The Corn is as High as an Elephant's Eye...

... An' it looks like its climbin' clear up to the sky.

That is to say, if you read my post about corn last year, I'm happy to report that this year's plantings did considerably better! In case you've struggled with corn, yourself, I wanted to share some tips I've learned along the way.

Tip #1: Plant your corn seeds very closely together. This year I planted them about 6 inches apart, in blocks, to ensure better pollination. It seemed to work, as I had many more developed kernels in each ear. The silks, down here...

... need to be pollinated by the tassels, up here.

Tip #2: Plant your corn blocks in an area that gets a gentle breeze. This also helps the corn silks to be pollinated.

Tip #3: Corn is a heavy feeder of nitrogen. Make sure your corn stalks get the nutrition they need by inter-planting with beans, which produce nitrogen in their roots and, in turn, feed your corn. This year I planted one bean seed in the same hole as each corn seed at the same time. Next year, I think I'll plant the corn seed a couple of weeks ahead of the bean seed, in order to give the corn a leg up on vertical growth. After all, the beans feed the corn, but the corn needs to be tall enough to support the beans (if you choose a pole variety).

The result of interplanting beans and corn looks something like this: a jungle of beans scrambling to the top of your corn stalks. I will admit that it made harvesting the corn and beans just a mite trickier... but the end product (at least with regards to the corn) was better quality.

Yes, in case you were wondering, corn and beans are part of Three-Sisters gardening, which I also blogged about in Corn 101. It turns out the indigenous people really were onto something!

No need to use stakes or bamboo teepees to support these pole beans... the corn stalks did all the heavy lifting for me! As an added bonus, the beanstalks [in their messy tangle of vines] actually did me another huge favor: they helped hold the heavy corn stalks upright. (Last year I had to pull a lot of immature stalks because they fell over onto my neighbor's brand-new Cadillac SUV. This year, I'm happy to report, the corn and the Caddy did not make contact!)

Tip #4: As the ears start to fill out, pull back the silks gently, occasionally, to make sure they aren't infested by corn worms. If you do find worms, they can be picked out and squashed by hand before they do any real damage. After you've sleuthed around, pull the silks back up around the tip of the cob and secure in place with a twist tie. Really! This method of pest evasion didn't seem to hinder the corn's development at all... and worms did not ruin my harvest.

Tip #5: When do you know to harvest? Wait until the silks become brown and dry... but not much longer than that. I found that the sweetest, juiciest corn was underdeveloped, rather than overdeveloped. Kernels left in the garden too long get tough and starchy rather than tender and sugary.

And my last tip: Don't overcook your corn! Once you've harvested those gorgeous ears, bring a pot of water to a rolling boil, shuck your corn, and then toss the ears in for exactly three minutes... no more! Remove from the pot and serve immediately. Don't let the corn remain in the pot, as it will continue cooking and become soggy and tasteless. Eeww.

If you live in sunny So Cal and you've been wanting to grow corn and beans, I really don't think it's too late! If we have a warm autumn, as we usually do, you may very well be able to pump out a round of short-season corn and beans. Look for varieties that mature in less than 60 days, and you might just find yourself quoting Rodgers & Hammerstein by the beginning of October, too!

Disappearing Bruschetta

Here's a super fast recipe for the best bruschetta ever. It uses fresh ingredients that are in season now, either in your very own garden or at your local farmer's market. I've served this hors d' oeuvres to friends and family several times this month, all with rave reviews! The truth is, it's really very easy. And I must admit, sometimes my husband and I have a whole plate of this for dinner. After all, it covers three of the main food groups, so I have no qualms about serving this as a meal in and of itself.

To prepare this dish, you will need tomatoes, basil, olive oil, a bulb of garlic, kosher salt and pepper, a loaf of artisan bread, and fresh mozzarella cheese.

Start with: an apron full of sun-ripened tomatoes and several sprigs of basil of any variety. I usually use 4-6 medium tomatoes and an equal number of sprigs of basil. Head indoors and chop the tomatoes coarsely; remove the basil leaves from the stems and also chop them into small (1/4 inch) pieces. Combine in a bowl and set aside.

Next, get out a bulb of garlic and be prepared to use A LOT! This is the step that makes the dish. You can't skimp on the garlic and end up with mouth-watering bruschetta. I usually use one large clove of garlic per medium sized tomato; thus, if I use 4 tomatoes I use 4 large cloves of garlic. If you're thinking of making this for a first date, you may want to reconsider! You will sense a faint personal scent of Eau de Garlic the next morning, but trust me, it will be worth it.

Speaking of garlic (and why did no one ever teach me this until I started watching the Food Network?) the best way to chop garlic is to peel each clove and then smash it really hard on the cutting board by placing it between the wood and the flat side of a chef's knife. Pound the knife with your fist [with a lot of pressure but careful to avoid the blade] to flatten each clove. This helps extract the extra oils in the garlic, you have virtually no waste, and it also makes it much easier to mince into very small particles. I prepare all my garlic this way now-- and an added bonus is no more fumbling to wash the messy garlic press!

Add minced garlic cloves to tomato and basil mixture. Toss with a splash of good olive oil and a very generous sprinkling of kosher salt and coarsely ground black pepper. The salt and pepper bring out the flavor of the tomatoes, while the garlic and oil mix and give off a heavenly aroma. Set mixture aside. Pour yourself a glass of wine and heat up your grill.

Once the grill is heated and cleaned, turn off the back burners and turn the front burner to low. You want to use indirect heat to keep from burning your bread. Slice a loaf of crusty artisan bread or a baguette into 1/2 inch slices diagonally along the loaf. Butter one side of each slice liberally. Place each slice of bread buttered slice down onto the grill. Quickly, place a 1/4 inch thick slice of fresh mozzarella cheese on each piece of bread. Pull the lid down over the bread so that the cheese melts on top as the bottoms turn golden brown. With a spatula, remove each piece of bread as soon as the bottom is crisp and the cheese is gooey.

Rest assured that if you aren't the grilling type, you can just as easily cook this in the oven under the broiler or on the stove. Just last weekend my family stayed at the Crystal Cove Beach Cottages where my husband and I prepared this on a tiny electric burner, just in time for sea-side happy hour! (Yes, I brought along lots of fresh produce from PSF.) Mmmmmm...

Immediately after removing from heat, top melted cheese side of each slice of bread with a generous scoop of prepared tomato mixture. Serve promptly so the juices from the tomatoes don't make the bread soggy.

If you serve this to a group, stick around to be sure you get your fair share of the bounty! I assure you that if you step away from the platter for even a few minutes, the bruschetta will have mysteriously disappeared!

Fresh Pict from the Garden

Several weeks ago I finally pulled my sweet peas. Planted this past February, they sprouted, grew, bloomed, bloomed some more, and then became garden monsters, entangling everything in sight and simultaneously blocking out the sunlight.

When my sweet pea vines soared over eight feet height, and I could no longer reach the blossoming stems to cut fresh flowers without getting on a ladder, I realized that I had reached that sad but inevitable moment: they simply had to go to make way for more summer produce.

I cut every flowering stem within reach and filled glass mason jars with dense handfuls of their tender petals and tendrils. The scent of sweet peas (my favorite) filled my house for a few last days.

My neighbor also picked a bouquet of sweet peas, which he took to his father's grave for Memorial Day. "I never realized that sweet peas had such a wonderful fragrance," he said.

They truly do. I have tried so many sweet-pea scented soaps, candles, and lotions, and none of them are anything like the real deal. Try as the chemists might, they just can't replicate the simple wonders of Mother Nature.

I snapped a few photos of the arrangements around my home, wishing all the while that I could send a bouquet, that very day, to everyone I knew. And I realized that, while I couldn't send the actual flowers, I could send the next best thing.

It occurred to me that, with a few clicks of the mouse, I can upload photos of my fresh, seasonal flowers and produce and turn them into greeting cards with a little help from my favorite digital photo site, Shutterfly.

Voila! I'm now creating my new line of greeting cards, "Fresh Pict from Pocket Square Farm."

You never know... you might just find a gleaming ear of corn or a bushel of sweet peas coming to a mailbox near you!

Homemade Tomato Sauce

Over the years, I've been searching for a perfect homemade tomato sauce. I've tried a lot of good ones, but they usually seemed to be lacking something. Some were too watery, many were too mild. I wanted a pasta sauce that had a thicker texture and more robust flavor.

I finally found one that fit this bill in a cookbook I picked up off the bargain shelf at Barnes & Noble. Italian Country Cooking: The Secrets of Cucina Povera by Loukie Werle celebrates and explains (in very simple terms) traditional Italian farmhouse recipes using a few seasonal, fresh, low-cost ingredients.

Many of the illustrated dishes are not something you would expect to see on a menu at an Americanized Italian restaurant. These dishes are the real deal, or so it seems. Hopefully someday I can travel there to find out for myself. Regardless, I'm taking the author's word for it, and flipping through the beautiful photographs of tiny towns across Italy almost makes me feel as if I am there, sitting down at a centuries-old, worn, wooden kitchen farm table, about to enjoy a simple soup and some crusty bread amongst friendly faces.

The first recipe I tried was this Homemade Tomato Sauce. According to the author, you can make it from canned tomatoes, but I prefer fresh from the garden, of course! I also liked that it called for rosemary and celery, both of which are currently growing at PSF. I never did get my onion and garlic sets in the ground this spring. Oh well. Maybe next year!

Salsa de Pomodoro Casareccia

(Homemade Tomato Sauce)

Ingredients:

3 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil

1 red onion, cut into 1/4 in. cubes

4 large cloves of garlic, chopped

1-1/2 Tbs. chopped fresh rosemary

1 celery stalk, cut into pea-sized cubes

14-ounces of tomatoes, fresh or canned (if using canned, buy Italian diced tomatoes)

Splash of your favorite red wine

Directions:

Combine oil and onion in large pot and cook over medium heat until onion browns, about 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add garlic, rosemary, and celery and cook 6 minutes more, until celery is soft.

Stir in diced tomatoes and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Lower heat to a simmer, set the lid at an angle so steam can escape, and cook until the sauce is thick, 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on your preference for thickness. Remove from heat and stir in a generous splash of your favorite red wine (I used one made from organic grapes), to smooth the consistency and kick up the flavor another notch. Season liberally with kosher salt and coarsely ground pepper to taste.

This sauce will keep in the refrigerator up to one week, in the freezer up to 6 months, or you can even can it if you are so ambitious (remember tomatoes must be canned using a pressure canner, not just a water bath, for safety reasons).

Makes approximately 4 cups of sauce. Enjoy over your favorite pasta with a handful of fresh parmesan sprinkled on top!

Trading Up

It's been a while, but I am back to blogging.

The end of the year is always a bit of a whirlwind for teachers. Open House? Check. Report cards? Check. End of year assessments, field trips, and activities? Check. Cleaning out the classroom. Check, check, check. Now it's official: school's out; summer's in!

Call is kismet. Fate. A good omen for the months ahead. The stars were definitely aligned when I headed outdoors on the first day of summer vacation.

There, I picked my very first warm, ripe, and juicy tomatoes of the season. There's just something special, almost startling, about the eye-popping, fire-engine red of a ripe tomato against the leafy green backdrop of its foliage that screams to be picked and devoured. As I gently placed the tomatoes in my gathered apron-front, I reveled in the thought that I could eat these beauties anytime I wanted to, not just at the 10:50, 1:15, and 2:10 recess breaks. Now that's freedom! Sigh.

I've officially traded in my red checking pens for red tomatoes. Enough of growing young minds for a few months; Time to grow more veggies! If you haven't planted tomatoes yet this season, I promise it's not too late. Continue planting seedlings through the end of August in warm Southern California, and you might just have ripe tomatoes through Thanksgiving! Plant any variety in June, plant Early Girls in July, and plant Glaciers in August (they tolerate cooler temperatures later in the fall). If we have a warm autumn, you'll be seeing red practically until you start decorating for Christmas!

Happy summer to teachers everywhere! Check back soon for some mouth-watering recipes using [what else?] these tomatoes.

What's for Dinner?

Ahhh.... that's the age old question. As a busy mom, I hear that question every afternoon-- at least once--but usually more like 10-15 times. My kids ask me what's for dinner in the car on the way home from school, again when we arrive at the house, and then every 5-10 minutes while I am actively cooking the aforementioned meal, regardless of the fact that they can see with their own two eyes what I have right there in front of me on the cutting board. Boy, are they persistent... or bad listeners... or creatures of habit... or all of the above.

But I can't really blame them for being so eager, because we all look forward to a delicious and hearty meal at the end of a long day.

So, I was driving home just the other day (to the rhythmic back-seat chant of "What's for dinner? What's for dinner?") when I realized how profoundly gardening has changed the way I think about food and plan my family's meals. Whereas I used to ask myself, "What's for dinner," I now begin that thought process with a different inquiry altogether:

"What's in the garden?" I ask myself as I head home. Meal planning is no longer about what I feel like. It's about what I have on hand, ready to go, in my own front yard.

Eating seasonally and locally is at once both wonderful and wonderfully challenging. When I say challenging, I don't mean in the sense of taking extra time or costing extra money. Case(s) in point:

People ask me all the time how I make time for my garden, and the truth of the matter is--yes, there is some upfront expense and effort required, especially twice a year at fall and spring planting times, but the minutes and hours returned to me at the other end of the growing season are completely worth it. That's when, instead of driving to the market to pick up some last minute items for dinner, I just take a few steps outside to the garden. And, since my raised beds are directly next to my driveway and outside the front door, I can even grab a weighty zucchini or ripe tomato as I park the car and head inside. Now that's fast food.

Financially, the expense of building the "farm" initially was somewhat daunting, but since then we've paid very little in terms of soil management (we crank out a lot of homemade compost now) and plants (seeds are cheap compared to the prices of store-bought produce). I can't even really say that our water bill has gone up, since the drip system that waters our garden already existed in the form of standard sprinkler heads watering an ugly and useless patch of greedy lawn. In fact, in the height of the summer months I can get our family of four fed (pretty darn well) on just our Pocket Square Farm produce and as little as $25 in groceries from Trader Joe's. Really. I have receipts to prove it!

What's so challenging about farm to fork eating, then? For me, I think the struggle is in separating oneself and one's family away from modern-day convenience food. Fast food has become completely entrenched as part of our daily lives... and why wouldn't it be when we're all so exhausted and crazed just trying to keep up with work, school, family, soccer schedules, swim lessons, homework, housework, etc. As I drive by In-n-Out Burger my car almost subconsciously swerves toward the drive-through's gravitational pull. I mean really... I could get In... and Out... and have my family fed for less than $20... and not have to do any dishes afterward? I am salivating as I type at the mere thought.

But, alas, I grip the wheel with all my might, pull my drooling tongue back into my mouth, and steer the car away from the temptation! Because this, I know, is waiting for me at home:

PSF Meals are Planned Around What's Ripe in the Garden

The kids and I hop out of the car, drop our bags in the entry, and head out to the garden to pick what's ripe and needs to be eaten. Even in the earliest days of summer, when my raised beds are really just beginning to crank out the veggies, we can still find enough to fill out a meal... every single day.

I realize when your kids ask you what's for dinner that "zucchini, green and gold bush beans, and strawberries" might not be the most obvious answer. In fact, those three foods, in and of themselves, are kind of a random modge-podge. But, most nights, we just go with what we have on hand. I saute the veggies in a little olive oil, steam some rice or warm a nice loaf of crusty bread, and slice the berries to serve on the side.

Start to finish (and I mean picking, washing, chopping, and cooking), this super sustainable meal is ready in 20 minutes flat.

Grilled or Sauteed Veggies are the Foundation of Family Dinners

Now, don't get me wrong. I do love a double double with grilled onions. I mean really... who doesn't? But next time your family asks "What's for dinner," I urge you NOT to think, "What do I want to eat?" but rather, "What's locally and seasonally available right now?" Then you'll realize that "What's for dinner?" is a different question altogether.

The answer may not be In-n-Out, but [cue jingle] that's what good ea-ting is... all about!

Bathing Beauties

Why did the chicken(s) cross the road?

To get to the day spa... duh!

Okay, well, it may not be a day spa EXACTLY, but our gals sure do love to pamper themselves in [what else?] a pile of dirt in the corner of one of my raised beds. Aside from devouring juicy bugs, dust bathing is their favorite pastime.

What? You didn't know that chickens take baths? Of course they do! Just not in the water. In fact, water and dampness is really not good for your hens. They always need their henhouse and bedding to be clean and dry, thus avoiding respiratory problems.

So how do our feathered friends clean up? They roll in the dirt. They fluff out their feathers. They puff and preen as dust particles sift deep into their plumage, all the way to their skin. They roll on their backs, spread their wings, and even stick their feet up into the air. Truly, chicken dust bathing is quite a spectacle if you've never witnessed it. See for yourself!

Ahhh! Nothing like dirt to make you feel your freshest.

The only things these So Cal chicks are missing are cucumber slices over their eyes!