Sun and seed equals Mammoth sunflowers

Fall is here with winter on its heals and while I am sad to see my warm air and bright sun go. I am looking forward to hot cocoa, pumpkin everything and the leaves turning color. I did have a good time relishing in the last bits of summer, especially while chopping down the last of my sunflowers.

 

They were ready to be harvested and my tummy was ready to enjoy the tasty tidbits that were hiding just inside the shells. I had about 7 Mammoth sunflowers heads and placed them all on the picnic table along with a large bowl for the seeds, a knife, gloves (the sunflowers tend to be sappy) and some tunes (a good beat to get you in the working mood).

 

Step 1. Remove the individual flowers

 

Step 2. Rub, peel, scrape or pick off the sunflower seeds

 

Step 3. Rinse in bowl with water and get off the nasty bits.

Then soak in a heavy salt brine overnight.

Step 4. Remove from brine and let them air dry (I used a colander).

 

Step 5. Put into a new bowl and have fun being your own mixing master!

 

 Ok this is where it gets fun, if you weren't having fun already. ;) I looked up a lot of seasoning recipes, but I went with what I knew. Good 'ole Johnny's caesar garlic spread seasoning. However, no matter what you use to season with, you will want to add a good amount of oil. I used EVOO (Extra virgin olive oil), but you can use sunflower, grapeseed, etc. I would stay away from vegetable, corn, soy or canola, etc. Mainly because they do not have good flavor when cooked and their health benefits are less than. Add some additional sea salt, but not too much. Mix it all and let it sit a bit to let it all meld together.

 

While your waiting on it to marinate, turn the oven on at 300 degrees. Use a cookie sheet and some parchment paper, if you don't have parchment you can use foil, the sheet itself, a baking mat, etc. Spread the sunflower seeds evenly and try not to have them stacked on top of each other, this is what gives it the "roasted" affect. Put into the oven for 30-45min. Halfway through flip the seeds over so the other side gets some roasting done. Let them cool and then enjoy the nutty yumminess! Mine lasted maybe 3 weeks. I guess I will be growing more next year...LOL. This will work with pumpkin seeds as well. Granted I didn't grow any this year, but I will be doing it with the ones that I pick up from the pumpkin patch. Enjoy all and happy seeding! =)

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet Potatoes! Part 1

Well after a late night of watching Youtube videos of gardening techniques (cause I'm exciting like that), I found a bunch of videos on sweet potatoes. How to grow them, how to use the entire plant and how to make a box in which to grow them. So of course I have to take the challenge and grow them!

So the first thing I need to do is to make a slip. What is a slip you may ask? Well to be honest I had no idea as to what a slip was. I am a potter and to me slip is a mixture of water and clay that is used to join to pieces of clay together. Obviously, that isn't it. So then I searched the internet and managed to find a lot. Because sweet potatoes do not give out seeds, you have to take cuttings and make your own slips. Have you ever had a sweet potato or even a potato start growing a plant on the side? Well that is the beginning if your slip growing. I went to the store and bought some sweet potatoes for eating and one to use for planting.

Step 1: Get all of your items together.

 

Step 2: Cut the sweet potato into 3rds and then add toothpicks so it sits just a little out of the water.

 

 

Step 3: Fill with water and then place outside or on a window sill that gets a lot of sun.

 

 

 Now its just a matter of waiting a few weeks for the slips to start growing. In the meantime I am going to start building my potato bin. I have the wood and the organic compost and the organic soil.

 

Time to get the tools out, then start measuring and cutting. I figured that I will make a box that is 2 feet wide and about 4 feet deep. Since this is going to be my first time trying this, the box is going to be of simple design. No muss, no fuss! Will start making it today and if all goes well I will have pics of the finished product sometime this week. =)

 

Beans, beans the magical fruit. The more you eat, the more that's still growing on the vine...

The beans are growing...and growing...and growing. At first there were these tiny, delicate flowers that started to pop up everywhere...

And then the flowers turn into little beans! Itty, bitty, little beans. Omg...aren't they cute?!?

 

As long as the sun keeps shining, there should be a great bountiful crop. I am looking forward to pickling a good amount with the hot peppers I am growing as well. They should all mature around the same time, which is awesome. There are already little green peppers on both bushes and just a matter of time before they are ripe. I tried this last year, but it didn't work out well. So this year I made some tweaks and so far so good. That's the great thing about gardening, you are always learning. What doesn't work one year, can be tweaked and tried a different way the next time you grow. And when you get it right, the results are absolutely amazing!

  

 

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 I surely know about "failing" on growing things. Yes, there are things that just plainly put, I suck at growing; for instance, any type of squash. I have tried growing acorn squash, spaghetti squash, yellow straightneck squash and even zucchini. I can get them started with no problem, whether from seed or from a starter. It's the part where its time to actually grow a squash is the issue. I call it a race for life, because as the plant starts to die from the base of the plant, the other end is doing all it can to continue to grow. In the end, the plant loses out and dies. Which results in me pulling up the poor plant and putting it into the yard waste bin. This has gone on for a few years now, but I am persistent. I keep trucking along, trying to figure out the why (is it dying) and the how (can I keep it alive and healthy).

 

So the point I am trying to get across is, if at first you don't succeed try, try again. Because at some point you ARE going to get it right and then you can do the "I'm awesome" dance among your veggies. Because lets be honest, veggies are 99% non-judgmental, its that 1% of onions that will judge you 9 ways to Sunday. ;)



Juicing - Part 1......The test

Well the juicer came and I of course had to open it and give it a go. It wasn't as heavy as I expected it to be. I guess I figured it was going to be heavy and cumbersome, but to my surprise it really wasn't. It was relatively light and with the exception of the main body, mostly plastic. The inside had a booklet of "recipes". I use the quotations because there was a recipe to make carrot juice. Add carrots, drink..."oh gee thanks, I would have never gotten that without the recipe book". Seriously?

I took the whole thing apart and washed it before using it. It took a little to figure out how to do that, but once I got the hang of it, piece of cake. So I decided to juice the pea pods I had just shucked, just to see how it worked and what to expect. It was loud, but its a juicer so its going to be loud. There were a lot of complaints of the how much noise juicers make, but how quiet do you really need it to be? The pods went in and this is what came out. The "green" smell with a hint of peas was really fresh smelling.

No I didn't drink it, not that brave. The color though...look at it! Its sooo vibrant! Plus I love that shade of green....very, very pretty. Now that I saw how it works, I cleaned it out with warm water and put it together for something that I was actually going to drink. I didn't make it to the fruit stand I mentioned in yesterday's post. So I looked around what I had in the kitchen, pickings were slim. I had the carrots I pulled up from the garden and some overly ripe apples. Why not? So I juiced the carrots first and the color was a nice bright orange.

Then I went back to the juicer and added in the apples. It smelled great, like fresh apple juice. However the taste was less than. =( I think that it was because they were overly ripe. Blech. So note to self, you get out what you put in. Going to get a bunch of fresh veggies and fruits today. I should have better results the second time around.

Now the pulp is actually pretty cool. Its dry and flakey, it reminds me of bonito flakes. For those who don't know, bonito flakes or Katsuobushi are dried, smoked and fermented fish. Another thing I read about juicers is some leave the pulp a bit too moist. The more moisture in the pulp, the less juice that you are actually get. So seeing how the pulp is super dry, its pretty cool.

I was going to make some of the veggie pulps into soups, but the more I think about it, probably not. With it being so dry, I'm not sure how good that would work out. So in the interim I will be composting it.

Well that's all I have for today. Will be posting Part 2's adventures tomorrow.

Beans, carrots, lettuce and a juicer.....

 

 

I needed a break from quilting so I have been busily making potholders. They are fun, fast and super easy to make. I say...why buy them in the stores when you can make your own, in the style and fabrics you want? I think my favorites so far are the veggie and cupcake ones. Have to go back to the studio and look to see if I can find anymore of the same fabric. Its like Christmas for me going through my stash and finding fabric I didn't even realize that I had.

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Well I just got my juicer and looking forward to using it today. Going to pull all the carrots from the garden and need to walk up to the fruit stand by my house to get some cucumber, parsley, celery and maybe some more apples to sweeten it. That's the plan at least. The next time I am at the local nursery I will look for some celery seeds or better yet some starters. My carrots are pretty much done (for this batch at least) and that means more room for some new things in the garden.

I haven't been out to the garden for a few days, been under the weather to be honest and it sure has been busy. I snapped a pic of my bounty and looking forward to some salad the next few days as well as some peas with bacon. Most everything is good with bacon. The carrots are for my juicer and I really can't wait to try them out.

The beans are flowering and the more I look at it I think I might have over done it a bit. I have three 4X6 rows of beans and they are so heavy they are actually bending the support boards. This is even without beans growing on it! Oye Fey! I see spicy pickled beans, frozen beans and bag fulls of beans handed out to friends and family. I was at my local Asian market and they had dried green beans with olive oil and sea salt. They were delish! Now to find a recipe on how to make them, though I have some time before I actually need to have it. So back to the bending boards. I am going to have to figure out how to reinforce them so the don't buckle under the weight. Will have to see what my options are and of course the price is also a factor.

That's it for now as I am dying to use my juicer....TTFN!

 





Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas just picked only 5 minutes ago...

What can one say about peas? Honestly I hate them, especially canned peas, disgusting. However, frozen peas are no better. There is something to be said about anything that is processed from its original state. The flavor and texture is lost, sometimes even the color. Growing up I did everything I could to rid my plate of the hideous peas. From the occasionally filling my mouth with them, then excusing myself for the restroom to dispose of them. It worked for awhile until my parents grew wise of my doings. Later in life I would tolerate them in things like soups or potpies, but it wasn't till I started to grow them myself that I gained an appreciation for them.

 

The flowers that pop up before the pods appear so just so beautiful. They are just so delicate and so pretty, that you get a feeling that something good is going to come of it. Then one day you come out to the garden and viola! there are fresh pods growing with tasty peas inside, almost like they changed overnight.

I picked some today and removed the peas from the pods. The dogs were so eager to get the shells to eat them. Of course being the mom I am I wanted to make sure they had some carrots as well. I was reading an article in my Organic Gardening magazine that said this about carrots...

"served whole, they (carrots) promote healthy teeth and gums for dogs,

since they can act as natural abrasives to control tartar".

Not too bad. Of course they all would rather if steak grew out of the ground, but what dog wouldn't. I managed to gather a good handful of pods that were ready to be picked. The peas are large and plump as you can see. As well as a nice bright green color. I am not sure if you can actually eat the pods themselves. There are still so many that need some more time to grow. Waiting for the sun that is suppose to be upon us soon.

I did manage to get a serving size of peas to eat along with the chicken I cooked for dinner. I added some butter and garlic caesar seasoning, turned out pretty tasty. I am still amazed at what I can grow and the colors are so much more vibrant (and fresher) than what I could buy in the store. Plus, they are free, with the exception of the care and love put into growing them. ;)

A convenient lunch...

Going through the fridge today and nothing really striking my interest. I knew I wanted a salad, but I had no lettuce...or did I? I'm thinking to myself, "Dude! There is romaine in the garden!". I head out to the garden with Doxie's in tow to grab some leaves of lettuce off the bunch. I see the carrots with some of their tops popping out from the ground and they beckon to me. 

 

What? Am I going to deny myself the sweet and crunchy yumminess that awaits me? Uh...that would be a no! :) Pulled about 10 of them for myself and 2 more for the dogs. They LOVE carrots and its a big treat when I pull some out just for them. Even dogs know how good organic gardening is. ;) Headed back inside the house to clean the carrots and lettuce. Made a Chinese chicken salad with a side of carrots. Pretty good lunch and healthy at that.

I recently bought a juicer because I don't tend to eat breakfast and when I do its only smoothies from frozen berries I have picked the year before. So adding more veggies into the mix can't hurt and is, I am sure healthier. I figured I can take the pulp and make some soups with it or add into meats depending on what I had juiced at the time of course. What does that have to do with gardening? Well I was thinking I should grow some veggies that I could juice. Well there is the obvious carrots and tomatoes, but not sure how well beans would juice. I know celery, spinach and cilantro are very good juicers and in a lot of the recipes. I just have to wait for some of my items to grow and do their thing so I can plant something else in their place.

There is a part of me that wants a bigger section of my yard dedicated to raised beds, but honestly there is no reason I can't grow everything and anything with the two that I have. Someday I will have my own place with a 1/4 acre dedicated to growing veggies, herbs, berries and fruit. Someday....one can only dream...

Ok, back to my lunch...yum! =)