More Zucchini! More Zucchini Recipes!

Zucchini, just right for sauteing.

It's a single hill of bush-type zucchini and took over the entire row by the end of the season,
and crowded onto the next row, too.  The rows are 6' across.  

This is the first year I've grown zucchini.  It's always so cheap at the farmer's market -- they're nearly giving the stuff away.  The plant looked lovely in the greenhouse this spring and I had an empty row in my garden, so I figured why not.  It's a fairly fuss-free plant without many issues.  Powdery mildew attempted to get a start thanks to the weather and whatever bugs dragged it in on their feet, but we halted that.  It's so simple to grow, I'm saving seeds for next year.

I promised more recipes, and here is another:

Zucchini-Pumpkin-Raisin Quickbread

• 1/2 c vegetable oil
• 1 cup sugar (I mix 1/2 cup brown and 1/2 cup white/splenda)

• 3 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla

• 2 cups shredded zucchini
• 1 cup solid-pack pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

• 1 cup raisins 

1. Mix first 2 ingredients in large bowl.  
2. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. 
3. Add zucchini and pumpkin, mix well.
4. In a separate bowl, mix remaining dry ingredients.  
5. Add dry ingredients to large bowl and mix until just combined. 
6. Stir in raisins. Pour mixture into a single large loaf pan or four small loaf pans.    
7. Bake at 350 for 1 hour (large loaf pan) or 30 minutes for 4 small loaf pans.  Cool in pans for 15 minutes, then remove to wire rack to cool completely before slicing.  

Remember that extra large zucchini in my last post?  I've only used half of it so far.  

Bake 

What to Do with the Fruits of the Harvest

Yes, that is a very large zucchini. More than a foot long and about 6" diameter at its widest point.   While we like a bit of young (small) zucchini sauteed with other vegetables, the whole family loves when I use the larger ones for baking.  

My husband didn't think he'd like zucchini bread so I developed the following recipe to suit his tastes.  It's always a hit.  I make several loaves, slice them and freeze the slices to add to lunchboxes throughout the year.  

Spiced Zucchini Raisin Quick Bread

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup sugar (I use splenda and I've often reduced this to 1/2 cup without any complaints)
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 tsp vanilla

• 2 cups shredded zucchini (you can add up to 3 cups without distorting the flavour or texture.  It just gets more moist! Leave the peels on when you shred it.)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup milk

1. Sift the first 6 ingredients together in a bowl.  
2. Mix the next 5 ingredients in a separate, large bowl.  
3. Add the dry ingredients to the large bowl slowly, alternating with the milk until fully mixed.
4. Stir in the zucchini and raisins. Pour into one large or four small loaf pans.
5. Bake in a 350 oven for 30 minutes (four small loaf pans) or one hour (a single, large loaf pan.) 
6. Cool for 10 minutes in the pans, then remove from pans to wire rack to cool completely before slicing. 

I'll be posting more recipes in the coming days.  Afterall, what do we garden for if not to enjoy the fruits of our labours?  

Holy Fat Carrots, Batman!

Yeh, the centimeters don't mean anything to me, either. They're about 6" long & 6" across. The really fat one, I need to take a tape measure to it, because I think it's about 10" circumference. These were winter storage carrots that got so darned fat. My other carrots were long and pretty thick, too, but nothing like this! Have a half bushel to slice & freeze this week.

Gardening Mistakes I Hope Not to Make Next Year

I don't think I want to plant sunflowers near my vegetable garden. Two years in a row they are covered in powdery mildew and spread it on to the other plants. I love the sunflowers, don't get me wrong. I do not like my cucumbers covered in the powdery mildew. I'll see if the city will let me plant them around the telephone pole in the tree lawn. I think they'd be happy there and my veggies will be safe.

Peppers....I'll plant them much earlier next year and start them inside much earlier than I did last year. I think we got started in March. I'll try early February next year so that they're much larger.

Maters....I won't crowd them so much. Though they did fine, it's a real pain to pick them and I think they'll mature more quickly with a bit more space.

Beans....I'm planting more of them, a different variety & I'll have a finch feeder nearby. Those bean beetles really pissed me off.

Nematodes. I'm buying some as early as I can. The kind that eat all the bad nasties hiding in the soil waiting to eat our plants...like those bean beetles. Grrrr.

Better soil in the square foot boxes. I'm not entirely sold on Mel's Mix though I might have to try it in one box just for comparison. I don't like the idea of using Peat Moss so heavily. Despite what the Canadian government says about our Peat Moss supplies being perfectly fine...it's still a limited resource and what kind of damage are we doing to the environments from which we strip it?

I'll use more of my front flower beds for vegetables. I have plans, oh I have plans. I had tomatoes out there this year and they tasted amazing being next to a garden oregano plant. Just wonderful. Now I'll plant a few more things out there.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of for now.

Sorry for the long absence. Gardening has been kind of sucky recently, plus my camera was broken so....no pictures.

Chinese Lantern Harvest

Remember that patch of Chinese Lanterns?

I harvested several stems full of them, defoliated the stems, then bound one end in twine:

Then I sprayed the lanterns with hairspray and hung them to dry:

SON OF A BEAN BEETLE!

So I went out to harvest beans yesterday and guess what I found?


You know what those fat, yellow, fuzzy suckers are? Mexican Bean Beetle larva. And they seem to have prodigious appetites.

While harvesting beans from my bush plants (barely any nibbles on those plants) I noticed that the leaves of the bean tee pee were looking much more chewed than they had previously. Previously I found only two adult beetles on the tee pee. It seemed almost immune. Not so, obviously.

Take a look at the leaf damage:

The Mexican Bean Beetle is the black sheep of the ladybug family. Ladybugs eat other damaging bugs in our gardens, but the Mexican Bean Beetle likes to chomp on bean leaves (and the beans, too!) RJ, my nine-year-old, was most upset when he thought I was drowning ladybugs. Here is what the adults look like. (Most of mine have been bright red, but some were paler yellow-orange).



I know my picture of the larva is rather hard to see, so here's a much better picture I found on the 'net:



My shoulders are actually sore from picking these suckers off my bean leaves and drowning them. There were SO MANY of them! I know there are more, but my soreness turned into a pinched nerve and ended my bug harvest. Hubby's out picking them now. I don't know why the beetles decided to go and lay their eggs on my tee pee plants since those were not the plants with the most beetles on them. I guess they figured there wasn't much eating left on the other bean plants.

Relatively few of the beans were damaged. I picked about 4 quarts and tossed only a handful, so at least they're not overly damaging the harvest. I understand later in the season they will go after the beans more.

I had sprinkled the leaves with diatomaceous earth, but it seemed to do nothing to deter the nasty bugs. Next year (it's too late this year) I could order the spined soldier bug from Natural Insect Control, a local company. They're rather expensive for the small number of plants in my home garden, though. I can also erect finch feeders near my bean plants, which is what I will most likely do. Finches will happily snack on Mexican Bean Beetles. I will continue to handpick and drown (in soapy water) the adults and larva I find. I could also try to find a supplier for the parisitic wasp Pediobius foveolatus. Price is a factor. I truly cannot afford to spend $100 on bugs to kill bugs in my garden, nor would I need as many as $100 would buy. That kind of expenditure completely negates the frugality of home gardening.

Now about that bean harvest:

Is Your Garden Addicted to Miracle-Gro?

Did you ever use it and have wonderful results, then the next year not use it and have terrible results?

Well, here's why...Miracle-Gro and other synthetic fertilizers strip the soil of nutrients. Wash them right out. It also salinates the soil (salts the earth) and makes it a very unfriendly place to nematodes, worms, and other critters that break down organic wastes and feed the soil and plant roots around them. The processes by which synthetic fertilizers are made is extremely hard on the environment. Those processes use incredible amounts of energy and create enormous amounts of waste.

Synthetic fertilizers only consider the three big nutrients for plants: Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), and Potassium (K). Putting plants on a synthetic fertilizer diet is like putting a person on a diet that ONLY contains Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat --- no iron, vitamin C, magnesium, etc., just the big 3 macronutrients. Everyone knows we need more than just protein, carbs, and fat. So do plants. Calcium deficiency shows up in some plants as black roots, pale leaf margins and, in tomatoes, blossom-end rot.

Synthetic fertilizers are short acting and water soluble. Meaning only about 15% of what you add to your soil is used by the plants and the rest is rinsed away with the rain. Synthetic fertilizers are to blame for nitrates in our drinking water.

I suspect a lot of people think that synthetic fertilizers (like Miracle-Gro) are vitamins for plants. Since chemical fertilizers strip soils of the natural nutrients that plants need, soils and the plants grown in them become dependent upon those chemical fertilizers. That really makes synthetic fertilizers more like a drug than a vitamin and their relationship with soil and plants an addictive one. The synthetic fertilizers have to continually be added to the soil in order to feed the plants the nutrients they need. Why? because those fertilizers denude the soils their beneficial nutrients and organisms. It's kind of like a human taking speed to get a bit of oomph instead of eating a piece of fruit for the same oomph. Studies have also shown that synthetic fertilizers actually REDUCE the nutritional value of fruits and vegetable grown using them. How's that for a drug?!

What is preferable is organic fertilizer. There are about a million different kinds. Bacteria dwelling in the soil will fix nitrogen out of the air into the soil for plants to use. That bacteria will be present if it hasn't been killed off by synthetic fertilizer use. Certain plants are better at fixing nitrogen than others. Clovers and all legumes are nitrogen fixers. They suck enormous amounts of nitrogen from the air and store it in the soil for future plants to use. Phosphorous can be gotten from crushed phosphate rock, bone meal, dried blood, cottonseed meal and other sources. Potassium (potash) can be gotten from plant residues (in the form of wood ash), manures & compost and natural mineral sources such as granite dust, greensand and basalt rock. Seaweed and seaweed extract are also excellent sources of potash.

Soil really needs to be viewed as a living organism requiring a wide range of nutrients in order to support the many life forms within it-- from plants to worms and bacteria to fungus.




I use compost, manure, mulch, wood ash, nitrogen-fixing plants, seaweed extract and fish emulsions to feed my plants and nourish my soil. The great thing about any of these is that they can stay resident in the soil for future generations to use and do not convert to toxins in the soil or pollute our waters. That's conscientious gardening. I purchase my seaweed extract and fish emulsion from Stokes.