Garden 2011

This summer, just as the past two, I planted a garden. I made sure to wait until the nightly frosts had passed before putting the plants in the ground and for several weeks now we have been enjoying the fruits of my labor.

I have been pretty consistent in my plot arrangement, which I shared last year, and this year I didn't change much again. Some newbies that joined the ranks are cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, and soybeans. Sadly, the grape tomatoes have been underwhelming and to make matters worse, the soybeans didn't even sprout. (I think a few Peter Cottontails nibbled-up the seeds before they even had a chance—poor little guys.)

On the flip side everything else is flourishing including the green beans (I bought the right kind this year!)

jalapenos (by the dozen)

basil (finally learned how to keep it alive!)

aforementioned cherry tomatoes (what can I make with these?)

as well as, roma tomatoes and green and red bell peppers.

On another positive note, our Japanese beetle invasion has nearly left the building. I noticed that the only minor damage they have caused has been to the weeds—haha!

But back to a more pressing point, what can I make with those cherry tomatoes? When I planted them I thought I would be one of these people who, as she leisurely strolls around her yard, grabs a few and eats them right off the vine. Well, that's definitely not the case and these things grow in clusters so when I pick my garden I always come in with dozens more. We have so many that we have been giving them to our cats to roll around as toys (well not really but you get the point). Please, this girl's desperate, if you've got a recipe that calls for cherry tomatoes, send it my way!

3 Cheers for 3 Years!

Today is our third wedding anniversary—woo to the hoo!

Since we have another triathlon this weekend, we started our morning right with a quick 3-mile run. Lately it has been difficult to climb out of bed to hit the pavement but today Justin bribed me by saying I could have my gift this morning instead of tonight but only after we finished the run, so when my alarm went off I only hit the snooze button once...ok maybe twice.

Once back, and completely drenched with sweat mind you, he handed it over gave me my present—the Louis Vuitton Neverfull—and I about peed my pants from elation.

I've been dying for this one-size-fits all bag for at least a year and every time I got close to forking over the dough, I would change my mind and spend the money on something we needed (the repairs for our air conditioner, the repairs on our Jetta, the hardwood floors, etc.). Nonetheless, my husband probably got so sick of my longing comments that he bought it himself is the bestest.

What I love about this bag is that it is so large it can carry my purse contents, lunch and snacks, as well as my laptop and other necessities I'll need to have on hand once the fall semester starts. Buh-bye carrying around multiple bags!

Anywho, once I was finished with my so-happy-I-look-like-I-have-to-pee dance, I made Justin his present. I'll be the first to admit that it doesn't live up to a LV bag but I'm sure your taste buds and most men might disagree. Recently I came across a deliciously-enticing recipe on the Picky Palate for (get this) cinnamon roll sugar cookies with cream cheese frosting. Since the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, I immediately knew I had found our anniversary day breakfast.

If you follow the recipe you could probably pull these off in a couple hours, including chilling time, but I knew I wanted them hot this morning so I made up the dough last night, readying them for the oven in the morning. Jenny from Picky Palate recommends chilling them in the fridge before devouring but we enjoyed them hot from the oven and they were divine.

Later this evening we will continue celebrating by stuffing our faces with more good food at Shinto, a local Japanese steak and sushi house. Cheers!

It's about time!

After my griping about how my garden seemed to be dying and cursing those darn japanese beetles, I am actually harvesting mounds of produce from my vegetable wild bandit. Just a few days ago, I went out to check on my tomatoes and came back 30 minutes later with a bucket of tomatoes and green beans.

I'm crediting this sudden burst of fruit on the weather change we've experienced in the last couple weeks and boy am I grateful for it (in more ways than one). Look at this glorious pico-de-gallo salsa I made from half of our bucket of tomatoes. Doesn't it look delicious?

Take it from us, it is scrumptious and it will keep us snacking healthy for at least a week and a half. We even steamed a handful of those green beans and partnered them with a nice teriyaki glazed salmon last week, yum! Is anyone else reaping delicious rewards from their gardening efforts? Do share!

Garden Update: 3 Months

It's been about 3 months since I planted my garden and I can whole heartedly say that it has taken off like a wild bandit...literally. In fact, I almost titled my post Garden Havoc: 3 Months and you'll find out  why soon enough.

This year I planted a different green bean family and unfortunately, they are the climbing variety for which I have nothing for them to climb, except their neighboring tomato plants. The green beans are so aggressive that they are pulling the branches of my tomato plants down and because of this, I have had to keep trimming them back, which means that I am reaping very few beans for all my hard work—boo!

However, to repay me for my gentle care and protection, my tomatoes are thriving and boy are they delish! (Just ask Justin. He sliced one up for his BLT last night and it looked good!)

But of course, this joy cannot shine through the storm clouds of the japanese beetles that have been wreaking havoc on my plants. For those of you who aren't familiar with these lovely buggers, I researched them a bit to explain what they are and where they came from. Ahem...
Japanese beetles are insects native to (what do you guess) Japan and showed up in America in the early 1910s (supposedly on a shipment of tulip bulbs). The beetles are not entirely destructive to the vegetation in Japan because of natural predators, they can be highly dangerous to US crops and gardens (as you see in the photos of my garden below). For the most part, the only infested areas in the US start in the far northeast trickling down into the southeast and midwest. They are detrimental to plants because they skeletonize the foliage, eating the leaf between the veins. When plants no longer have the leaf material between the veins they cannot absorb the sun and grow, eventually dying.

I have noticed a large population of these beetles in my garden and since one positive reason to grow your own plants is to keep them pesticide free, I have done nothing to control them by ways of chemicals. As a result, about 30% of my garden looks like this.

Not too appealing, eh?

Fortunately, they seem to favor my green bean plants, which is fine by me since they are becoming a PITA (pain in the ass) anyways. Nonetheless, does anyone have suggestions for how to eradicate or at least decrease their numbers? I have heard that the best way is to fill a bowl or bucket with soapy water and knock them into it but I've been too lazy to do that yet. Any other chem-free ideas? I'm all ears!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Justin does at least 80% of the grocery shopping for our familia, so when I grabbed a banana from our fruit bowl this morning I was pleasantly surprised by the Chiquita sticker that called out "I [heart] your heart."

I already know that this week is going to be a rough one, so seeing that little bit of cheer put a smile on my face and pretty much made my morning.

Garden Update: 1 Month

It's only been a month since I planted our garden, but with the sunny-hot-humid-rainy days we've had the last couple weeks, our garden is flourishing.

Check out my onions!

The green beans are growing a life of their own.

The lettuce is thriving.

I even have 2, count 'em, 2 larger-than-a-golf-ball tomatoes!

It's going to be a summer full of great goodies from our garden and don't worry I'll keep you updated on all the freshness coming out of there.

Embracing Gravity

In May, we hosted a Mother's Day grill-out at our house with Justin's extended family. Can you believe it was their first time coming to our home? You all know that I'm not a mom (nor soon-to-be), so I didn't expect to receive anything that day, however, Justin's relatives showered us with house warming gifts. One of these said gifts was this odd-looking tomato tower garden station.

As you can kind of see from the packaging (above), it is a stand with a container on top that you can plant flowers, herbs, or other favorite foliage. The unique part about this contraption is that in the bottom of the container (pictured below on the right) there are openings where you can plant tomatoes so they hang upside down. How cool is that? I have always wanted to get a topsy-turvy tomato plant, but never had a spot to do so, until now!

Assembly was a breeze and after a few minutes, it was standing strong and I was ready to go shopping for my vegetation.

Before I could do so, I had to ensure it wouldn't fall over, so I filled the base's container with leftover landscaping rocks and sand; then I went shopping.

While at Home Depot trying to decide which tomatoes to plant, I talked with an associate who recommended planting strawberries or cherry tomatoes in the planter. He suggested planting something with small fruit because as large tomatoes grow they become so heavy that they fall off the vine when hung upside down, even the topsy-turvy planters. I had already planted roma tomatoes in my garden, so I picked out a couple strawberries to plant upside down—yum! To fill in the top of the basin, I decided to plant an herb garden and bought catnip, basil, cilantro, and oregano.

Back at home, I separated some of the strawberry plants and slid a single plant in each hole.

The planter came with these handy-dandy caps that I put on the hole, leaving a small gap where the plant hung down through.

After placing them all in and securing them with the caps, I filled the planter with dirt and gave it a refreshing drink of water.

To plant the herbs on top, I filled in some more dirt and planted them like any other vertical plant. I also used the same marker tags that I used in my garden to label the plants. Can you imagine wanting cilantro but grabbing catnip instead? (Blech!)

All in all, the planter turned out great. It is awesome having an herb garden a step out my back door and before leaving for work this morning, I checked my strawberries and saw some buddings of future fruit. I can't wait until those are grown and ripe.

Does anyone else have a planter like this? What did you plant in yours?

PS: Check back for an update on our garden, it's growing like weeds!

Biggest and Best in the Upper Midwest

Over Memorial Day weekend, Justin and I ventured North to visit some family and friends in Minnesota. My best friend Heidi, who is a Minneapolitan and whom we visited last fall, is always gushing about the goods she gets at too-good-to-be-true prices from the Minneapolis farmer's market, so when the rooster crowed Sunday morning, Justin and I met up with her and her boyfriend to wander around the self proclaimed largest open air market in the upper midwest (see photo).

After touring around the place, I must agree with the sign.

There were rows and rows of vendors selling all sorts of yumminess at buy-like-there's-no-tomorrow-prices. From local vegetables, freshly plucked from gardens...

to herbs that smelled so good they could almost induce an aroma coma...

to plump fruit and berries, just begging to be eaten.

You can even find interesting oddities such as this purple basil. (Well, at least I've never seen purple basil, have you?)

The insane part is that the majority of the items for sale are grown by local folks, which turns yummy-food-smiles into pat-myself-on-the-back-for-supporting-my-neighbors-smile. Not to mention, the beautiful way some vendors spruce up their packaging. Nothing says "hello sunshine" like some pansy faces, am I right?

But of course, flanking the end of the good-for-you fruits and veggies is another row of cooked food such as hot caramel corn, pulled pork, and mini donuts (yum-o!). Heidi is particularly fond of the fresh squeezed orange juice, which I must say is probably the best darn orange juice I have ever had.

The last, but certainly not least, row capping the end of the market is what I call gourmet alley. There you can sample olives, olive oil, nuts, spreads, bread, and even homemade soap.

Unfortunately, after perusing through all the goodies, all four of us left with empty hands. Surprising, no? Well, in our defense, we had a full day ahead of us and didn't think the produce would last in a hot and humid car all afternoon. But, now that I've experienced it, when I talk to Heidi and she is slurping down an orange juice, I'll be even more jealous. In fact, it sounds delicious right now.

Here's the dirt

With a forecasted high of 88º F yesterday, I couldn't pass up the chance to get my hands/arms/feet/legs dirty and plant our vegetable garden.

I started bright and early Sunday morning (don't ask me how I naturally woke up at 7:50 a.m.) and the first thing I did was scope out the location. My plan was to use the same space that I planted in the previous year, which produced mounds of tomatoes and plenty of other delicious goods.

However, it didn't look like the picture above, but instead was looking tired and weathered as you can see in the photo below.

Most gardeners till their soil before planting because it breaks up hard clumps of dirt, kills weed roots, and, at the same time, aerates the soil, but since our garden plot is a measly 14x3 feet, I opted out of professional tilling for a few reasons: 1) I didn't want to wait until someone could come and do it, 2) I didn't want to pay someone money to simply mix up 42 square feet of dirt, and 3) I knew I could do it myself. Last year, when I was picking up the tools I needed to start my garden, an associate at Menards recommended an inexpensive handheld tool that he said did the job just the same as a tiller but with a little more sweat and sore muscles, enter the action hoe.

An action hoe looks similar to a regular hoe, but is a ring of metal rather than one flat piece. By digging this into the dirt, you are able to chop the clumps, tear the weeds, and push and pull the soil, aerating as you go. Oh, and did I tell you that it only cost $12? That's what I call DIY!

So, while I ran to the store to pick up the plant items I needed for the garden (more details below), Justin contributed to the project and tackled the dirt with the action hoe. When I got back, we mixed a few bags of garden soil in and the dirt was prime for planting.

Before I go any further, it wasn't as simple as saying "yeah, we mixed up the dirt and popped some plants in the ground." Oh no, there was some strategic planning that went into it long before digging in.

In order to delegate space for each plant I wanted to grow, I had to plan according to how much space and sun each one would need, and just like any other project, I whipped up a layout of the area (see below). Are you wondering why I didn't put the lettuce in front of the onions so that I had a neat grid? Although the majority of my garden is in full sun, the far left side is right next to our air conditioning unit, which at times blocks the sun. Since lettuce requires full sun, I had to go against my design gut and move them to the far right, out of alignment but in full sun.

After settling on a plan, I wrote up my shopping list accordingly. It included a bag of onion sets, green bean seeds, half a dozen tomato plants, some pepper plants (hot and sweet), and a few lettuce plants. One tip that my mom showed me when she helped me plant my garden last year, was to look for plants that are doubled up in their pots. If you get lucky and find some like this, you can separate them once you get home, getting more bang for your buck.

It may seem scary to divide them once you're home, but it really isn't. All you do is remove the soil ball from the pot it came in and soak it in a bucket of water. This will wash away the soil and you'll be able to carefully pull the two apart and plant as usual. For the first week or so, they might look small compared to other plants, but once they've established themselves in the ground, they'll flourish.

Back to the project: Once you have your dirt ready, place your plants where you are going to drop them in. By leaving them in their pots until ready to go into the dirt, you can play around with spacing to make sure each has enough room to grow.

It only takes a few minutes to plant each seedling and soon enough you will have a good-looking garden ready to produce some home-grown sustenance.

Out of the 100 pack of white onion sets that I snagged at Menards for $1, I was able to drop in about 60 of them. This year, I took the time to organize them in rows, just to make it look more uniform.

And just like last year, I planted a row of green beans along the front of the plot so I can access them easily when we need some veggies for dinner.

In addition to buying plants, I grabbed a bag of plant markers for $2 so I was able to label each plant.

The markers will come in handy, especially when harvesting our peppers since some are sweet and some are hot. I don't want to mix them up!

After making sure the tomatoes were leaning on their wire cages and ensuring the onion sets were facing up, I doused the whole thing with a good drink of water, thanks to my soaker hose, another one of my mom's recommendations. This morning, before racing off to the train, I ran outside to make sure they made it through the night. I look forward to virtually sharing the fruits of my labor with you all in the coming months.

Did anyone else have a productive day enjoying the nice weather?