“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.

What an idea, right! Strawberries are a very popular and healthy treat to grow. The ones from your garden will taste superior to the ones from supermarket. They are relatively easy to grow. They are a big part of our gardening history. Because of their health benefits they were used not only as a treat but also as a medicine. They are full of vitamin C, amino acids, folic acid, vitamin B65, potassium and other good things. An hey, no fat, low calories ! The sweetness of strawberries /which btw by biological sense are not berries, but enlarged ends of the plant’s stamen/ is innocent.

In our climate /Central Europe USDA zone 7/ you can plant them in spring or in the late summer. I am trying to plant some alpine strawberries from seed. It takes a long time until they start to germinate and grow. I germinated them sometime in February and the plants just started to grow more intensively. In the spring I also purchased some “frigo” plants /refrigerated strawberry plant hearts/. When I have received them I got scared because it was just roots and a tiny top part, nothing else . Three days after planting you could notice first leaves emerging and then BOOOM! Unstoppable development lead to plenty yummy strawbs. Cool.

Strawberries will need some fertile soil and watering especially during flowering. I fertilize them with comfrey tea and I will put some compost to the soil next spring. They do not like weeds, so time to time get rid of weeds. They like sun /not the alpine strawberries/, and they love when you will tell them a little story about a tiny small strawberry who grew big and was so pretty and so sweet that a good gardener decided to rescue it from the attachment to the plant / you stop there, you don’t want to scare your strawberries/.

What kind of strawberries can you purchase:

June Bearing strawberries produce a single, large crop per year during a 2 – 3 week period in the spring. June bearers are the traditionally grown plants, producing a single flush of flowers and many runners. They are classified into early, mid-season and late varieties. The largest fruits are generally from June bearing varieties.

Everbearing strawberries produce two to three harvests of fruit intermittently during the spring, summer and fall.

Everbearing plants do not send out many runners.

Day Neutral strawberries will produce fruit throughout the growing season. These strawberries also produce few runners. Everbearing and day neutral strawberries are great when space is limited, but the fruits are usually somewhat smaller than June bearers.

There are tons of varieties on the market. Do not believe the catalogue description. Experiment, try it yourself. For example I bought some Mara de Bois the “…ultimate gourmet experience” and also Honeoye the very hardy and high yielding strawberry. Well Honeoye was really hardy and did great and also outperformed Mara de Bois in flavor. I think it all comes to your personal taste.

Do not miss strawberries in your garden or even you can grow them on your balcony. It is worth it !