Meatless Mondays: Cucumber and Peanut Salad

For Meatless Mondays, I usually try to feature a main-course type dish that's either vegetarian or vegan. Today, I'm going to break with that convention a bit, because I want to share this salad with you. It's more of a side than a main course, but would work well paired with a soup.  It's quick and simple to prepare, and the flavors meld beautifully: sweet cucumbers with licorice-y fennel and crunchy roasted peanuts.

Salads like this are essential spring and summer dishes for me. Simple vegetables, served cold, are the perfect complement to sweltering evenings. It always amazes me how a few unassuming ingredients can combine into something so delicious. 

The recipe uses salt to draw out some of the water of the cucumbers. Don't worry, this salad isn't very salty - you will rinse the salt off of the cucumbers before combining them with the other ingredients.

You might notice that there are some pretty little herb plants sitting behind this salad. I saw them at the grocery this weekend and couldn't resist - at less than $3 each, these thyme and oregano plants were an easy addition to our gardening plans.

This recipe is vegan-possible: some vegans don't consume honey, but agave nectar or another sweetener can easily be substituted.

Cucumber and Peanut Salad
I call for persian cucumbers here, which are smaller and sweeter than regular cucumbers and seedless. Feel free to substitute regular cucumbers if you cannot find the persian variety; whether or not you remove the seeds is up to personal preference. 
Yield: 6 side-dish servings

INGREDIENTS
6 persian cucumbers (about 4 cups chopped)
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
Zest and juice of one lemon
1 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp fennel seeds
2/3 cup roasted peanuts, crushed

DIRECTIONS
1. Slice the cucumbers into half-moon shapes, about 1/4 inch thick. Place in a colander and toss with the salt. Place the colander in the sink, and let sit for 15 minutes.
2. While the cucumbers sit, combine honey, lemon zest and juice, and vinegar in a small bowl and whisk to combine. To crush peanuts, place in a zip-top baggie and roll with a rolling pin a few times.
3. Rinse the cucumbers thoroughly, and drain well. Place in a mixing bowl. 
4. Heat a skillet over medium-low heat. Add oil and fennel seeds, and cook, stirring constantly, about 1 minute. Pour this hot oil over the cucumbers, and toss to combine.
5. Add lemon dressing and toss again. Stir in the peanuts shortly before serving.

In other somewhat-related-to-gardening news, we're having trouble with a few birds trying to build a nest on our deck - on top of a light that is far too small, so their nests keep falling apart, covering our deck in mud and sticks. I'm not sure how to convince them to give it up, because it's clearly a poor choice of location, but I'm getting tired of cleaning up after them constantly! I think they're robins. Any ideas?

Like what you read? Subscribe to the feed in your favorite feed reader, or follow me on Twitter to keep up with new posts!

Container Gardening: The Costs

Previously, we discussed our seeds and space, and our containers and soil.

So how much is all of this gardening costing us? Of course prices will vary, depending on where you live, but hopefully our experience can help you know what to expect. 

The thing that I didn’t think too much about before we started was how much more it costs to grow things in containers. You must provide every space and all of the soil for the plants, which can add up! Also, because this is our first year gardening, we had to buy nearly everything new. As you will see, we tried to be thrifty where possible, while making a few splurges to get the maximum use out of our space.

EXPENSES:

Shelving unit: $59.99 (Target)

8 large buckets and drip trays: $2.78 per bucket + $0.84 per tray, total $28.96 (Menards)

2 self-watering planters (10 inch): $7.98 (Menards)

4 self-watering planters (8 inch): $8.97 (Menards)

Trough planter: $10.98 (Strader’s)

6” ceramic pot: $4.99 (Strader’s)

We already had a few other small pots that we are using.

2 railing planters: $29.98 (Strader’s)

Seeds: $42.24 (Some from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, the rest from Strader’s.)

This was MUCH more than I expected, but we’re growing a lot of different things. The average cost was $1.83 per seed packet. We will be saving seeds from as many of the plants as possible to grow again next year.

Organic potting soil: $58.63 (6 32-quart bags of Miracle Grow Organic Choice – Home Depot)      

2 grow lights: $21.94 (Walmart)

These are for seed starting, probably optional if you have a very sunny windowsill

Odds and ends:

$2.09 for wooden plant labels (Strader’s)

$1.98 for hooks to hang grow lights (Home Depot)

TOTAL INVESTMENT: $278.72 (not including sales tax)

Costs we expect to be one-time: all containers/planters, many seeds, shelving, lights.

Costs we expect to have next year: more soil (although we’ll be looking into re-using some), some seeds, odds and ends.

So our investment this year is pretty substantial, but the cost should diminish significantly in the following years, even if some items must be replaced. I’m sure there will be a few more costs as the season goes on, but these are the big ones.

Our two big splurges were the shelving unit and the railing planters – those set us back about $90 total. But the shelves will let us use a lot of vertical space, and ditto for the railing planters. Since we have such a small area to work with, using vertical space is really important. They are also things that we can re-use in the future.  I think these will be worth the investment.

Comparing this to the CSA I joined last year, the CSA cost a little more than $400, and I got a few pounds of vegetables most weeks of the summer. This garden will cost us a little less than $300, but we don’t know what kind of output we will get. The CSA and garden both carry the risk of crop failure due to any number of causes (although the CSA is in the hands of a professional, not my inexperienced hands). The garden requires more work – I just picked up the CSA once a week. The nice thing about our garden is that we totally control what we plant, and how we grow things, so there is more choice involved. And I’m hoping that growing some of our own food will be very rewarding.

A few things we haven’t spent money on:

1.       Dedicated gardening tools. I’m planning on doing most of the work with my hands, scissors, or a large spoon. This is one of the advantages of container gardening – no back-breaking work to turn up soil!

2.       A watering can or garden hose. The hose was an easy decision – we don’t have an outdoor hook-up for one. I’ll try using an old laundry detergent container (cleaned out well!) as a watering can - it's a pretty simple DIY project. 

3.       Seed starting kits. We are using empty toilet paper rolls (which we’ve been setting aside for a few months now) instead of buying seed starting kits from the store. The cardboard will decompose when we plant the seedlings. 

4.       Fertilizers or pesticides. We’re planning on using a little counter top compost mix to fertilize plants, and I’ll address pest issues as they arise. Some of these natural remedies will be an additional cost, but I don't know which we will need or use yet!

Do you have a garden? How much would you estimate it costs you to keep? 

Like what you read? Subscribe to the feed in your favorite feed reader, or follow me on Twitter to keep up with new posts!

Container Gardening: The Plan, Part II

In The Plan, Part I, we talked about the seeds we’d like to grow and the space we have to work with. Want more on gardening? Check out the gardening page!

I planted some wildflower seed paper in our purple ceramic pot, and I'm hoping it will add some color to our garden! The seed paper came from a Whole Foods gift card holder. I've always thought seed paper was really neat, but never planted any until now.

The Containers

5 gallon bucket, 10 inch planter, 8 inch planter, herb trough

Although pretty planters are certainly nice, the more reading and research I did, the more I realized that they weren’t necessary. I knew we could provide good room to grow without investing a ton of cash. Enter pickle buckets (AKA 5 gallon buckets). We picked these green buckets up at Menards for $2.78 each. I'm considering picking up some spray paint to make them more aesthetically appealing.

The problem with the buckets is that they don’t provide any drainage. Fortunately, that’s easily solved with a drill and a drip tray. Nick will be drilling holes in the bottom of each bucket, and they will rest on drip trays so they don’t drip on our downstairs neighbor!  (An aside: because we live in an apartment complex, there’s always the issue of neighbors. I’m hoping to make friends with the nice lady who lives downstairs by sharing some of our produce with her, and by doing everything possible to avoid dripping or dropping things onto her patio!)

These buckets will be used for the tomatoes, beans, squash, peppers, eggplant, and carrots. I will also be companion-planting some herbs in those same buckets. For instance, my reference book says that tomatoes and basil like to grow together, because the basil helps shade the soil and has much shallower roots than the tomato plant (so they don’t compete for nutrients). We will only have one plant of most of these larger plants (because they need the nutrients to themselves), so companion planting lets us get a bit more out of the space.

The smaller plants got lucky when we went shopping for containers. Menards had some self-watering planters that were a good deal. We could have used smaller buckets for these plants too, but the buckets were actually not a better deal in this case, so we went with planters. I don’t know how well the self-watering feature will work, but in any case these should be functional. We have two sizes – 10 inch pots for the larger lettuces (swiss chard, kale), and 8 inch pots for the smaller lettuces and herbs.

We will also be using the ceramic pots we used on the windowsill garden (three six-inch pots and one six-inch strawberry pot). Some may be re-planted; I’m not sure yet.

I mentioned our railing planters above. These are the only two planters like this we’ve located (with a deep pocket for the railing), and they cost $14.99 each. They were definitely a splurge, but hopefully worth it. One of these is going to be all mint.

And finally, one more container: the herb trough. This will be dedicated to our various types of basil.

The Soil

Since we’re gardening in containers, we have to provide soil for the plants. It might seem like the best or thriftiest thing to do would be to take soil from the ground. Putting aside the fact that we don’t have any land to our names, so we’d be stealing the soil from someone, this is a bad plan for a few reasons. First, soil that’s good in the ground isn’t good in containers. Container soil is much lighter in texture and must drain better; soil from the ground will compact and be too hard in containers. Second, we need a very nutrient rich medium for our plants. Potting soil has this built in – the kind we are using contains compost for fertilization.

We’re using an organic potting soil mix (this one) because we want to keep our garden as close to organic growing as possible. We’re not planning to use regular fertilizers or pesticides. We will use a number of natural fertilizers, and deal with pest issues with natural remedies. (Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted!) There’s no telling how this will work out, but the more organic our garden is, the happier we will all be.

So how much is all of this costing? Later this week, we’ll take a close look at how container gardening is affecting our wallets. 

Like what you read? Subscribe to the feed in your favorite feed reader, or follow me on Twitter to keep up with new posts!

Container Gardening: The Plan, Part I

Spring has definitely sprung here in Nebraska. Most of the trees are flowering now, and petals fill the air when the wind gusts. The beautiful change in scenery - vibrant green grass, blossoms all around - has livened up my morning walks with Cooper.

As warmer weather approaches, we’re gathering supplies and getting ready to start some seeds for our container garden. Working with a small space means we have to plan everything very carefully so it will all fit. Here’s what we’re looking at so far.

The Seed List

We will be planting, and attempting to cultivate, all of the following. A few of these have gotten a head start or trial run on our windowsill garden. Most of these specific plants and varieties were selected because they are supposed to perform well in container gardens.

Herbs:
- Basil (sweet Italian, fino verde, cinnamon, lemon, and dark purple opal varieties)
- Dill
- Mint
- Parsley
- Cilantro
- Chives

Lettuces:
- Rainbow Swiss Chard
- Spinach
- Tom Thumb lettuce
- Buttercrunch lettuce
- Blue Curled Scotch Kale

Other vegetables:
- Black Krim tomatoes
- Bush beans (Contender and Royal Burgundy varieties)
- Ronde de Nice zucchini
- Pattypan/Golden Scalloped squash
- Danvers Half-Long carrots
- Nutri-Red carrots
- Little Fingers eggplant
- Red Belgian peppers (sweet)

The Space

That is a LOT of things to try to grow on one tiny deck! The space we plan to use on our deck is 4 feet by 5 feet. (The whole deck is about 13 feet by 5 feet, and houses a grill and a small table.) We’re trying to make the most of the space in a few ways. First, we’re using straight-sided containers for the largest plants (more on that in Part II). Second, we’re using a wire shelving unit to make use of vertical space to grow lettuces and herbs. Third, we invested in a few railing planters to further use all available space. (Most railing planters won’t work on our deck, because it has thin metal rails rather than a thick wooden rail, so it took some searching and splurging to obtain these.)

The other challenge that our deck presents is that it is covered. This means it does not get tons of direct sunlight. In the morning, it gets direct sun from the east, but overhead sun doesn’t happen. This will undoubtedly affect some of the plants more than others, and is part of the reason this year is so experimental. Some plants just might not like living on our deck.  The plants that need the most sun will go along the railing, where they will get the most light, and more shade-tolerant plants will live on other parts of the deck.

Next time, in The Plan, Part II, we’ll discuss containers and soil. 

Like what you read? Subscribe to the feed in your favorite feed reader, or follow me on Twitter to keep up with new posts!