Reward for Our Visitors

So in order to thank our garden helpers, Adam created this muy delicioso dinner.  The main course was a pizza with sliced potatoes fried in garlic and olive oil, chorizo sausage boiled in our Chimay clone homebrew beer, caramelized onions, and goat cheese, and then drizzled with a olive oil / butter sauce infused with garlic, thyme, and oregano.

For a side dish, Adam's mother gave him a recipe for Cool Cucumber Salad.  This is similar to other cucumber salads that we have made except this does not require sugar, and it has penne pasta in it and some mustard.

Potatoes, Onions, and Cucumbers all came from the garden.

Greens, Greens and Nothing but Greens

In the past we have tried to grow salad greens in various pots and containers.  Normally this works for a bit but either we have poor drainage or not enough soil for the greens.

This created a debate between Miguel and myself.  Miguel wanted to grow the greens in the garden, while I was willing to settle for buying them in a nice plastic bag at Wal-mart.  I guess my concern was whether animals would leave the greens alone or eat them or worse contaminate them in a way that no salad spinner would ever get clean.

However, we came to a conclusion that we would grow the greens in our garden... aka Miguel won. (You'll see this as a recurring theme.)

We did reach a slight compromise.  Rather than putting the greens into our rows of vegetables, we decided to create a separate bed for them.  

We started by using a garden claw to tear up the ground some and then the shovel to remove the top lawyer of sod.  Once we had the old grass removed, Miguel then went to town with the garden claw and tore up the soil while at the same time mixing in some coffee grounds and some pelletized lime. 

Once the garden was worked properly, we used the hoe to make rows and planted our seeds.  For this bed, we planted Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce, Grand Rapids Leaf Lettuce, and an Italian Mixture Salad Blend.  

To finish off the garden, I found some birch branches and created a border partly to make it look good and partly so no one would step on it.

Below are some more pictures of Miguel creating the garden for the greens.

Dandelions... are weeds?

Who would have thought?  I always thought dandelions were just a fancy green in salads.  Today, the farmer's market that we go to had dandelion greens for sale.  I told Adam that we should get some for salads and that we should also grow them as well in our garden.

Big mistake.

Turns out, Adam thought dandelions were a weed and he started laughing.  Ok. So maybe they aren't on the same level as arugula or romaine, but they are definitely not a weed.... right?

So we skipped the dandelion greens and headed to his parents' house to work in the garden.  There, I decided to tell Adam's dad about the dandelions and about growing them.  If Adam just laughed at my naivete, then his dad almost died from laughing.  Apparently there is a whole industry devoted to killing weeds like dandelions.

Lesson learned.