garden 2014 – monadnock mama

I’m so far behind on my blogging, and especially on my garden update posts. This will be a whirlwind tour of the garden over the past three weeks. We’ve had downy mildew, hail stones, and rodents munching on unripened squashes. But, we’ve also had delicious zucchinis, cucumbers, and even some ripe red tomatoes! In fact, we had enough tomatoes to make some delicious roasted tomato sauce for our pizza last night. We would have had more if the hail hadn’t taken out at least half of them while they were still green. The only thing we haven’t tried yet are the lemon cucumbers that I had completely forgotten about. I kept thinking, what’s wrong with these cucumbers? why aren’t they turning green? I’ve decided just to be cool and enjoy what time I have left with my little plants before autumn arrives. I’m still pruning out the bad leaves but I’m not going to obsess, especially since everything still seems to be producing vegetables just fine.

One thing I have learned from this gardening experience is that we moderns have it good. I know that there are people who homestead and provide all of their own food — good for them! But, even people who are providing all of their own food are doing it by and large by choice, at least here in the United States. If they absolutely had to, they could go to a supermarket somewhere (even if it was a long drive) and get some food. Our forebears didn’t have supermarkets. If blight took all their tomatoes, they had no tomatoes. Despite its many faults, I am very, very thankful for modern agriculture. I never have to worry that there won’t be any food available (of course, paying for it is an entirely separate issue), and that is something I think we all take for granted.

Zucchini Fritters, adapted from Damn Delicious

1 large zucchini, grated, strained, and dried as much as possible
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
3 tsp minced garlic (you could use less or more depending on your taste)
1 large egg, beaten
salt & pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil

Grate the zucchini and dry it out as much as possible. I put it in a colander (as the recipe recommended) and patted/smashed it with paper towels until it seemed dry. I probably could have done it more, as my fritters took a really long time to cook through. In a bowl combine zucchini, flour, parmesan cheese, garlic and egg; add seasonings to taste.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. The original recipe states, “Scoop tablespoons of batter for each fritter, flattening with a spatula, and cook until the underside is nicely golden brown, about 2 minutes. Flip and cook on the other side, about 1-2 minutes longer.” I apparently missed this step and scooped mine by the 1/4 cup! They took a long time to cook, but they were so good.

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I know I haven’t been posting very much lately but I have a legitimate reason: my laptop is broken and is currently being repaired. Zane somehow managed to destroy the power jack, so now the battery won’t charge. I never realized how much I relied on having my own computer, until I didn’t have one. Thankfully, Damian is kind enough to let me use his desktop to edit photos and write posts, though I have to battle the tween for time to do so. These past couple weeks of gardening have been a serious lesson in humility for me. It’s not that I was ever really bragging, but looking back through my first month or so of garden posts one might assume that everything was coming up roses (or tomatoes, so to speak) and that perhaps I was just a naturally talented gardener. But, then things got real. First there was the blossom end rot, now…the blight . Oh, the horrible blight!!! My poor tomato plants are losing many of their lower (and some middle) leaves, and I am so scared that the plants will die before the fruit ripens. Stupid nature! Why must everything be a competition? I just want to grow a very humble garden — can’t you just leave me be? Obviously, the answer is no. Besides that, everything is doing great. We even have little cucumbers — so cute! — and we harvested some summer squash this week, too. Zane is so excited every time we go out there to see what might be ready. Despite the hassles it’s totally worth it because his joy trumps blight any day of the week.

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I mis-labeled last week’s garden update, which should have been weeks 4 & 5, so now we’re on the sixth week! The garden is still blooming at full capacity, but there have also been a few setbacks. I will chalk this up to my being a total newbie at gardening. The first problem I’m having is something called blossom end rot , and it is just a horrid as it sounds. Zane first noticed it when he picked one of our butternut squashes prematurely. It looked really shriveled and gross, and the end was all rotten. I thought, oh, well, it was dead anyway. But, after a closer inspection of the other baby squashes, I noticed that several of them had the same problem! I Googled “end of butternut squash rotten” and found out that this is actually a common problem, and is caused by a lack of calcium. The roots could have trouble uptaking the calcium in the soil if there is a dramatic change in watering patterns (which could definitely have happened while we were on vacation and it was SO hot here in New Hampshire), or if the soil was not enriched enough to begin with (which could definitely have happened when I had to move my garden beds, thus disturbing my soil layers). Regardless of the cause of the problem, the solution seems to be a foliar spray, which I purchased from Amazon and had overnighted. I removed all the rotten fruits and bathed the heck out of the roots in a foul-smelling mixture of liquid seaweed and water. The good news is that the rest of the new fruits actually look fine. In fact, we have a fully ripe zucchini that we are going to eat tonight in one of my favorite dishes (see recipe at the end of the post). The second problem I’m having is also quite common, and that is sunburned leaves. I think I did a little too much watering of the leaves during the middle of the day (should have just concentrated on the soil) and now some of my leaves have little burn marks. Well, live and learn! The third problem is that two of my pepper plants are not doing well at all (read: practically dead). I think my aggressive removal of the blossoms, in the hopes that I could get the plants to grow larger, was a big mistake. I gave the peppers the seaweed treatment, too, in the hopes it might bring them back to life.

Our dinner tonight, based on the recipe
“Tuscan Style Pasta with Chickpeas, Zucchini and Rosemary”
from Vegan Planet , by Robin Robertson

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 small or 1 large zucchini, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/4 inch thick half-moons
2 garlic cloves, minced, or about a tablespoon of jarred, minced garlic
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
One 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes
One 15 ounce can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper to taste
1 pound of rotini, or similar

Directions:
Cook the pasta, drain, and set aside. While the pasta is cooking, sauté the zucchini in the olive oil until slightly softened. Add the garlic and saute for about 30 seconds, then stir in the rosemary, tomatoes, chickpeas, and seasoning and cook for about 10 minutes to blend the flavors . Combine with pasta, and enjoy!

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We were on vacation last week and I didn’t have an opportunity to post a weekly update on our vegetable garden so this is a two-fer. My dad kindly agreed to take care of our vicious cat (he has scars to prove it — bad, bad Ollie!) and also to keep an eye on my gardens and water them as needed while we were gone. I was really worried that, with all the heat NH had last week, I might come back to a wilted pile of plants. Boy, was I wrong! Our garden is literally in bloom. There are blossoms galore on most of the plants, and some are even starting to look like, well, vegetables! We have a jalapeno pepper that is almost ready, and the start of some pretty tasty looking zucchinis and squashes. All four tomato plants have little yellow blossoms and grew about a foot while we were gone. I’m really glad I put the cages around them before we left. The cucumbers are now growing out from the main plant and, unfortunately, attacking anything they can reach. I’ll have to keep my eye on them! My neighbor also donated a couple more raspberry bushes, so we actually have a little raspberry patch now. I don’t know how well they will do this year, but I’m crossing my fingers, and the worst case scenario is that we have to wait until next year for berries. The only thing that suffered was my cilantro, which is now about 2 feet tall and has flowers — probably not much good as an herb anymore.

We’ve been trying to use up our explosion of rainbow chard by making green smoothies. I like to chop up a fresh pineapple, which I divide into four sandwich bags and freeze. Then, when I want to make a smoothie, I combine a whole banana, a bag of frozen pineapple, and about four leaves of chard and blend it with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water with an immersion blender. It is delish — toddler & husband approved.

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This update is a couple of days late, but with all the rain and just life being busy in general this is the best I can do. So…the garden has exploded. I’m amazed! Our beans sprouted and are really thriving, which makes me so happy. Pole beans are so satisfying to have in a garden because they grow really fast. Also, I finally got the raspberry bush planted in the ground (it is not exactly thriving, but I still have hope!). I noticed that a bunch of my pepper plants were producing buds already, even though they are not very tall (maybe 10 inches?). I read a bit online about what to do, and several people suggested removing the buds so that the plant would put more energy into growing taller. So, I plucked off all of the buds and I am hoping that the plants will grow some more and then try flowering again later in the summer. If I destroyed my chances to have peppers by meddling with the buds I guess that’s a lesson learned!