Peas Please

Great Garden Companions?

Any gardener will tell you that biodiversity and companion gardening are good things. The basic idea is that by combining certain types of plants you will introduce beneficial incects and nutrients to your garden ecosystem. With a few misplaced plants you can also make wackiness occur as well. For instance, placing a yellow squash next to a zucchini will produce a strange sort of hybrid mottled with yellow and green. Cool sounding but not altogether that appetizing. Similarly it is beneficial to plant other groupings together. Basil, when planted with tomatoes or peppers attracts beneficial insects which keep away other harmful pests.

But I must say that I was stumped when some friends sent me the pic of their recent venture into companion plants. Some say the one will go with anything. Others say that it comes with jail time. I say, gotcha back :)

Prepare to be Amazed

The other day while I was watching the movie, "Eat, Pray, Love" I was struck by the comment that Julia Robert's character makes.  She says,"I want to go somewhere, where I can marvel at something."  Well, don't we all?  But why must one go to the far corners of the earth to be able to marvel?  With every step into the garden I am surprised by what I find.  I am shocked that something the size of the period at the end of this sentence has the power to feed people for days and days (.)  Something that looks a lot like this . has the ability to bring people together over good food and even better conversation.  This . has the power to sustain and nourish us, to give us energy to be in this world.  This . has the power to bring people back from the pain of hunger and famine to life and life abundant.  Now if that isn't something to marvel at I don't know what is.  These are miracles of fish and loaves proportions that we encounter here.  Every seed is an opportunity to express faith and hope in a God that will continue to provide for our every need.

The Best Chicken Noodle Soup Ever

Warning: all measurements are approximate. Make sure to adjust for personal taste.

1 chicken breast grilled and cubed
1 quart chicken broth
1/2 to 3/4 cup fresh peas
Small bunch of chives (I use a kitchen shears to cut into small pieces)
1 cup bow tie pasta
1 tbsp dried parsley.
1 1/2 pieces crumbled bacon

Bring the broth to a low rolling boil. Add the pasta chicken, chives, and parsley. If using fresh peas add them two minutes before pasta is done. Add the bacon at the same time. Salt and pepper to taste.

Chive Blossom Vinegar

Place two cups of chive blossoms per 1 quart jar.
Fill the jar with white vinegar and cover with plastic.
Allow to ferment for two weeks before straining out the blossoms.
Keep the vinegar in a dark location so that the color does not fade.

Taking a Chance

We are well on our way to an actual spring I think, hope, pray. I may be sorely misguided but I'm taking a chance and getting at least some of the more volatile plants in the ground. A few tomatoes a few peppers of the red, green, and Anaheim variety. Ah yes, and one wee sugar stack watermelon.

A sure sign that winter surely has been banished is the first crop of rhubarb that has been cut. Add to that the first meal of the spring that has been garnished by chive and we are on a roll. In the next day or two the chive blossoms will be opening. I've never eaten the spicy little blossoms but I will look forward to making some chive blossom vinegar. A few weeks and I will post photos of the final product.

Why Mow it When You Can Eat it?

I hate it when bloggers apologize for not blogging for a while.  I personally have stayed away because I thought that blogging about gardening would hinder the arrival of spring.  However, it may have done just the opposite.  We have completely thawed now and all of the snow is gone.  But that wasn't  before we got a little shot of snow on May day.  Blah!!!!!!

I have been in the garden this past week.  I've been constructing raised beds and filling them with compost, peat moss, and vermiculite.  I finally found some vermiculite at Levi Reunions Garden Center outside of Sabin.  They will be ordering more next year because it has been so popular.  

Its really still too early to do much planting in the garden.  However, sugar peas and lettuce are cold weather plants so they have been entrusted to the raised beds.  I am trying a new trellis system this year.  It may look kinda funny but I'm hoping it does the trick.  I have also been constructing support structures for pole beans, Christmas beans, luffa and tomato.  Yeah, my neighbor thinks I'm crazy but it will be fun to experiment.

Bean Trellis

I'm including pics of some of the structures I've made this week.  You may notice that most of my backyard is now consumed by the garden.  My goal is to eliminate the need for much  mowing back there.  I figure the more time I spend mowing, the less time I have for gardening.  Plus I cant feed my neighbors with grass, but I can feed them with tomatoes, carrots, onions, peas....  They deserve a share of this gardens bounty after having to look at these structures for the summer.

Fairy Tales

I woke up this morning with pumpkins on my mind.  It is still snowy out, as is evidenced by our strange blizzard last night. I don't know why I am craving a fall vegetable but I guess it is what it is and I don't have any preserved pumpkin left. In a matter of months, about 6, we will hopefully be bombarded by a crop of these fairy tale pumpkins.  They are like something out of Cinderella which is probably why they have that name.  In 6 months we will have as many toasted or candied seeds as we like, and we will bake pumpkin bread with chocolate chips, and preserve more this year so we don't run out like last year.

FYI, I was hoping to find some recipes for canned pumpkin butter.  I always forget that pureed pumpkin is not supposed to be canned even in a pressure cooker.  Bummer.  I guess I will just continue to can the cubed pumpkin.  Perhaps I will search for a pumpkin apple butter recipe that might be acceptable for canning.  I will post if I discover one.

In the Garden with Penny

I was asked today to talk about prayer with a group of young Sunday School children.  I was interviewed by a young man with a set of very simple questions.  But my answers were anything but simple.  Doing that brought me back to my first real encounter with prayer.  And of all places it happened in the garden.  I grew up next to a woman named Penny Buffalo.  She was a master gardener, always digging in her flower beds and mixing in her latest concoction.  I absolutely loved spending time with her out there.  She is my perpetual image of the Holy Spirit as she buzzed around her garden with the grace of a hummingbird.

Both Penny and I have moved on from our days in her garden.  But I will always remember sitting in her lap as a four year old, smelling the flowers we picked, and listening to the beat of her heart as I laid my head close to her.  So I told the children that my prayers are like listening for God's heart beat.  If you are very quiet you can almost hear it.  May your heart beat in time with God's and may you teach others to sit in the garden and listen as well.

Nearly ready to plant.... Right?

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Yeah... maybe not.  This is the garden mid-February after a hefty February thaw.  We have had 60 + inches of snow this winter and this is what is left of it.  Hopefully we won't have too much more this winter.  It is odd to live in a place where the spring thaw is just as much hoped for as it is feared.  We have hundreds of volunteers working daily to fill sandbags at Sandbag Central.    Thankfully I live outside of the flood path, but who knows what will happen if this flood turns out to be as epic as forecasters believe it might be.  On a lighter note, I got  a bunch of my seeds in the mail  today. Yay!

Lordy Lordy something from Forde

So this is only anecdotal in nature.  I've never actually seen this quote in real life but it has been passed on to me by none other than the lovely Bishop Wohlrabe who just happens to office right next to mine.  But as second hand anecdotal quotes go, this is not a bad one from Gerhard Forde.

"You can't make a flower grow by pulling on it!"

How true!  After our week of 40 degree weather I am now settling back in for several more weeks of winter.  I will try to be satisfied with watching my seedlings attempt to poke through their potting soil and watering my scrawny houseplants.  I will post pictures of what the garden looks like this time of year.  Although I could just as well post a blank white screen because our 60 plus inches of snow is only partially melted.

Some Possible Contenders

So I am intrigued by these carrots.  As their name would suggest (Parisian Carrots) they are French in origin.  They are highly sought after in the gourmet market.  If nothing else they are cute little suckers.  They are now on their way from sustainableseedco.com

                                                                                                                                    This variety of bean is called a Christmas Bean.  It is a pole variety that is much like a Lima bean.  I came across them first when I was at the Dandelion General Store outside of Fosston MN.  I love these beans and can't wait to experiment with a bamboo tee pee.

The last contender for today is the Tomatillo.  These little suckers often get mistaken for green tomatoes.  And they have a flavor that gives off slight hints of tomato with a kiwi kick to it.  These guys are the ingredient of every descent salsa you have had at a restaurant.  Ever wonder why you cant get your salsa to taste like theirs?  It's probably because you don't have these in your arsenal.  I will be planting 3 or four of these plants just to make sure that we end up with two.  They are not self pollinating so you need to have at least two plants to produce viable fruit.

Plans and Whatnot

In the past few years gardening has become a big part of my life.  I don't know why I am so drawn to it.  Perhaps I have always had a fascination with the creative process.  I still remember the stories of the Boxcar Children that I used to read and wish that I had the same fortune to find myself in survival mode, planting and reaping to live.  I even remember planting carrot seeds across the street from our house outside the neighborhood fort.  Well, those carrots never quite made it to maturity.  Somehow inquiring minds and the temptation to peek don't quite mix when growing root crops.

As I have grown more accustomed to gardening in the northern states I have learned a lot about this land and myself.  With each new season we get the chance to celebrate resurrection.  No, these aren't the same gardens that we had last year.  But the seeds of last year bring new life to sustain us for the year to come.  And with the bleakness of the winter deep freeze comes a word of hope from catalogs like Burpee, and Gurney's, and Territorial.  So with sure and certain hope of the last frost in site I will plan this garden and reap its bounty.