Scenes from Franklin Park's Edible Gardens {Friday Five}

I had the pleasure of volunteering with the Franklin Park Conservatory Women's Board at a cooking class last night. Yes, I was on my feet for almost seven hours, and yes I spent a fair amount of it around a hot wood fire. But I was truly entertained by instructors Jim Budros, Rich Terapak, and Steve Stover and I was thrilled to take pictures around the garden. Here are just some of the beautiful edibles I saw:

If you have never been to the Scotts Miracle-Gro Community Garden Campus, go! Find parking in front of the caretaker's house off Franklin Park South or you can enter via the conservatory main entrance and keep driving towards the south end of the park until you reach the far parking lot. Wander around and take note of the hundreds of culinary species growing. It is a place of inspiration for kitchen gardeners and beauty for all others.

If you've never been to a cooking class, I suggest Rich and Steve's Spanish Tapas offering on July 19. Even an experienced home cook will be inspired and entertained while eating a fine meal.

Summer Solstice Garden Update

After a spring devoid of garden success (sparrows ate the peas, springs crops like radishes bolted too quickly, lettuces were slow to grow), I welcome summer. Warmer temperatures and less torrential rain will surely help our sustainable garden grow.

Grapes, tomatoes, and peppers bend with fruit and hope for autumn harvest. Greens and herbs grow by inches overnight.

Insects exchange flower dust for nectar in the symbiotic relationship that creates so much of our food: pollination. Thank you, bees and butterflies, for this gift.

Beans climb and slowly reveal their flowers. Cucumber and squash plants also hide petals under their shady leaves. We pick small handfuls of warm, soft ripe raspberries daily, coveted by child, chickens, and hounds alike.

How does your garden grow?

We Love Garlic Scapes

What is it? Garlic scapes are the magical-wand-like flower shoots of the garlic plant. They emerge in late spring and contain a small bud that will become a flower if left on the plant.

Many farmers, including me, prefer to cut the scapes away. The theory is that instead of the garlic spending energy growing the allium blossom, it will focus on the bulb.

The scape is edible at this early age. Many farmers include them in June CSA shares. Others sell them at the farmer's markets.

Eating Garlic Scapes

As with all vegetables, I encourage cooks to taste the garlic scape raw as a first step to using it in recipes. I find it has a mild garlic and onion flavor. The texture is dense and stringy in wider parts of the scape but palatable raw in the thin ends.

Young scapes are very curly. Choose these for the most tender bite. The flower bud can also be eaten and tastes like the rest of the scape with a hint of bitterness.

If you enjoy the scape raw, toss it in salads or use as a garnish. You can also blend it with basil, olive oil, salt, and pepper to make a delightful pesto sauce. We'll be eating scapes that way at least once this week.

If you aren't a fan of raw garlic flavor, try cooking with the scapes. Chop finely and use as you would use garlic or chives. In larger chunks, a garlic scape is a savory addition to stir fry, frittata, or quiche. They can flavor rice or quinoa dishes.

If you find yourself unable to fit them into your menu, freeze the scapes whole with the rest of your vegetable scraps for the next time you make stock.

Our family <3s garlic scapes, does yours?

PS. I asked Lil to arrange the scapes for me to photograph and she came up with the heart. How cute!

Added to Hearth and Soul First Year Anniversary.

Fruit Babies!

There is nothing like homegrown fruit. Last year we enjoyed warm raspberries off the vine and perfectly sweet strawberries along with two (yes, just two) Italian plums. The anticipation for this year's fruit starts with tiny flower buds and bitty baby fruit that are revealing themselves now. Here are some of the fruitlets we are tending this year:

concord grapes, montmorency cherries

strawberries, and red raspberries.

Not pictured are the fuzzy green peaches, snow drop blueberry flowers, soft chartreuse figs, and hard emerald lemons gathering sunlight and water in our garden.

Are you growing fruit this year? What kind(s)?

Flowers That Stink Like Death and Taste Like Spring

This week has been all about flowers here. When we returned to Ohio, everything was in bloom!

Along with all others who marvel at plants and science, we had to trek to the Ohio State University campus to view the largest flower in the world. Rarely coaxed to bloom in a greenhouse, a Titan Arum, aka corpse flower, bloomed last weekend in the Biological Sciences greenhouse. It attracts flies with a scent that reminds many of rotting flesh or food. Fortunately by the time we visited, two days after bloom, the smell had largely dissipated.

Nicknamed Woody, this is the first known instance of a Titan Arum grown from seed to bloom in Ohio. The beautifully undulating petals are quickly fading but visitors are welcome at the greenhouse. The greenhouse link also includes frequently asked questions and a webcam of the flower.

On the way home, and at every available instance, we dine on flowers. We snack on redbuds and add dandelion greens to our salads. Lil also likes to eat the young dandelion flowers.

Last night, Lil and I filled a container with edible purple violets from a neighbor's yard to exchange with another friend for morel mushrooms. We will collect more sweet violets to decorate Alex's brother's wedding cake on Saturday.

It's a great time to enjoy and eat the wild flowers around us!

P.S. I shared a guest blog post, Any Kinda Chowda, at The Lean Green Bean today. Hop over for two recipes and a ratio for chowder!

This post added to Simple Lives Thursday, 41st Edition.

Conference at a Crossroads

Please vote for this post to win a conference ticket. Simply click on @racheltayse is this poll. Thanks!

Hounds in the Kitchen is growing not unlike the edible garden in our backyard.  I planted seeds in education, writing, and speaking from this blog.  Some have borne fruit already.  Some activities seem to reseed themselves, providing reward after reward while others are rife with weedy challenges.

The garden is getting a little unruly.  It requires enough maintenance that my head spins regularly trying to determine which task to undertake next.  Do I write another blog post?  Query a magazine? Make arrangements for a new class?  Write a newsletter?

There are also expansions to consider. It's possible that this blog audience and local food lovers could support launching an ebook, organizing a conference, or even opening a cooking school.

I wonder what will yield the biggest harvest, emotionally and financially.  I consider which tasks I enjoy most and which require sacrifices of time and attention from my family.  The plantings are getting crowded; I question whether some should be culled.

I am actively seeking advice and education to cultivate my mission. I expanded my blog reader and stack of books beside my bed to include essays on being a food writer, edible gardening, sustainable cooking, business, and more. Soon I will organize an Artie Isaac-inspired brainstorming session for trusted supporters to plan my life.

In September, Asheville North Carolina plays host to the Type-A Mom Conference.  The speaker lineup includes bloggers I trust engaged in sessions that could help me clarify what I'm doing well and where to go next.  The town of Asheville is a place I have long wanted to visit and document for their amazing farmer's markets and real food restaurants. This post is an entry for a ticket to the conference from Blog Conference Newbie and MomImpact.

If you want to see Hounds in the Kitchen blossom to its full potential, I would appreciate your input.  What paths would you like to see in the garden?  Feel free to leave a comment or email.

Sexy Homegrown Tomatoes Bare All

Oh, Julia Child, you dear pink tomato.  Your blushing beauty covers your spicy inside, tempting gardeners for decades. Cherokee Chocolate, dark enchantress of the bunch.  That Christmas colored skin of yours yields to a dark juicy flesh, dripping with sunlight transformed to sweetness.

Then there's you, Rutgers.  Your pleats, your bulbous inundations, inspire a thousand delicious thoughts.

All together, you are a brothel of diversity, a color, size, and flavor for every preference.

Sliced raw, you bare your internal beauty, solid flesh giving way to juicy pulp and life renewing seeds.  Your eclectic flavors and textures are inspirational, a summer sensual feast.

The Garden, She's Been Growin'

I realize that is has been an obscenely long time since I posted a garden update.  It's not that we haven't been gardening, but that our hands are so frequently covered in dirt that I haven't updated.  Here's what's going on:

• Peas were a complete failure this year.  Boo!!
• We ate several meals of broccoli from our two plants.
• We over-planted tomatoes again.  They are a mess of vines and leaves and glorious fruit tearing down cages, drooping to the ground under all the weight.
• While we don't weigh every harvest, I estimate we have picked at least 60 pounds of tomatoes so far.  Most are being canned into sauce.
• Some of our tomatoes are suffering blossom end rot.  I'm treating with eggshell water and powder once weekly and that seems to help.
• Garlic was harvested in late July.  It's a decent harvest but not as good as last year.
• We collected 10 pounds potatoes, 18 winter squash, and a few ears of popcorn from the other garden.  Right now there is nothing edible growing there and I'm unsure whether I will plant anything for fall.
• Potatoes at home have been only remotely successful.  We still haven't harvested from the tower or one of the buckets.  I'll write a potato wrap up post after we complete the harvest.
• Raspberries are giving up a handful of ripe red fruit every day.
• Lil's garden carrots and chard have provided ample food for her to snack on and make salads.
• Green beans are coming on slowly.  I planted several at the end of June and they are just about to bear mountains of beans.  My favorite!
• Herbs are providing seasoning to our dishes.  I've dried some and we will make a batch of basil pesto for the freezer soon.
• Kale, the wonder producer, still has leaves on the plant.  I pulled and cooked most of the plants for the Soul Food Potluck.
• We have two plums on our Italian plum tree.  All the peaches fell in a wind storm and most of our blueberries never fruited.  This winter I plan to spend time studying fruit production.
• In the last three weeks I have begun fall planting.  I'll detail more about what and when to plant later this week.

What's growing in your world?

All are invited to come visit the garden at our next Homestead Open House on Saturday September 11 from 11 am - 1 pm.  We would love to have you!