Baby Mexican Feather Grass

My feather grass did send out little babies (who knew? I mean I know Mexican Feather Grass is a rampant self sower, but mine hadn't ever set seed before).

I'll have to dig it up and find it a new home.

Bluebonnet Watch 2012

Book Review: Founding Gardeners

As the name implies, Founding Gardeners by Andrea Wulf is a book about the 4 'original' gardeners of America: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.  This was a book that my sister picked up for me for Christmas, and I have got to say that I LOVED it.  4 Stars, 2 thumbs up, the whole shebang.  But then, of course, I'm both a garden nerd and a history nerd. 

The book never was dry (some can be - the book '1776' comes to mind), though I'm sure to some, it may be.  My biggest problem with the book was the amount of information that is jam packed into it - footnotes, the bibliography (which makes up almost half of the book), and an appendix.  It seems to me that these 4 gentlemen (along with select others that were not in the politics game), were the original garden bloggers - there were tours of gardens, there were letters, plants and seeds exchanged, there was even research on best practices for crop rotation and manures.  Jefferson and Adams took a tour of English gardens while Adams was serving as ambassador (makes me wonder if Jenny at RockRose saw any of the same gardens when she did her England Garden tour a few years back), and this is where they first became friends (they had a falling out years later over politics, they eventually, in their retirement, became friends again - all because of gardening).  Washington insisted on using American plants at Mount Vernon and wanted his plantation to be something wholly American.  Madison was considered what today would be a conservationist and called for people to step lightly on the land lest it be entirely destroyed in the rush to grow wheat and tobacco.  Jefferson was more excited about the Louisiana Purchase and the plants that would be found than he was about the land itself. And Adams never felt more at peace than he did when he was in his orchards in Quincy, Massachusetts.

As I said, I loved it and I highly recommend the book - good reads, good reads...

The Grass Experiment

After the horrible summer Austin sustained, our lawns ain't lookin' too hot (har-har - get it?  Hot in reference to our lawns, which died because of the heat?).  My friend Andrea decided to replace her backyard with Habiturf.  I told her she should blog about it.  She agreed - as long as I set it up.  The theory is that it will start out with some heavy typing - the beginning, the locations, the prep, the seeding - and then will move into more of a pictorial blog showing updates on the lawn - week 1, week 2, week 3 (why isn't anything growing yet), etc..

I don't know how frequently it will get updated.  Since the experiment is at Andrea's house, she is the one that has to take the photos and post them; plus, she's planning her wedding, so it's not like she has gobs of time to go about starting a blog.  This is where I come in - I set it up and I posted the first post, and I'll probably have to help with the subsequent 'wordy' posts, but I'm sure we can figure out how to update the blog via mobile (I mean, blogger has everything all set up - all we have to do is flip some switch somewhere).

Any ways, this is getting a bit long to tell you that you should totes head over to our grand, albeit expensive, experiment:  The Grass Experiment.

Ragamuffin, Ruttabaga

Ally at GardenAlly had tried to make rutabaga fries a month or so ago but said they turned out mushy.  I had left a comment giving pointers on how my husband makes sweet potato fries because they also tend to turn mushy if you aren't careful.

The next time Ally and I met up, she gave me a rutabaga and told me to make fries to see how they turned out.  I went home with my giant-as-my-head rutabaga and immediately used half of it in a pot roast (the husband didn't even realize they weren't potatoes).

I then sliced off two more slices and match-sticked them to make fries.

Unlike Ally, I didn't take any pictures, so you'll just have to make do with verbiage.

What you'll need:
A rutabaga in match sticks
cooking spray - for your cookie sheet
olive oil (a teaspoon or so)
corn starch (a tablespoon or so)
salt/pepper/paprika/whatever spice you want
pre-heated oven to 400 (though I turned it up to 450 after I put the fries in)

Step 1:
place rutabaga matchsticks in a large bowl

Step 2:
drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat well

Step 3:
coat evenly with corn starch

Step 4:
spray the cookie sheet with cooking spray

Step 5:
place matchsticks on cookie sheet in a manner so they're not touching or overlapping (if they touch, you'll be essentially steaming the fries instead of baking them)

Step 6:
Cook at 400 or 450 for about 5-10 minutes, use some tongs to turn the fries, and bake for another 5-10 minutes.  Continue turning every 5-10 minutes until fries are done.  I think I ended up cooking mine for about 25 minutes, but I forgot to turn them (I expected them to brown on the top, but they brown on the bottom first, thus the need for turning).

Step 7:
Season, and enjoy.

End result:  Not bad, but I still prefer the sweet potato fries more - the rutabaga has a slight turnip taste to it that I found off-putting in fry form.  That being said, I really liked it with the pot roast.

Experiment: Ginger (Zingiber officinale)

We went from this (July 2011) - planted in mid-April 2011.

To this (November 2011)

 

To this (March 2012) - I had planted the equivalent of about half of one of these pieces.  As such, I would say growing ginger was a success.  Now all I need to do is break off some of the pieces and re-plant.

Bluebonnet Watch 2012

It's starting to bloom!!!!