This week's garden recipes: fennel slaw and peach sorbet

One of the best things about growing edible things is, well, eating them.  Since I'm a glutton, I really get into the eating part of edible gardening (maybe I should rename this blog Gluttonous Gardening).  Our summer harvest season is just getting started here in SoCal, and we're already feasting.  Here are my two favorite recipes from the past week of harvesting and cooking (to respect copyright, I'm including links rather than the whole recipe):

• Fennel Slaw with Mint Vinaigrette: I'm growing fennel for the first time ever this year, so when I realized the bulbs were fat and ready, I had no idea what to do with them. A little Googling turned up this recipe, which turned out wonderful!  Even my "it's only worth eating if it comes from the drive-thru" husband and my "it's only worth eating if it has enough sugar to make an elephant diabetic" son liked it.  Yes, for real: my 13-year-old liked a fennel salad.  It really was delicious, especially after it had sat in the fridge for about a day.  The extra time mellowed the flavors a bit.
• Peach sorbet: Our peach tree is loaded this year, so I'll be having fun finding stuff to do with peaches (it's a tough job, but someone has to do it).  We bought an old ice cream freezer at a yard sale a few years ago and (finally) tried it out.  Neither of us has ever made ice cream before, but with a little pampering of the ancient ice cream maker, we succeeded in making the most wonderful sorbet I've ever eaten.  This is a very simple recipe from the Food Network - basically peaches and sugar.  The result tasted like a creamy, frozen version of a fresh peach.  Absolutely divine. 

Lest anyone out there think I'm a health nut, I've also had fun cooking up green beans with lots of bacon.  Once I've perfected my beans-to-grease ratio, I'll post a recipe here.  

Got extra garden produce? Help feed the hungry!

Many of us are busy getting our vegetable gardens planted, so it's a good time to think about how much we're going to grow, and what we're going to do with it all.  I don't know about you, but I almost always grow more produce than my family can eat.  I can, freeze, and dry, but there's usually still too much.  So this season I resolve to donate some of my surplus to a local food pantry to help feed the hungry.  I used to do that when I lived in Oregon, and it was a great feeling to know that my hobby could help improve someone's life.  (It was also a great justification to buy too many seeds and plant too many vegetables.  I'm not obsessed; I'm philanthropic!)

Anyway, there's now a web site to help me and other gardeners find a local food pantry: Ample Harvest.  Click on Find a Pantry and enter your zip code to get a Google map showing nearby food pantries, along with email and phone numbers.  Information is entered by the pantries themselves, so hopefully it's accurate.  I just typed in my zip and discovered a food pantry just a few blocks away.

If you want to get other gardeners involved in donating produce, you might consider starting a Plant a Row for the Hungry campaign.  Plant a Row for the Hungry is a public service program of the Garden Writers of America.  As a campaign coordinator, you work with gardeners and local media to coordinate donations of homegrown produce.  And for those of you who like to cook what you grow (that would be all of us veggie gardeners, right?), there's a Plant a Row for the Hungry cookbook with some yummy-sounding recipes.

So how about it, gardeners?  Let's share some of our bounty!

How to plant tomatoes (or, Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads...)

 Love Apple Farms has some interesting, detailed instructions for planting tomatoes. Their most notable secret ingredient: fish heads!  All together now:

Fish heads, fish heads
Roly poly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads
Eat them up, yum!

Or maybe that last line should read, Plant them up, yum!

For those of you who think I've lost my mind, you are correct, but not because of the fish head song.  The credit/blame for that one lies with Barnes & Barnes, whose novelty song was a staple on the Dr. Demento Show back when your Rainy Day Gardener was just a seedling.  If you're just dying to sing it to your kids/pets/plants, you can find lyrics, a Wikipedia entry, and a YouTube video online.

OK, enough with the fish heads.  Back to tomatoes.  I'll have to try the Love Apple Farms method next year, since I planted my tomatoes last weekend.  I didn't use any fish heads or other unusual ingredients, just some horse manure from my local landscape supply place (which, thankfully, does not feature piles of fish heads.  Can you imagine the stench?  The manure is bad enough.)  When I lived in Portland, I put crushed egg shells around the base of the transplants to help prevent blossom end rot and fend off slugs.  I like Love Apple Farms' idea of putting the egg shells in the planting hole (with the fish head), as it seems like the plant would get more calcium that way.

Do you have any special tips for planting tomatoes?  Or creative uses for fish heads?  If so, please share them in the comments.

I wonder if I can find a way to work one more instance of "fish heads" into this post.  Nah...

Spring bloom time!

It's the height of spring here in SoCal. Just about everything is blooming--especially the roses. Here's what's blooming in my garden:

Cymbidiums

The most recent addition to my collection, which I bought last weekend for $5 at a garage sale:
Green and pink:

And pretty pink:



Front yard cottage garden
We're gradually transforming our front yard, formerly a flat, dull patch of scruffy lawn, into a cottage garden. Here's my favorite corner, which is actually beginning to look "done" (or as done as a garden ever gets). That's a lavender rose and sweet peas.


Here's a wider angle, which doesn't look quite as done. Left to right, there's an almond tree (variety is All in One), with nicotiana and basil in front, then some purple salvia in front of the lavender rose and sweet peas.


And here, not quite so nice, is the street side of the fence. I need to add some more bedding plants to fill out this stretch.

Roses

My husband and I both love roses, and they look nice most of the year down here (not such a long winter dead period), so we've been going a little crazy planting them. Here's what's in bloom now: One of several roses we got from a neighbor last year. I don't know the name.

 And another mystery rose from our generous neighbor:

And another one. This one looks something like Double Delight, but our Double Delight has a slightly stronger scent, I think. I need to wait till both are blooming simultaneously and compare side by side.

Another gift from our neighbor:
 

And another, which unfortunately has some discoloration on the petals:

And here's our newest rose, at least till my order from David Austin gets here. It's called Sheer Bliss, and it smells as wonderful as it looks:

 And a closeup of the lavender rose in the cottage garden pics above:

By the front porch 

 Mandevilla, rescued last winter from the clearance rack at Lowe's for a couple of dollars:

Succulents and portulacas in my favorite terra cotta planter. We found this planter at an estate sale years ago, and I've tried a bunch of different plants in it, none with much success. I think I've finally found the winning combination.


This is my favorite time of year here in SoCal. There are so many flowers, lots of perfect sunny days, and the heat and smog of summer are still about a month away. Now if I could just finish planting vegetables--and stop buying every plant I see--I could sit in the garden, relax, and enjoy the view. Yeah, like that will ever happen...

Spring fever for gardeners - plant lust!

I'm semi-sane most of the year (though my husband and son might argue that point), but every January or February I begin to feel the faint stirrings of my more primitive, earthy instincts.  A shy glance as I pass the garden department turns into a long, loaded look, followed by a lustful leer.  Pretty soon I'm in the throes of unbridled plant lust.  Such is the power of these urges, that even a soggy, stormy weekend can't dampen my desire.  So, last weekend I found myself donning my rain jacket and slogging through the lake in my front yard to go plant shopping.  Hubby and I were the only customers at one nursery (did I mention Southern Californians are weather wimps?), so it was a good opportunity for some leisurely--if soggy--browsing.  I ended up with an almond tree, a dragon fruit cactus, a mandarinquat (no, that isn't a disease or a pesticide), and some seeds.

I'm taking a mini-vacation this weekend, with Friday and Monday off.  Friday and yesterday were picture-perfect sunny days, so I had time to get most of this stuff in the ground before today's rainstorm (Hey, Portland, would you please take your weather back?  I moved down here to get away from rain.).  I also ran out this morning before the rain started to take some pictures, since a few things have changed since I posted the last batch.  Here's a quick photo tour:

Front yard - still a work in progress but getting there

All in One almond


Meyer Improved lemon


Double Delight rose - gorgeous hybrid tea with a heavenly scent


Dwarf Mexican lime


Ketchup and Mustard floribunda rose - new in 2012. I love the vivid red and yellow blooms, but unfortunately they have no scent.


Southeast corner as viewed from the sidewalk - still kinda scruffy looking, but we're working on it


Sweet pea blossoms peeking through the picket fence


Looking down the sidewalk - those are snapdragons in the narrow part of the bed. I planted some zinnia seeds between the snapdragons so we'll have some color during the hot season too.


Pink snapdragon


Yellow snapdragon

Back yard - fruit trees and vegetable garden

Garlic and shallots planted in January and thriving


Blossom on Dorset Golden apple


Little apriums!


Pluot blossoms


Little peaches!


Indio mandarinquat (cross between a kumquat and a mandarin). BTW, that ugly green net fencing is there to keep my two greyhounds from digging up and/or trampling my vegetable beds.


As you can tell, we're big on fruit trees around here.  Though I started this post talking about (plant) lust, my other favorite of the seven deadly sins is gluttony, and as a gardener I get to indulge that one too.  Perhaps I should rename this blog The Sinful Gardener!

Winter garden in SoCal

While most of the country is mired in rain or snow, it's gardening season here in SoCal.  I finally found some time to get out in the garden this afternoon, planting garlic and shallots.  I have a bunch more cool season stuff to plant , but it will have to wait for next weekend.

While I was outside, I decided to take a few pictures.  Here's a winter tour of my backyard:

My peach tree is blooming!  We got this tree last year, free from our favorite nursery.  Yes, you read that right--free!  It had some wind damage, so they were going to throw it out but gave it to us instead.  Isn't it pretty all dressed up in pink and white?  Too bad there aren't debutante balls for trees :-)



And here are a couple of closeups of its frilly finery:




While the peach tree is blooming, the citrus trees are bearing!  Navel oranges, anyone?


Now for some more flowers.  First, a sunflower planted by a helpful bird.  There's something wonderful about a sunflower blooming in January!


Our house's previous owners planted this Cup of Gold Vine along a pathway in our backyard.  It must be at least 20 years old, and it blooms from January to about April.  The blossoms are really cool looking; see?


Last spring I planted nasturtiums in my vegetable beds, and they reseeded for some winter color.  I love it when plants plant themselves!


And finally, here's another plant that reseeded itself -- borage:


This is the second generation, and there are some third-generation seedlings too (you can see some in the lower right corner of the photo).  Three seasons of borage!  Now if I just knew what to do with the stuff...

So there you go - winter gardening in SoCal.  There's something wonderful about being able to dig in the dirt in January without needing hip waders.

New yumminess: persimmon jam

While the rest of the country was watching parades and football games, I spent yesterday making jam from a big batch of persimmons given to me by a coworker.  This was my first time making persimmon jam, but I think I'm in love.  It's heavenly!

It also required some research.  If you Google "persimmon jam recipes," you'll find lots, but nearly all of them end with, "ladle into jars and seal according to manufacturer's directions."  There's nothing about processing them, and since I don't want to give my family botulism, I don't do unprocessed jams.  There are a few freezer jam recipes out there too, but my freezer is full of pureed pumpkin (more on that in another post), so that wasn't high on my list either.  Finally, after an hour or so of digging, I found an old article from Sunset on preserving persimmons, and the mystery was solved.  [Update 10/11/12: this link is broken, but I found what I think is the same article here]  Apparently, the astringent varieties can't be cooked very long, or they become bitter, so canned jams aren't an option.  Fortunately for me, my giant pile o' persimmons were all Fuyu, a nonastringent variety that can be cooked.  So I was back in the jam business.

I followed the recipe in the Sunset article, using powdered pectin (the recipe calls for either liquid or powdered).  I had some trouble with the "skim off foam" step though.  The entire pan of jam was foamy!  I tried skimming off a layer, but it didn't seem to make any difference.  The results were delicious, but the contents of the jars look a little foamy, and there's a clear jelly at the bottom.  Next time (and, in the immortal words of Joe Elliott, there will be a next time) I'll try liquid pectin to see if that improves the consistency and appearance.  I don't think anything could improve the taste, though.  Persimmon jam is my new favorite jam.  Yum!

Then and now

Last time I posted, it was raining buckets, and I was whining (hey, it's my blog--I'll whine if I want to).  Now that spring is in full flower, I'm no longer whining; I'm sneezing.  But more importantly, my garden is flourishing, so in addition to sneezing, I'm bragging (hey, it's my blog--I'll brag if I want to).  Here's what my backyard looked like back in November:



And here's what it looks like now:







There's been progress in the front yard too.  Here's a pic from last summer:

And here's what it looks like now:



It still needs a lot of work, but at least it isn't a scruffy slab o' grass anymore.

Here are few more. This is a Japanese maple:


And here's one of the roses we got from our neighbor across the street:


And the cymbidiums we got from the neighbors across the street:




And one that I bought for way too much money from a woman that lives near here:





So, we're making progress!  It's fun to watch a boring yard transform into a garden--but it takes a lot of work (and money--*sigh*) to make it happen.