What to do with your leftover or unripe fall harvest...

my CSA green tomatoes

Fall is definitely in full swing, and I love it! There are so many great things about fall...enjoying the crisp air, bundling up with cozy sweaters and warm drinks, harvesting the fruits of your labor on hot summer days in your garden...and of course enjoying the fall recipes that celebrate your ripe and (hopefully) plentiful harvest!

Sometimes, however, it gets cold pretty quickly and your vegetables don't have time or the warmth to ripen before frost sets in, but don't despair! There are still some beloved recipes that safely use unripened vegetables that are delicious and one-of-a-kind, specific to the fall season, such as this one below! You don't have to let your vegetables go to waste!

Since my balcony harvest was very minimal due to the scaffolding that I've mentioned before, I had asked my CSA if they would at all be able to get me a few pounds of green tomatoes to make this recipe that I miss every fall,making sure to explain that they are just unripe red tomatoes. They asked their farmers and my wish was granted, so a recent delivery included some green tomatoes that I used for this pie (otherwise unable to find and purchase here anywhere...)! This is a simple and delicious recipe (one of my fall favs!) very similar to my mom's version...for those who are skeptical, it really doesn't taste like tomatoes, it has it's own mild flavor. If you're from the southern States, you probably have had fried green tomatoes before and this is nothing new to you!

green tomato pie

Green Tomato Pie

Pastry for 9-inch pie (top and bottom)
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
5 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
4 c. thinly sliced green tomatoes
1 tbsp. white vinegar or lemon juice

(1 tsp. grated lemon peel)
1 tbsp. butter

Mix sugars, flour and spices. Arrange a layer of tomato slices on the bottom of pie shell. Sprinkle with 3 or 4 tablespoons of the sugar mixture. 

Continue alternating layers until the pie shell is full. Sprinkle any remaining sugar mixture on top and dot with butter. Sprinkle lemon rind and vinegar on top. Put top crust on, cut slits in the top crust for ventilation, and bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or until brown (the ingredients start to bubble out of the slits). Optional: add a crust protector or put foil over the outer edge of the crust for the last 15-20 minutes of baking to prevent the crust from burning.

yum, yum, yuuuuuummmm!

Enjoy!

The Garden - a movie about an innercity garden and the fight to keep it

So...just in time for the upcoming weekend, I have a movie recommendation for all you gardeners out there...

The Garden

Get inspired and feel the strife of gardeners trying to hold onto their family traditions!


The Garden (2008) is a documentary about the demolition of the South Central urban farm and community garden in an industrial area of Los Angeles, CA, and is one of the biggest urban farms in the USA. It follows the story of what this inner-city garden means to the families that work the land and how each family's garden plot is part of their livelihood and family tradition. Due to a terribly unfortunate backdoor land ownership dispute, the state evicts the farmers from this land that they have farmed for years, after which demonstrations ensue in an attempt to save the land. A few celebrities also appear on the families' behalves.

To find out if the farm gets bulldozed or if they get to keep their land, watch the film!

Here's a trailer to see what it's about:

Jalapeno Update

After a long and drawn-out battle against the aphids, my jalapeno plants are finally starting to bloom and produce chilis!! So exciting!

I still have to spray the plants, especially the blooms (yes, even inside the flowers), with water about every other day, depending on how many aphids I see, as well as wipe off any aphids on the undersides of the leaves. Talk about tender loving care - these plants are spoiled! Almost daily care! But it does make me happy to see that my efforts are finally paying off and becoming fruitful...

Also placed one of my two habanero plants outside, too, where it's a bit cooler - this has worked in the past to force blooms. Am keeping one indoors to be safe!

one of my purple jalapeno plants

...with purple flowers!

the normal green jalapeno plants are flowering too, especially my larger one

...and the first pepper is growing! Hurray! Finally!

More updates on these later, hopefully I will then have 3 varieties of peppers to photograph for you!

Hamburg Botanical / Loki-Schmidt Garden (+ pics)

So.....I had a few visitors staying at my place this week, which explains the lack of posts! But we did do something garden-y here in Hamburg (Germany), which I would like to show you!

There are actually 2 locations of the botanical gardens in Hamburg, one in Klein Flottbek and one in Planten un Blomen, the main park downtown near the university. It's actually a pretty nice park...there are areas for kids, a concert pavilion, a few cafés, some water shows in the evenings, and of course some nice beds, like the rose garden. The park, as I just mentioned, is also home to the greenhouse part of the botanical garden.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the greenhouses - there were multiple houses for each climate zone (tropical, desert, etc.) and all the plants looked great! There were even lots of blooming cacti, no easy task to accomplish. And the bang for your buck was astonishing (thanks to its cooperation with the university): entrance was FREE! Waaay cool!

I only had my phone with my to take pictures, but I think they turned out alright - hope you enjoy some highlights of the greenhouses!

the park grounds outside of the green house

the different houses! tropics, desert, ferns, etc.

polka dots!

a very weird tropical seed/flower stem

the famous insectivorous pitcher plant!

some art students doing drawings in the desert house

one of those gorgeous flowering cacti!

a succulent with a huge flower

love the spiky dark green with the yellow flower pop

love the red needles

cool succulents

a fern! striking black stem!

carnivorous plants display - insects stick, fall, drown, are clamped, etc.!

fuschia!

we thought this one looked like a tumor...or a monster... :)

Mystery Vegetable: Fennel

This is one that I'm just really not that familiar with, and was never very aware of. One that never really seemed all that appealing and kind of rare. One that I probably have seen at the store, but never really caught my interest. One that has a kinda furry top, reminiscent of dill. One that is...

Fennel

2 fennel bulbs

These two fennel bulbs were part of my recent CSA box delivery, so it became time to venture into fennel territory! But in which direction?

Fennel, or Foeniculum vulgare (I find it amusing that "vulgar" is in the latin name, makes you wonder...), is also commonly used in seed form in baking and cooking, more so in India and Mediterranean/middle Eastern dishes. Its pretty little yellow flowers make it a nice addition to flowering beds, and its foliage is often used here in Germany in tea form to aid in digestion. The bulb itself is also popularly eaten in salads here in Germany and has a anise or licorice flavor. It is also one of the main 3 herbs used to flavor absinthe, that green alcoholic substance popular in Europe. Didn't know that!

So how to make fennel then? I had a recipe from a friend for fennel soup, which consisted of cooking the sliced bulbs with vegetable bouillon and onion and the pureeing. This was actually really good, in a way reminiscent of potato soup (maybe I haven't had potato soup for a while...).

Besides helping with digestion (to get things flowing and prevent flatulence), fennel also has a bit of Vitamin C, Manganese and Potassium.

So if you're looking for something new to try, give fennel a shot! Love it or leave it!

Window Sill Compost: Did it work?

my window sill compost

That's the question now, did my window sill compost project even work?!

Hard to say! To be honest, this was not an actual compost pile since it was not exposed to insects, heat, and moisture as a "normal" compost pile would be (remember I live in the city), so there was no real degradation that took place, outside of the drying of the ingredients.

Nevertheless, I assume that while it may have had different effects, that it had at least some sort of effect on my plants. What you see pictured above is the end result of the ingredients dried, crushed, and mixed together. I then mixed this in with the soil in each pot. If nothing else, this should have provided my soil with a lot of nitrogen, potassium, calcium, and other trace minerals.

Due to the construction project on my building, my vegetables are less than ideal this year, so it's really hard to say if the compost helped or not, but I like to think it did!

I just stumbled upon this article on Apartment Therapy about making an odorless "true" compost bin for indoors, something to consider for next year.

How about you - have you tried adding food scraps to your planters and had either success or regrets?

Exotic Plants: Grow your own tea!

So I was sitting at work in our canteen on break one evening with some colleagues, drinking the tea I always bring (whole-leaf green tea), and a friend who knew I had a balcony garden asked if my tea came from my balcony too! I at first chuckled, but after digging around on the internet some, I came to the conclusion: WHY THE HECK NOT?!

What I hadn't realized before was that green, white, oolong, and black teas all come from the same plant, that being the Camellia Sinensis! Who would have though! Wow! There are 2 varieties, the var. sinensis and var. assamica, one being broad-leaved and one narrow-leaved. What makes the different kinds/flavors of tea is how the leaves themselves are processed, basically the conditions and amount of time under which the leaves are dried and oxidized. Of course the region on which the plants are grown affects the flavor as well!

my Camellia Sinensis var. sinensis, about 1 foot tall

So after realizing how cool that would be to grow my own tea, I did some snooping around and found a company that ships tea plants. Wasn't sure how that was going to work out, but I figured it was worth a shot - was around 7€ ($10). It came all wrapped up with foliated cardboard and in a big box. All was well!

It's been several months now since it arrived, and it is still doing well! It's gotta lots of new leaves, too. I guess at some point I'm going to have to prune it back - fully grown it can get up to 3 yards tall, too high for my apartment!

some new leaves!

For now I'm keeping it indoors on the windowsill facing my balcony (southwest), which is fairly warm and dry, which it seems to like.

Of course I'm super anxious to make some tea, but I think I'd better just be patient and wait until the plant gets bigger :-)

leaf close-up

In the meantime, The Fragrant Leaf is a nice website that I found on the history of tea, how to best brew tea, tea customs and cultures, types of tea, etc.

At the International Garden Show, which I recently attended, I also bought some tea seeds! They're pretty big, look kinda like a hazelnut. Can't wait to see if I can get them to germinate and prosper as well!