Putting in the garden

I cheated the frost date by a day, and put seeds into my garden today.

The very first thing I ever grew on purpose was an edible- raspberries from the backyard of my friend Holly's grandparents. More than 20 years later, they're still going strong, with offspring growing in other Chicago gardens, as well as in friends' gardens in Ontario, New York, and Nebraska.

What with losing half my employment this year, I decided to take on numerous web challenges: the Growing Challenge to put in something new every year; Project Grow for Spitfire nasturtiums, which several dozen gardeners all over North America are testing for Renee's seeds; Eat Real Food to try to eat SLOW: Seasonal, Local, Organic, Whole.

My own personal challenge is to grow and preserve enough vegetables to make it through January. I routinely get into November still harvesting, but I haven't put as much energy into saving my food.

I've got 480 square feet+, including a new bed that increased the growing area by a third. Over the next several weeks, I'll slowly be planting seeds and starts. So here's my garden this year:

The Serpentine Bed
Cherry Tomatoes, Black Beans, Roma VF tomato to save seeds for Populuxe seed bank/, Broccoli, turnips/ climbing beans/ cucumber, winter melon, dill/ onions, beets, carrots.



The Wagon Wheel Bed
Two types of eggplants, Dragon Tongue beans from MrBrownThumb, Spitfire nasturtiums/Blue Lake and Slenderette bush beans, 5 types of heirloom tomatoes, parsley, garlic/ parsnips, leeks, spinach, onions/snow peas, radishes, then shell beans in succession, bell peppers in pots.

Garage sideyards
Pumpkin and mustard
Greens, then asparagus, raddichio, bok choy/broccoli

Three sisters bed
Two types of heirloom corn, Ghost rider pumpkin and Butternut squash from Chiot's Run, pole beans, nasturtiums plus shishito peppers in a pot.

The Savory bed
Parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, chamomile, cilantro (coriander), summer savory, caraway, taragon, mint in a pot, plus fragrant ornamentals

Here and there: cabbage, brussels sprouts, strawberries, concord grapes, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, more chamomile, more mint, more cilantro, lavender, salad burnett.

Many of the seeds came through swaps from the community on MyFolia.com, and a good number of them from Chicago garden bloggers through Shady Swap. The pictures are from last fall.

I also have 600 square feet or more of ornamentals and a pond. I do not have lawn.

So-delicious it might be illegal Tilapia in coconut lime sauce with asparagus

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
Zest and juice from two limes
1 T finely diced candied ginger
1 T finely diced cilantro leaves (from the garden)
1 T peanut oil
Salt and pepper to taste

1 pound tilapia from freshpicks.com

Fresh asparagus in season

Put all sauce ingredients in a small food processor or blender and mix. Melt 2 T butter in a frying pan, sear both sides of the tilapia, then add the sauce and simmer til fish is cooked through. Place asparagus on top of it, turn heat to low or intermittent, cover and steam until asparagus is bright green.

For vegan, substitute portobello or lots and lots of shiitake mushroom, plus pine nuts for the fish.

Serve over basmati rice.

Sconeday experiment

Or, Trust Your Instincts, But Read The Recipe

On the last day that my daughter was home, I decided to have warm scones ready for her when she got up. I had the idea in the back of my head to try the apricot compote-for-honey substitution with scones, so I was pretty excited about these. I'm really a novice baker. I'm a complete ease around a stove top and a frying pan, and I can make a stew with my eyes closed. But baking scares me, and I tend to stick to the recipe closely.

Except of course, that's hard to do when you don't read the recipe.

"I can do these without looking up the recipe," sez I to myself sez I. "I've been making scones once a week for months now."

The dough looked lovely-- a gentle orange color-- and smelled divine. It was kinda stiff, I almost rolled it, but thought, no I like the rough "drop" scones. Just before sticking them in the oven, I glanced at the recipe and realized, oops.

Forgot the butter.

Yes folks, I forgot to put the butter in the scones. Too late to do it right now, the dough was all mixed. So how do I get butter evenly mixed through a dense dough filled with nuts.

I melted it folks. Kneaded it in, and reformed the scones. They're going in the oven now; I'll be back in 15 minutes to tell you how they are. In the meantime, here's a lovely picture from my garden.
Well, they're a little gummy, but they taste delicious! So the conclusion is, you can screw up a baking recipe, but I don't recommend it.

Apricot-walnut scones
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 Tbs cane sugar (or 1 Tbs packed brown sugar)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 Tbs dried or fresh orange zest

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

2/3 cup fresh orange juice, with zest
1/4 cup apricot compote
1/4 cup sour cream, or plain or vanilla yogurt

1/2 cup dried apricots, diced and plumped or 1/4 cup crushed walnuts

Heat oven to 425F/218C

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Cut in butter (NOTE: DO NOT FORGET THIS STEP) using a pastry blender or by rubbing between your fingers until it has the consistency of corn meal. Whisk together honey, apricots, and sour cream in a measuring cup. Pour all at once into the dry ingredients, and stir gently until well blended. (Overworking the dough results in terrible scones!)

To prepare the dried apricots, plump them by boiling them for about a minute on stove top or microwave. Drain and pat dry, mix into the scone batter.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop batter by generous spoonfuls. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops are golden brown, not deep brown.

Feng Shui in the Garden

I started using DIY feng shui in my house about 10 years ago. To me, feng shui is a structure on which to build your own sense of balance in a space. I map my baguas and try to balance the elements, but at heart I'm just trying to make a room "feel" good.

You can spot a room that has been arranged with a cold heart, or without the hand or input of the room's users. It will seem dead or impersonal. The light sits heavily in an unbalanced room and the air doesn't move.

I asked a friend who is a knowledgeable amateur to come look at my garden, and she helped me rebalance it. We laid a new patio and reshaped the central bed. We added a water feature and paths.

I was thrilled recently to find Ann Bingley Gallops over at Open Spaces Feng Shui. In her recent newsletter about feng shui in the garden she states, “to get good Feng Shui going in your garden, start with the Bagua, using it just as you would in a room of your home.” On her site, there’s a pdf of the Bagua map (right sidebar, scroll down), which identifies the nine most important parts of your life and aligns it with specific areas of your space.

She continues: “The entry to your garden is the place from which you enter it most frequently. Now, look around and use the map to think about how each area is working to support your life.

“For example, what's in the back left-hand corner, which is your Wealth & Abundance area? After you've ascertained that it's not filled with debris or things you don't want or love, think about what you could add to enhance this important zone: good lighting, strong vertical plantings, and red, purple or gold flowers, for instance.”

This area used to be the dumping ground of the garden. To fix it, we laid out a round patio of scavenged marble and flagstone, and lined it with golden flowers—daffodils, tulips, squash. The entry way has “sentinal” flowers in red and purple: columbine, glads, eggplants, and nasturtium.

Here’s Ann again: “How about the Relationship area, in the back right-hand corner? Enhance this section with romantic flowers in shades of red or pink, and with plantings that "pair up" nicely.” In our garden, this is vegetables. Since I always plant for beneficial pairings, this worked out nicely—tomatoes with parsley and carrots, broccoli with radishes, beans with squash and corn.

Here’s Ann on water features: “Looking at the Bagua map, the best locations for a pond or fountain are the Life Journey, Family/New Beginnings, and Wealth/Prosperity areas. These areas are all associated with Water or with the Wood element, which is nourished by Water in the cycle of the Five Elements (here is more information about the Five Elements).

Luckily, our pond could really only be put in the Life Journeys bagua. Plus, because it’s near the entry path the first thing you experience when walking into the garden is the sound of flowing water. Very auspicious.

My small yard (23x60) has 10 distinct beds, separated by grass, brick, glass block or mulch paths. Ann: “Finally, consider the "path of Chi" as you lay out your garden. A graceful, sinuous path encourages Chi energy - and people! -- to slow down, explore and enjoy your garden. And welcoming Chi energy into your garden with an open, inviting pathway will bring you its positive benefits, over and over again."

I think I got it right, because even dogs that come into my garden follow the paths.

Here are some more portraits from my garden, and some panoramas to trace the progress of the design.

Thank you to Ann Bingley Gallops for her permission to reprint extensively from her blog, newsletter, and site, Open Spaces Feng Shui

Cracker Wednesday

My crazy Chinese-Greek-French-Swedish-Irish-Hungarian heritage has major benefits, one of them being that uncle-in-law with a farm in Hungary. He brings homegrown goodness back to the States a couple of times a year, including at various times, shelled walnuts, apricot compote, honey, cherries (packed in homemade whisky) and wine. This month's bounty was 3 quarts of walnuts, with which I made walnut butter, and a quart of apricot compote.

So I'm substituting the apricot for honey in all my recipes this week:

Sourcream-apricot crackers

1 cup plain flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 teaspoon seasalt
2 tablespoons softened butter
1/3 cup+2 T milk
1/3 cup sour cream
1/4 cup apricot compote (a very thin apricot jam, essentially.)

seasoning: 1 teaspoon each seasalt, coriander, 1 T dried orange zest

Preheat oven to 150'C/ 300'F.

Grind the seasonings together in a mortar; whisk the milk, sour cream and honey together to form about a cup of thick liquid

Add the seasonsings to the flour, and in a mixing bowl or food processor, cut the butter in until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. (I start this with a knife or pastry cutter, then finish it with my hands.)

Slowly mix in enough liquid to form a soft, but not sticky, dough.

Divide the dough into four portions and roll out one at a time, until paper thin. Some people recommend a pasta press, but a rolling pin works fine. Keep turning the dough over, and lightly coating it with flour so it doesn't stick to the pin or the board.

Lightly brush the sheet with a flavorful oil (nut or olive); if you like your crackers salty, sprinkle ground sea salt on the oiled crackers. Using a sharp knife or pizza roller, cut the dough into 1" square crackers. Line cookie sheet with parchment (or just put them directly on an ungreased sheet), then transfer crackers to the cookie sheet if you rolled it out on a board.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until lightly browned and crisp. Allow to cool on the tray and then store in an air tight container for up to a week. This recipe made about 200 1" square crackers.

Sconeday

Since I make scones once a week for breakfasts and snacks, I decided that "Monday" is now "Sconeday" Watch for a new scones recipe on most Mondays! This is the only recipe idea I ever had that I could not find that someone else had already come up with it.

Beet scones
a Mahlzeit original recipe

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons orange zest
1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
about 1 cup grated cooked beet (1 medium beet)

1 large egg
1/4 c honey
1/3 cup buttermilk or sour cream
1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Preheat oven to 425°.

Boil beet(s) until just al dente (don't overcook, because it needs to be firm enough to be grated). Allow to cool enough to handle, then grate it.

Mix together first 6 ingredients. Cut in cold butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add beets and mix until just blended. Whisk together egg, buttermilk, and orange extract in a separate bowl until blended. Add to flour mixture, and mix just until blended and slightly moist. Dough will be sticky, and pink.

Spoon large tablespoonsful onto a lightly greased baking sheet (or line a sheet with parchment paper). Bake at 425° for 12 to 15 minutes (shorter time for smaller scones). Makes 9 large or 12 medium scones.

Spitfires and walnuts, hipsters and uncles

My garden, long a private refuge, has become a community. It's rather a pocket metaphor for how one's life changes with time. In the past I've only brought people into the garden once a year or so, for a garden party we give each year at "peak," around mid to late July. This year, I've got friends helping me with tasks through my Hipster Supported Agriculture project, and a huge online community of mentors and friends that is growing and developing daily.

One of these communities is the GROW Project. I got involved in this through the blog that helped me find the online gardening community, MrBrownThumb. Renee's Garden sent free seeds to several dozen gardeners all over the country; we're planting them in various ways and conditions. I'm planting mine in stages; the newest event is planting the wintersowns at my stick trellis, the "Narnia Gate" on April 26 (left, you can see the spitfires at the base of each branch). These are thriving; I did not cloche these at all, and they lived through two hard frosts, one quite heavy. (Full progress in small type at the bottom of the post).


Left: along the fence. Right: Narnia Gate. The gate is dappled shade; the fence will be full sun, but right now the seedlings are shaded by the lilies.

I still have a good handful of seeds, which will be planted direct in about a week in various other spots in the garden, both for climbing and for trailing.

My recipe today also comes from my growing community. My uncle-in-law lives on a farm in Hungary. When he visits, he brings us food he's grown. This time we got several pounds of walnuts and a quart of apricot compote. While I come up with a recipe that combines the two (yes, a walnut apricot bread is in our future), I made walnut butter to give away with the Hipster Supported Agriculture project, another community project inspired by Kinder Gardens, yes, yet another community project.

Walnut butter
2 quarts walnuts
2-3 tablespoons walnut oil or light flavorless oil like safflower, canola or corn
1 tablespoon sea salt

Add all the ingredients into a food processor. Start grind at a low speed if you have the option, gradually increasing to high. Blend for about 60 seconds; do not blend too long because you do not want to overheat the walnut butter to preserve the enzymes. Check for taste, add salt if desired. I did it about 1 1/2 cups of walnuts at a time, since I have only a 3 cup processor. Two quarts of walnuts made 1 quart of butter.



Prior events: I'm growing Nasturtium "Spitfire" for the GROW project. Thanks, to Renee's Garden for the seeds. I planted 6 seeds in Ferry-Morse organic seed starting medium on March 8, and got 5 seedlings. These were cloched for 6 weeks, but not for the past week or so. One of them didn't make it, but the others are thriving, and are getting big enough to start weaving through the cyclone fence. There are also 9 seeds planted in a wintersown container, in plain soil mixed with perlite. These poked their heads out of the dirt on April 3 and were planted out in the shade on April 26.

Hipster Supported Agriculture

I'm taking part in the Kinder Gardens challenge by inviting, not children, but my twenty-something friends to come garden and cook with me. The deal is, they come once or many times, and I share the bounty from the garden and the kitchen with them. Had a wonderful first day, with a parade of visitors through my garden on cool and sunny Monday.

First to come by were my skating student Katie and her mother Trish, who like to garden but always complain about living in a condo. Then it comes out that they have a 17-foot wide balcony (didn’t ask if it gets sun). Trish said they grew cauliflower in a big plastic bin last year, so I’ll see if I can pass on some tomato seedlings for them to try. They helped me plant out the chard, dill and broccoli, and I showed Katie how to plant broccoli seeds with a radish; the radishes come up fast and mark the row, then you pull them just about the time the broccoli starts to take off. Unfortunately, I meant to plant the early sprouting purple, and handed her the Pinetree mix by mistake. Oh well. We put in more than 100 chard sprouts, so when they get to size, Katie and Trish get their first "HSA share" for their help with planting them.

Right after Katie left, a gardening buddy from MyFolia.com (another Katy) came by and I sent her home with borage volunteers and chamomile sprouts, a tiny raspberry cane, some lily of the valley and some dwarf iris. We looked for some of the things I need to divide that I can donate to her later in the summer as well (she’s trying to put in a free garden; since that’s how I put my garden in, I’m paying it forward here). She’s going to bring me some parsley in trade.

Second Katy left, and my friend Dee stopped by with her nanny charges, 2-year twins. We thought about gardening with them, but they weren’t crazy about dirt. (Who ever heard of two-year olds who don't like dirt?) They did however really like the flowers and the colors. Once we managed to convince them that picking flowers is okay, I sent them home with violet-tulip-grape hyacinth bouquets wilting in their hot little hands. I pity the next garden they see, because they now know “picking flowers is okay.” Well, it is in my yard.

After they left, I finished the garden tasks for the day: putting in several rows of carrots, planting out the nasturtiums and the second snow pea planting.

There was one more 20something to collect: at the end of the day, we went to the airport to gather my daughter, who had been on tour since August. What a perfect day.

Apple-spinach slaw with honey remoulade
3 medium apples, sliced very thin, mixed with a little lemon juice to preserve color
small red pepper, sliced very thin
10-12 oz spinach, blanched and sliced (reserve some of the water)

Dressing:
3 T mayonaisse
1 T honey
1/2 teaspoon lemon or lime juice

Toss the apples and vegetables together. Whip the dressing, using a little of the spinach water to thin it if necessary. Toss and chill for one hour.

I served it as a slaw with crab cakes, but it's delicious on its own as well (in fact, I'm eating it right now!)