Dehydrator

I'm so excited!! I picked up a dehydrator last week for $5 off of Craigslist!! That's FIVE-dollars!  I've been wanting a dehydrator for a while now to dry herbs from our garden (read about our little garden's birth story here) and figs from our tree.  When our fig tree comes in to season it's typically over a four week  period and we get more figs than we know what to do with.  Even giving them away by the grocery bag full and picking bags full ourselves there are many that hit the ground before we can pick them.  Now we'll be able to enjoy these babies during the winter months when we're dreaming of the summer fig season.  Sadly, fig season is over but I have a ton of herbs to practice with.

Home grown thyme, Greek and Italian oregano, marjoram, and sage

Also, I should add that I'm a wary Craigslist buyer.  I don't like going to stranger's homes.  But this this gentleman was very nice.  We obviously shared the same passion for gardening and homemade food and he told me how to make yogurt in the dehydrator (which I must try someday).

Finally, when I got home I discovered that the manual was missing from the box so I did a quick Google search to find one online.  In the process I discovered that some of these models had been recalled because of a faulty part that created a fire hazard.  Luckily mine wasn't one of the ones recalled.  However, it made me realize that I should have done my homework ahead of time and asked for the specific brand and model and checked it out before purchasing it.

Let the herb drying commence!

The Garden Update

True Lemon Cucumber

In spring we planted our summer garden.  This is what it looked like back then.  This year we planted four types of tomatoes (roma, early girl, brandywine, and cherry) and had one volunteer tomato. We also planted a zucchini and a true lemon cucumber.  The kale is a leftover from our winter garden and I just let it keep doing it's thing.  At the end of summer I like to evaluate what we planted, what worked, what didn't work, and note recommendations for next year.  So let's go plant by plant. First, the true lemon cucumbers....we've gotten a handful so far and while they are good I think next year we'll stick with the traditional cucumber or japanese cucumbers.  Since our garden space is so small I try to stick with high yield varieties go get more bang for my buck so to speak.

I planted a LOT of tomatoes this  year.   Next year I'll stick with two.  I love Brandywine tomatoes but they just don't seem to do well in our mild, coastal climate.  Even with the hot summer we've had, we only got three of these.  Same with romas, which typically do really well. I think I packed too much into the garden and shaded out the romas.  The cherry tomatoes have been doing fantastic. We've been getting a small basket a day. And the volunteer tomato which is a cherry as well has been going gangbusters. So much so that it has gotten out of control.

Volunteer cherry tomato

 The kale is booming and has done great.  I'm just going to let it keep going.

 The zucchini never really took off this year. Typically they take over the garden. When we bought this plant my husband warned that it didn't look healthy.  I think he was right. Next time I'll heed his warning.

So next year, one cherry tomato, one other variety of tomato, one cucumber, one zucchini, and green beans.  That should be it.  I may do some other veggies in separate pots. We'll see what happens when next spring rolls around.

Pea Please!

Spring is upon us and we've yet to plant our summer garden! I'm hoping to get to that this weekend. In the meantime, we've been working on taming the area around the garden bed.  Here is what our little garden looked like at about this time last year.  The area around the garden is just dirt and while looks o.k. in this picture, it is typically full of unruly weeds.  We’ve been looking for ground cover for this area that looks nice, is low maintenance, and that our cat won't use as her personal litter box.  One option was vegetative ground cover like elfin thyme.  But we have some in the front of our house and it still required quite a bit of weeding.  Since we don't spray any of our landscaping with weed killer, that option didn't work for us.  We have enough hand weeding to keep us busy and the idea is to make less work for ourselves, not more.  

Enter pea gravel!  I debated on whether or not I like the look of pea gravel.  But after hunting down some pictures on Pinterest and weighing our other options we gave it the thumbs up!

As usual the process has been much slower than I anticipated. I though it would be a weekend project, but it's been a little-bit-over-several-weeks project.  The first weekend I spent a day weeding out all around the bed. The next week husband laid down some weed cloth. We spent the last few weeks looking at various options for pea gravel. I like the look of light colored pea gravel, but it seems very difficult to come by in our area. We checked out the options at Home Depot, but they were pretty much non-existent. That was about three weeks ago.  Today we stopped by a fabulous local stone store. They had a large variety of options.  We really liked the coral pea gravel, which is light with orange tones and I think would look really nice against the spanish tile stepping stones.  However, the $200+ price was WAY outside our price range.  Instead we came home with a truck load this pea gravel, which cost a total of $35... for the whole truck load!! And to top it off, it is from a local quarry.  I'm all for supporting local businesses.  


The boys were hard at work unloading the gravel today and here's what our garden looks like now!  I love the results!! Thank you boys for my wonderful Mother's Day present!  Now I need to get started on planting the tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, peppers, and basil!

Happy Spring!

Today is the first day of spring...yay!  I'm loving the longer days and looking forward to spring showers and warmer weather.  Our winter garden is finally starting to take off, just as winter is ending.  Last year was my first year planting a winter garden and I mainly used starters.  This year I started from everything from seed sewn straight into the soil so it took a bit longer to get established than last year.  Our raised bed is small by most garden standards at 8 feet by 4 feet, but we have a bumper crop of lettuce, kale, and chard that we're enjoying.  Our pea are also just starting to climb up our pea tea-pea and the carrots are getting bigger.  I also planted broccoli rabe (which was eaten by snails) and bak choi (which bolted before I had a chance to pick it).  It actually works out well because there is room to start planting our summer veggies.

I have plans for a container garden that will be a bit more shaded.  My hope is to grow greens year round.  Stay tuned for updates on that project next month, which is as soon as I'm likely to get to it.  In the meantime enjoy this beautiful season.

The Secret Life of Bees

Our bee swarm once safely removed.

A few weeks ago my husband, son, and I were standing in the front yard talking with friends and I looked up to see THOUSANDS of bees swarming above our heads (apparently the average bee swarm has over 40,000 bees).  I had never seen anything like it and after a hasty good by we ran in the house and watched for the next half hour as the bees slowly lowered their flight pattern and landed in a nearby tree.  I guess our yard seemed like a welcoming spot to land. Whenever possible I try to use real life experiences as learning tools for myself and our son.   So onto google and You Tube we went to learn all why bees swarm and what to do about it.   It was fun to learn something new with him and to see it happening right outside our front door at the same time.  Then we called our local bee club (yes bee club) and a few hours later a bee keeper had rounded up our lovely swarm and relocated them to a farm about a mile away.  We hope they have a happy life pollinating flowers and producing honey.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Our Strawberry Patch

...well not quite yet.  We finally got a bit of sun this past weekend and I decided it was time to find a patch of dirt for the strawberry plants that I've had in a pot for a year.  I planted these guys in our garden a few years ago and left them in over the winter because I felt bad taking them out when they seemed to be doing just fine.  Remarkably they survived the winter and produced a decent crop last summer. However, last fall I decided to move them from the garden into pots to make way for our first winter garden.  At the moment my strawberry patch is pretty small (and nowhere near constituting a field or enough strawberries for my little munchkin), but I'm planning a trip to the nursery to get these guys some friends and we'll see how large our patch can get.

Figs and the Far Side of Complexity

Our Adriatic (?) Fig Tree

In the past few weeks our fig tree has gone from bare to sporting new leaves and baby figs!! Further evidence that spring is upon us (even though it has been pouring rain for the past few days).  I can't wait until July when we get to enjoy our first crop of these tasty fruits and I get to bust out the cookbooks and start making every fig recipe I can find.  Last year two of my favorite fig recipes were figs sprinkled with warm goat cheese and figs drenched with a warm cinnamon butter cream sauce.  My mouth is watering already!!

We typically get more figs than we can possibly eat. So we let the birds eat the hard to reach fruits and unload what we can't eat on happy friends and family.  However, I recently found a local garden exchange program where we can trade fruits and veggies. This year, I'm looking forward to trading our excess figs for some tasty bounty!


I thought it would be fun to include a quote about figs and this is the first one that I happened across. I thought it was perfectly fitting.

"I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Winter Harvest and Spring Garden Planning

Kale and Sweet Lettuce Mix

Beets

This year we planted a winter garden for the first time.  Since we have a small garden area I planted high yield veggies (kale, yield chard, lettuce, and peas).   I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but the kale, beets, lettuce, and chard were a great success.  The peas did okay, but not as well as I had hoped.  

It is starting to warm up a bit here on the west coast so I'm planning the spring/summer garden (tomatoes, squash, cucumber, and beans, oh my). However, our winter garden is still doing well and since I LOVE my greens, I don't want to pull the winter plants out just to make room for the spring garden.  I'm slowly learning that many veggies can grow year round in our temperate climate.  Great for us, but there is only so much space in our little raised bed.   So, I've decided to work around the plants that are still doing well.  I am going to start the tomatoes, squash, cucumber, and beans from seed to buy me some time. I've also harvested half of the beets to make a bit of room.  I'll likely also pull out the pea plant this weekend since it's not really producing much anyway.  The cramped quarters in our raised bed is also forcing me to make good on my goal of incorporating edible plants into our landscaping.

Here is a website I have found useful in helping me decide what veggies to plant and to plan out my garden.  Happy planting!!