The idea behind the site is that anyone can grow their own salad, almost year-round, even if a shameless penny-pincher and already-cluttered-home dweller like me, thereby treating themselves to much tastier and healthier produce, and quite possibly doing Mother Earth a good turn, too. And then there’s the very attractive prospect of including a small virtual store-front on the site and earning money with my favorite past-time. Who wouldn’t want to do that? It’s a dream job. So, that’s the idea, but the site is still nascent, needs a lot more work, and some sort of community aspect, which a forum might fulfill, but then again, maybe not. In the meantime, it’s mainly an informational blog in which I learn while writing and doing — much like The Root, but with the underlying motive of $$ (and, dare I say it, a little bit of homegrown world-changing?).

I hope to keep up The Root as my personal gardening blog, because, hot damn, I still love you, old blog, and I find I can write a lot more freely and easily when not concerned about getting my facts straight, or attracting the ever-wily Google bots.

Windowsill-garden event of the day/appropriate metaphor:

This weekend I pulled out the dirt and the seeds and I started some lettuce, arugula, chard, spinach. It was very rewarding to have a tiny helper who was all too willing to get her hands dirty with the project. And it was wonderful to smell soil again.

It’s the heart of winter — cold blue outdoors until 7:30 am, on overcast days, and this town just shook off an ice storm that slicked every last twig and lasted for days.

But we might just (knocking on wood, not counting any chickens) have homegrown salad soon. I have had the urge for several weeks to grow greens right here at home — maybe on the balcony in some elaborate miniature hothouse contraption, maybe under the dreaded, sap- and soul-sucking fake lights…or maybe, as it turns out, on the living room windowsill. That might do just fine.

Sprinting to the head of the class is some red leaf lettuce, which sprouted in three days and earned a place on said windowsill. This is pretty exciting stuff. The arugula and chard are sending up spindly shoots, over on a top shelf of the media center.

This is all it takes. I am already imagining a pea plant on the windowsill, sending tendrils all the way up to the curtain rod. Freya and I will eat snap peas for breakfast. I will just keep trying until it works, until some vegetable grows green enough to eat. Dude. Nothing like optimism on a sub-freezing day.

Using space efficiently is definitely a priority, here — I have pretty much decided to completely turn over Firstplot to herbs and picking flowers — so my remaining vegetable-growing plots consist of Vineplot (approximately 3′x4′), the pumpkin patch, and my balcony. I’m looking for a very compact squash plant, if there is such a thing…I don’t know, as I have never grown winter squash before…

Butterless coconut pound cake

Neville and I have always joked that the kitchen is never really clean because we use it; lately, this has actually been the case. It’s thoroughly winter, everybody’s hungry pretty consistently six times a day, and we all need energy to be/keep up with a one-year-old. But since I’m also a sucker for efficiency, it’s my de facto mission to get good at making several simple recipes and then use variations on them forevermore — last summer it was pizza, grilled chicken salad, and frittata.

This winter it’s been more of a crapshoot, but we do seem to eat a lot of Indian dishes and “experimental” baked goods. That has generated a lot of half-used cartons of coconut milk, yogurt, and buttermilk. Which is good cause for more experimentation. That’s how this cake was born. Buttermilk is amazing — I have been using it as a substitute for butter in a lot of things, and I love how they turn out. (I used to substitute store-bought buttermilk with regular milk mixed with vinegar, but that has none of the frothy good thickness of cultured buttermilk. It’s worth the extra cost, in my book.)

Coconut Faux-Pound Cake

2 eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup buttermilk at room temp.
1 C. lite coconut milk at room temp.
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tsp baking powder
2 cup flour
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut

Stir together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk wet ingredients together and then add them to the dry mixture, along with the coconut. Pour into a greased, 9×5 inch loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, until just brown on top and firm to the touch. Let cool completely on a rack. Eat, eat, eat!

Now I have a gloriously dense seed catalog full of crops I’ve never heard of, and my garden plans for ’09 are totally in flux. I would like to grow a nice big batch of peas, but which ones?

So I’m appealing to you: What are your favorite pea varieties? Below is the list of peas available in my seed catalog; check your favorite, if it’s among them, and/or write your true favorite in the comments.

(Wow, I had to test-drive that new feature! Nice.)

Dudes, I don’t even want to rehash the sad story of “the harvest.” In my case, it played out like a horror flick. Or, you know, I remember first hearing about the hunger-relief program Second Harvest — now, I’m confident that they work wonders, but, in my world, their name has always sounded like a euphemism for regurgitation. That’s how it was in my garden this fall, yo; harvest became a euphemism for what I was doing: clawing through blighted and blackened tomatoes just so I could salvage some seeds; letting the countless tomatilloes soften on the vine after determining that I don’t really like their taste. Then there was the lone pumpkin that harvested itself / fell to the ground, from whence I tried to gather it and instead came away with the softened stem in my hand (I lugged it home, anyway, where it turned foul within three days). Oh, the saga.

Well, it can’t get much worse next year! Optimism levels on the rebound. Should be good-to-go by springtime. I am seriously reconsidering what I will grow, though. I’ll always enjoy fresh salad greens, and having so much zucchini will always be a wonderful reason to bake more chocolate zucchini cake (kudos, kudos, kudos). But, the tomatoes? Sheesh, guys, I really didn’t dig them that much. They are, in my book, the most beautiful seedlings, and we did get some delicious mouthsful of the Black Krim that honestly did taste like red wine. But, holy crap, the blight! The interminable wait for the first ripe one! And then the same wait for the next! And then I just got thoroughly depressed by the idea of schlepping over to the plot again just to pick maybe one ‘mato that would end up mouldering on the countertop, anyway (why? They kind of give me indigestion after noon)!

I miserably failed at Tomato Husbandry, yo, and Pumpkin Husbandry was like a “D-”.

The wondrous counterweight to all the rampant garden negligence is the unstoppable thriving of babygirl Freya. She now eats with two fists; and has a sort-of wrinkled-nose, “Hey, I’m on to you!” expression, along with countless others; and crawls with such amazing gusto that you can hear her coming from two rooms away. Her first words after “Mama” and “Dada” were “Hi” and “Wow.” How wonderful is that. When we get up in the morning, she waves to the world outside the window. The girl literally greets the day. How amazing is she?

Last night I was trying to chop up some herbs with a dull knife and she got so excited about the big bunch of cilantro. At the risk of projecting too much of my own enthusiasms onto her young self, I dare say the girl likes green things.

Here’s to more goofy updates before the next growing season. Can’t wait to read what you all have been doing.

Soon I’ll fashion a sort of hammock for the pumpkin to rest in. It’s a Jack O’ Lantern, so I assume it’s going to be a honker that could break right off at the stem if I don’t take care of it (actually, I didn’t assume any of this, since I have this dopey optimism about the garden — pretty much like Kevin Costner building the baseball diamond — but concerned relatives are truly worried about my pumpkin, so I’m going to take action). Come to think of it, I’ll need to rig up some sort of counter-weight to the pumpkin as it matures, so it won’t take a faceplant into the dirt and drag everything else along with it.

Green, green, green in the garden. Very monochrome. Positively dull. Yeah, I know, I’m asking for it. But, really, now I know why people grow flowers. Everything but black-eyed susans used to leave me cold, but I’m beginning to realize that a lot of flowers have really got something good going on. Anyway, until next year’s garden, I have Photoshop. When I squint my eyes, it almost looks real.

In brief: The carrots seedlings, such as they are, one centimeter tall, are yellowing, the chard has somehow mummified into tough little inch-long shoots, the lavender I had such high hopes for seems to think it has fall foliage, Freya’s little primrose plant is suffering through yet another cycle of flood and drought, and my Brandywine tomato is straining to produce its 20th leaf. It’s nothing good.

I remember reading that container gardening is difficult, but I moved on pretty quickly from that. Extreme conditions, microclimates, special handling required. Huh. You don’t say. Where’s that sub-standard potting soil? I’m just going to try it out, here. And I don’t know what possessed me to try to raise a windowbox of chard in seed-starting mix, but it’s just not happening.

It’s because, at this stage of baby-raising and life-muddling, I can only care for the type of garden that requires like two hours a week of maintenance, tops. So it’s working out in my plot because that stuff is growing in almost pure compost and seems to appreciate it. And because the plots are so jam-packed, the weeds just stay out of sight in the shady undergrowth. All I’ve been doing for the past couple weeks is just harvesting and ogling it. That’s my kind of garden, right there. There might be drawbacks to a jam-crammed veggie plot that I’m not yet aware of, but I just hope it stays that way.

So, maybe in a couple years, with the container garden. Maybe when Freya toddles and can play in dirt without putting it into her mouth (all the time) and it will be our thing.

To be continued.

It’s at least three tomatoes fused, with leaves fringing out from the center and the sides. A hairy, mutant Black Krim that will scare the kids at Christmas. Truly a tomato worthy of that “Play with Your Food” line of books that was popular several years ago. Will we cut it open and find four hearts, or one massive seed pit? What will it spawn when I plant its seeds?

The weather has been humid and rainy for days — weeks — and, all of a sudden like, the zucchini plants popped out scads of flowers. At least one is a female flower with a zuke developing behind it. And the green pumpkin is the size of a ping-pong ball.

Last winter I made some noise about guerrilla planting a pumpkin or two on the property line — land that is probably rightfully CVS’s. Haven’t done it yet, in part because, after numerous nighttime diaper runs, the CVS ladies know me and Freya and Neville on sight. I feel like I would be betraying some shallow but persistent cashier-customer bond of trust. Plus, my parents read this blog. However. There is also the matter of keeping my word, and some needy pumpkin plants that aren’t getting enough sun. I had success transplanting a zuke. Might try a pumpkin, an illicit, city pumpkin…should act while parents out of town…how old am I again?

Mid-July. Jesus, that late already. Rewind and replay, from the top: I started with good earth, built up better earth on top of it, planted it, mulled over it, watched the apple blossoms fall on it, lost many peas to a woodland foodie and then built a fence around it, let the weeds riot in it and then pulled them up, and now it grows, grows, grows.

I pulled out a bunch of carrots and, man oh man, was it satisfying to walk home pushing Freya with a bundle of carrot greens stowed in her stroller. It looked like I had just been to the grocery store and for some reason that was really wonderful, although wouldn’t it be great if it went the other way around, if I came away from the chain grocery store with a bag of farmfresh stuff, knowing it came from my corner of the earth. (I know, I know, I don’t think it’s going to happen, am not even sure it’s possible, but that’s a whole ‘nother post).

So, the garden has kept me in salads, and we’ve eaten a lot of green pizzas and fritattas and crustless quiches, but mostly it’s a finger food garden — six pea pods one evening, a couple carrots the next, none of which even makes it to the kitchen. This is all about to change, though, I can see it coming.

The tomatillos are seven feet tall and growing. Gigantism. All ten tomato plants are flowering, about half have fruit. I have four hearty zucchini plants and a couple runts. I have four pumpkin vines. Here’s to keeping everyone in Jack O’ Lanterns from September to November. Freya’s getting ready.

We threw handfuls into coconut curry and pasta. I make great green blendersful of pea puree for Freya. By this Friday, though, pea mania was wearing a little thin. My last batch sat on the counter for a couple days, until some were sprouting and others were gooshy and khaki-colored. There was a titch of mold. Looking at them, I didn’t want to feed them to my daughter’s young stomach. But I was goddamned if I was going to toss what I had shelled. So I boiled them and made pea pesto. Tonight we dine on homemade pesto and prosciutto pizza. In typical fashion for us, at about 10 pm.

I never liked pesto. In my previous life, people would go wild for pesto and I would just be like, “What?” But I made this; I know the ingredients — some of them since sprouthood — and I can taste them. Fresh basil, garlic, Parmesan, those peas. It tastes good.

In addition to going all Rachel Ray on my own ass, in the past week Neville and I have really gone Martha Stewart on our bedroom’s ass. Ah, the story of our bedroom’s paintjob. Thanks to the previous tenants, it used to be a cave: a dark brown base accented with weird light-blue rectangles, which used to frame their posters, and a glossy tan ceiling. Heavy, navy blue drapes. I don’t know what they were thinking. The room sucked up all available light like a black hole. But it wasn’t even like cozy, sleepy cave, it was just hideous. And we slept there for a year.

But now. It is an orange grove! Rich, golden orange walls, sage green curtains and bedspread. So refreshing and natural. Passing a day lily on the street today, I got all sappy: My room is the color of a day lily’s throat.

Thing looks like a caterpillar I would run from. Judging by the number of leaves (petals?), it resulted from three tomato buds that melted into one muscular ‘mato. How does that happen?! Will it ripen, be edible?

Here’s another question. I feel like “Highlights for Children.” Can you spot the spider in this photo?

I will never, ever feel warm and fuzzy about spiders, no matter how much good they do. Life is unfair for them that way. This one was no larger than my thumbnail, and a gorgeous lemon color with scarlet stripes but, damn, doesn’t it just look like a spooky little alien on the attack? Found out it’s a Goldenrod crab spider, which changes color to match its surroundings, from yellow-and-red to white. Damn, that’s good.

The last wondrous mutation of the day was one I happily ate. Yeah, I dug up a Little Finger carrot. I don’t know if it was mature — I’ve never grown carrots before — but it tasted pretty good. And very crisp. I hope I grow a couple more.

Today my mom and Freya stood by Vineplot for scale.

From back to front: four tomatillos, four tomatoes, four zucchinis. There’s also scads of baby lettuce, arugula, chard, and basil under the vine foliage. I have truly maxed out this little plot. I love how it looks, even if things get a little choked and don’t fruit much (do heirlooms bear less than hybrids, anyway?). It’s a micro jungle. And the tender “undergrowth” lettuces we have been eating are delicious. It’s such a departure from my garden last year, which was really undernourished and overburdened with slugs.

It’s another “test year.” And I actually have a hunch that every year will be a test year. It’s all about the process, yo, there will be no final-and-forever garden. Especially since I’m still breaking ground and rotating crops. Really like using farm terminology for my five square inches of farmland.

While waiting for my own veg to come in, I have continued buying at farmers’ markets and farmstands. Really just another part of the test process. Cocarde oakleaf lettuce? I don’t honestly taste a lot of difference between lettuces, but Cocarde scores major sexy points: lyrical name, deep color, robust shape. (Am I still writing about lettuce, or Raphael Nadal?) Costata Romanesco, a “nutty-flavored heirloom corgette”? I do believe I will. And save the seeds.

Eagerly awaiting Little Finger heirloom carrots…poor germination, but some are oranging now…