Harvest Pizza

Last Saturday I visited the local farmers' market and bought some large, tasty tomatoes.

I recently harvested fresh basil and parsley from the garden, the few survivors from my otherwise ransacked garden.

What do these two separate events have in common? They are essential to making a delicious homemade pizza. Here is the recipe:

1 multi-grain crust (store bought is fine)
1 large tomato, thinly sliced
1 bunch of fresh basil
1 bunch of fresh parsley
Dried oregano
Dried minced garlic
Extra virgin olive oil
1 small tub of ricotta cheese
Salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.
2. Place crust on metal pizza pan and rub with olive oil.
3. Mix oregano, garlic & olive oil and drizzle over crust.
4. Spread ricotta cheese over crust.
5. Top with shredded basil and parsley. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let pizza cool for 2 minutes, then slice and serve.




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Attack of the Critters

I walked outside tonight after dinner to check on my new garden. Other than a few hoof prints in the soil and some strawberries that disappeared one night, I had been very lucky up to this point not losing too much to the wildlife. Unfortunately I found out this evening I am not immune to these problems.








- The beans and broccoli were nibbled down to their stems. It was either rabbits or deer. If I had to guess I'd say rabbits; the plants were sheared at an angle close to the ground. Deer tend to pull the plant out cleanly.




- This Japanese beetle is relaxing after a long night of eating raspberries.

What does this mean? That this area is not a necessarily good place to plant vegetables. That is all right. A perennial garden may work better here anyway.

I have a location on the other side of the house that might serve a vegetable garden better. Wild raspberries grow on that end without pest problems as I have seen so far. A fence of some sort might be in my future. The raspberry bushes could be transplanted to fence in a raised vegetable garden over there.




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My First Post

The reason I started this blog is best summarized by Michael Pollan in his book 'Second Nature': "As most gardeners
will testify, the desire to make a garden is often followed by a desire to write down your experiences there—in a notebook, or a letter to a friend who gardens..."







- My daughter Violet enjoyed helping me plant a wildflower garden at my parent's place.

I've constructed a variety of gardens in the past including vegetable, perennial, annual and rain gardens. For better or worse most of these gardens are at my old house. With the purchase of my new home and over one acre of land I will be able to start over. The experience and knowledge I have gained from my past gardens has given me the confidence to write about my new gardens...to learn from my mistakes, for pride and posterity, or maybe just to write about what I've planted.