Barefoot Gardening

I’m perpetually behind in blogging. I pulled the Garden Show photos off my SLR right away, but they only made it as far as Flickr. There was plenty of other coverage of the garden show, and you can check out my entire photo set, but here are some of my favorites. Click the image to embiggen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I always feel fantastic when it’s a nice enough day to work in the garden. It’s been a very mild winter in Northern California, but I’m still ready for it to be over. It turns out that there is a microbe in soil that boosts the levels of serotonin and norepinephrine [read: happy brain chemicals] in humans, called Mycobacterium vaccae. According to Horticulture Mag, it’s even being explored as a treatment in cancer. The article is a good read, you should click through.

I also learned something new today from an article in The Atlantic – the dirt aroma that is the essence of gardening?  It’s an odor produced by microbes in the soil as they break down plants. Scientists call it “geosmin”. Whatever you call it, it makes me happy.

 

My garden needed some seasonal refreshing. I took advantage of the tail end of the indian summer yesterday to handle a number of garden chores. Task 1 was to harvest compost and mix it into all of my containers. Task 2 was to add in some annuals amongst the perennials. Task 3 was to add in my Halloween decor, which ended up skewing a bit Día de los Muertos, and I’m ok with that.

On the left, I had some mums coming back from last year, so I added in some more, with some black potato vine. On the right, The red rooster carex has been going strong for a long time, so I surrounded it with some peach heuchera, ‘blackie’ potato vine, and ornamental kale. The potato vine prefers shade, and the mums love full sun, and these containers get a mix of both, so I’m crossing my fingers.

For fun, I also nestled some calendulas in between the red salvia in the windowbox and added a few mini pumpkins. As always, click to embiggen the photos.

And don’t tell me the flamingos aren’t fantastically humorous. My favorite succulent author posted them and I was in love.

 

 

This is currently my favorite container. I knocked it over one day while moving garden supplies, and the ceramic pot completely shattered. I re-potted it in a plastic one left over from a citrus tree, and the flowers are so prolific, you can’t even see the plastic. Recently, I added some lantana ‘fire’ behind the ‘sunset’ calabrachoa and California poppies. I love the color combination, and maybe I’ll even get some butterflies to play with my hummingbirds and katydid! (Butterflies love lantana)

 

I didn’t quite have the motivation to make the mole sauce this weekend, but I got around to picking more veggies. I’m so proud Only one red sweet pepper so far, but more tomatoes, and enough holy mole peppers to make a batch of mole sauce. Not too bad for containers!  [Note: Sorry for the previous iPhone photos with the blown out reds. I actually charged the batteries in my dSLR for this one.]

Thanks to Smitten Kitchen, who inspired Wild Suburbia, who inspired me, there are amazing smelling tomatoes in my oven right now.  If you recall, these are the Principe Borghese grape/plum tomatoes, which are intended for drying. Chopped in half with my trust Santoku knife, I’ve been slow roasting them at 225 degrees for 2.5 hours with some olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and a smidge of salt and pepper. They should keep nicely in the fridge in a small container with a bit of olive oil for snacking and use in dishes.

Before, sliced on parchment paper:

Sneaking a peak as they’re almost done. The result is a very sweet little tomato:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be with us next time for ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ or ‘What do I do with all this Panko?’

I have a backlog of gardening bookmarks, I wanted to share a handful that I’ve had to reference lately.

Are your plants in trouble? The Imperfect Gardener has a post on Flower 911.

When I was concerned about my tomatoes wilting, Colorado State had the best tomato problem reference.

Sadly, my cucumbers aren’t producing anything except flowers… Mr Brown Thumb shows us which are female and male flowers, and how to hand-pollinate with a paintbrush.

 

 

 

 

I cannot get over how pretty the green zebras are.  I’m hoping to harvest enough of the principe borghese this week to roast with some olive oil like this. I only have one plant of each variety, in containers, so I’m not hoping for too much, despite how each plant has overgrown the container. Admittedly, I ate one of the green zebras before taking the pic, or there’d be more to see.

You might call me the one-foot gardener today instead of the barefoot gardener. After an injury, i’ve been having to elevate and rest my left foot, but I needed a little fresh air, so I limped outside briefly to see what was ripe.

My mole peppers are about ready to be harvested as well. They’re a type of pasilla pepper, bred for mole sauce. I was planning to follow the standard recipe that comes with the ‘Holy Mole’ seeds (and use Mexican chocolate instead of any old unsweetened chocolate), but am soliciting any favorite recipes of readers. Please, comment away!

Lastly, a quick self-serving plug. My blog has its own page on Facebook where the feed is syndicated. I occasionally post extra pictures and links over there to avoid the annoying formatting issues I have in WordPress. Hop on over and press the Like button: https://www.facebook.com/BarefootGardening

 

The Principe Borghese  were intended to be for sun-drying, but my parents tried some right off the vine and enjoyed them. I was just excited to have *something* ripe in the garden. That’s my dad holding the tomatoes, by the way, my hands are not so manly

Sunset has a number of cute container gardening ideas on their website this month. The first one caught my eye as a little similar to a container I put together. The first one uses both electric pink festival grass (cordyline) and pink huechera, (though personally, I wouldn’t have doubled up on so much pink), and a plant that looks a little like a sunburst aeonium, but I’m not sure. Any readers able to identify it? It’s cute and could make a nice companion to my pink festival grass and thyme leaf fuchsia (which has adorable, tiny, dainty flowers – and it hasn’t stopped blooming!).