Winter Gardening Blues?

Anyone else feeling a little blue since the gardening season ended? I've decided to try my hand at some winter gardening. If I had access to the outdoors I would set up some cold frames, but apartment living leaves me trying different things. I've been reading up on the topic and I think I can grow micro greens indoors. I set up my grow light just in case the days are still too short. I didn't set up the warming seed starting mat because lettuce likes cooler temperatures so I thought the windowsill might work. One last problem: I couldn't find any seeds in my local stores so I'm using whatever was left over from last season that I thought would work in cooler temperatures and with shorter day lengths.

So...I planted arugula and bok choi, both which can be harvested as baby greens. Also, both mature pretty quickly. I'm going to see how this works out and if it works, I also have a packet of a variety of loose leaf lettuce seeds.

My Newest Tool...

Remember over the winter when I was so excited to show my soil blocker? Well I liked it so much that this summer I ordered a mini blocker! Shown below. Apparently, it isn't good to start seeds in too big of a container. The repotting process, if done gently enough, is actually good for them. So next year I will start all small seeds in a micro block (larger seeds like beans will still start in the regular blocker) and then I bought a contraption that allows small blocks to fit inside of the regular block. It's actually just a pin that makes a hole large enough for the micro block. Genius!

I had no idea the micro blocker would be so tiny. It makes sense, though. If some seeds don't start, as they sometimes don't, it's less wasted soil and space.

November Vegetables

I haven't done my 2012 garden recap yet, but it's coming.

Last night I roasted sweet potatoes and kohlrabi.* If you're unfamiliar with kohlrabi, see the picture below. It seems to be one of those vegetables that CSA members are very familiar with, but that you'd never find at a supermarket (not one of our supermarkets anyway). The recipe was very easy: peel and dice kohlrabi ad sweet potatoes, toss with a little olive oil or butter, season with thyme or rosemary, salt and pepper, and bake at 425 degrees for...the recipe said 25 minutes, but I find that kohlrabi needs longer than that. I baked for more like 50 minutes. It's delicious. And healthy!

*Kholrabi is a strange looking root vegetable that is in the cabbage family. I find it tastes a little like cauliflower, but Morgan doesn't agree. It needs to be peeled because the outer portion is very fibrous and tough (even when cooked). It's a hassle peeling this odd shaped vegetable, but feed the peels to your compost pile and you get a delicious roasted vegetable and everyone's happy.

I love kholrabi and mixed with sweet potatoes, and roasted it was a perfect fall dish!

It's Not Hoarding if You Have a Use For it...

I have this dream of building a cold frame to use to extend the growing season. I've had my eye out for old windows and even living next door to a window installation business I hadn't found the right ones until now. Some were broken or too big or too small or too heavy or there was only one (which is useful, but I wanted to try to match them). Then I came upon these lovelies one day! I carried them home and I think they're going to be great. There were 4 of them which is a good number because I can build one cold frame with 4 windows and vent two of them.

Some items I still need are: untreated wood for the actual frame, handles for the windows, and a temperature activated vent. That will be the best part. It will allow the cold frame to open when it's warm by day and close at night when temperatures cool. I could do this manually, but being that I work full time, I wouldn't be around to open and close the frame during the day.

Here are the windows...

I saw some more windows, but Morgan said I was bordering on hoarding. It's not hoarding though if I have a use for them. Right?

End of the Gardening Season...2012

At least for me.  The community garden closes November 1st and everything has to be cleared out by October 27th.  So today I took some time to clean out the mess that the garden has become.

It went from this:

To this:

And where was Morgan, you might ask? On his way to the city to watch football.  He was kind enough to send me this picture from the train:

Of me bent over in the garden. Can you spot me?

Football Season and the garden!

For the 2nd year in a row, I was able to incorporate the start of the football season with the end of the gardening season. Last year, we had over a dozen hot peppers (mild habenaros, to be exact) so for the Giants' season opener we made poppers! I did a small test run and then borrowed my parents deep fryer for the game. They were a big hit!

This year, I didn't have hot peppers appropriate for poppers because I didn't plant any, but I did have a bunch of almost rotten tomatoes and the end of season small green peppers and banana peppers. So...we made chili! And it turned out really well! It's a simple recipe: onion, garlic, all the peppers we had, all the tomatoes we had left, ground turkey, and cayenne pepper and chili powder for seasoning. Oh...one of the peppers was a Serrano pepper that my neighbor gave us. It was perfectly spicey. Also we added kidneys beans and black beans. I'm a protein hog so I like to get it in as many forms as possible. We added a can of tomato paste too to thicken it up.

Serve with sour cream and cheddar.

Footnote: I'm a big fan of cast iron. I specifically use Le Creuset. And when I was stocking my cabinets with these products it was important to me to only buy what was very essential and very useful because these pots are heavy and expensive. Also, it's just my style to have as few items as possible with the most uses as possible so I end up researching a lot of gadgets/appliances before buying them. The price of these pieces and most kitchen items drives this too, but I just really like having less clutter so everything has to be very efficient. After extensive research, I ended up buying one round dutch oven, one braiser, and one roaster. I don't know the sizes off the top of my head, but i specifically bought the sizes that i felt would be appropriate for me-that is to say not too big, but not too small...for me. To each his own. We also have a skillet that we got as a wedding preset, which is handy to make paninis, but not in the everyday rotation just yet. We use our dutch oven and our braiser the most. The point of this footnote is that, admittedly, we should've used the Dutch oven here and not the braiser, but it worked. They're both my favorite pieces.

October in the Garden

Things are winding down in the garden, at least for me. Plenty of people grow fall vegetables that can withstand frost, but since the community garden closes in November, I haven't taken my gardening into the fall. We're still harvesting peppers (small peppers), some tomatoes, and the last of the eggplant. While I'm doing this, I'm also reading Eliot Coleman's The Four Season Harvest. It's an interesting read about harvesting throughout the winter. It's interesting because you plant in the late summer/early fall, but plants are harvestable throughout the winter with minimal intervention. It's basically about protecting small plants from wind, frost, and other harsh winter conditions. Not much grows, but you can still harvest. I'm about halfway through, and interested to put some of his advice into practice next summer/fall.

Also, the end of the season means trying to use up or preserve the remaining vegetables. I've frozen a lot more this year than last year and canned a bunch too. Both new hobbies for me.

We've also been cooking a lot. Here's Morgan using a lot of our CSA apples for an apple pie. This is him putting the crumble topping on before it goes in the oven. It was delicious!