“Bred by Elwyn Meader and Albert Yaeger, intro. in 1959…a cross between New Hampshire Midget and Pumpkin Rind. The entire plant and fruits turn golden yellow when ripe. The flesh is pink/salmon, and pleasantly sweet with black seeds. Extremely early. 70 days.”

This heirloom water melon is a beauty. It is small, or as other sources say “personal size”. Leaves are yellow and so is the fruit. It matures very early. On my wine I had only one fruit but it was developing very fine. In my garden it turned out to be very sturdy, because the transplant was undermined by a mole few times during its existence. Unfortunatelly I picked it too early. At least I saved soome seeds for the next year. In my area water melons are very hard to grow. I dont know why, because in the next village it is no problem. The exception is the Golden Midget. He loved it here and I will give some seeds to my neighbours as a xmass present.

Beets are my new discovery. I had beets before. Here in Cemtral Europe we pickle them and eat them with the main course. We use very ripe beets, the bigger the better. I find them pleasant but nothing special. The idea of using  “baby” beets, roasting them and experimenting with them came from the internet.

Beets are amazing. There is a range in colors, sizes and shapes. I love to grow heirloom beets. This year I have planted 6 different varieties. They loved our soil and they were pretty happy. Some kind of field mouse must have been thinking the same, because once I pulled a chewed beet. Whoever it was chewed all the way up to the greens. I am happy to share, so I took it as a compliment.

In this post I would like to share with you some of my favorite recipes that include beets. The simplest and most straight forward is “steam them”. Steamed and cooled beets are great on sandwiches or as a side to a main dish. Please do not forget to use the greens — they are amazing ! I just saute them with olive oil and little salt, for approximately 40 sec on each side. Now that is something ! And if you want to go fancy, saute them with garlic. Done!

One of my favorite recipe for beets is from Jamie Oliver’s show “Jamie at Home”. I can higly recomend that show for every gardener/chef. His book is also very good. You can find his recipe here “roasted carrots and beets with juiciest pork chops”. I have to admit I tried only the veggie part of this recipe.

This morning I was experimenting and invented a pretty simple and amazing recipe. I had some leftover steamed beets in the fridge. I chopped them up and added some tomatoes, tossed it all together with a drizzle of olive oil, a little salt and put it in a small oven-proof baking dish. I topped the mixture with cheese (I used cheddar, but I can imagine a mixture of mozzarella and parmesan or any good melting salty cheese). I put it under the grill for cca 7-8 minutes until the cheese melted. I prefer beets cold or just lukewarm, but I loved the gooey cheese on the top.

Wow, things got a bit out of hand. Everything is happening so fast! I made these pictures just a week ago and they seem out of date already. This is a small walk through the garden. I hope you enjoy.

In the front i planted some poppies. I bought them on ebay and the “guy” claimed that these are California poppies in different colors. Hmmm… California poppies are light orange I thought…Well maybe not. He was right! Just look at these colors and patterns.

One word. WOW.

Last year I bought around 30-40 different plants and bushes. They came all at once, so some of them got mixed up or I forgot what they were. This is one of the examples: last year we had only foliage and were wondering what the heck is this bush? This year it revealed itself. It is jasmine!

Last year I fell in love with clematis. They come in a huge range of colors, shapes, smells. They are just great! My colleague knew about my obsession with clematis and also about wild flowers. Wild flowers+clematis=wild clematis. It is a great plant. Although very sensitive to fungal diseases.

This is another wild clematis from the hills of Transylvania /Romania

My wife’s favorite, peony. We have a few bushes whcih we got from my dad. Seems I planted them too deep, because this was the only flower. but there is always next year.

My pride. Blueberries in our area are a lot of work. They need acid soil, soft water and plenty of it. You should not plant them close to a concrete wall ! I know i did, but I did not know that at the time ! / I have to admit these are not the only blueberries we have. The total number is now around 8 bushes. One is a low bush blueberry. As I said. if your soil is not acid, they are plenty of work.

They said that they taste like blueberries! Thay said they grow in pH neutral soil! They do grow in pH neutral soil, but they do not taste like blueberries. What a disappointment.

Very rare and very hard to get strawberries “Mara De Bois”. They are premium because they look like cultivated strawberries but taste like wild strawberries. I am so curious. This year was they year of planting strawberries. We also bought “Honeoye” and a Slovak variety “Ostara”. I also started some alpine strawberries from seed. I had to decide about a ground cover under our front window, something among the irises and peonies. In our vineyard I found a neglected area where there were plenty of strawberries fighting a battle with grass. So I transplanted them and used them as a ground cover. It works. And they taste good too.

This chard is a part of the organic veggie garden. Since then we had some rain and it grew 3x bigger.

The organic veggie garden. Tomatoes, corn, watermelon, peas, chard, letuce, aubergines, okra and many more just behind the berry alley. These veggies are grown organically. We will see what is going to happen. The neighbors are famous for spraying like crazy. I hope the pests will not come to me for refuge.

Artichokes popping out. They will replace peas in the veggie bed. Peas are famouse for fixing nitrogen in the soil, so they artichokes will be spoiled a bit.

Sometimes when you go organic you lose a battle. This is a peach tree attacked by leaf curl. Leaf curl is especially dangerous for young trees. I have already lost 2 young peach trees. When all the young leaves get attacked, they fall off and the tree “suffocates”. This one is a lucky one, it was only partly attacked.

This Japanese pear “Nashi” was planted in last autumn and already went crazy. Started soo many fruits. Some of them will have to be removed in order to not overuse the energy. I am glad it likes its new home.

Happy Braeburn apple.

I had no clue what is this pretty weed until i have listened to the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast. I used to mow it . Well it is Comfrey (Symphytum officinale L.), a superb compost accelerator or fertilizer. To use it as a fertilizer you have to let it rot in the bucket. When Emma from the AKG podcast mentioned that this thing stinks I thought she is just a sensitive “westerner”. We Eastern Europeans are tough ! Well trust her and trust me, when you let it rot that thing stinks ! But it is great for your plants. How far will a good gardener go for his plants? Very far. I have a bucket full of comfrey in the farthest end corner of the garden.

Organic gardening is a lifestyle. You have to attract your “friends”. We have plenty of toad friends residing in my cellar /thank god they do not drink wine!/. With my son we decided to build them Under the Cherry Tree Toad Condos /UCHTTC/. They did not move in yet, we expect them sometime in the autumn. We used the top of the condos as a bed for more strawberries.

This is the very end of the garden full of poppies. These are domesticated wild variety. I have loved them since my childhood. If you want to see more of these beauties check the “Rural walk” post.