   
   
   
   
2. In a separate bowl, mix oil and water. Add to the dry ingredients, and mix until dough comes together, adding more water as needed. Knead for 1 minute, shape into a boule (a baking term for a ball), and let rest in an oiled bowl for 10 minutes.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Separate dough into 8 - 12 pieces and shape each into a ball.  (Amount depends on how big or thick you like your tortillas)
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. On a floured surface, use a rolling pin to flatten each dough ball into 6" rounds, about ¼” thick. If tortilla is still very sticky, dust with flour.  Stack tortillas on a plate.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Heat skillet over medium heat (dry...NO OIL) until very hot.  Cook tortillas one at a time until gently blistered on each side, flipping once during cooking.
   
   
6. Stack finished tortillas on a plate, separated by small paper towel squares to prevent sticking.

You may want to use these for tacos, enchiladas, burritos, or wraps immediately after cooking, but they store well in the refrigerator also.  Just allow them to cool to room temperature, then place them (paper towels and all) in a sealed plastic bag and refrigerate up to one week.  Warm tortillas in the microwave before using.

YUM!!