Today's Harvest!

The warm sunny afternoons and the rainy evenings have been a garden delight. The replanted beds of lettuce are coming up. The new spinach and arugula squares are starting to sprout. And the tomatoes, cucumbers and squash are happy!

Summer is in Full Swing at the Square Foot Garden

Summer is in full swing right now and so is my garden. The spring lettuce has had it's run and now the fall planting is starting to make its appearance. 

Our cabbage is ready to harvest, but it looks so nice, that I hate to take it so soon...

The bell peppers that were just tiny little buds last week are almost full size.

 My summer squash is coming showing a lot of growth. There are also many blossoms on the vines, so I am expecting many more!

And here is the beginnings of a little tiny cucumber. Cucumbers have been one of my favorites, ever since I was a little girl, and nothing can compare to the freshness of a garden cucumber. 

I replanted several of my squares this week with the beginnings of what will be my fall crops. I have new carrots, a batch of spinach and two new lettuces that took over the squares where the onions, broccoli and the old lettuce had been. More on them to come! 

Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers

These little beauties will soon be covered in olive oil and garlic salt and hitting the frying pan.

And my mint is ready for a nice herbal tea... or some hemp oil and tea tree soap. 

And last but not least, this little bud is what will soon be an eggplant. I love eggplant. 

You are never too old to learn something new!

Since this is my first year as a serious gardener, I have had to supplement my produce with a few other items that I didn't start early enough to grow or that I didn't have enough boxes to be able to plant this summer or that just weren't practical. I have been going to a local farmer's market to get sweet corn, strawberries, cherries and fingerling potatoes.

Last week when we were getting the last of the season's strawberries, I saw the little cute cucumbers that are used to make pickles. I have three children that ADORE pickles. They would eat them everyday if I let them. Maddie was with me and said.... Can we PLEASE make pickles?

So I decided that, yes, we would make pickles.

It was much easier than I anticipated. All we had to do was slice up the pickles, put them in the jars and then pour the vinegar and spice mixture over them. 

They got put into a simmering bath for 20 minutes.

And voile, we had three pints of pickles. 

Of course it was so easy that Maddie wants to go get a whole case of jars and a giant basket of cucumbers and make a LOT more. I was thinking that I could make tomato sauce, salsa and apple sauce. I might even do some peaches in August just like my mom used to do when I was growing up. 

A Beautiful Quiche

Many years ago, more years than I care to remember at this time, when I had just Leo and he was small, I belonged to an organic vegetable co-op. For an investment of a few hundred dollars prior to the beginning of the growing season, you could buy a share of the upcoming season's crop. It introduced us to all kinds of locally grown organic produce that I would have never seen normally.

One of the nicest things that they would do would be to include a few recipes in the share boxes to teach you how to use all the new and wonderful items that you were receiving. One of my all time favorite recipes from this experience was for a zucchini pie. It is actually a quiche that has zucchini, onions, a bunch of herbs, cheese and of course, eggs.

In keeping with this summer's theme of "it has to come from the garden or the chickens" I made two of these creations over the weekend.

Of course the boys are much bigger now and have a developed a much greater appreciation for vegetables. There were no leftovers this time. Both were devoured in one sitting. 

Things Are Really Growing Now!

The most amazing thing about my garden is that I am a complete novice gardener. And here I am, half way thought the summer growing season and I have all these terrific veggies... and herbs and some things are on their second planting of the season. 

Here is my second harvest of broccoli.

I am still getting lettuce from the first planting, even though it is showing a little bit of "bolt." I have already planted a second batch of Butter Crunch lettuce. That is Leo's favorite. 

My basil that I started from seed is doing pretty well. I just need to fine that culprit that is putting little holes in it so I can send them somewhere else. 

The Italian parsley is looking great. I have gotten a few harvests from it so far.

And the dream of every Italian gardener... the coveted Roma tomato. These will be roasted in garlic and olive oil and then made into sauce as well as other things. 

You Really Can Just Eat Eggs and Veggies!

I have been teasing the kids, ever since I planted my garden, that if I got good enough at growing veggies, I could stop going to the grocery store. I jokingly told them that we could just gather eggs from the chickens and harvest things from the garden when ever they got hungry.

Then I saw this thing of beauty, an egg with greens, roasted tomatoes and avocado slices on some nice grilled bread that looks almost too heavenly to eat.

How perfect would this be for breakfast, lunch or dinner?

I make egg sandwiches all the time, but I never thought to make one with veggies.

Tomorrow, I will collect the eggs from the chickens, snip off a leaf or two from some of the broccoli plants and see what I can come up with.

I can't wait!

In My Spare Time...

What do I do when I am not gardening? Well, since my square foot garden doesn't require a huge investment of time, I have started to dabble in some other ventures. I was introduced to essential oils a while back by one of my best friends, Terri, and then my sister-in-law, Julie.

The thing with essential oils is that you don't necessarily just use them by themselves. They get added to something to make them better. I have wicked dry skin so one of the first things I started doing was adding them to body butters that I made from scratch using Shea butter and other natural products.

I have a few really good recipes for body butters and a few other things and have been making those things for a few months now. So today, I decided to try my hand at making some soap. This was a clear hemp based soap with tea tree oil.

Hemp soap tends to dry out your skin a little and tea tree oil has some anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties, so they made the perfect combination for an acne soap for my teenagers. 

I don't know how it is going to work, but it was fun making it. It also gives me recipes to dabble in that don't expand my waist. 

We Have Some Serious Veggies Happening Here

It has been hot and rainy. And I have had some very happy plants because of it. My broccoli plants are doing amazingly well and are almost ready for harvest.

My tomatoes are coming along as well. These pictures were actually taken at night. I got a new cell phone last week and it has a fairly good camera. I decided to test it out by taking some shots at night. So these were taken during last night's thunderstorms.

Leo, my middle son, is in love with the very fresh produce that we are able to pick on a daily basis. He is lobbying for a green house now.

I was actually thinking about a greenhouse myself to extend the growing season. They have some very nice, reasonably priced kits.

I will have to keep you posted on that...

Grow an Abundance of Food with Help From Your Garden Solution - CPA - May 2014 - Central Pennsylvania

A wonderful article about square foot gardening and the secret to its success.



Grow an Abundance of Food with Help From Your Garden Solution - CPA - May 2014 - Central Pennsylvania

A picture is worth a thousand words...

These pictures this week pretty much speak for themselves. And notice, no weeds!!!! Yay!!!

Broccoli

The whole garden.

Lettuce

Carrots

Dinner this week is going to be a lot of salads. Look for my creamy Italian dressing recipe later this week. 

Two Weeks Exactly

It has been exactly two weeks since I planted the lettuce seedlings. We have had plenty of rain, lots of sunshine and some nice warm afternoons.

It is growing faster than teenagers! :-)

Grilled Garden Veggie Pizza

Do you know all those great summer pizzas all the recipe sites are showing? The ones with the wonderful garden fresh vegetables? I make those often. They are very simple and so delicious.

I can't wait for a few more weeks until I can enjoy my harvest on some terrific summer pizza.

I was never quite happy with my pizza crusts when I had to cook them in the oven. Pizza stones and cast iron skillets made them much better, but a good restaurant quality pizza crust kept escaping me... until last summer.

Last summer, my good friend, Lynette introduced me to the Pamper Chef Pizza Grill Pan. Lynette isn't giving me anything for this little plug.

Now I make my pizza on the grill. The thing that I found out about grilling pizza is that it is fast and it results in an excellent crust. If you want it to be even faster, you can pick up a store bought crust in the freezer section at your grocery store. My Juniata County friends can find frozen pizza crust at Schlegel's... because Schlegel's has everything! lol

You can get the grill temperature up into the 500 to 600 degree range and have a crisp crusted smokey flavored gem. Use you garden veggies as topping and an you have the perfect summer dinner to pair with a salad... grown in your garden of course.

These are my actual pizzas cooked on my grill with a Pampered Chef  Pizza Grill Pan. If you are looking for your own pizza grill pan, you can check them out here: Lynette's Pampered Kitchen

Lettuce Growth Update

This was my lettuce last week when I transplanted it:

And this was my lettuce today!

It's all filled in and you can't even see the soil. I think I may get a salad out of it later this week. :-)

Success!!!!

After impatiently waiting for a little over a week... today I was greeted by little carrot sprouts. They are my very first garden plants to sprout from seeds.

Ameraucanas

This little chick is going to grow up to be a prolific egg layer. She is sometimes called the Easter egg chicken and her eggs will be shades of light blues and greens. I also got some Rhode Island Reds. 

The fresh eggs are going to make a great addition to my garden fresh produce. 

You can learn more about caring for chickens here: http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2013/06/10-tips-for-healthy-chickens.html

Wait, water, repeat...

and think about what I am going to put in my other two gardens that I will be adding. :-)

Getting Down to Business

First we added the special growing mix. Thanks kids for lugging and lifting those bags!

The next step is to add the grid to give us the one foot square planting plots.

Here are my first few transplants. :-)

And here are my finished plots, all planted and ready to grow! The plots on the right have carrots, basil and Italian parsley seeds. The carrots are a special short variety. Now I just have to add sunshine, keep it watered and wait...  

A Late Start

There were quite a bit of early spring plants that should have been started in March and April. I knew I was behind by starting in May. Did I mention that I lived in a rural area with Amish and Mennonite neighbors that had small produce farms?

As luck would have it, one of these local farm families had extra seedlings that had been started in the greenhouse and were ready to be transplanted to their outdoor garden homes. For just a few cents, I was able to pick up a few of these little gems. There were the perfect size to make up for my late start.

Thank you Weavers of Willowbrook.

It's here... It's here!!!!!

Friday was a very busy, very exciting day. First my book arrived in the morning mail. I spent a few hours after lunch with the All New Square Foot Gardening. It became apparent to me that this was just the beginning of my adventure. It didn't take me long to realize that it was going to take about three boxes to meet my wish list. Heck, I was going to need one just for herbs. I had been buying the fresh herbs in little pots at the grocery store in the produce section for the past few years now.

My favorites are basil, Italian parsley, rosemary, mint, and garlic. I also use sage and oregano fairly often too. In a perfect world, I will go through one plant a week of my favorites. So I am going to most definitely have a few different plants at different stages of growth to keep myself supplied with those herbs.

Then around mid afternoon, I was off to meet Joe Manatti of  Your Garden Solution to pick up my first garden box and the special soil mix that went with it.

Here is a simple, quick vinaigrette that will be perfect for your first harvest of greens.  It goes especially well with a spinach and arugula mix. My kids love it.

Onion Vinaigrette

2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

1 slice of onion, minced

1 tsp. thyme leaves

1/4 tsp. of Sea or Kosher Salt

1/4 tsp. Ground Black Pepper

2 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil or more as needed

Chop the onion slice into quarters and throw it in the food processer and pulse until finely minced. Then add the vinegar, thyme, salt and pepper.  Turn the food processor on and add the oil in a slow stream so that it emulsifies.

Serve this fresh vinaigrette over baby greens.

2014 Dirty Dozen List: The Most Pesticide-Laden Produce You're Eating

When I see this list come out every year, it gives me reason to pause and think. And to be truthful, in the past I never really thought that much about it. But for the past two years, I started taking cooking classes with a local caterer. Olga is a wonderful cook and teacher. We have learned to make all kinds of things from scratch. She also was very instrumental in moving her pupils into areas of food where we had never been before. 

She also told us... Why buy this ready made and processes when it is really so quick and easy to do? And if you have the choice between an organic product and some thing that is not organic, always choose the organic product. Why take a chance on something when you don't have to?

The food was so delicious that I wanted to make it from scratch. And guess what I discovered?

Somewhere a long the way I realized that my allergies had started to clear up. I wasn't nearly as stuff as I had been in the past. So what had always seemed to be an indoor allergy improved when I stopped eating as much processed food. I said something to my son. And he said... "You know what mom? Now that you mention it, mine are a lot better too."

So there was/is some ingredient in processes foods that causes inflammation and congestion in my body. I don't know which one it is, but I do know that I feel better without it. So when this year's Dirty Dozen List came out, I took note. Much of the produce that makes this list is something that can be grown in my garden table. So this year it is going to be! 

Here is the article from Rondale News: 

Environmental Working Group (EWG) just released its 2014 Dirty Dozen list identifying the most pesticide-laden produce on the market. This doesn't mean you should stop eating produce in exchange for processed foods, but it does suggest that eating organic as often as possible is a top-notch way to keep chemical pesticides out of your body. 

In fact, a 2012 report by the American Academy of Pediatrics said children are particularly susceptible to the impacts of pesticide exposure, including an increased risk of pediatric cancers and behavioral problems, along with trouble learning. Pesticide exposure has also been linked to all sorts of conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, among others. 

To come up with the "Clean 15" and "Dirty Dozen Plus" lists, EWG scientists focused on 48 popular fruits and vegetables and based their rankings on an analysis of 32,000 samples tested by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

To rank produce, EWG analysts use six metrics, including the total number of pesticides detected on a crop and the percent of samples tested with detectable pesticides. In the latest report, 65 percent of the samples analyzed tested positive for pesticide residues.

But the report goes beyond listing foods with the most pesticide residues and charges the U.S. Environmental Protect Agency (EPA) with failing to comply with the Congressionally mandated Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, legislation designed to to warn Americans of the risk of eating foods containing chemical pesticides. 

"EWG's Shopper's Guide helps people find conventional fruits and vegetables with low concentrations of pesticide residues," says Sonya Lunder, EWG's senior analyst and principle author of the report. "If a particular item is likely to be high in pesticides, people can go for organic."

2014 Dirty Dozen Plus 
Nonorganic apples once again topped The EWG's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce report, making it the fourth year in a row the beloved fruit earned the unfavorable spot.

Kale, collard greens, and hot peppers were frequently contaminated with insecticides that are particularly toxic to human health, prompting their "Dirty Dozen Plus" status.

1. Apples
2. Strawberries
3. Grapes
4. Celery
5. Peaches
6. Spinach
7. Sweet Bell Peppers
8. Nectarines (Imported)
9. Cucumbers
10. Cherry Tomatoes
11. Snap Peas (Imported)
12. Potatoes
+ Hot Peppers
+ Kale/Collard Greens

2014 Clean 15 
It's not all bad news! These produce picks contained the lowest pesticide levels. 

1. Avocados
2. Sweet Corn
3. Pineapples
4. Cabbage
5. Sweet Peas (Frozen)
6. Onions
7. Asparagus
8. Mangoes
9. Papayas
10. Kiwi
11. Eggplant
12. Grapefruit
13. Cantaloupe
14. Cauliflower
15. Sweet Potatoes

Read More: EWG’s Complete 2014 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides and Produce

Other Important Findings
•    Every sample of imported nectarine samples tested and 99 percent of apple samples tested positive for at least one pesticide residue.

•    The average potato had more pesticides by weight than any other food.

•    A single grape tested positive for 15 pesticides.

•    Single samples of celery, cherry tomatoes, imported snap peas, and strawberries tested positive for 13 different pesticides apiece.

•    Only 1 percent of avocado samples showed any detectable pesticides.

•    89 percent of pineapples, 82 percent of kiwi, 80 percent of papayas, 88 percent of mango, and 61 percent of cantaloupe had no residues.

More From Rodale News: "Extreme" Levels of Roundup Detected in Food

"For decades, various toxic pesticides were claimed to be 'safe' … until they weren't, and were either banned or phased out because they posed risks to people," says Lunder. "While regulators and scientists debate these and other controversies about pesticide safety, EWG will continue drawing attention to the fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide loads.

My Induction to Square Foot Gardening

As I began my investigation of this garden box on the Your Garden Solution web site, I got even more excited. Joe and Seppi from Your Garden Solution chronicled their discovery of this method of gardening and how it changed they way that they and their families gardened. 

It seemed fun and meaningful. Joe talked about how he had discovered this method when he was given a copy of Square foot Gardening written by Mel Bartholomew. My next step was to check out this book.

After a quick search on Amazon, I was reading the first few pages of the All New Square Foot Gardening online. The book had instructions on what to plant, when to plant it and how to lay out the garden. Easy to follow diagrams of the grids showed to accomplish this. The book had me totally convinced and I added it to my shopping cart. 

The book had the answers to all my beginner questions... What plants can I grow, when should I plant which kind of plant?

Did I need seeds or did I have to transplant seedlings? They even had the plans for building the boxes.

I mulled over this information in my head for a while and began to formulate a tentative plan. With my four growing teenagers and my ever growing grocery bill, I figured that this was the time to act. 

I came up with a list of produce that the kids ate and that I wanted. I wrote down the names of the fresh herbs that I used. Then I went off to Schlegel's. 

Schlegel's is the name of the little store down the road from my house. It is family owned and operated and has literally EVERYTHING. Being in a rural county, they have found their niche for the past 3 generations providing for our community. Having some friends over to paint? No problem... Just head down to Schlegel's and get some fried chicken from the deli and pick up a few gallons of paint in the hardware section. They were like a miniature Wal-Mart Super Center before the Walton's ever thought of it. 

So I go to Schlegel's to pick my seeds, because... yeah, they have that! And heirloom variety seeds to boot. That is one of the benefits of living in a small town that time often overlooks. They don't think that "old" is old fashioned. They think that "old" means "quality" and we can get things here that much of the world has abandoned in their quest for the new and modern trappings of life. 

I was delighted with the seed selections. My kids are big salad eaters and I was able to choose a variety of lettuce seeds. I also got a nice selection of herbs too. I filled in with tomatoes, squash, beans and a pretty diverse variety of peppers, even the hot ones. 

Now I sit, very impatiently waiting for the mail carrier to unite me with All New Square Foot Gardening so I can "plot" my next move. I didn't mean to make a garden pun, but when I did, I decided to keep it! 

That is sooooo cool!

I love fresh produce. I appreciate the difference between small grower organic produce and commercially grown crops. I live in a rural area where the gardens are plentiful and my Amish and Mennonite neighbors garden to feed their large families. What I don't love is spending July and August pulling weeds in the 90 degree heat. And I really don't love crawling around in the dirt on my almost 50 year old knees. I love the idea of gardening and the healthy produce benefits that come with it. I just don't like actually performing the work of actual gardening myself. At least not in the traditional sense.

A few days ago I was browsing my Facebook news feed when I saw something that I had never seen before. That probably happens a lot in a Facebook news feed... but this thing was REALLY cool.

What is that? It was on the Facebook page of a high school friend. Their family had just gotten one and they were happily growing spring lettuce.

It was a garden table.

I started to investigate. My friend had gotten this simple yet amazing piece of garden utopia from a place called Your Garden Solution. I checked out their web site and soon began learning the advantages to square foot gardening as it was called as opposed to traditional gardening.

It seem that this method solved all my issues with traditional gardening. This method was easy, organic, not labor intensive, provided low weed maintenance, an abundant harvest, worked for vegetables or herbs and was raised on legs to save my rapidly aging back and knees. It was low water, no til and easily accessible.

It provided me with everything that I wanted in a garden and eliminated all of the things that I didn't like. I wanted one... now. I had already missed out on a month of growing for early spring vegetables.