Planting

I that I never posted about my gardening/planter boxes this year.  The pot above was just something I threw together last week for some color on our front porch.  But I planted the boxes back in April and forgot to every post here.

Just a recap, I have 4 raised beds/boxes that Eric made two years ago.  They are sheet metal boxes encased in wood, with drainage holes in the bottom.  They are filled first with pond stone for drainage then dirt.

Box One:  Lettuce.   I planted several varieties of lettuce - a few types of romaine and some black seeded simpson.

Box Two: Peppers.  3 jalapenos, 2 cayenne and 6 small habaneros.

Box Three: Herbs.  Parsley, cilantro, 2 basil plants, rosemary and lemon thyme.  The lemon thyme is leftover from last year, hence why it is HUGE!  I also planted dill in a separate container, not pictured here.

Box Four: Tomatoes.  I planted better boy, roma and cherry tomatoes this year.  One plant of each.

And just for fun, one other little flower I planted to sit on the front porch table.

Crowder Pea & Corn Succotash

We had a few people coming over for dinner tonight and I made the Pioneer Woman's Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork for pulled pork sandwiches....this recipe is delicious, you should make it!  We needed a side dish to go with our pulled pork sandwiches.  So we went in the fridge to see what kind of produce we had left and we came up with crowder peas, a couple bell peppers, corn on the cob, and a few onions thus our succotash was born.  It doesn't look the prettiest, but we all agreed it was good.

Ingredients: Crowder peas (one paper lunch bag full) 1 small onion, diced 4 ears of corn, cut from the cob 2 small bell peppers, diced 4 pieces of bacon fresh parsley, chopped garlic powder onion powder 1 bay leaf, crumbled thyme 10 shakes of hot sauce 2.5 C water S&P Shell peas.   Cook bacon in frying pan.  Remove bacon from pan.   Add onion, peppers, corn, garlic powder, onion powder, bay leaf, thyme & hot sauce to bacon grease and cook until veggies are tender.   S&P to taste Add peas and water and simmer until tender and water cooks out.    Crumble bacon and stir into succotash.

Squash & Zucchini Pie

Last week's CSA portion included squash, zucchini and onions which was basically everything I needed to try this recipe I saw here.  As always I made some changes but this was easy and different from what I normally would do with zucchini and squash.

 

Ingredients

3 C squash & zucchini, sliced & halved

1 small onion, diced

1 C Bisquick

3 eggs

1/2 C canola oil

1 T fresh parsley, minced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 C shredded parmesan

Salt & Pepper

Mix together eggs, oil, parsley, garlic, parmesan, salt & pepper.  I didn't measure the salt and pepper, just ground it over the mix generously.

Add squash, zucchini, onion, and bisquick.  Mix well together.

Pour into a greased pie pan.

Bake on 350 degrees for 35 minutes or until top is golden.

We had this as a side dish with grilled chicken but I also think it could be used as a main dish.  I think it would be good with diced ham or shredded chicken added as well if you wanted a main dish with meat in it.

Herbs & Veggies: An Update

Our little container garden is doing so well this year!!

My lemon tree is flowering!

We have been cutting back and eating up our lettuce but you can see some small plants coming up where I replanted a few weeks ago.

Dill is getting tall...

Just look at our peppers.  I would say peppers seem to be the biggest improvement over last year.  Last year they were in a container that also had tomatoes and this year I dedicated an entire planter box just to them.  We have tons of peppers growing and some of them even look as if they are nearing time to eat.

Ancho peppers

Jalapenos

Cayenne

Garlic  seems to be doing well.  I have to do some more research to known when the garlic is ready for harvest.

Our herbs are doing really well with the exception of the cilantro.  The cilantro was doing great but at this point it has seen better days.  I think it is about time to pull it up and replant it for more.  It's important to keep cilantro cut back even if you aren't using it and not let it flower, but it was growing so fast it got away from us.

Basil plant with lemon thyme in the bottom right corner and rosemary at the bottom left.

Parsley and oregano...

 

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Rosemary, lemon thyme & basil.

and lastly, tomatoes...lots of them!

Squash, Corn & Green Onion Naan

I saw this recipe on the Elefantitas Alegres blog but it is originally from Cooking Light.  We had corn on the cob sitting on the corner and we had gotten green onions in our CSA portion last week so I only needed squash and naan to make this recipe happen. I made a few changes to the original recipe but it turned out really well.  

Ingredients (makes 2) 1 small yellow squash, thinly sliced 2 ears of corn, cut from the cob 3-4 large green onions, sliced (white & green parts) Whole grain naan (2 pieces)  1 C italian blend cheese, shredded 2 T Garlic Olive Oil Thyme, leaves removed from sprigs S&P Grill naan for 1 minute on each side.  Just enough to warm it and get some grill marks on there. Spread olive oil over warm naan. Top with squash, then corn and green onions. Cover with cheese.   Sprinkle with fresh thyme. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes on an oven rack close to the top.   Without removing from oven, switch oven to broil and broil for 2 minutes.  

Corn & Tomato Salad

Our neighborhood had a Memorial Day Block Party and everyone was supposed to bring a dish.  I made this corn salad I saw on The Blond Cook's blog last week.  It was also a great way to showcase some of our homegrown herbs. 

Ingredients

8 ears of corn, shaved from the cob

1 pint tomatoes, halved

1/2 large red onion, dived

1/3 C red wine vinegar

1/2 cup basil, chopped

2 T fresh dill

2 T extra virgin olive oil

2 T garlic, chopped

S&P to taste

To make place tomatoes, onion, red wine vinegar, dill, basil, S&P in bowl and stir together.

Heat olive oil in skillet.  Add corn and cook for approximately 8 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for one more minute.

Add corn to tomato mixture.  Stir together.  Add additional S&P if needed.

Refrigerate until serving.

A Container Garden Update

It's been about 2 weeks since I last showed you all the progress with our container gardens.  They are coming right along.

The lettuce is coming up but not as much as we planted.  I saved extra seeds so I am going to fill in the bare areas with some additional seeds.

The peppers are getting taller...

The herbs are growing like crazy.  Our cilantro is huge.  The parsley is really growing, as is the dill.

The garlic seems to be growing well too.  This is the first time we have grown garlic. 

The tomatoes are growing as well.  I caged them last weekend and they are just shooting up.  

Herbs & Veggies - 2 week update

It's been 2 weeks since we got all our herbs and veggies planted and I thought I would check in with a little update.  I made a few additions and snapped some pictures this morning of the progress. The lettuce has been sprouting up for about a week now.

Peppers appear about the same.

Dill is growing like crazy as expected.

The herbs are doing well, the cilantro is really growing.  Also I picked up a thyme and lemon thyme plant at the farmer's market Saturday and added them to the box.

I also planted garlic which seems to be doing well.  If you've never eaten garlic scapes before they are good too - that's the green sprout-like part.  Here's an article with some different uses.  We grilled them last year.

And the tomatoes are getting bigger.  I got stakes and cages for them over the weekend so that will be my next project.

And some final touches... My birthday lemon tree is potted.

And all the bushes in front of the house turned out to be pretty pink azaleas.

Chicken Sausage & Sweet Potato Hash

A month ago or so my friend Sarah posted a picture on instagram of a dinner she made and I took a screen shot of it to remind me to make something similar.

  I didn't follow a recipe but I will share what I did.  The nice thing about a meal like this is you can put anything in it.  I bought sweet potatoes, apples & brussel sprouts but then I had red onion and red pepper in the fridge so I threw them in too.  This is an easy one pot meal.

Ingredients: 1 lb chicken sausage, sliced -  I used roasted red pepper & spinach from Costco 2 granny smith apples, peeled and cubed 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed Brussel Sprouts, halved lengthwise 1/2 red pepper, cut into pieces 1/2 large red onion, cut into pieces 1 T butter Olive oil Thyme S&P

First cut up all the ingredients into cubes, etc.  Brown butter in large frying pan over low heat. Add chicken sausage, apples and all vegetables. Add 1-2 T olive oil. Add 4-5 sprigs of fresh thyme. Grind fresh salt and pepper over to taste. Cover and cook over low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so, until all ingredients are tender. Remove thyme sprigs. Add additional salt and pepper if needed.  

Planting Time...

This past Wednesday we got new soil for our planter boxes.  We had to leave behind the dirt from our boxes at the last house because they were just too heavy to move.  We were able to keep the stones for the bottom of the boxes so that was nice.  Next year I am hoping that I can use most of the same dirt and just add in some fresh fertilizer and compost to freshen things up.  If you were reading along last year, you know that Eric built us these 4 awesome planter boxes.

If you were wanting to attempt to make something like these of your own, the basic idea is that the liners are sheet metal with drainage holes bored in them and then they are framed in with pressure treated wood.  We are fortunate because Eric works for an HVAC company and we were able to get the sheet metal shop to fabricate the liners to a drawing that Eric gave them (for free even!).  The liners are important because you would not want to plant directly against pressure treated wood as chemicals could ooze out into your soil, yuck!  But if you didn't use pressure treated wood, your boxes would not hold up to the elements for as long and we are hoping to use these babies for quite some time.  Anyways, enough about the boxes...they are wonderful. Since we are living in a different house than last year the first thing we had to do is decide where to place the boxes.  Most of the things we are planting need full sun so we placed the boxes in our side yard where it is sunniest.  Then we filled the boxes with pond stone and a mix of organic soil and compost.  It is important if you are planting in containers to use soil that is intended for containers versus directly planting in the ground.  The pond stone at the bottom helps with drainage which is critical to growing in containers.  If your containers don't drain well there is a high likelihood that your plants could die from being too wet.  

Thursday I planted all the herbs and veggies for the year.  I planted 3 varieties of lettuce from seeds: Black seeded simpson lettuce, a baby red mix and baby romaine.  Lettuce grows quickly so that's why I went with seeds.  You usually see the sprouts in 7-10 days.    

    Otherwise I planted starter plants.  Last year I planted everything from seeds originally which worked well but I started my seeds indoors in March.  I was slacking this year so I just started outside with starter plants.  This also gave me a better idea for spacing in the boxes. This box has 4 varieties of peppers: jalapeno, cayenne, habanero & ancho peppers.

My 3rd box contains all of the herbs: parsley, oregano, rosemary, basil and cilantro.  I also planted dill but in a separate container.  Last year I learned that dill really spreads a lot while it grows and it will take over your entire container.  Our dill plant was so huge last year it was overtaking all the other herbs.

The final box contains tomatoes.  It has 4 plants: big boy, pink girl, better boy and better beef tomatoes.

Tips From Past Years   *When planting container gardens, drainage is so important.  If your container does not drain well, your plants will flood and die.  Two years ago we planted in containers that did not drain well and almost nothing survived.   *Dill will take over the entire container it is planted in so dedicate an entire container to dill.   *Do not overcrowd your containers.  Plants need space to grow to their full potential.  Last year our containers were a bit too full, specifically the tomato container.   *Mark your plants.  Last year I was a dummy and I didn't mark my plants.  I thought I would just remember what I planted where.  For the most part I did, especially with herbs that each have a unique look.  But I planted several varieties of tomatoes and peppers and they take the longest to grow.  By time they were growing into normal size plants I could not remember what was what.  I will post a tutorial for the markers I made this year on tomorrow's post. Growing your own herbs and vegetables is really rewarding.  I am by no means an expert.  These are just things that worked for us.  I will continue to share with you our gardening successes and failures throughout the year.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask.  I will answer them if I can.