Community Involvement

There has been a lot said in recent years about giving back to the community.  Churches, schools, Girl/Boy Scouts all have individuals who volunteer their time to make their surrounding area a better place to live.  We at the Community Gardens are also helping to contribute to the process of making Granite City a better place to work and live.  Not only are we working against neighborhood blight by turning empty lots into neighborhood gardens but we are also giving produce to the local food pantries.  Two organizations that have benefited from our produce are the Community Care Center and Salvation Army.  Today Jim took a box of cucumbers to the Salvation Army and they were extremely excited to get the food.  When a box of vegetables was taken to the Community Care Center, the people there we so grateful and happy to get fresh food that it was all gone before Jim and Sharon made it to their car.

 By taking our extra produce to these food pantries we are ensuring that food will not be going to waste.  We would rather our produce look like this...

Than this.  Luckily we don't have too many rotten vegetables laying around.  But when they are left on the ground we leave them there to decay and add nutrients to the soil.  We also compost all of the food that has gone bad from being in the sun too long.  We will add this nutrient rich soil at the end of the harvesting season so the soil will be ready next year when are ready to plant again.

O is for Okra

Okra, a vegetable that is found mainly in southern dishes is being grown in the Old Six Mile Community Garden.  This little sucker is pretty crafty.  Just when you think you have picked all that is on the plant, boom, there is a huge one hiding next to the stem.  And when it comes to okra, bigger is not better.  Which goes against everything I believe in in terms of gardening.

Okra can be fried, steamed, baked, grilled, or pickled, but the most common way is fried.  In the South okra is a main ingredient in gumbo. The okra plant can grown between 2-8 feet so if you stop by the garden and see a ladder in the middle of the plants, you will know why. Luckily for us okra does well in drought conditions and since we haven't seen rain in almost 3 months it is doing pretty good.  It is best to harvest the pods when they are between 2-4 inches long.  If they get any longer than that they become tough and no longer any good.  Again this goes against my grain but my mom makes sure that they get harvested on time.

These okra are to large.  You may be asking yourself why I let them get so big.  My answer is, because I don't see them until one day I look down and BAM there they are.  Then I get a look from my mom or a smart aleck comment from my nephew that emphasizes that I just wasted an okra pod.

 The okra pod on the right is about the size you want them to be when harvested.  A word of caution about harvesting okra that my mom told me, and that I learned when I didn't listen to her.  Wear gloves!!  If you don't there is a very good chance that you will get the "okra itchies".  There is also a very good chance that I made that phrase up, but you get the idea.  I scratched and scratched and heard "see, I told you" many times before I learned never to pick the okra plant without gloves on.

 As you can hopefully tell from these pictures, okra are very good at the art of disguise.  The bigger they get the more they look like plant stems.  I consider it a game of hide and seek that I will not be losing!

If anybody knows any great okra recipes let me know, I would love to try some out.  I do know that Cracker Barrel and Lambert's serve fried okra.  And before you ask, that was not a paid endorsement, I am just passing on information  : )

HAPPY FRYING!!!!!

Birth of an Eggplant

egg·plant

   /ˈɛgˌplænt, -ˌplɑnt/  Show Spelled

noun

1.

a plant, Solanum melongena esculentum,  of the nightshadefamily, cultivated for its edible, dark-purple or occasionallywhite or yellow fruit.

2.

the fruit of this plant  used as a table vegetable.

3.

a blackish purple color; aubergine.

And we are growing them.  Lots and lots of them.  And they are fascinating to watch.  Are you wondering what makes them fascinating?  Let me show you what I mean.

 At first these pretty purple flowers bloom.  They grow and then they droop over.  At first you think that that is it, goodbye flower.  But no....

As the flower is hanging upside down a little eggplant starts to emerge.  WHAT???  That's right, they just bend right over and start turning into a large beautiful purple eggplant.

 Was this my pretty delicate little purple flower?  Why yes it was!!  It will keep growing and growing until we harvest it.  I think I have a new favorite veggie.  

 Another wonderful surprise was our okra.  We have never grown okra before so we didn't know what to expect.  Many people requested that we plant it, so we thought sure why not.  This little veggie also has a beautiful flower growing on it's branches, but we have no idea why.  And those little green sprouts above the flower, NOT the okra.  Even though that is what we have been watching and waiting to pick.  Haha tricks on us.  The okra actually grows on the bottom of the plant.  Who knew...

 These pumpkins came from a rotten pumpkin we just threw in the dirt last year.  We never planned on growing pumpkins, but here they are, ready or not.  Cool!