08.17.08
Home on the Range
Patti’s descriptions of her bountiful garden this year has inspired me to share a bit of our bounty. Brian’s actually the green thumb around here, and I’m just his side kick who enjoys the spoils. Unlike Patti, who has a nice large yard, we have a small yard, which doesn’t have full sunlight in much of the area, so we have only a small section good for planting. This year we tried a couple crops that we have never grown before–summer squash and green beans. Here’s a picture of our little veggie patch.
The summer squash is in the front with the large leaves. Behind them growing on vines is the green beans. Behind the green beans is our nectarine tree, and on the right of that is our miniature orange tree.
The squash have actually started growing in rather nicely, but can’t be easily seen unless you peer in between the leaves. Here’s a pic looking in between the leaves.
Early last week we started to harvest some of the squash. Here’s a pic of Brian holding some of them. I like to take a pic of them in his hands to help with size reference. Besides, he’s very happy when he harvests anything he’s grown, so he’s more than happy to show these off, heheh.
We started to get more than we could eat in one day. And after a while, it gets to be a bit much to have squash every day, ha! Here’s another batch we collected.
So what to do with all the extras? After all there are still more outside ready for picking each day, ack! Well, Brian decided to dehydrate some for later use in soups and such. So he stuck them in our Excalibur dehydrator and this is what resulted.
It turned out that he set the dehydrator a little high, so these came out rather crispy. When we tasted them we realized that they tasted a bit like sweet potato chip, and so now the bottle is almost empty, ha!
So moving right along to our green beans. I call them string beans, the seed package called them Bean Pole Blue Lake. The back of the package writes:
“Some say pole beans have better flavor than bush beans. If this is so, Blue Lake would support that suggestion. Outstanding flavor combined with high yields make growing these vigorous 5′to 6′ vines worth the time. Excellent canned, frozen, or eaten fresh. White seeded. Mosaic resistant. See inside for instructions on how to build a bean teepee.”
Okay, so today, we got a chance to give that description a taste test. And yes, they are yummy! Here’s a closeup of the vine before we picked the string beans off. I circled the beans because they’re kinda hard to see otherwise.
And here’s a closer up shot.
And another shot with the green beans in Brian’s hand for size reference.
Here’s a pic of our arugula patch. We actually planted this a few years ago, and each year it just comes up vigorously on its own. We actually have to thin it out, ack! This year it gave us so many seeds that they were falling in between our backyard bricks and started growing in between our bricks! Yikes!
And then we also got some bananas this year. These are the types of bananas that are cooked. Here’s a pic of Aaron, my 14-year-old, holding one stalk. It actually had three tiers originally, but I cut off the top tier and gave it to my mom when they were visiting. It is also a bit green in this pic, but the tree was getting a bit unruly, so Brian trimmed it back. But it’s okay, tho, as all we have to do is wait for it to ripen.
Brian has found that these bananas actually taste fine eaten raw, but ordinarily we have been cooking them. The above bananas did eventually ripen. Here’s what they looked like fried. For those who are familiar with foods from tropical climates, bananas like these are commonly eaten with sugar sprinkled on top or some other sweet syrup as a desert or snack. There are lots of different kinds of bananas, i.e. red bananas, green bananas, finger bananas, bananas you can fry, bananas that can be eaten raw, etc.
And here’s what they look like when they’re boiled.
Okay, I’d better quit with the pics for now before my blog goes on strike again, ha!
Toodles for now!
Marlakins
patti said,
August 25, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Okay – I figured out my string bean thing!!! You’re going to think I’m nuts. You know what I was thinking of? French cut beans! We always called them string beans when I was growing up and all I could think of is “How on earth can you grow those? They’re cut that way aren’t they?” So, string beans are the bean that we are growing also. The cut is what I was thinking of as french cut beans (string beans in our house). So, there’s my stupidity for ya.
Okay, those squashes are funny. I don’t know if I could eat those.
About the only squashes I’ll eat is spaghetti squash and zucchini. Maybe I’ll go out tomorrow and take some pictures of what our stuff is looking like. I’ll see how my time goes. I’ve pulled in 45 ears of corn so far. That sure doesn’t make very many quarts of corn to freeze! Corn is like peas, we’re going to have to grow a lot more to have enough to freeze for the winter. The beans are still doing great and actually getting better as I pull the corn in. I didn’t plant right and put the corn in front of the beans so it shaded them from the sun a little. As I’m pulling corn off I’m also cutting down the stocks which is getting more sun to the beans. I thought we’d only get 3 pickings but I think we’re going to get more like 5 or 6. We’ve done 4 pickings so far. We had a major wind storm today so I’m afraid to see what everything will look like tomorrow. Yeeks. The tomatoes and corn are going to everywhere I think. Oh well.
I’d love to try the fried bananas. I love bananas!
Okay, so the “string bean” (french cut bean) mystery is solved.
Hope your garden continues to produce for you!
patti
Administrator said,
August 26, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Hi Patti:
Thanks for revealing the mystery of the “string beans.” You had me wondering if I had not known what string beans were all my life, and so I looked it up, ha! But what I found was that green beans are aka string beans, so I did wonder what you were referring to. Mystery solved, tho!
Hope your plants did okay with all that wind. Sounds like you did pretty good this year. We’re starting to get some cucumber in as well as some snap peas.
As far as the summer squash, I think they taste similar to zucchini, but maybe a tad sweeter. So don’t be afraid to try them! If you don’t like them mushy, just don’t cook them too long. Same with the zucchini.
Okay! Happy gardening!
Marla
Administrator said,
September 6, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Thanks, Patti, for sending pics of some of your produce! I wanted to put them up to share. Personally, I’d eat these pumpkins instead of using them for target practice! Ack!
Your squash looks great, too!
And finally Grace’s fingerling potatoes!
Great job, Grace!
I think my Aussie friend will be sending me some pics of her produce soon. If so, I may be able to share her pics here, too. I just love to see other people’s produce!
Take care and keep up the great job!
Marlakins
patti said,
September 7, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Marla, what on earth would I do with all that pumpkin?! I was going to cook one (if I can figure out how) and use the pumpkin for pies and such, but beyond that, what would I do with it? Hmmmm, and I’m not sure hubby would like to miss watching the results of target practice on a pumpkin!
patti
Administrator said,
September 9, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Hi Patti:
I’d definitely make pies out of them. You can also steam some or bake some or just cook them the way you would other squash. Cut them up and put some in stews and such or try some cut in small pieces in stir fry. I haven’t tried it yet, but if I had lots of pumpkin to play with, I might try a pumpkin soup, too, or pumpkin pudding, or pumpkin bread. I think pumpkin was one of the Indian staples along with beans and corn.
We generally don’t make pumpkin pies until around Oct or Nov when they start selling them in the markets. And generally when we do make pies we’ll cook about 3-5 pies at one time. We have been known to gobble up 5 pies inside a week. I let Brian do the pies because he’s more creative with them than I am. The basic way we’ve done them is cut the pumpkin open and separate the seeds. Then bake the pumpkin and the seeds separately. When it’s soft, take it out and let it cool down. Then you can mix up the pumpkin meat (we’ve used a blender or a food processor) with the rest of the ingredients you choose for the pie like eggs, milk, sugar,cinnamon, ginger, and I think we’ve also added cardamon before or a little ground clove (whatever you think might be tasty). That’ll be your pie filling. For the pie crust mix whole wheat flour with butter (this takes a bit of muscle work) and then press into a pie dish. Once you get the pie crust made, then scoop in the pumpkin filling you just made and throw it in the oven and bake it. There are plenty of pumpkin recipes with different variations. Just pick one with the ingredients you like.
Did you get more pumpkins? Or just the 4? Were they all from one vine or did you plant several of them? I’d like to try growing them, but as I mentioned, we don’t have a lot of space.
Oh, just thought I’d mentioned that Brian read that if you keep picking the green beans, then pole beans just keep going. I hope what he read was right! I’m really loving the green beans. It’s amazing me how many we’ve been able to harvest from the vines. The summer squash is done now and we’ve pulled them out except one which we’re letting it sit because there’s one squash that we’re trying to let mature so that we can get more seeds for next season. Thanks for sharing your planting adventure as it has encouraged me to get back into the gardening scene, too.
Hope you enjoy those pumpkins!
Marla
patti said,
September 10, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Hi Marla,
We had a TON of pumpkins. From one plant we had more then 20 pumpkins (that’s one vine). The problem I had is they were taking over so much of my garden (because I didn’t plan on them being so prolific!) that I ended up cutting off most of them. In the end, we kept 5 mature ones. We have harvested 4 and there is one still turning orange on the vine. I also still have one spaghetti squash maturing. The zucchini just keeps coming and coming and coming and …….. well you get it. I told Grace when we pick this last couple that plant is coming out!! We got over 50 zuchs easily from that one plant. Extremely prolific and extremly healthy here. The only thing still left is my tomatoes but we are slowly starting to lose those to the night cold. Unfortunately, my beans are gone. We started losing them really bad I think because we did not have them shored up enough and we got a really bad wind and it blew all my poles over and everything. It was impossible to fix them so a lot of them ended up laying on the ground. The last beans we got were really puny and some of them were actually bad. So, I pulled them. But next year I will know how to pole them up better. This was a big experiment year for me.
I enjoyed sharing gardening stuff with you! I’m learning so much and I feel like I’m feeding my family so much healthier! Everyone agrees, hands down, that out of the garden tastes so much better! I also notice that I do less salads because we have so many other veggies that are fresh that taste just as good. But I hate to get too much away from having good lettuces a couple times a week.
Well, my summer of gardening is over. Hopefully you’ll get to keep doing some as you keep your sun! I am enjoying the cooler weather here though. It’s nice not to have to irrigate so much (worry about making sure everying gets enough water). The kids are looking forward to the snow. One thing about here – winter or summer we always have sun. So they can play outside pretty much all year round. That is such a blessing and so much healthier for them!
Chat later,
patti
Administrator said,
September 11, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Ah, so “one” plant seems to be enough for pumpkin! Maybe I’ll try to figure out a way to get one plant in. I’d love to have our own pumpkin. And I know what you mean about the squash. Our summer squash exploded for a while there! We were eating lots of summer squash for a while there, and I even gave some to my parents. Actually tonight I’m cooking the last of it and then I’ll have to buy zucchini again at the market. While we were harvesting the summer squash, I stopped buying zucchini.
Did you ever set up another green house? Maybe you can do a little herb gardening there in the colder weather?
Well, thanks again for sharing your planting adventures! Let’s see what we can come up with next planting season! I’m excited, heheh.
Marla