Flowers, Seeds, and General Optimism

As I write this, Wimbledon is on, my new ac is on full blast, and I'm examining the upside down Y's marked with dirt on my sunburned feet.  There was an early morning brainstorm session on the next stage of the hand-built compost bins with the Sustainability Committee, then I skipped over to my tiny plot to water the parched darlings.  I'm guessing it was a total of 10 minutes my un-sunblocked feet was exposed to sun.  I wish I didn't burn so easily.  I'm not looking forward to the bumpy rash.  My poor toes.

But I discovered a few gems to share with you here!  I'd noticed teeny purple buds on my eggplants last week but here they are in full bloom:

Here's another one:

Pretty, aren't they?  I'm not sure if the variety my mom got me are the bulbous Italian kind or the long skinny Japanese kind.  I just hope they produce edible eggplants of some sort.

Before I go on, an apology for the high contrast photos.  It was very sunny out (aforementioned poor toes), and I took these with my iPhone.

Also exciting is that my cilantro have gone to seed.  I didn't know this until I googled to find out why my cilantro started to flower and didn't look like all the other gardeners' cilantro.  Apparently, I'd not harvested it properly.  Since I had no recipes I wanted to cook just yet that needed any, I decided to leave the flowers alone.  Many have now turned into coriander seeds:

I picked one to taste and it was deliciously pungent!  This might be a better shot of my thumbnail than the seed, but here it is split open:

This is what the cilantro looked like a few weeks ago, haphazardly growing with little white flowers on top:

The basil also flowered:

What were once cute little perilla seedlings now have strong thick stalks:

The lettuces look like they need some chopstick and twist-tie therapy.  I had no idea they'd get so weirdly tall.  Here they are flopped over, bowing to the mint:

And speaking of mint, they've gone crazy, as I'd expected:

Here's the whole thing as of this morning:

From the other side:

It looks like a crazy jumble of green now.  Remember when it looked like this?

Wayward Cucumbers

When I planted my tiny plot earlier this spring I tried to use as much foresight as possible regarding placement, considering height, sun needs, etc.  But being an inexperienced gardener I made mistakes and my tiny plot isn't perfect.  I had relocated my cukes next to the bendy wooden low trellis-y thing I'd bought to separate my plot from my neighbor's, thinking they could use that to climb.  Here it is behind the winebox plants:

Instead the cukes grew in the opposite direction, winding their young vines around their eggplant neighbors.  So I unwrapped them as gingerly as possible and attached them with twist ties to chopsticks I stuck into the soil.

I know this is ghetto and I know it can't last.  This would be optimal but as I have neither the space nor ingenuity, but mostly the space, I'm going to have to play the cucumber situation by ear. It all depends how much they grow, in what direction, etc.  But ideally I'd rather have my guys climb a tall fence.  That's why I've asked my gardening club about switching plots, since they're making more and it would be better if I had one by a fence so I am not shading someone else's plot.  

Chinese Bellflowers

My mother brought four Chinese Bellflowers to plant in my garden (one got decapitated).  I'm running out of space but these flowers are lovely.  The root is edible but it won't be ready for another five years or so, so I'm going to plant them next to the taller perillas so they enjoy some shade.

Resting on my kitchen windowsill before planting:

This one has four points:

This one has five points:

This one has six points:

Mint!

My friends Jennie and Will have a lovely garden in the back of their semi-detached Victorian in Jersey City.  It's lush and there's plenty of room to grow lots of lovely things, unlike my tiny plot.  We did a swap last week: some of their mint for a couple of my perilla.  As I was digging my guys up I thought of an impoverished mother giving her kids to a rich couple who would be able to give them a better life.  "You'll have a chance in Jersey City... sniffle... there's better soil and more sun... sniffle..."  Actually, it wasn't that sad but I did think my two perilla were going to a better environment, where J&W have other edible goodies growing.

I planted the generous tangle of mint in its own winebox where I could contain its out-of-controlness - mint has a tendency to do that.  I mixed the soil with a little poo water (by now fermenting in the plastic container I left outside - the stench was unbearable let me tell you) first.

If you run your hand over the top, even the gentlest graze will release a cool minty fragrance.  It makes me want to brush my teeth again.

Perilla Recipe Experiment

For my 3'x3.5' plot (in a previous post I might have said it's less than 3 sq feet but I measured it today - I'm not so good with eyeballing measurements) I have an abundance of perilla.  When I started planting my mother brought over the cutest little seedlings and we kind of ignored the fact they'd grow to be about 4' tall and they really should be given 8" to 10" from each other.  I later gave some to a friend in Brooklyn with ample garden space, and some more to another friend in Jersey City also with a garden that gets plenty of sun.

Perilla leaves, depending on the variety, can get to be about the size of a medium sized hand.  Mine aren't there yet but I've been getting a lot of recipe ideas from creative food blogs and I came up with something I thought would be easy to make using ingredients I already have.

Here's the filling:

Stuffing each leaf:

Break two large eggs into bowl and season with salt and pepper:

Heat up a little oil in a skillet and dip each stuffed leaf into the egg before laying out in pan.  Here they are sizzling away, my kitchen smelling delicious:

Finished:

The result was golden half moons of deliciousness.  Use more soy sauce than you think to get perfectly seasoned meat.  Try to resist eating them right out of the pan, otherwise you might get squirted.

There are variations of this recipe I want to try next week when more leaves will be ready for picking.  Try replacing the beef for pork or chicken, and adding Thai curry spices and nam pla to the meat.  I'm also experimenting with home-infused perilla soju.

Oh Poo

According to the back of my bag of Dr. Earth's organic fertilizer, when making fertilizer tea I am to steep the solids in water for 24 hours then mix the mulch with the soil after straining.  I followed none of these instructions, other than steep in water... for three days.

I should have known when a few drops escaped from the plastic containers onto my toes as I carried them down that I was essentially about to pour reconstituted horse poop or cow poop or some other kind of poop onto my little ones.  But like the horrible tasting calcium pellets my mother made me swallow to encourage the growth spurt that never happened, the poop water was for their own good.

Long, smelly and more or less unpleasant story shortened, I poured the brown fecal water around my kiddies then took the lazy way out by just spreading the shitty mulch around the base of some of the plants.  Immediately my little plot was swarmed with dung flies.  I looked to the plots to my left and right and they all were more less fly-less.  Not mixing the mulch was a bad idea.  But will the shit keep the squirrels away I wonder?  For that it might be worth it.  Then again, I don't know how much damage these flies might do.

On a positive note, I noticed two lovely bright yellow flowers popping out and saying hello from the more promising of my cukes.  I was worried about those two but seeing these flowers will soon mean delicate little crustless sandwiches with my tea.