This year I discovered the ultimate carrot. The Amarillo carrot didn’t split or show any defects. It grew nice and sturdy mature carrots. The flavor was sweet and floral. Since I had such a good harvest I thought I would attempt to make a carrot cake for the first time. It was surprisingly easy. The end result was a moist and decadent cake that I couldn’t stop eating. I personally hate nuts in my baked goods but if you are so inclined you can easily add them.

Summer Harvest Carrot Cake (adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)
2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/4 Teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/3 teaspoons of ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon o fground nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon of table salt
3 cups of medium carrots peeled and shredded
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cup vegetable oil

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place oven rack to middle position. Spray a 13 x9 inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt in a large bowl and set aside for later.
3. Shred carrots using a box grater or food processor place in a bowl and set aside.
4. Using a food processor combine both sugars and eggs until combined approximately 20 seconds.
5. While the mating is running add oil through the feed tube. Mix until it a light color and well emulsified. Place into a bowl.
6. Stir in carrots and dry ingredients until blended and no signs of flour.
7. Place into pan and bake until toothpick in center of cake comes out clean approximately 35-40 minutes. Rotate the pan at the halfway pint.
8. Allow the cake to cool for two yours on a wire rack.

Cream Cheese Frosting
5 tablespoons softened unsalted butter cut into segments
1 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar
8 ounces of softened cream cheese cut into 4 segments
1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Beat butter and sugar with a hand held mixer at medium high speed until light and fluffy. Add cream cheese a piece at a time. Add vanilla and beat until smooth approximately 30 seconds.

Every month May Dreams Gardens hosts Bloom day where people from around the globe post what’s blooming in their garden. The weather this fall has been amazing. Lots of chilly nights with hot cocoa or apple cider and plenty of time around the fire pit. My garden was getting a little bare so I went on a major fall plant buying binge. I always get nervous when I buy plants around this time of year. I never know if an unsuspecting frost or heatwave will appear and wipe out all of my new plants. Initially, I played it safe by just buying a few seasonal plants. Just a six pack of snapdragons and violas.

Viola Tiger Eyes

But then I accidentally removed on of my husbands favorite plants, the felicia aethipica or Margarette daisies. Luckily, one of my favorite nurseries, Annie’s Annuals, was selling them. I bought those and then I threw in a African Bride Nigella for fun.

This probably would have been enough but then I just happen to be in the neighborhood of my favorite local nursery, Talini’s. They had a great selection of new plants. Some of which were also from Annie’s Annuals. I ended up coming home with two succulents, a dusty pink  Anigozanthos or Kangaroo paw, a bright colored Linaria reticulata ‘Flamenco’, a cool black dianthus, three different poppies,  two more violas and Chrysanthemum ‘Felicia’.

Dianthus

Linaria reticulata ‘Flamenco’

Viola Merlot

Chrysanthemum ‘Felicia’

The garden still has some old favorites. The alyssum, roses, Mexican primrose and chrysanthemum and are all doing well. Also, the Erigeron Glaucus ‘Wayne Roderick’ that I bought last spring is really taking off as well this fall. It’s nice to finally see some color in the garden. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the frost stays away until these babies are firmly established. Happy Bloom day everyone!

Wayne Roderick

Chrysanthemum

Mexican Primrose

It’s that time of year where I need to say good by to the summer vegetables. The majority of summer plants peaked a while a go but a few are still hanging around. The majority of them are an overgrown mess. I’m going to have to show some tough love and rip them out.

This year I had a pretty good haul of vegetables. Of course a few varieties did better than others. Here is a run down of the summer winners and losers

Tomatoes:
Varieties: Enchantment, Great White, Amish Paste, San Marazano, Green Zebra, Gypsy, volunteer cherry tomato and Purple Cherokee.

Winner: Purple Cherokee. This is my favorite heirloom variety but it doesn’t always produce well. This year it was quite happy. It produced beautiful tomatoes throughout the summer ranging from 1 to 3 pounds each.

Losers: Great White tomato- I grew this accidentally last year and it quickly became one of our favorites. I tried growing it by seed without any luck and later with established plants from two different nurseries. I grew it in pots, the ground and in the Earth trainer but it still was not happy. We got a total of three tomatoes throughout the whole summer.

Beans
Varieties: Tacoma pole green bean, Purple Bush Beans, Scarlet Runner and the new to me Dragon Tongue beans.

Winners: Three way tie between Tacoma Pole beans, Purple Bush Beans and the Dragon Tongue Bush beans. All three produced a prolific amount of beans. At one point it was difficult to keep up with them all. I like to saute the three together. The purple ones let you know they are done by turning green when you cook them.

Losers: Scarlet Runner Beans are pretty but really should just be grown as an ornamental. It didn’t produce enough edible beans for me to keep it around for very long.

Cucurbitaceae
Varieties: Market Cucumber, Zephyer Yellow Squash, Sweet Dumpling Squash and Golden Midget Watermelon.

Winners: Market Cucumber produced beautiful tasty cucumbers throughout the summer. I find I only need to grow one plant as I’ll get overwhelmed by cucumbers if I grow multiple plants.

Loser: The Sweet Dumpling Squash was a victim of bad placement and fickle weather. Unlike last year it didn’t produce a single edible squash.

Honorable Mention:
This is my first year growing watermelon successfully. To keep community garden thieves at bay I grew a yellow variety. It produced about five ice box sized melons in the beginning of summer. They were a little juicy but it contained a lot of seeds. I’m on the fence about growing next year.

Eggplant:
Varieties: Casper, Rosa Bianca, Black Beauty, and Listada De Gandia.

Winner: Listada De Gandia was a new to us variety. It produced an abundance of long cylinder purple and white striped eggplants. It’s still going and it’s almost Thanksgiving.

Losers: None

Peppers Sweet:
Corno di Toro Giallo, Jimmy Nardello, Poblano and Yolo Bell Pepper.

Winner:
I really enjoyed the Corno di Toro Giallo peppers. They made these large, yellow peppers that were great in stir fries and in pastas. The name translates to Bulls Horn since they curl up and look like a horn when they are mature. They lack the green bitter taste of other sweet peppers.

Loser: Yolo Bell Pepper just didn’t produce for the second year in a row. In the end I had only two mature peppers from this plant. It might be a victim of bad placement. It’s named after the county I live in so I feel like I might give it one more chance next year.

Hot Peppers:
Varieties: Fish pepper, Fresno Pepper, Black Prince and Ghost pepper.
Winner: Wow, we really loved the Fish Peppers. I noticed a lot of good buzz about it through blogs like You Grow Girl and In the Garden Online and thought it would worth a try. The plant itself is pretty with yellow and green varieted leaves. The peppers go from green and cream colored to orange and then red. They provide a nice spice smoky flavor great for thai food and barbeque.

Losers:ME
I grew the hottest pepper in the world aka the Ghost Pepper but I chickened out and never used it. As an ornamental plant it’s actually quite pretty with big bushy leaves and bright red orange peppers. I might plant it by the entrance of my community plot next year to scare any produce thieves.

Happy Halloween, I hope everyone had a good time and are recovering nicely from their candy hangover. Recently, my mom has been sending me photos from my childhood.  I thought I would share some of the pictures from my early Halloweens.  While looking at these I was surprised by how many times I chose to be a clown. My mom told me I didn’t want to wear anything girly or cute so apparently I embraced scary clowns. That mask is frightening. My sisters on the other hand went as cute mice or as princesses.

This year, I skipped that parties and hung out at home. I got the dog dressed up, made pumpkin cupcakes and spent way too much time carving pumpkins. My attempt to make a cute dog Jack O’Lantern but I think it ended up looking more like a Zombie Ewok.

My work this year decided to participate in the annual office Halloween contest. We went with a bee theme. Each person picked a particular bee to dress up. We had a carpenter bee, a spelling bee, Zombie, and Bea Arthur.

For those of you on Twitter you probably already know my big news but I have a little announcement. We are expecting a baby! A baby boy is due in late January and we are very excited.

So for Halloween, I decided to make the best out of my expanding baby belly and go as “Mother to Bee”.  I enhanced the free shirt I got from my doctor’s office with electrical tape, threw on some wings and antennae and presto instant costume.

I hope everyone had a great holiday with plenty of treats and candy.

The summer heat made a late appearance this year but it’s finally letting go and allowing autumn to take over. The days are shorter and the evenings are cooler. It’s the time of year where you can enjoy the apples and winter squash at the farmers market and you can still collect peppers and eggplants out of the garden. We’ve even had a few rain storms already. We usually have to wait until Halloween for our first siting of rain.

The recent mix of heat waves and rain storms has left a few blank patches in the garden. Desperate for some fall color I loaded up on popular fall favorites like violas, snapdragons and Icelandic poppies.

There are still some summer plants going strong the dahlias and petunias are especially happy right now.

Now that’s it cooler I’m looking forward to doing lots of baking, pumpkin carving, planting fall vegetables and bundling up in sweaters. Happy Fall everyone.