Port Potager

The final planting quadrant is also the smallest, because it lacks the center C that the others have in favor of a patio area for picnicking. It also has a full bed of strawberries along with existing perennial plantings of roses, rhubarb and lavender, so there aren’t many areas left to fill. Across the top row is garlic that was planted back in October. When this is harvested in July, it will be replanted with winter green like arugula, bok choy and turnips. The remaining section has Paisano paste tomatoes.  Along the right side is a short trellis of snap peas, which will shade a patch of mesclun and other spring greens. Right now this is the site of our winter cold frame of mache and spinach, so our plan is simply to interplant the mesclun with these plants in early spring and gradually remove and replace things they bolt throughout the season. There are also both winter and summer carrots close to the house, where they can handle the shade that creeps in during th...

The weather has turned, bringing us a quick shot of some much-needed rain along with fall-like temperatures for the foreseeable future. We’re also heading back into the darkness, and that means that we’re starting to make some final harvests around the garden for the season. The tomatoes will be fussy with the blast of cold nighttime air, and I pulled many of our big storage crops (pumpkins, cabbages, black beans) during my last picking session. Still, while some things are coming to an end, it’s already time to think about the spring. Our bulbs came in the mail yesterday: We have three more varieties of garlic: German Red, Spanish Benitee, and Early Italian, and hopefully these will do far better than they did this year — we didn’t have much of a harvest at all, which is why I had to order more to plant instead of using our own extra for seed.   I also ordered some bulbs for the cutting garden, since many are now too old to produce any blooms. According to the g...

Back in mid-July we went on vacation. (With such a big garden and several animals, the likelihood of me ever making that statement again seems slim — we really should save our vacationing for the off-season.) We drove all over Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, and it was great.  When we travel, we’re not super into souvenirs, though we do tend to pick up some edible ones. This time we bought prickly pear syrup with the intention of making our own prickly pear ice cream (we had some in Prescott, AZ, and it was really good!) and some Southwesternized gin and tonic concoctions. But alas! We forgot about the liquid rule and it got confiscated at the airport ( very  nicely,  I should add, considering I also left my phone in my pocket and we were generally completely brain dead after 12 days in the desert). What did make it home was a package of stoneground blue corn meal and Hopi tea that we bought at the  Hopi Cultural Center  from the couple who harvested and d...

Though at the beginning of March the warm winter weather had left the garlic bed in really good shape — green tops popping out everywhere from under the mulch — our recent cold snaps have left it a shambles: You can see that there are some green tops left on either end. The few that look good are quite strong and healthy: And the ones that are not? They’re  really aren't doing well at all: Most of the bed is like this, with formerly vigorous shoots all crumpled and dead.  The other day I poked around to see what the problem is. The (former) leaves pulled right off the clove, rotted: This could be an issue caused by keeping the mulch on too late into the spring, since it warmed up so much in February and early March — there was a lot of new growth early on. But then as soon as we did  finally pull up the mulch, it dropped to very cold temperatures for weeks. This was a lose-lose situation, for sure.  I dug up one of the appare...

Another section of the garden plan for spring is the quadrant near the workshop and chicken coop: The right-hand bed of this section is under a small maple tree, which we keep around because it shades the chickens nicely in the summer. It definitely limits our options in that bed, though — no full sun to be had. We've found that salad greens (spinach, arugula, mesclun lettuces, beet greens) started in a cold frame do well here, since they get sun until the tree leafs out in May. If they're reasonably sized, the shade then works to our advantage to keep them from bolting. Weedy cilantro and dill also do well here, so we amend with lots of compost and just have the herbs and greens switch places each year, and it seems to work well. Along the top are still perennial grapes and herbs, which will remain in place (give or take a few small shake-ups of the herb garden that I'm mulling over). On the left at the top is a section for potatoes, though we'll als...

We still  aren't done with the kitchen renovation, but Kirk has been managing to put together some healthy garden meals anyway (even though washing the dishes in the upstairs bathtub is no fun ). Last night we had a new Curried Butternut Soup: Photo credit: Tiegan Trach (who could not resist eating most of it first) Curried Butternut Soup 2 medium red onions, finely diced  4 Tbs. butter Salt and pepper to taste 2 small butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and diced 4 cups chicken stock 8 cups water 1 Tbs. ginger garlic paste 1 Tbs. curry powder 1/2 cup half and half 1. In a large stock pot, melt the butter and sauté the onions on medium heat until soft. Generously season with salt and pepper. 2. Add the butternut squash to the pot with the onions and stir, then add chicken stock and water. Cover the pot and allow to simmer over medium heat for about 30 minutes or until butternut squash is cooked through. 3. Add the ginger garlic paste and cur...

It's been a while since I've reported on a Sunday supper , but here's a really good one: Food styling courtesy of Tiegan Trach. We still don't have a fully functioning kitchen yet, so Kirk is focused on easy dinners. This chicken and  broccoli ziti was an upgrade from the mac and cheese that we'd normally make, to spruce it up for a Sunday dinner. To make this, Kirk boiled a box of pasta and added broccoli from our last harvest  in the last three minutes of cooking. This is probably the equivalent of one large head of broccoli, but ours included lots of individual side shoots, which is what you get as the season goes on. He also sautéed up a pound of chicken breasts, seasoned with dried basil and oregano, plus salt and pepper.  Finally, the sauce is a standard bechamel with about 1/4 cup of grated parmesan and four to six cloves of minced garlic. He mixed it all together, topped it with breadcrumbs and some more grated parmesan, and it's a...

This weekend, as always, we had a lot of picking to do. Our harvest is spreading across several tables and counters now. From the orchard we have lots of apples and pears: And from the kitchen garden we have an assortment of other (technical) fruits, including tomatoes, bell peppers. cucumbers, zucchini, and eggplant: The past two years we made and canned a delicious peach and zucchini chutney at the height of summer to preserve those outsized harvests. It's one of my all-time favorite foods, and I love it with some cheese, crackers, and pickles for a winter lunch.  This year we will not have any, so when our last jars are gone, we'll be out of that particular chutney for a few years, until a new peach tree begins to bear .  So we went back to the drawing board to find a new chutney recipe with ingredients that we actually have. Mid-September tomatoes and apples? Check. The Ball Book has a tomato apple chutney recipe , as does River Cottage . ...

After a month of late nights and less-than-healthful eating choices, it feels sooooo good to be back to grocery shopping in the garden. One big success this season has been our head lettuce: This is one beautiful head of Buttercrunch lettuce, and we put it to good use in some lettuce wraps: This is a great way to eat stir fry on a hot day because it's lighter to have lettuce than all that rice. It's also nice when you're in a hurry and don't feel like waiting 45 minutes for brown rice to cook. Kirk made the filling by marinating chicken in soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. He then fried up the chicken with a mixture of cashews, pineapple, shitake mushrooms, and a spoonful of peanut butter for extra richness. Once the stir fry was almost done, he added some fresh cilantro at the last minute. Yum! The things we have in the garden right now  lend themselves well to Asian dishes, so we had a proper stir fry last night as well: This one featured chic...

Though there's still between six and 12 inches of snow on the ground in most spots and we're nowhere near ready to plant any spring crops outdoors, we still have plenty of last year's harvest stores to enjoy for dinner. To wit: Along with filet or perch we had garlic green beans and sweet corn fritters. Despite not having a great green bean harvest last summer, we still had enough frozen beans to last through this long winter. We also still have a good deal of garlic, though some of it is beginning to sprout, which gives it kind of a greenish flavor.  The corn fritters were made possible by some frozen corn from our bumper crop of sweet corn this summer. These are basically pancakes with corn in them, but fried in a half inch of oil. Kirk made them from a recipe in The Good Housekeeping All-American Cookbook , but there's a very similar recipe here . Just use regular salt and skip the sugar if you use fresh or frozen sweet corn from a farm — that's ple...

It is cold. As I sit typing away, the wind is shrieking straight out of the north. It is a mere 6 degrees in the garden right now, and it's likely that the last turnips and greens will be dead tomorrow, even if the plastic tunnels don't come undone in the wind . Many schools in the area are closed tomorrow due to -30 degree wind chills, and though mine isn't one of them, hope springs eternal. So, yeah: it's cold. Definitely a soup night. And a soup lunch tomorrow, whether I get to eat it at home or have to carry it to school (I pre-packed to appease the gods of the jinx): This is a great  soup for a cold night. Kirk riffed on a Jamie Oliver recipe (brought to our attention by a good friend), and it is delicious: a sweet and spicy soup that warms you twice over. Here's Kirk's take on it, which makes use of our winter veggies and adds some sundried tomatoes for a summery kick. He also decided against pureeing the whole thing, which was a great ...

Yesterday, after completing our last bit of gardening for the year , Kirk made a really delectable lunch from some odds and ends. Not that you could tell — it looks like a fancy-schmancy tapas plate: These are two potato cakes garnished with some creamed spinach with carrot ribbons and turkey gravy. The kids were about to head out to the third performance of their Christmas play, and we wanted them to have a hot lunch to tide them over, but didn't want it to be too heavy. This was perfect. It was also a perfect way to use up the inordinate amount of mashed potatoes and gravy we still had left over from Thanksgiving, so I highly recommend it any time your eyes are too big for your stomach in the mashed potato department (which is really just about every time, right?). Potato Cakes 1 cup mashed potatoes 1 egg 1 tsp. baking powder 3/4 to 1 cup flour Mix mashed potatoes, egg, and baking powder in a large bowl. Gradually add flour until the mixture feels ...

Sometimes, Sundays are about slow roasting meats and veggies and hanging around the house, enjoying the aroma. And sometimes Sundays are about running half-marathons and going to baby showers and playing with the neighbor kids until the sun goes down. This kind of Sunday is fun, too, but it doesn't leave much room for a big, beautiful dinner. Enter tarts: I've sung their praises before, because they work in the summer  and they work in the fall, they work with veggies and they work with fruit . They are like fast food for gardeners, and tonight they helped us use up a lot of extra Swiss chard that we had to cut to make room for our greenhouse tunnels earlier this week. (They also helped us not blow our entertainment money on junk food when we didn't much feel like cooking.) For our quick dinner, Kirk made two tarts: The  Red and Blue beet tart  we've had before, but the Swiss chard and feta one is new. To make it, he steamed about a dozen chard...

This weekend we finished our major fall cleanup of the garden, removing spent summer fruits and setting up some of the frames for winter tunneling. The garden is a very different place without all those tomatoes: Also out of the picture are the beans, corn, okra, and all forms of squash. It leaves a lot of empty space: The newly-empty garden could be depressing, but I always kind of like seeing the clean lines of the raised beds again. After all, they've been obscured by a tangle of vines and greenery for months. It's the return of order after the chaos of abundance, and it's nice to have some breathing room again. This weekend is also like New Year's Day for the garden, because I planted garlic bulbs (in the bed above). Garlic is one of the first things we planted when we first built these beds, and it was the first of our crops to come full circle in its propagation . This is the fourth planting of garlic, and it means the beginning of the fo...

I know I won't feel this way in February, but I have to admit: A teensy part of me is looking forward to frost. You know, the part of me that is tired of picking tomatoes. The part of me that doesn't really need more than 36 quarts of tomato sauce put up for winter. The part of me that just can  not  chop any more salsa ingredients.  The part of me that is sick to death of fruit flies hovering around all those tomatoes. I know, I know. I'll miss them when they're gone (the tomatoes, not the fruit flies — they can go to hell). It's a long winter without fresh tomatoes, and by May I'll deeply regret having maligned their abundance in this post.  But for now, what to do? There are just so many .  Enter ketchup. We've been looking for something else to make, now that we are fully stocked with salsa , pasta sauce , ratatouille, jam , and soup . We first thought of giving ketchup a try last year, but it only occurred to us after  frost k...

This year I missed almost all of pickle-making season while I was in Costa Rica ; Kirk took over all pickling duties while I was away. Now that it is September, we are not sorry to see the cucumber vines die back, as we completely overestimated our cucumber needs this year. Before we rip them out, though, we made one last pass to gather all the pickling cukes of gherkin -size or greater.  This last pickle contains no dill, since our dill went to seed before we could get another patch up and growing for fall. That's just as well, since all of our other pickles are made with dill (as you would expect). With that flavor off the table, I went with ginger (because we had it) and some Indian spices for a completely different flavor. They should taste similar to the Curry Sour refrigerator pickles I've made in the past, except that these will be fully fermented and canned. Ginger Garlic Pickles 3 pounds of small pickling cucumbers 2-4 fresh grape leaves 2 heads of...

After sampling several versions of local rice and bean dishes during our beach weekend here in Costa Rica, we went shopping for ingredients to do our own cooking when we got back to Turrialba, the town where we are living and going to school. Between our own palates and the information I got from my Spanish teacher Heyni, we were ready to make our own version of a traditional gallo pinto .  Gallo pinto means "spotted rooster," but really it's the name of typical mix of beans and rice and spices. This is usually served with eggs for breakfast, but we decided to have it with some chicken for dinner. Here are our ingredients: Clockwise from the top, first we have salsa de vegetales  (also, for reasons unknown, called  salsa inglesa ),   which is a local condiment used mostly on bean and rice dishes. It's a non-spicy, savory mix of onion, carrot, cucumber, cauliflower, garlic, pepper, and cumin. We grabbed the cheap version, but the standard is appare...