The Falling Blog

Carrots! Not only are they ready, they might be overdue. I pulled some more for dinner last night and was very surprised at how thick and beefy they were. Biggest carrots I’ve ever grown. (I’m 6’4” for reference, and you can compare them to my forearm). 

I planted them on Mar17 (according to my notes) they probably could have been harvested two weeks ago. But oh man how satisfying it was to pull them up and out of the earth. 

What are you harvesting? 

Mid week garden update and Soup Recipe!

I’m amazed at how much has changed in my humble little garden in such a short time. 

A switch has been pulled and my tomatoes, melons and squashes have all jumped into super growth mode. I even started researching pruning tomatoes to keep ahead of the extensive number of new suckers growing on my plants. It’s sorta funny, when I received the plants initially from Gurney, they were left of my stoop for a couple of days and looked real poorly. I picked up 3 more from my local shop, (which I may live to regret looks like!!) Oh well, practice makes perfect. 

Honey Bees seem a bit more scarce this year than in previous. I have some suspicions as to why, but the wasps and bumblebees are picking up the slack mostly. 

I’m not feeling terrifically well today, but my wife is quite sick. I’m working remotely to help keep a lid on the kids and to let my wife rest. I figured I would do double duty and make some fresh soup from my garden carrots. They’re crowding the tomatoes anyway so, woo! Fresh soup.

Fresh Soup Recipe

Water (2-3 cups)

2 diced onion spouts

1 small clove of garlic. 

5 carrots sliced thinly

5-8 baby red potatoes

2 bouillon cubes

2-3 chicken breasts chopped into pieces

Kosher Salt, pepper, red pepper, onion powder, garlic powder

1. In a pan start heating the water to a boil. In a separate pan, brown the garlic with some butter. 

2. Once the garlic is browned, put the butter and the garlic into the hot water. Place the chopped chicken breast into the garlic oiled pan (that you used to brown the garlic). Sear the chicken on both sides and reduce heat. 

3. Slice the carrots, potatoes, and onion greens into the heating water. Throw in the salt, peppers, powders, and the bouillon cubes. Once the mixture boils, reduce heat and set a timer for about 45 minutes. This is now your main soup stock. 

4. While the stock is heating, finish heating the chicken. You don’t want to throw it into your soup too early, or it will get really stringy. Once the timer goes off, place your chicken into the soup and get ready to serve.  

You can make this a cream soup by starting with a condensed soup of your choosing. I would recommend like cream of chicken or cream of mushroom, depending on your tastes. 

Have a great day! I’m going to take some more vitamin C and get those kids settled down. 

Back Yard Gardening with Farmer Pete. 

The weather this spring has been very kind to my little townhouse backyard garden. Everything is just flourishing in the wet/hot/wet/mild cycle we’ve been having. 

We’ve already harvested our radishes and made a second planting of carrots in their place. The peas that I risked planing in early March have just started producing edible peapods. 

The carrots are getting quite big as are the beets. I’ve got flowers on the tomato plants so big red fruits shouldn’t be far behind. 

My melon plants are looking to get going any time now. I really like the flowers they lay out. I’m ready for them this year. I will be training them to behave, unlike last year where they simply took over my yard. 

The cucumbers are the best surprise, I didn’t think we’d be getting flowers and cukes as early as June, but there they are. They’re competing for space with the peas, so I’ll be interested to see how they fight. 

Pretty soon we’ll have to get the canning gear switched from strawberry jam into pickle making. We’re trying to get ourselves stocked for the winter with canned goods from our humble little yard. I think I’ll do a canning post when we get there. GO BUY A CANNER if you’re tending a garden. You will not regret it. 

Now to cook some din din!