Help! Cucumbers are losing their cute factor!

To paraphrase an old Johnny Cash song;  I sowed some seeds of cucumbers, just to watch them live.  Believe me, those cucumbers are living large.  I cannot believe I lamented the death of a few cucumber plants left in a closed cold frame on the one day that was hot and sunny late spring.  I cannot believe I tried hand pollinating the cucumber flowers with a small paint brush, worried that the bees were not buzzing and the flowers were not setting.  I cannot believe that I worried that the four foot trellis I made for the cucumbers was a little on the ugly side, since it was completely covered by the vines in two weeks flat.

Every year Bean and I grow a couple of different  vegetable plants just to learn a little bit about the plant.  We want to feel a connection to the plants.  We want to know about the growth patterns, the shape and smell of the leaves, how the blossoms develop into the vegetables. We want to know how long the vegetables need to grow before we can pick them. We grew corn a couple of summers, not because we are naive enough to think a couple of corn plants would fill our corn needs, but because I had never had an up close personal encounter with a corn plant.

So this summer, I planted cucumber seeds.  Not just any cucumber, but an heirloom lemon cucumber.  Triple bonus.  A plant I have never grown and a vegetable I have never seen or eaten.  "Oh look, they are so cute"! soon turned into " Oh God, not more"!! The plants mocked me.  I would pick every cucumber I could see, only to glimpse the bright yellow orbs from my kitchen window five minutes later.

This summer has been very hot and humid.  Whereas I have not been such a big fan of this summer's weather; the cucumbers seemed ecstatic.
                                              

                 Every day baskets and bowls full of cukes.     

             

I have made a couple of discoveries this summer.  Firstly; it is possible for our little city garden to produce all the cucumbers we could possibly need or want.  Yeah!! Woohoo!! Good job!  Secondly; I don't really like cucumbers that much.  A cucumber thrown into a gazpacho - nice.  Tzatziki - Yum.  Thai pickled cucumbers - adore.  

But, what to do with all the rest?

        I have made numerous cold soups.
        Some I have liked.  Some were just so so.

         I have pickled them. No major prairie woman pickling 
         productions, but a couple of jars at a time for the refrigerator.
           Okay, I'll admit it - I am not brave enough yet for full scale  
         canning.                                     

                                 The gentleman fixing our porch left with a check and bag of cukes.                                           

               I have added slices of cucumbers in water with herbs to
            take the edge off of a hot humid day.

 I have treated myself to some at home spa treatments.







 I have even pretended that cucumbers are not cucumbers and

         made cucumber crisp for dessert.  I don't know-
Scott Conant, do you think that's  irresponsible?


Bye for now!  I think I am going to learn how to juggle.
(I must remember to clean the spines off the cukes first.)

Urban Farming and Foraging

Urban chicken farming.  Backyard chickens.  There has been a lot of buzz the last couple of years about raising chickens in a city environment.  To the surprise of many, it is legal in our city.  Bean and I had discussed getting a couple of chickens  last summer and researched it a bit.  Bean has been communicating with a few chicken owners to find out what we would need.  

Bean set up a couple of visits to fellow city dwellers' chicken coops.  So armed with a bag of freshly made pear ginger scones we went visiting.

                                                     

  

I was very impressed with their set up. The coops were clean, neat and odor free. This is especially important in an urban environment. They have one rooster, a Plymouth rock rooster, that just showed up in their backyard and four hens of two different breeds.  I don't remember the breeds of the hens. So much for taking a notebook with me to take notes! Just like dogs or cats, different chicken breeds have their own personality and characteristics. The photo of the hen above is of a breed that is cold hardy, sweet tempered and quiet.  The other two hens are of a different breed and have a tendency to be more vocal according to the owners.  The chickens' wings are not clipped, but it seems that they have not had any problems with them roaming outside their yard. The owners let the chickens run around the yard for daily exercise. In other words, the chickens seemed to be well cared for pets. Their garden was lovely with flowers, herbs and vegetables growing and did not seem to be suffering at all with the chickens running around it.  The chickens were surprisingly calm and quiet.  

Bean and I will continue our research to decide if it is a feasible venture for our backyard.  I just love the fact that people around the city are looking at  their living spaces and seeing a variety of possibilities  that extend beyond the normal expectations of city living.  When Bean and I went on our neighborhood garden walk, we saw more people growing vegetables, composting, and collecting rain water than in previous years.  One backyard even had a very busy beehive.   

At our house we compost some of our garden waste and most of our kitchen scraps.  We have a cheap and easy worm composting system set up that is basically a big plastic bin with a cover and holes drilled in the top and side for air circulation.  Harvesting the worm castings is a bit trickier than in the expensive worm composters that you can buy, but it is definitely doable.  Worm castings = black gold for your garden and houseplants.  Amazingly, there really aren't any bad odors once the worm farm becomes established which doesn't take long.  Bean chops the scraps in the food processor which helps everything get processed faster.  He is the main worm farmer in the house.

I love our little garden, even though right now it is a bit of a mess.  There is a lot of deadheading and weeding to be done.  The weather has been horrible - 3 showers a day kind of horrible.  It's been difficult for me to muster up the energy in the last couple of weeks to work much in the yard.  I am such a baby.  Most of the plants on the other hand, seem to be loving it.  The cucumber plants have gone crazy, wild.   This is the first year I have grown cucumbers.  I am growing lemon cucumbers which outgrew the the 4 foot trellis I made for them two weeks after they were planted!  

Yesterday on my day off from work I did a bit of weeding which led me to my decision on what soup to make for lunch. Cold purslane  and cucumber soup!  I decided to finally engage in a little urban foraging!  Three years ago I was at a farmers' market and I spied bags of green that looked suspiciously familiar.  " This looks just like the weeds I am always pulling out of my garden in the middle of the summer."  "It's purslane," said the woman at the booth.  In the last three years I keep running into  purslane; in my garden,in books, on TV, on the net, in the cracks on the sidewalk.  It's a favorite vegetable of Gandhi I read. Henry David Thoreau enjoyed it stir fried as a side dish.  Chock full of vitamins and minerals.  Loaded with Omega 3 fatty acids.  I watched a Mediterranean cooking show where they gathered purslane and other plants for a frittata with wild greens.    Eat it raw, cook it, pickle it....

I decided that it was time to join the purslane party.                                                                                                            

              

Lunch was cold purslane cucumber soup with a delicious chicken curry salad made by Bean.  The soup was made of raw ingredients, nothing was cooked.  The purslane was tart and lemony.  Unfortunately I was a little heavy handed with the onion.  C'est la vie! There will be another day, another soup and plenty of purslane for the picking!