June 28th Garden Update

It's been 2 month since the poly tunnel plastic has come off and the sun is in the sky longer. We've already had a couple of heat waves and for the most part, it's been quite dry. My garden is slowly chugging along.
I've learned a lot so far.
The heat waves has caused the broccoli to bolt and flower and it won't stop. Seems like even cutting the main stem did not cause the side shoots to grow. I guess it's just too hot :(
At least the leaves/flowers/stem are edible....So once it finishes seeding, I'll dig the whole thing up and eat it.

So far I've only found 1 more cabbage worm since I plucked off the original 3 and put pots of herbs closer to the cabbage. So I decided to try putting a pouch of Star Anise onto my broccoli. I had left over bags from my wedding and Star Anise is a very strong smelling spice. We'll see how it goes :)

Speaking of spices, it didn't seem cayenne pepper affected the mole...It just dug the whole again...But maybe it was the way I applied the pepper. I just poured it into the whole and then filled it with soil...so it probably just avoided the bottom of the original tunnel and dug close enough to the original.
So this time I decided to mixed 5 spice powder into soil before refilling the hole and so far so good...Fingers cross it'll stop coming back. 5 spice is also very strong smelling so I hope the mole won't like it.

An other plant that bolted so I have no idea what it is...is this one...I'm pretty sure it's my cabbage....what do you think?

Maybe bolted cabbage???

Cabbage

My pea is continuing to flower but probably less then a plant in a location with more sun. But this gives me hope that if I can build a trillis next year that has more room at the top for vines to climb and stay up, I'll be able to grow more! The bean that the rabbit didn't eat starts to grow faster once it reaches a certain height as it's getting more sun. I'm taking that as a sign.

Chayote is starting to climb as well. I almost killed this plant as I let it get to try in the pot. I'm happy it's finally growing and growing well. My house is pretty humid even in the winter, so the top of the soil looked moist. What I didn't know was that the inside was dry so eventually I almost killed it.

I would like to harvest 50 Chayotes. We'll see how that goes.

Mango Salsa

This is my go to recipe for mango salsa.
In Ontario, I only have access to 2 different types of mango. Ataulfo and Apple mango.
For the mango salsa, I only use Ataulfo mangoes. I find apple mango doesn't have the intense mango flavour I desire.
This is a simple recipe but it takes time to chop up all the ingredients. If you're fast at chopping then you'll get this done in no time.
This is actually best made to sit overnight so the flavours have time to meld together!

Mango Salsa

Ingredients

• 2 Ataulfo mangoes
• 2 shallots or half a red onion
• 1 Avocado
• 1 large tomato
• 1 tbsp chopped cilantro 
• 1 lime
• 1 tsp garlic minced
• 1 jalapeno pepper (optional)
• a pinch of sea salt

Directions

1. Peel the the mango and cut it around the seed. 
2. Chop up the mango and place into big bowl.
3. Cut the avocado in half and twist it apart. Use a spoon to remove the flesh from the peel.
4. Chop up the avocado and add it to the bowl.
5. Dice up the tomato and add it into the bowl
6. Finely chop up the cilantro, garlic and shallots and add to the bowl.
7. If you're using the jalapeno pepper, cut it in half, remove the seeds, then chop it up and add it to the bowl.
8. Press and roll the lime on the cutting board. Cut it in half. Stick a fork into the lime and move it around to squeeze out the juice. Do it to both sides.
9. Add the pinch of salt and then mix very very well.
10. Put it in the first and let it rest for minimum 30 mins. Best over a couple of hours or overnight.

Enjoy with chips , tacos, pork chops, etc etc :)

First Sugar Snap Pea

So excited to see the first Sugar Snap Pea of the season.
I was worried I wouldn't get any since it's sort of getting late and getting hot but the vines just started to bloom.
A couple of flowers here and there.
And it's finally climbing higher so it actually gets more sunlight.

Once it starts to get a bit more sunlight I found it grew a lot faster.
The couple of beans that were not eaten by rabbits are starting to climb higher. I hope the higher they climb the fast they'll grow because they have more sunlight.

I think next year I'm going to try to grow squashes in the side that can climb trellis because once they get to a certain point they can get a lot of sun....as long as they get to that point that is...we'll see how it goes :)
I'll continue to experiment

Broccoli and moles

I know broccoli required at least 6 hours of sun and it's a cool temperature plant, but I thought, maybe if it has a bit more shade, then it can survive in hotter weather.
Boy was I wrong.
My side garden gets about 3-4 hours of sun if I'm lucky.
It's been basically a month since I planted my seedlings outdoors and the broccoli have gotten big, but 1 bolted early and the second one just bolted in the last heat wave.
I really should have been getting to a point where the head is growing but the heat caused the second promising looking plant to bolt :(
Looks like all I'll be able to get is broccoli leaves out of the plants.

I guess I'll try again in the fall but in the backyard when I get it back to see if I can grow it in full sun but cooler time.
The only issue is it'll take me at least a month to clear out the current beds of the trees, flowers and weed when I get access to it in Aug....
Which means I'll transplant in Sept, which is cutting it close to freezing temperatures....I guess we'll see how it goes :)

Other then that, besides the 3 cabbage worms I found and picked off, I haven't seen anymore so far.
I sprayed a mixture of cayenne pepper and castile soap on the leaves as homemade pesticide.
I also got strong smelling herbs and planted it close to the plants.
I got 2 mints (kept in pots), 2 thymes and 1 lemongrass.
Hopefully it'll be ok until I pull out these plants to plant something else.

Oh! and I believe I know what is causing the holes and caverns in my garden....we've concluded that I probably have a mole digging around somewhere.
That would explain why when I dug 1 foot into the soil, some areas had big cavities and why holes were appearing.
There's this 1 hole that comes out by my lettuce, that keeps on coming back day after day after I fill it again. It also explains why my bean collapsed in the last rainstorm. There was nothing underneath so when it rain heavily, it dropped the bean into the hole >_<
I think I'll have to throw some cayenne pepper into the hole before I refill it, but it probably won't stop it from tunneling around...I hope it doesn't cause too much issues around the roots and disturb my plants. I really don't want to have to get rid of it.

Steamed Minced Meat and Egg

In need of a quick small filler dish? This is an easy way to get an extra dish in with almost no effort at all.
This is almost like the egg custard dish but with meat so it honestly doesn't look as smooth since the meat underneath will affect how the egg on top looks.

I normally cook this with pork, but it can be done with chicken as well.
If the meat is too lean, it will be dry and tough. So it's good to go with a medium fat meat which is why pork is so good to use.
If using chicken, I would only use dark meat.

You can make this any size you want. This is perfect for steaming in your rice cooker when you're cooking rice if your plate fits.

Steamed Minced Meat and Egg

Ingredients

• 300g Minced Pork/chicken
• 5 Eggs
• 5 Egg Shells of Water
• Soy Sauce
• Sugar

Directions

1. Mix the chicken with the soy sauce and sugar.
2. Pour the meat into the bottom of the steaming plate and flatten.
   
3. In a small bowl, mix together 5 eggs with 5 egg shells full of water so it's a 1 to 1 ratio. When I crack the egg, I save half and use that as my measuring cup and add 10 of those egg shell of water. Almost the same ratio as egg custard but a little less water because meat juice will flow out as you cook!
4. If you want the top to be smoother, run the egg through a sieve. Can't have bubbles if you want that very smooth surface. If you really don't care, just gently pour on top of your meat.
   
5. Wrap the dish with cling wrap.
6. Pop it on top of your steaming device and bring water to a boil. Lower the heat to a gentle boil for 10 to 15 mins depending on how big your plate is. If it's in the rice cooker it'll be a little bit more cooked then it needs to be but it's definitely the easier way to cook this dish.
   
7. And you're done. Feel free to garnish with chopped green onion and a little bit of fish soy sauce.

Chipmunks and Cabbage worms

Gardening really is one thing after another. Especially since I'm avoiding use of any pesticide and herbicides.

It turns out when the chipmunks dug up my bean seeds, they left behind some random seeds behind. No idea what they are but they sprouted! I had pockets of sprouts like this all over the garden.
Since I had no idea what they were, I had to dig them all up. I really prefer not to trade with the chipmunks. They should just keep their seeds.

I also have this plant growing that I think is a bean but I'm not positive because the chipmunks dug up my garden and ended up moving things around.

So now I actually have to wait and see to be sure of what it is....I hope it's not a weed or something bad that will take over my garden. I looked up pictures of the different beans I planted but I can't really find a picture of plant at this stage to compare.

To keep the chipmunks and rabbits out of my garden, I used a netting over the polytunnel tubes.
But now that the beans and peas are starting to climb, I had to lift it up. So the top is open by the side is still sort of covered to make it a little harder for them to get in.

I had to stretch it to go around the chayote area as well so the chipmunks and rabbits can't get in this way. I was originally going to buy chicken wire but I figured since I already had the netting, I might as well just use it. It's a little floppy so I have to get additional support to make it stand up. Other than that, it basically does the same job as the chicken wire.

One thing the netting doesn't do is keep the moths out....so I found the 3 cabbage worms this week munching away.

I found it because I noticed a cabbage leaf was looking weird and upon closer inspection I realized that half of it was gone and I found the worm....the sucker really blends in. It was so hard to find it.
I'm so surprised at how fast they found my plants considering it wasn't a vegetable garden before.

So this weekend I'll have to go get some herbs and plant them around the garden or leave them in pots around the garden to hopefully keep the bugs out.
My plan is to buy rosemary, mint, sage and thyme to help keep the moths away.
Here's a link to a really good chart on companion planting with herbs. herb companions

I'm torn about the marigolds cause they keep pests away but rabbits love to eat them....so I'm hesitant to attract more rabbits.
We'll see how things work with the herbs and then I'll go from there.

Tangy Green Papaya Soup

Once again, I would call this a base soup.
Once you get to know the flavour of different soup ingredients, you'll be able to play around mixing them up. Lots of soups are various of each other.

The reason why I call this the tangy green papaya soup is because of the use of green papaya and ginger. The ginger gives it a kick rather then focusing on the sweetness that usually comes with papaya soup.
Also, since green papaya is not ripe, it's not as sweet as a ripe papaya.

This is great for a smoothing soup with a bit of a kick.
It's pretty simple and easy to make too. :)

Tangy Green Papaya Soup

Ingredients

• 1 Green Papaya (4lbs)
• 1/2 cup red dates
• 1/4 cup apricot kernel (1:3 ratio for north 北杏 and south apricot 南杏 seeds)
• 1cm block of ginger
• 1 - 1.5 lbs of pork bone
• 4L of water
• Salt optional

Directions

1. Pre-treat the pork bone if it's not done already. Blanch the pork bone and then wash the bones.
2. Start heating the 4L of water while you prep the other items. 
3. Peel the papaya and cut it in half to remove all the seeds.
4. Cut it into 1 inch strips.
5. Rinse the red dates and the apricot seeds.
6. Wash the ginger and slice it up
7. Once the water is boiled, put all the ingredients in except the salt.
8. Bring it back up to a rolling boil and then turn down the heat to medium low so that it's at a soft boil.
9. Let it cook for 1.5 hours
10. Before you turn off the heat add salt and stir if you wish to add salt.

And there you have it. Simple green papaya soup with a kick.

My Spring Radish Harvest

Since I don't ever remember eating radishes and how they taste like, I decided to plant 2 rows of radishes just to test them out.
I learned a lot from the 2 rows I planted.

2 major things I learnt.
1. You can eat radish leaves!!
2. Can't be greedy with space, the roots will not grow until you give them lots and lots of space. I don't know how they know they're beside each other but they do.

Here's my final harvest of the 2 rows after thinning out one of the rows earlier.

1. Radish greens
I stumbled upon this by fluke. At first I honestly thought the greens were some sort of lettuce because I didn't label my plants and I had planted a lettuce mix beside the radishes. So for the longest time I thought that it was some sort of prickly lettuce and I couldn't find my radish....
It wasn't until I decided to pull up a plant that I realized that these were my radishes. LOL

I ate the greens raw in sandwiches but I find I like it best cooked!
The greens are prickly so a bit of a pain to wash. It's edible raw and you don't feel it pricking you but just to be safe, it's all nice and soft when you cook it.
Once I realized I had eaten radish leaves, I decided to look them up to be certain you can eat them.
That's when I realized how nutritious they are and the fact that they contain more nutrients then their roots.
The greens are a good source of source of calcium, iron, magnesium, vitamin A, C, K!
When I cook them to eat with noodle soup, I find they taste like Choy Sum. So great fresh substitute.
I tried baking them but didn't like it as much.
So far I like it the best blanched and eaten with noodle or congee.
The best thing about the greens is that it acts like cut and grow lettuce. So for the 1 month you grow the plant for the roots, you can continue to harvest the leaves the whole time for fresh greens.

I like to eat the greens fresh, so throughout the season I clip, wash and cooked right away.
But since I had to harvest the root to stop it from bolting, I quickly rinse and dried in a spinner before I rolled up my greens in newspaper to store in the fridge.
It'll be ok for a couple of days so I'll have to get on eating them. Make sure you dry and separate greens from the root before storage to best keep the leaves.

As of right now, I still haven't ate one of the edible roots I did manage to grow, but I'm thinking I prefer the greens then the root itself. But this led me to point 2.

2. Spacing the radishes.

The ones on the left are from the row that I did not thin out.
The bulbs from the right are from the row that I had thinned out from 6 radishes to 2. The smaller one of the 3 on the right is from the row on the left that I did not thin out. I really thought I had enough room between all the roots since they were spaced out more then the row on the right, but apparently I was wrong.
The roots on the left are not edible. I tried and it was....very bitter and woody.

What I realized is that if you are growing radishes for the greens, go ahead and plant them closer to one an other. And you can have a month long harvest of greens until it gets too hot and the plant starts bolting.
If you want the roots, you do have to space them out.
You'll still get your greens but maybe not as much as if you were to bunch them up.

Great learning, the radishes are fast growing and great for cool season. I'll plant them again in the fall.
For now I will let the broccoli/cabbages and beans take over :)