Fall Garden Update

This is cabbage sliced thin, sprinkled with sea salt, juice of one lemon, and red pepper flakes massaged with a previous batch of sauerkraut the veggie mix then goes into a jar for fermenting for about 3 weeks until it turns red and sour. Green cabbage gets lighter.

This is some sauerkraut with carrots added to the above ingredients and grape leaves to keep the cabbage crisp while fermenting.

This is a lovely head of cabbage that I made into kraut.

This was a miss... I added kale, garlic, apples, to the basic sauerkraut and it was too strong. This gallon went into the outskirts of my compost pile. Didn't know about the salt, so I figured if salt was a problem, it would first kill some weeds.

Some of the last tomatoes

Bee apartment nearly full.

Beautiful Golden tomatoes, pickles green beans, pickled beets and carrots, garden radish and raddicchio.

A pickles, sauerkraut, garden radish, cabbage.

These dill pickles I added some beets they were good, just a bit pink reddish.

Love those colors...Purple cabbage yumm....

This is my lovely dino kale and chard forest, in my edible landscape.

Mamma bringing in the goods!

My lawn is slowly diminishing. Yay.

I love this tomato, it's called tomango. I haven't seen it anywhere on the internet, but it sure is lovely!

Two great heads.

My pickle crocks.

Making pickles.

Squash was pretty good this year.

A fabuloso orange tomato with L's in it! It was delicous, tasted like mango and cantelope.

Tomango, sauerkraut, radish, red lettuce, a few cherry tomatoes.

These are some beans and cabbage at the giving gardens where I volunteer.

Seed Saving Open Pollenated Tomato Seed

This is how I save my seed and ferment. I write the name on the bag, snack size works best. You can also use glasses or yogurt cups if you like. I am a little lazy it usually takes more than three days but I still get great germination rates.

I strain the seed with water and let them dry with bag underneath. The bag has the name of the seed on it.

My germation tests are done with a bag a damp cotton ball and I place that bag on top of the water heater.

Momma Samia lucked out with these birkenstock Jolly clogs, I bought them on Ebay and accidentally got Mens size. Happily they fit her just fine, so now she has a pair of garden shoes and she has put them to good use! Since I couldn't return them, glad they fit her and they didn't cost much. But I am green with envy, aren't they happy little shoes? They are shaped just like the dutch wooden shoes.

Recent kitchen activity

We made some pickles with carrots, beets and turnips with yogurt whey, water and salt and lemon pickles with black seed, jalepeno, whey and salt. Economical also.










My neighbor kid asked for a carrot for the Easter bunny. He was waiting by the door jumping up down when I brought over this baby carrot from the garden. He put the carrot on the table for the Easter bunny. Cute.

Economical Yogurt maker without elctricity. I usually put mine in the dehydrator, but mamma makes hers without electricity. I like that better. Mamma Samia cooked the milk to just boiling, lowered the heat until it was not super hot and added a mixture of the store bought yogurt mixed with some of the warm milk in a separate bowl than mixed it in the main warm milk pan. We poured the mix in pyrex and put it in a warm water bath and closed the small cooler. 75 cents is much better than the 3 buck yogurt.

This delicious dish was economical also.

Pappa Murphy's cheesy bread sticks used the dipping sauce for the pizza T $2.50, 1 long eggplant sauteed until crispy .50 cents, red pepper 50 cents, 4 large mushrooms 50 cents, olives 10 cents, artichoke hearts 50 cents and red pepper flakes. Under $5.00 and it was fabulous! The eggplant added Egyptian flare.






Our new convection oven. We wanted something to cook just for us to save energy and to save our cheap oven! We don't really bake that much and have already had to replace 2 handles and the oven's service warranty is up this year. It also has a rotisserie so we can make fresh rotisserie chicken without the all the junkie stuff I can't pronounce that some big stores and clubs serve. A bonus is we can move it to the patio or garage when it's hot.




Here is my freezer finally being delivered. I waited quite a few years for this baby. Took a few months to decide if I was going to go manual or frost free due to price. Decided to go with frost free, because who is kidding who? I am never gonna defrost, and my hubby wont either. I hope it's big enough. I am so happy to be able to freeze my greens, tomatoes, grape leaves and berries. Yay!

Whats new in the garden

The peppers are happily growing nicely.

Baby Marigolds, saved from the nicer varieties at the gardens.

The baby tomatoes are growing nicely.

A peek in the greenhouse.

This is a lovely Chinese artichoke, or chorogi, or knotroot,artichoke betony, or crosne . I got a few from Chris and we had a nice evening trading plants and green seeds. I am very excited to grow these and cook them!

They look like spiral shells to me.

By my finger is a red occa tuber. I planted them in my big black pots. A recent trade was very informative and I got some seed variety and new interesting plants. I also received some white occa which also went into a very large tree pot.

Look, I might even get a head off this raddichio, it happened just after the frosts.

New greens hardening off for the ground.

Big Sunday Breakfast

Today's big breakfast for hubby ~

Egg scramble with liver and onions, garden dino kale and leek steamed in chicken broth added to the mix. Fava beans, with onion, pakrika and dino kale, 100% rye toast and coffee.

Another wonderful Sunday with no rain.














Big Sunday Breakfast ~ My hubby loved the look of breakfast this morning and took this photo with his phone.

Scrambled eggs, with cilantro, fava beans, brown rice with turkey and mushroom sauce, asparagus,
100% rye toast, Fugi Apple slices and coffee.

I made breakfast with extras because I am going in the garden on this fine sunny spring morning...

Another hobby

A bed set I made for my sister. She helped put it together.






































One of my first quilts I made for a friend






















































For my nephew



















































For my nephew Kalani ~ a Hawaii theme

































Guest room


























My nephews set























For a niece

Spring is here in Beaverton

My neighbor gave me a scrap piece of wood for this years Mason Bee apartment complex. I hope they like this house.

Great advice from a Master Mason Bee Keeper. I had said that many of my bees drown last year in my water buckets and the suggestion was made to put a stick my water buckets. I leave water out to remove clorine for watering my seedlings and for my compost teas. So far so good. No bees floating in the water.





















The Mason Bees are starting to emerge from the tubes.





Yay!

March 1st the lettuce and cabbage are sprouted and ready for the ground when I am.

I planted some beets yesterday.













Peppers 1st night outside and the peppers appear to be doing ok. I set them outside whenever it was sunny even on cold days 45 degrees.























Kale, radish and cabbages sprouting

































Kale and chard will go in ground when I have time. Whats going on in the green house March 1st.

Spring is here in Beaverton. My trees are starting to bloom and the winter sowed seed is coming up. I moved the table to garden for potting up. I added charcoal, and worm castings to the mix this time and hoping for good results.

My friends came helped to start veggies for the Gleaner Gardens and other gardens. We had a great lunch of chicken soup made with kale and spinach from the garden, salad with home grown sprouts, home made pickles of carrot, beet and ginger, meat balls (ground beef, onion, cilantro) in a mushroom sauce with bay, rosemary and sage and brown rice.

It was a lovely day with great company. The sun cooperated and we have lots of starts. Next I have to move my shelves to my new green house.