Dinner Tonight: Spaghetti

Okay class, its time for the spelling bee.
Can anyone tell me what S-P-A-G-H-E-T-T-I spells?
Spaghetti? Um, nooo. Any other guesses?
Yes, that's right S-P-A-G-H-E-T-T-I spells EASY!
Great job and thank you!

During September I bottled tomatoes one day. It made a huge mess, was exhausting, etc, etc, etc... And then my tomato plants had the nerve to produce MORE tomatoes! How rude of them! Okay, okay, I was actually ecstatic with the abundant production of my four plants. But after making a huge mess one day, I couldn't justify making the mess over and over and over for just a few tomatoes at a time. So.... I froze them! Yep, I froze tomatoes. Have any of you ever tried this? I got the idea from good old Martha but changed the baking temp and time a little. Basically, you halve the tomatoes, arrange them on a oven-safe cooling rack and bake them at a low temperature for a long time to dry them. I am sure you could also just use a food dehydrator. I did mine at 250 degrees for about 2 hours. I also sprinkled them with salt, pepper and Italian seasoning - ready for spaghetti sauce! Once they are dried out (they still remain fairly mushy), throw them in freezer zip-loc bags and into the freezer! It worked out perfect for preserving my small batches of late tomatoes.

I used some of my frozen goodies tonight for dinner. Check it out! (They will take a little longer to cook than regular bottled tomatoes - they are frozen, people!) Add tomato sauce and you have yourself a meal!!! Have I ever mentioned how MUCH I LOVE EASY???

(Here's my un-attended sauce 15 minutes later. Perfectly lovely and easy. All on its own!)

Garden Gone

Saturday we pulled the final tomato plants from the ground and officially called the garden 'quits' for the year. It was definitely a sad day. This garden has brought me so much joy. I don't exaggerate when I say that it was the best part of my summer.

My top five six favorite aspects of the garden (in no particular order) :
- The adorable chicken proof fence
- Deliciously sweet cobs of corn for dinner
- Digging potatoes - can you say treasure hunt?!
- Watering my little plants each day - aka personal mediation time
- Freakin' amazing tomato plants that out-produced my wildest dreams
- Turning a dirty, leave-collecting, abandoned plot into something green, productive and beautiful 

So long, dear garden, til next year!

Confessions

Ok ok... I admit. I am NOT a consistent blogger. My apologies.

As far as whats been happening around here... My corn is now taller than my fence! Wo-hoo! I have several more zuchinnis and tomatoes showing up. And my potato plants are h.u.g.e! I am so loving loving loving my garden. Its definitely my favorite part of the summer.

Things I have learned... Weeds aren't the end of the world. 'Seven' dust keeps the bugs from eating every new leaf. My lilac tree creates way too much shade for the east side of the garden (this issue really must be addressed next year). And most important, I love to garden.

Food Wise...
Husband and I went on a little weekend get-away, so I didn't have to cook at all Saturday or Sunday :) :) :) :) :) However, before the get-away, eight o'clock on Friday night rolled around super fast and I was starting to feel that onery, panicky, stressed-out anxiety I get when I haven't made a plan for dinner (Does anyone else ever have these feelings???). Rather than lash out unreasonably at Flint, I opened up my recipe box and tried to find the easiest possible thing to make. (Not lashing out really was progress for me.) And boy oh boy did I ever succeed at finding the perfect recipe! Only seven ingredients and hardly any prep at all. And best of all, Flint loved it!!!

BBQ Chicken

Hello Sunshine!

As I turned on my garden sprinkler (just 10 minutes ago), I noticed (for the first time) these little beauties!!!
Ta-Da!!!

I knew that there had been blossoms on my tomato plants a couple weeks ago, but it seemed like nothing was happening. I was wrong! Granted, they are tiny... BUT, they exist. Period! I am curious to see if they do well or not (aren't tomatoes like the single hardest thing to grow?).

PS: Yes, yes, yes, I know. My pictures stink. Real bad. But you see... My cord that connects camera to computer is lost. Forever. And so I am stuck using my dinky phone for all photos. Lame-o. My apologies.

Why garden?

I have dedicated a lot of time this spring to thinking about gardening. And I have been tempted to ask myself:

Why?
Why garden?

I have never been too interested in gardening until this year. I don't even totally know why the sudden change. For my own sake, I am going to try to pinpoint a few reasons, though.

• With the recent disasters in Japan, my husband and I have looked at each other and said, "Are we really prepared for what could happen?" The obvious answer was no, which is frightening. We both come from families that value the idea of self-reliance. I guess I'm thinking gardening falls into that category.
• Having recently married, this summer will be the first time ever that I have my own yard to take care of. I don't know why its different and you suddenly care more when something is your own, but you do.
• I love to eat. And this summer the grocery store will be 80 miles away. Yes, I just said 80 MILES.
• Flowers are pretty. Need I say more?
• My mom does it. And I really like my mom. She's cool. I want to be like her.
• I have had a severe case of Spring Fever. Its true. Ask my doctor. And he said plants were the only cure.
• I grew up on a ranch and we grew hay, too. Being outside and growing things is in my blood.

Here is some more food for thought from Paul McKenzie (a horticulture extension agent in North Carolina)

What about you? Why do you garden?

Onions, Peas, and Weeds, Oh My!

one Saturday of beautiful weather 

+ husband with a free half hour 

= Planted Onions and Peas!!!

My big garden plot still needs some construction (we have a fence and some bushes to tear out). But that didn't stop me! I decided to let my peas and onions be flower bed fillers. I planted four short rows of onions (~100 bulbs total) and 3 short rows of peas (I didn't count these).

(I chose peas and onions to plant because they are frost hardy.)

The ground in this flower bed was so nice! It hardly took any major digging. The downside of such soft good soil was that the weeds had already invaded. There were hundreds of the one-inch-tall-annoyances. Grrrr!

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My short little rows. (I love onions!)

Here are a few of the onion trenches. I poured some water-soluble Miracle Grow fertilizer in the bottom of each trench. (Was that a good idea?) The onion trenches were ~2 inches deep.

 

And here is part of one of the row of peas. The trench was only 1 inch deep - not as deep as the onions. 

This was a great great great day!

Garden Plot Prep Work - Part 1 - Fertilization

Time to start planting is nearly upon us (or so I'm told), but before throwing the little helpless seeds into the real world, I need to do a little work on my garden plot. Anyone else? Oh good...

Today's post will cover fertilizer. This is something very tricky. On one end of the spectrum, you can have soil with too few nutrients and thus, plants that grow very poorly. On the other hand, if you use too much, you can get your soil too 'hot.' This is a very technical term that my mother uses to describe the infamous horse manure incident. Good ole' Dad was sure that his pile of horse manure had sat and composted for enough years that is was ready for garden use. Mom was not so convinced, but Dad persisted. The composted horse manure was incorporated into the soil of one flower bed, and the plants literally burned to death from the heat of strong, not-yet-fully composted horse crap.

It was not pretty.

The end.

So, how to choose fertilizers...