According to the US Drought Monitor we are in a moderate-to-severe drought right now. It’s been an unusually snowless year, and I’m starting to get a bit worried about some of the new perennials we put in our yard this past season. Fortunately today, we got a bit of welcomed snow:

Here’s the garden (nothing too interesting, sorry):

In other news, an Angus Beef door-to-door sales man rang our doorbell today. I answered the door with a chuckle, informing him that he had just found a house full of vegans! We both had a good laugh – he said “I saw your garden so I wasn’t quite sure if you’d be interested!” I asked how often that happens, and he said very rarely – he’d never run into an entire household of vegetarians before (though there are only two of us here so I suppose that’s not so odd). We talked for a minute or two; hopefully he’ll have another laugh when he tells the anecdote to his family over their steak dinner tonight.

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I should be working…but it’s a beautiful sunny day and spring is fast approaching. So, my inner dork is taking over for a few minutes.

I know some of you do the same thing (I’ve seen you admit it!), so hopefully this will be appreciated. This is a very rough first draft. I’m planning on planting sweet corn this year, which takes up a lot of space.

I’m also planning on cutting *way* back on the number of tomatoes that I put in. I love heirloom tomatoes, but we have had so many problems with blight, that I think this year I am just going to purchase some blight-resistant hybrid varieties at the greenhouse up the road. I’ll probably pick up my peppers and some of the cole crops there, too. I love starting seeds inside, but we have a lot going on this spring (and I have some big business development plans as well). It’s a lot of work starting everything inside.

One of our goals for the near future is to get a greenhouse set up. Something just big enough to start seedlings in.

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If you’re a fan of mock duck, you’ll enjoy this recipe.  It’s simlar to seitan, which is incredibly easy to make.

The canned stuff is imported from Taiwan – Companion brand. You can purchase it at a Food Co-op or other grocery store for $250-ish per 10 oz. can.

You can also make a couple of pounds of seitan for about $5. Preparation time is less than 2 minutes – though you will want a food processor for this to work correctly.

Seitan

Combine in a food processor:

• 2 cups wheat gluten
• 2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast (optional)
• 2 tsp. salt
• (optional) spices and flavorings to taste. Cumin, coriander, garlic powder, onion powder, sage, rosemary, thyme, and chili powder are some ideas.

Blend quickly until everything is mixed. Then mix together:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup oil

Have another cup of water on hand.

Start the food processor and slowly pour in the mixed liquid. The gluten should form a blob… you may need to add a bit more water, but the ball of gluten should completely absorb the liquid. It should look a bit moist, but should not be juicy. Process for 1 – 2 minutes. (You food processor will wobble like crazy).

 

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This post would be great to show your six-year-old son.

We received a few inches of snow today. It should all melt in a few days. Chris spent most of the day today outside shoveling dirt… I helped for a couple of hours, but I have a slight foot injury right now which prevented me from doing too much work.

Following is a fun little gallery of pictures of our compost delivery. We received three truck loads (30 cubic yards total; 10 fit in one truck). Click on a picture to enlarge.

I’ll try to snap some pictures of the snow tomorrow… when the sun turns back on.

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In April, 2010 we ordered two truck loads of compost from a company in Elk River, Minnesota. They helped the garden quite a bit. This fall, Chris decided to order three more truck loads (30 yards) before it snows, to give our garden an extra jump start next spring.

Puck checked it out. He approves. (This is him sitting in front of one truck load, 10 cubic yards).

Chris is putting in a new garden section, so this should help with that. We also cut out quite a bit of sod and top soil to prepare our current garden – and I put in a bunch of concrete block raised beds, so this black dirt will be nice to fill the rest of those in. It’s going to be a lot of work incorporating this, and hopefully the ground will stay free of snow for a couple more weeks so it will get done!

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Actually, winter is fast approaching with the first snowflakes falling in our area today.

We ended up neglecting this blog (and the garden a bit too!) this year, as life quickly got in the way of leisure time. Chris and I were married in September – we had a pretty fun wedding with some of our homegrown sunflowers, great vegetarian food from Holy Land, good friends, a beautiful day for an outside wedding, and a mime to entertain our guests! I’ll put up some pictures of the day eventually. I figured the blog deserved a small garden update first, though.

There are still Brussels sprouts out there, and Puck munches away on them whenever he gets the chance. We’re hoping to order another truck load (or two) of compost this fall, and prepare the beds for spring – but that will depend on how long the snow holds off.

You can see the concrete block bed in front – I did manage to fill that with strawberries this fall, so hopefully they will get a jump start next spring!

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This fairly large sunflower (it was actually a triple-headed sunflower) came up as a volunteer in my herb bed. I thought it was going to be a dwarf sunflower at first; I would guess that it reached at least 9 feet tall. The birds have been snacking on the seeds, and I wanted to save a couple to see if they produce similar plants next summer. Niko decided to investigate it after I brought it in.

Our sunflowers all ended up blooming 30 days *ahead* of schedule this summer, most likely due to the incredible amount of rain we received in July, and also really hot temperatures in June and July. It looks like we’re going to have to buy some sunflowers for the wedding this September, but hopefully we’ll still have a few to use from our garden then.

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Our yard and garden (and the entire neighborhood!) is being taken over by crab grass this summer. The stuff is awful – it spreads through the roots, goes to seed quickly, and takes over everything.

Today I got sick of pulling it out of the rows in the garden, so I decided to smother it with black plastic instead. Take that, noxious weed!

I hope this works, and then I’ll plant clover in the paths. Or maybe I’ll just put down patio blocks and be done with weeding between the beds. (That’s a tempting thought!)

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We spent much of the day out in the sun, and went for a nice bike ride. Beautiful weather this weekend, and rain possible tonight. I always hope for rain over night.

The daisies are in full bloom! I also picked our first small zucchini, one eggplant and a pepper, a head of broccoli, a bunch of chard, rosemary, sage, thyme, and basil this afternoon. Tonight for dinner, I think we’re going to try making ratatouille in mini bread loaves… on the grill, with garlic bread. Curios to see how that works!

Kallie says, “Happy 4th of July!”

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These pictures are from last week, but we still have a few heads out there that need to be picked today. I also planted romanesco italia broccoli, which is a neat looking variety – but so far no heads. AND no cauliflower yet – what’s up with that? Last year I think our cauliflower was ready before the broccoli.

I put in a few kohlrabi too; that’s one of the least exciting vegetables (Puck likes it though!), but I have a box of seeds from 2007 that need to be used up, and found these this spring so figured I’d give it a try.

Temperatures have been in the upper 90s the last three days, and we got 1/2 and inch of rain last night, so things should start to produce very quickly now. There is zucchini ready to be picked!

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