This is What Happens When Brooke Gets BORED!

When some people get bored, they watch TV or read a book. What do I do?! I play my new favorite homemade game called "Cherry Tomato Photo Shoot!" I know you are just dying to know how to play… It’s very simple: take pictures of the cherry tomato all over the house in different random places. The more unusual, the more points you can get! You can play solo or with others :-) This picture was my fav - it is in the cresent moon of my lamp. I bet you've never seen a tomato in the moon before!

Now, don't you worry - I do have a life. I'm just not sure where it's gone recently...

Local Food? Doesn't Get More Local Than a Trip to Your Front Yard Garden!

This was a great way to start a beautiful day here in sunny F-L-A! The weather is getting hotter, to the point where every now and then I need to close the windows and put the AC on - the humidity is unbearable! But the tan I get while gardening is a great perk :-)

As I mentioned before, my beefsteak tomato plant fell ill to verticillium wilt a month back and I cut the limbs off the root of the plant a week ago. I left the branches with about 20 tomatoes on them laying on the surface of its planter pot. To my surprise they have not so much grown bigger but have turned from green to yellow to orange and today to red. So what was a girl to do?! I picked those suckers off of their viney branch, which is somehow still in tact and not rotting, even though it is no longer planted in soil. They still need to ripen on my kitchen table, but we’ll see if I really can eat them!

I also picked a cute little cherry tomato and a zucchini which is huge! I’m not too sure what kind of recipe I will cook to use these beauties, but I’m sure I’ll think of something creative! It sure is nice to wake up, wander barefoot into the garden with my little orange and white cat following at the hem of my sun dress, and pick some organic goodness.

It still hasn’t really hit me yet – this whole garden concept thing. I have these wonderful veggies sitting on my kitchen counter, but for some reason it hasn’t sunk in that I grew these myself, and it took lots of time and preparation and TLC for these little babies to grow. Maybe it’s because it is only the beginning of the crop harvest here at the 10th Street Garden. Or maybe it is because I never thought I could be self-reliant enough to grow my own food. Either way, it will be a glorious summer as I plan to live solely off of the garden for my vegetable intake.

Happy Growing!
-Brooke N. Dressler

The Green Beans are Here!!! 10th St. Garden's First Crop!

Hello everyone! Well I am very happy to report that today, the last day in this beautiful month of April, I picked my first crop at the 10th Street Garden! This evening I picked 11 green beans from the little 13 inch plant in my garden. I have to admit that I was thoroughly surprised that the green bean crop gave me it’s harvest before my other plants.

You see I planted a Beefsteak Heirloom tomato plant and a Yellow Bell Pepper on February 21, 2009. Since then, the Beefsteak fell victim to verticillium wilt and has killed over. As for the Yellow Bell, it has been slowly harvesting, although may I add it is growing EXTREMELY slow. I almost thought about cutting one of the peppers off from the plant last week and “sacrifice” it so that the plant would be encouraged to set more flowers and then more vegetables. But it still remains my slow little grower.

In any case, I transplanted the Blue Lake Pole Green Bean about only a month ago and already it has yielded nearly a dozen of its beautiful beans. I know it seems silly, but I almost didn’t want to pick the beans from its stalk. I don’t know what I was waiting for, but I just felt like “Wait! Im not ready for these fresh veggies! Maybe they need some more time in the Garden to grow!” I don’t even know how I will use them, green bean salad, a stir fry etc. More than likely it will be the latter. Lately it seems as if they only meals I know how to cook well are breakfast, chicken and stir-fries!

Today was exciting. Getting my knees and sun dress slightly dirty from kneeling at the root of the green bean plant was a really organic experience. So this is what it is like to take care of a little seedling, until it is old enough to be transplanted, care for it for a month and then watch its crop grow?! How beautiful! I was surprised to even see the beans growing. The plants’ leaves are so large that I really had to dig and push them aside to see the beans.

So that’s it! The first edible crop at the 10th Street Garden, besides my herbs from the herb garden of course :-) Thank you, Mother Nature!

Until next time,
Brooke N. Dressler