Rice Hulls

At Edible Eden, we spend a lot of time thinking about the larger impact of our work - we try to always choose the most responsible selection of plants, materials, and garden amendments that we can.

One eco-friendly material we love is rice hull! Rice hulls are the the husks around rice grains that are removed in processing. The hulls are then par-boiled to sterilize any rice grains and ensure no diseases are spread. We often use rice hulls to aerate, improve drainage, and retain water in our soils. Unlike the commonly used perlite and vermiculite, rice hulls are renewable resources. They do not have to be mined and no land is disrupted in their production: they would otherwise be considered a waste product! Unlike those other products, rice hulls are also organic material so they break down and add new nutrients to the soil over time. Because of this, you must refresh your beds with new hulls every year.

Rice hulls can also be used as a mulch much like straw or leaves. Use them to retain warmth or moisture in a bed or keep delicate seeds in place; we just topped our freshly planted carrot seeds with rice hulls to keep them from blowing away and provide good germinating conditions without burying them too deep.

Have you tried using rice hulls in your garden? Let us know what you think!

Garden to Table Recipe

Simple Roasted Vegetables

 

3-5 Fennel bulbs, trimmed and sliced into 1 inch slices.
1 large Celeriac, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
2-3 turnips, peeled and sliced
Broccoli broken into flowerettes
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

 

Never underestimate the ability of a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and 45 minutes or so in a hot over to transform lesser known (or loved) vegetables into something you will need to beat the kids off with a rolling pin if there are to be any left for dinner!

Some of my favorites are fennel, celeriac and turnips as well as old stand bys like broccoli and cauliflower.
Preheat over to 425. Cut your vegetables into distinctive bite size pieces, put in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil, Salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Arrange on a sheet tray. Bake for 30-45 minutes, depending on the vegetable, until crispy around the edges and soft in the middle. Fennel in particular takes a good long while to turn all soft and caramelized but believe me…it’s worth the wait.

To finish it off, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Serve with meat, fish, tofu, or anything else you can think of.
 

Fall Fennel Slaw

I love fennel; it’s one of my favorite fall veggies and grows great in our climate. One of the best ways to eat it is raw and whole like an apple. My next favorite way is in this mouth popping salad:

Ingredients:

2 fennel bulbs

1 bunch flat leaf parsley

half a lemon

good olive oil

salt

pine nuts

pomegranate seeds (optional)

Instructions

1. shave the fennel crossways so you get very fine shreds

2. coarsely chop the parsley

3. toast pine nuts

4. combine parsley and fennel shavings, drizzle with EVOO, lemon and salt, top with pine nuts.

Alternatively, if you're dealing with confirmed fennel hater, convince them to try this:

Ingredients

one inch thick slices of fennel

parmesan cheese

olive oil

Instructions

1. Arrange slices of fennel on a sheet tray, drizzle with oil sprinkle with salt

2. bake at 400 until soft, about 30 mins

3. cover with a thick covering of parmesan and continue to roast for another 15 minutes until caramelized and crusted with cheese

4. Just try to keep them on the serving dish...

Cherry Tomato Ginger Jam

Here is a recipe for one of my favorite things to do with the end of the season glut of cherry tomatoes.

ingredients

4 qts Cherry tomatoes (any color)

1/4 cup fresh ginger, grated

Sugar, around 8 cups

1/4 cup lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

instructions

1. Place the tomatoes in a thick bottomed pot and begin cooking over medium flame.

2. Mash with a potato masher. Once they have begun looking like sauce, use an immersion blender to puree (optional).

3. Add the ginger, salt and lemon.

4. Now add your sugar- you have some leeway with the quantity of sugar- you want to add enough that the color and texture of the jam changes and looks more like jam and less like tomato sauce.

5. In general you can estimate around a cup of sugar per cup of tomato puree.

6. Now cook the mixture down until it reaches the texture you are looking for.

7. I put a few little plates in the freezer and when I think the jam is ready I test the texture by putting a spoonful on a frozen plate, returning to the freezer for a couple minutes and then tasting. This way you can both assess the ultimate texture of the finished jam as well as adjust the seasoning.

Cool Cucumber Soup

Most of us get distracted at some point in the season and fail to harvest some of those cucumbers- it’s hard to keep up with them when they really start fruiting! Here is a solution for those overgrown, seedy slicing cukes that are no good for pickling or salads. I like to serve in a small glasses with a crouton on top but it tastes just as good in a bowl!

Ingredients

2-3 large slicing cucumbers, peeled, de-seeded, diced

1 quart your favorite unflavored yoghurt

Handful fresh mint and /or dill and chives

1 clove garlic

1 small shallot

Salt to taste

Squeeze of lemon or vinegar

drizzle of honey

Instructions

1. Mix cucumber, shallot, yoghurt, minced herbs and garlic, salt, honey and lemon.

2. Blend in a blender or use immersion blender to puree.

3. Mix well and allow to sit for an hour or more.

4. Adjust consistency and seasoning as needed. You can use milk or veg stock to thin it out.

Josh's Favorite Beet Recipe

Ever wonder what to do with beets? Well, this colorful root crop starts sizing up in late spring and can be grown all summer and into fall. Options for preparation are diverse and numerous but this is by far my favorite!

This makes a great side-dish to serve with fish or chicken or a beautiful addition to a meal of summer salads

Ingredients

1-2 bunches beets, golden, chioggia or red, with greens

2 tablespoons honey

2 table spoons balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons cooking oil (olive, vegetable, grape seed- your preference)

1 block feta cheese

1 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. First remove beet greens, wash well and put back in the fridge.

2. Trim tails and noses off beets and put in pot of water. Simmer on the stove for approximately 45 minutes or until fork tender (you can also steam them if you prefer).

3. While the beets are still hot, put them into a bowl with cold water and use your hands to slip off the skins.

4. Once the beets are skinned and cool enough to handle, slice them and put them in a bowl. Sprinkle them with the oil, honey and balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper.

5. Next, put them on a sheet tray and roast in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately 10 minutes.

6. While the beets are roasting, melt some butter in a sauté pan, chop the beet greens and sauté in butter until soft. (You can also steam the greens if you are trying to avoid the butter.)

7. Now spread the cooked greens on a plate or platter.

8. Next remove the roasted beets from the oven and carefully arrange on top of the greens.

9. Lastly, crumble feta cheese all over the dish and serve warm.

Peak Summer Harvests & Baby Rosenstein

Here we are at peak summer and all that early season work should finally be paying off. All those fruiting plants: the tomatoes and cucumbers, zucchinis and eggplants, peppers and summer squash are all ripening on the vines. The onions, garlic, shallots as well as beets have matured and can be used now. The basil and other summer herbs are still going. Now is the time to be creative in the kitchen and, if you can stand the heat, get your Farm To Table cook on.

Unfortunately, this is also the season of fungal diseases, summer pests and extreme heat- so it can be easy to get distracted worrying about your plants survival. Indeed, the game now is to see how long you can keep some of these annual plants alive and yielding before they succumb to their eventual seasonal demise and make way for the rich hearty flavors of fall.

Truth be told, one of the real skills of a grower is getting the timing right. Many of our favorite fall crops must be planted around mid-August if they are to yield before winter conditions arrive, but often those precious summer crops are still occupying garden space long past that window.

What to do? Well, the first thing is make sure to have a garden plan to serve as a roadmap and guide planting decisions over the course of the season. Edible Eden offers garden plans for any size garden that will help maximize your space over the course of the season.

If you don’t have a plan in place; consider interplanting some fall crops in and amongst your yielding plants over the next few weeks so that when they do go down your kales and cabbages will rise to the occasion and fill their space.

Here at 2601 Taney, we are thinking a lot about timing as we continue our extended baby watch. Teri was at 40 weeks a week ago and now we are trying to go about our lives knowing that at any minute labor will begin and we will need to step away from whatever we were doing and head to the hospital.

It’s a good thing we have plenty of beautiful produce to munch while we are waiting!

Stay posted for news of the soon-to-arrive baby Rosenstein and enjoy that summer produce while it’s here.

Farmer Josh