Fall Garden & Summer Lookback

At the beginning of summer, Mike and I started putting together half of our garden. We followed the system of Back To Eden.  If you have some time to watch this film, I highly encourage it as it encourages a fairly inexpensive, high yield, low maintenance garden (& it's free to watch on their website). Early this spring coming we'll build up the other half of the garden with compost & mulch and the entire garden will officially be done!

These next few photos were from the beginning of summer. We planted corn, radishes, cucumber, tomatoes, and bush beans. We wanted to keep it simple for our first season. Only one of those plants never sprouted and that was the tomatoes.I have a feeling that it was because 2 days after I placed the seeds to dirt, we had a horrible, awful heatwave. Like 117 degree heat index bad. So, my guess is it just killed off the seeds. Actually, it seemed to have done it to the cucumber plants as well but a few weeks later, lagging behind the rest of the plants, 2 small cucumber vines started growing.  How sweet it was to see two little survivors, and how well they've graced me with plump, juicy cucumbers. 

 Corn starting to grow.

 Bush Beans

 Radish harvest

 Here you'll see the beginning of fall crop. Our corn, cucumbers, and radishes are still growing but we added in 3 types of lettuce, a row of spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, butternut squash, and carrots. Look at our beautiful sunflower guarding over the little seedlings.

 Zoe attempting to help, but really just wants to chase our rabbit, Riker, around the garden.

 Yesterdays harvest: about 1/2 pound bush beans, 2 corn, 1 cucumber, and a handful of radishes.

 Cucumber plants as of this morning. They're still doing great!!

This is where our corn is at now. I made the mistake this year of not planting multiple rows of corn (don't ask what I was thinking) so chances were that none of these plants would pollinate and produce ears of corn. Smart me, I made sure to shake the stalks a bit every other day and, TA-DA, we have corn!! 4 ears so far, and I see at least 4 more I'll be able to pick next week.

This week's project is weeding out the grass that crawled up onto the mulch. We did half the garden yesterday (as you can see from the fresh rows that were just planted), and while it's sweaty work out in the sun, it's really quite easy to pull out. Because of the way the grass crawled up the sides of the garden Mike put in a plastic barrier around the garden to prevent this from happening again. We definitely let the grass get way too far but every time we had a chance to work together to weed, it rained...like bad rain. Like, here's a video of our yard flooded.  Luckily, the garden was fine.

Here's to a bountiful harvest and my favorite season arriving, FALL!
-Lacey

Honey Glazed String Beans & Radish Quinoa

New and interesting dishes have been my goal for the last few nights. Fed up with the same 7 or 8 recipes I make every week, it's been my goal to try new textures and flavors.  After buying our bulk 25 pound box of quinoa, we've been less hesitant to cook with it. While it's one of our favorite staples in the house, buying a small box from the grocery store was costing us around $5+ at two a week so we limited our intake to save some money.  Now, we're free to cook with it as much as we please.

This was a "thrown-together" recipe out of necessity to get rid of some string beans in the fridge and use up a few of the radishes I picked out of the garden this morning. Surprisingly, cooked radishes are a pleasant change from the raw radishes we eat in our salads daily.

Onto the meal:

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa + 2 cups water (cook per box directions)

1 teaspoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

4 large radishes (6 or 7 small), sliced & quartered

1/2 small onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

Bunch of stringbeans

2 teaspoons honey (or to taste)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

2 teaspoons dried parsley

1 teaspoon thyme

2 T crushed walnuts

1/4 cup halved cherry tomatoes

Directions:

1. Cook your quinoa according to package directions. (Usually 2 parts water, 1 part quinoa. Bring to boil, then reduced to low-medium heat for about 20 minutes.)

2. In pan, add EVOO and allow to heat up. Add your radish, onion, and garlic. Allow to cook on medium-high heat for 3-4 minutes, stir every minute.

3. Add stringbeans, cover, turn to low-medium heat and allow to cook for 5-7 minutes. Stir halfway through.

4. Add honey and lemon, and allow to cook for about a minute. Toss in thyme and walnuts. Cover and cook 2 minutes to allow flavors to blend.

5. Toss in walnut and cherry tomatoes.

6. Serve string bean/radish mixture on top of quinoa on a plate. Enjoy!

 

The honey and lemon in this dish add a wonderfully sweet and fresh flavor to what could have been a fairly heavy dish with all this quinoa.  Hopefully this encourages you to explore some diverse and interesting ingredients to change up the taste of some of your dishes!

-Lacey