Green Tomatoes Forever?

It’s a given that growing tomatoes in the Pacific Northwest is tough, due to late summers, long rainy days, and weak sunlight.  We planted tomatoes in early May, and by now most of the plants have fruited, yet all are still green.  Every other part of the world seems to be harvesting tomatoes except for us. Does anyone in the blogosphere have experience growing tomatoes in the Pacific Northwest?  If so, it would be great if you could comment and help us out.

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Sunflower Monday

Wow! It has been a while since we have posted…sorry about that. A lot of things have been happening in the garden over the past two weeks. We started a mini CSA-type operation and send emails to interested folks on campus about what is available for harvest each week. If you want to be added to this list, leave us a comment! We also have made copious amounts of pickles, dried plums, kale chips, zucchini muffins, mint tea and pasta sauce. Here is a lovely photo that we took yesterday of one of our sunflowers.

Beautiful Beets

Passage’s mad photography skills have provided us with this beautiful example of some of the beets we grew.  Pictured above are striped Chioggia beets (grown from starts) and Golden Beets (grown from seeds).  They are the first of the season, and we hope to have many more to follow.  These were boiled to perfection and enjoyed while writing this post.

We are famous now

Lewis & Clark’s student-run Environmental Studies journal, Living Mosaic, decided to showcase Kristina and me in a video this past week. They are expanding the reach of Living Mosaic this year, incorporating multimedia projects and even working on a blog. It is pretty impressive.

If you do decide to watch the video you’ll learn all sorts of interesting (?) things about our garden. As neither of us have any experience as film stars, we of course look quite confused and silly. No judging, please.

Thanks to Laura Houlberg and McKenzie Southworth, editors of Living Mosaic.

An Overload of Food–What do we do??

Our plants are beginning to provide us with so many veggies that we don’t know what to do with them.  We have so many rows of leafy greens, including kale, chard, mustard greens and lettuce; squash and zucchini; yellow wax beans, potatoes and endless herbs.   We have decided to try creating our own small CSA in the Lewis & Clark Community, with emphasis on providing free food to the students, staff and faculty.  If you are interested, comment, or look for the sign-up sheet around campus.  Also, feel free to visit us in the garden any time!  We are looking forward to giving away some of our delectable delights.  

What we watch during our breaks

This video keeps us going during the day and makes Kristina cry sometimes.

Mom in the garden!

Last Friday my mom helped us in the garden! It was so nice to have an extra pair of hands and we had a lot of fun working with her. We made quite a bit of progress weeding and laying down copious amounts of bark chips. Thanks mom!

Stay tuned next week for “Dad in the garden!”, featuring Passage’s Dad.

~Kristina

Delectable Delights

The garden is finally beginning to produce some edible delights.  Over the past few days, we have begun to cook, pickle, and enjoy a few different things.  In addition to eating the pickled radishes we made last week (tasty!), we made a delicious marionberry crisp and fresh salad yesterday.

The filling of a Marionberry crisp.

The final product (this is a mini crisp we made for our boss (what’s up Gabe), because we ate the big one before we remembered to take a picture…).

Salads made from garden-grown radishes, mustard greens, spinach and baby lettuce. We dressed it with a balsamic vinaigrette that was packed with freshly-harvested oregano, sage, and rosemary.

Pickled radishes, ready to be eaten! 

 

 

Rad Radishes

Kristina and I have discovered last week that many of our radishes–planted earlier this spring–have reached maturity.  So, we asked, what is the best thing to do with radishes?  Pickle them, we decided.  So, after harvesting, washing, and preparing a pickling brine, we mixed all the ingredients together and put them in the fridge.  In a few days we will be able to enjoy them, but for now they are pickling.  Keep checking in for updates, because we are planning on pickling a lot more as the summer goes on.

oh, and check this out this for some inspiration: 

peace and love,

Passage and Kristina

Greenhouse progress

We are in the midst of assisting in the planning and building of two greenhouses for the Lewis & Clark gardens, which are to be built once the school year starts. Today we took a trip with Amy Dvorak (Sustainability Manager) and Lucy (Greenhouse Extraordinaire) to the Habitat for Humanity Restore in the SE and the ReBuilding Center on Mississippi. Both places had a wealth of reclaimed, usable materials that will hopefully soon be a part of greenhouse project.  For the greenhouse, we hope to create a reclaimed, sustainable structure with such attributes as a rain barrel for capturing gutter runoff, sliding doors to maximize space, shelves from reclaimed materials, and as many windows as possible for heat retention (and alternatively, ventilation).  Keep posted for updates and photos of the process!  Have a peaceful, joyful afternoon.

 

Passage and Kristina