Posts tagged ‘gardening’

Ohio readers! Be notified! This has been the best year for local peaches I’ve ever experienced. They are sweet, juicy, ripe and cheap right now.

I got about 3 pounds from Bauman Orchard last week and they nearly fell apart in my fingers while eating them. The girls went through all three pounds (with a little help from me) in about three days. And today I was the lucky recipient of a handmade tart from Mary Contrary, which she made with local peaches from the Lock 3 Farmers Market.

This is a directive: go eat local peaches now before it’s too late!

Note: We ate the tart and peaches so fast that no one got any pictures, so that there’s a tantalizing shot I borrowed from sxc.hu.

I’ve been composting for the garden for years, but I was using this make-shift system of tossing everything compostable into one of two trash cans and kinda rolling them around every so often to get them turned. As you can imagine, this system was a major fail. I never had compost at the beginning of the season, and by the end of the season the cans got so heavy it was really hard to access the compost I finally had. Something needed to be done!

So I got three untreated (as far as I can tell) oak pallets from someone who didn’t need them anymore and put them to work. I cut them with my hand saw into three 4′ x 4′ squares and nailed them together like this:

Then with the 1 1/2′ x 4′ pieces left over I nailed one to the bottom half of the open front, and just stacked the second piece on top of the bottom piece. It’s held on by a bungie so that I can easily get in and out of the composter to turn it and shovel compost out. Already my compost is breaking down more quickly, and it just looks so much better! Yesterday I found Olivia pulling dandelions on her own and tossing them into the bin, so it’s basically a win-win-win-win situation now. Plus, the whole project cost me a whopping $2 for nails and 2 hours time! Unbeatable!

I am so excited. My good friend, Morgen, has a grape vine growing over her swing set and it was covered with these little tiny concord grapes. She let me have a gallon size ziplock full of them to make into jelly.

I cheated and just boiled the whole she-bang down and poured it through a strainer since the grapes were really small.  That was super easy. Then I found this recipe on allrecipes.com. My friend Jenn let me borrow her canning pot and some rings and I have them set aside to jelly up. The recipe says it will take up to a week for it to set, and as of right now they are all still liquidy so I am waiting and hoping. I’ll give you all the heads up next week! Hopefully we will be eating pb and j in style by then and I can go get more grapes!

On our weekend road trip to Chicago, we needed a few stops to stretch our legs.  For one stop, we ventured about 15 minutes out of the way to Toledo Botanical Garden (Toledo, Ohio).  It exceeded my expectations, with lots of paved walkways (stroller-friendly), a lake, fountains, bridges, ducks & fish, and many little garden rooms to explore.  Most of the plants have identification labels.  It’s perfect for horticulture inspiration, a relaxing walk, & a packed lunch.  Plus admission is free because of all the garden’s sponsors.

For those of you in the NE Ohio area, you must make a trip to the Farmer’s Market at Stan Hywet. It’s Thursday’s from 4-7pm through September 23.   We bought fresh wheat bread, grass-fed cow cheese, and plumbs.  Everything tasted fresh & flavorful.  I was especially amazed at how creamy & rich the cheese was.

As a bonus after the market, you can walk the estate gardens for free.  I took lots of pics of my son running across bridges, next to fountains, & through the grape arbor tunnel.

It’s tomato time! I grew “lemon boy” and “ruffled yellow” tomatoes this year to change up my usual early girl, cherry tomatoes and romas. The harvest has been quite prolific, actually quite a bit more than I can use in just salads and sandwiches. Rather than freezing them, I decided to try to use them fresh as often as possible, and that’s how I started making my Simple Salsa.

It’s very mild, since I am always sharing it with the girls, but you can easily add a jalepeno or other hot pepper variety if you like some fire in your salsa.

The recipe is as follows:

Simple Salsa

about 6 tomatoes diced

2 small red onions diced very small

2 green peppers diced

1 clove garlic minced

1 T sugar

2 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

black pepper to taste

Stir all ingredients together, let it set a bit for the flavors to blend together. I’ve had it 5 minutes after making it and it is great. It is even better if you can manage to wait until the next day. We can rarely wait that long!

Last week some friends came over to help weed my driveway.  I didn’t pay them , nor was I in dire need because I broke a leg or something.   It was just an experiment in helping each other.

See, some of my girlfriends regularly get together for brunches.  But Devona & I brainstormed, “Why not do work projects for the person who hosts brunch?”  So last week I was the first work brunch hostess and kindly received lots of help with the overgrown weeds in my driveway.  I chose a project we could do while socializing & watching the kids.  We worked for an hour on what would have taken me a week alone.

Have you tried anything like this with your friends or even family or neighbors?  I’m curious what other ideas are out there.

Starbucks Coffee Grounds

I got this complimentary 5-pound bag of used coffee grounds from Starbucks.  My store keeps them near the bagged coffees.  Here’s an article about all the benefits of using coffee grounds in the garden.  You can add grounds to compost or use them as mulch.   They benefit plants because they’re high in Nitrogen, and they help bring down soil pH.  Supposedly they deter slugs & snails.  And if they’re fresh, the smell is nice as well.

For years I’ve had the most ragged garden, one which I apologize periodically to my neighbors.  This year it was, “I’m sorry my mint is appearing in your lawn.” and “Sorry about the raspberries looking so messy right near your garage.” But they’re nice about my urban gardening experiments, plus I always give them fresh produce!  So to curb the chaos, I’ve teamed with my husband to build three raised garden beds.

Here are instructions for building a wooden raised garden bed, plus tips on how to set it up in the garden space.  I think it’s much easier if two people work on the project together.

Supplies (for building the wood square):

tools for building bed

-4 pieces of wood per square.  Mine is 6″ tall 2″ deep, and cut to 4′ long, so my box is 4′ x 4′ square.  You can change the size, but keep in mind that you need to be able to reach all plants from the outside perimeter.  Ideally, I wanted 5′ square, but the wood only came in 8′ pieces, so 4′ square didn’t waste wood.  By the way, the nice people at the hardware store only charged $.25 a board to cut my wood.  That saved so much work!  Also, I used untreated wood.  I don’t want those chemicals near my plants.

-8 wood screws per square.   Mine are 2 1/2″ long.

-drill, extension cord to reach your drilling area, a drill bit that’s a little skinnier than your screws (for predrilling holes), and a screwdriver bit for the drill (unless you want to hand screw them with a screwdriver instead). Read more »

Our flower gardens are in full bloom. And if you have  little girls, like me, then all of the floral bounty is probably turning their imaginings to the subject of fairies.

This dish, filled with water, became the paddling pool for some fairies on our dining room table this week. I let the girls cut the flowers from my hostas before I trimmed them down to use in decorating the pond. They also clipped some lamb’s ears, some pink flowers (I don’t know what they are!) and some of the petals from my day lilies. The day lily petals made great boats.

The bonus feature for this “craft” is that it makes a wonderful variation on a center piece. The flowers remained vibrant for about 5 days before I needed to remove them from the table giving us plenty of time to enjoy the arrangement, and plenty of time for the girls to retell Thumbelina around the dining room table.