Most of my friends don’t dabble in greens in their garden because they don’t know how to cook them. Also, they don’t know if they will like the taste. My suggestion is to buy some of the greens they are thinking of growing in the store before committing garden space and seeds to the endeavor. You can then cook up the following recipe for a quick taste test of the green in question:

1. Pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet.
2. Cut up 1 onion and place in skillet.
3. Add 1 tablespoon minced garlic, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon of black pepper.
4. Heat on high until the onion is translucent and other ingredients are well-mixed.
5. Add 2 cups of chopped greens and 1/2 cup of water. Bring to a boil and let boil for 5 minutes. Turn heat off and let sit 10 minutes. Serve.

Be forewarned that greens from the store are entirely different than those you will grow yourself. The store greens will be tougher and more bitter. For example, store-bought collards were always fairly unappealing to me unless I threw them into a stew. However, fresh collards are tender with a more delicate taste. I enjoy eating them in salad.

Many home gardeners don’t grow potatoes. As far as I can tell this is because they don’t know how. There really isn’t much to growing potatoes. Essentially, you dig an 8″ inch hole somewhere in your garden, put in a potato (preferably sprouted), cover it up with soil. Approximately 3 months later, you pull fresh potatoes from the ground. Now this is the abbreviated version of how to plant potatoes. For a description of the whole process, just read my post on Planting Potatoes.

This time of year, early spring, is a good time to get potatoes in the ground. Potatoes aren’t impacted by frost when they are warm and snug 8″ inches under. Also, if the potatoes do come up before the expected last frost date, they can take some frost. I started planting my personal potato crop last weekend, a good three to six weeks before the expected last frost. I’m hoping I will finish planting this weekend. That will give me a good shot at having potatoes to put on the grill by the Fourth of July. Fresh potatoes on the barbecue grill are a summer favorite in my household. The recipe is fairly easy.

TOMATO MAN’S GRILLED POTATOES

1. Harvest and clean potatoes.
2. Microwave potatoes according to size. Large potatoes should be microwaved for 5-6 minutes on both sides; smaller potatoes, 2-3 minutes.
3. Baste potatoes with olive oil and garlic salt.
4. Cook with indirect heat on the barbecue grill. Large potatoes will need 15-20 minutes; smaller potatoes 10-15 minutes. 

Redmond – 72 degrees F (This is usually what we call a hot day at noon!)

Seattle – 69 degrees F (Oh, nothing like living close to the water!)

Missoula, MT – 56 degrees F (I hate you. I really do mean that!)

 Hoxie, KS – 60 degrees F (Grrr. I’d be able to sleep there.)

San Francisco – 54 degrees F (You make me REALLY crazy!)

Miami – 82 degrees F (with thunderstorms, no less. Thank GOD we’re not hotter than you!)

Nashville, TN – 70 degrees F (with thunderstorms. Maybe that is giving you cooler temperatures than us!)

New York, NY – 72 degrees F (but ha, ha, ha, about your 90 % humidity!  Ours is 71 %. Ha, ha, ha…um…oh maybe not so much…who really notices 19%?)

Lexington, KY – 69 degrees F (Similar to us, but you are much more Southern than we are.)

Providence, RI – 69 degrees F with showers (are you throwing in the showers just to make Seattlelites feel as if they’ve lost their touch?)

Dallas, TX – 76 degrees F. (Umm…okay…I feel better, but as far as I understand, this is normal for you!)

Denver, CO – 56 degrees F. (Grrr. They are sleeping well there.)

Honolulu, HI – 76 degrees F. (All that and the ocean, too. I hate you!)

District of Columbia – 74 degrees F. (Ow! You should always be much HOTTER than Redmond, but at least you’re somewhat hotter!)

Albuerque, NM – 72 degrees F. (You are right there with us. That’s weird!)

Mexico City, Mexico – 54 degrees F. (Oh, well, aren’t you special?! What’s up with that?)

Los Angeles, CA – 65 degress F. (Grrrrrrrrr!)

Cairo, EGYPT – Okay, so it’s noon there and you are at 91 degrees F. Uhhh…Redmond will be 91 degrees tomorrow at noon, too! 

Buenos Aires, ARG – 36 degrees F. Ummmm…what’s that about? Now it’s time to go to bed! I really can’t handle a South America country being cooler than I am right now, even with an air conditioner. Yes, it is THEIR winter, but still. This is weird. Update: Argentina is having a bad winter. Here’s a blog about that. Very serious stuff. I knew that looked strange.

Rio de Janeiro, BRA – 64 degrees F. This makes more sense, but I’m still jealous. That is nice cool weather right now to me. That’s what my new air conditioner is providing me tonight.

Well, after this world-wide weather report, I’m off to bed. Good night, Seattle! May you have better luck sleeping than I have had tonight.

UPDATE: A friend of mine slept on his roof last night in a hammock. He’s close to Elliott Bay downtown. It was 74.5 on the roof; 85 in his bedroom. It was an easy choice.

So, if you’re in the Seattle/Puget Sound Area and slept somewhere unusual to beat the heat last night, leave us a comment. We’d love to hear how other people are sleeping in Seattle.

Still this harvest was so abundant, I’m going to start abiding the recommendation on the seed package which is “harvest daily”. Also, I won’t start keeping garden peas fresh in the refrigerator quite as long. If we don’t eat the pound I picked yesterday by the next time I harvest or at least within the next few days, I will freeze at least half of them. I would rather have frozen peas to throw into a winter stew than watch the peas I have grown become fuzzy with fungis from having been in the fridge too long.

• If you are on unemployment benefits and you would like to go to school to update your skills, you will need to apply for permission to do so. You need to apply for Commissioner Approved Training (CAT).
• Within 60 days of your application for unemployment benefits, you need to apply for Training Benefits. If approved for these benefits, you can possibly extend the period for which you can receive unemployment benefits. This could come in handy if you want to complete an educational program to upgrade your skills.
• The applications for both CAT and TB are fairly complicated. It is a good idea to get some help filling them out. Bellevue College Worker Retraining offers an excellent class to help you fill out these forms. The class is free to the public and takes place weekly while school is in session.

Rutabagas are a root vegetable similar to a turnip. They have occasionally been described to me as kale or cole plants gone underground. This root can grow in poor soil and, from what I’ve observed, with relatively little sunlight, doing reasonably well in partially shaded areas of the garden. It can stay in the garden for the winter but you must harvest it before spring. I usually harvest the remaining winter rutabagas around Easter.

Rutabagas originated in Northern Europe where the winters are long and the growing season can be short. They are great in hardy, winter stews. Since this root is low maintenance, grows reliably and can stay in the garden through winter, I am planning on growing a lot of them this year. I will need to discover or create some tasty recipes to get the most out of the crop.

We do have blueberry ambitions: we planted three more bushes, two in the front yard and one in the back. The other two in the front yard seem to have died for unknown reasons. The one in the back is doing fine but not producing. I’ll need to show that patience that is a requirement of being a gardener. Then again, maybe the blueberry in the back yard is a late season bloomer. Wonders like that do happen in a garden. I’ll keep an eye on it and let you know if it suddenly produces in August.

On one such occasion, I chose to plant the sprouting potato in the garden just to see what would happen. In a few weeks, I had a potato plant and a husband filled with great anticipation for the end product. Thus our love of garden fresh potatoes began.

I began to research ”how to plant potatoes correctly”. Here is the process I came up with from multiple gardening and seed potato resources:

1. Use seed potatoes, preferably from an organic grower. You can use the sprouted store-bought potatoes but they very well might have a “growth-inhabiting” spray on them that may impact the number of potatoes they will produce. My observation was that the seed potatoes from the organic grower foster an abundant crop of potatoes that grew in season and then naturally overwintered as my Potato Miracle entry described. 
2. Cut the seed potatoes into chunks that have three eyes or sprouts per chunk. This will increase your number of potato plants as well as making sure each plant has enough room to grow all the potatoes it can.
3. I plant potatoes one foot apart in all directions. This is an intensive gardening method that has worked well for me.
4. For each potato, dig an 8 inch hole.
5. Place the seed potato in the 8 inch hole and cover it with 3 inches of soil.
6. Check each “potato hole” each day to see if the sprout has come up through the soil. When it does, cover it with another 2-3 inches of soil until the 8 inch hole is filled to the top.
7. As the potato plant grows to the surface, continue to hill up the soil around it to encourage growth of potatoes.

When the potato plant flowers, you can dig around the soil at the base to see if there are any baby potatoes to eat. Potatoes take about 90 days to mature. The longer you leave them in the ground, the larger they will get. Before the first hard frosts come, pull up the plant to harvest the potatoes.

If you leave potatoes in the ground for the winter, they may sprout in the spring as my potato miracle proved! This year I plan to experiment with overwintering so as to be grilling fresh potatoes earlier in the season next year.

Thus far this year in the Pacific Northwest, it has been unusually dry. I expect it to be dry in July and August, but this year June was dry. That’s unheard of around here. It’s been a very dry summer for the economy, too. Nothing growing; no jobs being created. So, I just focus on growing my roots deeper, going back to school, thinking in new ways for this new economy, this new age.

Still, metaphors aside, I welcome the rain today and absorb it into my world with great joy as does my garden. We will grow from this.

Whoa! Roses are easy to grow! So, I’m going to start thinking about getting some rose bushes for our very bare front yard as it does get a lot of sun. The soil in the front yard is marginal but compost should fix that. 

I’m too busy this summer, but my friend advised that the best time to plant roses is February/March as bareroot. She thought at that time of year I will have a better selection of rose bareroot to choose from than now.

Excellent! Anything that I can put off until February/March gardening-wise works for me right now. It will give me time to research what roses would work best in our front yard; an extremely dry, barren area under four big fir trees.

Now, I am totally NOT about flowers. I’ve tried to grow wildflowers in the front yard to no avail. Maybe roses are a better place to start or maybe this will turn into a huge comedy as I bumbling my way through “Roses 101”.