#Dilly White bean salad

[morethansalad]

Dilly White Bean Cucumber Salad (Vegan)

[bobosbigfoods]

dilly chickpea salad

INGREDIENTS chickpeas or white beans cucumbers, thinly sliced tomatoes, diced red onion, thinly sliced  scallions, chopped a lot of dill, chopped mint (optional) thai chilies, chopped (optional)

for dressing: lemon juice mustard minced garlic olive oil salt 

[livingcorner]

What to Grow in a Kitchen Garden

Kitchen gardens are making a comeback! We all want the freshest and most nutritious, flavorful food possible. What could be easier than having the fixin’s for tonight’s supper growing right outside the back door? Start small! Here’s how to plant a kitchen garden—with ideas on what which vegetables to grow.

Imagine waking up in the morning and breakfasting on your own garden—gathering gold orange cherry tomatoes or strawberries for breakfast. Cultivating a garden full of your favorite vegetables is a practical way to save a bundle on your grocery bill and it also makes meal planning a snap.

You're reading: What to Grow in a Kitchen Garden

Make a Tiny Kitchen Garden!

What’s great about a kitchen garden is that it can be manageable, not overwhelming.  How about a simple raised bed that’s 12 x 12 feet? Small spaces can be surprising productive! 

To get started, observe how the sun falls in your garden and for how long. You’ll need 6 to 8 hours of sunlight a day for many vegetables. 

Locating your garden near your backdoor makes harvesting fresh produce super convenient. If you lack a good sunny location for your garden in the backyard, your kitchen garden will look good enough to grow out front.

Ideally, the garden can be close enough to the house that you can access a hose or a spigot. Plus,

Your soil should have good drainage. You’ll probably need to amend most soils with compost or organic matter.

If your soil is really poor, consider raised beds and buying soil and organic composted manure. Raised beds work especially well in small spaces. Just avoid timber treated with chemicals.

Plan an easy access layout, varying the height of different crops.

Make the most of your space with some container crops.

Many dwarf fruit trees can be grown in pots, and tender plants that can be moved inside in winter

Try growing vertical, too! Trellises can hide eyesore while supporting vining crops such as tomato, cucumbers, and squash.

Don’t forget to include some edible blooms, too, such as nasturtium, borage, and flowering herbs. They will attract pollinators and add welcome color. 

See our tiny garden kitchen! We created a pocket-size plot that was only 10 x 14 feet. With a lot of thinking and planning, it produced two wonderful harvests, fresh salad, herbs, fruit, veggies and even pumpkins (vining). See what you think. Have you a spare nook doing nothing?

Read more: Using A Digging Fork – Learn When To Use Digging Forks In The Garden

Great Foods for a Kitchen Garden

Plan your kitchen garden with your favorite foods in mind. Here are some ideas!

Love Italian cuisine? Plant lots of ‘San Marzano’ paste tomatoes, ‘Corno di Toro’ peppers, ‘Genovese’ basil, and ‘Cocozelle’ squash.

Crave spring salads? Who could resist tender lettuces you’d never find in the grocery store such as ‘Blushed Butter’, ‘Flashy Trout Back’, or ‘Little Gem’ and don’t forget thin-skinned ‘Diva’ cukes, crispy radishes, and ‘Sungold’ cherry tomatoes.

Planning on canning? You’ll want to grow plenty of ‘Boston Pickling’ cucumbers, ‘Bouquet’ dill, and ‘Blue Lake’ pole beans for making pickles and dilly beans.

Read more: The Garden City Movement genealogy project

Salsa a staple on your table? Tailor your garden to your taste by growing peppers with just the right amount of spice. Try ‘Ancho’ for slight heat, ‘Early Jalapeno’ for medium fire, or crazy-hot ‘Ghost’ peppers for the true chile-heads.

Do you detect a theme? Just as meal planning is easier when you work around a theme, gardens can have themes too. Think ethnic—Thai, Greek, French, Mexican, Russian—whatever family your favorite  foods belong to. Those specialty vegetables that would cost you dearly at the store can be easily grown at home.

Go Gourmet! To really save money, try growing the pricey gourmet foods that you love but can’t afford to buy. Arugula, endive, edamame, filet beans, purple asparagus, white eggplant, shallots, and mesclun are easy to grow.

Remember, many vegetables can be decorative as well as nourishing. Frilly, red-leaved lettuces make a colorful edible edging, scarlet runner beans or purple-podded pole beans are beautiful as well as tasty, and ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss chard comes in an array of eye-catching neon colors. If garden space is at a premium, just plant what you love most and enjoy it at its peak.

Inspired to plan a kitchen garden?  See some sample kitchen garden layouts and start dreaming!

Source: https://livingcorner.com.au Category: Garden

source https://livingcorner.com.au/what-to-grow-in-a-kitchen-garden/

[jeninthegarden]

Wet & Wild

Reflections of the Gardening Projects of 2019

This is my 12th year of garden logging.  What did I just say last year in my decadal review?  That’s right: “the deer remain the big issue”. Well, this past summer, they jumped the temporary netted fence around the corn and tomato patch, and ate all my tomato plants.  And I had a lot of tomato plants!  The deer did not even wait until the fruit had set!  Meanwhile, the ground hog got in and dug up all my corn the same day I planted it (twice!).  Then I planted sunflowers for my beans and squash to trellis on in place of the corn, and the deer hopped in and ate all the sunflowers and squash, and pumpkins and beans.  So, the field crops, although perfectly mulched with cardboard and woodchips a la Back to Eden gardening method, for water conversation and weed barrier, were a complete loss.  It was particularly sad because I started all my squash and melons from seed this past year, with great variety.  The plants were vigorous and blooming before I transplanted them. I hardened them off on the patio before lovingly transplanting them.  Years past when I have tried to direct sow squash, the squirrels have always dug up the seeds and newly germinated seedlings.  

As noted last year, the past few years have been wet and wild - too much rain and too many snap heat waves that have been the most disruptive events.  Still considering rain barrels, but still haven’t done it because there is no shortage of rain in this region. The spring was very wet.  The summer was fairly cool.  The fall was quick and dry.  If anything, we just didn’t get enough sun and heat for the fruiting crops or the long growth crops.  For instance, peppers were drowning in the garden until I rescued them, re-potted them and put them on the warm stone patio. Potato crop was measly though not reduced by disease, insects or rodents. The beets also did not grow, though hilled up in the same conditions under which carrots flourished. They germinated nicely and then stopped growing when they were only 3 inches high.

By contrast, we had a huge crop of peas in the spring and well into June. Unfortunately that meant I had nowhere to plant the cucumbers because I had planned to put them on the pea fences. I won’t make than mistake again.  Fresh raw peas were abundant in the first 3 months. But when I sacrificed all the saved peas and tried a fall crop, even though it was warm enough, it was too dry and the shoots didn’t grow more than 3 inches before it frosted and I had to eat them.  Even the fall greens did not germinate well.  Carrots, we had a bumper crop of and harvested plenty fresh for Thanksgiving dinner, and we had several rows still standing in the garden, in January. Turnips did fine; I pickled them. 

The broccoli and kale did well this year but the cauliflower and cabbage faltered, very disappointing because theses too were started indoors from seed to give them a good head start. And they were hilled up to keep them from getting too wet, but there was not enough sun or heat and their growth was severely stunted.   There was never a chance for the Brussel sprouts – they need nearly as much heat and a long growing season as pumpkins.  Collards just did not germinate. I was using old seed and it failed.

Spinach, a very fickle crop in recent years germinated and grew well last year, particularly where I was extremely brutal about thinning it.  And like the peas, we had a bumper crop of bush string beans, the purple variety, which enjoyed an extended season of about two months.  Did not get a chance to make pickled dilly beans because the dill did not germinate; the seeds were too old. 

Shocker of the season, I grew and harvested radishes! Have not harvested radishes in 10 years.  This variety was the Spanish black, sometimes used to pad out prepared horse-radish, very white and picante.  These were the large breed that should have been the size of an orange, but mine were only the size of golf balls. Meanwhile I ate a vast quantity of watermelon daikon radish bought from the farmer’s market. I made radish and feta salad, shredded radish and cabbage slaw, thin sliced radish with burrata and honey. So aggravating that I could not grow my own!        

Salad greens did very well, particularly in the spring and lasted well into summer because it was so cool. Again, ruthless thinning produced excellent results. The claytonia and the purple orach are still my favorite spring greens. Nasturtiums really took over the garden and they lasted well into fall, they crept and trailed all over the garden.  I love the leaves in salad and the blossoms in scrambled eggs.  I really like squash blooms in my eggs too, but Bambi ate all the squash.

Onions were tricky this year.  The Egyptian walking onions, which are self-seeding and in my herb garden seem to be petering out. Not sure if the last crop tried to seed in the lawn and got mowed or were subsumed by the rampant wild violets I keep tossing in the herb bed.  The leeks, I am sorry to say, did not get enough sun or heat.  Result – NO LEEKY DANCE; very unsettling to the delicate balance of the universe, although the kids are teenagers now and would have been horrified if I had tried to make them dance.  I bought some leeks in the fall because I am very fond of baked leeks au gratin, with some millet or brown rice.

The chives, as always were abundant. And they are perennial so I had to divide them this year.  Love the blossoms scattered in salad like minced red onion.  And, speaking of red onions, I planted about fifty red Cipollini onions, and harvested about fifty.  They were neatly hilled up so they did not drown. Maybe they were smaller than they should have been, egg sized, but they dried and stored well; we are still enjoying them.

I had numerous gardening projects going this past summer and I am surprised at my own progress: 

 The community garden.  I have joined quite a few gardening groups, both online and locally this year. One of them is the InterGenerate community gardens of my county, and specifically the communal garden in my village.  The community plot I cultivated this past year was an experiment in high yield food production in a 16 square foot raised bed.  The violetto string beans were part of that and a smashing success. This year there has been a lot of discussion about subsistence farming and the pretentiousness of growing the perfect tomatoes. The aim of the group is to teach people how to grow their own food and in that vein we donate both seeds and the harvest back to the community.  So this year the focus will be on real subsistence crops: potatoes, beans and squash.  I am enthusiastic and have gone completely overboard ordering potato seed, beans and squash which will proliferate my own garden this year as well.

 The Pollinator Pathway. This is a national movement subdivided down to extremely local chapters working to connect greenways, nature preserves and public lands with private properties where no pesticides are used to create green corridors that are pesticide free.  Very enthusiastic participation on our cul-de-sac; we all registered our properties with the Pathway and promised not to use pesticides. This is very impactful because our cul-de-sac abuts a 200 acre Audubon nature preserve so we are an important bridge piece in the corridor.  I am also very self-interested in joining this movement because this was my first year of bee-keeping and I harvested some superb honey. And I want to add a second hive this year

.  Provence in New York. While puttering around Cape Cod this past spring we discovered a family garden farm selling huge lavender plants at irresistible prices. And while I would very happily have purchased one or two for my herb bed at home, my dear husband had a vision of the fields of lavender in Provence. And since the price was right, and we were driving my Toyota highlander from which I had not yet removed the winter weather mats, he bought 24 huge lavender plants and we brought them home. We planted them in place of the wildflower bed that had petered out and started to go back to grass.  Applying my knowledge of lavender plants that have not survived the winter well in my herb garden, we planted each plant in a hill with gravel and sand under it for drainage.  If the lavender field (conveniently located in the flight path of my bee hive) survives the winter, we will expand it by another 10 plants this year

 The Wildflowers. All three of the windflower beds disappointed us and have petered out. We replaced the one in the back yard with a lavender field.  The one behind that against the back property line is getting the Back-to-Eden treatment this spring so we can plant fruit trees there in the fall. Plums – I’m feeling a plum tree obsession building. Santa Rosa weeping plum trees...  The wildflower patch in the front lawn has already received the Back-to-Eden cardboard and woodchip treatment, and we hugeled the old, rotten woodpile into it. This fall I planted the front of that bed with bluebells and the back of the bed with blueberry bushes. And I threw in a bunch of foxglove seeds in the western wall bed that have set six hardy rosettes I expect to bloom this summer (it’s a biannual).  I may move those to the front wild-flower bed, behind the blueberry bushes.

 The Western Wall – I moved the rhubarb, asparagus and horseradish to the new flowerbed by the western wall of the house.  I also planted a couple of kiwi berry vines that now need a trellis. The asparagus had already been thinning in the vegetable garden and did not appreciate being moved, so I ordered 25 new roots. The rhubarb seemed to like the new location and actually needed dividing so I have high hopes for this spring. Horseradish is a weed so it will be happy anywhere, and oddly enough, I read somewhere that rhubarb-asparagus-horseradish is a good companion planting formula. But I’m a little confused about digging horseradish out of a bed without disturbing the asparagus and rhubarb roots. I couldn’t quite work that out so I planted a patch of each, in the same bed but not mingled.

 Hugelkultur. (You have to say that word with guttural gusto!) What??  It is the method of building a raised bed over buried logs.  We made a really good start in the spring and got the old woodpile in the front yard entirely buried and covered over with cardboard and woodchips, and planted with blueberry bushes and bluebells. The backyard wall of wood is much bigger (leftover from the nine pine trees we lost in hurricane Sandy) and quite a challenge because it is always a jungle of weeds and poison ivy. But we persevered and got half of it hugeled and covered over with woodchips. And we even got some hyssop and salvia, dogwood and a couple rhododendrons planted.  This summer we’ll get the rest buried and then I want to plant an Echinacea patch and add a couple dwarf pear trees, and put bluebells in the front.     

    Back to Eden. Scored 20 cubic yards of wood chips, for free this past summer from getchipdrop.com. The woodchip and cardboard weed barrier method of gardening worked really well in the corn/squash patch. Such a shame the deer got in and ate everything. The children’s garden, mulched two years ago, was still so weed free that I planted a weeping persimmon there.  It is a chronically wet area and persimmons don’t mind wet feet.  I am thinking of adding a swath of river rock and making a permanent rain garden.  Need to add some button bushes and Siberian iris, and cardinal flowers. I still have 10 cubic yards of wood chips and I am busy hording up more cardboard boxes for spring. 

 The Herb Garden. I had a little problem with the herb bed this year.  I had 3, robust, Scottish thistle rosettes in the herb bed in the spring, and I decided to let them grow.  And they grew. They grew about 9 feet tall and 5 feet around.  Now, there is nothing prettier than a bright yellow gold finch flock hanging all over a giant thistle plant covered with vivid purple blooms.  But, thistles are really really sharp and I couldn’t weed under them. And when they finished blooming, I still couldn’t cut them down because the birds needed the seeds.  So the herb garden was a thistle and weed garden this past summer.  I really was impressed with the thistles but think for their size they would look better from afar. So, I dug up a fine, large rosette (they are a bi-annual) in the fall and moved it to the back of the big hugel, in a patch that has already been mulched with cardboard and woodchips.  And I see plenty of little thistle seedlings in the herb bed that will have to be weeded out in spring, but I might save a couple and put them in the hugel too for next year. 

 House plants. They were sadly neglected this past summer.  First year in a long time that I did not put them outside.  They suffered for being kept inside – the air-conditioning is not good for them.  I won’t make that mistake again.  My wax plant vine “Hobi” (Hoya Obovata) finally died, after 25 years!  So sad because I took cuttings of a plant that I had grown up with. I am going to order a new one. My “Brutus II” (a kidnapped Philodendron Hope Selloum cutting from an apartment sublet 20 years ago) is down to a single green leaf.  My Dracaena Warneckii (given to me by my mother-in-law as an engagement gift) is still alive after 23 years and thriving. The other Dracaena varieties which I adopted after a friend took a summer-long, cross country motorcycle ride and never reclaimed them, are still alive after 25 years.  I gave my giant poinsettias away after the holidays – they are always dead by March no matter what I do. So I am only left with one, sad little Christmas cactus I don’t know how to care for.  The Areogrow planter is up and running and the basil, parsley and dill have sprouted.  It is an excellent little hydroponic system. The art glass terrarium was beautifully replanted in the summer and lasted a couple months before dying out.  So it needs to be re-planted again, this time with plants that want less light.

   The seed list this year is a fresh start and I’m scaling back, except when I’m not.

  Seed List:  will follow as soon as I stop buying seed packets.

[sweetseda]

Pickled Green Beans - Quick and Easy Canning Recipe

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Spicy pickled green beans are a recipe that bring back memories of growing up on the farm, like pickled beets. Vinegar pickles of all different types were common on the table, from the jewel red beets to the slippery pickled mushrooms. These pickled green beans with garlic and cayenne pepper are crunchy and spicy, and let you can green beans without a pressure canner.

Pickled Green Beans

You can use these pickled green beans in salads or on relish trays, for snacking, or as a fun addition to your Bloody Mary. (Here in Wisconsin, the local pubs stack crazy amounts of snacks on top of some of the drinks.)

Pickled veggies add a great crunch to any meal and may help aid digestion by adding a bit of acidity to the mix. They’re perfect to pair with heavier meats. Since this recipe is water bath canned, it’s shelf stable. There’s no need to tie up refrigerator space until you’ve opened a jar for use.

Don’t be too concerned about the high sodium count in the nutrition information – unless you plan to drink all the brine. The salt helps to pull moisture out of the beans, giving them their crunchy dilly bean texture.

For a little extra spice, feel free to add some mustard seeds or red pepper flakes to each pint jar when you add garlic and dill. (1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon per jar.) As would be expected with a simply bean recipe, these are low carb and gluten free.

How to Pickle Green Beans

Pickling (adding vinegar and salt) allows you to water bath can vegetables that would otherwise require pressure canning. (Remember, safe water bath canning needs a pH below 4.6.)

Always keep your kitchen tidy and gather your needed equipment before beginning. Use jars that are clean, and check rims for cracks or damage. (The hot water processing sterilizes the jars.) If you don’t have a canner, you may process your pickled green beans in a large stock pot with a rack in the bottom.

This Granite Ware Canning Set includes: 21.5 -quart Canner, Jar Rack, Bubble Remover, Jar Lifter, Magnetic Lid Lifter, Jar Wrench and Jar Funnel. It’s perfect for the beginning home canner.

Wash beans well and trim them to fit inside the jars. If you don’t have fresh dill, use 1/2 to 1 tablespoons of dill seed per jar.

I like to use canning salt in this recipe, but kosher salt or sea salt also works fine. Don’t use iodized table salt for canning, as it will make your brine cloudy.

Apple cider vinegar adds more flavor, but will yield a darker brine. If you like a clear brine, opt for white vinegar and use all red pepper flakes instead of cayenne powder. Don’t use homemade vinegar, unless you can verify the pH is safe for canning.

Remember to measure headspace from the inside of the lid to the top of the food or liquid. It’s important to use correct headspace because the recipes have been tested so that the processing time allows for all the air to be driven out of the headspace, ensuring a good seal and safe preservation.

This recipe is adapted from the Ball Blue Book.

Spicy Pickled Green Beans

These pickled green beans with garlic and cayenne pepper are crunchy and spicy, and let you can green beans without a pressure canner.

Author: Laurie Neverman

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Yield: 4 pints 1x

Category: Snack

Method: Canning

Cuisine: American

Ingredients

Instructions

Add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds and red pepper flakes per jar along with other spices for an extra kick, if desired.

Nutrition

Keywords: green beans, pickles, condiment

Enjoy your beans!

That’s all there is to it! Now you can have your own pickled green beans with a little heat and spice to liven up winter meals, or for an interesting hors d’oeuvre.

Serve your dilly beans for holiday gatherings and listen to your friends and relatives comment about how they’ve never had anything quite like that before (unless, of course, you hang out with other home canners 😉  ).

More Canning Recipes and Tips

Be sure to check out our other Canning Recipes and Preserving Guides, including:

This content was originally published here.