Potatoes, Trees, Soups & Library

Dear garden and library loving islanders,
Here are some photos from the past two weekends:

- Little Diggers dismantle their potato tower and count their haul.
- Our new library opens at lighthouse (garden books are all moved there now.)
- Scenes from forestry day for little diggers.
- Soup recipes below for your harvest!

Enjoy!



To enlarge slideshow, click on photos above; choose fullscreen slideshow F11.

For those who have trouble viewing the slide show on the gardening blog, here's a direct link to the photos.

Harvesting information for this week: from the gardeners!

Tomatoes:

The last few dozen tomatoes are now being harvested at DIGS and elsewhere on the island.

To store over long periods and ripen gradually, place green tomatoes between layers of newspaper in cardboard box. Keep in cool room. Check for ripening as needed.

To ripen hastily: place in paper bag where ethylene gas from one ripening fruit (any kind) will ripen all tomatoes in the paper bag.

Kale:

New Kale plants doing well in our DIGS fall/winter garden.

Jane suggests:
Harvest outer leaves only (1-3 per plant, so only take one at a time) that are as large as your hand.
Leave others to ensure continuous supply.

Zucchini:

Gadzukes, zuke season is almost over; our straw bale plants were uprooted at DIGS today and their bales became well-composted soil.
If you're interested in trying out straw bale gardening in your yard, it works well for hot-root loving plants like squashes and pumpkins. Bales can be purchased for $20 delivered by contacting through our email group.
For baking or freezing you can grate and wring extra moisture out zucchini.
But try this new soup recipe below, and then freeze the finished soup!

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Harvest Soup Recipes:
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Tomato Soup (better than Campbell's, but it might be the cheese and butter!) ha! :

Take a mixture of golden and red tomatos, chop and put in saucepan.
Cook 30 minutes (doesn't need much cooking down at all) until soft.
Push through seive to remove skins and seeds.
Add milk and salt to taste.
The sweetness of the golden cherry tomatoes means you don't need any sugar or other ingredients.

Jen suggests:
pinch of dill weed
chunks of cheddar added at last minute so that they only slightly melt
big slathered buttered toast to dip into it (butter slides off into soup....ahhhhh).

More soup recipes from gardeners:
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Coconut Curry Kale Soup

3 Ts olive oil or butter
1 yellow onion, chopped
1-4 garlic cloves (I probably didn't use that many)
5 pieces of ginger sliced or to taste
1 teaspoon yellow curry powder
1 C. chicken or vegetable stock
2 bunches kale, ribs removed, chopped
1 can Thai coconut milk
Salt and pepper

And you can puree it all at the end (says gardener who gave this recipe).

Then, if desired, you can add cooked chicken breasts cubed.
Vegetarians might enjoy added chickpeas!
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Zucchini Soup

2 tablespoons butter
2 onions, chopped
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
8 zucchinis, chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
4 cups chicken or veg broth
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup dry potato flakes or grated raw potato
1 tablespoon soy sauce
4 tablespoons chopped fresh dill weed

Directions
1.In a large frying pan, melt butter; add onion and saute until translucent. Add diced potato, zucchini, thyme, rosemary, basil, and white pepper, and cook for 5 minutes.

2.In a medium-sized cooking pot, add broth and bring to boil. Add zucchini/potato mixture; reduce heat and simmer about 15 minutes.

3.When cooked, puree in food processor or blender in batches. Return to cooking pot, add milk and bring just to boil, but do not boil. Add some salt to taste, or 1 Tbsp soy sauce and stir well.
Adjust seasoning. Garnish with dill weed. Soup may be served hot or chilled.
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More harvest veg recipes are certainly welcome! Just send 'em in by email and we'll keep them here on the blog for that vast amount of chard, pak choi, or whatnot, that you've got.

Best, Jen

Saturdays throughout Winter

ATTENTION GARDENERS AND LITTLE DIGGERS:

All are welcome to the DIGS garden each Saturday at 10 am for adults, and at 10:30 am for Little Diggers. (Note: No Little Diggers Oct. 6th.)

We often have coffee and cookies (YUM!) and we certainly don't work too hard. :>)
Come on by and have a laugh! Learn about lasagne and haybales!
We certainly do!

Best, Jen

Digs Fall Fair 2012

Dear Garden Lovers,

Here are some preparations for, and some scenes from the Fall Fair.
Enjoy!



(click on photos to enlarge, and play Full-Screen Slideshow, F11)

Best, Jen

.. experiments in winter salad gardening ..

well .. here's a couple of pictures of what the summer salad bed looked like a couple of weeks ago .. planning a year round salad bed has been a great learning curve for karen and me .. so far the bed has produced many salad bags throughout the late spring and summer months, and from all accounts people are pleased with the quality of produce that came from this lovely bed .. us, too .. although, i have to admit there is a part of me that is so looking forward to putting out five or ten times the amount of food onto ana's stand .. how wonderfull would that be .. ! ..

there was quite a bit of work done earlier on to make sure we would have salad throughout the summer .. and, for a first attempt at 'through the year' gardening, i think we've done pretty well up to this point .. although, that said, the lettuces are pretty much done for now .. we could have done at least one more plant/transplant of lettuces to keep going through the month of september .. so, live and learn .. we're already thinking of a different strategy for next summer ..

right now, though, we have our next flats of mesclun, spinach, lettuce (rouge d'hiver) and arugula growing in the greenhouse .. these ought to be ready for picking in the next week or so and the salad bags will start up again .. 

last saturday karen planted up the second succession of flats in the greenhouse .. there's quite a bit of thinking about how many flats will give us what we're looking for .. and how often these flats need to be planted to keep the harvest going through the winter months .. i daresay we'll be going through quite a few hundreds .. maybe thousands .. of seeds over the next months .. 

we also started fennel bulb seeds in the greenhouse again for transplanting outside later .. and cilantro .. which may live it's life in the greenhouse over the winter .. again, i think we could plant cilantro successively to see if it will grow throughout the winter months ..

out in salad bed #4 we have already planted peas .. little marvels which are doing very well went in three weeks ago .. and week before last mr big peas were planted, which are just starting to show themselves .. this time around they will be shelling peas .. so, here's hoping .. the peas we planted in the spring were a no show, basically .. don't know  why .. that's one of the things about gardening .. sometimes you just don't know the reasons why ..

two weeks ago we transplanted kale into one of the garden beds .. and then last week more kale was planted into a second bed .. that's a lot of kale .. it will be so great to have it, and the chard, to pick over the next while and into the spring .. there are purple sprouting broccolis planted in the salad garden, and in front of the apples .. brussel sprouts are growing beautifully for harvest later in the year .. maybe for christmas dinner .. 

this past saturday karen and i planted carrot seeds in this kale bed just to see what they might do .. they might disappear under the kales leaves, but there's nothing to lose by trying .. and, more lettuce seeds have been planted into the salad bed .. there's still lots more seeds to plant outside including spinach and asian veggies .. so, although we do have a bit of a wait until the next greens are ready, here's hoping that over the next few months we'll be able to continue eating fresh 'salad bags' from the garden .. 

keep your eyes on ana's stand! ..