All Posts by Sabine

First Eggplant and Planting Beans

SabineLeave a Reply

I harvested my first eggplant today. Yay! There are quite a few more on my two Asian Eggplant plants. This is very exciting, as I usually don’t have much luck with eggplant. I also planted beans this morning, two rows of Slenderette bush beans where the garlic used to be and two rows of Kentucky Wonder pole beans where the peas used to be. The plot is pretty much fully planted right now. There is still a little space for fall greens and radishes to be planted in about a month. And enough space for the squash to spread out. Fingers crossed.

Garlic Harvest 2023

SabineLeave a Reply
Just harvested and tied for transport

This morning, I harvested all my garlic. I have 17 hardnecks (Red Russian) and 21 softnecks (Transylvania), which is funny, because I planted 16 hardnecks and 20 softnecks. The heads are nice and big. I put the garlic on the porch to cure in indirect sunlight for two to three weeks. (I will spread them out a little more tomorrow.)

Hardneck on the top, softnecks on the bottom

First of July

SabineLeave a Reply

Today is the first day of July. Things are coming along nicely in the garden. The cold spring caused some delays, but made the peas and lettuce greens very happy. It now seems to be summer here and the cucumbers, tomatoes and squash plants have been taking off. I can see the first baby eggplants emerging. I planted the last two (extremely sad looking) winter squash seedlings (butternut and delicata) and fertilized them with Tomato-tone. I had fertilized all other seedlings about ten days ago and together with the rain we have had this past week it made a huge difference. Here is hoping for a bountiful harvest.

Garlic Scape Pesto

SabineLeave a Reply

I turned the garlic scapes I harvested a couple of days ago into pesto: just store-bought basil, garlic scapes, olive oil and salt, homogenized with a stick blender and frozen in ice cube trays with a thin layer of olive oil on top. I then stored the cubes in a Ziplock bag in the freezer. They will last for several months. I am still using pesto I made last year. I find that leaving out cheese and nuts makes the pesto more versatile, for instance if I decide to use it on fish or shrimp. One cube packs a punch. I also used rosemary from my porch to make rosemary focaccia, which I had for dinner with a big home-grown salad.

Lemongrass

SabineLeave a Reply

A couple of weeks ago I purchased some lemongrass at Whole Foods. There were four stalks in the package, but only two of them still had some of the stem intact. It was completely cut off at the other two. I placed the stalks that had stems in water and watched them develop nice roots. They also started to sprout new leaves. Yesterday I planted them (about an inch deep) in a container on my back porch. Lemongrass likes it hot and moist. The weather has been pretty cold these past days, but I am sure that will change. I am looking forward to see how this experiment will turn out.