What I did over summer vacation...

How time flies. Seems that it was only yesterday I was noshing on my indoor garden salsa.

I realized I never gave an update on my Aerogarden chili peppers since they were but seedlings. Well, the story is not great. Of seven plants, only two ended up surviving. Ironically, the reason that two of the plants didn't make it is because the overachieving plant ended up sucking up all the nutrients and blocking the smaller plants from getting light.

The big plant did bloom a ton of flowers, but it seems that they were all falling off without bearing fruit. Finally, the big plant produced one chili, which I was very proud of.

Alas, despite a ginormous plant that ended up being the size of Cleveland, only two chilis ended up growing in total. Worse, the bigger plant ended up growing so big that it even choked the light out from the slightly smaller plant, before eventually falling from its own weight (despite my holding it up with all my trellises). It was like some strange plant murder-suicide plot. In any case, it had gotten to the point that when I went on two West Coast trips, leaving the plants to fend for themselves with no water or nutrients. When I came back the plants were no more. 

Still, if you've been following this blog at all you'll know I'm not a quitter! I tossed the underperforming plants and wrote to Aerogarden, asking if they could send replacements pods for the ones that didn't grow. I've always been incredibly impressed with them, because they sent over three new pods, a mini jalapeno and two red fires. I still have an extra purple super hot from the original package. 

And so I'll be starting all over, taking in mind the lessons I learned from this go around. Among other things:

1)  Prune, prune, prune at 3-4 weeks. One thing I didn't do last time was to prune the plants at 3-4 weeks. This is what caused the one big plant to grow out of control and eventually finish off all its siblings. In retrospect, while it seems like its a waste to chop off healthy leaves, what you're doing is strengthening the main stem so that it can be stronger and support more branches. Plus, the top leaves you chop off would just grow into the light and be burned anyway. 

2) Prune leaves. Some of the leaves grew so big they ended up overwhelming the entire garden. In retrospect, all they do is suck out more water and nutrients. The next go around, any leaf that gets too big is going to be plucked off.

3) Pollinate the flowers. I've had experience with this with tomato plants, where you shake the plants to pollinate them (actually, my preferred method is to tap them with my fingernails until I see a little cloud of dust coming from the flower). With the last go-around of the chili plants, I must have started this too late, as every time I shook the plants the flowers flew right off. I think the right thing to do is to start even when the flowers are at bud form, and do it every other day when the lights are on.

4) Remove dead leaves. As the plants grew and grew and had nothing to show for them, I got a little lazy about cleaning the area on the garden surface and pruning wilting leaves on the plant. This can cause all kinds of icky stuff to form, making it an eyesore and making cleanup rather unpleasant. 

5) Read the manual. All of the tips above are in the handy manual that Aerogrow gives with the seed kits. Admittedly, I had grown a little lazy, and didn't bother to read them. Even if you know what you're doing, it never hurts to give yourself a refresher.

So, having said all that, I've already washed and sanitized my Aerogarden VeggiePro (or Aerogarden Extra as it's called now), and I'll be planting my 4 chili seed pods this week. 

Fresh Homemade Salsa with Aerogarden crops

T. Poole left a comment on my May 9 post recommending making salsa out of my Aerogarden harvest. I decided to take this advice and looked up a great salsa recipe on Allrecipes.  To my delight, it used lots of tomatoes and lots of cilantro.

So, today was the day I finally harvested my crop of cherry tomatoes, which started in my Aerogarden VeggiePro (now the AeroGarden Extra), and then was transplanted into a big flower pot by the kitchen window. Here's what they looked like:

Next step was harvesting the cilantro. If you recall, I have cilantro growing in two places: the Aerogarden unit...

...and the extra seeds, I planted in the flower pot next to the cherry tomatoes

For those of you keeping score at home, the cilantro in the Aerogarden unit grew at least 2-3x faster than the one in soil.

I took my cherry tomatoes and chopped them.

Next,  I chopped up the cilantro:

I added salt, garlic, onions, lime juice, and chili peppers to the tomatoes and the cilantro into a bowl (I couldn't find cerrano chiles, so I used long red hot chilis I found in my local supermarket). Then, I put it into the refrigerator for an hour.

When it came out, here's what it looked like.

I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much. But I kid you not, this was the most amazing tasting salsa I've ever had. It was light, fresh, and with a nice kick from the chilis, not at all like the thick gooey salsa you get in a jar, nor even like the over-done salsa you get at those fast food Mexican restaurants.

I almost polished off a whole bag of whole grain nachos in one sitting with this. And it was satisfying to know that half of it was made with things I had grown in my own kitchen.

This was the first, but will not be the last time I make this. Thanks to T. Poole for the suggestion!

Seafood Pasta with lots of basil, thyme, and parsley

If you've been reading this blog, you'll know that I'm always on the lookout for recipes which will use up the herbs that keep growing out of the Aerogarden (which looked like this as of last week)

As you can see, it's a jungle out there, and worse, the more aggressive plants like the basil were choking the light from the smaller plants (believe it or not, all the basil you see in the picture is coming out of just one plant!)

Going to good ol' AllRecipes.Com, I found a recipe for Cajun Seafood Pasta. It used 1 cup of chopped parsley (the parsley in the Aerogarden is still quite anemic, but I still have the potted parsley which grew back from last time), as well as a tablespoon of basil and a tablespoon of chopped thyme. 

So, I started chopping. I was pretty liberal with the basil:

As for the thyme, even after giving a major haircut to both thyme plants, I was able to get a whole tablespoon together.

The recipe called for making a cream sauce, using two cups of real cream. I'm always a little amused by dieters who will eschew ice cream, only to eat bowl after bowl of pasta which probably contains more cream! 

Toss with some fettucine, fresh shrimps and scallops, this was a recipe that was really worthy of the 4 1/2 stars it got from 657 AllRecipes users. I didn't really see where the "Cajun" came in, as even with three kinds of pepper I didn't really taste much of a kick. Still, it tasted really, really good.

Welcome to the Jungle

I've been writing this blog so long I realize I probably used that line before. But the herb garden is looking very much like a jungle. The basil is growing out of control, and the thyme and the cilantro and sage are all growing so fast they're getting tangled with one another. I've already trimmed the basil twice, as it kept growing into the light. I need to try to find some good herb recipes soon.

Here's something very cool--the chili is growing flowers now! One of the varieties has these little white flowers:

While the other variety has beautiful little purple flowers.

One thing that's a little worrisome is that a LOT of the flowers are just dropping off the plant. I'm not worried yet because there are a whole lot of flowers right now. 

The plants are growing incredibly fast, so much so that one of the plants bent over due to the weight of the leaves. 

You can see it at the left-most plant. The stem didn't snap, but it did bend a lot. I'm leaving it as-is to see if it'll straighten out on its own. 

Remember the cherry tomato plant? Here's how big it's gotten:

It's funny, the original plant (to the left) is really not doing anything, but the one branch to the right has extended and is responsible for over 20 cherry tomatoes now. It's all still being held up in the air by the Aerogarden Trellis Coils.  

I figure in the coming weeks, I will start cooking again. I'm checking to see if I can find a recipe that uses tomatoes, sage, basil, cilantro, and thyme!  

What baby chilis look like

So, remember the question I asked last week about what chilis look like when they're brand new? Here's the answer.

There are tiny little flowers growing among the chili plant leaves (which are gigantic now). I'm going to assume that this is what's going to grow into a beautiful hot chili in a few weeks.

Both the herbs and the chilis are sucking up water like crazy. The tub was almost empty in both today, so I spent a few minutes filling them up again.

The cilantro is doing something interesting. Remember how I said that the early plants grew and then flopped down? Turns out out of one "flopped down" part spawned a bunch of cilantro leaves which are finally looking like cilantro. In other words, in the picture below it looks like there are a whole bunch of stems coming out of the seed pod, but in actuality there are only one or two stems which branch off into others.

In the meantime, all the herbs are still doing well except the parsley, which is still looking the most anemic of all of them. Come on parsley, you can do it!

Update on the Aerogarden Chili and Herbs

I think after all these years of indoor gardening I'm getting pretty good at this Aerogarden thing. Here's what the herbs are looking like.

The basil, of course, is showing off as usual. It's already grown into the lights twice. Unlike the early days of this blog when I would feel compelled to make pesto every time I pruned basil, now I just chop it, take a nice whiff of it, and throw it away. I know there'll be more.

I was really worried about the cilantro for a while. It had grown and then it just flopped to the ground. But over time something interesting has happened--the bottom of the stem is still bent over, but the tops are growing fast and strong back towards the light. I like your spirit, cilantro...you're down but you're not out.

The parsley, on the other hand, is really growing very slowly. But there are two tiny stalks up, and I have confidence in now time they'll be as resilient as the cilantro.

What surprised me most was the thyme. In previous Aerogardens, I hardly got a little sprig. Today, they're growing through the roof. So much so that I had to scramble to find a recipe (which I found, see below).


The chili is growing like gangbusters. Here's what they look like now.

They grow up so fast, don't they? To be honest, I'm not sure what to expect next...will there be flowers that turn into chilis? Or will the chilis just grow? Tune in in the coming weeks and you'll find out.

Not wanting to waste any thyme, I used good thyme management skills to make a recipe I found for carrots. It was a ridiculously simple recipe: just toss carrots, fresh thyme sprigs, and garlic together with olive oil and throw it covered into the oven.

The roast carrots came out pretty good, but...where did the thyme go? . Overall, it was a yummy dish, but if I had to do over again I would have put more thyme into it. (okay, rest assured I'm running out of these puns, so you won't have to put up with them for much longer)

 

Here's something I am VERY excited about. Remember that tomato plant I pulled from my AeroGrow so many weeks ago and repotted? Just a few weeks ago I said that it wasn't growing flowers and that I was pretty much going to toss it. Turns out it got the hint. It has been growing...and growing...and growing, with lots and lots of flowers. I put it on my kitchen windowsill. Wonder how I am defying gravity? You probably can't see it in the picture, but I actually used the Trellis Coil from my Aerogarden and hooked them onto the window blinds. They are doing a super job of holding up all the branches. 

As I did when they were under the grow lights, I'm pruning dead leaves as I see them and "pollenating" the plan by tapping on the branches underneath the flowers until I see a tiny poof of pollen. 

How's this for cool--the plant and the tomatoes are actually bigger than they ever were under the Aerogarden.

This is where I think the good Lord is pretty cool. With anything that man creates, once it's broken, you basically toss it out because it's useless. Here, I had a tomato plant which I'd all but given up on and was about to toss in the trash. But now, it's got a whole new life and it looks like I'll be harvesting yet another batch of tomatoes. In my younger days I'd be philosophical and come up with a metaphor about how you should never give up and how everything you need to overcome life's present difficulties is within you...but in my old age I'm not as insightful as I used to be :P

Remember those cilantro seeds (coriander seeds) I planted? They're growing too, although at about 1/2 of the rate the Aerogarden cilantro is growing. It should be interesting to compare their tastes later on.

Glad you could join us, parsley

So, happily all the herbs came up a few days ago. As usual, the basil is showing off. The thyme in my last garden wilted and had a quick demise, but happily this go-around the thymes they are a-changing. Sages (another crop I haven't have much luck with lately) look good. 

And the one I was worrying about most, the cilantro, not only grew, if you look at the picture clearly you'll see that the smooth edges of the first leaf are already starting to get their "cilantro" characteristics! 

The one holdout this whole time has been the parsley. I was about to call Aerogarden to ask for a replacement. But lo and behold, this little guy just sprang up yesterday. 

So we're looking good. All present and accounted for! 

Speaking of parsley, remember that I replanted my parsley plant from the last Aerogarden and made it into a houseplant? Well, happily, that's been growing like crazy too. So much so that I had to scramble to find some good parsley recipes. Here's just one half of the harvest from the plant: 

So, Lisa and I decided to have two cooking nights. We searched AllRecipes.com for recipes that used lots and lots of parsley. The first one was baked Dijon Salmon. First step was mixing the dry ingredients and the four teaspoons of chopped parsley. Lisa bought panko bread crumbs, which I wasn't sure would work. Turns out it was the best decision ever. 

Second step was slathering the salmon with a honey mustard coating and then sprinking on the coating. 

Now for the cruel part--I forgot to take a picture of the finished product! The fish looked and smelled so good that I just devoured it (by the time I remembered I was supposed to take a picture, there were about two bites left). But fear not, I'll be taking a trip to Seattle sometime in the next few months, and I promise I'll make this same recipe with some salmon I'm bringing home from there :P

For our second recipe, we cooked oven fried parmesan chicken. First step was chopping the par-sa-ley:

Then mixing it together with a delightful mixture that included, among other things, freshly grated parmesian cheese and panko bread crumbs.

Dip the chicken in a garlic butter mixture, and coat with the dry ingredients and bake. 

This time I did manage to take a picture of the finished product. Once again, it tasted just phenomenal. The chicken was juicy and not heavy like deep-fried chicken, and the taste and crunch were amazing. I even helped myself to some of the salty greasy bits on the bottom of the pan (admit it, you do that too). 

The parsley plant was decimated, of course, after two days of cooking with so much parsley. But I'm still putting it under the single grow light of my third Aerogarden, and after only a few days a few stalks have popped up again. It's really cool not to have to buy those little plastic package of herbs at the supermarket. I just wish I could have endless supplies of other things, like milk (wouldn't it be cool if they were working on the AeroCow next?)