2011 Locally Grown Patio Produce

The crazy rains throughout May/June in New England, followed by some ridiculously hot temperatures and more rain have been good for my plant babies. Everyone talks about eating local and organic these days, but the money and access is always the rate limiting factor.

We are lucky enough to have our own little patch and okay weather to grow a bit of stuff. A small elevated patio, however is not really productive enough to feed our family of three which includes a ravenous toddler. Yes, you heard me... ravenous. We have yet to see the "picky" moniker that is so common these days. Probably because she has never really been offered dinosaur shaped nuggets, we never order off of the "kids menu" and she would rather eat a whole apple or pear than a Delmonte fruit cup. I can't tell you how many times people stop us and say, "is she going to eat the peel on that whole fruit?". Hmmm... why not, I eat the peel. Fruit cups have brainwashed society into thinking that kids will choke and die on apple and pear peels.

I think also the fact that she "helps" plant the garden by "digging" in the dirt with her kid sized trowel gives her an idea of where the food actually comes from. Post a comment or email me and I can send you some peer-reviewed journal articles providing positive evidence for this. And these are actual community based research trials done in schools, so it's not just anecdotal.

All that being said, I also belong to a organic produce delivery service, Boston Organics and have coordinated set-up a cluster distribution point for the World Peas Community Supported Agriculture group in Charlestown. Boston Organics takes care of the organic and World Peas does the local part (and often organic, but because they are small farmers, they can't afford the USDA certification most times).

Anyway, here are some of my backyard babies before they bear fruit (well more precisely veggies). I'll update the pictures once we get more blooms!

Happy growing!


Snap peas.


Sage and thyme (foreground) Bell pepper (background)


Zucchini (I think I need to thin these out)


Grape tomatoes, lavender and scarlet flax (in the smaller pots in front)


Chives atop of my rain collecting barrel.
We don't have a hose hookup since our patio is on top of the garage on the 2nd floor and the house hose hookup is downstairs by the back door. This is better anyway, because why let all that good rain go to waste?

Basil-nanza!

The basil on my patio has gotten out of control (the picture above is from several weeks before the overgrowth) and some of my tomatoes are vine ripened. This was a good excuse for me to buy a food processor. Actually, I haven't needed much of an excuse to buy a new kitchen doodad as of late (please see the imminent post on the Titan Peeler... and no I didn't make wood shavings from a table leg for dinner). I've always resisted buying a food processor because I have a really good hand blender which is pretty good to make smoothies and soups and is so much easier to clean than a blender/food processor. But I figured since I had so much basil and someday I'm going to want to try to make baby food to convince myself that this will prevent my kid from wanting to eat McDonald's everyday, I should finally break down and get one. This Cuisinart one was very well reviewed and was under 40 dollars. It holds 24 oz, which sounds pretty small, but the plethora of basil I had fit in there just fine and since my kitchen is pretty small it doesn't take up much space in a cupboard, which is key.

Here is one of my breakfasts this week which did not involve the food processor but had some basil and some tomatoes. It looks like a lot of food for a little person like me, but if I don't eat this much before I go to work I get grumpy and hungry by 10:30.








Here is the basil-nanza being washed, then sitting in my new kitchen toy with some olive oil and going into some ice cube trays for use in pesto, dressings, marinades, sauces etc. I figure since it's frozen I won't get really sick of eating basil-y meals in the next couple of weeks because I can spread the consumption out over a few months!

An Uninvited Dinner Guest

It has been a particularly rainy summer in New England, but finally we have gotten some serious heat and sunshine. My arugula was not doing so well with getting drenched everyday, so was starting to look very sad, but with the steamier weather was starting to perk up a little.



Suddenly one morning this week, I went outside to water all my babies and found this!! Eeeeekkk! At first I thought we might have had some hail in the night that shredded the leaves, because this happened to one of my co-workers, but all of the other plants (tomatoes, basil, green beans and various flowers) looked fine.



So I took a closer look and found the culprit. Here is his mug shot.



I think he may be a Cabbage White Caterpillar, but does anyone have any other guesses?

Only one and he devoured all the arugula! He tried to escape the next morning. How rude! At least he can have the decency to stick around so I can see what he turns out to be! So I knocked him gently back into the container and laid some tomato leaves that I had pruned and some basil flowers to see if he would like to sample that buffet. He seemed to be quite picky and went right back to what was left of the arugula, so I guess it must have been pretty tasty.

Oh well. To drown my sorrows I went to a restaurant this week with a co-worker and ordered a crispy calamari, arugula and avocado pizza which was delicious.

Hot Chorizo and Salad with Mustard Sprouts

My mustard sprouts have sprouted and we finally got around to cooking the rest of the sausages that we got at Karl's Sausage Kitchen.

The mustard sprouts were surprisingly mustard-y which is a good thing since my favourite condiment is mustard!



The hot chorizo were not so much hot as they were nicely seasoned, but went very well with the curry ketchup and Sparkling Lingonberry and Apple Juice that we got at Karl's.



Nothing like a weekend to catch up on all the things that you actually want to do/eat!

Sprouts update

I'm pretty impressed at how quickly the mung beans have grown. They have already been harvested, cooked and enjoyed and it has been less than one week. The mustard sprouts are still growing their way into a sandwich so I'll give you another update on those later. I also recently received a Zesty Salad and Sandwich Mix, so that is next on my list to grow.

Here is what the mung beans and mustard sprouts look like after having soaked under water in the jars for night and being cozy in their new sprout home.



Then check out the mung beans after only 24 hours!



36 hours later...





And 96 hours later being showered before they meet the stir-fry pan.





Here they are featured with some grilled scallops that the hubbie grilled on the BBQ because he likes to think that grillin' is a man's job.



I probably could have waited a few more days before harvesting them so that they would get longer, but I was too impatient and wanted to taste them ASAP. Nice and crunchy and no worries about pesticides, fertilizer and dirt residue!

I think this would be a great science experiment/kitchen activity for kids. You could put them in charge of the twice daily rinsing of the sprouts so that they don't go funky and then they could be very proud of their involvement with meal prep. The added bonus is that the results are super fast which appeals to both the level of patience of me and that of a toddler!

Sprouts!

I never like to buy alfalfa sprouts or most other sprouts from the grocery store because I am paranoid about all the outbreaks of E. coli and Salmonella that are reported from not being able to wash them properly. This combined with the fact that I am a sucker for weird kitchen/gardening implements caused me to buy this Seed Sprouter contraption from an online garden store called, Hirt's. I was pretty impressed by the rapid service and prices so I would recommend them from that point of view. Don't know if the thing works yet because I am just on Step 1 of the included instructions, so stay tuned!

I have started to soak the mustard sprout




and the mung bean sprouts.





Tomorrow I will transfer them to their new sprouting environment and in at most one week, I'm hoping to have some tasty results!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part V: More Babies - Green Beans and Arugula

The morning dew makes the veggies happy.

At first I thought my green beans needed more water because the soil looked cracked, but it was the plants busting through the soil. Tadahhhhh!!




And here are some teeny tiny arugula plants. Really... if you squint you can see them. I think they are camera shy.

Last year I tried arugula, but grew it indoors so my light scorched the heck out of them when I went away for a couple of days. Hopefully being outside will help. I'm planning on hiding them under one of the patio chairs for a little shading when it gets hotter.



Green bean arugula salad?

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part IV: Bearing Fruit!!

A baby Roma and a baby cherry tomato!!

I learned today that Roma is determinate. So no pruning.



Cherry tomato is indeterminate so prune away!!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part III: Plant Puberty?!!

My babies are growing up so fast!! I've moved the more delicate ones outside to join their tomato friends. It looks like the tomatoes and basil have hit plant puberty as they have started to flower.





Apparently this means that I should trim the flowers on the basil to prevent woodiness of the stem and to start staking and prune the tomatoes because fruit is coming soon!!

The jalepenos are looking healthy but no signs of coming of age yet. I've also started some green beans but those have yet to emerge from the soil so a picture of dirt didn't really seem too exciting.



I'm so proud of my babies and jealous that they get to hang out on my patio all day while I'm at work.

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part II

It's hot hot heat this weekend. They say it's supposed to get into the 80s, so I've decided to transition my veggies to the outdoors.

I started with the tomatoes to see how they will do since I think they are probably the hardiest of the bunch and then maybe later I'll put the cilantro, jalepenos and basil out.




The tomatoes are enjoying basking on the patio. One of them is looking a little sad and yellow. I think I let him dry out too much or maybe not enough fertilizer. I fertilized them all last week, so we'll see what that brings.

The jalapenos are looking a little less sad. The basil looks great and I debuted some of the cilantro with some shrimp on the BBQ last night. Yum!!

Urban Vegetable Garden Series - Part I

Spring has sprung! Well at least it has indoors in New England. It's still a little brisk outside at night to start planting outside, but my gardening calendar on boston.com said it was time to start sprouting some seeds so here we go!

E and I moved into a house with a very sunny patio in August so I've been excited to see what I can grow back there. Since we don't really have a patch of grass that isn't condo owned and operated, I will have to settle with what I can grow in a container.

So far, this is what my babies look like. We have two types of tomatoes, cilantro, basil and jalapenos. The peppers are being fussy I think, but everything else seems to be flourishing under the fake lights so far.

Up close and personal with the Roma tomatoes:


The cherry tomatoes:


Cilantro!


Basil and sad looking jalapenos:


If everything works out well, then I will be making me some mean salsas in a few months. Can't get more fresh and local than my back patio! Hope they will make it through the transfer outside...