Potatoes and Garlic

Potatoes are sprouting

Potatoes and garlic are cheap to buy. I have wondered whether it was worth my efforts to grow them. Now, three years into growing my own food, I decided it is always nice to have potatoes and garlic right in the backyard. Both are super easy to grow, and they will regenerate themselves year after year. I don't have to drive down the grocery store for potatoes or garlic, which saves time and gas and better for the planet.

After I cleared out the patches, I decided to pick out the potatoes so I can add compost to the soil. If I left the potatoes in there, I would puncture them as I turn and loosen up the soil. I have both red and purple potatoes. They are great as country fries for breakfast and/or brunch.

cluster of sprouting garlic cloves

Garlic cloves are all sprouting, so I need to separate them for each one to grow into a big bulb. Now I realized that I'll never run out of garlic as long as I keep propagating them. Garlic is perfect with potatoes.  How about some garlic fries or garlicky mashed potatoes or roasted garlic and potatoes? Are you hungry yet?

I love being able to step out of my backdoor to pick my meals.

Garlic cloves are separated for replanting

Getting Ready to Grow Again

All the nasty dried up onions have to go

After spending the first week of 2012 at Harbin Hot Springs, I am ready to work on the soil again and grow something new. By the way, I really enjoyed my stay at Harbin; however, it is not for everyone. It's rustic and clothing optional. If you don't want to see naked people in the pools, it is not for you. I wore my bathing suit the entire time because that's what I am comfortable with. It doesn't bother me to stand out a little, and there were a few others who kept their bathing suits on. Anyway, the water was awesome. I attended yoga classes (included in the entrance fee) everyday while I was there. As I spent my time in the mountain, I missed my garden. I couldn't wait to work on it again.

Dried up garlic chive flowers with seeds

Most of the first generation green onions I planted are now looking moldy, dried up, and infested with black aphids. All the garlic chives have flowered and seeded. Before I started ripping everything out of the soil, I cut off a bunch of dried up garlic chive flowers to collect seeds. I will replant some garlic chives as they are very good with scrambled eggs and Chinese dumplings.

After the seeds are collected, I started pulling everything out of the soil. The green onions have rooted deeply, and widely. I shook off us much soil from the roots as I could. In addition to green onions and garlic chives, this bed also has red potatoes. The potatoes are sprouting now. I accidentally pulled out a couple potatoes while pulling the green onions. I just planted them back into the soil.

Next step is to mix in some compost from my worm compost bins and add more soil.

Only potatoes are left in this bed now

Happy New Year!

My New Year's Day visitor

One of my readers asked me how come I haven't posted anything new since picking wild mushrooms. I realized that December has passed, and I didn't write anything for the entire month. Between being sick, rain, and pulling out dead plants, the month just flew by. Today is the first of January, 2012! It's going to take a few weeks to get used to writing 2012.

When I stepped out this morning, I saw a hummingbird resting on the clothesline. I use the clothesline  for drying bedding or towels when the sun's out. I don't see the point of turning on the dryer if  there's time to hang it out to dry naturally. Additionally, I often see hummingbirds taking an advantage of the clothesline to rest. I like to be around wildlife and living things. I was able to take a few shots today before the bird flew away.

My pet rabbit, Dusty, is still going strong. I call him bunny all the time, but he's about 7 years old now. Rabbit's lifespan is about 5-10 years. Dusty used to be gray, and now he's more brown although he happens to look more grayish in the picture above.

To celebrate New Year's Day, I decided to go down to Point Isabel for a walk. Point Isabel is a dog heaven. It is one of the largest public off-leash dog parks in the nation with over 500,000 dog visits per year according to its website. I love going there because it's less than 2 miles away from Sand Village, and I enjoy the company of all the dogs. It always makes me happy to see the dogs running, swimming, and playing together. I am also fascinated when I see some rare breeds in the park, such as Leonberger and Caucasian Shepherd.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Dogs playing in Pt. Isabel

First Mushroom Hunt of This Season

dirty wild mushrooms

The rain season has started. It rained all day last Saturday and Sunday evening. Last night, Chef Pauly invited me to go hunt for some wild mushrooms. He has gone out during the weekend and already picked a bunch. This morning I picked him up and drove to one of our regular spots. Shortly after we got on the trail, Chef spotted a few white puffballs. I was very excited because I had never found puffballs before. Even though Chef saw them first, at least now I know what to look for.

We passed by our regular candy caps spots, but they weren't out yet. It usually takes about a full week of soaking rain for the candy caps to come out. We continued on and went off the trail to look for golden chanterelle. We started going down some pretty steep hill. Chef started to see the chanterelle. I was still trying to adjust my eyes and mind to see what I needed to see. It didn't take long for me to started seeing them, too. As usually, I screamed with joy then reminded myself not to be so loud. Both of us started picking and filling our bags. It was quite a work out as we worked out way down and up the steep hills, but I felt refreshed as we got back on the trail finally with out bags of mushrooms.

cleaned chanterelle and puffballs

Cleaning chanterelle is a lot of work as they are covered in dirt. I trimmed off the dirtiest parts and cleaned each one carefully. It is perfectly okay to ingest some dirt, but I just prefer not to have dirt in my food if all possible.

I cooked some of the chanterelle tonight for dinner. I dry sauteed the chanterelle expecting a lot of liquid coming out of them. To my surprise, only a little liquid came out and it was soon evaporated. I didn't have to transfer the mushroom liquid into a bowl. I think that's because these chanterelle were picked so early in the season, and they have not overgrown and pack up much liquid. Unlike the ones I picked in previous years, these chanterelle felt firm instead of plump. Even though these chanterelle are not as big as some others I have picked, I like the firm texture a lot better. I can't wait to eat the rest of them and pick some more soon.

cleaned wild mushrooms drying in the sun

Sharing My First Passion Fruit

Ready to eat my first passion fruit

A friend of mine came by the other day to visit. As we sipped on our coffee talking about the upcoming holidays, she asked me how my lilikoi was doing. She lived in Hawaii for many years before moving to El Cerrito, so we both love and miss tropical fruits. I told her that I have quite a few fruits but they didn't seem to be ready yet. My passion vines started to bloom in June, and I discovered the fruits in early July. It is now November. I started to wonder whether they would ever be ripe.

We stepped out to the farm, and I lifted up the green bean vines over the passion fruit vines to show her the hanging fruits. One of the dark purple ones fell on the ground as I was pulling the vines. Since it was dark purple, perhaps it was ready although I thought it had to be wrinkly. I picked it up, and we went inside to cut it open. As I cut the smooth hard purple shell open, we immediately smelled the distinctive fragrance of passion fruit. Both of us cheered in excitement and took our cameras out to record this historical moment. We were both amazed that we could a fresh passion fruit right here in El Cerrito in the middle of November.

It took me two years to grow the cuttings indoors until they established roots. I planted them outside in November 2010. A year later, I have fruits. If it survives the winter, I am sure I'll have a lot more fruits next summer. My friend looked at the passion fruit with envy. I handed her a spoon and half of the fruit. "Let's try it!" I said.

It was sweet, and both of us savored it with fond memories. Passion fruit always reminds me of sharing them with my grandfather when I was a kid back in Taiwan. My memory of passion fruit was bigger. I am not sure whether they were bigger in the subtropical climate or perhaps everything looked bigger to a 5-year-old.