Spice Cake

This moist cake doesn't need frosting, and can be made as a gluten-free cake (see flour substitution in green type below). The original recipe from Bob's Red Mill spelt flour package - which I've modified - called for apple sauce, but I used unsweetened homemade pear sauce. This can also be made in two small round cake pans and layered, or made into individual muffins instead of a sheet cake. (NOTE: words in red are described in more detail in the "Ingredients" list in the right column.)

• 1/2 c coconut oil, softened if solid
• 3/4 c honey
• 3 eggs
• 1-1/2 c apple or pear sauce, unsweetened
• 2-1/4 c flour *
• 1-1/2 t baking soda
• 1-1/4 T baking powder
• 1/2 t salt
• 1-1/2 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t each: ground nutmeg, ground cloves, powdered gingerroot
• 1 c golden raisins
• 3/4 c chopped raw nuts, divided

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* For a gluten-free version of this cake, I used 2 c of this flour mixture:

•   6 parts fine brown rice flour
•   2 parts potato starch
•   1 part tapioca flour

… then I added 1/4 c almond flour, plus 1t xanthan gum

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Preheat overn to 350°. Grease a 9" x 13" glass cake pan (optional: line with greased parchment paper). Cream the oil and honey, add eggs and apple/pear sauce and beat until well mixed. In another bowl, mix dry ingredients and spices. Mix dry ingredients into wet. Add raisins and 1/4 c nuts. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle remaining chopped nuts evenly on top of the batter.

Bake for 35 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave the cake in it for another 10 minutes - this helps cook the center without over-browning. Cool and remove from pan to a rack as soon as possible, since the steam released while in the pan will make the cake get too soft.

My Summer Garden 2012

Summer has flown by, without any posts on my gardens. I guess I've been too busy getting my hands dirty! It's a dreary wet day, so a good chance for me to catch you up on what I've been growing.

The weather has been odd, with off and on torrential rains through June, then dry and over 100 degrees in July, still hot but with occasional rain in August, and a mixed bag this month. But evidently it has made gardens happy, with a banner year for things like peppers and tomatoes for many local backyard farmers.

My garden strategy this year was not to be overwhelmed with any one crop, and it has been successful. We've had a great variety of vegetables, fruit and herbs. My neighbor shared his abundance of tomatoes, plus sweet and hot peppers; I canned salsa, discovered homemade tomato paste, and made marinara sauce to freeze. Our one cooking Keifer pear tree yielded a big harvest during the last month, which I made into pear sauce (like apple sauce) and froze. Four minutes in the pressure cooker is all it takes for a big batch of apple or pear sauce - try it. (I'll be posting a Spice Cake made with pear sauce soon - it's yummy.) A few volunteer plants popped up in my garden, either from birds dropping seeds or from seeds still viable in my compost soil. Two of these surprise plants turned out to produce wonderful sweet cantaloupes, in addition to the Hale's Best melons I had purposely planted. I found what cantaloupe couldn't be eaten right away can be cut into chunks and frozen in zip bags for a great smoothie ingredient. Another volunteer plant has given a us a regular supply of tasty pickling cucumbers, enough for a couple of jars of refrigerator pickles. Otherwise, we've pretty well kept up with eating everything freshly harvested. Our diet is very healthy!

My bush Blue Lake green beans grew in slow motion at the start, but then provided what seemed to be an extended period of production, largely free of bug damage. I have been growing okra for the first time, a Midget Cowhorn Okra variety and a standard tall one, Crimson Spineless Okra. The midgets produced just as well, on strong stalks not over 3 feet tall, and tasted just as good. I've cooked the okra in many different ways, and we love it. I've panfired the Southern-favorite cornmeal-breaded slices, panfried the okra with onions and carmelized in soy sauce, added slices to stirfries, grilled whole pods until charred then eaten like French fries, sauteed and added to pasta sauce, and cooked them in a big pot of Seafood Gumbo. I even like to eat small okra pods raw! If you've ever eaten okra and found it was too slimy, I would guess it was either sitting around too long after being harvested or not cooked properly. Okra is going to be a mainstay in my future veggie gardens, especially since it's virtually pest- and disease-free.

Chufa, a grass which produces a nut-like tuber

My friends Art and Judy gave me a big bag of marigold seeds and I started a bed early in the spring. They grew wonderfully, into bushy foot-tall plants, which I transplanted all over the vegetable garden. Slow to flower, but once they started it's been an endless flood of orange/yellow blossoms. They add much to the garden: beauty, attraction to pollinating bees, and - I believe, although some authorities disregard this - detering harmful bugs from the vegetable plants. I like the scent; it reminds me of a little garden I planted when I was about 10 years old, so I must have planted marigolds. I've gathered loads of seeds to replant these next year.

As I mentioned in a spring post, I quarantined my tomato plants. This helped to delay and minimize the onset of blight, long enough so I've gotten a good harvest, considering I only grew 3 tomato plants. The "Legend" variety, an heirloom resistant to blight, has done the best for me. Only recently the plants have been under attack by hornworms, so my challenges continue! I seemed to be winning the war with grasshoppers. The white netting I laid over the sweet potato bed when I planted it has filled up with a mass of lush, healthy, un-eaten vines underneath, so I am looking forward to a good potato harvest later this fall.

Other successes in this year's vegetable garden include Japanese long cucumbers, Albino Bullnose sweet peppers (start out an ivory color and mature to bright orange), Patio Red Marconi sweet peppers, and Black Beauty eggplant.

I tried growing Kabouli Black garbanzo beans, but I consider this experiment a failure. Each little pod only produced 2 seeds, and they were all shriveled up. Plus it seemed to take forever to grow. I've also been growing a grassy plant called chufa (or chuffa) which should yield some little nut-like tubers on the roots before frost hits… I'll report on those after harvest. I grew a cucumber-bug resistant plant called West India Burr Gherkins, which I grew in a tall tomato cage. It climbed well up the cage then overflowed, looking like a topiary of Cousin It! The oval spiny fruit is hard to pick and eat, so I mostly used it in smoothies, since it's very mild tasting. Didn't attract bugs, but I don't think I'll grow it again. Cushaw White Squash was also supposed to be squash bug resistant, but succumbed to wilt (usually transmitted by squash bugs) and I had only harvested one big squash. It's been in cool storage in the basement since; we'll eat it later in the fall. Other new plants in this year's garden include lime basil, with fabulous lime flavor, great for pesto or used fresh in fruit smoothies; Perilla Purple Zi Su or "shiso" which is a lush dark red foliage plant used raw in salads, fresh in smoothies, or added to cooked food, like rice, to color it pink; cinnamon basil which is strong in its spicy flavor and will be in all my gardens from now on. Anise hyssop grew wonderfully from seed, has a great licorice flavor for tea or smoothies, and attracted masses of bees to its pretty purple flowers. I'll miss these flavorful herbs in the winter, but I've dried lots of their leaves and made vodka-based tinctures also. I've done the same with my super sweet stevia plants, started from seed, harvested for its leaves.

Black garbanzos

With autumn arriving soon, I've been planting my fall/winter crops. Garlic went in 2 weeks ago and I'll do another planting of it in Oct. I started seedlings in my basement, where the temp is about 65, for Georgia collards, brussels sprouts, Blue Curled Scotch and Siberian kale, Bulls Blood beets, and spinach. I've already transplanted some into the garden, holding back half the seedlings in case hot weather returns and destroys the first planting. I also sowed seeds for a few kinds of lettuce, and a mild tasting green I've not tried before - called mache or corn salad. It's time to plant cilantro (coriander) seeds now too; I've already transplanted one which Mother Nature started in my "excess" garden. I'm going to try a bed of pea pods, which I've only grown here in early spring, to see if I can get a late fall harvest. We've gotten several inches of rain in the past 12 hours, so I might have lettuce and mache growing all over the garden soon!

Garden season continues here in Zone 7. I'm already thinking about different crops; my friend Judy shared Dragon's Tongue Bush Beans from her garden, and they are so tasty I've made her promise to save me seeds. I just tried cooking turnips, prepared as you would mashed potatoes, which I bought from the nearby Mennonite farm, and they were so tasty that I'd like to try to grow some myself. They are a cool weather crop, so if I can find some seedling plants I'll try growing them soon. Tomorrow will be a great day for pulling weeds, with the saturated clay soil all loosened up. Happy gardening!

3 Great Homemade Salsas

Seems everyone has too many tomatoes around here these days, so here are some more tomato recipes. 

For me, nothing beats fresh summer salsa made from homegrown tomatoes, but in the dark days of winter some home canned or frozen salsa tastes quite wonderful.

Here are 3 ways to make your own salsa, ranging from simple to complex. Any of these recipes can be eaten right away, and all can be preserved for later enjoyment. Even if you don't do home canning, a cooked salsa like any of these freezes very well.

 
SALSA 1:  Packaged Mix (makes as little as 1 pint)

Rated: Easy

There's a line of salsa mixes and other canning products called "Mrs. Wages®." The ingredients are all natural, basically a mix of dehydrated vegetables, herbs, salt, and spices. Choose the spice mix suited to your taste - Classic Salsa, Hot Salsa, Jalapeno Salsa, Verde, Habanero, etc. - and simply add chopped tomatoes and vinegar! The package says you can even use canned tomatoes from the supermarket. Boil, simmer, then eat, freeze or can. These mixes are available for small quantities, like just one pint, so you won't be overwhelmed. Or use several packages to increase the quantity.

SALSA 2: Simple Salsa (makes 6-8 pints)

Rated: Moderate

I made this salsa in a canning class conducted by our county extension service. I like the simplicity of just a few ingredients. The peppers can be roasted and peeled if you want a slightly more complex flavor, but I don't find this makes much difference. You can vary the balance of hot and sweet peppers to suit your level of heat. If you preserve this for eating in the off-season, you can add chopped fresh cilantro when you are ready to serve it.

5 lbs. tomatoes
2 lbs. chile peppers (or a mixture of hot peppers and sweet peppers, according to your taste)
1 lb. onion
1 cup vinegar
3 t salt
1/2 t pepper

Wash tomatoes. Scald 30-60 seconds in boiling water. Dip into cold water. Cut out cores. Remove skins. Chop tomatoes coarsely, put into a big kettle. Chop peppers in fine dice, wearing gloves to protect from hot peppers; add to kettle. Peel and chop onion into fine dice; add to kettle. Add remaining ingredients, cook over high heat so it boils for 20 minutes. For canning, fill prepared jars with hot mixture, leaving 1/2" headspace, and process in hot water bath for 20 minutes. For freezing, let the mixture cool then freeze in individual serving size freezer containers.



SALSA 3: Judy's Favorite Salsa for Canning (makes 16 pints)

Rated:  Complex… but worth it!

This cooked salsa is the closest I've found to my favorite fresh uncooked salsa, the recipe created by our friend Bob (sorry, he won't let me share his recipe). I like a thick, hot salsa, and that's how this comes out. It uses a lot of tomatoes and hot peppers, so it makes a large batch. (When I am going to all the work of canning, I like to do a lot at once, to make the set up worthwhile). I canned mine and ended up with 16 pints. I used lots of my kitchen aids and did the preparation of the ingredients on Day 1 (storing the uncooked tomatoes in a big kettle in the fridge, and all the other ingredients in a covered container in the fridge), then finishing with the cooking and canning on Day 2.

2-1/2 gallons of tomatoes
18 oz. (3 small cans) tomato paste

I process the tomatoes in my Roma food strainer, using the salsa screen. This separates the skins from the rich, thick sauce. Conversely, you can prepare the tomatoes by hand: scald 30-60 seconds in boiling water; dip into cold water; cut out cores; peel off skins; chop tomatoes coarsely. Put the tomatoes and tomato paste into a big kettle. Cook over high heat until reduced in volume about 1/3, at least 45 minutes. This will thicken it nicely.

Meanwhile, prepared the additional ingredients, mixing them in a large bowl. I juiced the limes with my electric juicer and I did all the chopping by pulsing individual ingredients in my food processor:
Juice of 6 limes (1 cup total)
2 c packed chopped fresh cilantro
1 large onion, chopped
1 head garlic, peeled and chopped
3 banana peppers, seeded
15 jalapeno peppers, seeding 3/4 of them (caution: wear gloves when handling hot peppers)
1 t ground cumin
1/4 c cider vinegar

When the tomatoes have cooked, add all the other ingredients. Cook 5 minutes, until boiling again. For canning, fill prepared jars with hot salsa mixture, leaving 1/2" headspace, and process in hot water bath for 20 minutes. For freezing, let the mixture cool then freeze in individual serving size freezer containers. Or refrigerate and eat some right away!

Easy Homemade Tomato Paste

 Simple ingredients, quick procedure, easy storage, and delicious! I thought it was so cool to make my own tomato paste when I found this recipe online. I followed the instructions exactly, although I am not sure about the necessity of the final low-temperature baking step. I had such wonderful results, that I quickly applied the same method to creating a fabulous marinara sauce recipe (below).


TOMATO PASTE
(makes 1/2 cup)

• 1 lb. fresh ripe tomatoes (about 3-4)
• 1/4 sweet bell pepper (green or red)
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t garlic powder

Core and quarter the tomatoes. Process all ingredients in a blender until smooth. (My Vitamix super-blender works great for this, pulverizing all the tomato seeds and skin.) Pour the liquid into a 3-qt. saucepan and bring to a boil. From the blender adding lots of air, the mix will be foamy and the foam will rise in the pot, so be prepared to stir and/or reduce the heat slightly. Let it boil for 8 minutes - halfway through the foaming will disappear.

Pour the mixture into a mesh cloth jelly bag, or line a strainer with coffee filters, and place over a bowl to collect the liquid. Strain for 30 minutes. (You can reserve the strained off liquid for soup stock or for a flavorful liquid for cooking rice.) Spoon the thick paste into a heat-proof mason jar and bake in the oven for 20 minutes at 250°. Remove from the oven and cool. Smooth the top surface with a spatula, then pour a skin of olive oil to coat the top of the tomato paste, cap the jar, and store in the refrigerator. As you use the tomato paste, recover the top with a glaze of oil and it will keep for months. Alternately, you could freeze dollops in ice cube trays, then pop them out and bag them, having them available to thaw whenever the need arises. NOTE: I doubled this recipe and the results were perfection!

I think you could use this as a basis for homemade catsup (ketchup) too, just adding a little vinegar and sweetener, maybe some dry mustard or ground cinnamon - I'll try it myself next time I grill fresh marinated whole okra!

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I've made homemade tomato sauce many times, chopping ingredients by hand or processing loads of tomatoes in my ROMA food strainer, or chopping everything in my Vitamix then low cooking it for hours to thicken the sauce. After making the tomato paste recipe above, I experimented and made the recipe below. So much faster and easier than any I've ever made before.

THICK DELICIOUS MARINARA SAUCE
makes about 1 quart

• 5 lb. fresh ripe tomatoes (12-15), cored and cut in quarters
• 1 onion, peeled and cut in half
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 sweet pepper, stem and seeds removed
• 2 t salt
• 2 t fennel seeds
• 2 t dry marjoram or oregano
• 1 t black pepper
• 1/4 c chopped fresh basil

Process all the ingredients in a super blender, like a VItamix, in 3 batches so you don't overfill the blender and end up with a tomato mess when the top blows off! The Vitamix will pulverize everything, making a foamy, smooth pinkish liquid.

Pour all the processed ingredients into a tall cooking pot. and bring to a boil. It will be foamy and the foam will rise in the pot, so be prepared to stir and/or reduce the heat slightly. Let it boil for 8 minutes - halfway through the foaming will disappear.

Pour the mixture into a mesh cloth jelly bag, or line a strainer with coffee filters, and place over a bowl to collect the liquid. Strain for 30 minutes. (You can reserve the strained off liquid for soup stock or for a flavorful liquid for cooking rice.)

I like it as thick as possible, and used the contents of the mesh bag for my sauce, but you might want to stir back some of the drained liquid to create the sauce consistency you prefer.

Try these recipes now while garden fresh tomatoes are available. Freeze well, so you can enjoy them all year 'round

What's with Wheat?

Are you overweight, diabetic, suffering from arthritis, heart disease, allergies, rashes, acid-reflux, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, pre-diabetes, estrogen related cancer, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, Crohn's disease, constipation, high blood triglycerides, insomnia, cravings...or a belly you can't shed? I don't know too many people - especially in the baby-boomer generation - who can't find something they experience on this list.

I strongly recommend a book I just finished which is on the NY Times bestseller list: Wheat Belly, by William Davis, MD, a preventive cardiologist. This book is not just for people who are gluten-intolerant or thinking they have celiac disease, although it is good for all of those to read too, it's for everyone to read and benefit.

The basic premise of the book is that "…traditional wheat has been replaced by the high-yield, semi-dwarf strains that we know are genetically removed from the wheat of 1950." The hybridization of the wheat now grown worldwide has changed the way it affects our biochemistry, compared to ancient grains certainly, but even when compared to wheat grown 100 years ago. And this alteration is affecting us in many many negative ways.

You can get more of the flavor of the book at the author's blog:
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/

Read a review of the book, including the author's comments.
http://healthyfoodnaturally.com/2011/09/13/book-review-wheat-belly-lose-the-wheat-lose-the-weight-and-find-your-path-back-to-health/

Me and my husband Rick eliminated wheat from our diet over two weeks ago, after I read a lot of the blog. A wheat-free diet takes some adjusting, label reading, menu reading, and self-education, but it's been painless (literally). There are loads of tips on how to do it in the book, including recipes, and there's lots of helpful info online too. We've all seen the supermarket shelves full of "Gluten-Free" labeled products, but, as the author warns, you don't want to substitute other non-healthy foods when you eliminate wheat.

I'll report on my own progress in this blog, and I hope you'll read the book, at the very least.

From the author:
"…the U.S. government, with its repeated advice to 'eat more healthy whole grains,' transmitted via vehicles like the USDA Food Pyramid and Food Plate, coupled with the extensive genetic transformations of the wheat plant introduced by agricultural geneticists, underlie an incredible deterioration in American health…." - William Davis, MD

I'll Never Buy Garlic Again

Fifteen pounds - that's my recent harvest of garlic which I planted last September. Even for someone like me, who cooks from scratch and loves garlic, that's a lot! I had planted a few different varieties, including many cloves of elephant garlic. Many say this is a less strong type, but mine tastes just as potent as any garlic I've ever tasted, and the giant cloves are so easy to use. (Click here for my tips on growing garlic.)

I dug up the garlic beds in two sessions, since it takes a lot of time time to peel all the cloves and to prepare such a big haul for using over the next 12 months. Since curing, drying, and hanging garlic doesn't work so well for me (the cloves shrivel up over a few months), I've come up with other ways to store it… so many that my list starts to sound like Bubba's description to Forrest Gump of how to prepare shrimp!, here's what I now do to store garlic for future use:

Pureed garlic, frozen in ice cube trays, then bagged

Pureed Garlic Cubes - I run peeled whole cloves of garlic through the food processor with organic extra virgin olive oil. Since the garlic is fresh, it holds a lot of moisture, so it purees into a thick paste. I spooned this mixture into ice cube trays, froze them, then popped out and bagged the cubes, to save freezer space and free up my plastic trays for other stuff. When I add garlic to recipes, most often there is some oil in whatever I am making, so this mixture is very helpful to have on hand. I always keep a small jar of minced garlic in the refrigerator, and when I've used it up (in my Caesar dressing, hummus, salsa, soup, stirfry or other favorite recipe), I just replenish with a garlic ice cube from the freezer. You'll notice in the photo that I labelled the cubes; I've learned to label everything, since there are just too many things in my brain to remember, and it helps avoid errors. I don't want to mistake a garlic cube for a pineapple cube!

Garlic Powder - I use the largest of my harvested cloves for this purpose, putting them through the food processor with the slicing blade. I spread the slices in a single layer on the trays of my electric dehydrator and dry these "chips" to a brittle stage. These are then stored in a cool, dark place in jars, and ground into garlic powder easily in my designated herb/spice [coffee] grinder. I save the moisture absorbing cylinders from vitamin and supplements I purchase, and I always place one in with a jar of dried foods, to be sure moisture doesn't form. Also, I don't grind it  into powder until I need to, since some of its potency might be lost unless I vacuum sealed the powder.

Whole cloves in oil

Dehydrated garlic "chps", which I grind to powd

Whole Cloves - preserved in organic extra virgin olive oil, refrigerated in jars. If you don't plan to use these cloves for a while, you might add Hollywood brand safflower oil, which is 20% vitamin E, a natural preservative.

Potent cough syrup

Cough Syrup - In a workshop for natural home remedies I took years ago, the instructor made a cough syrup by filling a jar with chopped garlic, chopped onions, and honey. I added some dried elderberries to my version of this cough syrup also, since this is a natural flu virus remedy. This concoction gets stored in the refrigerator, and after about 6 weeks the mixture is strained, discarding the vegetables and reserving the potent syrup as a cough remedy, again storing it in the refrigerator. Why this combination? A 2007 study (reported in Science Daily) proved that honey outperformed dextromethorphan (cough suppressant) in suppressing nighttime coughs. Onions are anti-inflammatory, antibiotic, and antiviral. Elderberry tincture tested in the laboratory and in double-blind human studies cut the severity and length of Influenza A and B measurably and significantly. Garlic is a naturally powerful antibiotic, effective against toxic bacteria, viruses, and fungus. Garlic can relieve conditions of asthma, hoarseness, coughs, chronic bronchitis, and other disorders of the lungs, because of its powers of promoting expectoration. As for the medicinal benefits of garlic, see "More than a food ingredient" below. So this is a very potent syrup, strong tasting but effective.

Insect Repellent - I took any cloves which were not perfect for storing, as well as the chopped up main stems of the garlic heads, and spread them on the soil throughout my vegetable garden. Garlic is an organic natural detractor of insects, and I think it helps in my garden. All the other parts of the garlic plants went into the compost pile.

When I dug up all this garlic, attached to the root strings and/or below many of the heads were individual round cloves, especially on the elephant garlic. I call these the "garlic babies". They readily air-dryed, and I've stored them to replant my garlic bed in the fall. I am quite certain that I didn't unearth all these little cloves, so the garlic will likely replant itself in the old bed too. I'll have a great harvest again next year, after using up all the preparations described above!

MORE THAN A FOOD INGREDIENT:
Not only does garlic add loads of flavor to my cooking, it has widely recognized health benefits. As I've read online: "Garlic promotes the well-being of the heart and immune systems with antioxidant properties and helps maintain healthy blood circulation. One of garlic's most potent health benefits includes the ability to enhance the body's immune cell activity. The active component in garlic is the sulfur compound called allicin - a chemical produced when garlic is chopped, chewed, or bruised. Allicin is quite powerful as an antibiotic and a potent agent that helps the body to inhibit the ability of germs to grow and reproduce. There are now over 12 studies published around the world that confirm that garlic can reduce cholesterol. Garlic is known to stimulate T-lymphocyte and macrophage action, promote interleukin-1 levels, and support natural killer cells. Strong activity of these key cells promotes healthy immune system function, and strengthens the body's defenses. Garlic has germanium in it. Germanium is an anti-cancer agent, and garlic has more of it than any other herb. In lab tests, mice fed garlic showed no cancer development, whereas mice that weren't fed garlic showed at least some. In fact, garlic has been shown to retard tumor growth in human subjects in some parts of the world. 

Garlic "babies" to plant next fall

Another benefit of garlic is it helps regulate the body's blood pressure. So whether you have problems with low or high blood pressure, garlic can help equalize it. Garlic helps strengthen your body's defenses against allergies; helps loosen plaque from the artery walls; helps regulate your blood sugar levels; and is the best choice for killing and expelling parasites such as pin worms from the human body. In addition to all these health benefits, garlic is packed with vitamins and nutrients. Some of these include protein, potassium, Vitamins A, B, B2 and C, Calcium, Zinc and many others. In a 12-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, allicin powder was found to reduce the incidence of the common cold by over 50%."

Try planting garlic in your garden next fall. It's easy to grow, pest-free, delicious, and good for you!

Strange Bedfellows

There are some strange contraptions in my vegetable garden beds this spring. My efforts to garden organically have engaged me in various battles - against insects, funguses, and diseases - using alternatives to chemical treatments. I'm trying various "preventative" measures, some rather unconventional, which I've either read about or invented. I'm using other containers as mini-greenhouses, aids to watering, and other purposes. Here's a look....

You know from my past blog posts that for two years I've lost my tomato crops to "blight," which is caused by a fungus in the soil. This is the same strain of blight which caused the potato famine in Ireland over a century ago. In an effort to avoid the fungus which is likely residing in my garden soil, I have isolated my tomato plants. I've also sterilized my garden tools, tomato cages, stakes, and other items which would contact the plants, with bleach. I've avoided using my compost soil on the new plants as well, since that might have contaminants from last year's crops. The photo to the right shows how I planted a Baby Roma heirloom, which I started from seed. My garden cold frame, with its cover panels removed, has become a quarantine ward. I covered the soil with a layer of weed barrier cloth, covered by a layer of red plastic mulch, since this cold frame is actually in my established vegetable garden (the fungus resides in the soil, and spores bounce onto the lower leaves when rain splashes). I've also trimmed off the bottom 12" of leaves, in case any splashing occurs. The plant is healthy so far, with little bunches of green tomatoes forming.

The photo left shows a second effort to get tomatoes: an isolated tomato garden. I started two tomato varieties from seed which are supposed to be "blight resistant" - Old Brooks and Legend. I chose an area where I've never gardened or planted tomatoes, the spot where I piled the composted cow manure my friend Mitch delivered for a couple of years. I figured this area would have decent soil, since it got run-off from the now depleted manure pile (most of our land is clay and needs to be amended). Again, I covered the soil with a fabric barrier. In addition to all these precautions, I am doing weekly spraying with an organic fungicide, and also sprinkling ground cinnamon, a natural fungicide, around the base of these plants. When I see any discolored leaves, I remove and dispose of them. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Elsewhere in my garden, you'll see various other covers and containers. Descriptions are below each of the photo collages below:

The photo above left shows fine netting over my sweet potato bed. Last year grasshoppers kept eating the sweet potato vines. The leaves would grow back, but I'm guessing that the plants put all their energy into growing new tops, since my harvest of sweet potatoes - the roots - was really skimpy. I planted little plants from a 9-pack of Beauregard sweet potatoes, rather than from slips, since bunches of slips usually include 25 or 50, and I didn't need so many. The dead branches you might notice in the photo are the remnants of the peapod plants which grew in the same spot in early spring, left there to impart their nutrients to the soil. The white netting comes from the fabric department, 72-inches wide for just 99 cents per yard. It lets in the sun and rain, but so far keeps out the bugs. I've held down the edges with garden staples. A hint: tie a piece of survey tape to the staple top and you won't lose it in the soil - it could damage to a passing rotatiller blade. I left one sweet potato plant uncovered, to compare my results. Sweet potatoes don't flower or need pollination, so the netting can stay on for the entire growing period. I've also used this netting over some of my bigger blueberry plants, which are now ripening and protected by the netting from hungry birds. To the right is a celery plant, growing in a plastic sleeve I made by cutting the ends off a big white jug. This is not to fight insects, it's mostly so that the celery plants get a good drink of water when I am hosing the garden, since they like extra moist conditions. I thought it might also "blanche" the stalks, keeping them from being real green, but I don't see that happening... they are green - and delicious.

 

I've used translucent jugs, with just the bottom cut off (and cap discarded), as mini greenhouses. Above left shows a jug covering a canteloupe plant, pushed about an inch or two into the soil, keeping the plant warm and shielding it from squash bugs; the center photo above shows the same plant uncovered. To the right is another plant I used this method for, Black Beauty eggplant, which grew much faster under cover than another which I left uncovered - and grew strong without any flea beetle damage.

 

When I have young perennial flowers, shrubs, and tree seedlings which need special attention, I plant them in a big pot of good soil and submerge the pot in garden soil. The buried pot doesn't dry out as fast as it would if it were above ground, and the pot gets watered and gets my attention when it's in the veggie garden. By next year, a tiny cutting should have grown strong roots and be ready to transplant to a permanent location. In the top right photo above is a fig tree seedling, which I have lovingly nurtured from a little twig cutting from an established fig tree, given to me by my friend Richard. The other two photos above show contraptions I also used last year; in the center, a mesh hamper (folds up flat when not in use) over a gherkin plant - I'll remove it when flowering begins, so the plant will get pollinated. I've used another hamper over a small blueberry bush, to keep the birds from eating the ripening berries. On the right you see a pocketed red plastic Kozy Koat (the pockets hold water, which absorbs the warmth of the sun), keeping a healthy sweet Marconi pepper good and warm, since peppers like growing in hot weather.

Don't be afraid to try unconventional aids in your garden!