Creative Abundance

I'm not a huge fan of jalapeno peppers so the reason I grow them in my veggie patch is difficult to pin down. Jalapeno's are prolific...probably any one can grow them with success...and that is probably why I grow them! I love the act of harvesting (what a waste, otherwise). But, what to do with a grocery bag of jalapeno peppers...

Preserve them! That's right, I decided to try my hand at making jalapeno pickles. The term "pickle" simply refers to a vegetable that has been cured in a vinegar and salt brine. Cucumbers are not the only vegetable that take to pickling. In fact, okra, cauliflower, asparagus and many other veggies are successfully preserved in this way. And, it is really easy! Seriously!

After scouring cookbooks and the internet for recipe ideas I settled on a straight forward one I found on cooks.com. I cleaned and cored the jalapeno peppers (the seeds and ribs are where the heat comes from), got my brine boiling on the stove top, prepped my mason jars and lids (which are available at most grocery stores), and started cooking. In an hour I was finished!

It seems like I had so many peppers to start with, but I ended up with only 6 pint size jars of Jalapeno pickles!

Half the fun of growing vegetables, cooking, and now preserving is to share the gifts from my garden with others. My son is headed back to college this week. He's a creative and wonderful cook. I'm planning on sending some of my jalapeno pickles back to Maryland with him. I'll also share a few with my friends as hostess gifts. And, of course I'll use a few in my famous "Mexican Salad".

Note: The brine is cooling in the mason jars, as I sit here writing my blog, and the lids are popping as they seal! Pretty cool!

"Do Overs"

It is a struggle for me to pull out seemingly healthy plants because they are no longer producing at their best. But, this is one of the tasks of succession planting. This week I pulled out the first crop of harticort vert green beans I planted in the spring as the beans were no longer as sweet and tender as I wanted or expected them to be. And, because the second crop is producing wonderfully, I'm ready to use that spot in the garden for something else.

That mass of flattened corn I kept hoping would stand tall again and produce the ridiculously sweet corn my daughter loves...stayed flat on the ground. So, I reluctantly and sadly pulled it all up, too. Time to make room for fall veggies.

Succession planting, or planting the same crop several weeks apart to extend the season of enjoyment of the produce, is something I am committed to. I did it with all my root crops, but for some reason I haven't yet discovered, ALL of my root crops (carrots, radishes and beets) withered and died leaving me with no harvest to speak of. I have prepped a different area of my garden and have purchased new seeds to sow and am hopeful when I put them in the earth next week, that I'll have a beautiful carrots, parsnips and beets this fall.

Being a gardener means that failure doesn't exist. "Do Overs" and "Try Agains" prevail!

Grilled Eggplant Stacks

1 medium to large eggplant, unpeeled, sliced thin

2 medium to large heirloom tomatoes, sliced thin

1 block feta, sliced thin

sprinkle prepared eggplant with basil, garlic and oregano seasoned olive oil (make your own or use store bought)

Place the eggplant slices on a hot grill, leaving the lid off, for about 1-2 minute on each side, until there are "grill stripes" on the eggplant and it softens. Remove the eggplant from the grill and briefly cover with foil. This allows the eggplant to continue cooking while it cools.

Create the eggplant stacks by layering one slice of grilled eggplant with one slice of tomato with one slice of feta with another slice of the grilled eggplant. Repeat until all the ingredients are used. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar OR balsamic glaze. Enjoy!

Bugs Bug Me

My eggplant plants are just lovely. They look so healthy...and the eggplants themselves are shiny and lustrous looking. And there are lots of them growing on the plants, so I am looking forward to delicious, fresh eggplant for weeks to come.

Except, I'm a little worried about the "for weeks to come" statement. As I was recently cutting a ready-to-be picked eggplant I wanted to serve for dinner that night, I bumped a few leaves of the plant and noticed yellow bumps with black spikes coming out of them...about the size of a pea. YUCK! I'm pretty sure these weren't beneficial insects...so, like the good organic gardener I am, I hand picked...YEP...hand picked (with gloves on) the creatures off the backs of each leaf. And, I drowned them in an empty Vitamin Water bottle filled with insecticidal soap. It was probably a slow, painful death...but they were threatening my eggplant! Then, I sprayed the leaves down with the insecticidal soap just to make sure if there were any eggs hatching in the next day or two, they wouldn't have a chance of reaching maturity. These larvae could have been striped or spotted squash beetles or maybe another "nasty" I have yet to identify. I've had to pick some bugs off my acorn and butternut squash plants, too...maybe, they've migrated...

Needless to say, my goal is to utilize hygenic gardening practices to help discourage damaging insects from raiding my garden. By "hygenic", I mean, I clean up decaying or dead plant matter and remove it from the garden (I don't let it rot where it dropped), I gather and remove fruit and vegetables I "missed" from harvesting that are literally "rotting on the vine", and most importantly, I rotate my crops (I plant them in a different spot in the garden each year) so that insects don't set up camp for very long in any one spot.

And, I'm learning to not have such a queasy stomach when it comes to waging war on the uninvited and destructive visitors to my garden.

Sharing zinnias

Zinnias are happy, bright flowers. I love them! I think they make people smile so I have lots of them planted in my garden. I love to cut them and give them away. As I was meeting my neighbor for the first time yesterday afternoon, I was in my garden cutting zinnias to give to her as a "nice to meet you gift". Bzzzz.... I kept hearing this buzzing sound as I carefully selected and cut each zinnia. Bzzzzz.... I chalked it up to the bees that were flitting from the nearby squash blossoms to the eggplant blossoms. Bzzzzz....Then I decided to look in the direction of the buzz...

I stood perfectly still and just listened. This is something I find I do more in my garden than anywhere else. I actually take time to enjoy the flowers and the vegetables and my surroundings. I feel like I lose my sense of time and schedule and so it is easier to give myself permission to pause.

The leaves rustled in the slight breeze which was a welcome relief from the late afternoon heat. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of irridescent green on the fencing and realized the buzz was coming from a ruby throated hummingbird. It was quietly sitting on the fencing for my garden above the barely waving zinnias watching me cut them one by one. I stayed perfectly still and just enjoyed the moment.

I love cutting and sharing my zinnias. Now I know I'm sharing the zinnias with the hummingbirds, too.

Atlanta Farm Girl's Eggplant Parmesan

Atlanta Farm Girl’s

Eggplant Parmesan

Ingredients:

2 medium eggplants, peeled and sliced thin

1-container whole-wheat breadcrumbs (or your favorite variety)

1 small handful fresh or 1 t dried, crumbled basil

1 small handful fresh or 1 t dried, crumbled thyme

1 small handful fresh or 1 t dried, crumbled oregano

1/8 t ground red pepper (or to taste)

3-4 eggs, scrambled

Spray oil (like Pam)

1-2 jars ready-made spaghetti sauce

Shredded part skim mozzarella

Grated Parmesan

Optional:

sliced tomatoes, peppers, onions, mushrooms, zucchini or other squash, fresh spinach etc.

Preparation:

Ø Scramble eggs in bowl and set next to stove top

Ø Mix breadcrumbs and spices in bowl and set next to stove top

Ø Have 2 greased (I use Pam) cookie sheets ready with small amount of ready

Ø Heat Oven to 400 degrees

Ø Prepare 9” x 11” glass pan by greasing (with Pam) and spreading small amount of ready made spaghetti sauce in bottom

Method:

Ø Dredge each slice of eggplant in egg followed by breadcrumb mixture to coat both sides

Ø Place eggplant on cookie sheet and bake in pre-heated oven for approximately 20 minutes until lightly browned and soft when poked with a fork

Ø Place cooked eggplant in 9” x 11” prepared glass pan layering as necessary

Ø Add optional mushrooms, onion and/or tomato slices etc.

Ø Cover with remaining spaghetti sauce

Ø Top with mozzarella followed by parmesan

Ø Cover lightly with foil for first 10 minutes of cooking time

Ø Remove foil and cook an additional 10-20 minutes depending on how fast the cheese bubbles and browns

Purple Harvest

I don't have any irrigation at my "farmette", so in periods of dryness, like we've been having of late, I have a rented water tank from which I haul buckets of water to the individual plants in my garden. It's not a lot of fun...and very time consuming. So, I am always very hopeful when I see thunder clouds on the horizon that today it will rain. Today there are thunder clouds on the horizon...

A few days ago I harvested a beautiful eggplant from my garden. Holding the perfectly shaped fruit in my hands I reflected on how amazing it truly is that it didn't succumb to the insects I hand picked off the plants (I'm organic!) and that almost destroyed ALL my eggplant plants at the beginning of the summer, the heavy downpours contrasted with the periods of absolutely no rain...and sometimes no hand-watering, either, and the squirrels...who also love the vegetables I grow in my garden! And, last night I made my world famous (MY world, that is) "Eggplant Parmesan" for my kids. (I will post the recipe...it's worth the effort!)

Laughing around the dinner table enjoying a great meal from my garden is what it is all about for me. And, when my kids excuse themselves for seconds...It was a great day!

Tomorrow I'm going to think about succession planting...I've got to keep those kids coming back for more.

Growing in the City

I am happiest when I have dirt under my manicured nails and sweat is running down the small of my back...I thrill when I am able to pick heavily ripe tomatoes from their vine, burgeoning shiny purple eggplant and perfectly shaped deep green peppers for the eggplant parmesan I'm making for dinner...and I rejoice when I'm watching the dogs run full tilt from one end of the pasture to the other, just being dogs.

For as long as I remember, I've wanted to live on a farm...well, I've always wanted to have lots of animals and a garden that sustained my family. This blog is the record of my adventure into being an urban farmer...

About 18 months ago my wonderful, non-farmer, husband purchased 4 acres of land inside the city of Atlanta for us to build a new home on and for me to, finally, have that big vegetable garden I've lusted for. It is just enough land for the dogs, horses and my some-day chickens to thrive.

With the help of my equally frustrated farmer, father-in-law, Tom, we planted the vegetable garden this past Spring in raised beds I built myself surrounded by an 8 foot high wood and wire fence I had installed to keep out the deer. My family couldn't wait for me to transfer the hundreds of heirloom seedlings I'd been nurturing under grow lights in our family room since February to the "farmette". And, although Tom and I had absolutely no success with the root crops and one corn crop was flattened by an extremely heavy downpour late one night in June, we've harvested lots of incredible heirloom tomatoes, jalapeno and poblano peppers, harticort vert green beans, eggplant, pea pods, okra and blueberries. There are a dozen each of acorn and butternut squashes, tomatillos, tons of paste tomatoes and more green beans and eggplant ready to pick and consume on the horizon.

I am hopeful that my little farm in the city, my "farmette", will remind me every day that all each of us really needs in this crazy, busy life, is a little sunshine, some water, a good foundation and a little love to grow to our full potential.