Our water garden and the summer garden status

The continuous extreme heat and dry conditions this summer are making it really difficult to maintain the garden. Last night though, a storm passed over bringing much needed rain. Yet at this point, we're basically trying to just keep plants alive. So we haven't had much to harvest compared to years past. Yet one crop that is producing are the grapes. The plants themselves have been doing well, and this is the first time since we planted them a few years ago that we've gathered a crop. Yay! To deter the birds, who also really love grapes, we have several meshes covering the plants. We still have been picking lots of grapes and let me tell you, they are tasty little jewels! I'm thankful for them.

A bright spot in the garden is this new little pond and water garden. In the spring I showed you the beginnings of it. Now it's pretty much finished, although we want to transplant irises into the spot in front of the wall. 

I can take no credit for this project. My husband did all of it, including constructing the form to pour the concrete fountain. It was rather complex. Water is pumped up through one side of the form and then the water trails down over the top. Inside the circular openings he made recesses for plants. A "red creeper" plant is there in the middle. The water lilies and lotus in the pond were gifts from a co-teacher of mine who has a water garden. The others we purchased. Of the whole project, the biggest expense were the patio rocks.

water lily

submergible plants

The pond water is mostly rain water collected from a rain barrel. The plants and submergible plants help control algae growth. We're still deciding whether to get a couple goldfish to help with algae and mosquito larvae. But since our pond isn't deep enough for fish to overwinter, we'd have to find another pond for them at that point.

I can't tell you how much enjoyment and nourishment this water garden brings. Lots of birds and insects visit it daily, including sparrows, goldfinches, catbirds, and honeybees. When it's this hot and dry out, it's so refreshing to hear the babbling water, and to see an oasis of happy green plants!

 

Transitioning from spring to summer, and a kohlrabi stir fry recipe

Most weekends in May have been spent working hard in the garden. The growing season is early this year, so it's a challenge to keep up! Yet we're making good progress on the water garden (yay!) and moved a giant pile of rocks that was next to it. Now that area is much more beautiful with small native plants we planted. I'm so excited about this new spot in our garden! I hope to follow up with a post on it next month.

This month we enjoyed lots of sugar snaps, which are now gone, but with okra seeds planted in their place. For lunches and dinners we have been eating many salads with arugula, buttercrunch, endive, and purple lettuces. As the temperatures rise, those salad days are also coming to a close. The young tomato plants that we started from seed are now in the ground, with pesto and thai basil plants nearby.  Green been plants are growing, the grapevines are heavy with tiny green grapes, and a row of carrots are waiting to be dug up. Bouquets have been full with daisies and bachelor buttons. This week the first echinacea and African daisies opened and so begins the transition from spring to summer. I eagerly await the first zinnias!

 

This month we picked a lot of kohlrabi, which grow great around here. In a previous post I mentioned one of the ways we like to fix kohlrabi is in a stir fry.  Last night I made a stir fry with garlic, shiitakes, kohlrabi, and bok choy, and the last of the sugar snaps, all from our garden. It was delicious! There was also onion from the store as ours aren't ready yet.  If you need a (sort of) recipe for this, here's how I made it.

1. Melt about a tablespoon of butter in a wok or pan on medium heat and add chopped shiitake mushrooms. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. The mushrooms soak up the butter fast, but continue to cook them for a few minutes until they shrink a bit and release some liquid.

2. Add sliced onion and cook for a few minutes. At this point the pan was a little dry so I add a small drizzle of wok oil, flavored with thai basil and lemongrass.

3. Add chopped garlic and the chopped kohlrabi. Stir and add a swirl of soy sauce. Cook the kohlrabi a few minutes until they begin to get just tender.

4. Add the chopped bok choy, stir, and put the lid on.

5. Add the sugar snaps and a cup of hot miso broth. Simmer just until the bok choy and sugar snaps are tender.

6. Add soy sauce and sriracha sauce to taste. Serve over rice or noodles if you like. Enjoy!

A good day in the garden

bird's eye view, left side

bird's eye view, right side

This afternoon began my summer break! I knew that once school was out, I wanted to be in the garden. And so I was, for three plus hours, weeding, planting, etc. Above are two peeks at our sprawling garden as seen from my studio deck. Photos show it as is, with no prettying up, or removing hoses or weed buckets.
 

Here's what I worked on today: 

` Cut back the rose bush that had finished blooming. 

` Walked to the garden center that is dangerously close to our house and yet returned with only a 4-pack of spilanthes. After clearing spent daffodil leaves, I planted them between the bulbs. 

` Weeded between the onion rows. Boy was that a mess.

` Heavily trimmed back the catnip and mint, and put some mint leaves in my ice water, and gave catnip to the kitties lounging lazily inside. 

` Thinned the African daisies. 

` Cut dead canes on the raspberries and ate a ripe golden raspberry or two in the process. 

` Cleared a place to finally plant cosmos seeds. 

` And weeded throughout other plots. 

It was a good day!

Beginning a water garden

digging the pond, day one

Last year I talked about wanting to convert an area of our garden into a bird and butterfly garden. Well this is the spot. This is prime gardening property on the south of our house, but for a while it has been a blend of plants we want and things we have neglected. For instance, we like the sedums, bachelor buttons, forsythia bushes, and the nectarine tree, but there is also a pile of rocks covered in sprawling chocolate mint, a pond liner that had been waiting to go in the ground, and a host of weeds.

Well, last weekend my husband and I began tackling this project. While my husband was digging the hole for the pond, I pulled weeds. We worked out there Saturday and Sunday, sweating in the 90+ degree heat and I'm happy to say it's starting to come together. The next step this weekend will be to get more flat rocks to surround the pond and figure out how we want to move the water. This may be one of those projects that gets bigger the further you get into it. But I know once it's done, we will surely enjoy the water feature. And the birds will too.

To get started we have been consulting our local pond and water garden store, Water's Edge. They have a page on their website with a host of information about planning your water garden, water quality, plants, fish, moving the water, etc. 

If you have a water feature of your own or know of any resources, please share with us!

digging the pond, day two

oh boy, kohlrabi

This week I got a roll of film developed and a few shots are from late winter/very early spring, such as the one of the seed starts above. And I thought gosh, that seems so long ago. Everything was still brown outside then! Plus those kohlrabi and broccoli starts have grown so much since then, and that was encouraging, to see how far they've come.

While they're not ready to harvest yet, there's a couple ways we really enjoyed preparing them last year, raw and cooked. They're a good snack cut into matchsticks and dipped in a little dressing. Several times I also made a kohlrabi and beet salad. We also like to stir fry chopped kohlrabi with onion, garlic, and bok choy and serve it over rice. Spring is yummy.

Naturalizing

penstemon

One thing I love about having a garden are the surprises, the fun surprises. Not the aphid kind, which we had earlier this spring, probably as a result of a mild winter, but anyway. I mean the surprise of finding volunteer plants or plants that have reseeded themselves. At the end of a growing season, we tend to allow plants go to seed. This creates food for birds and then in the spring we find little plants popping up, that we didn't have to put there. They have naturalized. This spring there are a number of young penstemon plants popping up around the large mother plant. Likely we will let them get a little bigger and transplant them. Since plants often naturalize in places where we may not want them to stay, we have to edit. The african daisies are a plant that we always have to do this with, because they are such profuse seeders.

This spring we've also noticed marigolds and parsley popping up, which we will also relocate. Hollyhocks also weave their way in among our vegetables. Last year we transplanted some but they didn't fare well. So this year we will leave them where they are, in among lettuce rows and next to the tulips, and so forth. Such is our natural garden, and we like it that way.

What is popping up in your garden?

penstemon at left

Blooming now : A few favorites

When I need a little quiet I walk through the garden and simply look around. Today I'm sharing three plants from our garden that are blooming.

 

This money plant (Lunaria annua) reseeds itself, and we find them popping up all over our garden. They are originally from heirloom seeds gathered from my Grandmother's garden years ago.

 

Sage

We bought this plant last year from the garden center at the end of our street and its lavender colored blooms are just beginning to open.

I like the drama of these black parrot tulips as they unfold.

This year's sugar snap trellis

Last year we used the dried okra stalks left in the ground as a natural trellis for the new sugar snaps. That method worked up to a point but then the sugar snaps grew too large for the okra stalks to support them. So this year we are trying something else. With some leftover wire fencing and wooden stakes we built a trellis that looks like my drawing (below). To do this, drive the wooden stakes into the ground and then secure the fencing to the stakes either by wrapping the edge of the fence around the end posts or staple or tie it to the stakes.

Most of the stakes we used are T shaped because we then drape a netting over the entire bed to keep out the birds. The house sparrows around here really like to eat the tender leaves.

There's lots of ways to make a trellis. Do you grow sugar snaps? What trellis method do you like?

Spinach Salad and Spinach Recipes

Spinach. I really do love spinach. And I'm not sure why exactly because on it's own it doesn't carry a lot of noticeable flavor. But it makes me feel good. Lately I've been craving greens and thankfully some of our razzle dazzle and curly spinach wintered over. In the photo you can see some small new spinach starts planted between the grown spinach.

We like to make big spinach salads and top with whatever veggies, seeds, and fresh or dried fruit we have. Tonight I'm sauteing cubes of tofu in soy sauce until brown, to add protein. So tonight's salad will have spinach, diced carrot and celery, sunflower seeds, raisins, homegrown sprouts and tofu, all piled up pillowy and tall, drizzled with Newman's lite honey mustard dressing. Homemade bread on the side. Yum.

Here's a few other spinach recipes I'd like to try:

Garlicky greens (can use spinach or kale)

Indian-Spiced Lentils with Spinach (also uses another springtime favorite, rhubarb)

Wilted Spinach Salad with Asian Pears, Blue Cheese, and Pecans

Spinach with Shiitake Mushrooms (I would probably substitute some of our dried hot peppers for the piment d'espelette, and use a mixture of butter and olive oil to sauté the shallots and mushrooms.)

Happy Spinach!

Getting started

seed starts, week one

Two weeks ago today I had a couple wisdom teeth pulled and while I lay dozing with a gauze filled mouth, my husband sat beside the bed with seed trays and planted the first seed starts for our garden. He's been so eager to get our garden going this year; he began buying seeds back in December. Since then we have amassed quite a collection of vegetable and flower seeds.

seed starts, week two

Currently he has started seeds for everything from kohlrabi to strawberries to snapdragons and cockscomb. The trays are on a wire rack in a south facing window waiting for their turn outside.

kale, cilantro, and onions in the background

collards

Without a proper winter I am baffled that it's really time for spring. But the robins are busy, our fruit trees are showing tiny green and pink tips, the yellow petals are slowly unfolding on the forsythia, the daffodils are blooming, and even a few dandelions have been spotted. Our kale, spinach, cilantro, and collards wintered over. And now I am about to gather a handful of kale and collards to make for soup tonight. This recipe by Amy Chaplin for creamy cauliflower soup with greens is very good. I made it once in January, except without the dill.

But before I go, one goal I want to consider over the growing season is this: I want to be more observant. While I have always been an observer, sometimes in my daily life I get busy in the doing and by the end of the day I'm like, uh, what happened? So I would like to take notice of what is growing in the garden, be a little more aware of the changes and growth, and in turn hopefully be more appreciative.

Leaves from the autumn garden

I'm not sure why exactly, but I absolutely love walking among the autumn leaves, looking at their shapes and colors, and gathering a few to take home. Sometimes they simply dry and curl up on my table, or I'll press one into my sketchbook, as I did earlier this week with a gingko. Other times I will draw and paint them. They are such inspiration to me. Perhaps my childhood in the mountains plays a role in this.

Anyway, this afternoon while walking through the garden I gathered a few. The grape leaves are falling from the vines, the red crab apples too. Some of the nasturtiums have frozen yet others remain strong. The spinach, lettuces, arugula, and radishes are flourishing right now, and the turnips, carrots, beets, broccoli, kale are doing well too. Soon the temperatures will remain low enough that we will need to build the cold frames. This winter we hope we can extend the growing season of the fall garden with the cold frames.

Do you use cold frames in the fall/winter?

Pepper harvest

Last night in anticipation of autumn's first frost, we covered tomato plants, brought in the potted plants, and harvested all the peppers. There are five bags of sweet and hot peppers! So now I am on the hunt for pepper recipes. Do you know of any to add to the list?

Roasted Tomato Soup
Cream of Red Pepper Soup
Sweet Pepper and Lentil Soup and Romesco Sauce (also on that page)
Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Red Pepper Vinaigrette
Fusilli with Sweet and Hot Peppers, Fava Beans, Lemon, and Olives
Bell Pepper Egg-in-a-Hole

Matt's squash boats

When my husband cooks he gets creative, and never tells me what he's making. It's always a surprise. :) Last night he grilled these squashes, filled with an array of garden goodness. When I asked him what he did (since I was going to report it here today!) he said he sauteed onion, garlic, shitake mushrooms till tender. Then added fresh tomatoes and spinach till the spinach cooked down, just a few minutes. I did see him splash a bit of wine into the pan. Then he spread the sauteed veggies into the halved and hollowed out delicata squashes, sprinkling on Vermont cheddar and fresh dill. Or I think thyme would also taste good. He said he was going for a spinach pie kind of flavor. Then he wrapped them in foil, putting two halves together, and grilled them about 30-40 minutes and I can tell you they were yummy! 

Signs of autumn

mornings are cool and dewy again, optimistic, orange and red marigolds nestled with pink zinnias and gomphrena, the mint trails with one last blooming, the delicata squash have all been harvested, the last of the green beans are picked, we are beginning to gather the first leaves of arugula, spinach, and radishes from the fall garden, peppers are abundant, green tomatoes hang on the vine and we wonder if they will ripen, ash seeds cover the stairs, a few yellow leaves fall, squirrels busily bury walnuts, windows are open and the skies are bright blue, night arrives at 7:30.

Freezing

 

According to the calendar, today is the last day of summer. Sigh. And today I finished the last of our garden strawberries that we had frozen from early in the season. Sigh again. They were so good. We used them mostly in smoothies and today I blended strawberries with some of our frozen peaches, a bit of vanilla greek yogurt, frozen banana, a dash of milk, about three ice cubes, and a splash of lemon juice for jazziness. Yum.

I think freezing is so easy. Last year we had a surplus of tomatoes and decided to freeze them for use in spaghetti sauce, chili, etc. If you've never tried freezing, simply wash the whole fruit well and remove any mushy spots. Then lay them out to dry on a towel. Once dry, spread the fruit onto a cookie sheet and put in the freezer. When they are frozen through, you can store them in containers or gallon zip top bags. We didn't even bother to remove the skins prior to freezing. I find it just as easy to remove the skins when I am ready to cook with them. All you have to do is dunk the whole frozen tomatoes into hot water for about a minute then off slide the skins.

Do you freeze some of your garden produce?

Delicata squash

This is the first year my husband and I have planted delicata squash. Last year we bought a couple regionally grown squashes from the grocery store and really liked them. They reminded me so much of sweet potatoes which are one of my favorite autumn foods. So this spring, we planted two mounds at the back edge of the garden with about three plants (from seed) in each mound. Thankfully, the plants spread and flourished all through the hot summer. Now that some of the older leaves are dying back we have just begun to harvest them. (I believe M. said he counted about forty squash out there!) Two nights ago we ate one that he stuffed and grilled, so good. Today I picked these three, along with zinnias and gomphrena. (I'm still all about the gomphrena.)

Anyway, the little research I've done on harvesting and storing delicata squash suggest a few things: 

1. Use a serrated knife to remove the squash from the plant. Leave part of the stem attached to the squash, it is supposed to store longer that way. The stems do snap off easily so if this happens as it did on one I picked, eat that squash first. 
2. To cure or not to cure: I have read different views on this. What's your take on it? Are the squashes sweeter tasting if kept at room temperature a few days after picking? 
3. For the long term, store the squash in a cool dry place, around 50 degrees. 

Have you grown delicata squash before? What have you learned?

Trying something new, gomphrena

This year we expanded our planting space to improve a strip of land behind my studio. It's by the alley, where the trash gets picked up and honestly has never been tended. We killed the weeds by covering the area with epdm rubber, (which we had leftover from construction projects) and leaving it there for several weeks. Old carpets could also have been used. Then we raked out the dead weeds and removed the gravel to prepare to plant. The soil isn't great back there but it's suitable for flowers. This season we got it partially planted and hope to completely fill it next year. For now a section is filled with zinnias and globe amaranth, or gomphrena. I had never grown globe amaranth before but really am enjoying them. And they are great for this spot, as it is very sunny and dry, and they tolerate drought and heat, which we have certainly had in abundance this summer. I want to harvest some to dry but for now will tuck a few into zinnia bouquets.

Another new plant we're trying this year is delicata squash. Which I hope to talk about here soon.

Did you try something new in the garden this season?

Okra

This week we've been eating okra almost daily. It is tasty cooked on its own or added to other dishes. A few of our favorite ways to prepare okra are:
* Saute chopped okra in a little canola oil until tender and sprinkle it with sea salt and pepper.
* Dip chopped okra in a beaten egg and then bread it in cornmeal. Lightly fry it in a little canola oil until browned and crisp on the outside. It will be tender inside.
* Add okra to beans, rice, squash and tomatoes.
* Add okra to gumbo.
* And I just came across a recipe for okra curry I want to try soon.

Yet okra grows fast and if it gets over mature it is too tough to eat. If it makes a hard, crunchy sound when you cut into it, then you know it's going to be fibrous. At this point you can either leave other ones you suspect are too mature on the plant to dry and collect the seeds for next year, compost the okra, or use them to make art.

Okra has a beautiful shape and children and adults alike may enjoy printing with them. I use watercolor paint and brush a little color on the flat cut side. Then press it firmly to paper. You can talk about pattern making and counting with young children as they make their prints. Try it!

Inviting Pollinators

Usually when August hits, I look around the garden and want more flowers. Most of the ones we planted have naturally run their course. We just don't have many late summer bloomers. Also, this year we planted an area of the garden which we had never sown before. Without much planning we planted cosmos, bachelor buttons, chammomile, sedum, catnip, and basil. It is part spillover herb patch and flowers. All summer I've been looking at this spot and imagining it as a bird and butterfly garden, full of native plants, as a place to encourage more pollinators.

So the question is, what variety of flowers do we plant that bloom throughout the season and also attract pollinators?

Answer: This site, Pollinator Partnership has exactly what I am looking for. On their planting guide page, you type in your zip code, and it gives you a free PDF to download, specific to your ecoregion. We are in the Prairie Parkland ecoregion. In addition to lots of information about the importance of supporting pollinators, understanding your ecoregion and pollinator traits, how to set up your landscape, etc., towards the end of the PDF there are charts showing trees, shrubs, perennial flowers, and vines to plant that attract pollinators. The charts also list the plant color, when it blooms, the size, soil and sun needs, and the pollinators it attracts. Bingo! Now I'm a kid in a candy shop, looking through and picking out ideas for next year. I'm glad to see we have some already on the list and hope to combine those with other native varieties to prolong the season. The pollinator.org website is a great resource, whether your garden consists of one or more potted plants or takes up your entire yard, check it out if you haven't already!

Savoring the fruits

I have to admit that the sweltering temperatures in recent weeks have greatly diminished my garden time to actually, well, almost nothing. Except for strolls about the garden and general looking around. No, my husband has been the diligent one, enduring the heat, checking the tomatoes, removing the bugs, pulling weeds, and bearing the patient task of watering. And I have felt somewhat guilty in my lack of attention.
But then the other night in "The Shape of a Year" (a book Shari gave me) I read how this time is "the season of savoring the fruits." Jean Hersey goes on to say that our hurried springtime race to get things in the ground has relaxed. The garden "rolls along" now, and for better or worse it's pretty much what it is going to be.
So I think maybe the garden doesn't really need us busying ourselves as much right now, (other than watering, and checking, and harvesting.) Maybe our gardens just want the attention of our gaze. Maybe for a while we simply savor and appreciate the successful harvests (and perhaps even those that failed) and be very grateful.

I thought I'd share a few of my favorite things in the garden, here as we find ourselves already at the end of July.

One of our edamame patches. Last year was the first year we planted edamame and really enjoyed them so this year we planted three patches, at different times so hopefully we'll have steady picking. The plants have proven to be very heat tolerant.

edamame pods growing

One of our green bean patches, with pepper plants behind it. We're growing two bush bean varieties, including flat Italian. When the plants were just popping up from the ground there were a few rabbits that plowed them down. So the fence is to keep out those munchers!

I think these lilac peppers are so pretty.

To me, it just isn't summer without okra.

Nor do flower bouquets seem as cheery without zinnias. I love having them and they seem to love me picking them, because they just keep blooming.

Last night's supper with yellow squash, okra, peperoncinis, roma tomatoes, and basil from the garden. Yum!

What are you savoring from your garden?