Winter Kale & White Bean Soup

Amazingly, despite the really cold weather, the bed of kale is still green and doing well out in the garden. I was doing a cold-weather experiment in this uncovered bed. Those are Tyfon greens, or the remains of Tyfon greens, to the left. They pretty much vanish when the temps hit the mid-teens. The kale, as you can see, is quite perky despite multiple nights of mid-teens and no cover at all.



So I picked a batch and found a wonderful Kale & White bean soup recipe over at allrecipes.com by Jean Carper. You can click the the title below to go to the site.

Bean Soup With Kale

SUBMITTED BY: USA WEEKEND columnist Jean Carper
* 1 tablespoon olive oil or canola oil
* 8 large garlic cloves, crushed or minced
* 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
* 4 cups chopped raw kale
* 4 cups low-fat, low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
* 2 (15 ounce) cans white beans, such as cannellini or navy, undrained
* 4 plum tomatoes, chopped
* 2 teaspoons dried Italian herb seasoning
* Salt and pepper to taste
* 1 cup chopped parsley

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large pot, heat olive oil. Add garlic and onion; saute until soft. Add kale and saute, stirring, until wilted. Add 3 cups of broth, 2 cups of beans, and all of the tomato, herbs, salt and pepper. Simmer 5 minutes. In a blender or food processor, mix the remaining beans and broth until smooth. Stir into soup to thicken. Simmer 15 minutes. Ladle into bowls; sprinkle with chopped parsley.

This is what became of the kale:



And WOW it is a delicious soup. I did a couple of things differently - probably used a bit more kale than it called for, added 1 tsp. of bacon drippings (I am a real Southerner...) and instead of plum tomatoes - which aren't in season when kale it -- I used a small can of diced tomatoes. It was WONDERFUL! The parsley really adds a great green flavor. Can't wait to make more.

Hope you all are staying warm in this cold January! Here's to warm soups and warm hearts.

Garlic & Asparagus in Winter

One great thing about a garden blog is that I can look back at pics from the summer and marvel at how green and lush everything is. Right now, those are not words that would come to mind looking at the garden and surrounds.



This is the asparagus patch's first winter. It grew very well it's first year - seems to love the raised bed and rich soil. I plan to plant another bed of it this spring. We should be able to sneak a batch of these this spring to steam and dip in butter, then by Spring of 2010 we should have a strong supply going. I understand asparagus can live for decades. It's a great garden investment, but one that require a few years patience!



Meanwhile, over in this bed we have the baby garlic that went in the ground in either late October or early November....



So next summer, hopefully, we'll have fresh garlic out of the garden. Exciting! Meanwhile, we're expecting two nights this week down to 10 and then 4 degrees. Yikes. Got to go rake a big pile of leaves over the fig "bush." You can see it this past summer in this post "What a difference two weeks makes"

Before the Rains Begin

Greetings from Larrapin Garden on the day before the rains start (again). Hurricane Ike's rains should get up to NW Arkansas on Saturday and we could get soaked. Nothing compared to what may happen down in Texas. We're supposed to get up to 4 inches each day this weekend, compared with potential 15" of rain in Houston. Geesh, what a rainy year. We'd already had our usual yearly rainfall by June or July this year...

All the rain has had an amazing result on all the greenery and some things are still blooming even as the weather has started to get cool early. Those are scarlet runner beans growing on a fence and a happy bumble bee. The seed packed said "loved by hummingbirds" and that is so true. These are the 2008 favorites of the four hummingbirds that hang out at Larrapin.



Meanwhile, the Monarchs finally arrived after being absent nearly all summer. I think they are not so fond of all this rain.



The last month has been AMAZING for butterflies. We've finally got enough nectar plants to have been noted on the butterfly flight paths it seems! Their favorites: Tropical Milkweed (favored over the native perennial I see, but will plant more of both), four butterfly bushes (wow, deadheading will keep them blooming ALL the time), and scarlet runner beans plus assorted flowers. We've also got a lot of host trees - oaks, willow, river birch, wild cherry, with more to come such as Paw Paw...



This is a blurry photo, but it's the first time I've seen this type of butterfly here. Will have to look it up. Anyone know the name?



Don't let this pic fool you. It's from mid-July I think, when we had enough dry weather to have good tomatoes... The one in my hand is the old fashioned Brandywine, which turns out to be as good as everyone says. The one on the right is Cherokee Purple, which we LOVE but this year's batch was abysmal between the rain and the first time onslaught of stink bugs on the tomatoes. Will study up on organic control of those buggers next year. They poke the tomatoes just enough to scar them and make them prone to rot. We've had a few Ananas Noir (not pictured -- but they are soft red and green swirled, both inside and out) and the oddly colored tomato remains the favorite tomato of Larrapin.

So I'll end this post with a chicken photo since the next post will be a Buckeye update. This unusual chicken is one of the two I picked up as day-old chicks at the hardware store to be companions for the solitary guinea that hatched back in June. The grab-bag chicks are both solid black. One (not pictured) is an Ameraucana,which was confimed when she laid her first blue-green egg! The second black chick has grown up to be quite lovely. Is she a jungle-fowl variety of chicken? Not really sure, will study on that later... Here she is. The white blob in the foreground is the lone guinea chick grown up. And completely convinced she is a chicken. Which is a good thing. It makes her the ONLY guinea who reliably roosts in the chicken house every night. From now on, all my guinea will be raised by chickens!



Thanks for stopping by Larrapin before the rain!

July walk around Larrapin (Video)

Back in late July I did a walk-around video of the garden for two friends who were supposed to visit that week, but couldn't, due to illness. The video turned out to be kind of fun, a way to keep track of how things look, where various things were planted this season, etc. I think I'd like to do a walk-around video every month to see how it all changes... So here's what it looks like in mid/late July 2008:

Back at the Blog!

I took July off from blogging and then August was busier than I expected. But I'm back. We've been doing a lot of good eating around here! The meal above was the first one we had that was completely from the garden: green beans, red potatoes, fresh corn, and purple hull peas!

This summer we've had green beans by the bag, purple hull peas -- our favorite, feta-chard quiche, some delicious tomatoes (though not as many as usual due to all the rain), the amazing Ambrosia cantaloupe, more bell peppers than we can eat so many are going to the freezer for winter cooking, loads of onions from the spring still in storage, and corn (pictured here as an Indian inspired spicy corn -- I'll share the recipe -- if anyone would like it just leave a comment).

Glad to be back!

Mid-June Garden Goings On

First let me say: how the heck did it get to be mid-June already! My grandmother always said time sped up "when you get older." I thought she meant 80's -- not 40's! The speeding up of time though, is making me choose what I spend my time on much more carefully than ever... Gardening ALWAYS passes the where-to-spend-this-speeding-time test! There's a lot of good garden eating going on around here as seen in the pic above. I love beets. Now that I figured out how to use a juicer I really wish I'd planted more - they are delicious with carrot and apples.



While the amazing amount of rain has been disastrous for the yellow squash, the kale is still going strong. I haven't been quite bold enough to juice kale, but I hear you can..



Here's Larrapin's golf-ball sized watermelon. It's a variety called "Blacktail Mountain" is is supposed to be very early. I'll say! Hope it does better in the damp than the squash have -- which went from lovely to covered-in-mildew literally overnight. Eeek. I'm planning to replant rather than try to save it I think (and hope for more sun, less dampness.)



The zuchinni are currently surviving....



Aren't borage blooms amazing. I plant them to keep the tomatoes company and the bees love the blooms too.



And I've got stuff to plant that I don't have space for! Sigh. Garden is never big enough. :-)



Bush beans going strong. The little fence is enough to keep the bunnies at bay during that irresistable 2-6inche stage, which these have gotten past. If we get some good sunshine, we'll have beans before we know it.



The dill has managed to attract a celebration of swallowtail caterpillars. It's nice to be able to walk by and say words of encouragement and praise to a future butterfly.



So I was standing back admiring the garden, thinking what a beautiful place I have the privilege to learn from, when who should fly down from her nest in that tree at the end of the garden path but...



One of the roadrunners. This may be the female and maybe that nest is more serious than the usual piles of sticks in trees (and in the garage) that we call their "hunting blinds." She stood all puffed out in the sun, drying out for a moment in between rain showers.

Thanks for taking a mid-June walk around Larrapin!

Good Eatin At Larrapin This Week!

These pics are from May 28th - Spring stuff to eat! The strawberries are Ozark Beauty. It's a great variety, but with all the pouring rain we had, they were a bit watered down... Strawberries like everything *just right* to be their best..



Broccoli and Oregon Sugar Pod peas. Sugar snap peas, our favorites, are so persnickity that I went with a different kind this year - and wow are they productive. It was nice that they were only about 2 foot high at max and just draped over a tiny garden fence instead of requiring real trellis.



Nice group portrait! You know you love your garden when you photograph your food!



Pak Choi (Joy Choi is the variety) grew so fast a lot of it went to the chickens b/c we couldn't eat it fast enough. I'll have to work out a more gradual planting on this. It was SO much faster than traditional cabbage and delicious in stir fry.

A little tribute to the garden on my way off to work...

Garden Walk - May 27th

I was blog-visitng over at My Wildlife Sanctuary and enjoyed how the writer described her daily photo walk in her garden. Thus inspired, I waited for a break in the rain (I think we're about 16 or so inches ahead of normal so far this year with total rainfall usually averaging only 46 inches!) to go out for a photo stroll in the yarden. These are some veggie garden snapshots:



Above, the Blue Lake bush beans are just at the stage the rabbits like them. (Got to get that little rabbit fencing up for them...)



This is the Kale & Snow Peas bed. The kales are Blue Curled Scottish and Ragged Jack (Red Russian - in top right of pic). Ragged Jack is a lot sweeter and next year it's my choice. We stir fry/saute our kale with just a bit of olive oil and garlic and it is so very delicious that way - and so wonderfully green. We've eaten bundles and bundles out of this bed already and it's still full.

The peas are Oregon Sugar Pods. Very productive! Not as sweet, nor as finicky as our favorites, Sugar Snaps.



Here's the former Pea & Spinach bed, cleared yesterday of the bolting spinach. The peas are still going strong. I'll put bush beans in now, since I have the handy leftover stick fence for rabbits...



I love beets! I never plant enough. These are in bad need of thinning & eating the thinnings!



This bed of broccoli (underplanted with a small romaine lettuce) is nearly done. It was so lovely. There are a few red cabbages in there, but they are looking a little puny. I need to whip up a tonic for them...



And in the midst of our bounty, here's a future bounty for butterflies, more of the Tropical Milkweed I so adored last year and wrote several posts about under the Butterfly label.




This bed has Swiss Chard (also in need of thinning -- Hello, my name is Leigh and I'm an over-planter....but wait, we almost always get to eat the thinnings too...or if we don't the chickens get to...) on the end, Chinese cabbage (Joy Choi) in the middle and some more broccoli toward the right. The Joy Choi is amazingly productive and quick to reach eating size. We had a big one last night stir fried with mushrooms and it was YUMMY. I may go chinese on my cabbage choices from now on...



My tater row. Or one of them. This one was planted late b/c the other row got hit hard by a late frost. But then the frost-hit row regrew -- or about every other one anyway, so the row has big empty places. Hmm, what could I plant there?

Thanks for joining me in the garden walkabout in late May. My garden is a bit behind a lot of my neighbors b/c I'm always slow to figure out when and where I want to plant things. But wow, we are doing some good eating out of this garden. More about that next post!

First Harvest at Larrapin

First Harvest at Larrapin, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

While we've nibbled out of the Spinach bed already, tonight we had
these two batches of greens to harvest before the big thunderstorms
that are coming. That's spinach on the right and Ragged Jack/Russian
kale on the left. We love to saute it with a little olive oil and
garlic in a big iron skillet (or wok). It stays very green and is
delicious.

Spinach Fortress: Don't Laugh -- It worked!

Spinach Fortress: Don't Laugh -- It worked!, originally uploaded by Gardener At Larrapin.

The spinach seemed to draw the bunnies as well as the guinea hens (see "Guineas Under House Arrest" below...) so out of desperation one day I put up this stick fence around the spinach and pea bed. You can't see the peas because the guineas had munched them to the ground when the rabbits weren't doing the same. It worked! With the guineas secure in their pen, the fence keeps the bunnies at bay. I think it's kind of cute, so I left it.

We've had several spinach salads out of this bed already. It's spring planted so it's just now getting going really well. Year before last I planted fall spinach and overwintered it -- now THAT's the way to have big delicious spinach really really early! I hope to remember to do it again this fall.

Hershel's Tomato

Hershel is my wonderful gardening neighbor. (I misspelled his name in my sign above. Note the Sharpie pen for size comparison....) He's been gardening in our neighborhood for about twenty years and his garden is fabulous. We often benefit from his ability to produce enormous quantities of the best green beans ever -- Kentucky Wonders. The tomato pictured is Hershel's own development and the one I photographed is not the prettiest or the largest he's ever shown me. I believe the parent tomato is a German Pink type. Hershel's tomato produces a slice for a sandwich that will overhang the bread! Really great flavor, nice firmness. To the left is one of the Cherokee Purple heirloom I grew from a transplant I bought at Old Soul Organics in Fayetteville. It is, hands down, the healthiest, lushest plant I've ever grown, incredibly productive and with a *perfect* tomato flavor in my opinion. Needless to say I'm saving the seeds on that one. It has a near potato type leaf. Here's a sliced one:


The other tomato tip I'll do again next year involves composted cotton burr compost. The bed where I was planting the tomato was too clayey so I added a half bag of the compost right in the end of the bed where the tomato was to go. I guess they LOVE this compost! I'll do this again for each tomato plant next year.

Here's a parting pic of Hershel's wonderfully huge tomato -- this one not completely ripe. I knew I'd lucked out when I moved to the neighborhood and after meeting Hershel he pulled a giant whole tomato out of the freezer to show me! This is my kind of neighbor! The tomato had been so huge and perfect -- indeed, it seemed half as big as my head -- that he'd frozen it so that folks would believe him when he told the story! Because we know that gardening stories and fishing stories can be similar in some ways...

Finally today some RAIN!! It smelled exquisite.

Black Swallowtail Larva on Parsley

This is how gardening with the wild creatures in mind (in addition to the gardeners) can be a little tricky. I planted a whole row of parsley so that there would be plenty for us and for butterflies. But the stand was covered with SO MANY black swallowtail caterpillars that I couldn't bring myself to cut any -- even when I needed a bunch for a special recipe. To Mendy's dismay, I brought storebought parsley home to spare ours for the butterflies. Next year I may have a row of parsley and a dill plant in every raised bed in hopes of having enough for us all.

I heard a country story I like:
A visitor to an old farmer's garden noted that a groundhog was living nearby.
"You gonna shoot that groundhog?"
"Nah," the farmer replied.
"Well maybe you ought too. He'll eat your garden up," the visitor warned.
"Mister," the farmer explained, "If I can't grow enough to feed myself and one little groundhog, I wouldn't be much of a farmer."

Mostly I feel the same. But if you change the critter to a raccoon....hmmmm, all bets are off!

More Okra Tales

Like Connie, who responded to the "Do you know this flower?" post, I had no idea that okra has such lovely, if very brief, flowers. The Hill Country Red Okra from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds in the previous post continues to produce a good amount of BIG pods -- best eaten fried Southern style because it gets big so fast. Next year I'd like to try another variety in the Baker Creek catalog that has red stems, pods and leaves!

This photo is from 2006. I had leftover okra transplants and no room in the garden, so I put a few in various spots in flower beds around the house. I thought it was great. Plus, you could pick okra from the patio... This variety is Clemson Spineless and is great tasting and very productive. And all green.

Know this flower?

Know this flower?
Originally uploaded by larrapin67.

Did you know an okra bloom was so lovely? This is an Alabama heritage red okra with gorgeous red stems and leaf veins...

Melons and Future Monarchs

Here's one of the ripening "Charentais" French melons as well as on of Larrapin Garden's most honored guests -- a monarch butterfly caterpillar who wandered over on the melons from the tropical milkweed growing in the same garden bed.

The monster vine...

The monster vine...
Originally uploaded by larrapin67.

Here's the watermelon vine, covering the whole raised bed, plus an 8 x 8 tarp...

Larrapin's First Watermelon!

Larrapin's First Watermelon!
Originally uploaded by larrapin67.

Well, it's actually the second watermelon. I picked the first one and it wasn't ripe! What a disappointment. To make matters worse, even unripe, it was delicious to nibble. These are Tendersweets from Baker Heirloom seeds -- an orange/yellow variety. Before picking, I did study up on how to tell a ripe watermelon: thunking sound when tapped, white spot on belly, brown tendril above the melon... No dice. I think now the whole stem should be browning instead of just the tendril?

I've got two more chances coming up soon since two are getting pretty large on the vine. The vine is a monster -- taking up about 96 square foot right now! Of course there are two vines planted together, and also a french melon on the same raised bed. I ran the vines on a tarp beside the bed to keep down weeds....another learning experience, it holds water when it rains so I had to lift the melons up on little wooden pedestals to keep them safe...

Nothing makes you appreciate a vegetable or fruit --even the storebought kind -- once you know what a challenge that part between the seed and the table can be!