Garden Fresh Huevos Rancheros

Posted on July 17, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

I’m not a foodie or a cook.  My wife is, and she is AMAZING at it.  Seriously, she is God’s gift to people who have gluten allergies.  But every once in a while, I am one of those annoying people who will take a picture of their breakfast/lunch/dinner and put it on FB.  I’m sorry, I love food.

So if you are irritated with pictures of people’s food you can stop reading this post… now.

Now that the tomato plants are gone, I could actually see that I had some very ripe, although small, jalapenos!  Wahoo!  So I took 7 or 8 of them in with me this morning, which was all that I got out of the garden today.

Let me give you a brief overview of my normal morning eggs, because quite frankly, they’re great.  I put some butter in the pan and douse it with Louisiana hot sauce.  I put that on high and let the butter melt and everything start “shhhhhhh” around the pan.  (Bare with me, I’m obviously a very technical chef here with lots of big words…. ahem).

Then I put my eggs in.

I have to say that the fresh eggs from the organically, home raised chickens are so different, I can never go back.  My eggs this morning were laid YESTERDAY.  I love that.

Anyway, I don’t use a spatulas because, like I said, I’m pretty much a mess in the kitchen and break yolks when I use them, so… I do that little wrist flip thing that flips the eggs over.  Lots of practice on that one, but I don’t break yolks when I do it.  So,  that’s how I normally do eggs.

But this morning, I diced up a jalapeno and added it to the butter/hot sauce mixture, along with some fresh basil, then added the eggs.  While that was cooking I diced up the last little tomatoes and put them on top when the eggs were done.  The result… is what I call Garden Fresh Huevos Rancheros.  Not too spicy and a LOT of great flavor.  In hind site I should have added a touch of sour cream, but they were REALLY good anyway.

Here’s the obligatory picture.

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That’s it.  Don’t expect cooking or recipes and stuff here on a normal basis, but I just had to share this one because of the garden goodness involved.

Posted in basil, peppers, tomatoes | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Demo Continues in the Garden

Posted on July 16, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

Part of getting the garden ready for fall/winter is moving out the plants that are ‘done’ for the summer.  Most of the plants do great through spring and start to struggle as the heat gets turned up in the AZ oven.

Some of them do fine and even thrive.

The squash and zucchini are struggling quite a bit.  Even after being heavily watered in the morning they are wilting in the afternoon heat.  The two zucchini that I pulled in this morning were big, but they looked like they were from the land of misfit toys.  I’ll add a picture later if I get a chance, but I think you get the idea.

misfit squash

In any case, the tomatoes performed valiantly.  They produced decent amounts of extremely tasty fruit.  I don’t think I can eat a taco now with just regular tomatoes.  They were awesome.  But… no new blossoms and the last fruit to mature were getting smaller by the minute.  The vines looked pathetic and were a tangled mass that had become a haven for a variety of little bugs.  They were done.  I ripped them all out this morning except for one in the back.  It actually had three decent sized tomatoes on it, so it gets a reprieve until those ripen up.  One more batch of tacos!

One of the things I did this year with the tomatoes was follow the concept of the “tomato jungle”.  It has a lot of benefits including increased shade to the plants, but I found it very difficult to get to the fruit and I think I might have had better production if there had been a little more air flow around the plants.  I think I’ll follow a more traditional square foot gardening technique next year, single vine, and definitely a different support system.

In any case, they were a success… and now we’ve got a spot that will be a great place to put the first fall/winter starts… come September.  In the meantime, I’ll bury it in a couple of inches of mulch to maintain the healthy soil that is there.

Posted in desert garden, intensive gardening, mulch, tomatoes, Uncategorized, zucchini | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Getting Ready for the Fall/Winter Garden

Posted on July 13, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

One of the benefits to gardening in Arizona is that there is literally a 12 month growing season.  Some people would claim 10, because they don’t want to garden during July and August when production drops off and it’s just too stinkin’ hot to be out there doing anything.  They do have a point.  I’m down to just two watermelons, although one is PERFECT!  The zucchini and squash have slowed to a few fruit a week, the tomatoes have stopped having ANY blossoms, and the only thing really growing any new stuff are the peppers and tomatillos… and maybe sweet potatoes, but I can’t actually see those.

But having said that, I got my seeds this week for the fall/winter garden!

Crazy huh?

I’ve been reading about everybody’s fresh salads, chards, broccoli, greens… and I just keep thinking… SOON!

My only real challenge for the fall/winter is light.  My backyard faces north and my homeowners association faces south… I mean, my front yard faces south, so I really can’t grow anything out there (well, I might sneak a couple of landscape looking plants out there, but they won’t be on the official “approved” list).  During December and January the only part of my yard that actually gets light is the very last few feet next to my block wall.  So I have plans to build a couple of terraced planters in the back that will greatly increase my growing space, along with a couple of raised beds that will get light from September – November.  I’ve found that the veggies not getting enough light just kind of “pause” until they start to get it again.

Here’s the seed I got from Baker Creek.

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I love the fact that they throw in a ‘freebie’.  In the spring it was flowers, this time it’s carrots. It’s a nice touch.

Two of the items are really for spring, the tamarillos and the malabar spinach, although I’m thinking I’m going to throw a few malabar spinach seeds in the spot recently vacated by corn.

Posted in Arizona Garden, desert garden, malabar spinach, Starting Seeds, tamarillo | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

A haboob is not always a bad thing

Posted on July 12, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

Haboob hits the valley.

Check out this video from our local fox station.  One of our infamous haboobs rolls across the valley.  Of course a haboob is just a fancy word for a dust storm.  They are VERY common in AZ, especially during the monsoons.  Not a bad thing, you just don’t want to be outside breathing a lot when they run by.

What does this mean for the garden?  Well, now that the corn is down, not too much. Fortunately this one is being followed by some rain and THAT means a whole lot to the garden.

And there was much rejoicing!  Yeah!

Average rainfall for my portion of Arizona for the entire month of July is .89 inches, and that’s a lot better than June, which has an average of .05 inches.

So any rain is a good thing.

***update:  Some people did lose power.  That’s not good, especially in the heat, but fortunately the rain brought the temps down… a little bit.  Our utilities tend to be pretty good so I’m sure they’ll get it back up quickly.

Posted in Arizona Garden, haboob | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Gone! All gone! …good riddance!

Posted on July 11, 2013 by JonesGardenBlog

It’s gone.  After a couple of days of not wasting any more water on it, we pulled it out.  I hate it when a crop doesn’t turn out.  We yanked and pulled and in the end we took shovels to it.

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I have to say, it wasn’t exactly easy.  My three oldest boys came out with me to help.  I never have a shortage of helpers when it comes to demo in the garden.

There were a couple of very sparse ears, that had… something going on.  Not full ears, but nearly.  They were few and far between and didn’t take well to being starved of water the last couple of days.

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Those ones were a lot more rare than ones like this that… well, I don’t even know what to say about this.

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Needless to say, I have not figured it out yet when it comes to corn.  I have a plan, should I choose to follow it, for next year.  We’ll see…

Posted in Arizona Garden, desert garden, Growing corn | 14 Comments