Tag Archives: kitchen garden

End of the Season

Leave a comment

Ready-to-GrowThe garden is quiet now that the last session of the Spring 09 Dirt to Dinner project is done.

Real-World Wide Web

Real-World Wide Web

We explored the interconnectedness of the food webs we participate in every day. Latecomers spent part of the afternoon asking why we all had on nametages that said things like “Flowers,” “Oak Tree,” “Earthworms” and “Cougar.”

We also dug the potatoes that have been growing in the black nursery cloth circles since the start of the program. The plants had long ago bloomed and were mostly ready for us.

Washing the Dirt Off Dinner

Washing the Dirt Off Dinner

There were lots of the red-skinned potatoes with a blush color inside. I hope the folks at Common Ground know what they were because we liked them and they might work for next year’s Red White and Blue Potato Salad. They kept their color and held up nicely when we cooked them for the Balsamic Green Beans and Potatoes.

Some of the kids chose to pull the plants with their *many* green tomatoes and take them home to hang for ripening.

Roma Tomato Prepped for Dry Hanging

Roma Tomato Prepped for Dry Hanging

We are experimenting with three or four different ways to ripen green tomatoes and I’m curious to see what works best. Right now my favorite is to put them into a paper bag with a ripe apple or tomato and to let them redden that way. We are testing the plant hanging method, sunny window sills, newspaper wrapping and apple-in-a-bag. We’ll let you know how it comes out!

We also stabilized the gourd trellis and planted the gourds, picked the Principe Borghese and Costaluto Genovese tomatoes that were ready and explored the Ice Box watermelon ripening that has happened so far. (Not there yet, but close and already quite tasty!)

Everyone Loves the Eating Part!

Everyone Loves the Eating Part!

Today’s lunch included Balsamic Green Beans and Potaotes, Red White and Blue Potato Salad, Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese, Egg Salad, Tomato Basil Mozzarella, Roasted Tomatillo and Avocado Salsa.

Thank you to everyone who made this year’s program possible, including our generous donors at Seeds of Change, The National Gardening Association Seed Donation Program, the generous and helpful folks at Bauer Lumber and Mark Lassen at Lassen Construction.

Finishing Our First Program Season

Leave a comment
As Dirt to Dinner Begins

As Dirt to Dinner Begins

I’m cleaning things up around the garden for our final Dirt to Dinner lunch of the Spring session. A lot has changed around here since we started. Here’s what it looked like when all we had growing was the Spring Pea Trial vs. where the kids growing box and the rest of the front garden area are today.

Lots of Growing Changes!

Lots of Growing Changes!

We’ve added additional beds, trellis, arbors and teepee support structures, and, of course, lots of plants. We’ve let the lawn dry up and the mulch and straw take over to the point where I’m starting to wonder if I have 50 feet of defensible space around the house in case the suburb is consumed by wildfire. ;-)

Gourd_corsican_lgTomorrow we are going to put in several different varieties of gourds on an arbor we’ve constructed over the bench. It’s a tad late for gourds since they like such a long season, but we could still get lucky, and we could always try covering them with season extenders. Could be a good challenge for the new crew starting in September. One of the neighbors gets tomatoes until November, so I’m hopeful.

Eternal optimism is very helpful when it comes to experimenting with agriculture.

We’re also going to experiment with various ways of ripening green tomatoes, clean up around the garden a bit to see what we have to add to the compost bins, and we’ll probably tuck in some surprises for the folks who are coming back in the Fall.

Lunch is a Summer picnic theme so we are making tomato basil salad, potato salad, green beans, chopped green salad with veggies and some folks are also bringing a bit of potluck to spice things up. Should be a wonderful time to celebrate what we have accomplished and review the kids suggestions for what to do differently next year.

Food Independence

1 Comment
Return from 4 sq ft devoted to potatoes

Return from 4 sq ft devoted to potatoes

The Dirt to Dinner project is about creating a little bit of food independence in each of the kids who works with us. Making them aware of what it takes to grow the food they eat, showing them how they can do it, and helping them raise healthy food that goes directly from the ground onto their lunch plates. And, luckily for us, the whole process has been delicious.

Mashed Bounty

Mashed Bounty

Today we pulled some Yukon Gold-style potatoes out of the modest 4 sq ft patch where they had been growing and quickly boiled and mashed them. They hardly needed butter and were immediatly pronounced a success. The flesh of the potatoes is yellower than what I want for tomorrow’s red-white-and-blue potato salad, but it may have to do. Though I guess I could skin the red-skinned potatoes for the white, keep the skins on for the red, and, well, I still have my fingers crossed on the blues, but we haven’t raided any of them yet. Not one peek under all that dirt, compost and mulch. Though I have high hopes, we did plant thirty potato plants! There better be enough blue potatoes for one dish of potato salad tomorrow!

Tomato Season Finally Begins

Tomato Season Finally Begins

One thing I know we will have is tomatoes. They have started ripening in the warm weather and, so far, we have been eating the Principe Borghese drying tomatoes fresh. They are tough to resist. Especially with some of the blue flowering basil growing in the front bed and balsamic vinegar. These guys ended up in a salad bowl so fast they were still warm from the sun as we ate them. But just as soon as there are other tomatoes ripe, I really do plan to get out the drying recipes. I swear!

My bet is that the Costaluto Genovese will be the next to be ready. We’ve had one or two of them already. Some people call them ugly tomaotes because of the deep ridges they develop but they taste great.

The Tomatoes Are Coming!

3 Comments
From Sun Ripened to Sun Dried

From Sun Ripened to Sun Dried

I’m trying to remember this moment as the calm before the tomato storm. I have a feeling this nice hot weather is about to inundate us with tomato bounty. I have the drying screen, dehydrator and oven drying recipes ready to go. I’m still looking for the perfect catsup. Let us know if you have a recipe you like!

We will have quite a few of the Principe Borghese tomatoes ready to go first. They have been ripening one at a time here and there, but now there are suddenly *lots* of orange ones on the vines and the vines seem less robust, as if all their energy is going into the fruits now.

Shades of Genoa

Shades of Genoa

I am really looking forward to tasting the Costaluto Genovese tomatoes. They look wonderful on the vine with their deep creases and funky shapes.

I tried to count the other day and I think there are at least a dozen varieties of tomatoes growing in the Dirt to Dinner garden; Principe Borghese for drying, Roma for sauce and cooking, three varieties of grape tomato for eating, the Orange German Strawberry tomato my mother-in-law sent over for fun, the Big Beef for burgers and other slicing needs. And the there are what I think must be  the Crimson Carmellos, which grow like monsters! Green-GloryThey are the most robust tomato vines I have ever seen. If you are out late in the evening watering too close to this thing, I swear it might toss one brawny arm over your shoulders and keep you there all night telling you its garden tales as the moon rises.

The fruits are a shiny deep green and I know the label for the plant is hidden down there somewhere, behind the lost shallots that I foolishly thought might actually enjoy a little shade provided by the tomato. Ha! They better be nocturnal to be surviving under there. At least the Edamame beans still get some light from the side.

I am also enjoying the dry farmed tomatoes planted outside the fence in the squash garden. The squash aren’t big enough yet to be much help shading the ground, but the tomato plants still seem happy.

Romas Getting Ready

Romas Getting Ready

Between drying, making pizza sauce, making catsup, whatever the kids will eat in salads and on sandwhiches, I think we’re pretty much set for tomatoes!

And the really interesting thing is the way the tomatillos have taken off! There are both verde and whatever purple is in Spanish varieties out there and they have taken over the corner growing bed to a slightly unhealthy extreme. Yesterday I found some kind of mold growing on one of their leaves. I may need to get out there and pick off the affected parts of the plant. It’s so dense in this patch that the air circulation can’t be good.

Not sure why I didn’t figure out that tomatillo plants got so big and spready when we planted them. They all seem so small and helpless in the beginning! :-)

Tomatillo-Twins

Watching the Squash

2 Comments

Squash-ClockThere are no zucchini plants in the Dirt to Dinner garden, for reasons that will be obvious to you by August, if they aren’t already. ;-) Instead I’ve been trying to learn more about the squash varieties we do have going. For instance, did you know that the ‘pumpkin’ you buy canned to make into pumpkin pie is actually a squash that is most closely related to Butternut? I’m loving all the details available at Watch Your Garden Grow, from the University of Illinois Extension. It even includes recipes!

Spaghetti Trellis

Spaghetti Trellis

So far, the most vigorous grower we have out in the garden is the Spaghetti Squash which we are hoping to convince to grow up the trellis we have so generously provided just for this purpose. Unfortunately, the plants have designs on the wide open spaces in front of them and keep growing away from the trellis which backs up against theshade of the bushes that edge the garden. We could actually consider relocating the trellis, but there are still carrots and big white Icicle Radishes growing where it would need to go. Note for next year: Squash trellises need to be on the sunny side of the squash plants.

Net Lonving Squash?

Net Loving Squash?

At least the mystery squash seems happy to give it a try. Though, in my heart of hearts, I’m worried that this might actually be a cantaloupe plant of some kind. I’m not actually sure how to tell the difference. If it has big triangular leaves with spiny stems and sends out those little twisty tendrils that cling onto other plants and –hopefully–trellis netting, it could be anything from a Delicata to a cucumber as far as I can tell right now. I better go back to my website on growing squash to see how much more I can pick up.

Delicata Shade Crop

Delicata Shade Crop

These guys I am pretty sure really are Delicata. They are a Compact Winter Squash from Renee’s Garden that gets great reviews for growing well and tasting a lot like sweet potatoes, which most of the kids are happy to eat. I took this picture just before I thinned them down to the recommended “2 strongest plants per hill.” I could have carefully pricked out the extra plants and moved them to a sunny spot so we could see exactly how much difference the sunlight would make, but it’s starting to feel like there’s an awful lot of squash growing around here. There are eight of the compact Winter squash plants left after thinning, half Delicata and half Early Butternut. There are at least twenty plants representing the dozen different varieties mixed into the Zucche in Miscuglio we got from Grow Italian with names like Tonda Padana, Serpente Di Sicilia and Berrettina Piacentina. 

Pre-Colimbus Natives

Pre-Columbus Natives

And, not to worry, it’s not *all* Winter squash. There are two Summer squash plants that I know of in the garden. They are Golden Scallopini Bush squash from Seeds of Change. It’s a rare native American cultivare that predates Columbus. And it makes small 3-6″ squash with a flying saucer shape that I hope will appeal to the kids.