Broccoli oh Broccoli

I just want to make a note that this year's broccoli crop continues to produce significant usable florets. They've produced vegetables consistently from the beginning of June through the end of September, giving me at least 4 full months of production. What a great crop!

Harvesting, Cooking, Freezing

I've done a lot of the following 3 things lately:

1. harvesting green peppers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, basil, and oregano
2. preparing them in various meals
3. storing and freezing them in mason jars

I made a big batch of plain (no meat) tomato sauce with about 10 tomatoes, and I have at least another dozen or two tomatoes ready to go. It made over 4 pints of sauce, most of which I froze in mason jars.

4 frozen pints of tomato sauce

The other day on a whim I thought I would try to throw together a pizza on a tortilla because I had the fresh sauce I had just made plus fresh basil and green peppers and a chunk of mozzarella in the fridge. So I made 1 pizza with the sauce,  cheese, and green peppers and the other with sliced tomatoes and basil instead of sauce. I think they would have turned out a lot better on a pizza crust, but the thin wheat tortilla worked adequately :-) I froze two of those as well.

I've had frozen pierogies from the Italian store for a couple of weeks and I finally got around to makeingthem into mason jar meals to freeze. I used carrots, broccoli, green peppers and herbs from the garden. I boiled the sliced carrots in broth and fresh dill and steamed the broccoli over top of it. I sliced and stir fried a couple green peppers with onions and then added the pierogies after I boiled them. I also heated up two cans of blacks beans with a couple of chopped tomatoes from the garden with butter and Old Bay seasoning. I layered them in 32 oz. mason jars as follows: veggies on the bottom; then the beans, which filled half the jar; 4 pierogies each with the peppers and onions; and a small pat of butter on top to keep it moist when reheated. It made 6 jars, which I let cool and then put in the freezer.

pierogi, beans, and veggies mason jar meals

I've also made dozens of salads in the mason jars. You layer them appropriately, with the dressing on the bottom, then heartier veggies, lighter veggies, cheese, other stuff, and greens on top. I made my own balsamic vinaigrette (1 part olive olive, 3 parts balsamic vinegar, plus brown sugar and garlic) and used as many veggies from the garden as possible. The mason jars have amazing preservation powers! The salads can stay in the fridge for a week without the green wilting. Some of the veggies soak in the dressing and the flavor really pops.

mason jar salads stay fresh for at least a week

I thought all the cilantro going around this time of year might taste good in hummus so I've experimented a few times with that: chick peas, olive oil, lots of cilantro, garlic, lime juice & sea salt.

cilantro hummus

Check Out This Crazy Carrot

Check this bad boy out!

Another Typical Day

that looks like a meal right there

As we plow through these, the dogs days of Summer, and start to feel Autumnal clues in the air, the Bloomfield backyard urban garden aka yarden still keeps putting out hits! Like the Summer of Love, 1969, you can feel the love produced by my two little herb and veggie plots all Summer long. Broccoli continues to flourish. Tomatoes have begun to ripen. The basil, oregano, dill, and, of course, mint only get bushier as time goes on. Now, some fat little yellow worm ate through the stem of my zucchini plant, so that motherfucker died. The plant I mean, not the worm. Fat little worm gorged him or herself long before I figured out what happened. Oh well. The carrots turned out great, and the green pepper plant continues to put off nice little tennis ball sized fruits. Yarden 2014 for the win.

fat little worm destroyed my zucchini plant

Everyday I'm Harvestin'

With my Bloomfield urban yarden fully popping off as we roll through these lazy, hazy days of Summer, and Weird Al Yankovic releasing 8 new videos, I really wish the master of parody had turned Rick Ross's 'Everyday I'm Hustlin'" into 'Everyday I'm Harvestin'" so I could use it as my theme song this Summer...

Anyway, I have harvested three of these massive zucchinis already, and I can see at least 2 more fully developed on the plant. The zucchini plant went into the ground last and it has already produced a massive amount of fruit. Absolutely tremendous yield. I've sliced-and-grilled it, chopped-and-baked it, and cooked it in tomato sauce ... so far. What else lies in store for this classic Italian summer squash, a casserole perhaps, or maybe a loaf of bread? I went ahead and pulled out a carrot or two as well, although they will certainly grow larger over time.

My green pepper plant has produced two solid peppers so far. I'd call them larger than a baseball but smaller than a softball -- about the size of a standard coffee mug or a decent sized apple. Yesterday I chopped one up and tossed it in a salad. Now that I've picked it (and will soon pick the other one) the growing power will shift to the smaller peppers already starting to blossom at the top of the plant. This plant appears to have a great yield in store!

Oh, and lest we forgot the broccoli! I planted both seedlings and seeds this year, to spread out the yield, and it worked out well. I've harvested the seedlings several times already, and now the ones planted from seed have produced their first heads. This broccoli has gone on the grill, in the steamer, in tomato sauce, pasta dishes, and even a quiche (which turned out really well). Super high yield again on the broccoli this year. It has become my most tradeable item.

Broc and Zook from the yarden for tomato sauce

Now on to the herbs. I love saying herbs with a voiced H. I got a bit lazy with the cilantro and it all flowered. I think that means no more cilantro this season. I did just cut all the tops off so maybe it will restart the growing process? Thank god I put the mint into a pot, else it would take over the world. The oregano grows steady and wide so I can clips sprigs any time I need it fresh. Very high yield there. I usually tie up a bunch to include in my veggie giveaways since I have so much. 

I don't know exactly how to handle the stevia. I planted to seedlings from Home Depot early in the season and they have done quite well. Each one had a few stems growing so I have about 5 or 6 tall stems producing broad leaves. I clipped about 6-8 inches off the top a few weeks ago and let the leaves dry out. I'll probably do the same thing again this week, and then continue clipping the tops every few weeks. I don't really know. I plan on grinding the dried leaves into powder, which I can use as a sugar replacer. I highly recommend mojitos with mint and stevia from the garden!

top of stevia plants flourishing

cut the tops off the plants

what a lovely herb

dried and ready to grind into powder

Aloo Broccoli

Check out what my friend made by substituting my home grown broccoli for cauliflower in this recipe. Yih!

JoeSoGarden 2014 Bloomfield Edition, Part 3

I used faux bamboo and potted flowers
to cover the dilapidated fence.

Everything has begun to flourish in JoeSoGarden 2014. I've already started to harvest mint, oregano, and cilantro, and I harvested my first head of broccoli before June 1st. Before June! So let me list a complete inventory here and post some pictures of the yarden in bloom. 

• 5 broccoli plants in the planter box
• 3 in the triangle plot
• plus a row of broccoli seeds
• a row of carrot seeds
• a row of cilantro seeds
• a basil plant
• 2 stevia plants
• a green pepper plant
• a zucchini plant
• tomatoes from seed
• a random seed, maybe a bean of some sort
• potted mint
• oregano

Early season broccoli success! 

The triangle plot looks great with the red and brown mulch, flowers blooming, and broccoli, zucchini, and oregano spaced throughout.  

Everything else, especially the carrots and cilantro (both started quite early and from seed) has done well so far. I need to get some little army guys or something to live in the carrot forest. 

    I put grass seed in half a dozen spots around the yard and it came in well. As did this mystery seed, probably from next door, that started growing in the box. 

JoeSoGarden 2014 Bloomfield Edition, Part 2

Last week I finally posted some pics of the "yarden" in progress. For those of you portmanteau challenged individuals, yarden = yard + garden. Last Summer, my first in this apartment, I got to tend a yard for the first time in my life. Now, I don't necessarily mean extreme Hank-Hill-riding-mower-style lawn care -- I just have a small urban spot tucked in between an alley, a one-way side street, and crowded little Bloomfield houses with rusted chain link fences -- but I have a yard nonetheless. Take a look at the vegetables, herbs, and other plants I started in late April. I'll do a Part 3 of this post soon to show how everything has come together, with the herbs and veggies flourishing, and all my new ornamental annuals and perennials finding their homes in the Earth.

Who knew mint grows like a weed?!? I mean, I love a fresh mojito, but this herb will take over your life if you don't keep an eye on it. Last year I had it growing in the corner of the triangular plot, but this year I dug that sucker up and contained it. In Style class I learned you should always use the verb rather than the nominalization of it, so yeah, I didn't put it in a container, I contained it. Nice, job, Joe, that's why you TA'd that bitch as an undergrad.

From ground to pot to budding to flourishing in less than a month

I even planted grass seed, the bane of my athletic childhood existence, for the first time in my life. Trying to play soccer or wiffle ball without stepping on the goddamned grass seed sucks! Now I find myself standing on the edge of the lawn with my arms crossed yelling at Chance, don't pee on my grass!!!  I put the seed down in the corners of the yard and edges of the garden beds where it had gotten worn out. The areas I kept really wet have grown well, and I'll get those pics up in Part 3. In this particular spot, the mint had grown from the garden plot down under the brick and out into the grass.

In the last picture you can see last year's oregano starting to poke back out from underground. I didn't know this before, but oregano, mint, and thyme, will return annually. I'd love to know what other herbs do so as well...

In the next installment I'll show how everything has really started to grow throughout May and how I finished up the yard stylistically with a bunch of ornamental annuals, and perennials, and get this, a layer of mulch to cover it!