My prickly little friends

Oh, you can run, but you can't hide, my prickly little friends. What? You don't like having boiling hot vinegar poured over your green bodies? That's too terribly bad. Because even though you're trying to hide under that vegetation, I see you. And I'm coming for you.

And, thus, with threatening my own crops, I end "Crop Week".

I'm back in town tomorrow and can hopefully scrape together something a little more lively than cataloguing my backyard foodstuffs.

Lovely lavender

In spite of this crappy picture, I thought I'd add lavender to my crop week posts for a couple reasons. For starters, they're just lovely. Secondly, these are tasty little guys.

Case in point. My husband and I (well, mostly my husband) made this fabulous Lavender Chocolate Mousse Pie (new recipe post on my food blog) last weekend. I must admit that any cream based food item, infused with lavender, is about as close to heaven as one can get on this earth. I can still taste it. Aah.

I can think of few things that don't go well with lavender, either savory or sweet and if you don't like to eat them, you can always make them into soaps or just sit back and enjoy their wonderful fragrance in your lingerie drawer.

Green tomatoes

Hey, there! I'm still on vacation and still working on my crop week posts! Thanks to global warming, our weather has been unusually mild, with nary a sunny day to greet us here in Seattle.

So my huge batch of tomatoes are still as unripe as can be. It's a little disconcerting - so far I've had a few semi-ripe ones that I eagerly plucked from the plant. And, by the way, my semi-ripe tomatoes taste one thousand times better than the grocery store tomatoes.

Oh, dear. Well, hopefully they won't all ripen while I'm on vacation. If they don't, I saw a great recipe in the New York Times last week for Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade. So, if they don't shape up soon, they may be subjected to a boiling hot water bath and added to my jam collection.

Listen up tomatoes? Do you hear me? I'm going to eat you one way or another!

Corn!

Are you still with me? My vacation is continuing with another "crop week" post. This one is about my corn. Who knew that corn grew in the ghetto? No, I'm just kidding, but seriously, who thought that you could grow corn in a raised bed in the middle of the city?

I figured you'd have to have some serious yardage in order to grow some tasty kernels, but apparently, corn grows pretty much anywhere. I was also surprised, when I started looking at seeds, that corn is a grass. I'm always amazed at how ignorant and how far removed most Americans (myself included before this whole crop business got started) are from their food sources.

This particular variety is Hookers Sweet corn. It was developed by a woman who lived in Olympia, Washington. It's a stubby little fellow, making it ideal for growing in a limited space. I believe it is also a purple variety. I have yet to harvest any of them, but they look like they'll be ready soon enough.

Twelve ears of corn in a tiny patch stuffed with zucchini and gourds and they're going strong! Go, corn, go!

A week (or so) of crops

I haven't been posting too many pictures of my "crops" lately. Mostly because I've been lazy. But, I went out on a photographic journey of sorts and catalogued crops that were of note.

So, today begins a tour of my crops. I'll be posting pictures and waxing poetic about each one.

By the way, I'm on vacation for the next week, so that's why you're getting such exciting crop information.

Anyway, to start you all off, I planted Tarahumara Sunflowers in the spring. Some of them grew to over 9 feet tall and some of them, well, are still about knee-high. I can't explain why that is so. But the ones that have bloomed so far are beautiful and, once the seeds are ready, I'll leave some for the birds and save some for eating.

They really are cheerful and, mostly importantly, super easy to grow.