Will my dream come true?

We have signed all the paperwork to sell this village house with little property and to buy a farmhouse with barns and 9 acres. I'm completely consumed with thoughts of this real estate deal. We have a few months of waiting for the paperwork and applications to go through. Right now we expect the move to take place in mid-July, if nothing goes wrong. Not good timing for a vegetable garden. I've decided that I will not put a garden in here at this house at all this year. Fortunately we will have the garden at our friend's house from which we will have a portion of the produce.

Imagine the possibilities! I have visions of an orchard, berry bushes, huge gardens, chickens and a stand at the farmer's market.

It's seedling mania around here!

Yesterday my husband and I sat down and started the tomato seeds. Spring must be here! In past years we had always run out, or were very close to running out, of tomato sauce by this time. I'm happy to say that we still have plenty of sauce still in the pantry. My hope is that it will last us until we have tomatoes and are starting to can this year's sauce. We canned 72 quarts of tomato sauce last season, which I used for spaghetti sauce and chili mostly, and that appears to be a year's supply for a family of five.

The types of tomatoes that we are planting this year are different from our normal choices. Since I am doing this little community garden I asked for some input about what the other people would like to grow. I'm really excited to grow some different varieties. My husband is resistant to change for change's sake. We planted San Marzanos, which we did plant last year and were very pleased with. I did insist on them because it is important for us to have a reliable sauce tomato. The big change is that we did NOT plant Big Mamas like we have for the past 3 years or so. They were disappointing last year and the San Marzanos outperformed them by far. The San Marzanos may be much smaller but they more than make up for it in production. We also chose a hybrid called Campbells as a back-up sauce tomato.

Of course we are keeping the standard Sun Gold cherry tomato. I don't think I'll every deviate from that choice. We picked a few different heirloom varieties. Old German, which looks a lot like Striped German that we planted the past 2 years, is one. Another is Black Sea Man. The name makes my husband and I snicker every time it is said. So I'm sure that will be a big joke once the tomatoes are on the vine. "Oh honey, this Black Sea Man is delicious!"

We also started a large hybrid called Watermelon Beefsteak. The other freebee from Totally Tomato is a hybrid called Jetsonic and we planted that as well. In all we should have 144 tomato plants, the majority of which we'll use ourselves. The difference will go to the Master Gardener plant sale. There are about 40 pepper plants growing now. And of course we can't forget the artichokes which are looking wonderful. They are scheduled to go out to the cold frame for the rest of spring this week. That's their 6 week portrait there at the top.

The pepper seeds were started on March 13th. They don't germinate or grow nearly as fast as the tomatoes and I've found that they need more time. They are all sprouted now and doing nicely. I planted 4 varieties; a bell called Fat & Sassy, Jalepenos, a mild chili called Mariachi, and a Hungarian type called Volcano which came free from Totally Tomato.

This year's challenge; artichokes

Every year I like to try a different plant that has a bit of a reputation as a challenge, or that no one else around here is growing. Last year I did eggplants which turned out to be very easy.

Artichokes are actually a tender perennial that cannot be over wintered this far north. They can be grown as annuals but they need to be tricked into thinking they are 2 years old to get them to set fruit. So, it's the old fooling mother nature routine, and she doesn't always fall for it. The way to do this is to start them early, let them grow for a few weeks, and then put them out in a cold frame for a few weeks. The hope is that they get enough cold temperatures that they think they've just experienced a mild southern winter. It's kind of like taking your toddler and dressing her up like a 20 year old show girl in Las Vegas in the hopes of winning a pageant. But this isn't nearly so freaky.

I started the artichoke seeds, a variety called Imperial Star, on Valentine's Day. They haven't germinated yet, but I expect they will have by the 21st.

Time to plan the vegetable garden

Now that Christmas is over the seed catalogues have started rolling in and I have time to think about Spring and start planning the garden. This year is special because I am doing my first community garden! This is something I have always wanted to do and although I'm am starting off on a very small scale, I'm so excited.

I'm going to put in a large garden at a friend's house and three families are going to share in the labor (hopefully equally) and share in the produce. I feel as though it is my mission in life to help people learn to grow their own food and I think this is a good way to teach, even if it is just a few people.

We'll keep our own garden at home, of course. But I need to order seeds pretty soon because I start the tomato and pepper seedlings in March. I love this time of year. It holds so much promise.

A Book Review

I just finished The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming</a> by Jeannie Ralston.

This wasn't a book that I had heard of, or that was recommended to me. It simply caught my eye while I idly perused the stacks at the library. Lavender, hmm, my favorite flower, what's this book about? Normally I'm not interested in memoirs, particularly ones of people I never heard of before. I hope I can convey how this book affected me.

The author was an up and coming journalist in New York City when she met the love of her life, Robb Kendrick, a National Geographic photographer. For him she gives up her beloved metropolis and moves to Austin, Texas, and then moves again to a piece of property in very rural Texas. Inspired by the lavender fields in France, Robb decides to plant lavender on their property but his work requires him to travel extensively, leaving Jeannie to handle the business of the lavender alone. Meanwhile she is trying to get pregnant, trying to deal with her feelings of resentment towards her husband, and trying to cope in a place where she feels she doesn't fit in.

She believes it was the lavender that eventually taught her to let go and that her life with her husband, their life adventure, is more important than her idea of living a metropolitan lifestyle. Once she began to accept her new life she marketed the heck out of that lavender and turned her town and region into the lavender capital of Texas. Then Robb asked her to reinvent herself again, move again, accept him again.

This is a wonderful story, a fantastic manual on marriage, a terrific gardening journal. And in many ways I could relate to the author. I too moved from a large city, Philadelphia, to very rural New York for the love of my life. Gardening was the catalyst that has taught me to accept my life here. In short, I was very moved by this memoir and I'd recommend it to anyone, particularly married women.

A review of this year's veggie garden

Overall, I'd call it a great success. We had a wet and cool summer. I rarely had to water. So, the tomatoes had less flavor than I like, but they were profuse as the picture above illustrates. Granted, we planted more than twice the plants we ever did before. I canned 60 quarts of tomato sauce, along with a few quarts of stewed tomatoes and an attempt at my own ketchup. I was very pleased with the San Marzano paste tomatoes I tried for the first time this year. I felt they produced much better than the Big Mamas that were our standard for pastes, and they had a better flavor. The Heirlooms did very well also. We grew Striped Germans, which are my favorite and may not ever be kicked out of that position, and Roses, which were quite good too. And, of course, we included a few plants of Sungold cherry tomatoes.

Despite the low temperatures, though, the heat loving plants, like eggplant, did fine. I will likely plant eggplant again although three individual plants was quite enough. The peppers could have done better but it was my fault that I planted that tall cosmos between them which crowded and shaded them. I won't do that again. And I had a complete failure with the tomatillos. Again my fault, I didn't get them started soon enough and frost hit them before the fruit was ripe.

The beans did fantastic. But next year I'm going to abandon the purple beans and go with all green. The purple was pretty but not as prolific and I thought the green beans taste better. Besides, cooking turns the purple beans green anyway.

Planting the carrots and onions together in the same bed seemed to work quite well. And even though I historically have a terrible time with cucumbers, I did manage to get a few this year.

Of course the zucchini did very well. I really enjoyed the variety I planted this year, Eight Ball. They are round and had a good flavor.

The new asparagus plants I put in got a good start and hopefully we'll be able to harvest them in a couple years. And I planted some garlic before preparing the garden for winter.

Herb Pods

Yea, I need to come up with a new name for them, Herb Pods sounds both unappetizing and illegal. But since I'm not really marketing them it will work for now. This is my new favorite thing to do with all the basil I grow. I use basil a lot in cooking, doesn't everyone? And I'm a complete snob for fresh basil, dried, you might as well sprinkle grass clippings on your food. So, I wanted to find a way of preserving the basil before first frost.

Here's what I did; I picked all the basil that was left and de-stemmed it. I also pick a lot of oregano and de-stemmed that as well. I peeled a whole head of garlic. All of that went into the blender with about 1/3 cup olive oil and I pureed it into a thick liquid. It had a milkshake consistency. Then I poured it into ice cube trays and froze the mixture. When it was solid, I popped them out and put them into individual sandwich bags and back into the freezer.

Now, when making spaghetti sauce with my unseasoned tomato sauce, I just pop one of the herb pods into the sauce and it is all seasoned in one shot with the fresh basil flavor. I've also used them in a friend's recipe for a lentil rice casserole. It would work anywhere a recipe calls for fresh basil, oregano and garlic. Next year I intend to make more. Maybe with different mixtures; some that would be just basil for example.

I'd show you a picture but they really don't look like much.