Check out the morning glories!

Morning glories are invasive, but the scene at the garden was gorgeous this morning with yellow cosmos sticking out from purple, blue, white, and pink cosmos! If you can't make it to the garden in the mornings, check this out!

-Kate

Fried Green Tomatoes and Pesto!

I wanted to share pictures of the delicious things I made with the garden this summer! Thanks to the garden, I made pesto and friend green tomatoes for the very first time! (Above: Making pesto.) A food processor would be ideal, but my blender did the job! It's just a combo of a lot basil, 1/2 cup of parm or so, some olive oil, a couple cloves of garlic, and pine nuts. I often was too stingy to buy pine nuts this summer and the pesto is still good. I read that walnuts are also an okay substitute but I'd prefer no nuts over walnuts in my pesto. Also, both basil and pesto is good stored frozen, and the pesto is best stored with a layer of olive oil on top. I noticed mine got a darker shade of green after it was stored in the refrigerator for a few weeks). Check out how yummy a simple pasta with pesto can be! (Below)

Series of tomato photos: salt and peppering the tomatoes! Then dipping in milk, flour, eggs, and bread crumbs! Frying up and then deciding to fry a few more things than just tomatoes.

-Kate

Cooling Summer Recipes

Just today I received an email from Whole Foods with a Cucumber-Mint Soup (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/436?utm_source=Responsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=08_04_10_Recipe) recipe. It looks delightful.

This email reminded me that the mint is ready to take over the whole plot and there are quite a few cucumbers... so here are a few idea for what to do with them.

Cucumber-Mint Dipping Sauce / Savory Yogurt Salad

• Take 1 cucumber (either dice it or shred it on a box grater), sprinkle on salt to taste, let it sit for 5-7 minutes (until it releases its juice), add 6-8 oz. plain yogurt, 15-20 sliced mint leaves, and then either black or red pepper to taste. Mix and enjoy as a snack or with spicy foods to cool you down. (It also works well as a sauce on fried green tomatoes).


• If you replace the mint with chopped-up flat leaf parsley, you get something like tzatziki sauce.

Green Tomato-Mint Chutney

• Take one green tomato and puree it with one handful of mint leaves (no stems please). Add salt and pepper to taste.

Mint Tea

• Take about 10-12 leaves and place in a bottom of a mug. Add 6-8 oz. of hot water and a spoonful of honey. If you prefer iced tea, either stick it in the chill chest or add a few ice cubes.

If you have other ideas, please post them!

~ Tina

KASC Volunteer Day at the Garden!

Yesterday we had a group of about fifty students from the Korea-America Student Conference come to the garden for some volunteering. We had a quick thirty minute talk about the benefits of community garden and how we got started, and then the group got to work helping us weed, water, turn the compost cans, etc. They had a great time smelling our herbs and tasting our beans! Hopefully some of these students will go back home and help start a community garden of their own.

Here are a few pictures from the event!

Example of post!

Hey all!

This is an example of a post made from our new email account so everyone/anyone can contribute! Everyone will be publishing from the same account, so make sure to leave your name afterwards!

Kate

Early bird gets the tomato...

Hello!

We are a group of students, faculty, and staff at American University who helped create a community garden on campus to provide healthy vegetables, educate participants in growing their own food, reduce our carbon footprint, and to strengthen the AU Community.

This is year 2 of our garden, and we would like to share our successes, failures, and celebrations in this blog. To catch you up, we have a 500 square foot plot and we grow a variety of vegetables, flowers, and even one persimmon tree! It started last year as a simple tilled, unorganized plot with cucumbers and watermelons taking over with their long vines. We had many successful crops that year-tomatoes, corn, beans, cucumbers, basil, parsley, eggplants, lettuce, etc. It was just slightly unorganized- so this year we built raised beds out of lumber and rock. There are three corners of rock wall raised beds that contain flowers. The lumber raised beds contain tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, corn, beans, squash, basil, oregano, parsley, lettuce, onions, watermelons etc. We learned that when our watermelons are getting large, we should place a rock or brick under them so they do not rot before we can eat them, which is a problem we encountered last year. This year, our eggplants failed, which is disappointing considering our harvest was so great last year. In addition to an eggplant fail, we also have squirrels and birds eating our tomatoes before we can, despite our deer fence. I looked up that providing them with water and food elsewhere will deter them from seeking our vegetables.

We are currently enjoying tomatoes (when we beat the birds), green beans, cucumbers, basil, parsley, carrots, and oregano. Our radishes seem to be on their way as well as watermelon! We enjoy great snow peas earlier in the season as well as newly planted blueberry bushes. Unfortunately, I learned too late that you are not supposed to eat your first years' blueberries- that you are supposed to encourage growth over fruiting. Hopefully this is a small mistake and that fruiting will occur next year!

Well, this is a little overwhelming for a first post, but hopefully our nutty garden thoughts will entertain and educate in the future.