Cucumber/Mint Ice Cream

The first time Missy brought this ice cream, I was real leery. Oh come on now, cucumber ice cream? But once I had a wee little taste, I totally changed my attitude. This stuff is great. 

1 large English cucumber, peeled, seeded, and roughly chopped

2/3 cup packed mint leaves

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 cups whole milk or half & half

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon vanilla

4 large egg yolks

2 tablespoons honey

1 generous pinch of kosher or sea salt

Optional -- 1/2 to 1 cup very finely chopped white chocolate

1- purée the cucumber in a blender or food processor. You should have a scant 2/3 cup of purée, some of which is liquid. You're going to strain out the solids so this is fine. Alternatively, if you have a juicer you could simply juice the cucumber. 

2- put the mint leaves and sugar into a food processor bowl. Process until the mint is finely ground. (Or you could grind them together with a mortar and pestle.)

3- in a medium saucepan, warm the milk and cream over medium heat. Sit occasionally. 

4- whisk the egg yolks until smooth, then add the sugar & mint mixture. Whisk until thoroughly combined. 

5- take the saucepan off the heat and stir in the tempered egg mixture. 

6- return the saucepan to the cooktop over medium heat. Add honey and salt. Cook, stirring, until the mixture is 175-180 degrees F, or thick enough to coat the back of the spoon, about 5 minutes. Do not allow the mixture to boil. (When you draw your finger across the spoon, it should leave a clear mark through the custard.)

7- strain the cucumber through a fine mesh strainer into the custard. Stir in the vanilla. 

8- cool the custard somewhat in an ice water bath and then strain it (to strain out some of the mint leaves) into a pitcher. Refrigerate until cold, 

9- pour the custard into your ice cream freezer and churn according to the manufacturer's directions. When the ice cream is starting to thicken (and look like ice cream), about 5 minutes before it's ready, pour in the white chocolate. 

Avocado Butter

Another great recipe from Missy. 

Approximately two avocados

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 ounces butter

1 garlic clove 

1 tablespoon cilantro leaves

2 teaspoons cumin

Mash together. Wrap with parchment paper. Freeze. 

Avocado Ice Cream

Missy made us some avocado ice cream and it was amazingly yummy! Even people who don't like avocado like this recipe. For real! My mother, who not touch avos, liked it. Now that's saying something! 

This can be made regular or vegan style. 

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 cup lemon juice

14 1/2 ounces evaporated milk, chilled 

              Or vegan style, use coconut milk

1 cup mashed avocado (approx 2 avos)

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Mix the juices. Beat milk to double volume. Add the rest and freeze. 

August 14, 2014

A few people that didn't make it Tuesday came to the garden today. With just a bit of effort, we got a few more things accomplished. 

A new area is just about ready for planting. It's been sprayed a couple times with vinegar & lime juice, treated with wood ash, process bone and coral. The mulch is in the process of covering the burnt grass. A spot for planting was derocked and rabbit manure tilled in. Good area for??? Spagetti squash? Pumpkin? Gourds? 

An old tarp was spread out in order to create an area for potted plants. They need to grow for a while before we can sell them. Sales help pay for new seeds and tools. So far we have some ornamental taro growing. Next will be assorted sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and others. 

The tents had been taken down in preparation of the hurricane, so today they went back up. Same with the tables, chairs, and other supplies. Above is our little potting tent. Below, Missy is getting everything back in order at our lunch area. 

Laurie worked on weeding and sowing sweet corn. We also had numerous short pieces of white pipe dropped off for the garden and we got them placed around beds that still needed border markers. 

It's still raining almost daily. As a result lots of things are sprouting, but slow to grow. The new peas, beans, bok choy, and radishes are all up now. A few of the potatoes have made it up. But the poor tomatoes just sit there praying for sun. We are starting to see some damage to the green tomatoes....some rot, some slug damage. Dang rain! 

Today we were able to harvest a few things -- beets, Chinese kale, dill, basil, onions, cucumbers, bok choy. 

Aug 12, 2014

Today was basically a rain out. We didn't have much time to get anything done before that rain started.  But here's a garden update:

Zucchini squash-- the plants are starting to show signs of mildew on the leaves. When we started removing the affected leaves we saw that stem borers have been attacking the plants. 

All the plants had their main stems destroyed. But odd thing was the plants themselves.  Half the plants seemed small, quite a bit of mildew, but not dead. No flowers. The other half were thriving, very little mildew, and had flowers. Why the difference? The thriving plants had put down roots along their stems above the borer damage. 

So we may be able to take advantage of this plant behavior. By pulling soil and mulch up around the stems, the plants could send out new roots, making the plants stronger and better producing. Looks like the plants would be able to fight off the mildew better too. We will have to do some experimenting. 

Another one of the grow boxes is ready to dismantle. With the rain today, this job will be postponed for next week. 

We did get the two grow boxes replanted with sweet potato cuttings. 

Before the rain came we got a bit of harvesting done, but because of the goat attack, it isn't a lot. 

...shelling peas, a modest amount

...bok choy, enough for everyone to take some

...little onions, enough for everyone

...purple green beans, a modest amount

...enough dill, basil, and parsley

...cucumbers, enough to go around

We are seeing more damage from the pickleworm. Perhaps it is time to try an experiment to block the moth at night. Maybe something simple like laying screening atop the plants to see if that is sufficient to block the moth. We'll give it a try and see what happens. 

August 5, 2014

So here we are, August. It's been three months since we started over. In just three months we have a 75' x 125' garden developed. Not bad! And were still expanding. In fact, it won't be long before we really have to expand because we're outgrowing the first allotted space already. 

So what's in the garden so far?
Roma tomatoes
Sweet peppers
Hawaiian chili peppers
Three kinds of eggplant
Snow peas
Snap peas
Bush green beans
Pole green beans
Radishes
Turnips
Daikon
Broccoli
Chinese kale
Carrots
Yacon
Taro
Onions
Leeks
Potatoes
Several basils
Sage
Rosemary
A couple types of mint
Golden purslane
Cucumbers

Watermelon
Zucchini
White summer squash (doing poorly though)

Pineapples

(Above, new pineapple plants we added today.)

Ok, we don't have a lot of each one of those, but we have some. And as we open up more space, we'll devote more room to the varieties that we like. We still have lots more that we are ready to add. As each new bed gets created, it quickly gets planted with another crop of something.

(Above, we just added watermelon seedlings to the garden.) 

The garden is already bigger than what we had at the previous location. Without having to deal with the pasture grasses, we are able to spend our time on our vegetables instead. As a result we are going to be able to maintain a much larger garden.

 

As I mentioned, the white summer squash is doing poorly. Every plant except for one has succumbed to some sort of disease that has rotted up the crown. The plants are goners. 

We are trying to experiment with the leeks. Rather than hilling the soil up around the plants, we hope to blanch the stalks some other way. Our first try will be to wrap a cardboard roll around each plant. 

We'll see how well this works. 

The tomato plants are doing fairly well considering they are growing in unimproved rocky soil. I wasn't expecting much from them. But they are loaded with green tomatoes. Surprise! 

Remember the goat attack? He had eaten these bok choy pretty badly. We had trimmed off the half eaten leaves, and now they've grown back to the point that we are harvesting the biggest ones. 

The new bean trellis has bean plants! The beans have popped up, and so have the radishes we seeded beside them. Those radishes will be harvested long before the bean plants are very big. We didn't seed the entire trellis bed all at the same time. We plan to plant it in four sections, each planted two weeks apart. We want to see how staggered plantings on pole beans works out on the harvesting. 

A sign tells other volunteers not to sow anything in this bed. 

Today we emptied one of the grow boxes that we as been using to produce sweet potato cuttings. The soil level had sunk down to the point that it only filled the box halfway. Time to redo the box. So we opened the box, harvested the sweet potatoes......not many because we had stunted the plants by taking so many tip cuttings. But we knew that in advance, so we didn't expect any tubers, but we actually got a few. We then shoveled out the soil using it to top off two other grow boxes that we made....the far two in the photo above. Now those two boxes are ready for planting. Re-closing the box we took apart, we began dumping organic debris in it again. It's the front box in the photo, and you can see the weeds and cardboard lunch plates. The cycle starts all over again. 

We noticed our first attack of leaf borers. They are in the watermelon leaves. There are three in the leaf above, two close together and one off by itself. You can make out the light colored line that us the tunnel they have eaten inside the leaf. Since this one leaf isn't all that important to the plant, we opted to simply remove and destroy it. Another option would have been to use a fingernail to kill the little leaf borer at the end of its tunnel, thus saving the leaf. 

Today's harvest included bok choy, onions, green beans, zucchini squash, cucumbers, and some cool looking pink potatoes from Peru. One of the cukes was an interesting joined double ....

Late July - Good News : Bad News

Good news and bad news. The good first........

The peas are starting to come on. This is our first picking of sweet snow peas. 

Each week we're now picking cucumbers and a few zucchini. The cuke variety is called Sumter and grows well for us. So far not too much damage from the pickleworm. The zucchinis are not faring quite so well. I'm surprised that we're getting any at all, but several have worms in them. Luckily you can cut out the damaged area and eat the rest. The other summer squashes are dying from some sort of diseases. The yellow crookneck and the white patty pans. Everyone tells us that they can't grow them, so I guess we are not going to have any luck either. But we will have to experiment and see if we can come up with a solution. 

The potatoes are doing super. Above, Sue B is washing our harvest from today. 

 This is our first digging. Four different varieties. And there are plenty more to harvest still. 

Now for the bad news......real bad news. The resident goat broke into the garden. Mr Bucky is now nicknamed Mr Destructo. 

He went through and stuffed himself. He ate all the cabbages, broccoli, kale, Chinese kale, spinach, and basil down to the ground. Not a leaf or stalk survived.

He nibbled the tips of several tomato plants. Luckily they will recover. He didn't eat any of the potato plants but any potato tuber near the surface was eaten. 

The bok choy was attacked but only the greener leaves were consumed. Perhaps Mr Bucjy was getting a bit full? He also sampled the beet and chard leaves, ripping most of them out of the ground. The turnip greens were all eaten and all the turnips ripped up. He took one bite out of eat turnip, discarding the rest. But that ruined all the turnips. 

I was surprised to see that the goat chewed the pineapple leaves. They are sharp, tough, and very fibrous. But in spite of that, he ate the ends off almost every leaf. 

The poor beans are a total loss. Every leaf was eaten. We now have a bed full of green twigs. 

The radishes and carrots are partially destroyed. Some sections were entirely consumed. Others were partially spared. Plenty were simply ripped up and discarded. 

Very little was passed over. He did not touch the mints, eggplants, peppers, or peas. Nor the squashes, cucumbers, rosemary, onions, or chives. 

Letting a goat near a garden is disaster!! But we'll replant. Gee, we're getting a lot of experience in replanting! 

Since we're replanting, we decided to move some of the trellises. One person on each leg and the trellis is easy to pick up and walk to its new location. We plan to plant pole beans on this one. 

Lunch time! As you can see we've upgraded out "employee lounge". The big tables are in use. Shade tents protect up from the rain. The tree gives us plenty of shade. In the far background you can see the two trellises that we moved. 

An extra tent protects some of our work area, mainly the potting table. No, the tent isn't broken. We just have one leg shortened so that the rain runs off the canopy better. 

Mid July -- The Garden is Growing Up

We've been getting plenty of rain, maybe too much because the ground us getting soggy, but everything is growing really fast and robustly. It's amazing how well things are growing. 

The young tomato plants are already starting to flower. Some already have tiny little tomatoes. 

We got more pineapples planted, plus lots of other veggies. Leone found a bed where the seeds had not germinated well, so she is redoing the bed. That sometimes happens because some of our seed is donated rather than purchased. Not all the donated seed does as well as we hoped. 

The baby peas are starting to vine.

And the tiny little basil plants actually survived! We weren't too sure they were going to make it. 

The squash plants are doing well. We are trying to grow zucchini. With luck we may get a few before the pickleworm moth finds them. 

One of the zucchini beds is further along than the other, even though they were planted at the same time. We had gotten this bed (above) mulched before they other, so possibly that's the reason for the difference. Or perhaps one bed got more rabbit manure than the other. 

The cucumbers are growing quickly, it seems like we just sowed the seed yesterday, but I guess it must have been longer ago. We've mulch them to keep the weeds down. 

One thing that really grows well here is the taro. It's loving all the rain we are getting. 

The potatoes are all starting to seriously flower. Some have white blooms, some have purple. So it won't be long before we start checking for taters. 

Harvests are becoming better. 

Lots of cucumbers are on the vines along with an abundance of flowers. So pretty. 

The first strawberry has turned red! 

Good natural food. 

Early In July - The Garden is Hopping

We planted the first completed pallet box with sweet potato cuttings. They all survived and are thriving. We have our second box ready for planting with another sweet potato variety. And in the next couple weeks will be assembling and filling three more boxes. All the weeds, paper plates from lunches, and other organic materials goes into the boxes. Things like chicken pen litter, rabbit manure, excess grass clippings. 

Doug has been busily working on our future carrot bed. He's been digging out the rocks. 

In the foreground you can see a super jumbo rock he found. We also discovered a concrete foundation crossing the bed. A remnant of times of yore when this land once was part of Kahuku Ranch. Neighborhood mumblings say that this land once was used for the ranch horses where they came for shoeing and treatment. There are at least two other shallow concrete-like foundations on the land that indicate sheds of some sort. 

As Doug prepared the beds, others sifted the soil. This is the only bed that we plan so far to be finely sifted. We will use it to grow carrots. All the sifted soil was returned to the bed and a couple varieties of carrots sown. 

The onions are growing well and starting to get thicker stems. No signs of bulbing yet. 

All the potato varieties are growing strongly. They're quite lush. 

Everywhere we planted daikon, radishes, and turnips is doing great. They are enjoying the daily light rains too. We're harvesting these three veggies very week now.

The daikons, above, are still producing but we're seeing some bolting. So I suspect this variety is not a good summer variety for here. We need to keep that in mind.

So far the turnips, above, have been healthy. No pests have found them yet, 

We had transplanted some little garlic chive plants from the old garden site. At first they didn't look so hot, but now they've finally taken root. They're doing fine. 

The pineapples are showing signs of transplanting successfully. They are growing bigger and adding lots of new leaves. We still don't know how badly stunted they were by the uprooting. Time will tell. 

The pea vines are taking off and growing very rapidly. They should be flowering shortly. 

We seeded more radishes in between the broccoli. They will be ready to harvest before the broccoli gets too big.