Archive for Kitchen Garden

07 Jun 2010
fruit • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

In Strawberries We Delight

Picking up strawberries in the garden on a warm day is a true sensual experience.

My eyes are attracted to the bright vermilion peeking not-so-shyly from under dark green leaves; my fingers reach eagerly yet carefully for the plump berries; I can feel the hot noon sun radiating on my back ; the whole garden is humming around me; the heady perfume of strawberry hangs heavily in the air, and finally … the taste of that warm ripe strawberry explodes in my mouth.

Yes indeed that dainty delicacy is full of pleasures. When picked ripe – at its peak.

strawberries-3-species-whole1

One can't grow enough strawberries. From top left, scarlet Virginia strawberry, fragile Alpine strawberry, and water deprived (therefore small) garden strawberry 'Tristar'

The strawberry is a relatively new comer to our gardens – especially when compared to the apple or the quince. Read more

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags:
19 May 2010
Kitchen Garden • locavore log

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I know it’s a little wild looking.

garden-2010-05-028

but:

  • the raspberries  are very strong and lush despite a very dry April (and I managed to put a netted trellis for them, so the branches stay upright, hopefully making harvesting easier)
  • the Shirley poppies are absolutely gorgeous – although they have been allowed to take over the asparagus bed. The harvest may have been a tad affected – something that somebody in the house will not let me forget. I say that April was very dry, and THAT affected the harvest (but next year I plan to give the poppies a bed all of their own) Read more
sylvie | 3 comments
17 May 2010
fruit • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

Post Card From The Garden

Aren’t they beautiful?

currants-green-2010-05-012

They are earlier than the last few years, I may be able to pick in late May. While winter was cold and snowy (which currants like), the ground was protected from extreme cold by the blanket of snow – something we don’t have very often in Virginia. So the ground may actually have been a little warmer thanks to the snow cover. And of course, April was warm. So… ripe currants soon!

Soon I’ll be making The Easiest Jelly In The World again. Oh, we’ll be eating them with a sprinkling of sugar and other berries too, a very refreshing little fruit salad, but red currant jelly is an absolute favorite here. I also freeze ripe berries to throw a handful when making jams with low pectin fruit later in the summer (red to go with cherries and strawberries; white currants for peaches and apricots).

Anybody growing currants out there? what do you make with them?

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags:
13 May 2010
Harvest • herb recipe • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Vegetable recipe

When The Garden Gives You Lots Of Greens…

… start a vegetable weekly subscription and make Mongolian-style sauce (lots and lots of it!)

I certainly grow more than we can eat – and we eat lots of veggies! Yet I don’t grow enough for selling at a Farmer’s Market or to a restaurant. But even with all the preserving I do, it’s too much just for us. And let’s face it: some things don’t preserve that well anyway (lettuce sauerkraut, anyone?). Or I have no need to preserve them, because I’ll be growing them through the cold months. Why preserve when you can eat fresh? You know: the mâche, arugula, mustards, lettuces, onions, kale, turnips, spinach, Swiss Chard, and other greens.

So, what’s a girl to do?

Find a few people who don’t have a garden, are interested in super fresh food, and are willing to receive whatever I grow. That’s what a girl does.

So my mini (or rather “nano”) subscription scheme started last year. I am not a professional grower, so I do not want to commit for the entire “growing” season, and I want to give myself, and my clients, a way out if  I can’t sustain it – or if they don’t like it. So I offer the  subscription in 7 to 8 weeks increment (Spring, early summer, high summer, fall) and only to a handful of clients. A chef’s CSA.

So far so good.  We are in week 2 of spring, and that’s what my Thursday subscriber got today:

csa-2010-spring-week-2-005

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: , ,
10 Mar 2010
Garden Technique • Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • vegetable

On Spinach

A month ago, we were under 2 feet of snow with night temperatures in the single digits. This week we garden in short-sleeve shirts and harvest mache, baby lettuce, just-emerging sorrel, baby arugula, escarole and… spinach – lots and lots of spinach. Finally!

spinach-bed-2010-03-06

The spinach was not planted in the hoophouse but outside. Last spring we simply did not have enough spinach, not having planted any the prior fall. So this past fall, I did 2 separate sowings, a small one in September to give us some fall spinach, and three long rows in November. We covered the bed with wire hoops, and Reemay. The bed was buried under snow for several weeks, the hoops crushing in the process – they’ll have to be reshaped. Yes, the larger leaves of the spinach are somewhat tattered (but fine enough for the chicken who are happy enough for anything green), but the 2nd planting – much smaller plants – did very well and is starting to grow again. Happily so, too. With enough water, that should provide us with spinach through May. Maybe I’ll even have enough to freeze some later this spring. Read more

sylvie | 2 comments | Tags: ,
26 Feb 2010
Garden Technique • Kitchen Garden • Seed Starting • vegetable

A Gross Of Tomatoes

It does roll good off the tongue, doesn’t it? or is it just me?… “a gross of tomatoes”…

Except of course, they are not yet tomato plants, just 144 seeded cells with the promise of 144 seedlings. Seeded on Februray 22 (although the labels read 2/21 because I meant to do it on the 21st but did not get to them until the 22nd, and then was too lazy to change the labels). Hard to look at that one flat and think that’s a potential of 144 tomato plants. Hard not to go and seed an other gross… it seems such a long time away until we can pick tomatoes. Especially when the wind is howling outside.

tomatoes-ripening-on-vine-2008-08-161

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sylvie | 7 comments | Tags:
09 Jan 2010
Garden Technique • Kitchen Garden • vegetable

More on Growing In Hoop Tunnels

This is Swiss Chard in the garden today, unprotected, after weeks of cold weather, night in the teens (F/- 7 C to -12 C) and days of bone-chilling howling winds with gusts at 50 miles/ h (80 km). Not pretty, right? Certainly not much to harvest…

swiss-chard-outside-2010-01-09

This is Swiss Chard (and more) in the unheated hoop tunnel. Need I say more?

hoop-tunnel-2010-01-09-swiss-chard-etc-0131

hoop-tunnel-2010-01-09-swiss-chard-etc-0121

A few hours of labor, $100 in materials (some second hand), one layer of greenhouse plastic – and we moved at least one zone south, maybe 2 . Not bad for January, eh?

sylvie | 4 comments | Tags: , , ,
26 Dec 2009
Garden Technique • Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log • Soups

Snow, What Snow?

2 feet of snow last week-end, temperatures in the lower teens (F/ about -12 C). I have not been in the hoophouse for about a week, and frankly I was not sure how it was going to be in there. Would I have mush? It after all, got cold quite suddenly after a long mild fall, and I was not sure the plants had a chance to harden off.

But it all looks good when I went in today to harvest a big bouquet of cilantro and leaf celery for a Vietnamese-inspired rice and goose. In winter, I often do a version of my basic “Chicken Soup with a Twist” varying the vegetable and the meat.

Since we had a roasted goose for Christmas (I needed after all to replenish my store of goose-fat), I simmered the carcass and the bones with some aromatics for a dark rich fragrant broth. Sautéed some carrots, shallots, lots of ginger. Added a handful of already cooked rice, some chopped goose meat, a little fish sauce, and some braised cabbage to the pot. Covered with goose broth, simmered for 15 minutes, added handful of chopped cilantro and leaf celery, some hot sauce, and voila, a very tasty and warming lunch!

sylvie | 5 comments | Tags: , , , ,
19 Nov 2009
chicken • Kitchen Garden

On Chicken

The chicken have moved to their winter quarters.

chickens-2009-11-024

We’ve taken the wire fence from the summer garden down; moved the electric net fence to enclose the new chicken area; relocated the coop inside the old summer garden, and built a little dome shelter – complete with perches – so the chicken can be outside the coop and dry on wet days – like today.

The idea is to harness “chicken power” in helping to prepare next year summer garden. We’ll give them the run of the area through late April, with the hope that they will eat the bugs, control weeds, aerate the soil and incorporate organic matter – including their droppings – in the top soil (since I am also piling leaves, old straw, and other organic debris in there). Besides providing us with tasty eggs, those girls (and one boy) are playing a big role in the cycle of the garden.

Come April, they’ll be moved to another area that I want them to help clear. We hope to rotate them every 6 months, with the idea that, at all time, one area will be under chicken patrol, one area will be fallow (with cover crop) and one area cultivated.

Meanwhile, this winter, we have work to do moving the stones around to change the perimeter of the summer garden. One can see on the picture low stone “walls” outlining the perimeter of the initial summer garden – about 28 feet square. We saw way too small when we first did it two years ago. Of course, at the time, it looked big, and picking and moving the stones from the to-be-planted area to the perimeter was no small task. Fields grow stones, around here! Prospectives have changed. Funny how that happen. I now have grand plans for extensive plantings of beans, corn & squash for next year, so the summer garden is likely to be 3 to 4 times bigger by the time we are done.

A girl can dream.

The stones will have to be moved.

sylvie | 3 comments | Tags: ,
03 Nov 2009
Harvest • Kitchen Garden • locavore log

Still Harvesting

Last evening I saw the man in the moon. In the incredible Hunter’s Moon that hanged, powerful and enormous, for a short while. As I was driving home, the sun sinking behind the mountains at my back , the majestic Moon was rising in the Eastern sky, capturing and reflecting the dying light from the sun. I was moon-struck. You don’t get to see such moons very often.

It’s the moon that give the hunters light to finish their task, even as the sun sinks down. It can also be used by the harvesters to finish gathering the crops (although they got their own harvest moon, 28 days ago).

In between those moons, we’ve been harvesting.

harvest-oct09-2

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sylvie | 8 comments | Tags:
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