Free garden stakes, just look around your flower beds

Although I prefer to grow edibles in our landscape, I am a sucker for beautiful flowers and as a result have a variety of lilies - day, tiger, oriental, etc.
Today I was spending some of my garden time cleaning up the spent day lilies and trying to figure out what I could use to stake the pole beans and cucumbers when I had an AHA moment. Daylily stems are sturdy, tall, and free!

Viola, plant stakes. I used them for a cucumber that I have in a container and to help accommodate some of the vines on the pole beans, since the teepee I "built" earlier this season is now much too small.
I gently inserted the stems into the soil and quickly learned to hold them at the bottom or they will bend and break. I also found that I could prop them into an existing planting - the bean teepee to easily increase the height.

Near the top of the picture that's above, you can see the joints at the top of the stem where the lily flowers once bloomed. Now they make a great structure to help train vining plants.
As a frugal (OK, downright cheap) person, I couldn't be more thrilled with the results.

What AHA moments have you had in your garden this season?

A New Use for Nasturtiums

I love this time of year when we're enjoying the incredible fresh flavors from the gardens. This is actually the first year I've grown nasturtiums in my edible landscape, and I'm glad I did. They are pretty flowers that just make you want to smile.
From an edible point of view, the leaves and flowers add a nice tang to salads. However, having the same thing over and over is downright boring, so I went in search of other ways to use Nasturtiums and happened upon a recipe for "Poor Man's Capers" that I'm going to try and want to share with all of you. The recipe came from an article on About.com.

While real capers come from the buds of the caper plant, there's a less expensive version that is made from the still green and firm seeds of nasturtiums. The seeds in this photo came from the flower that has started to dry up. All you need to do is take a look at the wilting flowers for the seeds and harvest away. The seeds have a peppery bite that would also make an interesting addition to an antipasto.

Poor Man's Capers

1 Cup Nasturtium Seeds (still firm and green)
1 Cup White Wine Vinegar
1 Teaspoon Salt (or to taste)
5-8 peppercorns (slightly crushed)

1. Rinse and drain the nasturtium seeds and blot them well on paper towels.
2. Place the seeds into a 1 pint canning jar.
3. Combine wine vinegar, salt and pepper in a small saucepan and bring to a boil
4. Poor the boiling liquid into the canning jar over the seeds.
5. Seal and refrigerate the jar.
6. They need to stay in the refrigerator for about 3 months before they're ready to enjoy.

Use these "capers" any place you'd use ordinarily capers-on salads, vegetables and fish.

I'll keep you posted on the results of my batch and look forward to hearing from all of you about your experiences as well.

Time for Fall Planting & My Spring Lettuce Still hasn't Bolted

It's the time of summer when we start thinking about what to plant for fall harvest. The odd thing this year is that the early season lettuce that I planted in early May is still going strong. In a normal year it should have bolted (gone to seed) long ago.

The lettuce is just another testament to the cool summer those of us in the upper Midwest have had this year. Other signs are the bounty of tomatoes that are still green...oh just a couple days above 80 degrees and sunny would be wonderful.
The cool weather hasn't stopped the proliferation of zucchini though. It's producing abundantly, just as you would expect in a normal summer.

As we start to put this strange summer behind us, I'm planning for fall planting (and praying for a few days of summer). So far I've planted arugula, spinach, chard, and radishes. I've been planting beans every week to 10 days over the last month so we should have a nice harvest to freeze for winter. Still in the works are the snow peas that I'll be planting from seeds harvested from the spring crop; and since it's been so cool, I'm also thinking that I'll try some small cabbage and broccoli to see if they can mature before the first frost. Obviously, I don't need any more lettuce.

How about you? What are you planting for the fall harvest?

Buried in Zucchini

It's that time of year when the zucchini is taking over our lives. Zucchini is a wonderful summer squash that can be among the most prolific plants in your garden. When this plant takes off, it takes over. Once the zucchini starts producing you'd be wise to check the plant a couple times each day. Otherwise, the perfect, cucumber-size squash you decided to give just one more day, may grow to the size of a bowling pin!

One of my summer reads this year was Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. In it she describes zucchini season as the time when you have to lock your car doors even in her small town because otherwise you're likely to come back and find someone was kind enough to leave a zucchini or two on your seat!

I have just one zucchini plant this year, but at this point it looks like I'm still going to need to find some creative ways to use the bounty of the harvest. One thing I know I'll do for sure is give some to the local food shelf to share with others in need of some real, fresh food.

Other than that, there will be the usual zucchini bread, zucchini on salads, grilled/roasted zucchini, and I plan to try Zucchini chocolate chip cookies.
It may just be another way to get my family to enjoy our zucchini bounty.

Check out these other sources for zucchini recipes. You may be able to find them at your local library, or you can purchase through Amazon.com.


Photo from Springhill Community Farm, where you'll also find some great zucchini recipes.