The Garden Produces a Dinner

It's getting to be that time of year for many gardening addicts in Northern California. It's that time where you've tended the garden so much, that it now starts to tend to YOU.

Last night, our garden provided this dinner for us. It's the first full dinner of the summer season using summer produce, but obviously not the last.

Every item in this stir-fry dinner, with the exception of the chicken of course, came fresh-picked from the garden. What you see to your left is the result of hours of work, hours of planting, hours of tending and about ten minutes worth of harvesting.

Venus celebrated her birthday this past evening -- and rather than go out -- her birthday wish was for a green curry dish utilizing everything fresh from the backyard garden. We also could have used tomatoes, but green curry and tomatoes just don't mix.

Not many asian dishes use tomatoes as a featured item. I'm told, by one friend who grew up in Vietnam, that tomatoes do not grow well in southeast Asia, therefore they are not a staple of the local diet.

Cooking a green curry dish like this one is always an adventure. This one was no different. First off, Venus and I aren't quite good enough yet to make our own green curry mixture. So, we rely on the pre-mixed Mai Ploy brand (one of the best) and some coconut milk to get the job done.

Why is this such an adventure? Well -- one look at this VERY blurry photo to your right will tell half the story. And you run into this kind of roadblock quite often whenever you attempt to re-create a dish from your favorite Thai or Vietnamese restaurant.

I always want to know how much of a particular spice or mixed spices I should use in any creation, so I always rely on the "serving suggestion" advice that is posted on most jars. True enough, there are the words clearly printed in English: Serving Suggestion.

Unfortunately, the suggestions are all in Vietnamese.

I may be a good cook, but I haven't gotten around to learning Vietnamese quite yet. Sadly, the wife hasn't yet either. She does trump me on foriegn languages though, as she CAN read, write and speak Spanish.

But, even Spanish fluency doesn't mean you can translate instructions printed in Vietnamese. Sorry, but we were out luck.

No matter. This is what guessing is for. The dinner is all about the fresh ingredients, not the green curry.

The greens in this fabulous bowl include a couple of bell peppers chopped into bite sized chunks, some very large bush beans (including a variety that is quickly becoming one of my favorites: Dragon's Tongue), some Bok Choy, freshly harvested basil and a GINORMOUS Asian Eggplant.

I'm normally not a huge fan of eggplant. I can take it or leave it on the vegetable front. I'm just not wild about it. BUT -- put some eggplant in a Thai or Vietnamese dish? Suddenly, I can't get enough of the stuff. There's something about eggplant drowning in a dish of green or red curry that brings out a special kind of taste.

To put it short and sweet, everything in last night's dinner was a favorite from the garden. Although the peppers are still probably another month away from peak production, the same cannot be said about the bush beans. These things grow overnight.

This is our first year growing bush beans. I've been told that they are not as productive as pole beans. But, whomever told me that must be a liar, because we suddenly have far more bush beans than we know what to do with. I'm almost afraid to go home tonight, because I might be attacked by a bush bean.

These things are prolific.

Although Venus would have no problem with a meatless stir-fry -- I still haven't reached that stage of vegetarian nirvana. I may never get there. And before you criticize, remember this: My diet once consisted of Western Bacon Cheeseburgers, french fries and a large coke -- supersized at that. So, believe me, I'm doing a lot better in my mid 40's with boneless, skinless, chicken breasts.

Meal prep is the hardest part of this creation. Once everything is chopped up and mixed, you can cook everything up with a nice side of rice in 15 minutes or less. And, yes, because we experimented with the green curry, the meal did come out a TAD HOT.

Just a tad though. Do you know what the nice thing about eating hot meals is? It takes awhile to eat. And you get full -- which means you wind up eating a lot less.

Not to worry though. This fresh-from-the-garden creation made for a tasty lunch the very next day.

Re-Charging Raised Planter Beds

How the best plans can sometimes change....

I had intended to post up photos of heavily frost covered planter beds, with a "winter is here -- woe is me" blog message but Mothern Nature isn't cooperating.

A day after I took photos of my frost-covered beds, the weather changed, and changed rather dramatically. Those frost covered mornings? Gone. Replaced with bright sunshine, cool morning temperatures and real spring warmth in the afternoon.

Spring warmth? The high sixties? Low 70's? In JANUARY? Exsqueeze me? Did Old Man Winter take a break? Keel over? Last year at this time we were getting hit with rain and windstorms that blew fences down and cars off the road. And this year Mother Nature brings us April in January?

Weird

But, if there's one thing I've learned it's this: there's no arguing with Mother Nature. You just take what she gives you -- grin and bear it so to speak -- and if that grand old dame wants to give us a false spring, then so be it. Use your time wisely.

And that's just what I did this past weekend. The wife shoved a planting guide into my face, promptly produced thirty packets of seed, pointed to a nearby raised bed and ordered the now famous line: "get to work." That means, time to get digging.

Now myself, as a very romantic man, did inform the wife last Friday night that I had brought her a gift from the heart: three bags of composted steer manure. Not every man is this romantic, I'll give you that. But Bill Bird's heart just oozes with romance. And in some cases, romance smells.

Put these elements together: the weather is warm, I've got three bags of composted steer manure from Home Depot and the wife has thirty packets of various lettuce, swiss chard, spinach, bok choi, peas and other seeds. Plus, she's got the always reliable Farmer Fred Hoffman planting guide. And who can argue with that?

If there's one thing I've learned about raised beds, it's this? Yes, they are wonderful to garden in. The soil is surrounded by redwood, which conducts heat into the soil, warming it MUCH faster that ordinary dirt in ordinary ground. When you've got sunshine and highs in the sixties, you've got dirt with temps in the 70's.

Another thing I've learned is raised beds are USELESS unless they are "re-charged" so to speak with every season. The plants suck up all the good nutrients during the growing season. You might still have soft, loamy soil. But without a bag or four of compost, you've got a soil without nutrients. And without nutrients, you've got a garden that will not grow.

Since I have yet to inheirit a two-cycle, gas powered, Mantis Rototiller, I recharge my beds the old fashioned way. Yep. See that green-handled hoe in the bed? That's mine. And it digs pretty darn good if you're using two hands to dig up the dirt and mix in compost. With a raised bed, you must ensure that you pull ALL soil away from the redwood boards and ensure that old soil mixes in with the compost you're adding to the bed. Why? Because root systems grow towards HEAT. And those boards get pretty hot in the summer. I find that roots tend to grow right to the edges and, in some cases, stick right to them.

I also discovered that lots of little critters, such as BLACK WIDOWS, also enjoy raised beds. I manged to rudely intrude on a few of them. You would have thought that frosty cold days and nights would have done them in by now, but no such luck. By hiding in the soil, and near one of the redwood boards that retains warmth, just about any critter can withstand the onslaught of winter cold.

So, dig carefully and wear gloves!

The bed pictured here contains three bags of composted steer manure, worked into every corner. It also contains several cups of bone meal and other pelleted fertilzers that will ensure that vegetables will get the three important nutrients that ALL vegetables and fruit need: Nitrogen, Potassium (also called Potash) and Phosphorus.

It didn't take the wife long to start planting after I had finished -- perhaps thirty seconds or less. That entire 4X8 bed contains all sorts of good seed now, and if the weather holds, we'll see germination happen before the start of the weekend. If the cold weather sets in again, some seeds will germinate, while others will not.

It's still way, way, way, way too early to tell if spring has arrived two months early. Knowing our wacky weather, we could get another two months of wind, rain and more wind. But, when Mother Nature rewards you with a patch of spring in January, if you like to garden, you'd better take advantage of it.