Garden problems

Bunny wars (cont.)

| Green Card Gardener

I did not do my homework, or I was naïve, or both, thinking that the rabbits would leave my new strawberry patch alone. They are systematically eating their way through the rows. I should have known better – pet rabbits are given strawberry leaves as a treat. Fencing in the strawberry patch is out of the question because to really keep the bunnies out, the fence needs to be galvanized hardwire cloth, buried 6 inches in the ground and at least 3 feet high, like my vegetable garden. Even a stubborn gardener like me must admit that this is not economical for a strawberry patch, and very labor-intensive.

But I wasn’t ready to give up just as yet so as a last attempt (all products I have tried in the past did not work), I bought Plantskydd, an organic rabbit repellent from Sweden that is supposed to do miracles. With one leaf left on a plant, so I learned, the strawberries might survive the onslaught. If in a week or so, the new leaves are not chewed off, the stuff works. Until then, I am not getting my hopes up too high.

Fortunately, our neighbor, a part-time farmer, grows strawberries. He has supplied us with super-ripe strawberries twice this week. This strawberry cake was an impromptu operation so I used what I had on hand. For the lining of the crust, I made a small batch of strawberry jam of the ripest strawberries. Unless it’s top-quality or homemade, I find most strawberry jams nothing but sugary so this was more than a solution borne out of necessity.Strawberry Cake with Vanilla Custard

Crust:

¾ cup + 2 tablespoons (125 g) all-purpose flour

2½ level teaspoons baking powder

½ cup (100 g) sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 eggs

3 tablespoons lemon agrumato olive oil (or lemon-infused olive oil)

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 pinch salt

Filling:

1¼  to 1½ pounds washed and hulled strawberries

Strawberry jam for brushing

1 batch homemade vanilla pudding (recipe is on my other blog, Spoonfuls of Germany)

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees Celsius). Line a 10-inch (25 cm) cake pan or springform pan with baking parchment and grease the sides.

2. Add all ingredients for the crust to a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until combined, then beat at high speed for 1 minute. Pour into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until firm and golden. Remove from the oven, let cool slightly then unmold onto a cake rack and let cool completely.

4. Brush the cake with jam.

5. Prepare vanilla pudding following recipe. Spread on cake while still lukewarm, leaving about ½ inch (1.25 cm) free all around to give the custard room to spread without dripping down the sides.

6. Wash and hull strawberries and arrange in an overlapping shingle pattern. Refrigerate and serve within a day.

Makes 1 cake 

Vanishing seeds

| Green Card Gardener

As a gardener, you experience all types of failures. What just happened to me with the cucumber, summer squash and Charentais melon seeds qualifies for the funny category although it is also rather annoying, because I started the seeds late already due to cold weather, and now I have to buy seedlings in order to get an early summer crop.

After the seeds showed no sign of germination after more than a week, I put the tray with the jiffy pots in the oven with the light turned on, and a heating pad underneath to speed things up. A big red sign said, “Do not use oven and leave light on”. The oven smelled like a greenhouse but except for a couple of lonely melon seedlings, no results.

So this morning I decided to start all over again, emptying out all the pots and sifting through the soil. I found several melon seeds that had not germinated, I suspect due to lack of heat. But I could not believe my eyes when the rest of the pots contained no seeds whatsoever! Then it dawned on me – one sunny day last week, I had put the tray outside on the patio table, and the birds must have eaten them.

A small consolation: there is still one jar of Golden Zucchini Chutney in the pantry. I made it for the first time last year instead of the Zucchini Relish I usually make. The recipe is adapted from Preserving by Oded Schwartz. We eat the chutney with any type of Indian food.

Golden Zucchini Chutney

3½ pounds golden zucchini

3½ tablespoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon corn oil

3 tablespoons black mustard seeds

1½ tablespoons freshly ground coriander

1 dried medium-hot red chili

1½ tablespoons turmeric

4 large onions, halved I thinly sliced

7 large carrots, peeled and grated

8 ounces candied ginger, finely chopped

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

5 cups apple vinegar

1¾ cups sugar

You also need:

A canning pot, or a very large stockpot

6 1-pint canning jars

6 bands

6 new (unused) lids

1. Cut the squash (do not peel if using organic) in half lengthwise and scrape out any seeds. Cut into ½-inch cubes.

2. Place the squash in a colander and sprinkle with half of the salt. Let stand for one hour. Rinse under cold water and drain well.

4. Heat the oil in a large non-corrosive pot. Add the mustard seeds, coriander and chili and fry until the mustard seeds pop and the spices release their flavors. Add the turmeric and stir.

5. Add the squash with all of the remaining ingredients except the sugar and the remaining salt. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 25 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.

6. Add the sugar and salt and simmer for 1 to 1¼ hours, until most of the liquid has disappeared and the chutney as a thick consistency. Remove the chili.

7. Fill into sterilized canning jars and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Let sit for 2 months before opening.

Makes 6 1-pint jars

Victory (for now)

| Green Card Gardener

Every gardener has his/her nemesis. Mine is rabbits. But today I can declare at least a partial victory. I harvested a carrot!

When I started the garden in 2004, there was no initial problem. I guess the rabbits just hadn’t discovered the new organic supermarket in the neighborhood yet. But then, year after year, they became more voracious. On top of it, I learned that rabbits go through seasonal taste changes – a vegetable that they leave alone one year is the first to be wiped out the next year. Slipping through the fence, the rabbits devoured basil, beet greens, carrot leaves (nibbled to the ground), blooming French filet beans, lettuce, radish leaves (it is a mystery to me how they can find those hairy, tough leaves tasty), spinach, pea seedlings, and Swiss chard. Tomatoes and eggplants, usually not rabbit fare, weren’t safe from them neither. They just bit off the tiny plants and spit them out.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to fight the rabbits with one ineffective remedy after another: hot pepper flakes, anti-rabbit spray with a nauseating smell, granulated fox urine, pieces of garden hose that were supposed to look like snakes, mint sprigs, cotton balls soaked in vinegar and tossed all over the garden, ammonia-soaked rugs hung over the fence, dangling CDs, flashing bike lights at night, dog hair, plastic cups filled with moth balls that had to carefully drained far from the garden after every rain…

After nothing worked, it was either putting up another fence, or giving up the garden. Last spring we reached deep into our pockets and put up a second fence of sturdy hard-wire cloth. Over several weeks my beloved undertook the backbreaking task of digging a trench around the entire garden and packing it with 2B modified gravel. But it still wasn’t enough to keep the rabbits out – they simply jumped over the new fence through the old fence and wrecked havoc. So we reached even deeper into our pockets and doubled the height of the fence. Finally it worked! We named it “Berlin Wall No. 2”. Except for the occasional toad I have spotted no living being without wings in the garden ever since.

Lately I noticed that something is devouring the new stems of the Charantais French breakfast melon, which is growing on trellises outside the fenced-in area.  I console myself with the thought that in a few weeks, I would have to prune out the abundant growth anyway so the rabbits are doing the job for me. What the rabbits don’t know: next year, I will plant everything behind the Iron Curtain.