Fence going up

My old little garden has been providing us with endless harvests of greens for the past two months, and no end in sight yet. As you can see, things are pretty much full up in there, not an inch of space left anywhere. The lettuces have been a great treat, and I've had to give away quite a lot of it to friends. I was surprised at how nicely the romaine grew, and have planted some in the new garden as well. Most of the bright lightest green you see here is Black-seeded Simpson leaf lettuce. It's very quick growing. Tomatoes are along the right wall, and bok choy nearest the camera, along the path.



Today the fence guys came and put in the big posts for the new garden's fence. Very exciting and impressive! Should be finished just a few days from now. I do hope they get the fence done before the rabbits and deer discover all my baby vegetables as their personal free buffet...I've been very lucky so far, considering I see deer footprints here and there in the fresh soil every few days.

You can just see some of the green rows of baby seedlings sprouting up in the garden already (if you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can see it better). Those are from the seeds i planted two weeks ago. I made a new succession sowing yesterday, and will plant more seeds in another two weeks again. This will hopefully give us a more even supply of Fall vegetables and greens, rather than have them all mature at once.

A good July 4th

What a lovely July 4th I had!
First a wonderful breakfast at Ralph's Pretty Good Cafe with my honey.

Then we went for a nice 14 mile bicycle ride in the countryside.

After that I brought in a HUGE amount of fresh lettuce from the 'little garden' and carefully washed it. Such sparkling bright greens and ruby reds! It was enough lettuce to fill a spaghetti pot like four times over! I divided it all in four portions- one portion I gave to my neighbors, one my husband took with him to a party today, one we are bringing with us as part of a large salad for a party tomorrow, and the last batch is just for our own use at home over the next few days. Funny thing is the little garden doesn't look much different even after taking out all that lettuce...I really have a lot of lettuce right now.

After that I did a little bookcase organizing.

Lastly this afternoon I made two nice white boules today in my Dutch oven pots. They rose nicely! One has a poppy seed top and the other is sesame. I also mixed up a batch of semolina dough for next time I bake, let it rise, then put it in the fridge to 'ripen' for a couple of days. The flavor improves over a few days in the fridge before baking.

Suki loves to play turbo ball...

Our new adopted kitty Suki has lots of energy. We got her these Bergan brand track-ball cat gizmos.
She seems to enjoy them...

Forming the beds and paths...

Today we started shaping the beds and paths in the garden. We still have to stay well clear of the outside perimeter of the garden, to allow the fence people ample room to install the big fence that will keep out the marauding woodchucks, rabbits and deer.
But the interior of the beds are now plant-able even though not quite finished. Once the fence is put in (two weeks from now) we'll be able to finish the path that goes all the way around the garden inside the fence.
There are three long vegetable beds running down the length of the garden, and one wider bed on the end for blueberries, strawberries, and rhubarb. The long thin beds are 3 1/2 feet wide, and the two paths between them are two feet wide to accommodate a wheelbarrow.


I am terribly excited because now I can actually start planting seeds for a Fall crop! Hopefully not too many rabbits and deer will nibble the seedlings between now and when the fence is up. I can now start to sow seeds for lettuces, spinach, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, radishes, beets, and various other Autumn loving vegetables. All I have to do is wait for it to stop raining.

Topsoil is in...

The new topsoil mixed with compost has been brought in for the vegetable garden. It's about a foot deep. We'll be laying out the bermed beds and the mulched paths in the interior of the garden over the next few days, while trying to steer clear of the perimeter so the fence people can put the fence in around the outside a couple of weeks from now. Meanwhile, I should be able to work in the center area of the garden once we have the paths set.

New vegetable garden- breaking ground!

Well, they broke ground for the new 40' x 18' vegetable garden in our back yard today- so exciting! They are coming back tomorrow to do some more digging and bring in some new topsoil and compost to heap in the middle. After that it's a matter of waiting for the fence to be installed around the perimeter (to keep all the marauding varmints and deer out), then lastly laying out and sculpting the beds and paths inside. I can't wait to starting planting! (but I'll have to). The robins feasted on some yummy nightcrawler worms after the excavators left for the day. Poor worms! That's me in the last two photos...

First worm castings harvest

Well today I harvested my first tray of earthworm castings from my tiered worm compost bin. I really could have done it a couple of weeks ago but didn't have the time til today.

After carefully sorting out the remaining worms and returning them to the bin, I wound up with about 12 pounds of beautiful 'black gold'- pure worm castings. Looks and smells like gorgeous black crumbly forest earth- smells like the forest, too, really nice.

Every time now that I plant a new row of lettuce or radish or spinach seed in the garden, I'll work little trowelfuls of castings right in along the little seed trenches as I sow. Unlike manure, castings won't burn the seedlings. Castings are like compost but even better- more-nutrient rich, and all the nutrients are already broken down into a form that the plants can use immediately.

I'm excited! My next tray of castings should be ready to harvest in another month or so.

I've had the worm bin for about 2 1/2 months now, and it's done extremely well for me. The worms have been breeding and thriving. The worms are all now 'up to speed' and can process kitchen scraps more quickly than when they were starting out. I'd estimate that they consume and process about 7 pounds of kitchen scraps per week now. I hope to increase that to 10 pounds per week soon, as the many babies mature. The worms have been multiplying happily and I must have about 30% more than when I started. It's said that their population size will automatically regulate itself according to the bin space and the food supply.
The worm bin is unobtrusively in the corner of the kitchen, and it never smells or attracts fruit flies or anything. I guess I must be keeping the bin conditions just right.

I like that after the initial purchase of bin and worms, it becomes an essentially free way of USING one's kitchen garbage and food scraps, converting it into healthy rich garden fertilizer...to help grow new fresh food! A very lovely cycle to start in motion.

Little garden filling up...

Well things have certainly grown in two weeks since my last pictures!
The big hailstorm we had a couple days ago did shred some of the outer large lettuce leaves but the damage was less than I had feared. We ate most of the damaged leaves right away- and there is plenty more lettuce growing.
We are getting a lot of leaf lettuce now- more than we can eat really, and we're enjoying fresh salads almost every day.
The three varieties of radish are coming along nicely and we might get to eat some in another week or two. Lots of baby green tomatoes. This evening we had our first Swiss chard, stir-fried with rice and shrimp. I'm excited to see the romaine lettuce and the bok choy growing well too, though they are still small. The string bean bushes are getting lush and I had to trim back some of the leaves so they don't completely shade the developing radishes. I want to plant more scallions- the little row of green threads looks so pretty, but I want more scallions started! The only thing that has not been doing well is the cilantro. It has stayed small and keeps producing flowers rather than leaves. I may just yank it and plant more scallions there instead. Don't want to waste a single inch of space! Sort of like "square inch gardening" around here.... ;D

Our new kitty

We had a sad 6 weeks. Of our three beloved cats, 8 year old Lydia got kidney failure and died. Then a week after that, our 20 year old Ellie kitty began to fail and died. Both kitties passed away peacefully at home with us, within a month of each other, after about two weeks illness each. We did all that we could to save them and make them comfortable.
Things were pretty glum in the house, and poor Pearl kitty who was left (our 9 year old silver Maine coon cat) was understandably confused and worried, both her longtime companions having 'disappeared'.

We went to the animal shelters near us and carefully looked over all the kitties needing homes. After much consideration of various cats, we picked one to adopt into our family. She had been taken from an abuse situation, had been emaciated and sick with infections, and the end of one ear had to be amputated. She recovered very nicely after weeks in the Humane Society shelter being nursed back to health and then spayed. We think she is between 2 and 3 years old, since she still had many kittenish characteristics.

We've named her Suki.

Suki has lifted our hearts completely and is such a sweet delight! She is the most affectionate cat I have ever known, giving face kisses and cuddling us all the time, following us around the house cheerfully. We have completely fallen under her spell. It's a very happy match for all of us!

Pearl and Suki are tolerating each other much better than I had anticipated, both cats adapting pretty quickly to each other. We are giving Pearl lots of extra loving, of course (poor Pearl has been through a lot the past couple of months).
We can also feel good about giving a desperate homeless cat from the Humane Society a good 'forever home'.
I hope you too consider adopting your next pet from your local Humane Society or animal shelter. If you can't adopt, then consider making a small donation to support the good work they do! Every little amount you can give helps eliminate the suffering of desperate innocent animals.

Welcome home, little Suki!

Two semolina loaves

Yesterday I baked two loaves of semolina bread, side by side in cast iron Dutch oven pots in my oven. The loaves get lowered gently right on their sheets of parchment paper into the hot pots, and the lids are put on tightly during the first half of baking time to trap steam and produce a crispy golden crust. the parchment bakes right along with the bread and helps keep it from sticking to the pot. You can see here how the parchment 'bowls' look after baking in the Dutch ovens.

I topped one loaf with poppy seed, and one with sesame seed. Brushing with a water/cornstarch glaze before sprinkling on the seeds makes the seeds stick to the loaf.
They came out very nicely. I really like baking bread in the iron pots!

Both loaves have barely lasted through dinner and breakfast, what with company staying here overnight.

Little garden is filling up....

I am still in the planning process for my new large vegetable garden, but in the meantime, my little tomato patch has become much more than just tomatoes now.
I rearranged the stone path to take up less space, and decided to use the spaces a little more intensively for quick growing greens and radishes.
I planted quite a few rows of new seed up and down along every single available space...lots of lettuce (leaf and romaine), 3 kinds of radishes (cherry red, white, and French Breakfast), bok choy, scallions, and more chard. Things are growing! The scallion and bok choy seeds have not popped up just yet, but I expect them to shortly. I think I've crammed in about as much as I can from the little garden. I plan to rotate the spots for lettuce and radishes as they get used up and need to be re-seeded every couple of weeks or so.

We've been eating leaf lettuce and chard in salads already (3 salads this past week!), and I'm now thinning radish seedlings. Today I saw a 1" toad hopping around under the lettuces.
I am so pleased with how much more I am growing (and hope to harvest) from my little space now! It's been about 20 years since I last grew my own lettuce, in Puerto Rico. Interestingly, the same variety- Black Seeded Simpson!

Here is a "Before" picture from almost a month ago.

And here are the new pictures from this morning:

more veggie seeds...

I've been so excited by my new little rows of leaf lettuce sprouts and radish sprouts coming up in my small garden plot that I went and bought MORE seeds today and crammed some more things in real tightly wherever there were any bare spots.

I already had the regular red radishes sprouting up nicely from seed from 10 days ago- today I put in some new round pure white radishes and some long "French Breakfast" radishes. Also scallions, some dwarf upright romaine lettuce, and bok choy. Honestly, I'm hoping they can all grow so crammed in, but I did put plenty of organic fertilizer, there's enough sun, and I'm hoping the leaf lettuces and radishes will mature and get pulled and eaten quicker than some of the slower growing items, thus getting out of the way in time for when other plants get big. I am also trying to stagger the seedings so things don't all mature at the same time.

I read that radishes like some shade when summer starts getting hot, so I planted some rows close alongside the tomatoes as well. The tomatoes will get pruned and staked up but they'll still be big and will cast some shade over the radishes in a few weeks.

I had Blue Lake bush stringbeans and a few bush wax beans already planted, but today I bought some beautiful dark purple Italian pole beans and planted them near the fence on the ends and also on the empty trellises near the garage door, not in the garden at all. Last year I actually got good bush stringbeans producing heavily in that miserable hot dry location. I worked a little organic fertilizer in there as I planted the seeds.

In the garden I found quite a few baby earthworms in the dirt as I planted my seeds today- a good sign that they like the organic fertilizer I had hoed in several weeks before. The fertilizer is based on ground chicken poop, chicken feathers, and some added minerals. Yummy! :D The tomato plants seem to be really thriving after their first two weeks with it.

I am now VERY anxious to get my larger garden put in...still trying to get the excavator over here to set up the plan and get started.

Sourdough baked in my Dutch iron pot

I found an interesting recipe online that used my sourdough starter and the no-knead artisan bread technique. Had to leave the dough mix out overnight to 'ripen'.
This was the first time I have tried baking the bread in a covered cast iron Dutch oven. They say it traps the dough's moisture as steam and thus produces a wonderful crisp golden crust. Using the covered pot means you don't need to use the baking stone or a steam pan.
Luckily, in my basement I still had an old 6 quart pot I bought for $8 in a garage sale about 15 years ago- perfect size for a round loaf! I love the name on the lid- the "Drip Drop Baster".
I let the 2 round loaves rise for 2 1/2 hours after shaping, each on their own piece of parchment sprinkled with corn meal, sprinkled with more corn meal, and then covered with a kitchen towel.
After heating the oven for a good 30 minutes with the cast iron pot inside to heat up too, I quickly picked up a loaf by the parchment sides and laid it in the pot, parchment and all, and then firmly put the lid on and baked at 450F for a half hour. Then I removed the lid and let it brown and finish for another 15 minutes.
I did one loaf at a time, since there was enough dough for two nice sized loaves.

I must say the crusts turned out better than any bread I've ever made before. Beautiful golden and crispy. The bread has a pleasant medium sourdough tang (my husband does not like it too sour), and inside the texture was perfect as well- lots of stretchy gluten 'chew' and nicely dispersed small air holes.

Fabulous bread, and well worth keeping an active fed sourdough starter in the fridge and also worth mixing the batch of dough the night before- especially if I make the two large loaves which will last about 3 days for us. I will definitely be making this bread regularly.

Little cactus finally blooms

Here is Pearl waiting patiently along with us for this little gymnocalycium cactus to bloom. Yikes, it's had buds for the past six weeks or so, and had been 'threatening' to open its buds for days now! You can see the early appearance of the buds in my April 13th post.

Today we were finally treated to the open blooms! Very pretty pale peachy pink flowers, with a faint sweet scent if you smell them up close. So lovely! The delicate shell-like color is wonderful against the blue-green of the cactus and the red of the spines. Hopefully we will be able to enjoy the coming blooms for at least a week to come. Click on the pictures to enlarge them in full detail...

Four loaves baked today...

Today i baked four small loaves of bread. Tonight we are going to a little potluck dinner with friends, and I'll bring two loaves with me to share. That leaves another two for home eating.

I made one "tiger semolina" (with the black sesame seed stripes), two olive/sundriedtomato/onion loaves, and one plain white boule with sesame seeds on top, slashed in a sun pattern. I'll take one olive loaf and the semolina to the potluck tonight.

I bought a refrigerator thermometer last week and discovered that my fridge and freezer were both set too cold. This actually could be affecting both the ripening and the rise rate of my doughs as they sit in my refrigerator! I have now adjusted the settings to a normal level. It'll be interesting to see if there is any change in my next batch of breads.

My worms are working hard...worm bin 5th week

I checked the bottom tray of worm compost in my worm bin yesterday. I have about 2000 worms working on two trays at the moment- the bottom tray is slowly getting the last of its newspaper and food scrap remnants finished up by the remaining several hundred worms hanging out in there, while the top tray is now the active tray that gets all the new food scraps. The worms are slowly moving up to the top tray through its mesh bottom, migrating to where the new food is being offered.

Here are photos of the top 'working' tray, the one I am putting the new food scraps into:

You can see lots of newspaper strips, coffee filters, and cardboard mixed in with food scraps and worms.

Here are photos of the bottom tray, which is being left alone for the remaining worms to finish processing. All that's left are some raggedly newspaper strips that are now rapidly decomposing. There are no more recognizable food scraps, and it is full of good castings already. Should be ready to harvest in 2 or 3 more weeks and apply to my vegetable garden:
It's so cool. I was surprised to find the bottom tray about 70% 'processed' already and looking like fine black earth (it's really black castings). Everything has a lovely smell like a forest floor. My bin is only 5 weeks old.

At this rate in about 3 more weeks I'll have about two gallons' worth of worm castings to add to my leaf lettuces and tomato plants in the garden...all magically made for FREE from kitchen scraps. My little pets are working hard!

The "Gusanito" worm bin I have has 5 available trays, and I'm currently only using two since my bin is only 5 weeks old. Keeping the spare trays in the basement for now. I imagine I might eventually have 3 or 4 trays going at the same time, in various stages. You only feed the top tray, and you harvest the bottom most tray when it looks done and is about 80 or 90% castings with few visible scrap remnants left. The worms tend to leave it by that time anyway, and move up where there's some better food prospects, but you do have go through the harvested finished compost to rescue remaining worms before you apply the finished vermi-compost to your garden.

The species of composting worm I have, Eisenia Foetida, would not survive our cold winters here, so putting them in the garden would be pointless. There are at least a couple of native earthworms species I've seen in my garden soil that I'm happy to encourage outside instead.

Here is a beensy new baby worm from my bin, saying "Hallo!" to you and waving her teeny weeny little dirt hanky! Notice she is also wearing a dainty dirt tutu...

My 'tiger semolina' bread

I have been enjoying making bread so much lately that I now keep like two different batches of dough 'ripening' in the fridge at any given time, plus some sourdough starter. I happened to have both basic white dough and semolina dough in the fridge today, ready to go.

My loaves always seem to be fairly small, but my husband loves them anyway and they taste so good! So I just solve the issue for now by baking two at a time.

Today I pulled out a portion of my semolina dough, and also the basic white dough. I made a plain white boule (still our favorite) and a semolina loaf. I experimented with the semolina- traditionally, Italian semolina bread is topped with sesame seeds, but this time I used black sesame seeds. I envisioned that after slashing and it puffing up a bit in the oven it might look like tiger stripes, especially since the semolina flour is golden colored. As you can see it did indeed turn out very tiger-looking! So I'm naming that variation my "tiger semolina" bread.
What a pretty pair they make!

Garden's in

I spent some time cleaning up my small garden beds yesterday- weeding, hoeing, adding some organic fertilizer. Today came the fun part- planting things.
This is my tomato patch, which is hmmm... maybe 5 feet wide by 25 feet long maybe? I had to fence it last year due to marauding deer and woodchucks and rabbits. It's a very small garden, but I can get a surprising amount of tomatoes and greens from it in years that it likes the conditions and the weather.

I used to only plant tomatoes, but have been adding a few other vegetables the past couple of years. On the left side are fourteen various tomato plants, my favorite being Prudens Purple heirloom. There are some golden tomatoes, plum tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and good old Early Girl and Better Boy too. I stuck a couple of leaf lettuces in between them to take advantage of the available spaces while the tomatoes were still small. A sage plant is there too on the far end.On the right side, starting from furthest away is a rosemary plant and then a little cilantro patch, further along is some red leaf lettuce, then bright green leaf lettuce, and five Blue Lake bush stringbean plants. Then starts some vari-colored Swiss chard (tiny right now but will get very robust) which continue on to the right in back of the camera, and lastly behind me is a small strip with new leaf lettuce seeds planted.
I planted several more string bean bush plants and some yellow summer squash in amongst the flower beds as well. Last year, the Blue Lake stringbeans just LOVED it in the crummy sun baked spots on either side of the garage door, so I planted them there again after adding some organic fertilizer to the soil there. I got big bowls full of stringbeans last year from just 6 measley little bean plants.

I found quite a few earthworms while working the ground...a good sign, as I hadn't seen many for the past couple of years. This is my first year in a long time using only organic fertilizer, so I am anxious to see how the plants do on it. It's made mostly from ground up chicken feathers and chicken poop. You can bet that the native earthworms in the ground are going to prefer it to 'Miracle Grow'. That would be good, because then the earthworms will work the soil and contribute their castings- and earthworm castings are a wonderfully rich bonus fertilizer!

If my little tomato garden produces a lot this year on the organic fertilizer, then I think we will likely add a large raised bed in the Fall to grow a larger amount of vegetables next year.

Olive bread

I used the recipe from 'Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day', using their basic boule dough. In addition to calamata olives, I also added some sliced sundried tomatoes, slivers of browned onion, and a few pinches of finely chopped fresh rosemary. The loaves are small, but quite good! The cured olives give it a robust taste.
I just love the stretchy moist chewiness of their boule dough recipe, with the crisp crust. Butter would be superfluous. This bread has its own olive tapenade built right in.

Nice to know I can make an olive loaf anytime I have some boule dough on hand in the fridge and some olives around. With these Artisan bread recipes, I do like the fact that you can keep your box of moist dough aging nicely for up to 10 days or so in the fridge and make the bread anytime during that period. It even tastes better if it's a few days ripened, sort of like how sourdough gets.

Dutch babies

We have been nursing a gravely ill beloved pet cat at home here this weekend. This morning she looked a tiny bit better, so I took a little break and decided to bake something sweet with the fruit I had on hand.
I looked through some of my old bread books from years ago, and found an interesting recipe to try from my old Sunset publishing book on Breads (originally published in 1963, this was the 1996 edition). The recipe was called Strawberry Dutch Baby. What an odd name, and with no explanation!- I can only guess that it might be because they can be baked in cast iron 'Dutch ovens'? It's a sort of crepe that you bake in the oven and it puffs into a bowl shape which you then fill with fruit and fruit syrup.

I had a couple of old cast iron skillets that would work well- the recipe makes two 'babies'. I had some dried apricots and fresh strawberries and blackberries on hand.
I had to run to the neighbors to get some confectioner's sugar in the end though- just wouldn't seem complete without the snowy confectioner's sprinkle.
I was very pleased with the outcome, and I was amazed at how the batter puffed up and formed a bowl all by itself in the hot buttered cast iron skillets while baking in the oven. The batter was easy- only flour, milk, eggs, and a touch of sugar. The 'Dutch babies' certainly do make a beautiful presentation in their skillets.