It is the time of year to get ready to grow those tomatoes, beans, squash and other veggies to keep you from having to spend so much at the grocry store.  Whether you will be plowing up a spot in your backyard or filling planters on your deck or patio, have you stopped to ask yourself if your garden is vegan?

There are many additives and soil conditioners found on the market today promising massive productivity from your garden and some of these are even mixed into the pre-mix soils you buy in bag form.  Miracle-Gro states on the back of the bag that the mix contains manure and poultry droppings.  Some others contain blood meal and bone meal, both which are slaughterhouse by-products.  Bone meal has also been found to be a carrier of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease).  For these reasons it is a good idea to read the labels of the pre-mix soils, if you decide to use them.   Beware of the “Organic” soils as they contain as much or more of the additives mentioned.   I have found that Scott’s brand soils usually contain no additives.

So, what do you fertilize with if you want to avoid these animal by-products?   A compost bin is a great way to re-use certain waste from your home while feeding your garden with essential nutrients at the same time.  For calcium deficient soils a treatment of lime will put an end to tomato blossom-end rot, but the treatment is best done the season before planting.

Of course you will always have the bird droppings from fly-overs and a rabbit dropping here or there.   That’s ok, those are naturally occuring.

What’s that rabbit doing in the garden anyway?  He’s stealing your carrots!

Away from this site for the past week at least.  I have been taking care of things outside with the garden and preparing an herb garden.  Those tasks just take time away from the little things.  We have peppers, tomatoes, okra and squash growing in the garden so far.  The herb garden is taking a little longer as we need fill dirt and some more boundary rocks before it is planting time.  Two loads of mulch later the yard is looking much better.  A large maple tree was cut down this week in the front yard as it had died on one side and was threatening to fall onto our house.  I hated to cut down a huge tree, especially since it gave much needed shade in the afternoon sun but I also didn’t want to repair a roof.   Now we are looking for fast-growing shade replacement for that area.  Hybrid poplars and weeping willows are being considered.

In the cooking department I haven’t created anything earth-shaking lately.  The past week has consited of spaghetti marinara and tempeh sausage.   Red beans and rice,  roasted corn and macaroni and “cheese” and the usual veggie burgers (Amy’s are the best).   My wife did make coconut-lime cupcakes, those are always earth-shaking.   I owe someone a recipe and/or batch of eggless cornbread.  I’ll get to that one soon.

Other than those small things nothing much going on.

We do have fresh kittens, more on that later.

Back from vacation, unpacking and trying to get back into the groove of things at home.   Our vacation was very much needed and relaxing and an opportunity for me to go without any sort of attachment to a computer.   I took no laptop with me, used no public access and stayed Internet-free for a week, quite the accomplishment.  Most of the veggie blogs, or food blogs, post pictures of their eats along the way.  I am not a big food photographer while sitting in a restaurant.   I did manage one picture while in Atlanta, but I will get to that later.

We started our vacation in St. Augustine, Florida.  My wife went to college there and I/we have visited countless times.  There was one vegetarian restaurant in town that we knew of, Manatee Cafe, but we found another while driving around.  The Present Moment Cafe is a raw food restaurant with a small deli located next door.  We visited the deli and looked at the menu of the restaurant but decided to pass.  Prices seemed a little high and it was “pretty food”.   Not to take anything away from The Present Moment Cafe or anyone who enjoys eating artsy food, but I am not into trying to figure out why a chef used this color or that texture to accent my collard greens.   Make the food tasty, put it on a plate and make it enough so that I leave your restaurant full.   Putting a sliver of whatever on a plate, dancing some dribbley sauce around it and sprinkling some fluff about does not dinner make.

Our first eating out was The Manatee Cafe. This is a basic vegetarian restaurant with a menu of sandwiches, wraps and salads.  They have a great tofu reuben which I have had previously but this morning I wasn’t extremely hungry and went very basic with hash browns and grits.   The hash browns here are actually very chunky-cut potatoes fried crispy with Spike seasoning, nothing special but very tasty.  My wife had the veggie wrap (Tofutti, hummus, carrots, sprouts, mushrooms, sweet potatoes and avocados) with hash browns.   Everything was great and as expected.   No pictures,  it is the “Hey, I like to take a picture of my food so I can remember what I ate.” thing that I can’t get to.

If you ever visit St. Augustine you will go to St. George Street.  With it being the oldest permanently settled city in the US there are many old houses and buildings to be seen and many are along St. George Street, though they have been transformed into modern gift shops and trinket stores.  The oldest school house is on St. George Street but more importantly so is The Spanish Bakery.  No where else can you get some of the best soup a big loaf of fresh baked bread and three VEGAN lemon, cinnamon or almond cookies for $5.   The bakery is a small hut with just enough room for a row of cookies on display and three pots of soup.  Table are outside under large shade trees which are handy on hot, sunny days.  In the summer they have a very good gazpacho, however, they only had a vegetable soup on our visit which was still excellent.

View sitting outside of The Spanish Bakery on St. George Street.

Our fix for sweet stuff was found at Rita’s, an Italian Ice place on St. Augustine Beach.  Rita’s is a chain located mostly on the east coast but this is the only one we have ever visited, and we do each time we go to St. Augustine.  The have Gelati and custard ice but we always get the vegan Italian Ice option.  Flavors range from tropical punch, black cherry, vanilla, chocolate, pina colada, lemonade and mango.   I think of the three times we went there I had six or seven large ices, I lost count, but the best was the mango.   Cold, sweet and with little bits of mango.  I just looked at their website and noticed locations are coming to Hermitage and Mt. Juliet.

Most of our time in St. Augustine was planned to be spent on the beach and it was.  Six hours in one day allowed for plenty of digging in the sand and burning of our skin.  While walking around in a few places the smell of shrimp boil hit me.  Not the smell of the shrimp but the combination of spices used to boil the shrimp.   I love the smell and it instantly made me want to boil something in those spices to munch on.  Since getting back I have gotten together all of those spices along with some corn and potatoes that will be boiled and enjoyed on the patio one evening, a post about that will come later.

Mean people not allowed on St. George Street

Each trip to St. Augustine also gets us to go to a local nursery to pick out some plants that are a bit uncommon here.   I am a bit of a tropical plant enthusiast so you shouldn’t be surprised to see my fruit-bearing orange trees and palms.   I managed to find a Green Saw Palmetto and a Washingtonian Palm that were small enough to fit in the car for the ride back.  We also found a Madagascar Palm and a Longleaf Pine, both which are less uncommon here, for the ride back to be added to our plant family.

Washingtonian Palm and Green Saw Palmetto

So, to summarize, St. Augustine, good.  Pretty food, bad.  The Manatee Cafe, good.  The Spanish Bakery, good.  Beach, GOOD.

Yesterday consisted of a long day of getting our yard in some kind of shape that we would be happy with.  We had gotten 20 azaleas and planted those along the front walkway of our house.   Mulched and ready to make the front yard look so much better.   We’re the third owners of the house, the first owners were apparently plantaholics.   I realized there is a five-foot azalea growing at one corner of our home when the white blooms showed up this week.   A lilac bush is also blooming, as are plenty of daffodils.  There’s a group of peonies that are budding as well.   I planted 20 or so alocasias along our back driveway that I had been growing in a pot for about 5 years.  I am sure they are happy to get a spot of ground to call their own.

My wife’s daffodils, hyacinths and tulips are in full bloom and look spectacular.   I think she is very happy with the variety she planted.  Irises should be blooming next week.

We plowed up a small patch, about 15’x15′, for a vegetable garden.  We’ll be planting tomatoes, bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe and maybe eggplant in a couple weeks.   A smaller herb garden will be fixed up later.  Both will be organic, of course.

It’s time to plan gardens.  We have a new house and plenty of yard space to transform into patches of edibles so work will begin soon.  We’ve made a short list of what will be included.  As of now, a medium sized vegetable garden and two smaller herb gardens are planned.

Herbs to be included:

• Rosemary
• Basil, Sweet
• Oregano
• Lemon Balm
• Thyme
• Sage
• Parsley
• Catnip (Something for the rodents we keep as pets.)
• Peppermint
• Spearmint
• Cilantro
• Dill

Vegetables:

• Squash – Yellow
• Eggplant
• Sweet Potatoes
• Tomatoes, Roma & Beefsteak
• Peppers – Bell, Datil, Poblano, Anaheim
• Cucumbers
• Onions
• Broccoli

I am sure more will be added as we get into it and know exactly how much room we will have.  I would like to plant artichokes, I think that may have to wait a year.   Asparagus is another one but I’ll need to make space around the yard elsewhere as keeps on giving and I don’t want to risk digging it up by getting the gardenspace ready each year.

I have all the organic pest control I should need.  Neem oil has done the job quite well in the past and should suffice now.   Organic veggies and herbs throughout the season should get me cooking regularly.