Visit from Jaja

Jaja came to visit this weekend and we had a blast!  We went to an incredible workshop at the Center for Art in Wood, in Old City where we created a "cabinet of curiosities" out of a cigar box and with great instruction and inspiration from the staff at the center.  We created a portrait for the front, and of course I chose to draw my cats.  Yes, I'm a cat lady.  I really like how it turned out:

 

They had great supplies for us to use, and the boxes already had elaborately patterned paper around the edges that we could use as a jump off for inspiration.  Apparently cigar stores just smash these boxes and throw them in the trash, so it's easy to get them if you're there at the right time.  Which I will obviously be doing now that I know how beautiful these boxes are without any decoration at all.

 

We also went to a work day at Farm 51, which is run by my friends Andrew and Neal.  We destroyed some raised beds and harvested broccoli, then had a bonfire and ate delicious home made coffee cake and cookies.  Their house next door is gorgeous and another constant source of inspiration:

 

 

 

An amazing and inspirational weekend and a great way to start the new year!

Shoots

The beginning! These chives are in a container on my porch, and there are also some coming up in my plot at The Woodlands Community Garden.

Fall Sprouts

The summer crops are out of the community garden plots (and the green tomatoes have been dealt with). I sowed some lettuce mix, carrots, arugula and spinach and the sprouts are sprouting. Onto the next season!

A Sweet First

Last week while I was digging up the last of my potatoes in The Woodlands Community Garden, I accidentally dug up some of my sweet potatoes! This is my first time growing sweet potatoes and I didn't realize that they could actually root along the vine, creating more tubers as they go. Like this:



(from http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/botany/sweet-potato-info.htm).

Sweet!

August Harvest

What a doozy!

I harvested the following from both the St. Bernard Community Garden and the Woodlands Community Garden this morning:

• 'Katahdin' and 'Yukon Gold' potatoes
• one tiny (and slightly tasteless) watermelon
• habanero peppers
  
• 'Sungold' and 'Tomaccio' cherry tomatoes
• 'Long Slim' cayenne peppers
• a 'Cherokee Purple' and two other tomatoes
• red onions
• an eggplant
• leeks
• deformed, end-of-season cucumbers

Then I made home fries for lunch.



I am loving this weekend. The weather is gorgeous (back in the mid-eighties) and my lovely friend and former CA room-mate Crystal is coming for a visit! Enjoy your own weekends and this fleeting end-of-summer feeling.

Wind and Chill

Yes, that's right. It's been windy and rainy and chilly here in Philadelphia the last few days and I am loving it. Fall is my favorite season and I love sleeping with the window open and being able to keep the comforter on the bed the whole night (instead of kicking it off in a sweaty tantrum in the middle of the night as I've been doing so far this summer).



I picked up my monthly allotment of plants from the Camden City Garden Club yesterday morning and it turns out that they just got a delivery of cool weather crops and I got first dibs! So now I've got my fill of cilantro, broccoli, two kinds of lettuce, mustard greens, swiss chard, peas, and bush beans. The beans are actually a summer crop, but I'm still going to try because beans seem to do well on my porch and I need something to replace the spent tomatoes, marigolds, and snap dragons.

Beans and red leaf lettuce:



Swiss chard:



Cilantro:



Now bring on the chilly weather!

Sweet and Savory

We've been getting lots and lots of tomatoes in our CSA box lately, which I am more than happy about because the tomato plants in my garden are falling short. My absolute favorite way to eat them is to slice them thickly and sprinkle a generous pinchful of salt and sugar on each one. Sometimes I add a basil leaf to each slice, but usually I eat them just like that, held over the plate dripping and juicy.

Porch Status

I haven't posted many pics of my porch plants because they are often in a very sad state. But it's spring! And that means that everything is looking much nicer than normal, and I'm paying a lot more attention to my plants. So I thought I'd show off.



Romaine and "red fire" lettuce, garlic, yellow and red onions, pansies, wildflower mix (still sprouts), sage, spinach, cilantro, and swiss chard.



Penstemon and pansies.



Peas, pansies, lettuce, and redbud branches.



Chives, strawberries, and daffodils.



Amaryllis! Okay, this one is not on the porch, it's in the sun room. But still.

Starting

Back in February, when the snow was still covering the ground, we started growing plants for the community gardens in Camden.



We ordered plugs of vegetable starts from a company called Kube Pak, in Allentown, NJ. The veggies come in a dense sheet and we transplant them out into larger cell packs so they have some room to grow.



Some of them went out to the community gardens this month, including a few chive and leek starts that went out to my own gardens in Philly (check out my post on Farm to Philly).



I spent hours in the greenhouse with the plants, watering, smelling, and just being in there while the snow was covering everything outside.



Now my little guys are all grown up and in the ground. How time flies!

Camden Crops

I took a bunch of volunteers out in Camden last week to clean up our garden at 3rd and Beckett Street. A surprising number of crops survived the snow this winter, and we harvested several pounds of rutabagas and kohlrabi.



Unfortunately, when I took the kohlrabi home to cook, it was woody and hollow inside. I guess our little over-wintering experiment didn't quite pan out.



The green cabbage is still going strong, looking a little ratty, but edible (as soon as it heads up). The spinach survived, along with the mustard greens, though the latter is starting to bolt so we pulled it.



And of course, the kale. Good old reliable.

Pretty

Since life and darkness got in the way of my CSA pics (except for last week), here's a picture of the produce from our community garden. Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, green zebra tomatoes, a black krim tomato, zinnias, and a few strawberries that the squirrels seem to have missed from the container on the porch (they blend in pretty well).

Garden status

Right now the winter squash vines are taking over the garden. It's a rookie mistake, the same one we made when we underestimated the size of the potatoes in the spring. These squash vines are causing us to sacrifice other crops to make room for their huge leaves.


***from the north***

But check out what we'll get in the end! Little ponca butternut squash and casper pumpkins.



In other news, unfortunately our tomatoes are suffering from blight and pooping out way earlier in the season than we expected. We also had to rip out our cucumber vines a few weeks ago for the same reason. We've resorted to using the farmer's market to supply our insatiable pickle addiction.



We also dug up the remaining potatoes to make room on the south side of the garden for fall crops.


***from the south***

And the eggplant is very happy we did that.



The end. For now.

Mary, Mary

***from the south***

Our little community garden plot is in it's summer stages now. No more chard, lettuce or root veggies, and only a few little potatoes hanging on at the north end. Now we have eggplant, cucumbers, pepper, squash, basil and tomatoes.


***from the north***



On the south side: Desiree potatoes, casper pumpkin, ponca butternut squash, bush pickler cucumber, eggplant, yellow and red bell pepper, and zinnias.



On the north side: Black beauty eggplant, garden salsa pepper, Italian basil, ponca butternut squash, casper pumpkin, bush pickler cucumber, black krim tomato, green zebra tomato, sweet 100 cherry tomato, cilantro, dill, and arugula (hiding behind the tomatoes in the cooler micro climate).



We've been harvesting the cucumbers like crazy and we just picked our first eggplant but otherwise things are growing slowly. But we're watching those tomatoes like hawks circling above, waiting to fold our wings and dive into their juicy home-grown-ness.


***Green zebra***

And that's how my garden grows.