Organic Garden Update

Here's an update on Stone Wall Organic Garden:

There are a million tomatoes and I've been blanching and freezing just about everything. I feel like I am playing "Twister" while I pick the tomatoes. We have 70 tomato plants - my new name is "Farmer Girl!"

We also bought a "FoodSaver" - see link on side bar for more information. It takes the air out of the bag as your food is sealed. That way your food can last much, much longer in your freezer. Years even!

We have some mega zucchinis like this one:

The cucumbers are excellent! Here's one:

Wax beans are like bananas - look how big!

This is oregano. The watermelon is spreading, however, so I had to put bricks around the oregano to protect it. It's very mild oregano and tastes good in salads too! Drying it will bring out the true oregano flavor for seasoning.

Here's one of the baby watermelons starting. This was last week (7/26/09), but as of today -8/5/09 - it's the size of a bowling ball!

Oy vey! - we are going to have many watermelons!

Here's a turnip - I blanched, cut and froze most of the turnips using the FoodSaver.

Here's some beets - I boiled them, cooled them off (following the Barefoot Contessa's recipe), removed the skins (wearing rubber gloves of course - or else I would have purple hands!), cut them into small sections, marinated them in Julia Child's vinegrette recipe, and sliced fresh onion like my Grandmother used to do. Very good food!

Here are some carrots. I will have a separate post showing more photos. I also made a video of the carrots and will post it on YouTube. They are rainbow carrots and we harvested about 50 lbs!

The broccoli is starting - not too bad for the first planting.

This tomato looks like a turtle with a smile:

Here's our basil. I am going to make pesto, providing I can find REAL pine nuts that are NOT FROM CHINA! Do you believe it? I am going to look in an Italian market for pine nuts FROM ITALY!

Here are some onions and leeks:

The parsley is holding up and it's very flavorful:

Every time I look at the cabbages, I am reminded of Peter Rabbit:

The potatoes are almost ready too. We've harvested some. There are red potatoes and Yukon gold.

That's it for now.

Au revoir!

Stone Wall Organic Garden

This is Stone Wall Organic Garden - all of our seeds are organic and most of them were purchased from an Israeli company. We started the seedlings in our 3-season porch. The garden is 30' by 80' and my husband rototilled the entire thing!



These are two types of potato plants:



Here are the rows of potato plants:



This is a squash plant:



Tomato plants: We planted 70 plants of different varieties and plan on selling them at the local farm market, plus canning.




Panaramic view of the garden and the old, stone, barn wall on our property - made of Pennsylvania field stone from the 1950s!

Our garden is named Stone Wall Organic Garden.




Photo on left: parsley. Photo on right: left side- garlic, then peas (front left), and the rest are rainbow carrots!



All organic, we also planted basil, watermelon, chives, turnips, beets, Swiss chard, green beans, wax beans, and two types of lettuce.

Here's a link to the garden Youtube video of the entire garden.

I made a salad last weekend of whatever was ready to pick.

I added my own twist on Julia Child's vinegrette: (Organic extra virgin olive oil, organic white wine vinegar, organic horseradish mustard, a dash of organic honey, salt and pepper) wisk and voila!

Remember, eat organic food whenever possible! Bon appetit!