Author Archives: Hand in Hand Parenting

New Raised Beds

5 Comments

The Dirt to Dinner crew wants to send the folks at Naturalyards a big Thank You! As many of you already know from The Great Raised Bed Debate, if money had been no object, we would have started with lots of their untreated, kiln-dried Port Orford cedar raised beds on day one.

Hexagonal Raised Bed from NaturalyardsBut you’ve gotta let people know you’d like their help before they can help you. As soon as I talked with the kind people at Naturalyards, they promptly donated three of their beautiful, easy-assembly raised beds. Not only that, but we found another gardening fan who happened to be driving from where Naturalyards is in Oregon, right to our doorstep in time for the next Dirt to Dinner session! How’s that for service and support?!

Strawberry Tower Planter from NaturalyardsAt our next meeting the kids will be assembling three different Naturalyards raised bed designs; a rectangle planter, a hexagonal planter and a strawberry tower. We’ve also received several alternative suggestions for assembling the beds. We could make a potato growing bin, or instead of two large towers we could make three smaller planters. And we’ve been toying with a design that would combine the strawberry tower and the hexagonal planter into a single bed.

It will be fun to see what the kids decide on. Some of them relish the construction projects as much as they do the food.

Dark Days Dinner – A Variation on White Bean and Kale Soup

3 Comments

Carrots, turnips & herbsOK, by the time I was done with it, my version of this soup was quite nearly a stew, but it was still yummy. Four different recipes for a White Bean & Kale Soup were swirling around in my head when I went into the garden to see what I could find. This one looked especially appealing but unfortunately I didn’t have all the ingredients.

The ‘Dinosaur‘ or ‘Covolo Laciniato Nero Di Toscana Precoce‘ kale was easy. It loves this kind of winter weather and puts out dozens of long, dark green fingers from a tall central spike. My ‘Tokyo Market‘ turnips surprised me with fat white globes sitting atop the soil with nothing but their skinny taproots in the ground. And, this year at least, we finally have carrots! Last year by this time they had all been eaten, but we have 12 square-feet of carrots and parsnips still in the ground waiting for a recipe like this. The rosemary bushes are also content to grow straight through the winter here, so I pulled off a tender branch to flavor my vegetable stash.

Inside I had been soaking the ‘Jacob’s Cattle‘ beans we grew over the summer. They were the closest thing to a white been that I had. This year I plan to grow Cannellini and at least one other White Bean and Kale Soupwhite variety, but for now, we’re making do with what’s on hand. Might need to call this one “Pink Bean & Kale.”

I sautéed an onion in olive oil for a few minutes then added the carrots and turnips. While the vegetables were softening, I stemmed the kale and chopped it fairly fine. I also cut up some nice chicken Italian sausage with the perfect amount of fennel in it that just squeaked over the 100 mile Dark Days Challenge line in time to join us for this meal. I tossed the sausage and kale with the softened vegetables and added the chopped rosemary leaves. As soon as the kale started to brighten and wilt, I added in the now cooked beans and simmered the whole concoction on low for about an hour to marry the flavors some.

Before serving, I added fresh ground pepper and my husband insisted on dusting his bowl with Parmesan as he would with Minestrone. The whole family approved, which was a nice surprise as I had been expecting the little one to turn her nose up at the fenneled Italian sausage. Instead, I caught her scooping some out of my bowl when I wasn’t looking!

Dark Days Stir Fry

2 Comments

Roman BroccoliTired of all the rich holiday food and desperately in need of a fresh vegetable, I grabbed an empty dish pan and headed out into the garden this afternoon to see what I could find to turn into dinner. The first thing I pulled were some nice fat rutabagas. I’m hoping to re-purpose they bed they are growing in very soon so I wanted to use them up anyway.

Next to the rutabagas there was a very nice head of ‘Romanesco’ Broccoli growing. I have been watching this plant carefully because I’m not entirely sure how to tell if it’s ready to eat or not, but I was more than happy with the size so I figured it was worth a try.

Next to the ‘Romanesco,’ there were lots of side-shoots on my regular broccoli, so I collected those. I picked through the snow pea vines and found half a dozen pods that were ready to eat. In search of more variety and color, I pulled some bright white ‘Tokyo Market’ turnips and several different kinds of carrots, ‘Yellowstones,’ ‘Romeos’ and ‘Nantes.’

Inside again, I diced and sliced the vegetables, including the turnip greens, and tossed them into a skillet with olive oil and a red onion left over from burgers my husband cooked a few nights ago. I added a few dashes of white wine vinegar and tamari and covered the pan to steam everything. When the vegetables were almost done, I tossed in diced jerk smoked pork chops hubby cooked on New Year’s Day and stirred it all together for a few minutes before calling it done.

Simple. Fresh. Very satisfying.

Leeks, Sweet Potatoes and When is Spring?

1 Comment

I started some sweet potatoes in Ball jars on the window sill to grow slips for planting later this spring. I used three sweet potatoes from the cupboard but I can’t tell you which varieties they are yet. I don’t imagine there are very many varieties in local commercial production so it should be easy to narrow down. I’ll ask around and see what I can figure out.

I also quickly started some leek seeds for the Dirt to Dinner kids to plant now that I have finally grasped the difference between summer leeks and winter leeks. I am using Sherwood Leeks from last year’s Seeds of Change seed donation for the summer planting. I hope they sprout. They were packed for 2007 so I planted about a third more seed than I actually wanted in case germination is spotty. I’ve read that onion seeds don’t keep well and these have been through less than ideal storage conditions since they arrived.

The big news here is that the Principe Borghese tomato seeds I planted on Christmas are sprouting! When I saw the first sprout I popped one of the few remaining dried tomatoes from last year’s crop into my mouth just so I could taste them again. I can already hear the dehydrator whirring. ;-)

The Cincinnati Market radishes are also sprouting nicely in a sheltered bed in the garden. I grew up in Cincinnati, so as soon as I saw them in the Seed Savers Exchange catalog I knew I had to grow them. I hope they taste good. I guess I can always pickle them if we don’t like them raw in salads. I would probably devour small disks of cardboard if they were pickled well.

Today was also the day for the first of the All Red and Red Gold potatoes to start heading into the soil. I think the problem with last year’s All Blue crop was that the plants didn’t have enough room. We only gave them roughly a square foot each because we were using a deep bed for planting. But this spacing produced lots of very small blue potatoes, which tells me the plants were too crowded horizontally in spite of the extra space we gave them along the vertical.

The reds are getting three square feet a piece–eventually. Right now there are Sugar Daddy snap peas planted in between the potato rows. Hopefully this won’t crowd them. The peas should be grown and out of the way by the time the potato plants need the space and the soil hilling gets deeper. Well, that’s the idea anyway.

Pea Trials Year 2

Leave a comment
Pea pod in hand

Fall Wando Success

This year, rather than start the Pea Trial in January, I decided it might be worth while to try growing different varieties right through the winter. I started with a shelling pea that I always see mentioned along with it’s resistance to heat, Wando, and planted it on August 13th. I figured it had the best chance with our fall weather. Maybe it was just luck, but we have been eating peas in the garden from this small test patch since October right into December. Frost got some of them, but the plant has put out new flowers and started over.

In mid-September some of the Dirt to Dinner kids and I planted two more test patches of peas. One side is Cascadia snap peas and the other is Oregon Sugar Pod snow peas. Pea plantingThese have also survived the three or four frost days and the winter winds. If it gets too cold though, the pods on the vine are ruined. But we pick them off and toss them into the compost and the plant puts out more flowers. I put in a test patch of Thomas Laxton peas on October 31st but as soon as I thought it was safe to take the burlap off of them (11/15) the patch was decimated by whatever evil critter out there chews the leaves off all the sprouting vines. I have to remember that in the Dirt to Dinner garden peas planted directly in the soil need protection until they are well established.

We also have another small patch of Petit Pois peas put in on November 12th with starts from Yamagami’s in Cupertino.

These diminutive peas are authentic French petit pois and are ever so sweet, ready to use at miniature size, when the slim pods are just 3” to 4” long. Each pod contains six or seven tiny peas, less than half the size of regular shelling peas. Their buttery flavor and tenderness cannot be matched! Plentifully produces petit pois on disease-resistant, 18” to 24” vines. These small, delicate vines need support.

Block planted Petit Pois

Petit Pois Perfect

The plants are still pretty petite right now at the end of December. I haven’t seen any flowers develop but they are shaded by a massive tomato plant I was trying to winter over. Not sure that experiment is going to be worth the space or potential shade cast though. The tomato is a very unhappy grey-green right now that does not bode well. Maybe I will cut it back to whatever looks healthy and green and give the poor peas some more sunlight. I’ll check their color more closely when the rain lets up.

On Christmas, which was a gorgeous gardening day here, I put in about 50 Sugar Daddy snap pea seeds, under covers and started another 30 in the garage as back-up just in case those get destroyed. In January I plan to do some of the Italian pea varieties we liked from the trial last year and I swear there is a packet of Laxton’s Progress peas around here somewhere that are waiting to be planted. If only I could remember what I did with them!