Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the seed catalogs are so delightful!

Is it me or does it seem like they came earlier this year? I think I remember getting them in the cold dole-drums of January last year.  I’ll be honest though, the weather here in Southern Virginia hasn’t been too terribly frightful, in fact…I picked my last 5 habanero peppers last Friday before pruning the plant back and covering it up for the winter, “hoping” with fingers crossed it’ll over winter (anyone out there ever over wintered a habanero plant before, this was just such a great producer I’d love to keep it around)

I digress…

I think for a gardener, nothing is a better present than sitting down with a cup of tea and flipping through the seed catalogs just dreaming of what you’ll plant next year…

I’m going to try and get my act together this winter and go into spring with a plan…a bona fide, grow from seed, propagate from cuttings, plan! 

So what about you? Are you already receiving your catalogs? Are they earmarked, and tagged with post-its yet?

Are there any new seeds you’ve decided to try this year?

I'll be spending some time during the next few days off going through these and marking them up... here are the ones I have so far. Any I'm missing you'd recommend?? 

I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season!! 

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: I love the illustrations in this one.
I'd love to frame some of the artwork

High Mowing Organic Seeds: This is a new one for me this year!

Seed Savers Exchange:  The first Seed Catalog I ever got and probably still my favorite

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds: The pictures in this one are
 just amazing

Missing Gardener has been found....

Well color me embarrassed.  I have no clue how it got from July to December but it did....  I'm so sorry I have been MIA....

Well I'm starting my 2012 New Years resolution early. I will be back to updating this blog on a regular basis. Check back later this week for a brand new post...I promise.

I hope you all had a WONDERFUL harvest season and are having a magical Holiday Season!

See you soon!

Lime and Chili Herb Grilled Chicken

So I've been wanting to try my Lime Thyme in a chicken marinade for a while.... I'm not sure what took me so long, but I finally found some time this weekend....

I threw together this marinade from a few ingredients I had lying around from my garden in addition to the lime thyme... I was a little skeptical at first, but was pleasantly surprised by the final result

Ingredients for Marinade

This made enough marinade for two chicken breasts, it may cover more, but two was all I had

Ingredients 
3 Limes
2 Chili Peppers (I used 1 jalapeno an 1 red chili pepper from the garden) sliced
4 Crushed Garlic cloves
3 Tbsp Olive Oils
Herbs (any would work)
     - Several Sprigs of Lime Thyme
     - Tarragon
     - Rosemary
1 Scallion thinly sliced  (I threw that in after the picture was taken)

1. Juice 3 Limes into a bow
2. Add in sliced chili peppers, sliced scallions and crushed garlic
3. Add olive oil
4. Pour Marinade over chicken in a ziploc bag
5. Add fresh herbs whole into the bag as well
6. Seal bag and marinate overnight in the refrigerator
7. Once your grill is hot, pull out the chicken and top with a pinch of salt and pepper
8. Grill over high heat for 3 min/side
9. Put chicken off to the side or lower heat for 10 min (I did it on a charcoal grill and just put it to the side)
10. Let it rest, and enjoy :)

Final Product

I really was pleasantly surprised by the flavor and juiciness of the chicken!

Maybe next weekend I'll have to try something different with the herbs...

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Giddy as a Little Girl

So I just had to share, I'm as giddy as a little school girl meeting her favorite star...

On a whim I sent an email to my favorite author Chester Aaron, who I've mentioned before wrote my favorite book (which my copy is extremely well worn) "Garlic is Life"  I thanked him for being such an inspiration for getting me to put some garlic in the ground and I sent him pics of newly harvested bulbs

Today he emailed me back the nicest email.

It was just such a nice thing, I wanted to share with everyone. If you are looking for a good and humorous  garden novel, please check this book out!

Thanks for letting me indulge...

:)

1st Garlic Harvest

Wanted to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July!! I hope you're enjoying your weekend! I am excited to get to watch Fireworks over the York River tonight.

As great as I think the fireworks will be, I have to admit, the highlight of my weekend is my 1st garlic harvest! I'm sure many of you will understand that feeling having planted a seed months ago and watching it grow and then harvesting. These garlics were even transported from Atlanta to Virginia late this winter.  Hardy little guys!

This is my first year growing garlic, so it was a lot of trial and error for sure. I watched a few YouTube videos (what did we do before those) and read a lot, to learn these few tips that I would have never thought

1. When the garlic scapes start to loop around, cut them off. This allows the plant to put its energy into the bulb not producing the flower. PS, they taste and smell AMAZING to, you can use them like you do scallions

2. About 2 weeks before you plan on harvesting, stop watering (what?!?!)... apparently it helps harden the bulb. I gotta admit, this one was hard for me. I kept throwing just a little bit on because we've had temps in the 100s. I don't know if it made a difference, but it didn't seem to hurt

3. Watch the leaves of the plant to know when its ready. When it looks like it starting to die, and the leaves start turning brown when only the top 4-5 leaves are green its ready.

So this was a strange plant to harvest for a newbie, but the result was pure joy!!!

I'm leaving the other two in a few more days to see if they get a little bigger.

1st bulb of Siberian Garlic 

Plant Rescue

I've recently discovered a great way to add some color to my yard for a fraction of the costs! Does anyone else out there "plant rescue"? Our local Lowes seems to be quick to throw perfectly good plants and flowers into the clearance bins. (Not that I'm complaining)

This all started for me a few weeks ago, when I found a pretty sad looking pink geranium normally $9.99 in the clearance rack for only $2.00!! I took a closer look at it, and it had good bones if you will, they had just neglected to care for the dying leaves and flower heads. So I scooped it up, took it home and its doing wonderfully in my yard.

Checked again yesterday, and they had a bunch of planters which retailed for $20.00 with three large red geraniums in them. Truthfully, they didn't look much worse than the ones they were selling for the $20.00, but these were marked down to $3.50!!

This is what it looked like when I got it, like I said, truthfully not that bad.

And with no joke only 5 min of pruning it looked like this

So there is my little tip for you today, run don't walk to your local Lowes or Home Depot "clearance" garden section and see what you can pick up... it'll save you a bundle!

What to do with too many jalapenos?

So if I had to recommend a jalapeno plant, it would be this "Mucho Nacho" plant I've got this year, its a huge producer, but in order to help keep it producing, I have a plethora of jalapenos I've picked :)

So one of my new favorite things to do with them is make popcorn. Ever had jalapeno popcorn? Yum!!

2 1/2 Tbsp Olive Oil (gives it a buttery/nutty flavor throughout)
1 jalapeno sliced
3/4 cup popcorn

1. Heat up the olive oil in a large bottomed pan (I used my stock pot on Med-High heat)
2. Put the sliced jalapeno's in once its hot
3. Cook the jalapenos until they're close to crispy
4. Add the popcorn and start shaking
5. Keep shaking every few seconds to keep the kernels from sticking to the bottom and burning
6. Keep on the heat and shaking until there is about 1 sec between popping
7. Remove from heat and pour into a heat proof bowl
8. Toss with melted butter (optional) and salt
9 Voila! Yummy japaloeno popcorn with your freshly grown jalapenos :)