Chard

I picked my first chard this evening for dinner. This is the part I love about gardening. I go walk in the garden and decide what to eat. Tonight it was chard and rainbow "green" beans. We actually had eggplant Parmesan as well but I didn't grow eggplant this year, although I have in the past. I had my bed filled with garlic when it was time to plant the eggplant. Now the garlic's gone and I'm left wondering what to fill it with. I decided on yellow crookneck squash and zucchini figuring that even with the late start they'll last up until it's about time to plant garlic again.

I tried a new recipe for the chard. I recently bought a yogurt maker, although I know you can make it without a "maker." It's just easier to me and it was cheap enough. So I also bought a yogurt cookbook because I find that we tend to like things I make with plain yogurt, including pancakes and waffles, coffeecake, marinated chicken, or corn bread. The cookbook is divided into the usual sections: salads, soups, appetizers, various meats, side dishes, sauces and desserts. I saw the chard "salad" recipe, although it's not really what I'd call a salad. It was good though, and refreshing on a hot summer night.

Basically chop and cook up the chard until barely done, then drain well. Mix with a yogurt "dressing" plain yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic) and some parsley or mint, plus salt and pepper. I went with the parsley although next time I'll try the mint since I'm growing that as well. The lemons are from the yard as well, so this dish won the prize for the most "local" of the meal.

Spontaneous Vegetable Beds

I'm a bit of a spontaneous gardener. Other than the big push in the spring, when I get the beds ready and typically get the tomatoes, peas, beans, and cucumbers in, I garden in a somewhat haphazard manner. This means that sometimes I get a few surprises. If, as is typical, I remember that I planted something there, but cannot remember what exactly, I watch to see what emerges. With most things, I can recognize the seedlings so it's only a mystery for a few weeks. But for squash, I'm sometimes not sure until the end whether it's pumpkin, zucchini, crookneck, or... ?

Pumpkin tend to grow long leggy vines, so once they get long enough, I'm pretty clear on what they are -- except for these mutant ones I have grow almost every year. I'm a lazy composter as well, opting for ease of use over hard work. I have two compost piles: one is the active one, which I add to nearly daily; the other is the "cooking" or done one. I don't turn regularly. I never measure the temperature. And I don't add anything to piles (other than waste). So some seeds don't get killed in the compost, including the year I threw our jack-o-lantern pumpkins in, seeds and all. They must have been a hybrid because what I get each year looks nothing like a pumpkin other than being round. They have a very hard yellowish shell, with knobby little bumps all over. My mother thinks I should cook one up at some point but I've not been brave enough. If they're not in the way of something, I tend to just let them grown and harvest the knobby things with my pumpkins, creating an autumn harvest display on my front porch.

Today, I was in my puttering mode, doing a small bit of weeding, tying up the tomatoes (probably for the last time because I ran out of green tape and the tomatoes are nearly at the top of their stakes anyway). I had harvested the garlic last week so had a lot of bare ground and raked it up, getting in ready for something. The question was what. I created a new raised bed around the other side of the house from my main beds because that's where I had space. Unfortunately there's no easy water over there so it's getting watered a bit sporadically. My idea was to do the "big" things like pumpkins and squash, letting them run amok as they saw fit over there. Oh, and sunflowers just to be pretty and tall back there since I'd pulled up the volunteers that came up where I had tomatoes in mind. I put in a couple of short rows of carrots and radishes, some basil, and some dill. Then I decided to go ahead and put a zucchini and a yellow crookneck squash in where the garlic had been, so made hills and planted those.

When I back in the garage, I saw these great garden markers I'd bought. I gave some to my dad for Christmas and he's clearly labeled all his roses and loves the markers. I labeled the one rose I had a name for, Sheila's Perfume. I thought I might as well be more organized this year and made markers for all the seeds I planted today and put them out. It already looks more organized!

Oh, the markers are here if you're interested.