padrón pepper jelly

I recently harvested about forty padrón peppers and an additional 20 jalapeños from what had been a particularly fruitful fall garden. Particularly prolific were volunteer cherry tomatoes, which popped up out of the ground all over my front yard and yielded two or three pints a week, depending on how constantly I went to picking. It's all gone now, sadly. We had a recent polar blast that forced me to harvest what I could in preparation for a week of perpetual freezes--hence the bounty of hot peppers. This was sad because my romaine seeds took forever to germinate and only started spouting in early November. If the frost had held out, I might have harvested about twelve heads of the stuff. The arugula was also ready for a second sprouting before the freeze, but the rocket had already provided us with a month and a half of weekly salads.

padrón me, jalapeño

But I digress.

It was time for two batches of hot pepper jelly. I followed my old formula of circa 20 peppers (majority padrón) for each batch. I chopped them coarsely, dropped them in the blender along with enough seeds to be mildly terrifying, added one cup of cider vinegar (white vinegar in the second batch), and processed.

I dropped that mess into a pot, added another cup of cider vinegar (again, white vinegar in the second batch), 6 tbsps of dry pectin, and brought to a rolling boil. Then I added 5 cups of sugar, boiled for one minute, and removed from heat.

Each batch filled six 8 oz. canning jars. I cleaned and sterilized the jars ahead of time, and then let them sit in hot (very hot) water while I cooked the peppers. Then I brought out six jars (for each batch, added the jelly, tightened down the lids, and returned the jars to the hot water. The water was too hot to touch comfortably, and I did not allow the water to touch the actual lid--that is, the water came up to the mouth of the jar. I let each batch sit for about ten minutes, then pulled them out and dried them off. As the jelly cooled, it sucked down the lids of each of the jars.

So there it is. My recipe diverges from the standard ones in that it uses about a cup less sugar. Granted, the pectin I used advertised that you need "no sugar" or "less sugar" than normal.

a clear winner: rainbow swiss chard

Rainbow chard, in repose

Hard to argue with hearty swiss chard. Eight plants produce gorgeous leaves and stalks and a weekly vegetable serving. Here's to hoping it is the perennial that my neighbor claims it will be.

Oh Kale... (and garden updates)

Just a summer update on the status of my garden, which has chugged away this spring and summer with surprising alacrity. After last year's massive disappointment™, the Georgia sun has smiled upon us, and given us just enough growing days both to maximize the early lettuce crop and get the tomatoes off to a running start.

Among the biggest hits this summer are sugar snap peas. Sweet and punchy, and so delicious that my seven year old has devoured them almost as fast as they have grown up. More than once we were able to send them in her lunch. Given how well these delicate climbing vines like the cold weather, I want to take a run at fall growing in greater numbers.

Winterbor in summer

Kale has been resilient and prolific and as tender as this thick green leaf can get. We planted two varieties. The superior plant was Nero di Toscana, an Italian heirloom that produces almost beveled leaves, long and flat and dark green. The other is Winterbor Kale, a hybrid that is, surprise of surprises, winter-hardy.

The Toscana leaf does have a superior taste, no question. This might be why the bugs like it. At least, I presume the leaves have been somewhat mauled by the bugs. While that does not affect flavor (there is plenty of leaf to go around), it does lessen the aesthetic effect. Effectively. But I might try more marigolds with this next year.

The Winterbor leaf is actually the prettier of the two. It produces a curled blue-green leaf that almost shimmers in the light. And while the Toscana leaf has a superior taste, both in depth and texture, the Winterbor is formidable in its own right. If one likes Kale, one loves this Kale. At least from my garden.

I have no idea what is to become of the Kale as summer grinds on. I don't know if it will return or if I must replant it. We shall see. If I do, then I must take care to listen to the instructions and plant 12 to 24 inches apart. My plants are too crowded at present, and it stunts leaf production.

Cobbler, anyone?

The rest of the garden soldiers on. The tomatoes are popping up quickly and flowering and fruiting. I'm guessing another 30 days to some good production.

The blueberries are looking taut. And tasty. Let us pray. The strawberries have already produced and will continue to produce. They are sweet and soft.

cuke in the cage

It's a good garden year. The cucumbers are up and running. The broccoli has been tender. The radishes peppery.

Fear and Loathing in McDonough: the saga of cedar lumber

There is nothing greater than a power drill.

This I learned this past year, when I used a power drill to hang symmetrical picture frames (with the use of a level) as well as build a wine rack. It was like catching a bug of some kind. For an effeminate intellectual who nonetheless feels his family roots in soil and labor, the feel of a power tool and the creation of something beautiful, no matter how small, is exhilarating.

So I decided to build raised garden beds. As projects go, this one was not too difficult, and with a few boards I could build simple 4x4 boxes for placement in the front yard. No problem, right?

Building the boxes would prove easy. What did not was locating cedar boards. I was determined to build my bed out of cedar, both for the aesthetic appeal and the fact that it would repel a certain number of bugs that would destroy whiteboard. Needless to say, I was unwilling to build it out of pressure-treated wood. I don't care how many studies show that it's fine. If I'm going to the trouble to build the damn thing, then I'm building it out of cedar.

Cedar is expensive and thus rare. After a couple of false starts, I made the requisite phone calls to find an obliging retailer All signs pointed to a Home Depot just south of Atlanta. Upon arriving I found the 1x8s I needed, but discovered that the 2x2 posts were not there. Alas! That forced me to drive an additional ten miles south to McDonough to buy the necessary 2zx2 board.

where one buys furniture, in hell

No problem, really, until I tried to leave.

The drive to McDonough is no more than thirty minutes from East Point. Just a smooth sail down the I-75, blowing doors off the tractor-trailers and avoiding the inevitable horseshoe slingers off the I-285 connector.

So I spent thirty minutes driving there, and thirty minutes driving back, roughly. What I did not anticipate was the difficulty in getting out of the parking lot at Home Depot. That took close to thirty minutes.

where one can get dental surgery, and a manicure

The Home Depot sits squat in a huge quad-complex of stores that clearly drew in people from thirty miles square. Getting in is easy--just an exit off the freeway and a quick right turn. Getting out is damned hard. One is forced into a right turn out of the complex (the freeway was to the left), and then one has to meander through traffic to take a left turn into another shopping complex before pulling a U turn to get back the other way.

Where the parking lot ends... (apologies, Shel)

This proved an education all itself. The parking lot of the complex I had to pull into was a kind of faux town square. No megastores, but instead a grouping of family services that one used to find in small office complexes. This itself was no surprise, but then the parking lot abruptly ended. Asphalt gave way to a dull and vacant lot of weeds and mud, stretching off into nothing. In the distance one could see a house-line. Track style homes, built to spec on a planned lot, probably thirty feet below the grade of the mall, and thus thirty feet beneath the vacant lot. Everything looked all new and cheap and earth tones. It was a bare Levittown plastered against the steel gray sky. No trees, no landscaping. Just the dull efficiency of the late capitalist world.

I hooked my U turn, waiting for a line of pretty mid-level cars to pass, including an impatient Mustang that took the brick-laid speed bump at 45, which could not have been pleasant for the driver or the passenger. He hit the 90 degree turn at 30 and peeled off even faster. I felt a kinship, I hate to say. These shopping complexes are fascist buttresses, and the only way to really fight them is to fight them.

Getting back onto the main road was hard. I watched the string of Fords and Chevys make their pass, a procession of fleshy women in steel gray coifs with hard set mouths under square frame glasses, the thin lipped men next to them staring straight ahead, silent and defeated. It was a bleak scene. I entered the procession and took my place, reveling only in the opportunity I had to let three cars pull in from a mall outlet on the way. The drivers looked vaguely surprised at my kindness. The goatied redneck in the Nissan truck behind me revved his engine and bared his teeth, which were so white and large that they shined even in my rearview mirror. Getting onto the I-75 northbound proved a whole other problem. I had to pull one final U-turn because the line to enter the freeway ran three lights back. Better to jump the line by a stoplight, pull a U-ball and join the stream of traffic without excessive pain.

Civic architecture is about efficiency and control. Strapped as we are to the single-family home and the single-family car, the mega-four-corner complex (six or eight corner, in some cases), is probably as efficient as one can get. It is a bleak efficiency. The control it exerts is even bleaker. One might be able to finish all one's shopping there, but one must also drive from parking lot to parking lot, weathering traffic, dealing with the bored masses, who are quick to irritation yet slow to confrontation. It is a slow suburban death one dies, in such places.

I felt even worse for the residents of the adjacent housing complexes. If one's upstairs view was a vacant mall lot, a barren expanse of red Georgia clay and invasive weeds, one's aesthetic sensibilities must be staid and stultified. Not by any coarseness of character, mind you, but by experience. And the fault lies not with the sad family who buys the 2500 square foot home there, because it is affordable, but rather with the developer who was too cheap to hire a serious architect, and too stupid to understand how space and design work to shape human life.

The drive north on the I-75 towards East Point was smooth. Wax Tailor on the stereo. I thought about my power drill, which I would soon be using to make a simple raised bed. It is the simple things, I suppose. That, you know, make life worth it. And beautiful.

Fertilized the garden again

Round of fertilizer went into the garden. Last weekend I also planted tomatoes and peppers, rounding out the Spring planting. Next up: build a box for strawberries, and figure out how to put another eight pepper plants in the ground. Apparently it is going to be a summer of peppers.

Fertilizing the Spring garden

This last Sunday I applied two gallons of fish fertilizer to the garden. Everything appears to be rockin and rollin despite some unseasonably cold March weather--down to freezing again last night.

The lettuce and kale appear to be growing a little faster than the swiss chard. the peas look delicate. I'm hoping for the first crop within a couple of weekends.

Our first freeze

Our first freeze this year came early--November 12. It wrecked my squash and the last of the tomato plants (why I hadn't pulled them, I cannot really say). It also destroyed most of my flowering plants, including of all things the golden pineapple sage, which was just beginning to send up beautiful red flowers.

The arugula survived, as did the radishes. And actually my little seedlings of cold-weather plants appear to still be alive, if not thriving.

The temperature below the stairs is now 58 degrees. It climbed briefly back up to 60 after the freeze, but is otherwise holding steady.

UPDATE: within a week, the temperature below the stairs was back up to 64 degrees. Again, holding steady.

Fall plantings

Out came the tomato plants. They were the victim of fungus and ultimately an early cold snap, which ended any hope that the late plants would yield some well-structured fruit. Alas! Nonetheless, I picked all the green tomatoes and have them on the windowsill. I doubt they will make sandwiches, but they will do in a sauce or cooked dish.

In place of the tomatoes I put down a split row of fennel and arugula. In the place of the tomatoes in Maia's plot I put down red lettuce. In place of the tomatillos, I laid down some carrots, although I am not at all convinced it will yield anything good.

The soil underneath the tomatoes was exceptional. Spongy and black. live worms rooting around.

The arugula I planted a ways back has produced immediate and beautiful salads for two weeks. It is a little thinned out at present, but I believe I can get lettuce for the week with no problem. My new row will hopefully produce when these plants are spent. As far as arugula goes, I will eat whatever I grow. It is a beautiful leaf. But it also reminds me how exceptional homegrown lettuce really is. Tender. Fresh. Delicious.

fall garden

In what might be termed a last gasp of futility, I fertilized the red peppers and tomatoes last weekend. With a kind of Pollyannish determination, I am trying to will my plants to produce one more harvest before the frost comes. The last batch was quite good, and so I was fairly convinced that an early November harvest might be possible.

This would be harmless except that it kept two large double rows occupied. Meanwhile, the arugula and radishes have sprung up. I am already enjoying a daily harvest of arugula which, combined with the last of my cherry tomatoes, are producing lunch-time salads. Delightful salads. With two more rows available, I could have another variety of chard, perhaps some more greens, carrots and radishes, and a welter of lettuces. And fennel. I'm sitting on a bag of fennel seeds that I really want to get into the ground.

And now we've had two unseasonably cold nights, dipping below freezing. I may be Pollyanna when it comes to my garden, but I'm not the village idiot. They are going to be mealy, and there is no real point in keeping them.

So they have another two days. On Saturday I will perform the massacre of red hill. I will leave the volunteer tomatoes in (they take up no real room, but will pull all the big plants. Then I'll prepare the beds and lay seed.

In my newly planted rows the chard is slow to rise. Coming much faster are several volunteer squash plants. Hopefully the vine borers are all dead from the cold.

The case of the missing tomatoes

The wet weather has claimed my tomatoes, I fear. So too did an ill advised decision to try and train the tomato vines to a single vine. My more successful plants were allowed to bush out somewhat. Also, I had a reversal of fortune. The front planter put up an admirable show, but did not produce near the level of quality fruit as last year. By contrast, the tomato in Maia's corner has produced succulent cherries, tart and sweet with a fair pop. Last year, that plot was near dead. My amending of the soil clearly had the intended impact.

I fertilized the garden two days ago. 2 oz. on everything. Last of the fertilizer.

mysterious recipe

I'm cleaning out my office and found this:

1 gallon water
1 tbsp baking soda
1 tbsp veg. oil
1 tbsp dish soap (unscented)

A recipe, I suppose. Either for a delightful beverage or as a natural insecticide. I'll find out this weekend...

Fertilized

Simple record of fertilization. 2 gallons on tomatoes and peppers.

The Curse of Temperance

Temperance, at least in its non-ironic form, would seem a virtue. Certainly for weather, where temperate climates attract swarms of humans. I certainly pine for temperate weather when the hottest and coldest days are upon us. But this summer, in the middle of July, I find myself wishing it were hotter, more humid, sunnier. I would like to sweat my body weight every day. I want to feel like a salty heap.

But why? Why? After all, am I not enjoying the morning walks with my dog, feeling chilly in a t-shirt? Am I not enjoying seeing 70 degrees on the coke sign thermometer outside my downtown office? Am I not pleasantly surprised when I wear a hoodie all the way home without realizing it? (That one does require a modicum of explanation--my office is sometimes air conditioned to sub-arctic levels, and I put the hoodie on in my office. Then I went home, and realized, half way, that it was still on.) So why? Because my tomatoes are not coming along. We are in mid-July, and I've had only a few beefsteaks and a few handfuls of cherries. The vines are not fruiting. The fruits are not growing. By now in any given year, my diet consists largely of tomatoes. Tomato sandwiches, tomato salads, tomato just because. I now fear that this will be a lost year.

The peppers are slow to ripen too. I have only two that have begun to ripen past green. My major discovery this year was that pepper plant branches have to be supported, lest the heavy fruit weigh down and rip them off. And i did have them staked--just not properly.

The hot weather will come, no doubt. Until then, we slog along in wet and cool weather. My heart goes out for the poor farmers who have lost their crops. I know my little garden has suffered through, of all things, mild temperatures and lots of rain.

Fertilizing the garden

Fertilized the garden. Yesterday. It has been tough to get to this because it has been so wet. Everything is coming along fine, although I lost a branch on a pepper plant. Too heavy, I s'pose. The squash borer is slowly threatening my summer squash plant, although I have now gotten at least six squash from it and more are coming. We've made one casserole and grilled up the rest. So I can't really complain.

You can kind of see one pepper that is ripening here

The tomatoes continue to sit, and the fruit is not ripening. This is the coldest, wettest summer I've seen since I moved to Atlanta. Whoever thought I would complain about rain! The upside is that I haven't turned a hose on in weeks.

The sunflower my daughter grew. It stands ten feet tall now

Lettuce

Caring for the garden

The garden is on autopilot now. With the bee balm fully in bloom the bees are out in force. I presume they are pollinating everything.

The squash looks healthy, but I could have sworn we had a beautiful squash growing that appears to be gone now. That is weird. I would imagine that pests would eat it on the vine, leaving some behind. Or it could be that it stopped growing. Insufficient pollination? Insufficient flowering? That stupid bore beetle everyone keeps warning me about?

I fertilized yesterday. Used two gallons of Neptune's Own organic and fertilized all of the rows, the hydrangea and the petunias.

First cucumbers are in. I believe it was the Diva, but I have been too lazy to check and see whether it was the Jade or the Diva. Quite tasty. Made a salad with it.

the gin, the tonic, and the garden

I've been researching gin and tonics this week to try and figure out the best way of using my tonic water. It's been arduous. But then again, I suffer for my art.

There are two versions of the gin and tonic that I make. The first is The Quencher, and it works something like this:

1 part gin
1 part tonic syrup
5 parts club soda

If I do this with 1 1/2 oz. parts, then I'm looking at a very tall drink--nearly 12 oz. of fluid on top of a whale's share of ice. I don't bother garnishing this, but it'll take a squeeze or two of lime or lemon, should one want. The Quencher is perfect for touring my extensive gardens, especially when the black krim is beginning to fruit.

The Black Krim shows progress

Velvet Underground?

The second version is The Standard:

2 parts gin
1 part tonic syrup
4 parts club soda

This makes a standard gin and tonic--as close as I can get to what it tastes like when I use Schwepps, Q, Fever Tree, or what have you. In short, I believe this is the correct recipe to create a gin and tonic that you might order at a serious cocktail bar. And The Standard is not just a modified Quencher. Parts should be measured with a 1/2 or 3/4 oz. jigger and it should be served in a traditional highball glass. To order a double is, inappropriate. Garnish is not necessary, but lemon peel is nice. So too is this cucumber, with Hendricks gin.

The third version is The Bitter Pill:

2 parts gin
1 part tonic syrup
1 part club soda

Mix ingredients in a shaker, add ice and shake vigorously five or six times. Strain over a highball glass packed with ice. You can also "layer" the drink by shaking it without club soda, pouring over ice in a highball glass and then adding the club soda.

The cucumber in perspective

The Whoppers Are coming in

Fertilized the garden today. 2 gallons of fertilizer went on the blueberries and the tomato plants. Also fertilized the begonias and the summer squash.

The summer squash is beginning to come in. The plant looks healthy. My lettuce is producing beautifully. Enjoy it while it lasts--my best is that two weeks more is about as much lettuce as I will get.

Tomato report. The transplants all did quite well. Only the Juliette cherries did not survive. I'm not sure what happened, except that the stalk broke at its base. Given that the plant was not top heavy, I have no idea what precipitated this. I staked the plant immediately, but it is worth pointing out that none of the other plants required staking at this point. The leaves have all since wilted, but the stalk still appears to be alive. I'm monitoring it daily.

The Black Cherries were the first to fruit. That planter has always produced beautiful tomato plants, with thick, Jack-and-the-beanstalk-style trunks and multiple vines that I train up the light pole (and whatever plant grows around it).

The Whoppers and the Beefy Big Boy plants are beginning to bear fruit. They are quite pretty, and my guess is that we are three weeks from potential harvest here.

Planting dilemma. The lettuce will doubtlessly bolt sometime in June. I have to decide whether to let the space remain fallow until the winter garden is planted, or try and bring up something else in the meantime.

Finishing the Rows

Today I laid out the rest of Maia's plot.

Juliet Tomatoes and Max's Wild Cherries.

Chives (still flowering from last year); Matilda butter lettuce and red arrowhead lettuce; gentry summer squash

Diva -- Jade -- Diva cucumbers -- Matilda butter lettuce -- red arrowhead lettuce -- tomatillo.

I mixed black cow and my homemade compost into the rows and topped them with Miracle Grow Garden Soil. The soil quality doesn't look perfect, so we will see. I added some blood meal along the top, fertilized it all right off the bat and mulched the whole thing. Now I will let benign neglect bring the fruits in.

The Black Krim and the Morado

I am a fan of the black tomato. The prize of my 2012 garden were my two cherokee purple plants. The yield was moderate to large, and the fruit was dark and succulent. My predilection for strong flavors probably pushes me in the direction of dark tomatoes, and as such the cherokee purple was a wonderful introduction.

This year I have planted two varieties of black tomatoes, both heirlooms from the east.

The Black Krim comes from the Isle of Krim on the Crimean peninsula. The dark red mahogany beefsteak tomato should bring big yields and a slightly salty taste.

The Morado tomato is quite similar, but the seed is Spanish in origin. The climate conditions of its initial growth seem to favor Atlanta, as it likes both heat and elevation. I'm hoping it will be a big producer in the years to come.

The advantage this year is that I can compare the fruit of these two black tomatoes to see if there is any substantial (or subtle!) difference. And i am continuing my pattern of planting two black tomato plants a year. Sadly missing this year are yellow and orange varietals, but alas! I went light on reds last year,  We'll see how the Whopper and Rose tomatoes turn out.

Garden plantings, 2013

The tomatoes are in! For reasons well beyond my control, I was unable to plant early this year, which had been my hope. It is my dream to have early June tomatoes, but alas, not this year.

This year I bought tomatoes from GardenHood, which stocked tomato seedings from a Decatur farm. I settled on the following:

Black Krim
Beefy Big Boy
Yellow BrandywineWhopper
Morado
Rose

In the front planter, I put in Black Cherry.

More on the

I am also adding a bed to the front, and I began with lemongrass. I will add creeping perennials next, and probably put one more row in behind it, hopefully stocked with radishes, carrots, lettuces, et al.

Tomatillos are the first plant in Maia's plot.

That's all for planting--technically done on Saturday, one day before this post.