Cover Cropping Beds

Autumn is here, we took the dead corn stalks out of the 4x8 bed and brought all of the Red Beans in to dry. During the autumn and winter, we are trying something different this year. We planted oats in the 4x8 bed that will grow quickly, prevent weeds and provide more bulk matter for the bed.

In only a week, the oats are sprouting along with some straggler beans that fell into the bed. Beans will grow as much as possible and be cut down to replace nitrogen in the soil and also add some bulk to the bed to break down over the winter.

After the leaves fall and we layer the back garden with leaves, we'll also seed some oats and buckwheat for next year.  Buckwheat has been a great success in helping to bring insects into the garden when other plants aren't flowering. 

We have had above average temps the past couple of weeks and the plants kept growing. I'm hoping to have a couple of smallish pumpkins to use for seeds for next year and we are still eating the peas and carrots, tomatoes and eggplants are growing.

Late sugar pumpkins running up the Juniper Bush

Carrots!

After the potatoes were done - we planted peas

Finally some tomatoes!

Little Eggplants growing

Vacationing at Home: Day 6

Day 6: Saturday

Today was a great day to sleep in, hang around the house and garden and talk with neighbors. Spent a fun day relaxing, watched a couple of movies, and had some friends over tonight for gaming. I, of course, play a Druid in D&D and it's lots of fun to play and write a story with our friends.

I finished my project and uploaded my final for the Permaculture class. Now I would like to find another challenge, another place to design and work toward teaching abundance, food security, and sustainability. I look forward to where this new perspective on everything will take me.

For house projects today, I gathered together laundry and washed, dried, hung up and folded everything I could find in this house that needed to be cleaned. With everything for the week ready to go, tomorrow I work on the next project - gathering all paperwork, books and magazines to the basement to sort, trash, donate and shred where appropriate.

One project a day seems to work well - nice days on outdoor projects, and rainy days on indoor projects. The difference this time, is that when these bigger indoor projects are done - I won't have to do them again. There won't be a junk drawer or closet left untouched and when I'm done, there will only be what is necessary and needed.

For today's pictures - veggies and fruit from the garden. The perennials are growing: trees, vines, berries, nuts, and other plants.  The raised beds change day to day. We dug up the red potatoes and canned 27 pint jars for winter. The other beds have a variety of plants - we keep trying a few different things in each to find what will grow best for us.  The squashes are thriving this year and I am looking forward to a pumpkin harvest in the autumn.  Our cherry tomatoes are just starting to flower and the canning tomatoes just might make it.

Jerusalem Artichoke (Sunchoke) 

Zucchini

Sugar Pumpkins

Gala Apples

Eggplant

Cherry Tomatoes finally starting to flower

Hot peppers!

Small Red beans for drying

Carrots growing, growing, growing

June Garden and Volunteer Plants

Over the past few weeks we have had much rain, and in between the rain storms we added a few new plants and a few more volunteered in the garden!

New Rhubarb 

New Raspberry

Blueberry from last year has berries! 

Vetch is everywhere

The Paw-Paw is doing nicely - just planted this year!

We planted this 4x8 bed with corn and beans and found that MANY pumpkins came up from last year. As well as an overachieving butternut squash...so we decided that a new bed was needed!

Notice the large volunteer Mammoth Sunflower behind the bed. 

I love these and will find a way to have them all over the garden next year =)

So I took some newspaper and placed it down in the front yard  and wet it with a watering can.

And then I put cardboard over that and wet it down with water.

We filled the circle up with soil...

And moved the many rogue pumpin and butternut squash plants into the new bed...

We watered it in and it looks good as a starting point to replacing the front lawn...

Notice the Sunchokes are about four feet tall in the background!

in the back garden, trees are growing like crazy, grape vines are vining....

In the beds, canning tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and amaranth, carrots, radishes, sea kale,

and eggplant, etc. are all growing. Intermingled hot peppers in each bed as well as 

marigolds, poppies, herbs and flowers all perking up after a week of rain.

And the first of our apple trees is fruiting - I pruned off about 25-30 fruits

and we are letting a few grow near to the trunk where they won't break the branches.

I can't wait to try this fruit!

Easy Eggplant Lasagna

In an effort to stop spending money during the work week on take out or vending machine substitutes for lunch, my daughter and I decided to make Eggplant Lasagna. 

Now, this is our version. Less cheese, more veggies and quite delicious.

We started with 2 medium eggplants sliced into 1/4 inch rounds.

Salt, pepper and olive oil and bake at 350 degrees on aluminum foil covered baking sheet.  

Also, cover with Aluminum foil.   Bake (15 minutes or until soft) and put aside to cool.

Grease (I used olive oil) a 9x13 inch pan, and then put 1/3 of a jar of Marinara sauce 

Next, add a layer of the eggplant rounds

In a separate bowl, combine 1 package of your favorite cheese (we used a 3 cheese blend)

and 2 eggs.  Mix well and place 1/2 the cheese mixture on the eggplant.

Because we were not using a lot of cheese, we placed it directly on each round of eggplant

Note:  Many of the recipes I read used several cups of 2-3 different kinds of cheese.

We opted to use less cheese to keep the recipe as low cal as possible, but this is completely up to you. Layer whatever you would like !

We then covered with another 1/3 of the jar of Marinara and a package of frozen peppers.

I would at this point use whatever veggies you would like to bulk up the lasagna, the peppers added a great amount of flavor to the eggplant.  

Cover the pepper layer with the rest of the cheese and egg mixture.

Cover with the final 1/3 of the Marinara sauce and sprinkle with Panko and grated Parmesan cheese. Again, this is preference and to your taste, but I find that about a cup of Panko and a couple of tablespoons of Parmesan can go a long way with flavor.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes and you will have the delicious bubbling dish below.

We cut it into 8 servings (4 lunches each) and lunch for the week was ready.

We already had many of the ingredients in the house and only needed to purchase the eggplant.

In the Spring, I will be planting eggplant to see if we can reduce 

the cost of this delicious dish even more! 

Mint, Gourds and a Pine Path

In March I bought four different small mint plants from Hirt's Gardens for around $4.00 each and today I split them into their own pots - Pineapple and Ginger are each in a 12" pot and the Spearmint and Chocolate mint are in a much bigger container. If I had any doubt about  keeping them contained, today I was reassured that the whole of my yard would be filled with mint if I hadn't kept them this way. The roots were so thick, I had to cut through them with my Hori Hori to separate the four plants.

I am looking forward to some Mojito's with different mints soon!

Chocolate Mint and Spearmint

Pineapple mint and Ginger Mint

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Today I also planted Eggplant, Birdhouse Gourds and Watermelon in one of the straw beds. I just dug into the straw and put in a couple of scoops of garden soil, planted the seeds and watered. Our goal is not to do a ton of work with these plantings, but to give them what they need - water, sun and nutrients, and let them do what they will.

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I was very happy to see Nasturtium popping up in four new places and  am hopeful that it gradually replace the "grass" that we don't want growing and give us a beautiful, flowering salad instead.

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My Sister Kim dropped off a load of pine last week (yay Kim!) that she found on the side of the road for free! It's a beautiful round tree. We've decided that we will slice it into rounds and use it for our garden paths. The weather was just too warm to do the paths this weekend, but soon. It smells wonderful and will make a nice path through the garden beds and be the beginning of the work in the front yard garden.

Future garden paths - giving  "waste" a new purpose!

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Several different small projects this weekend. We are waiting for our shipment of perennials from Permaculture Nursery in Holyoke, Mass, and then the final of our plantings will be done. I'm sure we will continue to add flowers, herbs, etc., but the foundational plantings will be completed.

I also scattered a few different flowers and several types of hot peppers in two straw beds to see what will come up. In another bed I planted some seedlings that I started indoors. I want to compare which will do better. It is possible that neither will work, or both will.  If any work, I will happily collect the hot peppers. If not, there are some hots that we have planted in the raised beds with other veggies. What a great problem to have - too many hot peppers! If only...