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Archive for the ‘gardening’ Category

calling all zone 7-8 gardeners

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

I just went to the store to buy seeds yesterday. We are in the oven-like doldrums of August here in Arkansas. Nothing in my garden is doing well producing edible items except for the basil and the okra. We get an occasional japaneese eggplant, and some tiny ancho peppers, but that is about it. Tonight I made dinner: eggplant with a little chopped kale and chard, topped with copious amounts of pesto. I served this concoction on a bed of quiona, a nutty-flavored grain from South America.

After my Catskills vacation, I miss lettuce! I miss squash! I miss spinach! I miss tomatoes. Any lettuce or spinach I plant from seed outside doesn’t even come up in the baked 100F+ heat- indexed afternoons.

So I went ahead and did it. I bought seeds. The seed package says it takes 55 days for the chineese cabbage to be ready. That puts the harvest date at October 12. Weather.com says the average high/low for our location is 72F/52F…PERFECT FOR CABBAGE. I’m going to gamble, so I planted some yellow squash indoors also. Keep in mind that our kale lasted the entire winter last year to thrive in March.

I’ve also got a number of first-year asparagus plantings in. I waited way too long to get them into the ground, but they are doing better now. My established asparagus patch has become so thick, it blocks out the sun for my carrots and an eggplant.

Our tomatoes are nothing but a tangled overgrowth of overgrowth with the occasional cherry tomato trying to turn red in the heat.

But now, my triumph: I attended the Faulkner County Seed Swap in April. There were two heirloom types of okra there. I planted both to find one extra wide, and another extra long. The extra-wide type has grown to be 6 feet tall, and it is still going. The extra-long type really attracts ants. Both produce fruit that is tender at a large size, unlike the usual Clemson Spineless that I plant. However, I am really starting to get sick of eating okra. This week I gave in and purchased red peppers and spinach from the store.

Sometimes I think I should only plant basil and a couple of beefsteak tomato plants. If only I could plant mozzarella plants.

blackberry buzz 2010

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

The blackberries are ripe! I haven’t made a pie, but Ty made some smoothies.



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I can’t wait to try this recipe for blackberry buckle. Next I’ll try a blackberry smash.

Last year I made some blackberry cordial too, but that may be illegal. You see, I live in a dry county, and you can’t buy liquor just anywhere. Have no fear, a Facebook group has been created to remedy the situation.

I’m considering some civil disobedience on this blog. Right now the only liquor sold in the county is through “private clubs”. These laws have traditionally been used to keep “a certain kind of folk” out of drinking establishments. In Conway it is actually a step in the progressive direction, but still holds some bad connotations. What am I going to do? I’m going to post all of my “private club” attendance numbers on this website, and encourage all new folks to Conway to use those numbers. Sure, when we got here a “membership” was only $5 per year, and now it is $5 for a “lifetime membership” but why not just pull the plug on the entire system. What good is a membership number if everyone is using the same one and they aren’t immediately traceable to the actual owner? Stay tuned.

red and black season

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

One of my favorite blogs for all things crafty/gardening, Little House in the Suburbs, has marked this weekend with the sighting of the first blackberry.

I’m over 2 hours away from Memphis, but roughly at the same latitude. We saw our first blackberry on Ty’s birthday (yesterday). We ate 4 today. They’re almost completely ripe, but we thought we would pick them before the birds got the first few.



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Ty’s wearing his favorite shirt, blowing out the candles on his favorite cake (Grandma Jo’s Wacky Chocolate Cake).

We’ve had one cuke, and three cherry tomatoes. GASPACHO! I am gazpacho, oh, I am a summer soup! I cannot wait.

food of the south

Monday, May 17th, 2010

It is no secret that my favorite thing about the South is the weather. This feature goes hand-in-hand with the growing season. Last Tuesday we went to our first crawdad/crayfish/crawfish/mudbug boil, and it was super tasty.



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Crawfish can best be described as mini-lobsters. To prepare crawfish, you throw a bunch of live ones into seasoned boiling water for a few minutes. Then the deconstruction begins, separating the head from the tail. There are pincers, but they are too small to open without tools. Ty managed to get one opened and the meat was light like crab meat. After separating the head from the tail, the optional step is to suck the juices out of the head. Nintey-nine percent of the edible part of the crawfish is in the tail. That segment is encased in shrimp-like segments, but they usually have to be cracked open. After eating dozens of crawfish I had a slight bruise/bleed on my thubmb with a freshly cut thumbnail since the fresh skin was exposed.


The latest issue of the Oxford American
takes on food in the South. The climate makes the place, and the growing season, available ingredients, and preservation techniques make the food.

My garden has kicked it into gear. I’ve got tiny yellow squash, zucchini, egg plant, peppers, and tomatoes all ready to explode in the next month.



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smiles

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Ok folks, I’ve been super busy lately. My brother got married 2 weekends ago. I posted a bunch of pictures to my gallery.

I picked the Kentucky Derby winner last weekend, and Conway, Arkansas hosted another Toad Suck Daze. Ty and I ventured downtown for crawfish, a tornado dog, and sleep deprived people stuck on a truck.



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My kickball team also had our final game last weekend. Ty came out to watch our game and take pictures. It took all I had this weekend just to recover.

It had me feeling like this guy.



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I’ve got a fun garden anecdote. My neighbor Sam and I planted our cucumbers way too early. She lost 5 plants and I lost multiple others. I found volunteer cucumbers growing everywhere! I picked a few out from between the tomatoes and replanted them. I gave more to Sam. When I went to Nebraska I got some fun square foot gardening netting from Katie. I put up a trellis for Sam, only to find out that all of the cucumbers I gave her are either yellow squash or zucchinni! We’ll be good as long as the stink bugs and the squash beetles don’t take over.


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garden cheating

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Last week, I had three peppers become separated right above the ground. Is it a cutworm? Is it a bird? The peppers just seem not to be growing much outside too. It may still be pretty cold for them. So I cheated and bought an orange and green bell pepper plant. I also bought a poblano pepper plant for fun. The transplanted Hungarian hot wax pepper form last year decided to bloom out, so it can’t be that bad for peppers outside.

I also bought a Japanese eggplant. Hopefully it will do better than the eggplants I had last year that never created a fruit bigger than a baseball.

I have tried to grow leeks so many times this year. I’ve run out of seed and I had no seedlings to show for it. I also purchased a pot of leeks, and separated them out around the garden. I’ve never grown them before, but this looks like the only way I’ll be able to do it.

All of my green onion seeds have been duds too. Bought the last packet I’m going to buy, and we’ll see what happens. My mother planted a bunch of Egyptian walking onions in the compost pile last year, and those are going pretty strong. Maybe we can subsist of of those for a while. I really like to put green onions in salsa.

You can definitely tell the cherry/grape tomatoes from the other ones. The cherry/grape tomatoes are always much taller, and I’ll have to cage them soon! I haven’t even staked them yet.

This year, I didn’t buy compost. I scraped the bottom of the compost pile out back, and transferred and mixed that soil into last year’s beds. This resulted in 4 kinds of weeds: wild thyme, tomatoes, fennel, and cumbers. I’ve been digging out the cucumbers and transplanting them. Fennel gets pretty big, so I’ve only transplanted a few of those. The tomatoes and the rest of the fennel get ripped out!



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jelly success

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Last night I made some more jelly. I am absolutely horrified by the amount of sugar in jelly, but I understand it is a critical part of the preservation process. I made the Herb Jelly from the Ball Book of Home Preservation. I had a thyme plant that was getting old and needed to be split.

Another website suggested giving thyme a “haircut” to keep it healthy. I thought I had 2 cups of “loosely packed herbs”, but I don’t think I had enough. I added some parsley and rosemary. The jelly is made with cider (no sugar added) and vinegar (I used cider vinegar). It resulted in a very crisp and tart flavored jelly, with a hint of thyme. I was really afraid of over-herbing this one after under-jelling the last bunch.

It came out very tasty, but not as herby as I would have liked. It jelled like magic though!



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The garden is coming along. I got my peppers in the ground. The kale is blooming, so I need to yank it out. I already lost one bell pepper to some sort of snapped center stalk.



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Here’s that pollen shot I promised:



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slutty trees!

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

The pollen around Conway is really bad right now. I took some pictures of my car this morning. At work in Little Rock, a co-worker noted how much more yellow my car is compared to the other local cars on the lot.

I’m not posting my picture because someone else from Conway posted a better one. We need a rain, and some antihistamines.

gardening neighbors

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

In the past year, the 4 empty apartments next to our tower have become occupied! They’re getting together and making their own community garden. They’re working on a rainwater irrigation system, and just started planting this week. Here are some pictures from this week when they added some compost to the raised beds.



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We also had a small asparagus harvest this week.


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Everything I planted is just starting to come up. There is some bad news, I’ve had three tomatoes die on me. Two look like they were cut off or snipped off by animals, and one just was dead one day. Almost all of the cucumbers I started inside died, but I’ve got plenty of volunteer ones coming up this week. I’ll have to transplant those. Some of the lettuce has changed from seedling to something that actually looks like lettuce. Some of the weeds look like hundreds of tiny tomatoes, maybe they are?

My neighbor Sam and I are thinking about making some jelly or mango chutney this weekend. I know canning is meant to preserve what you can’t eat right away, but I think it is also a good way to make a big batch of food from fresh ingredients and save it for later. The Natural Resources Defense Council website tells me that strawberries, blackberries, oranges, and peaches are in season in Texas and Mississippi. The website helps you know what is fresh and in season from your local CSA or Farmers Market, or what is being imported from an adjoining state.

My mother-in-law got me a pressure cooker and a preservation book for the holidays this year. Sam is picking out some recipes today, and maybe we’ll garden and preserve tomorrow.


season of the gar

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

My friend Mark Spizter has a book coming out. He’s the husband of my band mate Robin. I’m so excited that they both have books coming out!

When Ty and I first got to Arkansas, we went out with some folks who told us about “spearing gar”. The animals look quiet intimidating with a long, sometimes gator-like mouth. The alien look of the gar as inspired a lot of violence against it. A recent episode of River Monsters cleared up myths of gar biting off legs and eating whole children.

Mark has a genuine affinity for gar and how they gather, surface, and dance in the stream. You should check out his book Seasons of the Gar from the University of Arkansas Press.


Somehow I’ve surrounded myself with conservationists and naturalists. These people are concerned with the natural order of things, but are also interested in co-existing with nature. If you are a human, in my opinion, co-existing with nature sometimes means eating tasty animals. Luckily, most of my friends agree!

In the coming weeks I’ll blog about Joel Sartore’s book Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species. You should watch the video on that site. My friend Katie was involved with the project.

Another book I’ll be previewing is Dave Madden’s The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy. Dave was a PhD student with my husband Ty at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I’m really looking forward to reading this book. I’ve been hearing about it as Dave has written it. He interviewed my farmer/hunter father for the project!

On the garden side, I put in half of the garden today. I’ve got 12 tomatoes planted, and I only snapped 2 off in the process. I purchased a drip irrigation system today, but it is going to take some figuring out to get it in the right position. I really want to wait until some of the seeds come up before I lay it out. Planted lettuce, beets, spinach, radishes, green onions, snap peas, pole beans. I planted a bunch of herbs in pots. Last year I didn’t have enough dill. Transplanted cucumber and cabbage, although it is probably too early for the cucumber to be outside, it was busting out of the sprouting pellet.