I love this time of year because so much of what we eat comes from the garden. It's harvest-directed cooking.
The meadow garlic is getting ready to bloom. So the growth has increased dramatically in the last week or two. |
In addition to the rogue granex onion, the native garlic is also blooming now just as we've passed the vernal equinox. Plants are really tuned into the day length, plus we've had a lot of rain in the last two months, especially when it's supposed to be the dry season. In February we had 6" when the average is 3.1" and we've already had more than 3" of rain in March when 3.9 is the average for the whole month.
Ugly carrot soup
When I included this recipe in our Organic Methods book, I called it "ugly carrot soup" because sometimes the carrots come out funny. I didn't have any ugly carrots for this soup, but it came out tasting just as yummy. Every time I make it, it's different because it depends on what's available from the garden. In addition to my harvested vegetables (half of the blooming onion, rosemary, oregano, nantes carrots, curly parsley, meadow garlic, garlic chives, come-again broccoli, cabbage leaves), I added one store-bought onion, non-fat plain yogurt, freshly ground pepper, spaghetti, and olive oil.
The ingredients for the carrots soup plus 8 cups of water and a garnish of dill. |
Carrot soup is good hot or cold. |
It's not too late to get started with your edible gardens. It was recently shown that people who did their own cooking were healthier than those who eat out all the time. Just think how much that would be multiplied if you augmented your menu with crops fresh from your own yard. Get started today with your own copy of Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida.
Rain gardens revisited and removing invasives
Extracting invasive coral ardisia from the wooded area along our property line. |
I moved a magnolia that had planted itself too close to an irrigation sprayer. I talked about this in my Plan Ahead! post over on the Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens blog. I also cleared out the rain garden I'd built to move water from the downspout French drain. Leaves had covered it.
While I was in the area, I spotted a few invasive coral ardisia (Ardidia crenata) shrubs. How did they get there? The neighbors grow them in their yards and the birds eat their bright red berries and deposit the seeds with a dollop of fertilizer below their perching branches.
The tuberous swordferns (Nephrolepis cordifolia) are everywhere. At first I thought they were the same as a cute fern up in Maryland, but soon found that I was dealing with a monster. So at least a couple of times a year I attack the invasives and eventually I'll get a better handle on them.
One of many loads of coral ardisia and tuberous sword fern. |
The down spout rain garden history
Before the rain garden the lawn became a puddle. | I dug a dry well 18" in diameter and equally deep, filled with gravel a covered with fake river rocks. |
A rain garden revisited. The Asian azaleas are larger and the lyre-leaf sage (Salvia lyrata) is beautiful this time of year. |
Around the neighborhood
Canadian toadflax in a "Freedom lawn." |
This is why you should leave snags in your landscape if possible--the hawks and other birds of prey love the perch there. |
Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt
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