Potato Review!!!

I can't believe I forgot about the potatoes when I was doing the seed review!!!  One of the most favorite of Veggies!! This year we did 4 types of potatoes both here and at the school.

I got the potato seed this year from Jacobsens Greenhouse - You can find them on Facebook too. They are local here in the Valley, and have been in business here for many, many years (since 1979) and Hubby's mom worked for them for years before she passed.

I took pictures of the signs at Jacobsens when I chose the potatoes and then we laminated them at the school to use as the garden signs for identifying the varieties in ground.  It worked great!  Of course it was a VERY HOT and dry summer so it might not work as well in a really wet summer - but this time it did!

Our four varieties were:

Magic Myrna - I have grown this purple fingerling type potato before and very much liked them. Developed in Palmer Alaska!  Easy grow and great flavor. Not so purple that it makes things weird when you cook them either!  Baked, mashed or fried they are great - very smooth.  

Purple Viking - Beautiful purple potato with white insides!  Smooth and tasty, this spud is medium sized and great for cooking.  Mashed, fried, baked or even chips!  It makes a very cool chip! 

Above are Purple Viking and Yellow Finn with a few of the Daisy Gold mixed in.

Daisy Gold- This spud has great flavor and size, and as we grew this one in a bit shadier a spot they produced pretty well also.  About 6-8 large potatoes per seed.  Great baker and masher, its really smooth and creamy.  

Yellow Finn- This potato also has great flavor and texture - as you can see from the review written on the back of the label picture below - it is not a high producer and has really thin skin.  It is a great masher as it does not have to be peeled even and made really good french fries as well!  

We will probably grow all of these again if they are available.  I want to see how they do in a non-drought year and see if it makes a difference to production.  We will also try to get some "Yukon Gold" potatoes to grow as they are a favorite of  almost everyone who tries them.

I wrote on the back of the signs that we used to identify the flavors (I only had one done when this picture was taken).  It helps during buying time to remember which ones we liked and what the best qualities were.  We don't have as much growing space here or at the school as I would like to grow tons of potatoes, but we get to grow enough to feed us a bit and at the school so that the kids have a taste of a few varieties and how to grow, care for, dig, prepare and cook them!

There are tons of great potato varieties, and I encourage you to find a favorite and grow it yearly, but also to try new varieties that you or your kids might like!  The apparent consensus at the school was that they like them all!

Happy Spud Shopping!  Blessed BE!

Time for Seeds!!! Annual Seed review

I usually get this done before it is time to actually order or HAVE the seed ready to plant-but - its a crazy time in Big Lake, so here it goes now:

We love tomatoes here at Wicked Raven! They are our favorite summertime treat from the garden over all the others I think - maybe a toss up between the Royal Burgundy Green Beans, and I do love some cucumbers as well....  but I'll start with tomatoes as it seems that that is what I remember to take pictures of the most!  These are not in order of preference, just ones we love!

This is my greenhouse with the tomatoes and Cukes growing all over the place!  Got a few peppers in there also but not that you can see in the picture!

There are few tomatoes that are a better prize than Early Girl for Alaska.  True to their name, they produce medium sized bright red fruit early in the summer.  I have had them as early as Mid June!  They are nice and firm, red through, and they lend themselves to salads, sandwiches, or just plain salt and pepper eatin!  The only problem with the Early Girl is that it is an indeterminate plant and boy... it is REALLY indeterminate!  IF you dont cut them back you will have them vining all over the greenhouse.  Early Girl will also grow outside in containers, I grow some indoors and some out.

Above you can see the Early Girl tomatoes in the front and throughout this mix of tomatoes.  The others are Sungold, another favorite.  I wrote a whole blog about the Sungolds - see it in "here comes the sun"- they are one I will not give up!  

We found a new love in Bush Early Girl Tomatoes!  They really are bush and they grow better outdoors than indoors I think but... they will grow in a very compact space about 3 cubic feet total and they are a beautiful tomato!  Every bit as tasty as their grown up counterpart, they grow like giant grapes and  - my father in law says - if you are single you better grow only one unless you have lots of neighbors who like tomatoes!  My computer renamed some of my pictures during the migration to the new "upgrade" so I can't find a picture of the bushes that we grew this year!

San Marzano!  A fantastic paste and sauce tomato!  I sometimes even eat them off the vine, but they are definitely a sauce/paste tomato.  Flavor is divine though and I made pizza sauce with them and it was best ever! They produce well and are a fairly determinate plant, not taking up too much of your space.

Above is a favorite that we found out about from Aunt Cinny (see her amazing greenhouse here at "I covet this greenhouse).  These are "Cherry Punch".  They are so sweet and tasty, and they grow like grapes off the plants!  They are good for eating, cooking, salads and snacking!  These, with the Sungold lend themselves very well to freezing whole as well - just put them in a bag in the freezer and use them when you need them - for whatever you need them for!  

Another new one we had this year and that I will be growing again, is Chocolate Cherry. Chocolate Cherry is a bit bigger than the Cherry Punch and about twice the size of Sungold.  They tgaste very subtly of chocolate and are a lovely reddish brown color - very chocolate looking- when they are ripe.  Yes - we grow a lot of cherry tomatoes, but they are so delicious and they produce all summer - no waiting!

This is Parks Whopper - a variety tried by my dad that were new to the menu this year.  It is a great tomato, the one above is about 4" in height, so it's a large tomato.  Nice and firm and very tasty with no pith.  This is a great sandwich/slicer.  Not as productive as some we have had in the past but seem very carefree and somewhat determinate.

For Cucumbers this year I had three varieties that all did well - the above is a "Tasty Jade" .  They grow profusely (feed throughout the summer though), and they are a great slicer, sandwich, or even for Cucumber dip!  We also grew Northern Pickling and Bush Slicer and liked each of those as well.  I think we will keep growing the triplets!

This is the new favorite squash "Grey Griller"!  I learned of it from my Aunt Nancy, who grows it in containers where it is almost as cold as it is here most of the time.  So I knew it should do well here. It is a compact squash that is wonderful sliced with a little olive oil, herbs, and grilled to al dente!  Delish!  It also stores well and I have used it in pasta dishes as well.  We used our last one right before Christmas - harvested in September!  I stored them on the counter in the fruit bowl - easy care!  We also grew some Black Beauty Zuchinni and some Yellow Crookneck this year and we will grow those again as well.  

For strictly outdoor growing, the champion is still the Royal Burgundy Green Beans!  I grow them in the cold frame and if you missed it you can read about them here!  Such great flavor and they are pretty easy grow!

That gives a good start to the spring lineup for seed starting!  Stay tuned for some great garden plants and for the garlic progress as well!

Blessed be in your garden!

Here is a great pasta sauce recipe for using up extra tomatoes!

Oven Roasted Pasta Sauce

10-12 cups of tomatoes diced for bigger ones or whole for small cherries- any variety and more is better!  I use the Roma, San Marzano, Sungold, Early Girl,and whatever you have that needs to get used up!  I like to use a mix of yellow, red and chocolate - the color is so fun!

1 large onion diced

10 cloves of garlic - rustic cuts diced

2 tsp sea salt (use regular if you dont have sea)

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 C. Olive oil

1 tsp dried rosemary or 3 sprigs fresh - leaves stripped

1 tsp dried oregano - or 1/8 C fresh leaves

1 tsp dried thyme or 1 TBSP fresh leaves

In a glass bowl mix all the above together gently so as not to break down the tomatoes.  Place in one or two 9x13 glass pans and roast for 30-40 minutes.  You want to keep all that juicy goodness that comes into the bottom of your pan though so check to make sure it is not cooking off.  I have made it and covered the pan with foil but the roast just isnt the same.  I have also used rimmed baking sheets to make this recipe.  Do not use parchment as it sucks up all the good juice!

You can also cut this recipe if you have tomatoes that you need to use up and don't have this much!  I have also used my frozen tomatoes for this recipe and it works just as well - with a little less cook time!

We have used this on multiple pasta recipes, including pasta salad and as a crostini topping for Caprese's instead of a sliced tomato, put the pasta sauce on and top with a slice of cucumber, slice of mozarella and balsamic.  Yum!  

Store in glass jars in the fridge.  Use within 3 weeks or can in a water bath.

The Quitters Quilt...

Last year in November, our world was shaken and rocked by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake.  It shook up the schools and our people real good and destroyed our Middle School.  We all went under one roof at what was the High School - now called Houston Junior Senior High.  With this great shakeup came the shake up of many of our staff members as well.  We turned over 19 staff members, some being replaced, and some not. Some retiring and some quitting to go do something different.  Most went to other buildings where it was not so "hard" as our building supposedly is.  One of the people who retired was my boss and my dear friend Bethan.  She retired to go do something different with and for the kids, and so the "quitters quilt" was born.  She didn't really quit - but it was a funny joke among us to tease her.  She is such an amazing human being that anyone who knows her would laugh to hear her called a quitter!  She is the one who brought the "One more mile" print to work to hang and inspire us to go one more mile!  Read that post here.

Bethan is a lover of the Little Prince and the beautiful red fox.  She has many connections to the story and associations with it and for nearly every event or holiday we celebrated, someone gave her a fox of some type.  "In one of the stars I shall be living, In one of them I shall be laughing, and so it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky at night." - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery   

In our world we say "There among the stars....."  Me because I have a child who is there among the stars, and Bethan for a whole lot of reasons that would take too many posts to cover and that really aren't my story to tell.  This is my story to tell....

I learned of this fabric from another quilter in the school - one of her friends or relatives is a salesperson for the Wilmington line of fabrics and this one is an amazing piece of fabric.  I had to get mine from Ebay as every place I searched for it was out of stock.  I had to get it in three different sellers!  That's how amazing it is!

The quilt is an original design.  I put it together in stages and had to do a lot of math (which is NOT my forte')!  It came together fairly easily once I got the math down!  Stay tuned for this pattern in my ETSY shop in 2020!  It can work with a variety of fabrics.

As I told you already, Bethan is a lover of the fox - see those two in the center?  There were only three to be had total with the three panels I was able to get, and they are a little larger than all the other blocks in the panels, so once I got the two in I decided I would make it look like the other animals were peeking into the center of the quilt from the outer border - seeing what the rest of the friends are doing.  Above photo is testing out other border colors/fabric to finish it up with the animals.

Here is the fabric I chose!  The teal picks up the colors throughout the quilt (even the block that washes out in the lower right- if you didn't notice it - good!) You can see in the below picture - darn it!

You can see well in this picture how the animals eyes look into the quilt around the border.

The finished product is exactly what I was envisioning when I started the quilt, and just reminds me of a Bethan world - filled with the Little Prince, the fox and his friends, and stars.

I hope you have something and someone in your world that inspires you to create, imagine, and believe!

There among the stars - Blessed Be.