Kitchen Garden Day

Kitchen Garden Day is being promoted by Kitchen Gardeners International. They suggest on Sunday, August 23, to open your garden gate wide to allow people to tour your vegetable garden. No matter how large or how small, even if it is a few pots of vegetable plants on your back porch or patio, share your excitement about gardening with your friends, family, the neighborhood, the county. Well, you get the idea. This initiative promotes the idea of growing healthy food, saving money and energy (such as fuel, not your own energy...lol). It also hopes to encourage a new generation of gardeners and to re-kindle a flame in those who have dug in the dirt in the past. Besides, it would be fun just to get together for an afternoon.

According to the KGI newsletter "The United Nations has estimated that we will need to increase world production by 70% by the year 2050 if we are to keep up with population growth. Put in another, more sobering way, we will need to grow more food over the course of the next 40 years than we have produced over the course of the past 10,000 years combined." Having an edible garden will help to supply food to this growing world population.

For more information about the Kitchen Gardeners International go to http://www.kitchengardeners.org

I know most of you plant a garden as a hobby. Perhaps now you will realize that your hobby is an important contribution to your health, the greening of America, and to society in general.

If it is too late to make plans for a garden tour this year, put it on your calendar for next year.

National Community Gardening Week

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack proclaimed August 23-29 National Community Gardening Week. A community garden is an opportunity to educate everyone about where food comes from, either a Farmers Market or a garden. This exposure to growing our own food is important to generations of healthy eaters.

The People's Garden is located on the grounds of the USDA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is the nation's demonstration plot that puts into action the gardening concepts that the USDA emphasizes--providing healthy food, air, water quality. The plot offers the opportunity to teach environmentally responsible practices and offers exhibits for the public. Read more about it at The People's Garden site at http://www.usda.gov/peoplesgarden

Perhaps it would be a good time to look around your community to establish a community garden next year. We have several active, thriving farmers markets in our county, but I am not aware of a community garden.

Do you have any experience with community gardens? If so, perhaps you can share here and give us some info on how this works. Thanks.

Amish Gardens

Candy onions at the market

Farmers bringing in the hay.

Last week we camped in Shipshewana, IN in the heart of Amish country. Every Amish/Mennonite household has a garden it seemed. We enjoyed our drive through the countryside observing a completely different way of life compared to ours. The Amish are friendly and always waved to us.

This is just one of the enormous homes with lovely garden.

Pumpkin Carving Time

Oh no, it isn't pumpkin carving as in designing jack-o-lantern faces. This carving is very important at this time of the year though. We have four grandsons, ages 4-9, who always pick out their Halloween pumpkin while it is growing on the vine. This weekend Grandpa took them out to the pumpkin patch so they could designate their pumpkin. In order to remember whose is whose, G'pa came up with the idea of carving their names on the pumpkins they choose. He uses a Dremel power tool and bit to write each boy's name. You could also use a sharp knife to etch a name or initials on the pumpkin. It is fun to watch the pumpkin grow larger, and the names stretch right along with it. This year the boys picked out a pumpkin for the new baby girl in the family too.

My husband is always trying something fun for the kids. One year, the boys built wooden boxes and laid a cucumber inside each box. As the cucumber grew, the box formed around it making it a square cucumber. It worked pretty well, but they discovered the strength of the growing cukes when they grew big enough to pop the box apart. It was an odd looking cucumber and provided a lot of laughs and conversations.

Cauliflower Salad Recipe Re-discovered

Alright, I admit that I really need to go through my recipe box and re-organize. I happily discovered this Cauliflower Salad recipe when rummaging for a different salad recipe in one of the index card file boxes which house my recipes. Yes, filed in S for salad, not C for cauliflower. (My daughters laugh at my filing method....)

This is a special recipe because it is written out in my mother's distinct Zaner-Bloser handwriting which she taught as a second grade teacher. Beautiful writing on a yellowed blue lined sheet of paper. She passed away in 1993, so finding this brought back great memories of sharing recipes.

I made up the salad, and, after the first bite, my husband said, "This is good." I haven't made it for awhile as you can tell from this story. It was a refreshing way to use up the cauliflower and lettuce we are in the final stages of harvesting. The dressing would be good for any veggie salad I think, easily prepared and kept in the refrigerator if you can't use all of it at one time. Enjoy...

Cauliflower Salad

1 head lettuce

1 lb. bacon, fried and crumbled

1 medium onion, chopped

1 head of cauliflower, broken up

1/2 c. parmesan cheese (I used colby shredded cause that's what I had)

Layer above ingredients in order.

Mix:

1 c. sour cream (light would be okay to use if you like the flavor)

1 c. mayo (I used light Miracle Whip dressing)

1/2 c. sugar

Pour over salad. Toss before serving. It would be fun to experiment adding other veggies and ingredients such as raisins, nuts, sunflower seeds.....

Thanks, Mom.

Green Bean Harvest Time

Here they come!! The beans are on the bushes and picking has begun. Hooray! Green beans are the second most popular plant for gardeners after tomatoes. We picked our first crop this week and cooked them up in a big pot of boiling water along with potatoes, onions, and bacon. Add seasoning, and let it simmer for 45-60 minutes or till tender. The first batch of beans are always the best, and this pot was deeeee-licious.

My husband staggers the plantings so that they all don't mature at the same time. In this way we will just be finished picking the first planting when the next planting will be ready...ideally that is the way it should go...He usually plants another batch every three weeks. Just be aware of how many days till you can harvest the variet of bean you chose. Check the information on the back of the seed packet. Don't plant them too late in the gardening season or they won't be ready before the first frost. Bean plants do not like frost.

The first pickings should be worth your while, getting lots of crisp, tender beans from healthy bushes. Picking the beans encourages the plant to grow more beans. I don't like them when the pods have mature beans in them because the beans are tough. Everybody has a different take on their favorite flavor and texture, so if this is your first attempt at growing green beans ( also known as snap beans or string beans in different parts of the country), you can experiment with the maturity of the beans.

As the bean plants get bigger and thicker, you may have a problem with mold/fungus if there is too much moisture. Moist soil keeps the beans growing, but avoid over watering. I know Mother Nature may interfere with this plan by dumping rain on the garden, so work with her as your partner in gardening. Keep your eye on weather forecasts to judge how you care for your garden.

In the next few weeks I am going to experiment with a few green bean dishes and give you a report on the recipe. If you have a great bean dish you like to prepare for your family, please send it so I can try it too. Thank you.

Pesky Tomato Problems

Tomato season is fast approaching and I know some parts of the country are in the thick of it. A member of the yahoo group I joined, The Veggie Patch, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheVeggiePatch/ suggested a resource for identifying what the problem is for the plant by having very clear pictures. Click on the photo, then read the symptoms. The page includes suggestions for controlling the disorder.

The link to this helpful information is
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/publications/tomatoproblemsolver/

Thanks Dev in OK..

Add the Herb, Basil, to Your Fresh Veggies Stir Fry

Fresh veggies from the Garden in an easy stir fry.

All of these vegetables, peas, brocolli, Swiss chard (the pinkish color), onion, zucchini, green pepper were grown in our garden. The yellow squash was given to us by our neighbor. Growing the veggies and harvesting them may be the hardest part of the preparation for a stir fry, but chopping them up is very time consuming. My DH chopped all of these for me.

After that, stir fries are so easy once you get the extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) into the pan. No, I don't use a wok. just a large skillet. Experiment a bit on the length of time to cook them. Some individuals like the vegetables warm, but crispy. We like ours cooked more than that, so I add a little tiny bit of water to the pan to steam them after the frying. So I guess I should call the dish a stir-fry-steam. I added fresh basil to this concoction giving it lots of flavor. When using fresh herbs, add them at the end of the cooking time to get the most flavor and you can mix in quite a bit more than when using dried herbs. I also cheat if I want to make it Asian flavored by just shaking on the soy sauce and stirring it into the veggies. It is a lot easier than making up a special sauce using cornstarch, etc. Thanks to Pat for that tip.

We like the stir fry with walnuts or sunflower kernels sprinkled on top. I also love it with brown rice or mixed in with pasta.

Our peas are really producing now. We have been lucky this year with this crop. Do you have any suggestions on how to prepare them? Our grandkids love going in the garden and just biting into the peas right off the vine. They are so sweet and snappy.