September has been a good month for the garden.  Lots to harvest, including some beautiful cabbage and onions delivered to the Pantry and Lewis House yesterday.

Here, one of our favorite simple side dish recipes:

1 head cabbage
2 medium onions
2 Tbsp. oil or butter
Salt and any preferred seasonings - garlic, pepper, fennel, etc.

Quarter the cabbage and cut out the core.   Slice onions and cabbage as thinly as possible.  Heat a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the oil or butter. When hot, add the onions, sprinkle them with seasonings, and cook about 3 minutes. Add the cabbage, more seasonings, reduce heat to low, and cook covered, until  tender, about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally and add a tablespoon or two of water if necessary.

Enjoy!

Summer Heat Yielding Big Harvests

So it's a bit hot and humid out there but the garden doesn't mind.  We harvested beans, onions, okra, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, squash, basil, parsley, bok choy, eggplant, fennel, dill, carrots and our first pumpkin yesterday.

And then we harvested more tomatoes, wax beans, peppers, cabbage, and Swiss chard this morning.

Milkweed.

We sort of don't like weeds, but we sort of do.  Butterfly Habitat!

Another Strawberry Harvest

The Strawberry Team picked more than a pound of strawberries today!  These are on their way to Lewis House, but if you've picked some of your own strawberries, how about a smoothie?




Blend your choice of soy or skim milk, plain yogurt , as many strawberries as you like, and one banana.  You can add granola or rolled oats, and a little sugar or vanilla if you like, but organic early strawberries are SO sweet you might want to taste before adding.

Delish.

Perfect Start to the Day

Today's bright, cool morning brought four awesome volunteers down to the garden. They wasted no time and went right to work tilling and raking the garden. Even more exciting is we have a wonderful group of volunteers eager to plant their adopted seeds and seedlings next week. A sure sign spring has finally arrived in MN!

And the Award Goes to...

Last week, Blue Cross' Twin Cities Corporate Giving Garden Network initiative was honored with the Corporate Volunteerism Council-Twin Cities’ (CVC-TC) Innovation Award. The Blue Cross Corporate Giving Garden continues to spur interest and enthusiasm for a growing network of corporate giving gardens throughout the Twin Cities metro area. Blue Cross provides consulting, leadership and connection for the network, holding two Garden Summits each year for members to share best practices and learn from each other. Read more

Seeds from Minnesota Green

Being still quite cold (only high 20's today!) here in Minnesota it's hard to envision getting our hands dirty planting seeds is just a little over a month. But spring will be here soon and we'll be ready with seeds picked up today through our Minnesota Green membership.  What an amazing variety of seeds donated to the program by Seed Savers Exchange!

So excited that we've got three varieties of Okra to try.

Monkey Scarecrow Does Good Job.

Our loofah seedlings are doing beautifully, probably because no crows have gotten past our monkey scarecrow.

Spring

Outside, we have snow on the ground. 

Inside, we have plants started.

Spring is almost here.

The Great Loofah Experiment

Our garden friends in Texas gave us this:

We peeled it, and got this:

Since loofah has such a long growing season, and Minnesota doesn't, we've started them inside.  Assuming the seeds are planted at the right depth (We did carrots too deep one year.) we'll post pictures of progress.

Hoping by July to see this:

And if we pick them early (before they become scrubbing loofahs) we can make this:

2 tbsp. canola oil
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lb. loofah gourd, peeled and cut diagonally into 1 1⁄2"-long pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper, to taste
Sugar, to taste

Heat oil in a 14" flat-bottomed wok or nonstick skillet over high heat. Add garlic; cook, stirring, until golden, 15–20 seconds. Add loofah and 1 tbsp. water; season with salt, white pepper, and sugar. Cook, stirring, until just tender, 30–60 seconds. Serve immediately. (from Saveur Magazine