Gardening Class #1

All about starting a garden...mainly a vegetable garden.  Today was the first class that I held here at Irish Gardens.  I wanted to share the knowledge that I have gained and my love for planting with others so I decided to have a class.  It was open to all ages.  I only had one person show up but thats ok.  We still had fun and I think she learned something.

One of the things I wanted to do especially if kids showed up was give them a chance to plant some veggies here in a special garden and come back at least once a month to check on them.  All the veggies produced from their plantings would be theirs to keep. 

Here is what we did and what we learned.

 The new garden area.  It seems every year I add a new garden.  Hubby's ok with that as it makes it less grass for him to mow.9

 My student - A (no names really needed) planted and learned.  First when building a new bed lay some newspaper down first...then the soil.  This acts as a weed blocker with out the price of the fabric.  Deeper is not always better is something else she learned.  Some plants do just fine in a little amount of dirt.  Then it was on to planting.  We discussed the use of square foot gardening and how much you can really get into this one garden...quite a lot.  To the right here she planted beans and carrots.

 Then after that we talked about some companion planting.  How planting marigolds with tomato's is smart for many reasons.  We talked about other companion plants as well but didn't plant those.  Maybe next time.  After the marigolds and tomato's the left were planted it was time to water.

 Lastly or maybe we talked about it first was onions.  And their crazyness in my gardens, but it gave A a chance to see what they look like from small seed bulb to harvest.  Granted these are far from the size you would find in the stores but the smell is dead on and sometimes you don't need all that onion...just a little bit.

A successful class if you ask me.  I had fun and I think she did too and thats all that matters right?

Harvesting Edible Garden Tour - September 2011

Welcome one and all to the Monthly edition of the Harvesting Edible Garden Tour.  A place where you can come and find out what is harvesting all over the gardening blogospere.  So what you say could be harvesting in Irish Gardens at this time of year?

 My greenhouse still gets warm most days so I still have Eggplant harvesting.

 The sweet peppers that have been growing in the greenhouse - The only sweet pepper plant to survive the crazy summer weather finally had a pepper ready to harvest.

 Chives chives and more chives.

 Still got a few tomatoes left that came ready this morning.

 Green beans finally are plumping up enough to harvest as well.

Carrots - finally after watching all summer the plants very very slowly get bigger I had carrots ready.  Guess they didn't want to get bigger than this just like last year.

So lets see what is edible and harvesting in your garden?  Post and leave a link below.

Irene is messing with my tomato's

So although I knew that when the rain and wind came to my area from Irene that my tomato's would be one of the first of the garden casualties but I so hoped I was wrong.

Just look at my poor tomato plant....

Look at parts of the yard....lots of rain....

So how did Irene effect you or is she yet to come your way?

Harvesting Edible Garden Tour - A day late

Sorry all I lost track of what day it was.  Silly me.  Oh well.  So how is your garden growing?  Got anything edible that is harvesting this month?  I did and still do if you count my herbs.  Which for this month I am not.  See this month I want to show off my other harvests.  Yesterday's actually...Sunday I went shopping in the garden and came back with:

Some Corn on the Cob

 A few more cucumbers

 Hot pepper

And a few tomato's.

Not a bad day at the market if you ask me.  So tell me what you harvested this month.  Leave a link below to your post so others can join the tour and see what you harvested.




I can't wait to see how your garden is doing.

I'll take a BLT w/ MBC

So who wants to take a guess as to what that mess of letters mean?  I bet you'll get half of them right....maybe more.  Here is a hint.

Almost all the letters are on the table.  How many can you guess?  Give up.  BLT - Bacon Lettuce Tomato sandwich w/ Mayo Basil Chives.  A meal from my garden.  Mayo and bread were the only items on the menu that were not grown here by me.  I added the chives and basil just because.  Well I see basil and tomato all the time together so I thought why not?  Then the garlic chives well I put them on everything.

 Look at the size of that tomato.  I mean really...one slice was all I needed and then some.

Not the best picture in the world but you can mostly see everything.  And let me tell you it tasted a whole lot better than it looks.  So in case you don't know how to make these wonderful sandwiches here is what I used to make them:

1lg Tomato - sliced
1pkg bacon - cooked
2 handful's of lettuce - cut to sandwich size if needed
1 stem basil (about 6 leaves) leaves removed and cut in half
small handful of garlic chives - chopped up
bread
mayo

Put them all together and enjoy.  Although the order doesn't matter it's best to put the mayo on the bread and then all the other ingredients between the slices of bread.  But don't let that stop you either.

My first true meal from the garden

The other day I fixed my first true meal that just about all came from the garden.  Eggplant parmigiana.  Oooohhh baby was it good.  Special thanks go out to my sister Melanie who although helped after the meal was fixed let me know that I did in fact fix it right. So here is the final look of the meal that almost didn't have leftovers:

This was so good.  Silly me forgot to take a picture when it was first done so this is the very last portion....it went to work with the hubby the next day.  You can see the one of ingredients that didn't come from my garden - Cheese.

Yup thats corn on the cob....from my garden.

The meal before preparation.
1 Eggplant
3 Tomatoes (only one shown still had to get others)
Spices
Corn on the cob
Cheese
1 Can paste
1 egg -beaten
flour
oil

First time ever growing eggplant and thanks to some advice the plants were moved into the greenhouse as they are a heat loving plant.  This is the first one to form and it was tasty.

Thats 3 Beefmaster tomato's in there all puree'd up and cooking.  I added the can of paste after this picture because it needed thickening.  My sister informed me after that beefmaster tomato's are great for slicing but not so much for sauce as they are watery.....found that out the wrong way...but you know what?  1 can of paste thickened it up and I still call this meal made from my garden.

My crazy small corn on the cob hanging out in boiling water doing there thing.  So how to fix this meal you are wondering?  Well let me tell you.  The list of ingredients is already listed above so lets not go through that again.


Cut your tomato's how you like it then put into blender set on puree.  Pour into sauce pan and add paste.  Add spices to taste (oregano, basil, sage, thyme, rosemary, parsley to name a few) Italian seasoning is a good one to add.  Cook on low heat tasting often if it tastes bitter sprinkle a little sugar and stir.

Take your corn on the cob and place into boiling water.  By the time the rest of the meal is done they will be as well just keep the heat on low.

Slice the eggplant like you do tomato's....to get circles dip into the egg then coat with flour.  Then fry in a pan with the oil...add more oil as needed.  Just enough to brown on both sides.  It takes about 2-3 min each side. Place cooked eggplant on a plate covered in a paper towel.

Preheat oven to 400.

Once the sauce is to your taste and the eggplant is cooked place the eggplant into a casserole dish in one layer, add grated parmigiana. cheese if wanted then sauce and topped with cheese (mozzarella shredded is good.) Depending on the thickness of the eggplant and sauce together will determine how long in the oven but should be less than 10 min.  For me it took about 5 for them all to be heated through and the cheese melted.

Serve and enjoy.

Thriving Thursday - On a Friday

Another week almost passed me by before I got my Thriving Thursday post out.  If it helps I started it yesterday but things came up and I had to stop.  So on this Friday morning what is Thriving in your gardens?

 I have a pumpkin.....finally a pumpkin that didn't fall off.

 My herb Marshmallow is flowering...pretty white flowers with purple middles....

 The orange froggy dude is doing great in the greenhouse.  He really likes it in there.

 While the White Rose of Sharon bush is flowering it's beauty, the bee's are playing in the pollen.

 Baby spider plants are rooting quite well in water....this guy was potted up to be sold through the other site (www.theirishgardens.com)

And finally Tomato's, Cucumber's, and herbs were thriving and ripening.

So what is Thriving in your neck of the garden blogosphere?  Write about it and add your link below.

Where did the time go?

So I just realized that I missed 2 Thriving Thursdays.  How did I do that? Oh well.  Anyways I have lots to show you all.

Like my Marshmallow plant is now flowering.  Such a pretty delicate flower.

 Blue Chiffon Rose of Sharon is in full bloom. So pretty with the rain drops.

The white Rose of Sharon is also blooming beautifuly this rainy morning.

 My new Rose of Sharon bush is this beautiful Blush Satin.  I love it.

 And the old big double purple Rose of Sharon bush is also flowering.  Can you tell I like Rose of Sharon bushes.  They are just so pretty.

The first of the Rose of Sharon bushes along the driveway have finally bloomed....simple yet pretty.  So far thats 5 different types that are in bloom right now.  I still have at least 1 other variety to bloom.

 Finally a pumpkin to speak of.  Gets bigger every day so thats good.

And the big news of the day other than the pretty blooms around the gardens is my tomatoes are finally starting to turn a color other than green.

Ok so thats not the biggest news of the day.  A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted to start a small business selling my herbs.  See they love the greenhouse and I had started to add cuttings to the compost pile because they were growing so fast I had more than I needed.  I mean I was cutting mint and basil every week and now my dried herb containers are full.  So as of late this past week I received my sales tax licence in the mail so Irish Gardens is now open.  I am so happy and can't wait to really get started.

Attack of the tall tomatoes

Remember last year when Bob and Bobbet shared their story about Greenhouse life as well as the importance of strong supports?  Well you would think that I would remember and take my own advice right?

Don't worry I did.  Only problem is see in this picture that really tall support?  Yea I had to go get that yesterday because apparently the 7 supports already in with the tomatoes were no longer strong enough to hold them up.  See the tomatoes are huge (not a bad thing) the supports are over 5 feet but apparently this particular plant doesn't want to stop growing at 5 feet.  And the plant supports and all started leaning away from the house.

 Well the new supports are in and I just had to take this picture.  See I am 5 ft 3in and look at the tomatoes......at least a ft taller than me.  Please don't look closely at me in this picture as well....I don't look so good.

Look at those beauties.  This waiting for them to ripen is driving me nuts.  There are so many of them.

Oh well I'm not the first gardener to wish that time would go faster.