An Elevated Garden

Last year we didn't have a garden-we knew we would be too busy to keep up with it all, especially the weeds.  This year we don't expect to be quite as busy; and we decided to do an elevated garden, which should hopefully eliminate some of the weeding. Time will tell!

Needless to say, we have had a busy morning.  First, my hubby mowed the small area we would be using-the grass has gotten a little high, and we don't need any weeds poking through the bottom layer.

Next, we lined up all the soil we got at Lowe's last night.  This included compost, garden soil, and top soil.  I am glad my hubby knows what to use, because I would have been clueless.

 Here are the plants we picked up ready for planting.

We planned on making a 5 by 10 raised bed/elevated garden.  To accomplish that, we bought 3 4 by 10's.  Two were ready; the other needed to be cut in half.

My hubby used this triangle to measure before cutting the board in half.  Well, he called it a square; however, I ever so politely explained that I learned my shapes in kindergarten, and he was mistaken.  Glad we settled that. 

Here I am working hard while he cuts the board.  Somebody needs to keep it in place.

Next, he secured all the boards together.

Then we got out the "landscape fabric"-which I had never heard of.

My son unrolled it, and we got it put in place.  It was about 3 feet wide, so we had to do this twice to cover the whole area.

 Now that it was all in place, it was time to start dumping in all the bags of dirt.

First set of bags done-on the the second...

spread it out some...

 and now the last type of soil.

It wasn't enough, so we went back for more dirt, and this time we got some manure, too. 

Once everything was spread out nicely, we stretched out the sprayer hose, and watered the soil.  Meanwhile, I got distracted, and forgot to a picture of that, so I got a nice picture of the hose after we threw it back on the ground.  Lovely photography skills, huh?

 Next my hubby added some boards to each corner of the garden.

 This will become what holds the sprayer hose in place.

 After that, we got busy planting.  This year we have 2 types of tomatoes, tomatillos, green peppers, habaneros, and jalapenos, lots of okra (I am beginning to wonder what I was thinking planting so much okra, actually), zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, cucumbers, and strawberries.  We also planted seeds for lettuce, cabbage, and green beans.

And here it is getting watered.  We are 2 months away from fresh veggies!  Now, let's see if my oldest son even notices the garden when he gets home from work. 

A Year of Blogging

Today marks one year of blogging for me.  It seems like maybe I should have something introspective to say about it, but I don't.  My blogging has mostly been for me-essentially an online diary.  I have enjoyed it, and I hope those of you in the blogosphere that have read have enjoyed it as well.  In remembrance, I looked at my first blog post, a year ago today, about our first garden.  It makes me sad-I wish we would have planted one this year-those green peppers look so good right now!  But overall, I am happy that I have a journal of sorts of everything we have done.  It has been a great year!

Wordless Wednesday: Mint Finally Expanding!

Fried Okra

Tonight I made dinner-red beans and rice, cornbread, and okra.  The okra was from our garden-back when we picked it, I sliced it up and put it in the freezer. Tonight I pulled it out of the freezer, and thawed it in the microwave for about a minute.  I found a fried okra recipe online, and it turned out great!  I have made okra a handful of times in my life, and it has never been great-just okay.  Tonight, I think it was actually great!  The main difference-I think I used cornmeal my other tries, but tonight's recipe called for corn masa flour.

Here is the recipe from theitsnoteasyeatinggreen website:

Fried Okra
serves 4
Corn flour or masa harina is widely available, in particular the brand Maseca. If you cannot find corn flour you can use corn meal.
2 cups okra, cut into half inch pieces (about one bag frozen)
½ cup buttermilk
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ cup corn flour (masa harina)
½ cup all-purpose flour
oil for frying
In a small bowl, combine cut okra, salt, pepper and buttermilk.
Let sit for about five minutes then drain into a strainer. In another larger bowl combine corn flour and flour.
Toss okra into flour mixture. Working with your hands or a fork, separate the pieces of okra so that all the pieces get covered. Depending on how wet your okra is, you may need to add a little more flour and/or corn flour.
Heat one inch of oil in a large heavy-duty pan over medium-high heat. Test the oil by adding one piece of okra; it should bubble immediately as soon as you add it to the pot (350 F).
When the oil is hot, add the okra (you may need to cook it in two batches). Fry, occasionally rotating until light golden brown.
Remove to a pan lined with newspaper and paper towels. Lightly salt and serve hot. You can fry the okra ahead of time then heat it up in a hot oven for five minutes right before serving. A convection oven is very helpful if you want to get it back to the original crispiness.

I followed the recipe pretty closely other than:  I used milk rather than buttermilk, and I added some Chachere's seasoning to the flour mixture.  I also used the deep fryer.  Yum!  I will use this recipe again!

A Dormant Garden Awakens

I've mentioned the Texas heat and drought we have had this summer.  I think the worst of the heat has finally gone away-we have been enjoying days in the 80's and 90's.  We've even had some rain.  My garden, which was only producing jalapenos and chili peppers, has now decided that since the weather is cooperating, it is time to produce again.  We have lots of okra coming up, and cantaloupe, too! We had planned to plow the garden under in the next few weeks, but it looks like it will be delayed now-yay!

Ratatouille

The hubby was working late tonight, and he usually cooks, so instead of scrounging for leftovers, I decided that I would take advantage of all the vegetables we have growing, and make something with them.  One of the vegetables that I have not used yet (because they just recently started growing) is eggplant.  So I searched eggplant recipes, and decided on ratatouille.  I found this ratatouille recipe.

I didn't quite have all the ingredients, so I had to tweak it a bit.  Instead of regular olive oil, which I was out of, I used chili garlic infused olive oil.  We didn't plant zucchini, so I used summer squash in it's place.  I omitted the mushrooms (because we didn't have any and because I don't like them), and replaced the parmesan with shredded cheese (again-we were out of parmesan).  I figured the boys would like the cheesy-ness of the shredded cheese a little better than what parmesan would have to offer, anyhow.  It looked so colorful and pretty as I was putting it all together with reds, yellows, and greens!  I had a hard time waiting for it to finish cooking because it smelled so good, too!

I have a family of meat-eaters, and I was a bit concerned these veggies would not be filling enough for them, so I checked the fridge for any leftovers I could put with it.  I found a chicken breast, which I sliced and heated; and I found some bowtie pasta that had been tossed with cheese (probably queso fresco) and something green (probably green onion if I had to guess). 

The verdict:  I thought it was amazingly delicious!  The fresh garden tomatoes were full of flavor, as were the squash and green pepper.  The eggplant was really good, too, although next time I will be sure to use regular olive oil (surprise-after I started baking it I found it!)  The cheese did not seem out-of-place, which I had worried about.  The chicken and pasta were perfect accompaniments, too!  The boys felt a little differently, though.  They don't care for "weird" vegetables, and they barely picked at their plates.  Oh, well-more seconds for me!

Pickles!

We have so many cucumbers growing!  I am the only person in the family that likes cucumbers, but these just don't taste quite...good.  But I don't want to waste them, so I guess it is pickle time!  I don't care for dills (okay, that is a bit of an understatement-I despise dills), so I am concentrating on sweets and bread & butters.

Last weekend, I found a recipe here for refrigerator bread and butter pickles.  It was very simple-I just cooked the vinegar, sugar, and a few other ingredients to get the sugar to dissolve, and then covered my sliced cucumbers (sliced with a machine-not by hand) with the liquid, and refrigerated them for 24 hours.  Voila!  They were ready!  I thought they were delicious, but my family said they still tasted like cucumbers. I am hoping that in a couple weeks when they have had more time to meld together, the cucumber taste will have disappeared.
 

In the meantime, I have more cucumbers growing, and don't want to use the same recipe if no one but me likes them.  So I found another recipe today here that is for microwave bread and butter pickles.  I was getting ready to ignore the recipe because I kind of figured "who makes pickles in the microwave?", but then I read the "reviews" of the pickles below the recipe.  So many people have commented on how great they tasted, that I figured, "why not give it a try?  It's just one cucumber."  I made them this morning-this time slicing the cucumber long ways, and combining all ingredients in the microwave for 9 minutes before placing the concoction in a jar and in the fridge.  As soon as they are cooled they will be ready to eat.

Our First Garden

We have been married almost 14 years, and we have said for many of those years that we would like to plant a garden.  Many things prevented us with the follow-through:  living in a place that didn't allow gardens, knowledge that we would be moving in the middle of harvesting time, the initial investment, just to list a few.


We finally decided that this year was our year for the garden back in April or so.  We went to Home Depot and rented a tiller to till up our back yard.  We live in an area of Texas known for the limestone in the soil, so digging is difficult.  Raised in Virginia and with family in Ohio, I thought basements were a very common thing-not here-the limestone is too difficult to deal with, and expensive to remove.  The tilling took some time, especially since this area had never been tilled before.


Once that was done, we added a little potting soil, and planted small plants since we waited too long to plant seeds.  We planted several varieties of tomatoes, several varieties of peppers, squash, eggplant, cucumbers, okra, strawberries, watermelon, and cantalope.  I'm probably leaving some others out, but that's all I can think of at the moment.  The strawberries did not survive. 


The tomatoes and squash were the first to start growing.  I like tomato products, but am not a fan of eating a raw tomato; however, these are delicious with just a little salt.  Birds keep eating the tomatoes if we let them ripe on the vine, so as soon as they start to blush we have to pick them and let them finish ripening inside.  The squash we have eaten fried so far-a recipe from my father-in-law.  Yum!  I was starting to realize that we planted way too much for our family of four, but was not interested in canning.  We gave away a ton of produce at this point.


June is a very busy month for our family-there is literally no time to even eat at home, much less tend to a garden.  I was beginning to wonder what we were thinking planting a garden!  The weeds started taking over, but surprisingly, it was still flourishing.  We finally have had a little more time to spend on the garden, and have harvested a huge amount of veggies in the past couple weeks.  I ended up chopping and freezing some green bell peppers and some okra.  We bought some canning jars and a canner.  So far all we have canned is 1 quart of refrigerator bread and butter pickles, but we are planning for more.