When Life Gives You Cucumbers...

Make Pickles.

In our garden the plants seem to grow well, but the volume of fruits & veggies is low. Our four zucchini plants have produced a grand total of 2 zucchinis. Not 2 each. Just two. We have seven pepper plants and to date we've seen a grand total of 6 peppers. Our tomato plants are producing a reasonable number of tomatoes, but very few have turned red relative to the total volume. The tomatoes in the gardens on either side of ours have not only been turning red, but due to very little involvement on the part of those gardeners half have fallen off to the ground half rotten.

Our cucumbers for some reason seem to be doing quite well on the other hand. I mean we're not growing cucumbers out the ears or anything but I've had a cucumber a day pretty much for the last two weeks. Meg made some cucumber water with lemon and mint out of one. I made pickles yesterday from a half dozen that came out of the garden yesterday morning. And they're still coming albeit a bit slower now than the last two weeks.

The pickles I made are a simple refrigerator recipe. Now we wait ten days for whatever happens during the wait to happen. But even as I filled the two jars we made I could smell the wonderful smell of good deli pickles. I just hope the wait is worth it. I'll be so disappointed if I screwed this up.

Speaking of pickles reminds me of one of my favorite Annie stories. When Annie was a baby, just old enough to start eating real food, I wanted to play a mean little "evil daddy" trick. We were out at a restaurant and Meg always order's pickles on the side of any meal she orders. We had been sharing our food with Annie throughout the meal. Annie was funny about food.. she always made the "mmmmm!" sound whenever food was around. If a pizza delivery guy showed up at the door and she saw the box... she'd make the mad dash towards whoever had the box making the "mmmmm!" sound. She loved food and ate anything we gave her. 

So we're eating at this restaurant and I decide to do this trick and hand her a two inch length of pickle, knowing she'll put it right in her mouth and expecting her face to go sour and for her to spit it out. But not Annie. She started eating that pickle like it was the finest thing she'd ever eaten. She loved it so much that it was kinda scary how quickly she was devouring it. Afraid that it would be too harsh on her little system I attempted to take it away and it was like trying to take a bone from a dog.. she growled and hissed and cat scratched at me. Okay she didn't do any of those things but she may as well have because the cry she let out  was one of the very few she ever made. She was not a crying baby, she was generally happy and gave us very little trouble as a baby and this behavior was foreign to us. She was not giving in until I gave her that "Effing Pickle" back.

I gave in and let her eat the rest of the pickle and then she wanted another. To get through the meal we had to let her have that second pickle. So Annie played the trick on me. But she wasn't done with the trick just yet. When we eventually got home and settled in for the night Annie projectile vomited green pickle juice all over us. No crying... no fussing... just a little green pickle vomit as a sorta thank you gift for that wonderful treat.

To this day Annie loves pickles and almost always orders them on the side of her dinners just like her mom. Sometimes she'll take just a few bites of the meal she ordered, but there's never a pickle to be found on our table at the end of a meal. 

Exit the control freak

It's 8:45 on the Friday morning of my vacation week and I should be at the garden right now watering, but instead I'm sitting here in front of my computer... somewhat lazily playing on my computer and drinking a cup of coffee. The plants can wait a bit.

Water, sun and some nutrients... that's all it takes to grow some plants. We pretend that it takes more than that. Carefully spacing out our plantings, trying to read the condition of our plant's leaves to determine if we should add that or if we're watering too little or too much, but nature doesn't think about these things and yet these plants have been here for a very long time.

Sure we try to maximize the produce and we try to force things to grow where they really didn't want to be in the first place, so care is taken to try to invent an appropriate environment to allow everything we want to grow exactly where we want it. We drive steaks into the ground to support our plants. We add certain flowers to attract bees and butterflies. We add other plants to deter critters that might otherwise eat our goods. We are control freaks trying to make it happen in such a way as to provide us with the most delicious salad, or ratatouille, or pasta sauce, or pizza topping, or accompaniment to our grilled steaks.

On the other hand we can't just add nutrients, water and sun to the soil at the edge of our driveway and hope some random edible goods grow. So there is a certain requirement on our part to make some conscious decisions to plant something that might purposely grow into these edible goods. But how much effort is too much effort? Is it enough to get these seeds started and then just sorta hope nature does her part? How much money too, must be spent buying treatments for our soil because our radishes & beets look pathetic and our zucchini's flower but never create squash? We hunt for beetles that are specifically destroying this plant or that plant. We look up treatments on line. We make mild soaps to try to wash away the black sticky goo these beetles left behind. We buy lady bugs and apply them onto the leaves of struggling plants, hoping the ladybugs will eat the stuff that's killing them. WTF?

• Step 1. Dig in the dirt.
• Step 2. Add some nutrients
• Step 3. Add some seeds
• Step 4. Water

I think I need to let the garden tell me what it wants to do. I can't be the control freak. If it grows... great! If not... try something else. 

Garden School For Disappointing Farmers

So we're coming up on four months since we started this blog to follow our efforts to become organic gardeners. We haven't had much success in our garden. The fruits of our labor to date include:

• Small windy rooty radishes (that we never ate)
• About 15 tiny beets (we ate about 5)
• Half a dozen heads of lettuce (no other salady items to eat with them)
• Approx 36 pea pods (all of which were eaten)

But this week our first cucumber has reached maturity and was ready to be picked and four more are fast approaching with a half dozen mini's trying to become serious contenders as well. Where are those heads of lettuce now?

Our tomatoes too have started to produce millions of green tomatoes but only two are starting to turn reddish orange. I already see signs of the blight coming and I'm not sure how many of these tomatoes will ever make it to our table.

We haven't lost faith yet. Our garden is quite flush with green growing things strewn about. We have four (or five) brussel sprouts that are starting to form little nodules at the stems of each leaf. what a funny system for growing eatable items. Our second round of carrots are growing tall stems, but these will stay in the ground till early fall... or maybe till after the first frost as I hear it sweetens them up. We accidentally weeded out most of our first round of carrots before we understood that carrot sprouts look like the grass we keep weeding. Our herbs are doing quite well and I'm especially happy about Meg's cilantro as they're the only herbs we (she) planted from seed... somehow planting seedlings always feels like cheating to me. On the other hand all those who planted seedlings and partially matured plants are having more success than we are, but so are those with better located plots. Our plots is shaded by trees until 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning and again by 4:00 in the afternoon. Most gardens have sun from 7:00 to 7:00.  Our zucchinis have flowered at least 70 times but only two pathetic zucchinis have started growing. Our peppers are starting to produce baby peppers and we're hopeful that we'll soon be enjoying some of those. Our butternut squash and cantaloupe are kreeping longer daily with signs of flowering but no fruits yet. We planted eggplant and corn rather late (June 30th) and they're both growing but I fear not fast enough to give us much if anything at all. The watermelons never germinated.

We're calling this year "garden school" where we are learning through trial and error and through conversations with more experienced gardeners. I'm already thinking more about next year than I am about what I'll get this year. I have plans... ideas... experiments that I want to try. Today I'm a fairly disappointing farmer, but my day will come. Give me a couple more years to play with my food and I'll be making this work far more efficiently. 

The Seeds We Sow (All About Annie)

Vegetables aren't the only thing that gets watered in the garden.

Occasionally on a hot day we'll hit Annie with a few sprays of the hose to cool her down and to make her time in the garden a bit more fun than just watching us dig in the dirt.


Sometimes I feel sad for Annie because she isn't growing up with a yard to play in like I had as a child. It wouldn't even need to be a big yard if there was just a patch of grass to call her own and maybe a tree to climb.

But Annie's a trooper. She pretty much accepts her world as it is without complaint. She can occasionally be a nudge like any child but she's well behaved most of the time and she makes it easy to be a parent. For those who subscribe to the idea that life only gives you what you can handle.. I guess life doesn't have much faith in me as all my kids are pretty easy to
deal with.

See those cute little chick-let teeth? They're all loose now and soon will be gone, replaced by the unsightly growth of adult teeth in her sweet little girl smile. And those freckles will eventually fade like mine did. And her button nose will someday have... shall we say, more character? Will it resemble my big honker or will she inherit Meg's smaller more feminine nose?

Such a happy little reader she is. Aside from her American Girl Dolls, which she treats like babies and even has fake conversations with an imaginary babysitter from her sleeping beauty cell phone to check in on said babies when we're away from home, reading is her favorite thing to do. Although these days inventing dance moves based on a style of dance she's created that's part ballet, part Irish step dance and part hip hop, is quickly rising on her list of things that she loves to do.

Her energy is amazing. Her sweetness brings tears to my eyes. Her ability to engage in wonderful conversations makes me proud to be the daddy of one of the sweetest creatures I have ever known.

MR. Thank U Verymuch

Do you recognize this guy? He's Mr. Gimme A Break, Mr. Throwme A Bone. He's the guy who has been waiting impatiently for the photographer for this blog to get him his damn pictures so there's something to see in his blog entries. He's also me looking a bit older than I believe I am in my head, but that's a story for a different blog. I wish I had a good picture to represent Mr. Thank U Verymuch, because I finally have access to some long awaited pictures and today I'm going to share a few of them with you.

We didn't get any photos of the garden as we had acquired it, but there were four of these boxes laid out in a  pattern to fill the space and divide it into four equal quadrants. We didn't like the way the boxes seemed to limit the growing space... so we pulled them out, dug up what was originally in the space and then removed as much of the weeds and roots as we could (or so we thought). At the end of day one in April this is what we had. Notice that we kept the chive in the corner of that box. Also notice the huge rock in the lower right corner. That was in the ground and we dug it up and knew right away that it needed to have a home in our garden as a sort of utilitarian step/seat. It was a good choice... that rock has served me well on many occasions even in the short two months that we've been gardening.

About a week or two later we had painted the box blue and set the garden up for planting. I had this idea that everything should be planted in raised mounds. Meg hated the idea and eventually I gave in and removed the mounds.

By the end of May we had planted all of our initial round of seeds and and planted our seedlings as well. The chive really took off and has a bunch of purple flowers on top in this shot. Just at the fence line are the peas at about a foot tall. Notice also that we added a slate walk way aligned to our favorite rock.

 This close up from a recent visit in June shows the bottom of Annie's crib, which we mounted above the fence to give the peas more room to climb. They're currently taller than the additional space we gave them. You can see much growth has happened at the ground as well.

Here's a look from the opposite side. In the box is where all of our herbs are growing. Between the box and the fence you can see our cucumbers just peeking over the edge of the box, then there's a row of beets, a row of peppers, a row of carrots with about six carrots in it because we accidentally weeded out all of our initial planting of carrots, then finally the peas. There's asparagus growing just outside the fence, I'll include some shots of that in an upcoming entry. On the other side of the box is a clear patch where our radishes used to live, but I've replanted three new rows of carrots here and they're doing quite well.

Now try to imagine my happy face here as I'm happy to finally have been able to show you some progress in our garden. I know this entry itself was a tad boring, but now that we got this out of the way perhaps I can get more creative and write a fun blog entry... although no promises here... Meg's the more creative blogger, she's just sparse with her entries. (nudge nudge... let's go Meg.... this was supposed to be a joint effort)

Twisty & Rooty

Two months of gardening and finally the results are starting to show. This week our radishes have started to reach the point where at least some needed to be pulled. In fact they should have come out a week ago or more but I thought leaving them in a little longer might let them grow bigger... plumper... rounder. Unfortunately that's not what they had in mind. They decided instead to stay long and narrow. Then they decide to get all twisty and rooty looking.

But more is happening than twisty radishes. Our peas have started to finally flower. This means we'll see some peas in the next week or two. We won't have as many as some of the sunnier gardens, which by the way have had peas for a few weeks. Our's are taller, their's are making peas.

Our original planting of lettuce had almost all been eaten by some critter, but for two of our original plantings. those two are doing well despite the loss of so many of their family members to the great beast. We replaced  much of that lettuce with cheater's lettuce. Cheater's lettuce because we bought them already half grown and then we planted them in place of the fallen soldiers. I almost feel guilty wanting to pluck leaves from any of the non original heads, but I'm going to need something to eat with those twisty radishes.

Last night I once again thinned the beets. It was pretty obvious that some were doing far better than others. So I made the command decision to pull about a half dozen to a dozen wimpy beets. I took them home, cleaned up the leaves and steamed them and served them up with a little butter and salt. Meg and I loved them. Annie, not so much.

Last night also included the addition of two locations of cantaloupe, but I'm not convinced we'll have any luck with those. In August at our local farmers market you can get locally grown musk melons. Have you ever had a musk melon? It looks a lot like a cantaloupe, but it's larger and has pronounced grooves, almost like a pumpkin. Anyway, these locally grown musk melons are a personal fave of mine. I have to buy two because I know I'll eat the first one when I get back to the house. The other is for later on when I wish I had another and lo and behold there's another right there.

We added a couple more herbs to our herb garden last night. We had basil already, but decided to get a second different variety to mix it up. Then I saw some lemon thyme and that sounded good to me... so in it went. I have to report that Meg's cilantro that she planted recently is starting to grow. I actually tore off a leaf the other day and ate it, just to make sure it was the cilantro and not a weed.

Speaking of weeds... if weeds were edible we would be amazing weed farmers. We grow more weeds than we do vegetables. I guess that's the reality of it all anyway, right? I mean the world is covered in things that grow and perhaps its edible to something but most of it isn't edible for us and we call them weeds. Weeds have played a part in our history for as long as we've maintained cultivated land. According to the book of genesis, after the serpent convinced Eve and then Eve convinced Adam to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God drops this little nugget on them:

"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground"

Oh, that crafty little serpent, tricksey he is.

A Mental Picture

It would be great to include some lovely photos of the progress our garden has seen. Unfortunately our photographer hasn't been doing her job to get us photos. Maybe I can get Meg to have a little talk with her and encourage her to get some updated shots of the space. I feel overdue on an entry into the blog and would really love to show you what the garden looks like, but instead I'm going to do my best to paint you a mental picture.

To start you off you need to envision our space, which is approximately 10'x15'. There is a light blue colored box sorta centered in our garden. It's approximately 3'x5' and 8 inches tall. In the corner of this box is a chive plant that we acquired with the space. It has grown quite tall and is dotted with purple flowers that are starting to die and fall off... possibly due to all the recent rain. The rest of the box is filled with single plantings of myriad herbs, including basil, oregano, rosemary, sage and thyme. There were some cilantro seeds planted but we haven't confirmed any growth there as of yet.

Out side the box towards the fence we have some recently planted cucumber sprouts, then some long ago planted beets which are in need of some thinning. Then there's a row of peppers looking like they need some nutrition. Our carrots come next and we have very few of these... most likely due to our overzealous weeding when the the carrots were first breaking ground. No one told us they would look so much like the grass we were pulling. Against the fence our peas are climbing and a few have even surpassed the top and will soon latch onto the bottom of Annie's crib, which we installed a few weeks ago in anticipation of these little climbers needing more vertical space to climb than that 18" fence.

Outside the fence is a row of asparagus playing volley ball with the peas. The asparagus once looked exactly like what you might purchase in the store, but have long since grown into ugly weedy looking shrubs in need of a good haircut, which is sorta the point when starting asparagus. You let it grow tall and weedy then cut it all back to the ground... or let it fall back to the earth. Next year the growth will be thicker and the following year thicker still. One needs patience while waiting to reap the rewards of growing asparagus. For about two feet beyond the asparagus is the flower bed with our bee attracting flowers just starting to pop up from the earth. In this same area I've transplanted from another garden a small raspberry shrub and a couple of strawberry plants that I found invading the walkway outside a neighboring garden. The raspberry has taken quite well, but the strawbs are struggling.

On the other side of the box you'll see two rows of radishes. Originally one row, we created a second row as we thinned the first row. I'm happy to say that our radishes are doing quite well and we even picked one yesterday and sliced it up and ate it. It was a bit small but delicious. I ate a second one later in the afternoon. Beyond the radishes is a hodgepodge of recently planted young lettuce and  brussell sprouts, a transplanted poor man's onion, and some seeds were planted for eggplant and butternut squash.

We've also recently added 6 tomato plants and 4 zucchini plants along the back side adjacent to the walkway. The tomatoes, like the peppers need some nutrition. But the zucchini's look quite happy in their new home.

A final note: Due to an abandoned garden we have recently acquired some more space. I started working the ground in that space yesterday. I really dig the earth... literally and figuratively.