Hurricane Ike Devastates My Garden

The remnants of Hurricane Ike dumped 6.64 inches of rain - the all-time record here for a single calendar day - right on my lovely garden. On Sept. 14, the bean plants were still producing a quart bag of beans every 7-10 days and the tomatoes were in full production mode.

The pictures show the aftermath. Within 2 days of the downpour, the beans and their leaves were wilting despite ample sun. The tomatoes remained plump, but the leaves withered and the fruit stayed the same size. I can only guess that the plants drowned in the water-logged clay soil that couldn't drain it away soon enough.

This photo was taken yesterday (2 weeks later). Note that the hardy kale plants right next to the bean poles are still a healthy green! The first frost is still probably a few weeks away, but this garden is mostly history. I'll pull the rest of the beets and keep cutting Swiss chard and kale as long as we can. Free food!

The First Tomato of Summer

Tonight we ate the first tomato from our garden - with basil, salt and pepper, and a little olive oil. Perfect!

The garden is really crazy now - I picked a half dozen beets yesterday, some as big as softballs. The green beans and cucumbers have to be checked daily lest monsters grow under the leaves. The cilantro went to seed weeks ago, but I'm keeping the basil in check - barely - by pinching off the seed heads as fast as they can make them. Kale and swiss chard are green (and red) and glossy. Since I got smart and only planted one short row of each, we only have to eat them once a week so far. The 5 tomato plants are ready to start full production - bruschetta parties are planned.

And little peppers are growing at last on just 3 plants. This is my first attempt at those, so whatever we get will be a bonus.

Kale is the New Zucchini

We all know the health benefits of kale, the dark green leafy vegetable that belongs to the cabbage family. I have grown kale in my garden for the last couple of summers, but my husband and I are almost the only people I know who actually eat the stuff.

Kale is amazingly hardy and grows abundantly without much attention. If you cut it, it just grows back - like leaf lettuce. So, once the kale is ready in July, I go out with a couple of plastic grocery store bags, cramming them full of only the very biggest kale leaves from the two half rows I planted, and repeat every two weeks until AFTER the last frost, which is supposed to make the leaves even more tasty. A bag or two of kale leaves, after washing, stripping the stems, and cooking to wilt in just the water left on the leaves, gives you enough kale to fill most of a quart-size ziplock bag for the freezer. I've still got half a dozen of these bags in my freezer now, and I just planted kale again - only one half row this year.

I try to convince others in my family of the benefits of kale, but can only get one daughter to take a little bunch once in awhile for her great minestrone soup. Just like gardeners with tons of zucchini in August and September will thrust a bag of free veggies (!) on friend and foe alike, I want to do the same with kale, BUT..... Zucchini is fairly tasteless on its own and can even be used for muffins and quick breads. Kale, on the other hand, has a "robust" taste - not for the timid - and has to stand mostly on its own. Here's the formula (note that I don't say "recipe") for some good potato-kale soup, similar to Caldo Verde:

1. Saute a bunch of chopped onions and 1-2 minced garlic cloves with some leftover small ham cubes (or in olive oil) in a soup pot until wilted.

2. Peel 3 large or 4 small all purpose potatoes and cut into small chunks.

3. Throw the potatoes into the pot and add a quart or so of some kind of stock.

4. Bring to a simmer and cook until the potatoes are almost soft.

5. Add 1 1/2 - 2 cups of chopped cooked kale and simmer another 10 minutes.

6. Season to taste and serve. This is good topped with grated parmesan cheese.

Does anyone have any other good recipes for kale? I'm desperately interested!

Gardening Thoughts in February

For the last few years, I've heard that gardeners should start planting tomato seeds in February in order to set out some sturdy seedlings by Mother's Day. I've never done it yet and always ended up standing in line over at the local garden shop in May. Let's see if I get my act together and get some on the windowsill this month!

Last summer, Environmentalist Daughter convinced a couple of us to go in with her for a share of weekly summer organic produce from a local farm. The farm had drop-off points all over the city with one conveniently near her, so she would get our box of fruits and veggies on Saturday, divide it up, and the rest of us would get ours later that weekend.

What I liked was trying new items, including some I'd never heard of, like Asian melon. What I didn't like was that some veggies were already limp by the time I got them. Meanwhile, I had already set out my own backyard garden, and was ready for tomatoes, green beans, kale, spinach, beets, peas and radishes. Luckily, you can never have too many tomatoes, so I was still able to use everything. But this year, I'm sticking to the backyard garden.

I'm a child of North Dakota and Minnesota, and grew up thinking everyone ate strawberry-rhubarb sauce for breakfast. Unfortunately, my two rhubarb plants have withered and died, and it takes at least one year of growing uncut to give a plant a good start. So no sauce for us this year.

If anyone else is looking at the seeds in the drugstore now, you might want to read an account by novelist Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Tells how she moved from the Southwest to Appalachia with her husband and two daughters and they decided to eat only food grown or raised within 40 miles or so (locavores?). How they did it, what they had to do without, etc., is mighty interesting.