lookin’ good! isn’t she photogenic?
Remember the cauliflower from the last post? It was growing nicely- until Tweetie managed to get into the garden…
lettuce, under cover
cauliflower, about the size of a tangerine
ready to eat right now:
arugula
broccoli raab
kumquats
lettuce, little gem
lettuce, oak leaf
lettuce, red oak
lettuce, red romaine
lettuce, romaine
meyer lemons
tangelos
herbs: chives, curry, dill, garlic chives, lemongrass, marjoram, mint (spearmint) oregano (greek), parsley (italian flat-leaf), rosemary, sage, tarragon (french), thyme (english), thyme (french), thyme (lemon)
growing, but not yet ready to be eaten:
beets
broccoli, calabrese
broccoli, romanesco
brussel sprouts
cauliflower
carrots
escarole
frisee
garlic
onions, red
onions, yellow
onions, white
radishes, french breakfast
strawberries
swiss chard
tuscan kale (calvolo nero)
Just a few photos of Spotty-Dotty, mostly for our own amusement…
Here she is in the wild (or rather, the 40′ x 40′ patch of un-mown lawn in the middle of our yard. The chickens love to forage there) :
Spotty-Dotty being sneaky, hiding behind some vegetation:
Hope that everyone had a good holiday season + winter break! Things here at the blog were pretty quiet, but I’m ready to start posting like mad! Or at least, a bit more regularly- especially since things are really starting to get busy in the garden at this time of year…
One of the most interesting gifts we got this year was from B’s sister- a donation to Heifer International in our name. Heifer International is a terrific organization- here’s a description of their work from their website:
Heifer’s mission is to work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for the earth.
By giving families a hand-up, not just a hand-out, we empower them to turn lives of hunger and poverty into self-reliance and hope
With gifts of livestock and training, we help families improve their nutrition and generate income in sustainable ways. We refer to the animals as “living loans” because in exchange for their livestock and training, families agree to give one of its animal’s offspring to another family in need. It’s called Passing on the Gift – a cornerstone of our mission that creates an ever-expanding network of hope and peace.
The donation given in our name (B. and I) was for a flock of chicks. Pretty appropriate, considering what fanatical chicken people we are… And the box that was gift wrapped explaining the donation contained this:
Tomorrow is the first chicken coop tour in Phoenix! Check it out if you get a chance- there will be twelve coops around the valley open to visitors on the tour- B. and I are excited to attend- we went to the annual tour in Seattle, sponsored by Seattle Tilth- at the time, it just seemed like it was going to be another community garden related thing, but afterwards, we were hooked! We knew that as soon as we had a little patch of land to call our own, we’d get our own little flock of feathered friends…
As far as this local tour, it’s organized through the Phoenix Permaculture Guild, and we were on the planning committee for the “Tour de Coops” as it’s been named. I did the graphics for the poster, t-shirt, and booklet. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to print the poster for distribution,(although there are a few copies floating around) but here’s what it looked like:
for Gourmet magazine- my favorite food publication… Conde Nast announced on Monday that it was closing the magazine- see this article. So sad! But there’s a movement to save the magazine, via crowdsourcing… please join!
Once again, I’m a bit behind on posting, but here are some photos of some of our summer garden highlights. I want to say that we’re officially in fall, since temperatures have fallen to around the one hundred degree mark, although yesterday it was back up to 103F. (For all of you non-Phoenicians, yes, 100 degrees is cooler weather)!
cucumbers – armenian + pickling
watermelon- this was our biggest one- over 14 pounds!
grapes- this is a bunch of thompson seedless green grapes
melons – minnesota midgets – we’re still growing/harvesting charentais melons…
These days, since it’s so hot out, we let the chickens run around the east side yard for about an hour, while we’re watering some of our new plantings along the perimeter fence. Ok, its not exactly a green pasture, per se, but it is pretty green, and with the grass, and the shade of the pecan trees, it’s pretty darn pleasant!
Here’s the side yard (I told you it was green!):
And here are the chickens enjoying themselves:
Sweetie, being a naughty chicken, standing on the picnic table:
Spotty-dotty, as she contemplates nibbling on the fig vine:
Polka-dotty2, hunting for tasty tidbits in the grass:
Tweetie, looking a little scraggly (- she’s currently molting):
Brownie, looking a little stunned ( I actually had taken a terrific photo of her just previously, looking up at me, but I forgot to turn of f the flash, so she wasn’t willing to look straight into the camera after that)…:
Sorry for the delay in posting! Anyway…
Other varieties of tomatoes we currently have in the garden, are:
Black Krim – My personal favorite, as far as taste, and appearance. This russian heirloom variety is considered a “black” tomato- which just refers to its coloring. It’s a relatively soft tomato, and a very “tomato” taste- not too sweet- if anything, a little salty. We’ve planted it before, and its probably the one of the few varieties that we’ll plant every year- it seems to do very well here, both prolific and able to tolerate most of the heat, with a little helpful shade in late summer… One of the best things is that the color seems to fool the wild birds- its not as red as some of the other tomato varieties we’ve got in the garden.
Early Girl - This is one of the only two non-heirloom tomatoes we planted in the garden this year. Thomas Keller mentioned this tomato in his Bouchon cookbook, so we planted it- but frankly, I wasn’t that impressed. The most impressive thing about it was that it really was an early tomato- it was our first variety to start ripening, and it was pretty prolific. The tomatoes were bright red, and you really had to wait until they were completely red- not a tinge of orange, otherwise they would be a little tart. I’m not sure if we’ll plant this again next year- it was a decent tomato, and certainly better than anything you get in the store, but not the best one we grew!
Yellow jelly bean tomato – This was our other non-heirloom variety- and it was terrific! We decided to plant this yellow grape tomato instead of the sungold, which is the yellow cherry tomato we’ve done before. Once again, its another one that you have to wait until its actually almost orange (instead of yellow) before you pick it- in order for it to taste sweet! The chickens really like the yellow tomatoes- both this variety and the yellow pear- for some reason, they found the red ones a little disturbing…
Red Zebra - This is the red version of the green zebra. This one started out really well, but once we reached 110F, the fruit started to get blossom end rot. Still, it’s a terrific tomato, tasty, a little tart, prolific, and very attractive! (Although almost everyone who saw it first asked if there was something wrong with the tomato…) B’s mom had a good name for them- she kept calling them “tiger tomatoes!”
