This ear of Oaxacan Green Dent (pictured below) is a little more mature than the ones we used for the tamales. But isn't it gorgeous?
We took advantage of growing our own dent corn to harvest a few ears early for green corn tamales. Now, although our variety is Oaxacan Green Dent, "green corn" refers here to corn that is usually harvested when hard and dry, picked while still somewhat immature. In our case, we probably let it go a little too long, as it was pretty dry when we went to grind it into masa. Nevertheless, our experimental tamales turned out quite tasty, especially when paired with the wonderful fresh salsa that the Chillis whipped up with fresh tomatoes, peppers, and chives. You can see the tamale recipe on which we more-or-less based our own endeavor here. This ear of Oaxacan Green Dent (pictured below) is a little more mature than the ones we used for the tamales. But isn't it gorgeous? First, I cut the corn from the cobs and scraped them well to remove as much of the kernel as possible. It was at this point I realized our corn matured to a drier state than would have been ideal for the tamale project. However, we went ahead with the experiment. We ground the corn in a blender, though a food processor would have worked better, as dry as the corn was. We blended in the butter, and then mixed in the masa harina with a hand mixer until the mixture was fluffy. We put a generous spoonful in each corn husk, and folded them up (adding a strip of hot pepper to some of them), and the little packets were ready for the steamer.
Steaming tamales. (Important: add water to just below the tamales, but add more during the process as needed and don't let it boil dry [it can happen faster than you think]. If it boils dry and the corn cobs scorch, you will never be get your pot clean again, especially if it's made out of stuff you can't use a scrubby on. Not that I know from experience or anything...)
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In preparation for our first day of Green Chillis this year, I was digging through the old card catalog drawers that we use for storing seeds. I nonchalantly opened one labeled "potatoes," and nearly leapt back in surprise, as a myriad of purple tentacles reached out of the dark recesses of the drawer! Though I hadn't noticed until then, they had even worked their way through and were peeking out of other spaces between the drawers above. This, my friends, is apparently what happens when you store your seed potatoes saved from last year in too warm an environment. As I learned afterwards, it's best to store them in the refrigerator. I wish I had thought to take a picture of them in the drawer! What follows is a log of our blue potato experimentation. We'll see what happens. The day I found them, it was still way too cold for planting them out, so we decided to try a variety of things to keep them from using up all their energy and petering out before getting in the ground. For most of them, we broke off the long tendrils, leaving little stubs, and put them in a plastic bag in the fridge, hoping to slow them down again until we could plant them outside. The tendrils we put in a jar to see what they would do. The four other little spuds you see below, we planted in a pot. We planted the potatoes from the fridge and the rooted shoots out in the garden on April 3. Awhile later, we planted out the potatoes we potted, which had grown enormous! Over the summer, both groups sprouted and grew, thought the rooted shoots and potatoes from the fridge took a while to establish (in fact, I'm not sure how many of the successful plants were from the shoots and which from the fridge). At last, it was time to harvest! We thoroughly dug through the patch where we'd planted the shoots and the refrigerated taters, and found only a few stunted tubers. Strangely, some of them looked exactly like rough-textured rocks, and we could only tell they were potatoes when we broke them and the interior was brilliant purple! A week or two later, we harvested the potatoes we had transplanted from the pot, and had more success. For some reason, this variety of potato has a tendency to form a small potato attached to the end of a larger one, resulting in several that looked like little people (or babies, or mummies). Below is the entire (rather scanty) harvest: Scant or otherwise, we were determined to enjoy them! So on a mid-August afternoon, we harvested and minced chives and thyme, diced our spuds, minced a head of garlic we harvested earlier this summer, tossed everything with a generous slosh of olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and roasted them until they were crispy and delicious! Tastes were shared with library staff, and the kitchen smelled amazing. Conclusion to this season-long experiment: Best to not forget your potatoes in a drawer until they get all shrively. But not all was lost! We enjoyed our bowl of really really yummy taters.
The first of our corn was ready to harvest the first week of August: Blue Jade is a miniature sweet corn. We harvested a couple ears from their short stalks, and discovered that, although the kernel color wasn't as developed as the image on the seed packet, the taste was delicious. We tried it raw and cooked; the verdict: yummy both ways, and so pretty!
The week after we harvested the first ears of Blue Jade corn, we picked a couple more, along with a fresh ear of Oaxacan Green Dent. Interestingly, at the milk stage, the color hadn't quite developed yet on the Oaxacan Green, but it did have a smattering of bluish-greenish kernels. Once again we experimented, tasting them raw and cooked. Yum!
We eased into a pleasant summer that granted us regular rainfall - we didn't even have to lay out soaker hoses this year. The plentiful rain watered the weeds and the veggies alike, so we've been busy tackling those and mulching well to limit future weed growth and conserve moisture. The plants not demolished by small furry garden monsters are growing well, and we’ve been able to donate bags of herbs (basil, mint, and chives), mustard greens, and swiss chard to the food pantry. Before long, it’ll be time for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants! (You can click on the pictures below to view the uncropped images.)
In early June, we commenced our summer hours, meeting on Friday mornings to get our work done before the heat of the day. We planted some seedlings; sowed cucumbers and Malabar spinach; harvested lettuce, radishes, sugar snap peas, and mustard greens; mulched; weeded; and generally kept busy (with the reward of sampling the bounty afterwards!). I was able to bring a huge bag of lettuce and a sizeable one of mustard greens to the food pantry. Unfortunately, the ground squirrels have done in a number of our transplants, which is discouraging. But a lot of things that are growing well, and we look forward to a bountiful summer! A growing garden! See the handsome garlic coming up there on the right? We planted it so late we weren't sure if it would survive. What a nice surprise! (Now if only I had thought to label the different varieties...) The bales of straw mulch were donated by Jim and Peggy Holmes-Hicks and will help keep our garden hydrated and suppress weeds.
It might look like we spent the whole spring out of doors, but we also had our seedlings to take care of - watering and transplanting the babies so they'd be ready to plant in the garden and share with the community. Near the end of May, we really dug into planting! Corn, soybeans, swiss chard, carrots, and more, along with some of our seedlings.
We started out the "cruelest" month by braving the soggy weather to plant potatoes, peas, radishes (from seed we saved, threshed, and winnowed), lettuce, and raspberry canes. Digging in wet weather really isn't recommended, as the air pockets in the soil can be squished out, leaving the ground hard and compacted. But sometimes you've gotta do what needs to be done when you have the opportunity! April certainly had its showers, but we were able to get a lot accomplished. The main project this spring was expanding our garden space again by reallocating the walls of our raised beds. One reason for doing this was to connect the beds so that we could run one or two continuous soaker hoses, which would save time when watering because we wouldn't have to switch the hose for each plot. These beds may look easy to assemble and take apart, but those joints really can stick together, especially when glued with a season or two of mud! But the Chillis pooled their ingenuity, cheerful attitudes, and brute strength, and we managed to do a pretty nifty job of it. After laying out and connecting the borders, we sheet mulched with old newspaper and added a layer of old leaves from the autumn rakings of a library staff member's yard. March 20, the official first day of Spring, fell on a Green Chillis day! We ventured out to the garden to see if anything was springing yet... Pretty sure this didn't grow here! One young Chilli discovered a drink token from the VFW Post; afraid it will be some time before she can use it... On March 27, the brassicas we started two weeks ago had mostly emerged - their glossy seed leaves looking, as one Chilli observed, like tiny butterflies. Inevitably, some cells had more than one seedling vying for success, so we thinned them out to allow the strongest one to thrive. The thinnings didn't go to waste, though - we gobbled them up! Delicious. We also planted lots more seeds, including a flat of radishes for tangy microgreens, and re-potted an avocado tree that I started from seed a few years ago. It's now nearly as tall as our littlest Chilli! What is the result of heating corn seeds until the moisture inside expands so much that the seeds explode? Popcorn! What is the result of applying the same practice to pumpkin or squash seeds? Popsquash, of course! We've had a few pumpkins hanging around the library as decoration since last fall -- pumpkins that volunteered in the garden from unknown seeds. This week, we decided to cook one up and see what it tasted like! When the pumpkin was sliced and baking in the oven, there was no way we'd waste the nutritious and delicious seeds inside. We spread them on a baking sheet, and stuck them in the oven, too (450 degrees, if you want to try this at home). Before long, we started hearing the tell-tale popping that let us know our seeds were roasting nicely. A peek in the oven revealed that the mini-explosions had sent a handful of them ricocheting out of the pan! Before long, the popping had subsided and we took out our popsquash (leaving the handful that had jumped ship to become popcharcoal at the bottom of the oven). While we waited for the pumpkin itself to finish baking, we munched on crunchy popsquash (some Chillis thought it benefited from a sprinkle of salt) and played a round of Garden Bean-O. The pumpkin turned out pretty good, too, and after eating some by the slice, we mashed the rest up with a bit of butter, salt, and pepper. Yum! It was an exciting day all around, as we also uncovered the results from last week's cucumber germination test. The Poona Kheera seeds appear to be quite viable! Only one of the Mexican Sour Gherkins had sprouted, so we'll leave them another week and see what happens. We did get some work done too, planting kale (Lacinato and Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch), brussels sprouts, and cabbage (Mammoth Red Rock, Copenhagen Market, and Early Jersey Wakefield), after observing how similar their seeds look -- not too surprising, since they're all from the Brassica genus.
And as a final bonus, we were treated to a view of our first seedlings: Alyssum wins the early bird prize this year! Runner up: Foxglove. It's been a long, cold, snowy winter here in Central Illinois, and it seems the majority of Midwesterners agree that Spring is welcome to arrive at its earliest convenience. We've had a taste of it the past few days, with temperatures venturing above freezing, and the opening of another gardening season at the library! The new batch of Green Chillis jumped right in with several activities... -- Germination testing for two varieties of cucumber seed (saved from 2011 and 2012, so we weren't sure about how viable they'd be): We lined up 20 seeds in a damp paper towel and enclosed them in a plastic bag. We'll check them periodically over the next couple weeks to see if any sprout, and that should give us an estimate of how many seeds we'll need to plant to get a given number of successful plants. -- Starting seeds in flats for several varieties that take a bit longer to mature: two kinds of petunias, three kinds of daisies, foxglove, and alyssum. -- Exploring the box of goodies received through the Herman's Garden Seed Donation Program through the Seed Savers Exchange. This is the second time we have applied for the program, and once again the SSE responded most generously. It was like Christmas in March, watching the Chillis dig through and exclaim over the colorful packets! "Purple Poodle Pole Beans? Oh! Purple Podded!" We rounded out our time by reveling in the sunshine and snow -- with a snowball fight in the garden! Here's to another year of growing!
(I've also -- slowly, yet surely -- been updating the blog from the past seasons. Check out the posts below for the story of our garden so far!) |
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June 2017
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