growing, growing, cinderella's coach

How many pounds?

candy roaster squash (pumpkin) for Thanksgiving pie

Here's our baby candy roaster on its umbilical cord.

grandfather would say "that's enough for me, what are you going to eat?"

MMMMMMMMMMMMM, good!

garden stew - really!

pearl onions, three color pole beans, yukon gold potatos, garlic clove, sweet banana pepper, yellow cherry tomatos, heirloom tomatos

stew ingredients

red onions, carrots, three color pole beans, yukon gold potatos, heirloom tomatos, yellow cherry tomatos

collecting stew ingredients

carrots on the stone, yukon gold potatos in the basket

tender and tasty baby carrot for the stew

Should have planted rows and rows of these. These were our first time attempts to grow carrots and being reasonably successful, we'll put in lots more next year.

yukon gold potato crop

One four by eight foot bed with yukon gold potatos for fall stews.

Making beef stew! First dig the potatos.

Just a few of the yukon gold potato crop that we grew.

A "cheesey" pumpkin

Use your favorite cheese ball recipe, mix in a blender, form into a ball and chill. Remove from refrigerator and roll in shredded cheddar cheese. Garnish with celery stalk stem and greens.

Fall mesclun mix on Vera Bradley plate!

From Wikipedia:

Mesclun (pronunciation: MESS-klunn) is a salad mix of assorted small, young salad leaves which originated in Provence France. The traditional mix includes chervil, arugula, leafy lettuces and endive in equal proportions, but in modern iterations may include an undetermined mix of fresh and available lettuces, spinach, arugula (rocket), Swiss chard (God's Breath), mustard greens (Dijon's Child), endive, dandelion, frisée, mizuna, oak leaf, mâche, radicchio (Italian Spinach), sorrel, and/or other leafy vegetables. Mesclun is good up to 5 days in a plastic bag. Wash and blot dry just before using. The name comes from Provençal (Southern France)—mescla, "to mix"—and literally means "mixture".

broccoli for Thanksgiving?

Broccoli that the green worms have been gracious enough to leave for us! We hope some broccoli heads form before they eat all the leaves. It is growing beautifully though even with temperatures in the 30's in our two layers of plastic, greenhouse. It is November 5th and counting - 21 days until Thanksgiving. We'll be thankful if we can serve it with the turkey.

Christmas cactus at Halloween?

Wait, wait, Christmas cactus!

It's only Halloween!

Is this a trick? by such a beautiful treat!

fall blueberry bush colors

Rabbiteye blueberry bush turned brilliant colors in October! It loves its place next to the warm brick at the side of the house with an east facing sun supply.

Thank you beautiful bush, we have your blueberry babies in our freezer just on the other side of the wall!

salad tonight

Temperature was 31 last night (Nov. 4) and here's our "greens" bed in our new "poor man's greenhouse. Tiny red Swiss chard on the near right, a mezclun mix behind the pole, radishes in the middle. Oldest plantings on the right, newest ones are timed two weeks apart, proceed from middle to the left. We pick from right to left. Then replant at the right. Hope it lasts all winter!

Saffron crocus in our yard

Saffron crocus grow and bloom in the fall of the year. Plant in August and harvest in October. The three red stamens seen here below the yellow syles, are the saffron spice. I picked mine with tweezers, dried them on a paper towel and stored in a tight lidded jar or zip lock bag. Each stamen is a "strand" of saffron as called for in recipes that use saffron such as saffron rice and paella, a Spanish dish with chicken, seafood and rice. Saffron costs between 500$ and 5000$ a pound and requires 70,000 plants to make a pound of saffron. Grown commercially in Southeastern Spain. !Vamonos! (Let's go!)

Count on eating something with saffron next time you stop by!

You croakin' to me?

This is one of our big pond frogs getting up the courage to flirt with the pretty ceramic beauty who just keeps ignoring him.

Worth the 7 month wait! Red Inchelium garlic!

Red Inchelium garlic - medium sized cloves.

Separated and planted each garlic clove in November of 2008, about 2-3 inches below ground and covered them with a thick (4 inch) leaf cover and pine straw. Harvested them in May of 2009. They need 7 months to lay dormant and then to grow. Great tasting! Harvest just before the stems are about ready to bend over and break so that bacteria and rot do not get into a broken stem.

We washed them with a hose sprayer through a plastic basket and let the water run back into the garden. We layed them out singly on a tray with a kitchen towel under it to absorb the moisture. They dried like this on a covered porch during very rainy weather and did not mildew or mold.

We will use some to replant this fall and of course eat the rest! Wish we had planted 5 times as many!

A tisket, a tasket - a lemon cucumber basket!

These are lemon cucumbers from Renee's Garden seeds. Here in Western North Carolina they were prolific throughout July. Pick them before they are two inches in diameter; at one inch they are crispy and the seeds are soft. Great on sandwiches of cream cheese and cucumber. After two inches in diameter their seeds harden and you need to remove them and there is less flesh to eat.

They get their name from their lemony color, not their taste. They are a mild tasting cucumber - a great addition to any salad, or eat plain. We had literally "hundreds" on 5 plants. They vine everywhere. We wove ours upwards on a homemade bamboo trellis and they thrived, producing fruit as they climbed.

Hello

Hello, My students at school planted these seeds in April, 2008. I transplanted them into pots and they grew over 7 feet tall. Only problem was that any wind that came up blew them over! We transplanted them into the ground after becoming tired of setting them back up straight after every storm.