Costa Rica: A Trip Abroad Before this Year's Planting

Hi!  I WILL be blogging about my experiments with square-foot gardening this year, but before that happens I will be visting Costa Rica for the first time ever and want to blog about that.

Having never traveled outside the borders of the US before this, I had to get a pass-port.  That happened without a hitch.  I have been brushing up on my Spanish, but still read and write it better than I can speak and listen.  Getting better at the latter though.

Here's the basic run-down:  I will be arriving in Costa Rica April 13 and staying at the Beacon Hotel in Escazu (a suburb northwest of San Jose).  My job while I'm there will be to visit the student teachers who have been assigned to the school in Escazu to serve as ambassador for MSU and to make sure they are having a good experience.  Also I have been asked to take photos for use in future advertising of the Costa Rica student teaching option.

On Wednesday I will travel by bus to Manuel Antonio on the Pacific coast to visit student teachers there.  Same deal.  I will be staying a jungle bed and breakfast called the Hotel La Colina.  My traveling partner is Marti Sievek a professor in Secondary Education here at MSU.  He teaches Spanish and speaks it fluently.

Tomorrow I am meeting with Marti to discuss the trip.

I will blog each day with photos and post to facebook so I hope you will join me on my journey.

KARL

November - Thinking About Next Year

WELL!
My first garden was a REAL learning experience.  Luckily I started with a small 10 X 15 ft garden, or I'd have had many more problems.  I learned a lot, with minimal hassle, so that's all good.

I already have plans for a completely different 2013 GARDEN.  My sister suggested SQUARE FOOT GARDENING.  I got a book and read about it and it makes PERFECT SENSE.  The main problems with "Farm Style Gardening" is it wastes water, wastes soil (you need wide paths) and it tends to produce more than you can possibly use and not in a timely fashion. 

That was what I experienced during my first attempt with 2012 GARDEN .  First we got several dozen radishes --  what do you do with a lot of radishes?  A few yes, but  DOZENS???

Next we got BUNCHES of lettuce.  We used what we could but the rest went bad.  Salads and sandwiches don't really go through the lettuce very fast when there is only two of us.  Suddenly we were ALSO up to our earlobes in CUCUMBERS.  Again, not a thing you really need to have a lot of for any reason.

When the tomatoes came, THAT was cool.  Lots of things you can do with tomatoes.  And I did:  Salsa, marinara, chili, stew --  the freezer was FULL and they kept coming!  AAGHH!  ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES.  My sweetie blanched some and we froze them after we ate enough marinara to make room.

HOWEVER . . . 

With SQUARE FOOT GARDENING there is no waste and no over-production.  It's definitely a new way of looking at growing things, but it is exciting to me.  Over the winter I will be building (low talent carpentry, really) three 4X4 foot frames for my 10 X 15 garden.  That will be 48 one square foot planting cells.  THINK of the variety of things that will be possible.  And no wasted water, no fertilizer, no weeding.  

2014 GARDEN will probably be on my PATIO!
I'll check in to let you know how the 4X4 frames are doing after the holidays.

Happy Turkey day. / Merry Christmas./  Happy New Year!

HARVEST

August 10, we got many LARGE cucumbers.  We kept the best looking and composted the rest.  Also harvested some shallots,  little red (early Girl) tomatoes and a couple of NICE yellow tomatoes. Today, August 13th we harvested MORE early girl tomatoes, more yellow tomatoes and a couple of peppers.

I made beef stew and used shallots.  They marinaded a little while and BOY did they make it SPICEY HOT!  Used the tomatoes in (1) Grilled Chili and (2) Grilled jambalaya.

RECIPE:
Grilled Chilled Chili:
You need:

• 3 pounds of tomatoes.
• a large yellow onion
• 1 jalapeno
• 2 pounds of meat (1 of ground beef and 1 of ground pork works well.)
• 1 bottle of Ale
• 1 can of beef broth
• 3 cans of pinto beans (I like Bush's southwestern grillin' beans)
• salt pepper and chili powder.

Do this:

• Core the tomatoes, spray with PAM and grill, 10 minutes - turn them after 5 minutes.
• Spray the jalapeno and grill with the tomatoes.
• Slice the onion into 1/2" slices and grill.
• Form the ground meat into 1/2" patties.  Sprinkle some salt, pepper and chili powder on the patties.
• Grill them, about 5 minutes per side.
• Puree the tomatoes and pour into a stew pot.
• Chop the jalapeno and onion and add to the tomato puree.
• Cut the meat into 1 inch cubes and add to the pot.
• Add the Ale, broth and season as you wish.
• Bring to boil stirring constantly then reduce to simmer and stir occasionally.  
• Simmer 1 hour then add the beans and continue to simmer for 15 more minutes.
• It's good, but if let it marinate in the frig overnight it is even better the next day.

Great late autumn recipe and FABULOUS when made with garden fresh, charcoal roasted tomatoes and onions!

Harvest July 18

In this warm spell we've been having, I have been concerned about the health of my garden.  It's hard to get over there to water everyday and Mother Nature has not been generous with the rains.  So I was a bit surprised when I went there to water today and found cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, shallots and lettuce that were ready to pick.
We discovered that Swiss Chard is not to our liking and though it makes the garden look pretty, we weren't much interested in eating it, so I dug them all up and composted them.  Live and learn.
Looks like we have some nice peppers, watermelon and more cucumbers, shallots and tomatoes on the way!  I planted more lettuce, if all goes well we should have a new crop by late September or early October.

The Harvest Continues

The Garden, June 26, 2012

The Harvest Continues:  More radishes and some Lettuce!

And looks like we'll have some tomatoes soon!

June 26, 2012 -- The weatherman is predicting a heatwave, so I went to the garden early in the morning, did some light weeding, watered everything well and harvested some more radishes and a NEW CROP --  GREEN LEAF LETTUCE!  We have the beginnings of a darn good salad, but we'll have to buy a few other things at the Farmers' Market.  But HEY!   It's all organic!

First Harvest!

The Garden June 21, 2012!

The First Harvest!  I grew food!

June 21 -- I harvested 6 radishes.  Pretty impressive since they were grown from seeds planted 40 days ago!  But I am now a grower!  Mostly I relied on the soil and the rain --  that's my secret.

Transplants -- only way to rock.

I guess I learned my lesson about seeds!  We don't really have a way of starting seeds in our townhouse so we began our garden with seeds in mid-May.  I feel like a chump.  Got smart and bought some pepper and tomato seedlings in early June and NOW we got a garden.  The seeds are just starting to take off but the transplants are rockin' and rollin'  What a difference.  It's been really windy and lost most of my mulch, so the next major workday will be WEEDING and MULCHING.  We should have ready to eat garden fresh salads in no time.