Seeds Sprouting

Many of the basil seeds popped up yesterday or today. I've got at least two plants of each type of basil with the exception of the sweet basil which hasn't come up yet. The Delicata squash has also just started breaking ground.

Nasturtium Capers

This morning I started brining a batch of "Poor Man's Capers." Capers are made by pickling the seed pods of a Caper plant, but apparently the same process can be used for Nasturtium seed pods. I'll be following this recipe. I made 6 jars worth, each with a 1/2 cup of seed pods. I think I will combine those down to only 3 or 4 jars for pickling.

Nasturtium seed pods in brine

Favas and Fishing

This evening I picked all of my fava beans and set about shelling them. Fava beans are kind of a pain in the ass because you not only have to pull them out of the pod, but then you have to blanch the beans in salt water and then remove the edible seed from inside of a tough skin. I took a picture at the end to show how much "waste" is produced versus the amount of edible material. To be fair, the bowl of edible favas is actually a little smaller than it should be because I couldn't stop tasting them as I worked. In the end I've decided it was worth the effort, because they are just so sweet and tasty once you've finally got them done.

Left: Edible Fava Beans, Right: All the stuff I picked through to get them

Next year I definitely need to plant more fava plants and give them more room to grow. The nasturtiums I planted between them got much bigger than I'd expected and probably outcompeted the fava plants for light. I've started the battle of tearing out the nasturtiums, plucking their seed pods along the way. With the ones I picked today I'll be making "capers" tomorrow.

This morning and afternoon Elliott and I did a day trip fishing with a group of families from Pilgrim. I caught three Sculpin in the morning (Elliott was busy puking from sea sickness, as was most of the group) and we caught 12 Perch in the afternoon after the captain wisely moved the boat to calmer waters.

Fishing!

For dinner I coated the little perch fillets in butter, garlic, and dried herbs then broiled them. Fresh fish that we caught ourselves and fresh picked fave beans from our garden...it couldn't have been much tastier.

Dinner

Harvest:
5 lbs Fava Beans (before shelling)
1 lb Nasturtium Pods

Death to Chard, Seeding for Summer

Night before last I yanked out all the chard to let the carrots underneath grow. Poor things are several months old and the one I pulled out by accident was less than an inch long. He didn't go to waste though...and he was delicious. Hopefully the rest will be just as tasty when they're full size.

I started some seeds in a flat this afternoon, mostly to tuck in around my tomatoes, but I'm getting anxious to pull out the favas and nasturtiums, so I put in a handful of squash and melon seeds so that they can go in the ground in the next couple weeks. I'm always bad at keeping track of which seeds I put in which cell, so here's the layout:



You may notice an Ancho/Poblano, Golden Wonder, and an Anaheim pepper in the grid. Unfortunately these didn't make the transition into the tomato bed very well so here's try #2. I also put in three cells of Dulcetta peppers. If these are as good as the little mini sweet peppers from Costco, I'm going to wish I'd planted lots. Better to plant too many than be sorry later :)

Another harvest

I sent my mother flowers today for Mother's Day, and while she seemed to enjoy them I wish I could have sent her these sweet peas. The shades of purple I'm getting are awesome. Definitely planting this variety again this year. They're beautiful and seem to be somewhat heat resistant while the edible peas are starting to die out. And of course, they smell delightful.

Sweet Peas

I'm cooking for Elliott's dad this evening with a handful of things from the garden. I made some tortellini with sage butter and Swiss chard. I put some snap peas and tomatoes into a salad with some avocado, spinach, and red onion and a dressing made from sesame oil, rice vinegar, mirin, soy sauce, and a little sugar.

Harvest Tally:
11 oz of Swiss Chard
13 oz of Snap Peas
3 oz of Juliet Grape Tomatoes

We had a visitor in the garden a couple days ago. I guess even in LA you can increase your biodiversity by planting a few more plants.

Grasshopper

Summer's Coming!

Yesterday I planted my little pepper seedlings in my Tomato bed. I'm hoping they do much better there than in their little peat pots. I forget to water them pretty regularly, so they all only have about two true leaves on each plant even though they're all over a month old. The only ones that aren't so old is the Anaheim pepper, I tried to sprout an Anaheim plant several times before and only on the third try does it look like it's starting to grow. It just started to pop through the surface on Friday. I also planted some Ancho/Poblano pepper seeds yesterday in hopes of getting one more Ancho/Poblano plant.

This afternoon I also picked a bunch of flowers from my garden. The sweet peas have finally started blooming strong. I assumed they'd be toast soon with the weather starting to heat up, but I guess they're just getting going. Put together in a bouquet with a few nasturtiums, they look quite pretty.


I also managed to pick one strawberry from my plants. There were two other strawberries right next to it, but this was the only one that wasn't being munched on by bugs. It may be a tiny little guy, but he sure was delicious. Just the right balance of sweetness, tartness, and flavor

Two more down...

Lost two more Tilapia. One was sort of medium sized and the other was one of the runts.