It is absolutely astonishing what can come out of a 14’ x 16’ plot of city soil. It is early November and I am still enjoying the miracle of food from my garden. Just yesterday I made soup mostly from what was picked the garden: mixed greens, potatoes, carrots, shallots and celery.  I browned a small piece of sausage and garlic for flavor, threw in some spices and voilà – a healthy, nourishing, low-cal, low-fat, tasty, dinner.  Roasted beets and potatoes, salad of mixed lettuces, nasturtiums and arugula, sautéed rainbow chard, and tea made from borage, mint and basil make up many fall dinners in our home.

I’ve also had some memorable moments with kindred souls in that city garden. On Sunday, a mother and daughter walked by and admired the garden.  I invited them in and they were so excited and grateful to be in the garden. I offered them some food.  Soon they were pulling carrots and picking greens and teaching me about a plant they use that I thought was weed.  They were immediately at Home in the garden.   Davicka, the 16 year old daughter, told me that they were Bhutanese refugees that had been relocated by the U.N. this summer to Scranton.  After expulsion from Bhutan, they had lived in refugee camps in Nepal for 17 years.  (Many still do.)  The mother spoke no English but we all shared a meaningful dialogue – a moment of mutual appreciation of what comes from the dirt when you add seed, sun and water – survival, sustenance, food and sometimes moments of celebration.  

Another kindred soul, Harry, flies, and I mean flies sometimes on two wheels around the neighborhood in his jazzy chair, shouting a friendly hello to everyone he sees. He brings me a soda and shows me photos of his grandchildren every time he sees me. Early this spring Harry asked me for my mailing address for his Christmas card list.  Because he seemed one of the kindest beings I had met, I reluctantly gave it too him hoping he wasn’t a psycho.  Later in one of his visits to the garden, he spoke more of his family. His son and family lives nearby and his wife died a few years back. Tragically, Harry lost two of his three children in a drowning accident when they were quite young. Some people are broken after a loss like that, not Harry.   I saw Harry in CVS last week; I overheard him ordering 150 photo Christmas cards.  The photo-tech girl was laughing, really enjoying her moment with Harry.  Yesterday my photo card arrived in the mail.  What a moment.

Most of the kitchen remodeling project is finished and I am happy to say that we have done pretty well in making some green choices.  First of all, our friend and contractor Jim does a really great job of salvaging whatever he can.  When we did the demolition, we saved every large piece of wood possible.  We saved 2 x 4s and floor and wall planks and the deck steps.  Now our new kitchen floor has the old kitchen walls under it.  When he took apart our steam radiators, he saved many of the brass valves and handles to use in the large radiator we got from a salvage yard which thankfully works perfectly. I’ve picked up a large metal grate for radiator covers from a friend to cut and re-use. 

When purchasing cabinets, we bought all wood construction made from North American-grown hardwoods and avoided the toxic formaldehyde particle board cabinets.  I wish they were from FSC-certified or other renewable woods but that was not the case.  The manufacturer, Shenandoah Cabinetry, states, that they work with all suppliers to encourage sustainable forestry practices but I am not sure what that means.  The cabinets were manufactured in the United States helping to keep jobs here.  Our porcelain flagstone flooring tiles were also made in the United States keeping jobs in the U.S. Buying closer to home saves immensely on energy used to transport the goods. 

I received a windfall from a friend who pulled down a bunch of good fiberglass insulation that they didn’t want – they are replacing with foam.   Our new exterior door and windows qualify for federal tax credits for energy efficiency.  We also purchased a new refrigerator and dishwasher which qualify for the tax credits as well.

One last note, I hope to buy low-VOC paints for the walls.  I have not yet price shopped on this so we’ll see if our budget allows for this. I do hope so.

I recently woke up to news about toxins in plastic water bottles. I know this topic has been in the news for years but I have managed to ignore it until now.  I think information overload makes me close my eyes and ears to what is going on sometimes.  If you have a baby then click here and read on for more info on the subject.  If you don’t have a baby you still need to read about exposure to these toxins. Now I do not necessarily believe every frightening thing that I read but it is imperative that we, at the least, educate ourselves and read up on what is being considered.  Then, make your own informed decisions. Plastic is now everywhere and it sure wasn’t 30 years ago.

Did you know that canned food is lined with plastic? Ice cubes are made and stored in plastic; we reheat leftovers in plastic; spring water is stored for who knows how long in plastic. Ketchup, mustard and salad dressing come in plastic bottles. The water companies and plumbers now use plastic water pipes. I have been drinking water filtered in a Brita water pitcher for years as well as reusing water bottles.  Hell, our toothbrushes are plastic.  Kid’s lunchboxes and coffee makers are plastic.  Linger too long in a dollar store and you risk becoming plastic yourself. 

I realize that every day we have a new thing to be scared of. This week it is bacteria in SHOWER HEADS.  Well, call me psycho but Hitchcock himself couldn’t have made showers more frightening than this one. I refuse to give up on taking showers however plastic is something that I certainly can avoid at times. 

Look, just make a conscious decision about what goes into your body by reading and deciding for yourself.  Make changes, even small ones like using glass and metal more often.  Less plastic will certainly help the environment and might help your health as well.

Shower on!

P.S. Immediately after writing this, I got up to wash my glass coffee pot and broke it on our porcelain sink.  There are some advantages of plastics over glass after all.

We have made great progress on our kitchen remodel lately. When we removed the old ceiling in the pantry and back porch, we realized it would make a lovely vaulted ceiling. Once we saw it, we just had to have it.  This creates some difficulties for Jim, our contractor who will need to add furring strips to make room for the insulation and move a sewer exhaust pipe. And, just after removing the ceiling, thanks to Mother Nature’s gift of abundant rain, we discovered the roof had leaks.  Better to know now than when kitchen is complete. So next we had to buy roofing material for covering the porch and the new addition, Oh, didn’t I mention The New Addition yet? Well, we were both quite happy with adding a tiny powder room when the contractor Jim suggested a small shower too.  That sounded great and the math was still affordable. That is until my brother visited and suggested that, considering resale value, most people want a tub too.  So, Jim built an addition over our outside cellar steps to contain the new full bath.  Just a few extra thousand dollars!!!! That’s all.    

Then of course, the new stucco on the addition laughed at the old dirty stucco on the back of the house so Jim said we had to do new stucco over the dirty section too. OK. I can see that makes sense, just some more mortar mix needed.  Who knew that we need scaffolding, not ladders to do the stucco.  He said we can rent it or he can build his own scaffolding out of some free racks and planks he salvaged from an old building being torn down.  I love being green so that sounded great.  When we returned from our week at the beach, Jim said he would need some green to pay for the hardware that holds it all together, and “by the way”, he said, “Blow torch Johnnie needs to be paid for the welding he did on the racks.”   And then there’s Jim’s additional labor charge for the addition.

Our next surprise a few days later: “You need to paint the new stucco to seal it. You can’t leave it like this.”  The rest of the house is unpainted stucco.  We talked about it – a lot, but I still don’t understand why we had to paint it, but yesterday we bought ten gallons of masonry paint. At least I talked my way out of being the painter.

New Addition is code for additional money.  I do hope all this addition ends before we max out our credit! I am not great at math but I know we are getting dangerously close.

Well, we have arrived!! It’s finally fall and I’ve begun to harvest my garden (well, I have been harvesting for a little while now).

I had a lot of trouble with my lettuce and was only able to harvest 2 full heads of green leaf and 2 full heads of romaine – very disappointing considering everyone said this would be the easiest and quickest to grow!!  Hopefully next year will be a little better.

My carrots have done VERY well and so have the cucumbers! I can’t believe how BIG some of the cucumbers have gotten and I feel like I’m out there every other day picking off new ones.  I’ll have to come up with some recipes to use them all up!

On a sad note, my tomatoes did VERY poor!  I attempted to grow Roma tomatoes from a plant given to me by a friend and I was only able to harvest TWO viable tomatoes.  The rest began to rot on the vine or, once brought inside, rotted over night before I could eat them. I had such high hopes of making my grandmother’s sauce with my own home-grown tomatoes this year … but, again, hopefully next year will be better!

My green pepper plants were awful, too.  I was able to get ONE pepper to grow on ONE plant and it has started to turn red but has an odd shape to it.  Ironically, I gave my uncle one of my pepper plants that I started from seed and he has had GREAT results.  I must have given him the only good one, ha ha.

The only veggie left to harvest is my red onions.  I think I’m going to wait a little while longer before I grab those … but I have high hopes!  The greens look beautiful and I can see a little bit of the purple color when I move the dirt … so here’s hoping!

How did your garden do this year?

~Garden Girl

The last one came from a friend who is from Nepal. She does not use exact measurement so just make it up as you go. You can’t go wrong with good ingredients. Items in Green were grown in my garden.

Pesto

4 cups fresh basil leaves (from about 3 large bunches)
3/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup freshly grated pecorino romano
4 garlic cloves
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
squeeze of lemon wedge

Combine first 4 ingredients in blender. Blend until paste forms, stopping often to push down basil. Add both cheeses and salt; blend until smooth. Transfer to small bowl. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Can be frozen. Use some pasta water to mix into pesto when serving. Serve warm or chilled.

Salsa

2 tomatoes
1 tablespoon lime or cider vinegar to taste
¼ sweet onion
small orange or green pepper
one or two jalapenos
¼ c chopped cilantro
½ tsp salt to taste
1 garlic clove peeled, minced
½ tsp sugar
½ tablespoon olive oil

Chop up and toss well in bowl or through all into food processor and pulse until chopped to desired consistency. You’ll make many friends when you serve fresh home made salsa.

Potato Salad from Nepali Neighbor
Cabbage
Cumin- whole and powder
Potatoes
Turmeric powder
Dried red pepper- whole and crushed
Salt
Onion
Oil-vegetable
Ginger
Cilantro
Tomatoes

Warm the oil and fry whole cumin seeds and then chopped onions until golden in color
Add diced potatoes and sauté until golden brown and add turmeric powder and a pinch of cumin powder. Stir quickly and immediately put the chopped cabbage in.
Stir well so that the yellow turmeric is evenly distributed. Add salt and continue to sauté until the cabbage wilts. Add crushed ginger, 1 medium size tomatoes and crushed red chili (if need be) and cover it and let it cook in medium heat…stir it regularly until the color of tomatoes is evenly seen and smells good –turn the heat off and add chopped cilantro(if you like it) on top and cover with a lid!!! Enjoy warm or cold.

So here is how our kitchen remodel is going so far. Our good friend Jim, a contractor, has agreed to do the work for us as long as we help out on weekends. We have made some amazing progress. With the help of a few very strong younger friends (BFFs!) we gutted the kitchen down to the studs and original flooring. In one dreadful, exhausting and exhilarating weekend, we removed stucco from 2 walls, plaster lathe boards, lumber, and flooring – 3 tons in all. Before this demolition we moved the appliances and counters down to the cellar for a temporary kitchen while the work is being completed upstairs.

Jim said, “You’ll have a summer kitchen now so you can do your canning down here.” (No, we don’t can and probably never will.). Funny though, Linda descends from a line of Italian Americans who had backyard chickens, vegetable gardens and kitchens in the cellar. Many people had them to escape the summer heat and to do canning closer to the garden. Linda’s great aunt Jenny is 95 years old and built a brand new home a long time ago. Aunt Jenny wanted to keep the upstairs “nice nice” so she moved to the basement. She has a bed in her summer kitchen and still sleeps there today, fifty years later. Aunt Jenny would be so proud….Linda, eyes wide and scary, hunts around the cellar chasing for centipedes and spraying for ants. More frightened of the power of legacy than the centipedes, Linda knows too well that apples don’t fall far from the tree.

Did I mention that our cellar is not one of those finished pretty rooms? It is a hundred year old house with foundation made of stone blocks that were parged about 50 years ago. I always wondered what those sounds were as I sat upstairs quietly reading a book. They are not ghosts of previous owners. Now as I sit eating dinner, eyes itching from god only knows what allergen in the dungeon-like “summer kitchen”, I can not only hear but can see the yellow painted mortar is falling off the walls piece by piece. Right now, Strawberry Shortcake’s Kitchen is a fond memory. It really wasn’t so bad after all. But, all good, as long as the upstairs turns out “nice, nice” and Linda can get the image of Aunt Jenny out of her head.

Well the hard work of seed starting, weeding and preparing the garden back in early spring is paying off already and it’s only the end of June. We returned home from a few days at a family cottage last night. As soon as we unpacked the car I made my way down to the community garden. What a great surprise! I found the first two cucumbers and several small heads of broccoli ready to harvest. We have been enjoying mixed greens and lettuces for several weeks now but to be able to add a homegrown cucumber to the salad is fantastic. I also found many small tomatoes well on their way. I am growing several varieties of full size and some cherries. It will be interesting to see what actually comes to fruition as I save the seeds myself from earlier year’s tomatoes and from other grower’s tomatoes that I have liked. The golden yellow cherry variety that I grew last year was the sweetest cherry that I ever had. I think it should be classified as desert instead of vegetable.

I also thinned the rows of beets and will sauté the baby beets and their greens tonight with garlic and olive oil. I might add some of the rainbow colored chard that was picked last night as well. We’ll have it over pasta tonight.

Tomorrow night our community garden members are going to meet for pizza and beer. Hopefully we will create some bonds of friendship and some memories to smile about. I am looking forward to this year’s bountiful harvest: food, friends, good times.

Northeastern States – Warning

According to the Penn State Master Gardener Blog late blight has been confirmed in five Pennsylvania counties on tomato and potato plants.  And, it has never occurred this early and this widespread in the U.S.  Late blight thrives in wet weather, so current conditions favor the spread of the disease.  Late blight is a serious problem because tomato and potato crops in home gardens could potentially harbor an infestation that could destroy commercial grower’s fields.  One of the most visible early symptoms of the disease is brown lesions on stems, with white fungal growth developing under moist conditions.”

If you have suspicious plants, please get samples to your local County Cooperative Extension Office.  If the disease is confirmed in your area, the Extension Office will notify the commercial growers so they can take preventative measures.

Meg McGrath, Cornell plant pathologist, states in her blog: “Home gardeners need to be on the lookout for Late Blight – a very destructive and very infectious disease that’s killing tomato and potato plants in gardens and on commercial farms in the eastern U.S.

Here are the steps recommended by Master Gardeners you should take:

1. Examine your tomato and potato plants thoroughly at least once a week for signs of late blight.
2. Spray fungicides – chlorothalonil, not organic preventively and regularly and for organic growers, there are few control options currently available with known efficacy against late blight on tomato and potato. Frequent copper or Sonata and Sporatec applications may provide minimal control if applied preventatively.
3. Be prepared to destroy your plants when late blight starts to become severe. Seal them in a plastic bag. Do not put them in the compost pile. Leave the bag ‘cooking’ in sunlight for several hours to kill plant and pathogen, then put in the trash.

If you want to try to control late blight with fungicides, you need to begin spraying fungicide now – even before you see symptoms – and you need to continue spraying regularly.

Late blight is the same disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s.

Well … I’ve had some successes so far this year!  My pepper and cucumber plants are strong and will hopefully bear some delicious veggies this summer … the onions I started from seed aren’t doing half bad either.  BUT … the rest of my little garden seems to be sucking wind.  I think maybe two carrots have come up so far, which is disheartening to say the least.  I do have to say, though, that watching what little I have grow and flourish has definitely given me a sense of pride.

At any rate, I’m not sure if I can blame it on the abnormally cool month of May (and start of June!) but that’s where I’m placing blame for now.  And, honestly, I think I planted my lettuce seeds a tad deep … so that’s probably another major issue.  But lettuce is easy enough to replace so I’ll just throw some more seeds down this week and hope for the best. 

I’ve also noticed that grass is pushing up through my bed which irritates me to no end!  I worked so hard to remove the grass from our little garden and yet it still grows … it’s as if it’s mocking me!!

I’ve been pretty lucky in terms of “pests”.  We have feral cats that hang around our yard so the bunnies don’t think twice about entering my little garden, plus we have our wonderful doggy – Desi!  He keeps the squirrels on their toes.

So now my focus is on the plants I do have that seem to be doing well.  Should I support my pepper plants with wooden sticks?  Is it better to let the cucumber vines crawl along the outskirts of my garden or have them climb the fencing?  Looking forward to your tips and suggestions!

~Garden Girl