Final harvest 2015

This past Friday we got our first frost, with the temperature dipping into the mid 20's. I headed out to the garden to harvest everything but the kale (it doesn't mind a little frost).

I picked all the tomatoes, green or otherwise, parsley, basil, and eggplants. (not included in this picture is another flowerpot full of green tomatoes.

I don't know if we are going to be able to eat all the green tomatoes. My plan is to eat fried green tomatoes until we can't stand them anymore, pickle some of them to give to friends and family and make some green salsa. So these are my good intentions.


On Saturday I put some basil cuttings in water to root them, to grow the basil on my windowsill throughout the winter. Then I decided to turn the rest of that beautiful bouquet of herbs into chimichurri sauce.

Chimichurri is an Argentinean sauce or condiment meant to be served with grilled steak. I am not a meat eater, but I could eat this sauce every day. I put it on rice or veggies, or veggie tacos, and sometimes just eat it with tortilla chips. The nice thing is that I have never made it the same way twice and it always is delicious. I got the recipe from my friend Ben after he made the sauce for us this summer at our friend's lake house.

Here is my version of Ben's recipe. It is similar to a pesto sauce, and can be made with or without limes (limes give it a fresh taste and go well with the cilantro) I love it both ways. You can substitute the herbs with what you have on hand and you can use different kinds of vinegar. In the recipe above I used a lot of parsley, some basil and some garlic chives (no cilantro this time). Almonds can be substituted for the pine nuts.

1 Jalepeno or other spicy pepper(s) (or not)
1 bunch of parsley
2 bunches of cilantro (or more parsley and no cilantro)
some fresh basil and chives (or not)
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
3-4 cloves garlic
1 scant tbs oregano
1 tsp salt
pepper to taste
1-2 tbs pine nuts

Juice of 2 limes - optional

Blend in blender and serve.

The sauce tastes even better the day after it's made. The garlic gets much stronger and the limes and vinegar taste less sour.

Well that's it for this year! The straw bale garden turned out to be a fun experiment and experience, and I hope that everyone who is curious will give it try. Please feel free to contact me with questions!

Renee
gallusgurl@gmail.com

End of Summer Summary

I haven't posted in a while, but I want to follow up on how everything eventually turned out in my straw bale garden. I can't say that I am disappointed.

I have been busy working on finishing up my PhD and have been a very lazy gardener, and blogger. The beauty of doing the straw bale garden was even though I have not been able to tend to it much it has been doing pretty good.

It's the end of September and I am still getting a lot of tomatoes, and the eggplant has finally come in.

The weather this year has really had an impact on my garden. In the spring it was very cool. The tomatoes, peppers and eggplants stayed very small and did not start really taking off until about August. Also it was very wet. I posted earlier about the excessive amount of rain we have had this year, with June being extreme.

According to the Illinois State Climatologist blog, this year was the 6th wettest summer for Illinois ever recorded. Illinois officials have sought a federal disaster declaration from USDA in response to the heavy rainfall and damaging flooding across Illinois during May, June, and July of 2015.

And I think the rainfall really took a toll on some of the plants in my garden. The straw bales hold moisture well, a little too well. Because of all the rainfall they never were really able to dry out completely during the months of July and August. I did not water the straw bale garden one time in these months because it didn't need it.

I noted in my July 21st post that one of my 2 summer squash plants was wilting. I think this was due to root rot. The week after the first plant went, the second one died as well,  leaving me with only two summer squash. At least I got a little food out of the deal.

Also I posted earlier how well the cucumbers were doing. Some of them tasted good, but I noticed that as the season went on they were getting extremely bitter, which is a sign of stress. Cucumbers like well drained soil, but the straw bales were not drying out. This was unfortunate because I was looking forward to lots of cucumber salads, but ended up not eating very many because of the bitterness. The cucumber plants also did not get very much sun which may have stressed the plants as well.

the last cucumber

The tomatoes, peppers and eggplants that seemed to be stunted by the cool weather in the spring, flourished in the late summer and were not at all fazed by the dampness of the bales. Also the parsley, basil and nasturtiums did not suffer. These plants got the most sun, which may have contributed to their success.

The kale did well, but it didn't get as big as I thought it should have. It did not seem to suffer from the damp bales, but it was located in the shadier part of the garden.

Kale

Kale

And there are still lots of tomatoes!

These pear tomatoes did extremely well.

 

Tomatoes and nasturtiums taking over the compost bin.

Some plants that were planted in the shadier area did not do well at all. The beans did not amount to much, and the peas never bore fruit at all. I also planted radish seeds in some of the bales, the radish greens grew but not much came of them.

 Here is an image of the end of the year garden. As you can see my trellising efforts have been defeated by the weight of the tomato plants. Next year I will try to drive the stakes in deeper and instead of using wire, I will invest in something a little more sturdy.

Also I wanted to try to show how much the bales have shrunk throughout the season. It is hard to see in the picture below, but I had some green wire fencing wrapped around the bales to keep them upright. If you can try to see where the fencing is you can see that the bale is no longer touching it.

Here is another picture of the shrunken bales. They have decomposed a lot.

Next year it will be a different story for this garden. The people who bought the house next door have informed me that they will be parking their 30 foot mobile home right in front of my garden, where the tomato plants did so well. On the bright side, they cut down a very large oak tree in their yard removing some shade that was taking a toll on the garden.

We will see what the future holds. All in all I am very happy the way the straw bale garden turned out, especially since it didn't require very much work at all. I will definitely be doing this again.

The cucumbers are coming!

I planted 6 cucumber plants in the straw bale garden. I know that's probably overkill, but I'm crazy about cucumbers. Especially refrigerator cucumbers. My mother used to make refrigerator pickles (that's what we called them) with cucumbers from our garden, so whenever I eat them they remind me of my childhood, and my mom. <3

The cucumber vines are gangly and I don't have them trellised correctly. I should probably get to that that this week.

Cucumber #2 (Edwin and I at cucumber #1 this weekend)

About 10 days ago I ate the first red tomato from the garden. I was very excited, I made homemade mozzarella, and picked basil from the garden. Then I sliced the tomato and put it on french bread with the mozz, basil, salt and pepper and grilled it in my pannini maker. Unfortunately, the tomato was mushy tasting, which was a bit disappointing. I think it might be because the weather had been unseasonably cool the past few weeks, and that tomato took forever and a day to become ripe.

The weather for the next 10 days will be in the low 80's according to the forecast, which is good news for the au courant tomatoes growing on the vines. And....we will finally have a break from the rain (yippie!), which means I will have to actually remember to turn on the hose a couple of times this week.

I think this is the Stupice tomato

Cherry Tomato- either Isis Candy (gold) or Cherry Cascade Hybrid (red)

I am not sure what is going on, but one of my summer squash plants is wilted (the plant on the left in the picture below). I looked online, and one explanation for this may be root rot; the roots are getting too much water. Not much I can do about that, since it has been raining almost daily. The plant has a few good leaves, and the flowers look okay. It looks like smaller leaves are coming in, so it might be able to recover.

Wilted squash plant on left.

Finally the pepper plant and the eggplants are getting bigger. They were staying so small, I think because of the cool weather.

3 eggplants, a pepper plant and nasturtium

Round cucumber plants and tomatoes

This straw bale garden is about a week ahead of my other traditional garden in the yard, but I feel it is doing much better. The plants are much bigger, and I think that has to do will the extra nitrogen and fewer weeds.

Giant basil leaves

Lots of parsley, basil and nasturtium

Beans, beans good for the heart

It has only been two days since my last post, but there is already more to see!

The temperature has been in the 80's the last few days, which has really helped the garden grow. It was hot this morning but I didn't bother watering because the bales were damp, and it is supposed to rain today. That is another nice thing about the straw bale garden. It is okay if you forget to water one day because the bales hold so much moisture.

Dolloff beans

The tomato is ripe for the picking!

Cherry tomatoes

These squash leaves seem bigger than they were two days ago

Baby cucumbers

More baby cukes

Land of the ...Mosquito

Happy 4th of July!!

I did not post about my straw bale garden in the month of June, although things have been going (growing) very well. This year we had the wettest June in Illinois EVER. Well at least since 1895, which is how far back the records go. We had 9.37 inches of rain this year, with the second wettest year happening in 1902 with 8.27 inches.

This July we are breaking the record for the most mosquitoes in Illinois EVER (probably).

https://climateillinois.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/wettest-june-and-now-second-month-on-record-for-illinois/

 I have been meaning to post an update, but one thing that has been keeping me out of the garden are the mosquitoes. I am not kidding, they are extreme. I decided to take the plunge today, so I loaded up on bug spray and ventured in. I still ended getting about 10 or so bites anyway, 4 of them on my face. As I was trying to take pictures of the plants the bugs were flying in my face and ears, they were everywhere, it was horrible. I am surprised that they are not visible in the pictures because they were pretty much all I could see.

Kale and tomatoes

Beans, peas, kale

Tomatoes, summer squash, nasturtium and basil.

My first (and still only tomato fruit)

tomato, parsley, nasturtium, cucumber (there are some tiny cucumbers growing on the vines!)

Pepper and eggplants (and nasturtium)
The peppers and eggplant are still small, due to the cooler
temperatures we've been having

more cucumbers

pepper, tomato and eggplant

You can see from the bales that the spiders are thriving as well as a result of the rainfall.

I have to say I am pleased with how this garden experiment is going so far and can't wait to enjoy the fruits of my (non) labor. Seriously, I have hardly done any work since fertilizing and planting. Today is the first day in probably a month that I turned on the drip hose. But mostly I have just peeked in every once in a while to see how things are going. Today I pruned the tomato plants, they all have buds. I should probably add another wire to trellis the tomatoes, beans, and maybe the cucumbers.

Gardeners usually spend a lot of time in the garden weeding, but guess what! There are hardly any weeds in my straw bale garden! (We won't talk about my other two gardens). The few weeds that do come up are very easy to remove.

Beans and Mushrooms

It was unseasonably cold this morning when I went out to check on the garden. The temperature was somewhere in the mid-40's, but I didn't mind because I saw the first bean plants poking their seedling heads out of the straw bales.

Dolloff Bean

I may end up transplanting the pole beans somewhere else in my yard and plant more tomatoes on the straw bales.

Mushrooms are growing on most of the straw bales and they look really cool. I think these might be shaggy mane mushrooms, which are edible. I will leave some of them to see if they mature into shaggy manes, but I don't think I will eat them because I am not confident in my mushroom identifying skills. Maybe a mycologist, or one of my Polish friends will read this post and let me know.

 And we also have the first tomato of the season! I don't know what kind it is, it is one of the plants that I bought from the Communiversity Garden sale at NIU.


More mushroom images...

Cucumbers and mushrooms

Kale and Mushrooms

Maybe you have guessed by now that there is a maple tree shading my straw bales. These stupid whirlygig seeds are also edible, and if I end up eating them, it will be out of spite. http://www.wikihow.com/Eat-Maple-Seeds

 In other news I harvested some radishes from the traditional garden (not straw bale). We will be having these for dinner tonight (and yes I saved the greens too.)

Radish, red onion, salt and lime juice.