Enjoying the Vegetables of Our Labor

 Every evening after dinner, my husband and I go out to the garden. Nearly every single day since the end of June, we have picked something while there. Sometimes it was just a handful of snap peas. Other times, it filled that nice old square gathering basket we've had for years. It's been a lovely, steady stream of fresh produce filling our refrigerator. So, what have we done with our harvest?

The daily haul on July 27, 2024

Pak Choi

Our first bulk harvest in June was the pak choi. We cooked up most of the little greens with some butter beans (from a can), garlic, herbs, and a touch of vinegar to make a fairly hearty dish. A sprinkle of bacon bits really made it.

Beets

People either love or hate beets. I happen to love them. This year, I planted some beet seeds that have been sitting in my seed collection for several years. I wasn't sure if any would actually grow, but they did. The vast majority of the small crop were chioggia beets, which have lovely interior rings like a target. There were also two or three Detroit dark red beets in the mix. I picked them in two rounds. The first batch I cooked whole in our Instant Pot, skinned them, then sliced them up. I toasted a couple rounds of naan, spread a mix of mayonnaise and feta cheese on them, layered on the beet slices and sprinkled it all with fresh thyme. Sooooo good!

A couple weeks later, I picked the rest of the beets, Instant Pot-ed and peeled them again, then used them to make pickled beet eggs. The recipe is simple. I put 1cup of cider vinegar, 1 cup of water, half a cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of salt together in a pan and heated it until everything dissolved. I also sliced up the one and only Detroit beet and added it to the pan. The chioggia are a light pink color when cooked and I worried they wouldn't dye the eggs that beautiful fuchsia. I put six hard boiled eggs and the whole chioggia beets into a glass canning jar and poured the vinegar mixture on top. After a few days in the fridge, we pulled them out and had very tasty pickled beet eggs.

Eggs and beets ready to soak up that pickle-y goodness.

That color just three days later!

Green Beans

Actually, they're Royal Burgundy garden beans, but they cook up green. I really love these purple beans because of how well they grow and because they have a built-in cooking indicator - as soon as they turn from deep purple to a beautiful bright green, they are cooked just the right amount. No squishy, overcooked beans! 

My husband is not a huge fan of green beans, so I just had four plants this year. It was still enough for several lunches for me (and the plants are still making beans). One nice way to use them is in ramen. I put a pack of instant soy sauce flavored ramen noodle in a pan with the seasoning pack and enough water to cover the noodles. I then put whole trimmed purple beans around the edges of the noodles before turning on the stove. As the water starts to heat up, I crack a whole egg on top, then put on the lid and let it all come to a boil. As soon as it does, I stir up the egg to make sure it cooks all the way. Within another minute or two the noodles, egg, and beans are all cooked just right.

Green bean and egg ramen with a side of cucumbers and dill.

Cucumbers

For the last month, nearly every meal has had a side of cucumbers - and I love that! This year, I planted a mix of old Chicago Pickling cucumber and Garden Bush Pickle Hybrid cucumber seeds. I'm not sure which ones actually grew, but they are all lovely. I eat them dipped in hummus, swimming in a light vinegar brine as quick-pickles, and mixed with sour cream.

Cucumber slices with sour cream and dill looks a bit slimy but is very tasty.

I also diced them up in salads. For one salad, I used a bag of riced cauliflower as a base. I added diced cucumber, tomato, pepperoncini pepper, and avocado (not from our garden) and dressed it with a little oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and fresh flat leaf parsley. 

So cool and fresh on a hot summer day.

Honestly, most of the cucumbers were consumed straight from the fridge all on their own.

Mmmm. Crunchy.

Tomatoes

I didn't start my own tomato seed this year. Instead, I got a grape tomato and a Supersteak tomato plant from a small local garden center. Both have produced a prodigious amount of fruit, though they have been slow to ripen. This is a good thing, however, so we're not overwhelmed by tomatoes. Even so, the grape tomatoes have become a breakfast staple for me, slice up with cottage cheese and fresh chives. 

A breakfast of champions.

 The beefsteaks are perfect for slicing on sandwiches, and that is exactly what we've been doing with them. Toasted white bread, spread with a layer of mayonnaise, topped with thick slices of tomato, and sprinkled with chiffonaded basil. There is no better seasonal treat.

Summer on toast.

Herbs

I've tried to add fresh herbs to as much as I can this summer, which has become much easier since moving some of them from the garden to our new patio container garden. But what we can't use fresh needs to be preserved for the long dark winter. I've dried two rounds of herbs so far, with at least on more batch to be done later in the fall. I have also made pesto to put in the freezer. I went online and found a good basic recipe - 2 cups fresh basil leaves, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1 small garlic clove, 1/4 teaspoon salt, black pepper to taste, 1/4 cup of oil, and 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (I don't bother with the pine nuts) - whipped up a batch and then carefully scooped it into a silicone ice cube tray. Each cube is about 1 1/2 tablespoons of pesto. Into the freezer it went. Once they set up, I popped the cubes out of the tray and put them into a sealed container back in the freezer.

One batch down, several more to go. We have A LOT of basil.

Squash

And finally, the squash and zucchini. I love them in so many ways - diced up and sauteed with garlic and herbs, sliced and coated in cornstarch then fried, layered in long slabs instead of noodles in lasagna (we haven't done that one yet because it's been so hot this summer!). A perennial favorite in our house this year has been to spiralize them into zoodles (or squoodles, I guess, depending on variety).  

Zoodles and squoodles together.

These thin-cut curling veggies can then be cooked and topped like spaghetti. I made a nice dish of the mixed yellow squash and zucchini noodles with sliced faux chicken cutlets and several blocks of our homemade pesto.

So creamy and fresh.

I'm going to be so sad when our harvest finally ends and we have to go back to flavorless off-season grocery store produce.

Our August Garden

My middle name is Augusta. Or at least it was until I got married many years ago and the Social Security Administration decided that I could only have one middle name so now my maiden name is my middle name. In my heart, it's still my middle name, though. It was a good choice for both sides of the family - my mother's maternal grandmother and my father's mother were both named Augusta. One would think that I would have some sort of special affinity for August because of my name but I don't. I actually didn't even think of the connection at all until this last week as I considered writing an update on our garden here. 

Anyhoo, the garden has been doing well. It's starting to remind me of an autumn garden, though. We had a cold snap last week that has me ready for fall. That may tint my view a bit but the garden is starting to peter out. It's been a couple of days now since we picked any cucumbers. That had been a half-dozen-a-day thing for a couple weeks. The plants are still setting fruit but they look like the last hoorah - tiny and super prickly. The leaves are starting to give up too.

The cucumbers' leaves are getting crunchy.

Overall, it's been a very fruitful season. There's never a huge amount of any one thing at a time, except for the cucumbers, but we've enjoyed a steady stream of fresh veggies. (Look for another post coming soon telling what we did with our produce.)

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

The snap peas had a nice long run and are now providing support for some morning glories that seeded themselves from last year. 

It's fun seeing the peas and morning glories intertwining.

Underground, we had a nice daikon crop, which my husband pickled. We also had a handful of two different types of beets. They are all entirely finished now.

Just one of a dozen or so daikons.

Can't beet this!

On the topside, both the yellow squash and zucchini produced well. I would have liked more zucchini. Maybe because I like it so well, it didn't feel the need to overwhelm us, as is so cliche for zucchini. There are still a few small squash on the vine, so we'll probably get a couple more this season.

Yellow there!

Um...I can't think of another pun. It's a zucchini.

The tomatillos put on flowers like crazy but have only made a few fruits so far. The tomatoes, both beefsteak and grape, have put on fruit like crazy. They're just both taking their sweet time turning red. We've started bringing them in as soon as they start to blush so our lovely summer rainstorms don't make them explode before we can pick them. I think they still taste just a good (much better than store-bought, at least) when they ripen inside rather than out on the vine.

At least the tomatillo plant is pretty.

Tomatoes ripening inside...

...and more still waiting to go.

The Three Sisters bed has been doing it's thing mostly untouched all season. The rattlesnake beans grew well as always. They're just starting to dry on the vine now. Similarly, the turtle beans in a different bed put on tons of beans and are now slowly drying before we can shell them. The popcorn seems a bit odd, making two or three ears in the same spot. I've never grown it before, so maybe that's normal. I'm just glad that after being flattened during several thunderstorms, the stalks straightened right back up again. We're just waiting for it to all dry out now. The Long Pie pumpkin vine has woven its way happily between the corn stalks and up the bean trellis. We've picked two them already and there's a third still on the vine.

I love that shell beans are fairly self-sufficient.

I hope the popcorn is doing as it's supposed to. It looks nice.

Two Long Pie pumpkins curing in the dining room.

One more still hanging out.

I'm not sure if our One Too Many pumpkin plant is actually going to have time to do it's thing. The strong seedling we transplanted in June struggled to establish itself. Perhaps it was a bit resentful. The vine finally had a growth spurt just a couple of weeks ago and has filled the entire bed. It has even put on a couple of pumpkins - one the size of a ping-pong ball and one like a baseball. I'm hoping we've got enough warm days ahead so that they can grow and prosper, but the days are getting noticeably shorter. Like with all the garden, we'll have to wait and see.

Finally, our resentful teen pumpkin is becoming a better-adjusted young adult.

You grow little pumpkin! I believe in you!

Not all has been happy fun time in the garden, however. Somehow, a deer or multiple deer, found their way inside. I'm guessing they accidentally hopped the fence while cavorting in the back yard. The yard slopes slightly so the fence on the north side is shorter than on the south side. Once inside, the deer stomped around in most of the beds, ate many of the leaves off my purple snap beans, and decimated the chard. It wasn't a very good year for the chard anyway. It didn't grow very well, I think because the location I chose for it was a bit shady and damp, and then it got leaf miners and I didn't make an effort to remove them. So, we haven't harvested any of it yet and it looks like we might not get much at all. I guess that's the compromise we make when our neighborhood is filled with deer and we do little to discourage them from getting comfortable.

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

It's kinda nice just hanging out with the local baby wildlife.

Why Wait Until Spring?

I started my new container herb garden today. Our garden is fairly close to the house, but still far enough away that, when I’m cooking, I don’t make the effort to go out and get fresh herbs. So I decided to make a container herb garden on our back patio, just a few short steps from the kitchen.

Look at that garden all the way back there.

My original plan was to wait until spring to put the container garden together. I ordered the plant shelf last week from Amazon (for $45.99). I put it together so that I could see what size planters I could fit on it. Then, it was going to go into the basement for the winter. I figured I could start collecting ceramic pots of various types throughout the rest of the summer and fall - maybe scoring some on end-of-season clearance - so I would have them all ready to go in the spring. 

Two to start.

I found two that I liked today. I got the white one at T.J. Maxx. It was made in Vietnam and cost $9.99. The multi-colored one is from Lowe's. It was made in Malaysia, weighs considerably more, and cost $22.98. I actually like the white one better, but I'm happy with both. I only want ceramic planters. There are tons of plastic/resin ones out there but I just like the look and feel of the ceramics better. These were both marked "frost resistant," not that that's much of a concern for me.

Enjoy your new homes, little ones.

This past spring, I started some herbs from seed indoors. They included parsley, thyme, and basil. I transplanted three of each into the garden. Today, I transplanted two of the plants back into containers. All three of the parsley plants took to the larger garden quite well. I had no qualms about digging one out to move to the patio. An odd side note about the parsley: the seeds I purchased were labeled curly parsley, but one of the plants is very obviously flat leaf parsley. The flat leaf plant was being overshadowed in the garden by horseradish leaves, so that's the one that went into the pot. It became a bit droopy in the aftermath of the transfer, but I think it'll do fine. If not, I've got two more parley plants.

The thyme plant that I moved from the garden into the planter is the only one of the three original seedlings that survived the initial transplant. It's well-established and I didn't disturb much of its roots in the move, so it should be okay. I love thyme and, even though it is a perennial, I haven't had luck over-wintering it in the garden. I hope that it adapts well to the planter so I can bring it inside this winter.

View of the new container garden from our kitchen.

My plan is to keep collecting ceramic planters for my various herbs. I've got strong, perennial chives I can divide and put in a pot before fall. I'll be collecting dill seeds so I can start some directly in a new planter next spring. We have some beautiful Greek basil plants that are cuttings from the indoor plant that have thrived in the open garden this year. We'll definitely bring a couple of them in for the winter. I don't think I'll bother transplanting my sweet basil if I get enough pots before fall. The plants have massive roots and would probably resent the relocation. I'd like to have enough planters by spring to also start rosemary, oregano, and maybe some well-contained mint. No cilantro, though. There's no place for that in my kitchen. I'm really looking forward to having my fresh herbs so close at hand. Of course, we'll have to see what the deer have to say about it too.

The Ends?