Jack brought home a Shiitake mushroom log last week. Apparently I get one from him every season. I had no idea!
Last season I got an oyster mushroom log (shown on the left) that I wrote about here >>>. Check out the difference with the Shiitake on the right. Interesting, eh?
I’m hoping they’ll do a Candy Cap mushroom log someday. I would love to grow them and make ice cream. Oh, heavenly. Sigh. Reminds me of Mendocino.
Anyway, here’s a little recap on how these suckers work …
This little guy greets you at the gate that leads to our main vegetable garden—where there are more pumpkins nestled in patches here and there.
I made a similar Dia de los Muertos pumpkin for a good friend who has an amazing collection of dolls and figurines. I thought this pumpkin would go perfectly at his house.
It cracked me up so much that I ended up making another one for us and our garden. Now, when I walk out to the garden and see this fella it reminds me of our friend and makes me smile.
I also had the cutest little scarecrow in the pepper patch.
And look what happened to him!!
… and sure enough, she was right: There’s always a zucchini that gets away from you.
It was a stealthy sucker hidden in the deep abyss that I like to call the “squash patch”. It’s a place where small children should never venture, at least never alone. It looks pretty and lush with it’s beautiful bright yellow blossoms, but has teeny tiny thorns that’ll prick you and create a rash on your arm. It has hidden hollows were the local garden animalia gather to play cards, smoke cigars and drink whiskey. It’s a dark place with secrets.
Somehow I missed harvesting this particular zuke—we’ll call him Ed—when he was still a middling, which is, in my opinion, when the zukes taste best. I didn’t discover him until it was too late. He was HUGE. I would show you a picture of him, but I have momentarily lost my phone (with which I took his photo), a situation that is verging toward traumatic and I’m trying hard not to think about it. If I ever find the phone again (wah!) I’ll show you the picture of Ed placed next to a banana for scale. The poor banana, once confident and righteous about its size was made to feel puny and insignificant compared to the ginormousness that was Ed. Ed was BIG. And swarthy. Ed was intimidating and just a wee bit sexy if you know what I mean.
I stared at Ed and wondered, “How in the world am I going to use up all that zuke? It’s too much! It’s too huge!”
Snicker. (It is not often that a girl gets to say that with total dismay.)
Of course, Trudy’s recipe (and warning) came to mind. But I had a feeling that just one recipe wasn’t going to be enough. And I was right.
Ed yielded over 15 cups of shredded zuke. FIFTEEN CUPS!
The average GENEROUSLY proportioned zuke recipe calls for 2 cups. What the hay balls was I going to do with 15?
I’ve got less than a week until school starts and have been busy finishing up the last of my outdoor garden projects. Jeez, is it me or did Summer slip by way too fast?
Anyway, the weather in the Bay Area has been remarkably pleasant this summer. It’s so lovely in the early evenings that I’ve taken to eating dinner in the backyard and relaxing with a good book until it’s too dark for me to read anymore. Jack hasn’t had a chance to hook up the electricity in the garden yet, therefore we don’t have much light out there right now. Annoyed at having to cut my outdoor evenings short due to darkness I started scouring the house for lighting options.
As it happens I recently cleaned up my pantry and had pulled out a bunch of these empty Scotch bottles that I tend to save and use for flower vases. I took another look at these Scotch bottles and realized that they would make terrific oil lanterns. They’re heavy and sturdy and can easily withstand a windy night. Excellent. I felt an urge to upcycle!
These oil lanterns were super easy to whip up. Here’s what you need:
1. bottle (FREE. Use what you have.)
2. lantern wick (FREE. This package has 2 and coincidentally we already had it in the shed. Why? I have no clue, but I was using it! If you’re buying, it’s only a couple bucks.)
3. washer to stick on top of the bottle to hold the wick in place (FREE. I also found this in the shed, but the center hole was a little too small, so I made it bigger with 1/2-inch drill bit. Easy! If you’re buying, they’re ~$.50 each.)
4. Citronella lantern oil ($3.50)
Pour lantern oil into your clean bottle (I used 1/4 bottle of oil for each lantern.) Thread wick through washer and then insert into the bottle so that the wick rests easily on the bottom. Trim wick about 1/2-inch above the washer.
Voila! Two custom oil lanterns for the bank-breaking price of $3.50.
I love that the lantern oil actually looks like Scotch. And because we’re a Scotch-loving family I think these lanterns are especially perfect for our home—a subtle nod to who we are.
Upcycling at its best.
P.S. They work great!
Well, with all this heat my second round of basil has exploded. I just harvested five big ol’ bushes, which means I’ve got basil coming out my ears. This much basil can only mean the sweet deliciousness of pesto, baby! Woohoo!
I love pesto, but even I cannot eat quite this much of it. It’s time to freeze pesto, my friends. This recipe for vegan pesto has become a household favorite, even with my very picky pesto-loving Mister.
Pesto is so stinking easy to make and even easier to freeze for future use, it’s silly not to. Here’s my vegan take on the traditional pesto. And if you don’t like this just as much as the original, I’ll eat my Giants cap!
I’ve been cleaning up my alley garden in preparation for a new round of plantings. Yesterday I decided to pull up my carrot crop; I had neglected them a little too long. Aphids were starting to attack (I HATE aphids) and I forgot to thin them out as seedlings which means they were growing right on top of each, stunting each others growth. I decided to yank ’em, enjoy them as babies, and start the new crop while there is still plenty of time in the season.
Holy baloney, don’t these colors look incredible? I’m so happy I went with the Kaleidoscope Mix from Cooks Garden. It was one of my few splurges on seeds. For the majority of my planting I pick up seeds at the local Walmart or garden center for $1-2 a pack. These seeds were $4.95. But look at the colors! They’re beautiful! Who doesn’t want to eat that?
Last weekend while Jack was working in the backyard I tackled the front yard, a project that has been on my list since Spring. I hacked, trimmed, yanked, planted and installed a new drip watering system. There’s much more than what I’m showing you here, but this is the fun stuff. Who cares about me going kamakaze with a hedge trimmer?
Anyway, when I was putting down the final round of mulch my neighbor came over: “Boy, that sure does look better. I didn’t want to say anything but that purple stuff was kinda out of control. It didn’t look good anymore!”
Dude, I could not agree more. It looked terrible!
These first few pictures are from last Spring when we planted a few perennials and lots of annuals.
Look at those gorgeous hollyhocks standing up back there. A month later they were eviscerated by slugs. I’m going to try them again in the backyard. Anyway, this pretty look only lasted a couple of months before the perennial bushes like the lavender grew like gang busters, smothered everything nearby and took over. I didn’t trim back when I needed to, which would have preserved things better. But I didn’t, so they went beyond woody and the entire garden turned to poop. Ugh.
This time I had a new plan.
My little garden has been quite the little producer. Here’s a shot after a heavy round of harvesting. I took away about two-thirds of those big leafy greens on the right and it still looks abundant, doesn’t it? Amazing.
With all this production I’ve had to quickly come up to speed on preservation strategies. For super abundant crops like the turnip and beet greens I blanch, vacuum pack and freeze a little more than half of the harvest. I’m always shocked that it ends up being about 10 percent of the original volume. On the other hand, those little bricks of vacuum-packed green don’t overwhelm my freezer either and that’s a good thing considering that it’s currently full of 40 pounds of elk meat.
For other crops like lettuce, mesclun, and chard I wash, dry and wrap them in paper towels for storage in the fridge.
Here’s what my fridge look like right now:
I’ve been told that I haven’t blogged since I got out of school at the end of May. So sorry, but I’ve been furiously working on a long list of projects that I had put off all last semester. Even now, I’m a little panicked that I won’t get everything finished before school starts up again on Monday. I’ve repainted our bedroom (with only one minor scary incident—yay), completely cleaned our closets, installed a new closet system, caught up on half my sewing projects, finished up leftover yard work and in between socialized with friends, got a massage (thank you Simone!), went to a baseball game and am trying to catch up on my chick flicks, foreign films and dramas while Jack’s out of town.
It’s been busy. I need to sit down.
In the meantime, I’ll let Lily give you a quick update and tour of the veggie garden.
Okay, just to give us some perspective, here’s the action two weekends ago.
We moved the shed and were left with this delightful pile of concrete rubble. Awesome. Lovely. (By the way I was perfectly content to let all that rubble lay there until September. Jack frowned severely, called me a hoarder and declared it banished. You have to feel a little bad for him. He’s got OCD.) We moved it. By hand. And oh, my aching back!
Now, we’ve got …
Loonyville 