Category: garden (Page 6 of 8)

Well, once again, it’s that time of year — time to try to grow something for us to eat!

I learned in last year’s garden to wait until mid April to plant because of the potential for late freezes; and so, we did wait. When it came to soil preparation, since we added the vermiculite, peat moss and compost in raised beds last year, all we needed to do this year was add compost, which we did. We hope to be able to develop our own compost someday; but until then, we bought some cotton burr compost and mixed it into the top soil layer in the beds.

And here’s where things are at currently. There are peppers, tomatoes, carrots, squash, zucchini and green beans — basically the same as last year, mostly because it all grew really well. We decided against okra because you have to pick them when they’re three or four inches long or they get very fibrous; and with all of the other vegetables, we just weren’t able to keep up with them properly:

In this picture, the two small tomato plants are plants I found growing in another raised bed that apparently grew on their own from seed or maybe even tomatoes that had fallen off the plants from last year:

And these bell peppers we started from seed in the raised bed:

And finally, these are still last years’s onions!

We thank the Lord for bringing us through the Winter into the time of Spring, the time of life, and the opportunity to plant this year; and we pray for His provisions of rain, water and sustenance from the plants, according to His will.

— David

I sit here writing this blog post on the first full day of Spring 2010. Wow, I never thought I’d still be writing about our Spring 2009 garden! In it, we planted onions; and they have been going strong through the wettest, harshest winter we’ve had since we’ve lived here in Central Texas. I had picked all of the green onion stems off of the onions last summer in order to dry them in our solar food dehydrator, and decided to leave the remaining onions in the ground and pick them as needed as we entered into Fall. In actuality, once everything else in the garden had come to its natural end, I forgot to go out and pick the onions much of the time. Then, mid-way through winter, Dave noticed there were green onion stems (aka: scallions) that had grown back long and healthy. Boy, talk about a gift that keeps on giving!

One recent evening I went out and pulled several onions when my supper dish recipe called for it. These bulbs are much smaller than regular onions you buy in the store, but the taste is delicious and robust. I was pleased and surprised with how well the onions had survived through Winter, and with the bright, healthy color and texture that had been maintained:

You really do get two vegetables for the price of one with these onions. The green onion stems are potent with their own milder onion taste. They also looked green and very healthy. It’s amazing how some garden vegetables are so fragile when severe weather comes; and others, like these green onions, seem to thrive:

I didn’t want to waste any of the green onions, and the weather we have been getting has been too overcast to use the solar food dehydrator much of the time, so I decided to put them in the oven overnight to slow dry. I cleaned and cut up the green onions and put them on a pizza pan sheet, set the oven to 150 degrees (or thereabouts), and left them overnight. They needed to stay in the oven a bit longer the next morning; but the end result was delicious, crispy, preserved green onion bits! I have since used them in a few various dishes; and it adds a nice, subtle onion flavor:

We never tire of giving our Father thanks for His direct provisions. And we pray He grant us strength, resilience and growth through times of the spiritual winters of His chastisement, affliction, or the lessening of His presence to teach us to desire Him more.

Susan

Last year, Dave and I cut up some sweet potatoes and planted the pieces in one of our garden beds. We were very excited at the end of summer to dig up our hopefully large, robust sweet potatoes. Well, when we dug them up, about the only thing they were good for was to use as replacement shoe strings 🙁 We sort of gave up after that and planted turnips in that garden bed this year. About half way through summer, we started to see these weird green leaves coming from the turnip bed; and by the end of summer, the leaves had taken over the entire bed. Go figure, the sweet potatoes from last year had been growing and had really taken off. The picture above is our yield! For reference, the larger ones are at least 6-7″ long. What a blessing to have this unexpected crop of good lookin’ sweet potatoes.

(I was so inspired about it, I’m writing the sequel to the children’s book “Green Eggs and Ham” entitled “Sam I Yam”…….and I’m also waiting to hear back from the Broadway producers regarding my musical remake of “Anna and the King of SiYAM.” Hmmmmm, not sure why I haven’t heard back from them yet. Another musical I’ve pitched is “Yamalot.” Then there’s my nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Yam”…..I got a million of ’em folks…well, four anyway…….<tap, tap>…um, is this thing on?)

I was excited to start using them, so I made sweet potato biscuits for our Sunday community fellowship meal. Here they are before being put into the oven. (Note to self, let the potatoes cool before mixing them into the dough. That’s why these are spoon-dropped biscuits and not perfectly round):

And here they are fresh out of the oven:

We’re very thankful to God for the unexpected blessing and provision of these sweet potatoes.

Susan