Robbins Farm Garden

A Cooperative Learning Project

Fresh-from-the-garden Chili

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If you garden, you know the question: How do I make the most of the seasonal selection of vegetables from the garden tonight? In this case, it was finishing up several small Onions, five random Tomatoes in various states of ripeness, a few green Peppers, a half-dozen Tomatillos and some charming little Hot Peppers.

fresh from the garden chili

The answer was Chili. I chopped the Onions, Peppers (green & hot), Tomatillos and skinned Tomatoes, adding them sequentially to a sauté pot with a small amount of oil. When the veggies were all in, I added a standard can of rinsed beans (in this case, butter beans), whole cashews and some chili seasoning. The result was three very hearty servings of my best chili ever!

Boffo bush beans

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Somehow, I gravitate toward harvesting our bush beans, and a couple of weeks ago, I thought I noticed that they were slowing down, and might be done for the season. 

I mused likewise out loud, suggesting to Elisabeth, one of our chief gardening officers, that perhaps we should pull them and get something else out of the raised plot before it was too late.

Purple, yellow, and green string beans.

Boy, was I wrong. Saturday, I spent more than an hour in that bed, harvesting plump, robust yellow, purple, and green string beans. Yellow has been the star by far this year, IMO, producing the most and the prettiest beans of the trio. Purple seems to produce a lot, but not of great stature, and the greens have just been so-so.

I don’t know how much longer they have to go — my recollection is that they kept producing last year even after our pole beans began bearing fruit. If so, we probably have a few more weeks, since the latter are climbing, but I haven’t noticed an flowers yet.

This day in the garden – August 19, 2012

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Today we harvested our first kabocha squash, our first watermelon and our first serious batch of soybeans. If you look closely, you might find the one little sweet juicy delicious slice of watermelon that actually survived the ravages of hungry gardeners to make the harvest photo.

Harvest - August 19, 2012