Experiment 8 - Cooking with Garden Science (Part 1)
After carefully cataloging veggies yielded by the instant garden and saving some surplus for planting in future years, I enlisted the aid of super cook, photographer, and fellow tumblr user tango-mango to help me turn some of my gardening endeavors into delicious treats. As if all that wasn’t cool enough, she’s also my mom!
Today’s main course: Garden Science’s homegrown lentil soup!
Photograph and recipe by tango-mango.
I speak “recipe” about as well as I speak Martian, so here’s a quote as emailed to me by tango-mango highlighting the finer culinary details of our work:
We modified an existing recipe and cut the proportions down significantly (1 cup of lentils down to 1/4 cup). We sautéed onion and garlic in extra virgin olive oil. We then added some cumin, a little chili powder, a little salt, a teaspoon of tomato paste, some chicken broth and the lentils. We covered the pan and let it simmer for about 45 minutes until the lentils were soft, checking occasionally and adding more chicken broth or water when it got too thick. Finally, we stirred in some fresh lemon juice and topped it with cilantro.
In case it wasn’t evident by how delicious it looks in the picture, the soup was awesome. Our cooking efforts made all of the meticulous hours of harvesting lentils from the plant worth it. We did not include the green lentils in the soup, by the way, so they may still be cooked up into something tasty.
I took a bunch of pictures of the soup-making process as well, and I will likely post those soon. If you want to see some shots of the lentils while they were still growing, check it out! If you like cooking, Portland or just good photography, check out tango-mango on tumblr as well!
Experiment 8 - The harvest so far
Look at all the cool instant garden stuff!
From the top left moving counter clockwise, we have pinto beans, navy beans, lentils, and green lentils.
The number of pinto beans dried and ready for picking gets higher every day. The beans pictured above are from yesterday alone!
The number of beans per pod seems to range anywhere from 1 to 6.
This may not look like a lot of lentils, but it took a long time to hand pick them all. There are still a bunch more lentils still on the plant that have already dried and are waiting to be harvested.
The one green lentil plant ended up producing a lot more than I was expecting it to. They have a lovely coloration! As with the regular lentils, there are still a bunch more on the plant.
The navy beans aren’t drying quite as fast as anything else, but there should be a fair number of them ready within the next week or so. At that time, there will likely be more pictures.
Another round of “Meet the Garden” should be posting very soon!
Experiment 8 - Lentils and Green Lentils (MTG 6.1)
If you missed the last post, I’m doing edition 6 of “Meet the Garden” on a per-plant basis. First up, the lentils!
The plants appear to be done flowering and are absolutely covered in lentil pods. Many of the lentils within the pods look like they are at or nearing full size, too!
The above photo should provide some amount of context.
The plants are looking as if they may be nearing the end of their season. Does anybody happen to know a good way of drying fresh lentils and/or get them out of their shells?
Experiment 8 - Meet the Garden (Part 5.1)
This “Meet the Garden” post is going to be a little different than previous ones because I’m breaking it up into two pieces. If I tried to fit everything into one post, I’d end up with something as long as the film strip for Titanic and I’m relatively certain nobody has an attention span that long… myself included.
I tried to include a view of our entire garden. If this is your first time joining Garden Science for one of these posts, the box closest to the camera is Garden Science’s “Instant Garden,” otherwise known as “Experiment 8,” and the items therein are grown almost exclusively from seeds found in the kitchen. Behind the instant garden are our tomatoes, and behind those are the peas - they are currently a little out of control and there’s no way we can eat everything they’re growing. The giant-leafed thing closest to the camera is one of our sunflowers, and it’s nearly as tall as I am.
Here’s another view. On the right you can see our lima bean crop, which is coming along nicely.
Anyway, on with the update!
Lentils and Green Lentils
The lentils got really lanky and then fell over. Now, it’s a little difficult to tell where one plant starts and another stops. The green lentil plant is virtually identical to the regular ones, and it’s buried somewhere in the upper left of the lentil cluster. See the little white flowers? The plants are totally blooming!
The flowers are very pretty, but they’re also tiny. The above photo shows flowers from the green lentil plant, but the flowers on the regular lentil plants look nearly identical. They seem to bloom in mostly groups of 3 and occasionally 4.
Even more exciting than the flowers are the tiny lentil pods they leave in their wake. I discovered these today, and you can already see the little lentils forming inside!
Popcorn
The corn is one of the most impressive things in the garden right now. I accidentally cropped out the bottom of the plant in this photo, but I measured them today and they’re both about 34” tall from the base to the top of the highest leaf. They seem to be right on target in terms of growth for this region and time of year, if not better.
Here’s a birds-eye view.
Garbanzo Beans (Chickpeas)
The garbanzo beans were planted later than the other things around them, and they are difficult to photograph because they kind of blend into the scenery. Like most of the other things growing, I had no idea what they would look like or what to expect when they came up.
The leaves are almost rather cilantro-like.
Mystery Plant
I still don’t know what manner of weed is growing in my garden, but it looks like it’s about to bloom. It was getting kind of gigantic and threatening to take over the garbanzo beans, so I took the gardening shears to it and pruned it back in several areas.
That’s it for part 1! Part 2 will likely be up a little bit later today.
Edited for minor errors at 2:04PM.
Experiment 8 - Best buds
One of the pinto bean plants started becoming increasingly more vine-like, so I grabbed a dowel out of the garage to see if it might want to climb it.
Answer: Yes.
It’s amazing… in the morning I go out and see a bit of new growth hanging in the breeze, and by the time I get home from work it’s managed to wrap itself around the dowel.
This same plant also appears to have flower buds forming behind some of its leaves.
Speaking of which, the lentils (regular, not the green ones) appear to have flower buds forming, too. You can see them in the above photo right below the two big leaves at the top middle.
Exciting!
Experiment 8 - Meet the garden (again)
Plants grow slowly. I don’t notice too many drastic changes in the instant garden from day to day, but I was looking over my posts recently and realized the last time I put photos up was quite a while back. Don’t worry, I am about to reacquaint you all with my growing friends in their newest state. Warning: some of the photos show some attempts at “artsy” photography. Some are more successful than others.
For those who want reference, here is the first “Meet the garden” post.
1. Pinto Beans
2. The lone Navy Bean
3. Popcorn
4. Lentils
5. Green Lentils
I’ve also added a few new prospects to the instant garden, but I’m saving that post for tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Experiment 8 - Meet the garden
I finally managed to take some sort of decent photos today. In celebration, I put together the post I’ve been meaning to assemble since I planted the instant garden in the first place. Here are all of the plants that have come up so far, from closest to the sidewalk to furthest:
1. Pinto Beans
2. The lone Navy Bean
3. Popcorn
4. Lentils
5. Green Lentil (super mega closeup)
The barley still hasn’t come up. Also, it turns out the “green sunflower” I planted is apparently something called… pepita? I’m not sure. I know absolutely nothing about it. The seeds may have even been dry roasted, which would definitely reduce my chances of success. Anyway, in the case of both the pepita and the barely, I did the rational thing and simply re-planted them in ridiculous numbers.
Theory: If I plant enough seeds, something’s bound to come up eventually. Right?
Experiment 8 - 5/7
Five of the seven seeds I planted for my experimental garden have sprouted into seedlings.
The thing that concerns me most about the lentils at this point is not whether or not I think they’ll grow to full size, but what exactly will happen if they do. I didn’t really bother to research what these plants look like or how big they get when they grow up, and I think the lentils may eventually be competing for space with everything else.
We had a navy bean sighting this morning, too. I only planted one, so I’m relieved to see that it’s come up.
The pinto beans, too, have begun to emerge along with the popcorn. The popcorn plant is too small to get any kind of clear photo of, but you can already see the pinto bean leaves.
Now, all I’m waiting on are the green sunflowers (or pepitas, as I learned they are actually called) and the barley.
Experiment 8 - Lentils!
The lentils AND the green lentils are coming up in Garden Science’s experimental vegetable garden!
Here’s the green lentil. ^
Here’s the regular lentil. ^
The lighting was not at all conducive to macro photos today, but I think I managed to capture both plants decently enough. I planted three of each type, and I think I can see new plants coming up alongside the ones in the photos.
The rest of the garden should be on its way!
