We visited our community garden plot at Howard County Conservancy yesterday. We found some treasures in the soft thawed soil. 
Organic Gardening
Frozen Peppers and Cherry Tomatoes
Only in winter can we enjoy last year’s harvest while starting this year’s garden. We still have about 2 bags each of frozen peppers and cherry tomatoes from our garden plot harvest 2010. We use the frozen cherry tomatoes and peppers on homemade pizza and in soups, chili and tomato sauce.
Last summer, we had an abundance of tomatoes and peppers in our garden plot. Along with canning, we tried freezing these veggies for the first time. The frozen veggies still taste sweet and fresh. I will use the same freezing method for this year’s harvest. To freeze the peppers… chop, blanch in boiling water for one minute, soak in ice cold water, drain, dry, freeze individual pieces on a cookie sheet then toss all the frozen pieces into a freezer bag. To freeze the cherry tomatoes…. cut in half, roast on cookie sheet for several hours in a 150 degree fahrenheit oven, cool, freeze on a cookie sheet then place in freezer bag.
While enjoying last year’s harvest, we started planting seeds for this year’s garden. This week we planted King Richard Leek, Genovese Basil, Italian Parsley, and Hybrid Shallot seeds in starter containers. In a few weeks we will plant our tomato, pepper, eggplant, swiss chard, escarole and lettuce seeds.
Our Garden Plot Dreams for 2011
Who says you can't dream big?
My husband dreams of installing a drip system so we can work in the garden (and visit the goats and snowball stand) while the plants are being watered. He also wants to combine the garden beds, reduce the walking paths and cover more plants with row covers so the plot has intensive plantings thus more produce and less bug damage.
I dream of a longer growing season so I can cook from our garden harvest all year. I want to plant new types of veggies and make a cold frame. For additional crops in early summer and late fall I would like to try planting leeks, shallots and peas and Asian greens, broccoli and kohlrabi along with our regular crops of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, carrots, beans, spinach, turnips, greens and herbs. But, my biggest garden dream for 2011 is that our family has fun together with each other and other gardener friends in our community garden.
What are some of your garden dreams for 2011?
Goodbye October
The month of October ends with a photo-free post. It is the start of a new tradition at Our Garden Plot. A Photo-Free Finish on the last day of each month. It is a chance to practice creating vivid word pictures about our garden plot.
October garden highlights:
1. We pulled out our last row of tired tomato plants.
2. We pulled out big round radishes and long crunchy carrots from the ground.
3. I made bean and noodle soups from fresh picked escarole and endive.
4. We dug out football-size sweet potatoes from the soil below shriveled vines.
5. Our glorious fig tree shed its leaves.
6. Our turnip, lettuce, radish and spinach seeds sprouted leaves.
7. We harvested a grocery bag of thick crisp string beans.
8. We conquered the greedy Mexican bean beetles.
9. We picked pounds and pounds of pungent, plump and pointed peppers.
10. We roasted and froze our habanero peppers for the first time.
11. We dumped a manure and compost mix onto our plot.
12. We prepared the soil for next year’s garden.
What are your October garden highlights?
Habanero Peppers and Pumpkin Chili
The one habanero pepper plant in our garden plot continues to supply us with more than enough hot peppers. I do not know what to do with all these small bright orange peppers. They are pretty, but so pungent! One tiny crumb size bite will burn your tongue. A week ago I roasted about 15 of the habaneros in our oven. As they roasted, the kitchen filled with a sweet smell that reminded me of a deli or a room filled with pepperoni sticks. Then the aroma became overpowering and grabbed my throat. I could not stop coughing and my eyes started watering. I opened our kitchen sliding glass door and stood outside on our deck until the coughing stopped. Those are powerful peppers!
Yesterday, while making chili for guests I wondered if my roasted habaneros had less heat than uncooked habaneros. I cut a speck of skin from a roasted habanero and placed it on my tongue. It gave a tingling burn, not a stabbing burn. The heat seemed reduced so I chopped one-fourth of a roasted habanero and added it to the sauting onions and garlic. My chili got a spice lift and tasted fabulous. It had a rich hot and sweet flavor. My husband and guests devoured my chili as they told their own hot pepper stories. Today, my friend, a creative cook, suggested that I add my leftover pumpkin soup to the leftover hot chili. Our spicy pumpkin chili was delicious, mild and creamy.
Don’t be afraid to add habanero peppers to recipes. They are hot and sweet. The website, Habanero Madness and the book, Habanero has more than enough habanero pepper advice and recipes for all my habaneros.
What do you do with your habanero peppers?
Our Little Garden Helper
My five year old son surprised us this past sunny Saturday when he eagerly followed our instructions and helped us cut up and compost our tomato plants. Often our son does not want to do the garden jobs we ask him to do. He prefers to create his own jobs. Here is a list of my son’s top 10 favorite garden jobs:
1. Hold the hose and water the plants, dirt, fence and sky.
2. Dig holes in the dirt and bury treasures or plant cut flowers.
3. Throw the inedible fruit into the compost bin and stir it.
4. Place or slam rocks around the garden beds.
5. Plant sunflower seeds and sit under his tall sunflower umbrellas.
6. Hit the sunflower heads with sticks and watch the seeds fall.
7. Create a web fence for the garden beds by twisting and weaving string through sticks he staked around the bed.
8. Find bugs, worms and butterflies.
9. Cut something!
10. Throw something!
What are your little helpers’ favorite garden jobs?
The Greens Mystery Solved
This summer, my husband brought home a surprise for me. Not a bouquet of flowers, but some brown wilted plants in moist paper towels. He knows I prefer plants over cut flowers. The plants were starter greens from his co-worker. I planted them in our salad table. I assumed the plants were romaine and green leaf lettuce because one had smooth broad leaves and the other had curly thin leaves. When the plants reached mound size, I questioned their identity. The leaves felt tough and tasted bitter. My husband told me it was endive. A quick search through gardening books and the internet solved my greens mystery. It was escarole and curly endive, something I never grew or cooked before.
Highlights of what I learned about endive: 1. Curly endive has the frilly leaves and Batavian endive or escarole has broad leaves. 2. Endive can grow in winter and is less bitter when grown in cooler weather. 3. Blanching endive can reduce bitterness. Curly endive is blanched by covering it with a porous pot. Escarole is blanched by wrapping it with string so the outer leaves will block light from inner leaves. 4. Endive is used in a lot in Italian cooking including soups and saute. 5. Endive is high in vitamin A,B,C and contains Calcium and Iron .
I wrapped my escarole plants with string to blanch the inner leaves hoping they will be less bitter. I plan to make Escarole Bean Soup and Curly Endive and Bean Soup with my hearty mystery greens. Do you have any mysteries growing in your garden?
Growing in Our Mini Plot
My husband built a salad table one Saturday afternoon this past spring. He followed the plans for the Salad Table from the Grow It Eat It Network. He built it from wood piled in our garage. After he completed it, we had a little more space in our garage and a mini plot on our deck. A variety of crops grew in our salad table this year. In early summer, swiss chard, romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce and arugula grew in it. My son helped me pick the tender leaves. The table is the perfect height for him to reach and pick without bending over or standing on his toes. We ate lots of mixed salads and swiss chard this summer. I sautéed the swiss chard in olive oil with garlic, salt and pepper then tossed with pasta. Swiss chard is good in minestrone soup, too.
The fall crops are now growing in the salad table. Recently, this wild fennel shoot popped up unexpectedly. I learned that wild fennel can be an invasive plant. It does not have the celery-like stem of sweet fennel. Its delicate leaves have a strong anise or licorice flavor. Clippings of fennel leaves in a salad are a happy surprise to taste buds. Along with the wild fennel there is spinach, radishes and two mystery greens growing in the table. The mystery greens are transplants from my husband’s coworker. Our mini plot’s first growing season was a success. It grew some gregarious greens!
The Unexpected Sprouts
A clear blue sky, crisp cool air, warm sunshine plus adventure equals a perfect Saturday in autumn. We headed for our garden plot this afternoon but had a few diversions before arriving there. We stopped at a pet store and a fall festival. We went to the pet store to purchase biscuits for our dog and my son discovered a playful kitten. My son slipped a thin metal wire through the kitten’s cage. The cat flipped, batted, jumped and kicked at the bunch of cardboard strips hanging at the wire’s tip. My son roared in laughter. He did not want to leave the pet store. We redirected him with hope of a hayride at our community garden site. The Howard County Conservancy was full of activities for its fall festival. We bumped through rolling fields and woods on a hayride pulled by a tractor with wheels taller than my son. A master gardener at the compost demo gave my son a bunch of pink and blue balloons. My son slurped honey from a straw and chatted about bees with a woman from the Howard County Beekeepers Association. We listened to steel pounding on steel as a blacksmith hammered a hot orange metal rod into a fork after heating it in a coal fire stoked by large bellows. My son said the banging was his favorite. While my husband and son lingered and asked questions in the blacksmith shop, I finally visited our garden plot.
Our plot is still producing tomatoes, peppers and beans. I picked two grocery bags full of red and green tomatoes and peppers. I pulled out and composted three tomato plants that had toppled to the ground. Our fall plantings sprouted! Radish, turnip, spinach and lettuce seedlings now sprinkle the brown earth in unplanned patterns of curving rows, circles, clumps, pairs and triples. Some extra seeds must have dropped from my hand during planting. Many seedlings will need to be pulled out to allow more space for underground growth.
Those unexpected sprouts remind me of our day. Unexpected adventure and fun popped up despite my plans. Thank you God, for your goodness and for dropping some extra seeds outside my rows of plans.
The Rain
It started raining early this morning. We felt the thick air move through our open windows. We heard our dog whine as he sensed the coming storm. Then the rain fell. It felt like water from hundreds of hoses with nozzles set on “soak” blasting our townhouse. All day the rain came in mists, showers and downpours. The rain caused flood warnings, some schools districts to close two hours early, a relative’s roof to leak, traffic delays and my hair to frizzle. Rain can be a nuisance in our busy lives, but it is never a bother to my son or to a garden. The rain gives my son the chance to wear his big yellow rubber boots, hold a fancy striped umbrella, and search for the perfect puddle to splash in. The rain gives our garden the chance to thrive and grow new crops in autumn. Last week I planted lettuce, spinach, turnip and radish seeds in our garden. They must be bursting and sprouting strong roots in all the wet soil. I hope to see little seedlings peeking out of the ground in our garden plot this Saturday. Thank you rain.
Our Garden Plot 