Saturday, December 19, 2009

Ratatouille, the movie and the recipe


I love the movie but have yet to try the recipe. I am hoping it is delicious as the charming movie. It looks like a good recipe to make from fresh garden produce. It will be on my summer cooking to do list next summer.

Recipe: Confit Byaldi - New York Times After viewing the movie "Ratatouille" this evening, I set out to find a recipe. I found this one on New York Times website. Here is an alternate recipe which is highly rated: http://recipesrecipesrecipes.wordpress.com/2007/11/23/ratatouille-as-seen-in-the-movie/ If you try either of these recipes, let me know what you think of them. I will be trying them both and will let you know my results.

Here's another nice looking recipe: Remi's Ratatouille. The image shown in this article is of this dish.

A recipe that I prepared several times last summer with my abundant eggplant and zucchini crops was a layered dished. Think lasagna without the noodles. It is very simple to prepare and delicious. You simply slice the eggplant and zucchini lengthwise in quarter-inch thick slices and layer with spaghetti sauce and cheese. I used a combination of cheddar and monteray jack between the layers of eggplant and zucchini. On the top layer add chopped fresh basil and cheese. Bake 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Let the dish cool about 10 minutes after removing from the oven. Slice and enjoy with a fresh salad.



Buzz it up



Thursday, June 4, 2009

Invaders in the garden!

While checking my garden this morning I notices to interesting things - "footprints" in the garden and random seedlings I didn't recognize. 

My first thought on the footprints was that the dogs had gotten in, however looking more closely I am sure it is rabbits, dag nabbit! Tops of some bean plants and lettuce were nibbled. Didn't have this problem last year because my raised bed was 22 inches high and rabbits couldn't get in. 

The other issue of the mysterious seedlings - the weed cloth should keep virtually all weeds out of the garden so where did these seeds blow in from? Then I thought about how I was not as pleased with the cotton burr compost I had purchased from Home Depot. It wasn't as fine and didn't seem as composted as what I had purchased from Suburban Lawn and Garden last year (Nature's Best brand last year). I decided that I must be finding cotton seedlings. I did a search on the internet and sure enough a match. Dang! Rabbits and cottom seedlings two uninvited guests. I had a talk with the bassets since they are bred to be rabbit hunters...maybe that will help. Ha! And I will start searching for some natural repellants and think about adding a barrier of some sort. I really don't want to fence in the garden.  Let me know if you have any ideas. Just add to the comments to this post. Thanks!
Buzz it up

Sunday, May 31, 2009

The newest thing in the garden this year


It had to happen someday, but sooner sure is nice! Meet the newest member of the family, my grandson Brayden. In this picture he is three days old and ready for his first ride home. I wasn't sure how I felt about being a grandmother...wow...that sounds old...until I saw his little head pop out into the world. Watching a birth is a spiritual experience. I am happy to be Grandma. He is a very special little niblet.


Buzz it up

Raised beds in place and planted


The raised beds are in place and planted. I have planted tomatoes, zucchini, egg plants, okra, bell peppers, banana peppers, spinach, lettuce, bush beans, collard greens and cilantro.

Tomatoes in cages

Zucchinis planted in hills.

From left to right, eggplants, bell peppers, and okra.

This is the first year that I have actually used a grid. As Mel Bartholomew says, you aren't square foot gardening if you don't use a grid. After getting a grid in place, I understand his point. Without a grid, you tend to plant rows. Once you have a grid in place, you plant squares. It's a different approach. I think that I will go seed shopping and start some seedlings to go into the squares as I harvest them. The lettuce and spinach will be harvested and replaced with another vegetable.

I created the grid by screwing in metal eyes, three per side, to inside of the top board then strung natural jute twin across the bed in one foot spacing.

This is year two of my raised-bed garden and I am learning more and enjoying the garden much more now that tilling and weeding are a thing of the past.

Buzz it up

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Preparing New Raised Planting Beds

My new raised bed frames arrived from Natural Yards on Friday, just in time for the weekend. This year my garden supplies include two 4 x 4 raised bed frames, a 4 cubit foot bag of sphagnum moss, a 4 cubic foot bag of vermiculite, 1 bag of composted manure and two compost 50 gallon bins worth of composted yard clippings. I also purchased a 100 foot bolt of weed barrier cloth and 10 bags of rubber mulch. The rubber mulch is made from recycled materials and is supposed to last many years.

My soil recipe is 1 part compost, 1 part vermiculite, 1 part sphagnum, 1 part soil mix from last years garden and 1 shovel composted manure. To make it easy to mix, I added 1o shovels of my composted yard clippings, 10 shovels of vermiculite, 10 shovels of sphagnum, 1 shovel of composted manure, and 10 shovels of the mix from last year's garden. I put all of this into my wheelbarrow and mixed it in the wheel barrel. Then tipped it into my garden bed. It took four wheelbarrows per 4 x 4 bed.

The 4 x 4 beds have three feet in between each bed. I had enough soil-less mix for four beds. The trick in the plan is that I had to disassemble one half of my last year's bed which was a 4 x 8 foot bed, four boards high.

The first step my husband Brian and I did was to figure out how long the garden-bed row would be and then laid down the garden cloth. Then we removed the top two rows from last years bed.
We measured the distance from the farthest half of last year's bed to include a four foot bed, three feet space in between and then another four foot bed and three feet. So we started building the first new 4 x 4 bed ten feet away from where the near-side of the old bed that would remain. We had to leave the 4 x 8 bed intact until we assembled three beds so that it could hold the planting mixture.

Once the three beds were assembled, then I started mixing up this years planting mixture based on Mel's Mix from Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. I put four wheelbarrow's of mixture in each of the three beds. Then we scooped out one wheelbarrow of planting mix from last years bed and scooped all the mix from the half we were disassembling to the end that would remain. We began putting together the last of the five beds, but found that the ground needed to be leveled and we were running out of daylight so had to stop for the night.

One advantage of adding the planting mix from last year's garden into the new beds, was that some of the red wriggler worms I added to the bed last year were transplanted along with the planting mix. I was so encouraged to find the little guys. I wasn't seeing them at first. They had migrated over to the sides and bottom of the garden bed. I suspect they were seeking the warmth of the wooden frame. I was so happy to start seeing them as I digged a little deeper.

I hope to get the last bed in place today and to place the rubber mulch. I may hold off on the mulch because I think I may purchase some landscape edging to hold the mulch in place. I priced it on the Home Depot website last night. I looks like I will need 6 packs of edging which should run about $180. We bought the rubber mulch at Costco. It was about $20 a bag. That's pretty rich for my blood, but hoping it really will last as long as the claim! And I hope the ten bags will be enough. I think I will need to buy another bag of sphagnum peetmoss and vermiculite to finish filling the beds. Then I will be ready to plant. Yeah!

I haven't done the official talley but I estimate that I am at about $600 for this year's garden beds. The five beds will then have reached a cost of about $1000 - $1200. That sounds like a lot to me, however, these materials will last for many years. The planting mix from last year was still very usable this year. If you were able to find reclaimed lumber for your garden frames you could cut the cost in half.

We recently stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast near Herman, Missouri, Les Lavandes, where the owner, Myrta Webber, was able to acquire barn boards for free from a neighbor who was taking down an old barn on his property. The old weathered barn boards look great in their new life as a raised bed garden. Another example of a great reuse of materials. Remember the OurFriendlyEarth motto: reduce as much as possible, reuse as much as possible, and recycle as much of everything else as you can.

I expect to only be refreshing the mix each year with my own compost which is virtually free. We use a lawn service which uses only organic treatments for the lawn and we do not add any chemicals to the lawn ourselves. We water the garden with water from our rain barrles, so our garden is as close to organic as one can get in a suburban garden.

Les Lavandes Bed and Breakfast, Starkenburg, MO
Gardens at Les Lavandes B&B

Buzz it up

Sunday, April 26, 2009

New Every Morning...

God's mercies are new every morning and his faithfulness endures forever. 

It's time for a new garden season! I am sure many of you have been planning for months. Last year, as a newby gardener, or rather a returning gardener, I got a very late start planting my first plants and seeds in late June. This year, though later than the real garden troupers, I am starting earlier. 

I have ordered two more raised garden beds. Last year I started with one raised bed which was 4 feet by eight feet and 22 inches high. I am going to break down last years bed and tranform it into three 4 by 4 beds, 11 inches high, then add two more 4 by 4 beds for a total of 5 beds. This will give me 80 square feet of gardening space. Last year I had 32 square feet of raised bed gardening space so this will almost triple my capacity. 

I am counting on my basset puppy Michelle and her cohort Max (also a basset, but more mature) staying out of the beds. I had built the one last year 22 inches tall to keep them out. Crossing my fingers that we all get along! LOL.

Please let me know how your spring gardens are going by adding your comments here. I am sure many of you are already enjoying some spring greens and maybe even some early peas. I envy you. Maybe next year I will be right there with you! 

Buzz it up

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Urban Chicks

Here is a site I just found that is very interesting. It is something that I wish I could do if my city would change ordinances: Back Yard Chickens...in the city.   Here is an additional resource: How to keep chickens in the city from WikiHow. Urban chickens appear to be the next movement in the Victory Garden genre. Maybe I won't need to move to the country after all. 
Buzz it up

Food, Nutrition, Gardening Blogs