Simply Belle

Wow, it has been a while I haven’t updated my blog, and I haven’t paid a visit to any of my friends’ blogs either. Nothing is wrong from my end, except that I have been overly busy with job and other important stuff. Hope all is well with you all.

Anyway, the other day, on my way home from work, I thought of having a hearty neck bone soup for dinner. We have been having a cooler weather here so a soup dish would be a good idea and would definitely stick to our ribs.

The moment I got home, I shouted to my husband. He seemed to be nowhere in the house. So, I looked for him outside, and sure enough, he was out there wheel borrowing a load of soil up to the garden area.

Me: Could you get me a white cabbage please?

S: How many?

Me: Just one plant.

He brought me a single plant but turned to be an arm load…hehe

typical salad on a daily basis

Lately, we have been eating tons of vegetables and plenty of fresh crisp salad. Sometimes, it is too much of a good thing that we have to give a lot of them away. Sometimes, we give our tummy a rest and skip a day of eating veggies. And after a day’s rest, we crave for it.

The cold weather doesn’t seem to hinder the growth of the plants. Some, like the lettuces, spinach, kale, asian cabbage, and even the mache are exploding. The brocolli raab which is one of the better tasting vegetables, is doing extremely well. We never expected that the plants would survive in the cooler weather, down in the 20′s.

So far, we haven’t bought that much vegetables since summer. The ones I buy from Oriental store in Phoenix now and then, stay in the other refrigerator until they spoil. And my husband throws them eventually in the compost pit. I think our garden would last through winter and continues until May. By then most of the plants will bolt. And then comes the beginning of the summer garden which includes the melon, tomatoes, beans, eggplant, peppers, etc.

Now, we just prove that there is no reason for people to go hungry. And it doesn’t even require a huge garden space to produce an ample supply of vegetables.

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Our summer garden got frost out because of unexpected frost at 27 degrees not too long ago. We didn’t have the chance to cover the beds with the poly greenhouse plastic. Even the next batch of vegetables from the other bed which is supposed to be cold hardy also got hit by the frost. Luckily, most of them were able to survive. The next day, we immediately covered the vegetables with the plastic to minimize the damage and to protect the garden from further frost, possible hail, or other severe weather.  We live at 5000-foot elevation so we get a lot of early morning frost around end of October. Also, we live in an area where weather can be unpredictable. One day, it is nice and warm, the next day, it is freezing cold.

Lately, I haven’t been visiting the garden because I have been coming home late, and also, I have been busy with my yoga, late appointments, and Bible study. Today though, I came home on time, and while still in my uniform, I rushed straight to the garden.  The last time I saw them, they were recuperating from the frost. I thought I would take a peek and see how the veggies are doing. Boy, was I in for a big surprise.

Take a look:

Chinese cabbage

Bloomsdale spinach

Thumb-thumb lettuce (right), and Grand rapid lettuce (left)

Turnips

Kale – frost worst hit as shown in the picture.

I couldn’t believe the transformation of the plants from few days ago. They look so healthy and vigorous, and have gotten huge. My husband said that he gave them a drink of compost tea.  Yes, a compost tea that he brewed for about a day and a half out of hay, cow’s manure, kitchen’s waste products, and whatever he could find. Even used tea bags and banana peel get thrown in.  It is truly what I call an organic gardening. Not a bad thing to have in the sunny spot of your backyard.

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sweet and juicy persimmons – make excellent salsa, too.

Just because we live in Arizona, where scorching heat is a plenty, and rain is scarce, doesn’t mean we are unable to enjoy organic gardening.  Particularly now that organic vegetables are not only expensive but very limited, and some varieties are hard to find because of modern agriculture in which vegetables are grown for their appearance, shelf-life, and not for their taste and nutrients, these babies are delicious and refreshing treat. For example, the freshly ripened figs have only a shelf-life of 3 days and bruise easily on shipment, and so you rarely see these in the market. Yet, they taste mightily awesome especially when eaten fresh. I don’t care though for the dried ones and the fig newton cookies, which are considered processed figs. Nothing can really beat tree-ripened fruits, more so if they are raised from your own garden.

Earlier, in one of my blog posts, I explained methodically the mechanics on how to build a raised bed for those of you who may be interested. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t hard either. It involves cunning and hardwork, lots of hauling gravel, dirt, manure, and hays. Results are phenomenal as shown in the pictures below.

We expect to have an all-year-round gardening even on the harsh winter days this year. Yes, we do get snow as it can get down to zero here, but the good thing is, it warms up during the day time which is essential to growing plants. Right now, we are using a 40% to 50% shade cloth to cut down the heat because most plants simply can’t bear sweltering heat of Arizona. Eventually, when the weather gets colder and below freezing point, we will replace the shade with the plastic cover, which will then resemble a green house. Of course, we had to carefully select the cold-tolerant plants like kale, lettuces, radicchio, and many more. It is like a trial and error to see which ones grow best in our climate. We did this before many many years ago, and I remember having supply of organic salad in the cold winter months. You can’t beat that, right?

Anyway, without further ado, let me show you our garden.

chard- eat your heart out guys.

carrots

this bed supplies us with fresh veggies every other day, and now and then, to some of my friends.

one of my favorite vegetables- spinach

Chinese lettuce ready for harvest by end of October

there are probably 15 kinds of veggies planted in this bed which has inside dimensions of 32 feet by 4.4 feet.

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Gardening in Arizona is extremely tough because not only do we have to worry about the extreme sunlight, dry temperature, and lack of rain, we also have to deal with hungry critters that will eat the young plants right down to the ground. Our worst enemy though is the scorching heat and dry climate because it cooks the seeds before they even have a chance to sprout up. We also have the elk that comes at night and can jump over any fence below 8 feet, the quail that likes to peck on the baby plants, the huge and fat grasshopper, a bevy of hungry birds, and other creatures we don’t even see. So, what do you do? Give up?

That is what we did for a while when the gophers practically demolished every single plant in the garden last year. It was a devastating feeling knowing that our gardening days were over. My husband even thought of moving to another state like Oregon which boasts of mild climate, and deep-top soil – a gardener’s paradise. But, we invested so much time and effort on this garden, we can’t just give up and leave, right? There must be another way of beating all the odds, thus, the idea of raised bed came to mind.

I tell you, it isn’t easy. It is a back breaking job. First, my husband dug down below ground level, spread the hardware cloth to ward off gopher, and laid the cement blocks three layers high. Then he filled the bottom with rocks for drainage, followed by a combination of sand, top soil, and compost. We had this compost pile for years and finally found a use for it. A very very rich soil, I must say. The idea of including the sand is for the water to penetrate down to the roots instead of settling on the surface and because of our dry weather, it evaporates in no time.

Let me tell you first how pocket gophers operate. They remind me of the Taliban fighters-very clever. They build a centralized hole underground and from it, they branch out and create tunnels all over, and cover the end of the tunnels with soil to conceal them from the gardener.Hmmm, I am beginning to think that Taliban must have gotten the idea of underground operation from these creatures. Notice the similarities? So, when you finally spot a hole, you try to stick a piece of lean wood to try to corner them, but they just go to the next tunnel and exit at the other end. Just like the Taliban, they are extremely hard to fight because they attack from underground engaging in a methodical and perplexed operation. So frustrating!

Anyway, going back to my story:

Seeing that the first bed was doing extremely well, it gave my husband the inspiration to build a much larger one. He has been working on it for about a month now and is only half way through. In other words, he had the bed built but hasn’t filled it up yet. Two days ago, I talked him into visiting our friends’ garden in Roosevelt (an hour-drive from home), and gladly obliged with the utility trailer hooked behind our truck. He said since we were going to that direction, he might as well haul some cow’s manure for the second bed.

When we got there, he said, “honey, i brought an extra shovel just in case you want to help.” “Huh, I am not wearing the right shoes!” I squalled. And I am talking about temperature in the 100′s with practically no humidity! But I relented, and started shoveling away filling up the front side while my husband took care of the back side.

Here are the pictures:

You see the flip-flop I was wearing? Definitely not suitable for shoveling.

A shade cloth is used to cut down 40% of the sunlight, and to help keep most of the insects out and the soil from drying out fast.

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Because of pocket gophers’ problem last year, I thought our garden days were over. But apparently not so. We finally thought of ways to outsmart the conniving and illusive gophers by building raised beds made of bricks and spreading hardware cloth at the bottom. My husband spent about 3 weeks on the first bed, and is currently half-way through with the second one. The process involves a lot of hard labor because he has to fill the bottom with huge rocks for drainage. Then he mixes the top soil with sand and uses it to fill up the bed.

So far, we are happy with the results as shown by the pictures below.

Notice there are some holes on pechay’s leaves. Despite of the shade cloth that we put over the plants, some unknown insects still manage to get through. But, it is okay because those holes don’t alter the taste of the vegetables.

My husband has been telling me to thin off the beets as they are getting crowded. I thought I would just leave them the way they are right now until I have the courage to pull off the unfortunate plants.

Our first harvest which includes pechay, chard, and beet’ tops. And guaranteed pesticide free.

And I transformed them into this delicious veggie dish. Oh, so good!

Fresh fruits and veggies from the garden.

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In this day and age, when all the fruits and veggies you buy in the store are not only expensive, but adulterated, and pesticide-laden, wouldn’t it be a good idea to avail of the vacant space in your backyard and fill it up with your favorite vegetables and fruits? Not only that, it practically costs nothing to raise a garden especially in the province where rain is a plenty. Unlike here in our place where water rain is scarce and so it costs expensive to water a garden even with drip irrigation installed.

While I was in the province vacationing two months ago, there was a time that I couldn’t figure out what to cook for lunch. There was no fish available because it was the day after typhoon Frank. I looked around in the property and in no time, I knew exactly what to fix for lunch – “Kamote top salad.” That was really good and refreshing dish! And it is such a good feeling to be able to turn to the yard and make a meal from it without spending a dime. Plus, knowing that it is organic makes one feel good.

Before our Philippine trip, when everything was at an all time high, I suggested to my husband that we start a garden again. I don’t know if you remember in one of my old entries, we had gopher invasion in our garden last year and turned our yard into a complete disaster. They attacked from below the ground and cut off the roots of the plants and pulled the dead plants inside a hole and nibble on them. They did it methodically until all plants were gone. Seems like a battle hard to win, huh?

But not for long…

My husband outsmarted the pocket gopher by putting a hardware cloth, which is a wire mesh fabric, and spread it out at the very bottom of the raised bed. He used blocks to make the garden bed. It took him 3 weeks to finish the whole job. That whole process deserves another post and will be posted shortly.

Two weeks later when all the seeds had a chance to sprout up, here’s a sneak peek of my husband’s hard work.

Pechay

Beets

Tomatoes that we planted in the pots before the Philippine trip so gopher will not get them.

Herbs are being eaten off by some insects.

Figs up close

Prolific fig tree

Delicious Johnny Gold apples

Persimmons

And my lovely visitor that frequents my yard.

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I didn’t realize my yard is full of weeds. The little rain that we had earlier made the grass grow faster. That means, I will be spending some time in the yard after work, about 2 hours a day, before dark. I have to put off the walking regime for a while until I get rid of all the weeds both in the back and in the front of the house. It is kind of hard to do because the soil is dry and hard. And squatting for two hours is exhausting, that is why, I change position every so often. I am hoping by next week, I will be finished with the weeding. Care to join me?

While weeding, I had a cup of tea and a persimmon for snack. I picked the ripest one off the tree and it tasted good already. It reminded me of manibalang mangga only without the acid. Though it needs several more weeks to ripen completely. The warm days and chilly nights will change the acid in the fruits into sugar. Nothing is better than tree-ripened fruits. Don’t you all agree?

Look at the transformation 2 hours later. Looking good, huh?

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I meant to submit my entry to PMN before the deadline but I missed it again for the second time. I received an email early this morning from Dine reminding me of the deadline but I was getting ready for work so there was no way I could make it. Thanks Dine! Anyway, I thought I would just post my entry here in my blog.

I had this plant sitting on my kitchen counter for quite a while now. When I bought it, it had plenty of red little flowers and thick silky leaves. It was so beautiful that I just had to take it home. I thought it would die right away after several months like any other house plants that I have had but lo and behold, this particular one is still alive and looking good. I hope to see flowers by next spring.

Last week, I went out in the garden and took pictures of the butterflies but only this kind came out half decent.

Bartlett Pear- the best eating pear.

Our fruit trees (left to right) persimmon tree, apricot tree, and apple tree.

Persimmons- my favorite autumn fruits

Persimmons-up close

Apples

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Just to show my friend, Dine, how fig trees look like. I haven’t had a chance to take pictures of our fig trees when they were loaded with fruits. The above picture (that I lifted from a site somewhere (http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/fig-tree.html)resembles my figs during summer. By the way, the fig leaf is mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 3:7) when Adam and Eve covered their private parts with fig leaves.

Persimmon tree, one of my favorite fruits.

We had a summer supply of fruits last year and it lasted through the fall. A lot of the fruits were wasted on the ground for the javelinas to feast on. I was able to bake a couple of apple pies and hmmm, nothing could beat fresh picked apples. They were full of juices and just scrumptious. Thanks to my dear husband for planting the trees. We have also several fig trees, plums, and another variety of pear that are not included in the pictures I posted.

These apples make good pies. I just forgot the name.

Granny Smith apples, great for apple pies

Bartlett pears, sweet and juicy.

Fuji apples, my favorite apples.

Asian pears, huge, delicious, and juicy. One pear fills me up. Notice there are bruises on the fruits? It got hit with hailstorm in late spring.

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