Garden tidying

It felt so good to be able to get back in the Potager and tidy it up a bit. I promise you I did no lifting or anything strenuous.

Hubby helped me by pulling out the finished pea supporter and the Old German tomato plant that was doing nothing. I was then able to weed all the beds while sitting on a little stool and side dress the plants with an organic fertilizer.

The cucumbers were cut away from the pepper plants and they are looking better already. There are plenty of cucumbers left.

I was able to plant beets, beans and some lettuce in the cleaned-up beds. I'm hoping this screen shades the lettuce without getting damaged until I can construct a more garden worthy structure. The screen should be on one of my windows.

I also got to do a little cleanup in my flower garden. Since it is not raised beds, there is not a lot that can be done from a stool, so there are still a ton of weeds in here.

Still it looks much better than before, almost like a place you would want to sit in to relax. A nice tidy garden. Ahhh. Now about the house.....

I will choose the Season I Bloom, thank you!

My Lenten Rose is blooming. I thought these bloomed in late winter/early spring. This one was bought in bloom in the fall, bloomed all winter and then bloomed the next year, but not this past year. I thought it was dead. I guess it wants to be a fall blooming Hellebore! That's fine by me.

Japanese Invasion

The Potager, end of July 2013. It looks so peaceful. But...
I have been invaded.

My Zinnia's are covered with Japanese Beetles!

Ewww! Well at least it's only on my zinnias and not in my vegetables...yet!

I had planted Four O'Clocks to combat these beetles. I had read somewhere that they attract Japenese Beetles, who will feed from them and then be poisoned and die!

Pretty, but deadly! Or so I read.

I hope it's not poisonous to the bees that are always around it! I have never seen a Japanese Beetle on this plant. Maybe I received bad information. Or maybe the Japanese Beetles read the same thing and agreed to avoid the plant.

Or maybe it's because Four O'Clocks spend most of the day with their flowers closed up. Talk about sleeping in! I should look at night and see if any Japanese Beetles are visiting.

Not wanting a full scale invasion I am back to the tried and true method of knocking the beetles into a jar of soapy water. Not as cool as a poisonous decoy plant, but effective.

Convalescence and Cucumbers

Tomorrow marks the end of my two week post surgical convalescence. In my mind I thought I would be straightening up my garden or reading a book at the beach.
The first week I couldn't drive and I was in pain, so I sat inside in the air-conditioning.
The second week I was beginning to feel better, but I would get so tired from the littlest tasks.
Needless to say I never made it to the beach and only in the past two days have I done anything in the garden.
So what did I do with my time? I watched a lot of daytime TV and let me tell you, there is nothing good on TV during the day. I don't watch Soap Operas. I really don't care about celebrities, so talk shows were out. I began watching HGTV all day. HGTV is terrible! First of all, it should be renamed the Real Estate Channel, because every show is about buying or selling a house. Of its millions of viewers, how many do you think are actually doing that? 10%? Secondly, they play the same show all day long. One day, Property Virgins all day. The next, Property Brothers. All day. Then Love it or List It, all day. Get my point. It's awful! Thirdly, HGTV stands for Home and Garden Television. Garden? No. Early on the weekends there are landscaping shows, but they are entertainment. You really can't learn a thing from them.

This is what made me become a gardener 

This also taught me how to garden

I long for the days of Square Foot Gardening and the original Victory Garden. Practical information you could use. Hubby & I watched them every week when we were living in a rental and had no garden. They were great.

P. Allen Smith seems to be reruns cause I've seen them all. Victory Gardens hasn't been produced since 1992 and they only seem to replay the same bad ones.  I never saw any other gardening shows the whole two weeks in the TV listings.

Which leads me to today's post.

Having given up on Daytime TV, I began watching movies, and one day I was watching Julie and Julia. This would be the third time I had seen the movie. I also read the book and occasionally read the blog the book/movie are based on.
As I was watching it with my hubby, the scene came on where Julie is hosting a dinner party and lifts her fork and says, "Braised Cucumbers are a revelation!"
I sat up straight and said "Braised Cucumbers?"
Hubby said, "Eww, no. No."
But I had at the moment 12 cucumbers in my fridge and several more that could be picked. So I searched for Julia Child's Braised Cucumber recipe.
There were several braised cucumber recipes that people claimed were Julia's, but I eventually came across Concombres au Beurre, from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. If I remember my French right, that means Cucumbers in Butter. And they are baked, not braised. I guess that is why it took so long to find the recipe.

Take 6 cucumbers, about 8 inches long. Peel them, cut off the ends, and de-seed them. Cut them into 1" x 2" sections.

Place them in a bowl and sprinkle them with 2 Tbsp. white vinegar, 1 1/2 tsp. salt and a pinch of sugar and let them sit 30 to 60 minutes.

Drain the cucumbers and dry with a towel. Place dried cucumbers into a square baking dish. Preheat oven to 375.

Toss cucumbers with 3 Tbsp. melted butter, 1/2 tsp dill or basil (I used dill from the Potager), 3 minced green onions (I didn't have any green onions, but I did have an onion in my garden that hadn't bulbed out yet, so I used that. I was short on the onions.), and pepper to taste.

Bake for one hour, tossing occasionally.
How were they? Good. They had a definite squash taste, like a cooked zucchini, only with that freshness that cucumbers have. They were firm, not crunchy, but a velvety texture.
The four of us ate the entire dish. Even hubby liked them!
Cooked cucumbers! What a revelation!

Big Spider

Fortunately the spider moved before my daughter and I walked into this!

Old German Germination Problems

In spite of all my other tomato plants being loaded with tomatoes, including the very weird Jersey Devil right next to it, this Old German tomato plant I purchased from Territorial Seeds has not had a single blossom. It's over three feet tall. I have no idea what would cause a barren plant. I checked the soil and it's not high in nitrogen. Does anyone have any ideas?

Potatoes, First Harvest 2013

We harvested some of our potatoes yesterday. (Hubby harvested and I supervised because I can't dig as I'm recovering from surgery.)

These were  Purple Majesty and Mountain Rose Potatoes. Purple Majesty is a mid-season and Mt. Rose is an early potato.

As you can see the blue were blue all the way through and the red ones were pink inside. (This photo was from this morning when we cut up the small ones to fry for breakfast.)

We enjoyed them for dinner roasted with a drizzle of olive oil, salt, pepper and some fresh rosemary from the garden. The taste was so much better than store bought potatoes. From ground to plate was less than one hour. That is what it's all about.