Skip to Content

basil

Plenty of Pesto

Fri, 07/15/2011 - 22:01 — Maggie

Basil for PestoBasil for Pesto Basil Stuffed into Measuring CupBasil Stuffed into Measuring Cup Pesto and MessPesto and Mess For the first time ever (I think) I made pesto all by myself!

I started with an absurd amount of basil. My basil in general is absurd. All of the basil you see in the bottom two pictures, that casserole-dish full of basil... all that was from pruning! I removed a couple large branches from one of the plants that was overshadowing my cilantro (and a couple branches from the marigold on the other side that was contributing to the buried cilantro.) The rest is just from taking off the starting-to-approach-flowering tops.

So basil-basil-basil.

I'd ordered a two-pound bag of bulk pine nuts from Amzaon, which worked out quite well. There were various warnings about "pine mouth" from Chinese pine nuts, but these were American and seem quite good. I ended up using about a cup of them in this batch.

While I was looking up info before I started, I came across this page on How To:Simplify that says that if you're going to freeze the pesto, you shouldn't add the Parmesan cheese right away, but right before serving it. So I added a little bit of the Parmasian, but figure on adding most of it as I use the pesto.

I used the blender for most of the process, but used the salsa-maker towards the end-- at the point where it was getting to be too much and too think for the blender to be effective, and when I was wanting to give it a bit of texture rather than make it totally pureed.

Yes, I did manage to make all that basil fit into that measuring cup. I'm thinking that when they say "two cups fresh packed basil leaves" they probably don't mean quite such extreme stuffing!

As you can see, I produced an entire salsa-maker full of finished [minus most of the Parmesan cheese] pesto. I froze an icing container full, and put a butter container full into the fridge.

Really, I need better pesto storage. A whole icing container full is really more than I'm going to want to defrost at any one time. So an idea came up in the PR chat [of course.] Ice cube trays! Freeze the pesto in ice cube trays, then store the frozen pesto-cubes in freezer bags.

So now I need ice cube trays. So, as usual, I headed over to Amazon to see what was available in the way of ice cube trays. I'm thinking I'll go with the silicone trays. these Jumbo-Size Silicone Ice-Cube Trays seem like they'd be about what I need. But of course I couldn't stop there, I had to keep looking.

And that's when I saw the Pi Symbol Ice Cube Tray! Probably not good for pesto storage, but oh-so-nifty! I'm getting a kick out of the Set of Heart and Stars Ice Cube Trays too, and those probably would be good for freezing pesto!
There are even Ducky Trays and Musical Note Trays! Decisions, decisions.




Peppers, Carrots, Herbs, Stevia (Another Garden Update)

Tue, 07/12/2011 - 14:45 — Maggie

Jalapenos (July 12)Jalapenos (July 12) Small Garden (July 12)Small Garden (July 12) Stevia Plant -- Ordered OnlineStevia Plant -- Ordered Online More on the garden. All the way to the left of the big garden I have jalapenos; they didn't fit into the pictures in the post I put up yesterday.

The jalapenos were ravaged by insects early on, so they're only now starting to actually grow. I had them under tulle floating row covers for awhile, and then starting using diatomaceous earth and pesticides to keep the bad things away from them. They're still kinda struggling, but are starting to establish themselves. (Same situation with the bell peppers, which are in the next picture down, but they seem to have recovered more quickly.)

Behind the jalapenos you can see the cantaloupes and watermelons that did fit into yesterday's pictures, and off to the right are the pumpkins and cucumbers.

I have marigolds interspersed throughout both gardens. None of them have bloomed yet so they're not all that obvious, but the ones that I put in earlier are starting to get quite large. There's a marigold plant in between the jalapenos and the cantaloupes too, but it's kinda hard to see exactly what's what in the picture.

I find garden photography so frustrating. Getting a closeup focused on one plant is one thing, but pictures of whole sections of garden end up looking confusing. Green in front of green, green behind green, green hidden and tucked behind green.. even labeled it's hard to tell what's what.

And the confusing-garden-pictures problem is nicely illustrated in the next picture. You can see the row of bell peppers, you can see the row of tomatoes to the right of it.. but then there's that left row. It has basil at the front, then a section with cilantro and oregano side by side behind the basil, and then a section of carrots. But the basil bush hides the oregano and cilantro, so I guess you'll just have to use your imagination to see them.

The original volunteer Brandywine tomato plant that sprouted up out of the top of my herb planter sometime around the end of winter is in the front of this row of tomatoes.. but you can't see it here. Perspective is so darn annoying in garden pictures!

And yes, I know, the deck is a bit of a cluttered mess. I really need to come up with some kind of decent outdoor storage solution. What am I supposed to do with not-currently-in-use plant supports, rakes, shovels, etc? It seems absurd to bring stuff like that all the way around front and into the garage when I still need them out back. We don't have a shed.

And the bottom picture is the Stevia Plant I ordered from a seller on Amazon. (It was one of those semi-Amazon purchases where you have to click the "see all buying options" rather than having a normal "add to cart" button. Not sure what's up with that, usually even things that aren't fulfilled by Amazon have a normal "add to cart" button. The seller on this one was "So Succulent Gardens.")

I decided to just buy a plant after figuring out that at least one of the seedlings I've been growing wasn't actually stevia. (The bottom one in that last stevia post turned out to be mint. This wasn't all that surprising as the mint I planted last year never sprouted.. so the seeds had to be somewhere!)

Garden Update (July 11, 2011)

Mon, 07/11/2011 - 12:44 — Maggie

Big Garden (July 11, 2011)Big Garden (July 11, 2011) Pumpkins (July 11, 2011)Pumpkins (July 11, 2011) Cabbage and Cucumbers (July 11, 2011)Cabbage and Cucumbers (July 11, 2011) Watermelon (July 11, 2011)Watermelon (July 11, 2011)
Yes, I know this garden post is overdue. I have so much trouble getting garden pictures that I like. Even growing everything in well spaced, significantly raised rows, with vine plants grown mostly up, everything just looks jumbled.

And I need so many pictures in order to give much of a real view-- especially since I have so many plants interspersed, rather than having each type of plant together.

The tomatoes are all staked to bamboo. Most of the vine plants are grown up short sections of fence, sometimes supplemented with bamboo for added stability. The cucumbers are particularly suited to growing up fences and bamboo trellises.

The pumpkins took off really fast. I ended up attaching a bit of fencing to a pole in the center, and starting them growing up that. I added some bamboo to that rig, although the only actual pumpkins I can see growing are the ones along the back fence.

The watermelons are growing up a section of fence attached to a bamboo support (vertical with a couple of diagonal pieces to keep it steady--you can see that in the bottom picture) and the cantaloupes are growing up a section of fence between 5-foot garden U-style posts I picked up at Lowes specifically for that purpose. (Like these: U-style Fence Post 5')

The main garden fence uses much shorter posts, and the cucumbers are using slightly longer ones I'd gotten from my mom. (Mostly they're using the two-foot fencing, though. I like the plant-support fencing not to reach all the way to the ground.) I'll have to invest in some more taller ones for next year, I'm very fond of the vertical growing. I also have one 6' fencepost pole that I haven't put into use yet. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to use, so I picked up a couple of different options to try. While I dug holes for the bamboo before putting in the tomatoes (bamboo doesn't hold up so well to pounding), fence-posts I put in with a sledgehammer, so I did have to make sure I wasn't using any posts that would be too tall for me to reach to pound into the ground.
(Actually, perhaps it's an Engineer Hammer. It appears to be that one, although most of the writing on the sticker is worn off, so I'm not sure. I haven't weighed it.)

I had the bush beans covered with tulle while the plants were developing, to minimize insect damage; my green bean crops last year were not good. I eventually had to remove the tulle so that the bees could pollinate, though. I'm avoiding much pesticide on the green beans for the same reason, but I am using bug-killers on most of the other plants. I have upside-down soda cases on either side of the green beans to help keep the edges off the ground.

Most of the lettuce is protected by cages. Some are regular wire garden fencing (the same stuff that's around the outside of the garden and that supports most of the vines) shaped to enclose the plants and some are modular wire storage cubes.

There's some cabbage at the back of the garden. I'm protecting that from pests mainly with a combination of Diatomaceous Earth and Dipel Dust (Although I got the Dipel locally and it's not the kind with the cayenne in it. I'll probably try the stuff with cayenne next time. Through much of last summer I was actually making jalapeno-seed "tea" to spray onto my plants to repel pests.)

The bugs have been really bad this year, so I did break down and buy some Ortho Bug-B-Gon MAX Dust and Sevin Dust. I'll definitely be buying more of the Bug-B-Gone-- that duster bottle is about a zillion times easier to get where I want it than the shaker cans that the Sevin comes in. The shaker cans aren't bad for low-to-the-ground things like my savagely-bug-attacked pepper plants, but applying it to the cucumber plants to keep away the awful bugs that cause bacterial wilt is quite awkward.

Wow, I didn't realize how long it had been since my last garden progress post! I'd taken some pictures since then, but hadn't gotten around to editing them down to the relevant parts, labeling them, and posting them. Whoops!

Syndicate content


about seo