Parsley Pesto

Hi to all my loyal fans!  I wanted you both to know that I tried my Fabulous Pesto tonight with the herbs I had on hand and it turned out great.  My basil in the garden had not been happy about some 30's-ish lows last month, so I only had a tad of that for my pesto.  I had a bit of cilantro and TONS of parsley.  It was vibrantly green and yummy on our bean thread pasta.  By the time you put parmesan, pine nuts and garlic on anything it would taste great.

How much are 16 caterpillars worth?

Today's garden yield included 2 cherry tomatoes, over 6 pounds of Manderin oranges and 16 juicy caterpillars.  Since early November when I did a big seed catalog order, I've been keeping track of my garden expenses and yields.  My little spreadsheet includes expenses of seeds, plants, pots and stakes totally $73.49.  I didn't include wages for our work or expenses of watering because they were too hard to quantify and, hey, its a labor of love.  My yields record all the garden produce I've harvested since November 1: chard, lettuce, eggplants, tomatoes, herbs, lemons, oranges, lima beans, black-eyed peas, pomegranates, radishes, potatoes, and butternut squash.  Assigning values to each produce item, trying to be comparable to organic produce at the store, my yield so far is about $156.  But today's yield included 16 little green caterpillars eating my turnip greens.  How much are they worth?  How will I fit them into the equation?

I plucked them off.  They are now residing in a jar with greens from turnips and from a nearby radish, which wasn't infested with the caterpillars.  I'm setting it up as a preschool science experiment.  Do you think the caterpillars will selectively eat the turnip greens in the jar?  Or had they just not noticed my lovely radishes?  Oh!  Gotta add the radish and baby turnip to the yield totals!

Ok, my science mind is starved by motherhood.  I got out some old equations to work on the caterpillar density.  I know that 16 caterpillars might not sound that remarkable to you, but they were found in my little container garden.  One pot of lonely turnips, the pot being about 12 inches in diameter.  Feel free to check my math...  That is a radius of 6 inches.  The surface area of the pot is pi*r*r = 113.1 square inches.  That's 0.15 caterpillars per square inch, or 20.4 caterpillars per square foot.  Gosh, if I had an acre of turnips, they'd have 887,397 caterpillars on them!  That feels like a caterpillar plague of Biblical proportions in my little pot!

Wonderful worm castings!

It has been a while since I've tended to our worm bin in a substantial way.  We just keep them in a plastic tote in the garage.  A month or so ago I'd moved all the contents over to one side of the bin and started adding the new bedding and new kitchen scraps on the other side.  This gives the worms a chance to migrate out of the older bedding and scraps and into the new, easing but not eliminating the sorting of worms.  Today was harvest day from the old side.  In addition to finding a happy, healthy worm population with plenty of egg sacks, I harvested about 2 gallons (I'm estimating from my 5 gallon bucket) of fresh worm castings.  These went directly onto our sugar snap peas that are happily blooming.  Nothing like digging around in worm poop to really make your day.  Elizabeth, you said that it is pretty sad when good limas make your day.  Is worm poop sadder?  But it was really rich worm poop!  I'm linking an image from RedWormComposting.com so you can  see what I mean about the egg sacks.

The best lima beans of my life

Months ago I planted some lima beans from the dried bulk bin.  Unfortunately only one of them grew well.  The one that took, grew pretty well.  Today I harvested all 11 pods since they looked mature.  I've never grown limas before so don't really know.  Did you know the pod is fuzzy?  I did a cursory Google search today to see how to prepare them.  My distracted search with DD tugging on me didn't net much useful information.  I took a pod to DS's preschool and polled the teachers.  Although no one had cooked a fresh lima bean before, the consensus seemed to be to shuck them and boil/steam the beans as one would fresh peas.  So this evening the kids and I shucked the limas, yielding a whopping 1.25 ounces of beans (an average of about 2 beans per pod).  I put them in a pan with a tiny bit of water and simmered the beans until soft.  They were the best lima beans we've ever eaten.  I must grow them again!  And in a better location to get a better yield.  I also think that next time I'll put the dry beans in a wet paper towel before planting to start them sprouting.

The Holiday of Horrors

It has been a while since I've posted.  You know how the whirlwind of the holidays can get ahead of you.  And it still is ahead of me, but I've got to share this.  We've just experienced what I shall refer to in years to come as "The Holiday of Horrors."  I'll post the very abbreviated version.

On 12/26 we drove to Arizona to visit family.  On 12/27 my 92 year old Grandfather got a stomach bug and was hospitalized.  On 12/28 DS got bug, spent 2 days on the sofa and didn't stop throwing up until 1/2.  On 12/29 my Mom got bug.  On 12/30 Grandfather died.  On 1/1 I got the bug.  On 1/2 we drove back home to California without emesis or excrement soiling the new (used) minivan.  On 1/3 DS and I were still on the sofa due to the bug.  On 1/4 DD got it.  So far, only DH has escaped unscathed.  I sure hope we are done with it.  Today DS went back to school and DH went back to work, so we are pretending we are back to normal.

My husband is a stud-puppy!

I've been so stressed 'cause my clothes washing machine broke yesterday.  I tried to fix it, dear-FIL tried to fix it.  I spent the morning running around the neighborhood looking for an available washer to finish washing my HEAVY, soaking wet half-washed laundry.  Neighbor kindly helped out.  On a good day, I'm up to my ears in laundry so I knew that with the machine out of commission things could get ugly fast.

Sears said they'd charge $130 just to come look at the thing!  I called two independent repair guys, neither of whom returned my call.  One was recommended by friend Amy as "quick, cheap and cute."  Sounds good, right.

DH made the time tonight to take a look at the machine after googling the problem.  The internet is an amazing thing, and so is my husband!  He fixed the broken washing machine!  DH fixed it faster than any of the service guys called me back, he didn't cost me a dime, and he sure is a cutie, if a do say so myself!  I highly recommend him!

Pole Beans, Peas, Potatoes, and Ducks

This weekend we enjoyed more gardening.  We shredded up some newspaper and cardboard for our worm bin and checked on the residents.  They are abundant and happy - well, at least they didn't complain.  We also used the borrowed shredder for shredding more yard trimmings for the compost.  One bin was too wet and the other too dry.  Some compost swapping seems to have that all worked out now.  I FINALLY had the chance to trim some bamboo that we had cut prior into branch-less poles.  My plan is to use them as a trellis for the snap peas, which are sprouted and about 4 inches tall now.  The snow peas, which were ancient seeds, didn't sprout.  Happily, I recently got a seed shipment from Territorial Seed, so I planted Red Noodle Yard Long Pole Beans in their place.  We also replanted some limas from the bulk bin.  Only one sprouted prior and it looked so lonely.  But this is my first time to grow limas, and I'm surprised to tell you that lima bean pods are fuzzy.  Very cute.  I replanted the remainder of the ancient broccoli seeds that didn't sprout prior.  I figure if they are down to a 1% sprout rate, planting the whole envelope might do the trick.  Yes, I realize I could just throw them out, but my optimism takes over. 

I also planted two containers on our "garden table."  The first pot has Garlic Chives, Celeriac Brilliant, and Kohlrabi Kongo Hybrid.  The chives are an attempt at growing garlic flavor that ISN'T garlic so that I don't react to it.  We'll see.  The kohlrabi and celeriac I've never tasted in my life, but I was intrigued by them in the seed catalog.  The latter specifically said not to direct sow outdoors, but I did anyway.  Why?  They were in my hand and I was planting outside, not in.  That's my only defense.  The second pot is really a cardboard Amazon box.  Friend Sara had read that this was a container gardening option when one was too cheap for containers.  So into the cardboard box went the Radishes Cherry Belle and Carrots Napa Hybrid.

We harvested the remainder of our potatoes.  We got out another 2.5 pounds - these were all red ones except for one gold.  The gold one was kinda tucked into the shade of the mandarin orange tree so that plant didn't do as well.  While digging in the raised bed we saw lots of happy worms and one grub, which has now been put into the "pet grub" aquarium.  I feel like whenever we pull anything out of the ground we outta add something back in before replanting.  Since we had no finished compost or fresh worm castings ready, I added worm castings from a bag before planting three squares of Spinach Erste Ernte (that must mean something... but what?), Lettuce Bullet Green Romaine, and Lettuce Green Deer Tongue Loose Leaf.  These three I selected for their relative tolerance for heat stress, as I recall.  Or maybe I threw I dart. 

On the topic of potatoes, one gets dire warnings about only planting seed potatoes and not those from the store.  I got mine from the farmer's market and from organic bags at the grocery, cut them up and planted them.  They did fine.  Perhaps with repeated plantings in the same area, seed-specific potatoes are more important.  I did save some tiny potatoes off the plants in a brown bag for next spring's plantings.  For the effort, potatoes are way cheap, but hey mine are organic and they are so much fun to dig out.  I love the surprise!

Did I tell you what we did with some of the grubs that had inhabited the "pet grub" aquarium?  This week, I took DS and DD to a woman's house (Kim) about 30 minutes away to get duck eggs from her free range ducks.  It took some convincing to get DS to be willing to bring the grubs as a gift for the ducks, but talking to him about needless suffering vs. happy life/quick ending did the trick.  Once he was on board with the grubs going, he seemed happy to pack them up into the jar with the air holes, which he held in his lap (along with this snack - yuck!) all the way there.  We also brought Kim some chard form the garden and extra egg cartons.  Since we arrived with such generous gifts, she gave us the $4/dozen duck eggs for free!  What a deal!  And DS even came back with a jar full of feathers and one acorn.  We learned all sorts of great things about ducks (the girls quack loudly and the boys mumble soft quacks).  DS was so excited about seeing them and her horses, dogs, tortoises, and fish.  As soon as we got home, he drew several pictures of the adventure.  We haven't tried the duck eggs yet.  I'm allergic to chicken eggs but have heard that sometimes people with chicken egg allergies can be ok with duck eggs.  I'll let you know when I get up the nerve to give it a try.

No pictures this week.  It is way too late, and I'm rambling.  Happy gardening!