Laurie

garden update: June 11, 2008 (first dated post, an improvement I hope)

Tomatoes: sunburned around the edges but seem to be thriving (must have watered them on a hot hot morning)

Peppers: haven’t come up

Beets: about two inches, will thin them when they’re a little taller

Zucchini, Cucumbers, Butternut squash and Pumpkins: all up and thriving

Basil: No sign of it

Mint and Lavender: Finally getting down to business in their respective pots

In other DIY news: took the family strawberry picking on 06/07/08 (and a friend had a baby that day, which seems lucky) and then made jam. Ten out of ten pint jars sealed … wish we’d made twenty or forty half-pints instead, but not complaining. Yesterday and today: made my first two batches of homemade ricotta, from organic whole milk (Hartzler Family Dairy) and organic buttermilk (from somewhere else). Simple. Will use it in a huge batch of lasagna which will be shared with another family. Then I’ll make another batch of ricotta to eat the in the style that I had it at a recent brunch: whipped up with some whole milk and a little salt. Served in a bowl and with honey poured over it and toasted pinenuts sprinkled on top … and grilled bread as a vehicle.

Also: weeding.

complaints of a (not so) dutiful blogger

omg … writing a blog is so boring! if you’re reading this, I have one question: WHY? the problem with documenting a garden project is that it’s tediously slow in real life, not to mention in wildly erratic blog updates. seriously, if you feel like poking your eyes out with bamboo shish kebab skewers (which is what i used to prop my tomato plants up in the keg cups while they awaited the great Ohio outdoors), just stop reading and save your sight.

we planted today … aforementioned tomato plants tethered to skewers, plus seeds for cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, basil, beets and pumpkins. my son wrote the names of our potential output on stakes. In his lexicon, “Suc” stands for zucchini, and that’s probably how he’ll feel about it when he’s eating the bounty twelve ways for a month. the mint and lavender are small but alive in pots … i thought mint was supposed to deliver prolific returns, but so far, the mint sprouts are rather, um, sproutly.

i’m looking forward to visiting more farms to see how it’s *really* done, including a tour of Flying J Farm at the Ohio Green Living Fayre on Labor Day. I’d better have some tasty tomatoes by then.

out the back door — it’s april!

Hello sunshine!

It looks like my family will be kind of schizophrenic about this whole garden thing. On the one hand, it’s our first go round, and it makes sense to casually throw some seeds around and see what takes. Minimal investment, minimal expectations and a chance we’ll be pleasantly surprised. Then again, as long as we’re bothering, we might as well be thoughtful and come up with a strategic plan, select the best breeds (even if that means mail ordering seeds), and lovingly coddle our little plantlings to fruition … or vegetation as it were. We’re on track to Frankenstein something together that’s not quite laissez faire and still not at all scientific. To wit:

My son Jack selected all the seeds … based on the pictures featured on the front of the packets

We’re not going to bother with fertilizer … but we did start a compost box, which includes worms (acquired from R&R Sports Headquarters, my new favorite bait shop in Columbus)

After asking around, I reluctantly started the tomato seeds inside … in cups leftover from the last time we had a keg (in the nineties, I’m sure)

Measure the pH? No way … can’t be bothered with it for my hair products or my garden

Bought a shovel, hoe, rake and spade … refuse to buy tomato cages, ground coverings, topsoil

Here’s the lineup: mint and lavender in pots, tomatoes (cherry and regular), basil, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, butternut squash and a pumpkin or two (in a separate plot).

 

 

As of this morning, the tomato sprouts have poked through the dirt

out the back door… second installment

have I expressed my skepticism about this garden thing? a friend gave me a flower bulb of some sort back in mid december. it came with directions to suspend it in water so it would bloom.(similar to what I remember my mom doing with avocado seeds back in the hippie heyday). i did. six weeks later, nothing. so i turned the bulb upside down. or rightside up, as it were. lo and behold, roots started growing down, a stem started growing up, and now i have a beautiful, fragrant purple something-or-other.

anyway, the gardening book arrived three weeks ago. i haven’t even cracked it. i did join a csa. not sure whether that makes me more or less likely to actually proceed with the garden. definitely makes me more likely to consume a lot of aphids. do people sell garden tools at garage sales, or am i going to have to buy retail?

next post: a lineup of what i will plant, and when. stay tuned.

out the back door… first installment

a few reasons I really shouldn’t have a garden:

1. i don’t have a back yard… house is on a corner lot with all street-facing yard

2. neighbors will think it’s strange and unsightly (the garden, but me too)

3. going near plants and gardens makes me itch, which in turn makes me angry

4. my dog might pee on it

5. my kids might pee on it

6. it will require the purchasing of tools and implements and that means CLUTTER

7. all these damn rabbits here in Ohio… do they really eat the vegetables?

8. i don’t know the first thing about planting, tending, harvesting, bugs, moles

Still, I’m going to do it…. just bought a book from amazon.com. Bring on the clutter!

out the back door… prologue

In truth, it won’t be out the back door at all, because i have neither a back door nor a backyard. “It” will therefore be out the front door and “it” will be a vegetable garden… or at least a valiant effort at a vegetable garden. More about that in a second. First let me say that I enjoy immensely others’ musings on all things food. Some favorites that come to mind:

• “bread stays on the table for the next course of a hand-count of cheeses on a board: buttery Gorgonzola, Camembert more running than standing, impeccable Gruyeres, Cheddar with a bite and crumbling to it, and double-cream as soothing as a baby’s fingertip.”  - MFK Fisher, Alphabet for Gourmets

• “gastronomical perfection can be reached in these combinations: one person dining alone, usually upon a couch or a hill side; two people, of no matter what sex or age, dining in a good restaurant; six people . . . dining in a good home.” - MFK Fisher, Gastronomical Me

• “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”  - Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

For me, reading food writing satisfies what (I hope) is a typcial tendency to value thinking that affirms my own point of view. Which is to say that there may be perfectly eloquent and profound NASCAR writing out there (all due respect), but I wouldn’t value it. So I like food writing, but I’m too lazy to actually write about food myself… unless I’m confident that it will serve a purpose. And I’m too new to Columbus to add much value to the fine blogs, web sites and guides that are already out there sharing wisdom on where to drink and dine, where to buy vegetables, why people eat chili on top of spaghetti (huh?)…

So I’m going to use this space to document my garden project. Because if I commit to it in a public forum, then I’ll feel compelled to do it. Maybe I’ll even feel compelled to spearhead a SF Columbus harvest party or potluck this summer. And if nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment… plus I’m cautiously optimistic that it will return the localest of local produce to me. Extremely cautious.