Restart: Blogging

Well, I’ve had a nice break from the blog, and I think I’m feeling ready to start posting again.

I’m in a different place mentally than I was a month ago (or however long it’s been since I posted).  A better place.  Much better.

I moved forward over the past month in the post-relationship mental processing — a giant leap forward.  This was really necessary for me, even though it’s been over six months since I moved out – I’d gotten stuck in a place where I recognized that my thoughts and judgements and opinions had been forced into his mold, but I was in denial about how dramatic that was, and I couldn’t step out of the mold quite yet.  Especially since we were still spending lots of time together.  In fact we’d been spending more and more time together, and I’d begun to wonder if we might not have a chance at getting back together.  I initiated a conversation where I started clarifying some of the things that hadn’t worked for me during our time together, and it blossomed into a dialogue of crystal clear communication (VERY rare for us, that was one of my issues actually) which, while encouraging in and of itself, made it very clear we are NOT getting back together.  As soon as that conversation was over, like magic, I felt freed up.  Freed up from constraints I hadn’t even realized I was carrying.  I apparently have a HUGE tolerance for walking on eggshells to accommodate another person.  For taking their perspective and denying any other (even though I usually have a personal view that’s a conglomeration of several perspectives).  I’m not sure that’s a wholly bad trait, but I guess I’d gotten rather carried away with it.  Discarding it, now that it doesn’t serve me, felt really good!

Anyway, so here I am back.  When I first started the blog, I used it almost as a diary, just posting tidbits of what happened each day or every couple days.  I think I might like to go back to that, instead of feeling like every post has to be so SIGNIFICANT.

Unfortunately, my first diaric post is of a vegetative day in which I did nothing except water the garden, surf the web, and make a pseudo-omelet for lunch with eggs (local), avocado (not local) and bleu cheese (not local).  The garlic was not local either, although I do have some local garlic, but I’m using up the pound from the co-op first before I get to the local heads.  Oh, and I added in a half a jalapeno from my own garden too.  As I’ll describe another time, my garden this year was truly a bust – hardly anything grew.  But there are bits and pieces that grew, and three jalapenos is three more than none.   Then tonight I made a salad from store-bought greens and tomatoes, and feta, and another avocado, and some other non-local stuff, but some of my own chard went in, plus slices of a local leek.

Yes, Deer, No, Deer, Whatever You Say, Deer…

We’ll see how well my garden fence actually keeps out deer once there is something  in the garden that the deer might like.  So far there isn’t much in the garden that is more than an inch high, except for a tomato plant I got from a friend, a few pepper plants, and some potatoes that have sprouted.  More will grow or be planted shortly.

Anyway, here are the photos I’ve been promising of my deer fence.  I had the wooden pickets and wanted to use them just because I already had them.  But they are only about three feet high, and a garden generally needs an 8′ fence to be confident of keeping deer out.  Here’s how I compensated and made do.  Click on any photo to make it bigger.

One technique I used was to take advantage of some terracing of the yard.  The terrace is only about three feet high, but with the shrubbery above it and then a three-foot-plus fence above that, I think it will deter the deer quite effectively along that side:

Then, from the other direction, this is how I tackled the challenge:

You might not be able to see the details in that photo, so here is a better closeup:

I used branches from pruning the fruit trees to extend the posts higher.  Then I strung some thick orange twine across at a couple of intervals, then hung some lengths of twine vertically to create the illusion that the area is “occupied” by a fence.  From what I hear, this will work on deer even though there are gaps that might be big enough for a deer to jump through.  For good measure, I hung some garbage cds to provide shiny movement and distraction.

Two other views from inside the garden area, looking out over the terraced part:

 

Here’s my favorite piece: part fence, part art.  This is a giant metal door hinge that R and I found at the dump.  It’s got a kind of medieval look to it, with the horizontal straps that extend all the way across the door.  I didn’t get to take it when we split up, but when I told him I had a use for it as a garden gate, he was kind enough to lend it to me on a long-term basis.  I searched the junkyard for a lightweight interior door or screen to put in it, but found nothing suitable.  (Not to mention that any solid door would have taken to the air with the first good wind gust).  Finally I had an absolute brainstorm about what to put inside the hinge:

One of the things I like about the fence is the extent to which it’s cobbled together from stuff I already had or stuff I found.  The white and brown pickets were all originally bought by me, but years ago for use at earlier homes.  They were used as garden fence at R’s in a clever double-height scheme.  The green pickets in the hinge were in place at the house I bought in 1996, but when I had a better fence built there, the pickets became part of my “stuff” that moved around with me.  Some of the fenceposts were here on this property and I just relocated them.  Others I bought new, and I might have brought a few from R’s.  The branches, as I mentioned, were pruned off fruit trees here on the property.  The orange twine was here on the property — a giant roll of it, sitting on the scrap lumber pile.  Even the cds were repurposed — they come to the library where I work, one every month or two, and we use them to update the electronic card catalog.  Once we’ve used them for the update, they’re trash — except that I’ve been saving them for months now, in anticipation of this use.  And although I’m not showing off the garden itself yet, until I’ve removed some weeds and until things are growing a bit more, I will point out that the walkways you see in a few of the photos are made from cedar planks that were left over from that fancy fence I mentioned that I had built at another house.  The cedar plank boards came in 6′ lengths, but for much of that project we could only have a 4′ high fence (building permit laws — back fence may be 6′ high, front and side yard fences can’t be more than 4′ — sheesh).  Anyway, I saved all those 2′ lengths of cedar planking, through three moves now, and finally have found a use for them as garden walkways and weed suppressors.

So, overall, ten fenceposts was all that I bought new for this project.  Oh, plus some bolts and nuts for attaching the door to the giant hinge, and the hinge to a fencepost.  Not bad!  As long as it works, that is, and the deer decide to admire it from afar only. 

To make the garden also rabbitproof, I have some chicken wire I will staple along the pickets.  That part of the project is coming up pretty soon.

 

I Made Ends Meet!!

No, I’m not talking finances, although with this new part time job, I’m finally making more than I’m spending for the the first time in about four years…

No, I’m talking garden fence!  I finally completed the perimeter — the ends have met!

Of course, there is still much to do — latches, vertical extensions, chicken wire, etc.  But all the major pieces are in place!  Photos to come soon.  This is a funky “with whatever I could find laying around” kind of fence.  But I think it will succeed in keeping deer out, as well as rabbits (and of course dogs).  I’m not so sure the ground squirrels won’t be able to make their way in, though, and I might have to react if they turn out to be destructive.  But — woo hoo!  The ends have met!

Independence Days Challenge Results 6/6/08

Planted this week:  Pumpkin, carrots.  (Still working on the deer fence, so I’m not planting my starts yet, but seeds are ok because the fence will be ready before the seeds sprout.)

Transplanted this week:  Peas — the peas I’d planted in a pot were 6-7″ tall and very healthy looking.  I put them in the ground.  Last I checked (yesterday) it was still unknown whether they would survive — they weren’t looking good, but were still alive 2-3 days after being transplanted.  Maybe digging a pot-sized hole and plopping the whole soil mass into one spot might have worked better — instead, I planted each sprout in a row next to the others, which meant a bit more handling of each sprout than perhaps they liked.  There really was no need to plant peas in a pot indoors, it was just an experiment to see how they did as compared to the ones outdoors.

Harvested:  Nothing

Preserved:  Two more onions in the outdoor dehydrator.

Stored:  Nope.

Managed:  Finally went to pull the last remaining root cellared carrots from the sand bucket, and it was too late.  There were only two small ones and two others that were honestly hair-like in size, and the tiny ones had molded and the small ones were very close.  I decided they were all post-consumer, so into the compost they went.  The only root cellared produce left from last year now is jerusalem artichokes, and I haven’t dug through the bucket sand to check on them, because I don’t really like them that much, and I don’t plan to grow them here.  Though, I just had an idea — maybe I’ll plant a row of them, about 5 feet outside the garden fence.  If the deer and ground squirrels don’t eat them immediately, they’ll grow some nice tall stalks which can function like a second fence!  Ah, well, can’t hurt, eh?

Prepped:  When I went to the “junkyard” shop in the County Seat to buy a used washing machine on Monday, I noticed some unopened boxes of canning jars, and a stack of several mini bread pans.  I was in a hurry that day, but when I returned to town on Thursday, I went back to check.  The boxes of jars were still there, and three of the bread pans.  I bought them — one case of widemouth quart jars, one case of pint jars, one case of half-pint jars, one case of mini (4 ounce) jelly jars.  All unused (though old and dusty).  All with lids.  All for $25.  Including three mini bread pans.  I didn’t know the going price in the stores for this stuff, and the junk place told me they try to sell them for half the new price.  Even if I paid a little more than half, that’s okay.  Even though this area is not full of peak-oil-aware people, lots of people here cherish their “old fashioned” skills like canning, so I reasoned to myself that it would be unlikely to find this stash at a yard sale (though I really don’t know, and will continue to keep my eyes open for more).  I’m not a canner, and don’t have immediate plans to learn, but I recognize good tools and supplies for the future — whether because I will eventually want to learn the skill, or whether so I can barter with those who do can, doesn’t really matter.  Now I have the beginnings of a canning stash!

More prep:  Nearly done with the garden fence!

Advocated for local [food] economy:  Nothing particular this week, though still had some conversations about the upcoming farmer’s market

Cooked something new:  I retried millet for breakfast, and it worked this time!  I had definitely undercooked it the other time.  I drizzled a little olive oil on it, as recommended by something I read, and had some for breakfast.  It didn’t taste bad, but wasn’t very appealing to me.  I made myself eat about half of a big portion, then put the rest in the fridge.  An hour or so later I was hungry, so I tried again — put some soymilk on the rest of it, rather like one might for oatmeal.  Somehow, that made all the difference to me (I’m very texture and temperature oriented when it comes to food) and I snarfed up the rest!  The only downside is having to plan ahead to soak it overnight.  I didn’t notice much of a milky or oily coating that came off during soaking, so someday I might try cooking it without soaking it, to see if it’s really as bitter as what I heard.

More cooking something new:  I made garlic bread for a potluck at the next door neighbors’ tonight.  About the simplest thing in the world — butter, garlic, bread, oven — but I’d never made it before!

Variation on cooking something new — EATING something new:  I don’t believe I’ve ever had rhubarb before.  So recently during lunch at the wi-fi cafe, I saw they had some rhubarb tart, and I had a piece.  Yum!  Now the next step will be to buy some stalks and cook something with them.  I do have the sprouts growing, but they will not produce stalks this first year, I don’t think.

Learn a new skill — Other than the new cooking, let’s see — I got pretty creative in my fence construction this week, and it seems to be working well (though no real test until there are garden yummies growing inside, and I see whether the deer get in or not).  By the way, since I’m on the topic of keeping the deer out of the garden, it’s time to talk pee  :)  I’ve switched from using a large bucket to using a small coffee can, for collecting urine.  Pretty much every day I take the can outside and empty it.  I had been emptying it onto the compost, but I realized that I produce a lot more pee than I do the other components of compost, so I think I was overdoing it!  Just when I was at a loss as to make good use of that resource, and was about to return to flushing it away most of the time, a friend mentioned that the scent of human urine was a moderately good way to repel deer.  Not as good as the scent of mountain lion urine, but…  :)  Since this is good mountain lion habitat, I definitely don’t want to lure one unnecessarily by offering their own scent!  But I have been using my own, poured on the ground around the outside perimeter of the garden fence.  Again, no way to measure success until there is something inside to tempt the deer, so we’ll see.

Update on last week’s skill:  the beans I’m trying to sprout have one or two sprouts, but most beans aren’t sprouting.  Remember these are really old beans.  I’ll give it another several days to see what happens before abandoning them and restarting with fresh beans.

Reduced waste:  I’ve been remembering my cloth bags at the grocery store lately.  Carried my water bottle to a BBQ Thursday night and again to a speech/dinner Friday night.  I even remembered to decline the straw BEFORE I’d opened its little package, when I had iced tea in a restaurant in town Thursday.

Who Knew? The Lemon Balm Was Listening…

The day after I posted a “come in” call for the Lemon Balm, it sprouted!  Two little dabs of green rose up overnight.  No such luck with the Ground Cherry — maybe it needs a second pleading here?  Come on,  baby, you can do it!  And let’s hear from some of the other plants that have only sprouted ONE sprout…

Thursday’s Independence Days Challenge actions:

* Growing Food:  I dug *part* of a garden bed, pruned *part* of an apple tree, and *started* to set up a compost pile.  I don’t really want to count things that I only partway do, especially since I have a history of starting what I don’t finish.  But I do want to report the progress.

* Food planning/Eating from storage:  Soaking some *really old* red beans that I’m finally using up.  They’ll go in the crockpot Friday and be dinner, with some rice.

* Eating from storage:  Thursday’s dinner, along with a salad, was baked potatoes and roasted beets, both grown in last year’s garden and root cellared ’til now.  (Hey, if they’re both in the same oven, how can one be baked and the other be roasted?  I guess they’re baked beets then…)

In other news, I’ve taken the next step towards a new part-time summer job that looks like it will see me once again earning more than I’m spending, at least for a few months.  It also has the potential to turn into a full-time job with benefits, etc after the summer, but I’m not sure I want that, so I’m not focusing on that for now — first, I’ll just see how the summer goes and see how I feel about any other opportunities later.  More details once it’s official.

At home, I’ve unpacked a few more boxes, moved around a little more furniture.   A little at a time, pressing myself to keep making small progresses, seems to work best for me, rather than planning an all-out long slog of a day, which I usually end up slothing and not doing.  You could say it’s the same kind of mentality needed for the Independence Days Challenge, which is why I’m hoping that challenge will be a good one for me to participate in.

Good news…

… I found toilet paper growing in the yard!

It’s a bit hard to see in the photo, even after I cleared out some of the dried leaves clinging to it. Here’s a closeup:

That IS lamb’s ears, isn’t it?

:)

Growing Challenge — 3 Steps Forward and 1 Step Back

Three steps forward:  three of my indoor pots have produced seedlings so far:  turnips, mesclun salad mix, and brussels sprouts.  (I guess that means I have a brussels sprout – er, sprout?  :)  I haven’t grown mesclun mix before, so I guess that counts as another Growing Challenge item, though I hadn’t decided to plant it at the time I listed my inclusions.  I’ve grown brussel sprouts before, years ago, and I assume I started them from seed, but I really don’t remember.   Even though it was about 80*F here today, it’s supposed to get cold again in a few days, so I’m glad I’m starting all these guys indoors.  Within a week or two, though, I’ll have to put the turnips in the ground, as they’ll get too big for their pot.  But they’re hardy, so I have hopes that they’ll be ok.  As I mentioned before, I’ll plant some seeds straight in the ground at that time.

Now for the step back:  when I got home this afternoon, I checked in on the kitchen windowsill to see if anyone new had sprouted, and I saw that one of my containers was upside down on the counter and in the sink!  Potting soil everywhere!  Oh no!  It was the container with the dipper gourd seeds.  I think the cat must have been climbing up around there and stepped on the container, which extended out just a bit off the sill, due to the window being open to let a little fresh air in, so…  Darn!  I put all the soil back in the container.  I didn’t see any half-sprouted seeds, either.  I saw one or two seeds that still looked like seeds.  Hopefully they will still sprout ok.  Keeping the cat off the counter is another story though…  I’m pretty sure he was chasing flies — yesterday when it was so nice, I opened up two doors and a screenless window and just kept them open all day, to air out the house on such a nice day!  I hoped the flies etc would fly in and then just fly right on out.  Erm, it didn’t quite work — the house was FULL of flies and mosquitoes!  I’ve been snapping towels at them, catching them in jars to put outside, encouraging the dog and the cat to think of them as toys, anything!  Haven’t noticed any more mosquitoes today, I might have gotten all those, but there’s still lots of flies I haven’t vanquished.  I’d bet anything the flies were hovering in that kitchen window and Bear the cat was ‘only trying to help’ when he stepped on the potted gourd seeds.

OK, I’m over it now.

Exciting Happenings Around These Parts

The owner of the local cafe posted a sign much like this one a few weeks ago.  This photo is for the second meeting, happening Tuesday evening.  She’s started a new business across the street from the cafe, a commercial kitchen with all the accoutrements.  Her idea, which was discussed with high enthusiasm by 15-20 people at the first meeting, is to create a local food “brand”, by combining local growers with local “processors”, the latter being people with recipes and products they are interested in producing commercially.  In other words, if someone wants to produce, say, apple butter, or jarred pasta sauce, they coordinate with the local growers to get the right variety of tomatoes, apples, etc.  After buying their ingredients (mostly local as possible), they make their product in her commercial kitchen, which has all the certifications and equipment needed to be legal.  UC Davis will provide us nutritional analyses of recipes submitted.  Items produced in this way will be eligible for the local brand label, and hopefully the local markets will be interested in carrying these products.  Of course they could also be sold at the Farmer’s Market (for which, in a parallel project also coming out of the cafe, there are plans to hold a second Farmer’s Market each week, the new one being in the middle of town and held on Saturday mornings, so that tourists and 40-hour-a-week-ers will be able to attend — the current Farmer’s Market, which will also continue, is held on the hospital lawn, which is *not* in the middle of town — even if it’s only a quarter-mile away — and it’s held at 3:00 on Friday afternoons, and is usually done by 3:30.  Not too convenient unless you happen to be right there).

I was wary that the first meeting, which was attended by much of the gardening crowd, would produce lots of growers but no processors.  However, when asked to show hands, there were a good 8-10 people expressing interest in producing a product.  Many were also growers.

My role in this project is likely to be grower only, unless I discover something I really want to make as a finished item.  And, since I’m in a new place and don’t know the details of how the garden will do this first year, I’m pretty tentative in what I can offer anyway.  I’m more likely to bring whatever does well in my garden to the farmer’s market.  Committing to provide X pounds of tomatoes or potatoes or whatever, will have to wait at least one growing season, as I learn what grows well in my location/soil/water.  On the other hand, there are a dozen mature fruit trees in my yard, starting to bud out as I type.  I know most are apple, I know there’s at least one apricot, and I suspect at least one peach and one pear.  Soon as I can figure out what varieties they are, I can make at least a tentative offer to provide some of the harvest for any processor who needs those ingredients.

My other role in this project is that the lower fields at my house will be used by my friend KH, who plans for large garden beds.  Her aim is to provide produce for the cafe directly, plus for the farmer’s market, but it certainly includes providing ingredients for the processors.

There are so many things that might possibly go wrong, both in my yard and with this project in general, but I am so excited to see it being discussed and tried!  I think this is just the kind of conversation we need to be having now, so that when/if a time comes, next year or in several years, when this valley returns to being dependent on its local growers for most of its food, we’ll not be starting from zero coordination at that time.

Also, Growing Challenge update:  I started a few seeds from each of my items yesterday.  They’re on the kitchen windowsill, in the plastic tubs that I buy organic salad greens in from the market.  (Of course, once I’m growing my own salad greens, I’ll have to get my indoor starter containers elsewhere :)  There are lots of other garden items I want to try starting from seed too, but other than some catnip, I haven’t planted those seeds yet.

Growing Challenge — my selections

Okay, I’ve mentioned earlier that I’m participating in Melinda’s “Growing Challenge” for the upcoming garden season.  The rules of the Challenge are to grow at least one new thing in your garden this year, that you haven’t grown before, and to grow it from seed.  And, to report at least weekly, either to her or on a blog, about the experience.

So this week I’ve selected which items I’m going to grow for the Challenge.  Melinda started the challenge months ago so that people would have time to think/decide before buying their seeds.  Well, I went about it a little backwards — I bought my seeds months ago, as a hedge against the fast arrival of troubled times.  It just seemed like a good idea to have a good supply of open-pollinated seeds, so I placed my orders from Seeds of Change and Baker Creek back in November or December.  Of course, I figured that if my paranoia didn’t come to fruition, I could always make more seed purchases come spring.  But since I was ordering, I went ahead and ordered quite a bit.

So once I decided, just recently, to participate in the Challenge, I went through my stack of seed packets and pulled out any packets I had that were for items I hadn’t already grown before.  Then I mulled these over and decided which ones to use for the Challenge.  I realized as I perused, that I’ve grown lots of things before, but not very successfully!  So I still have lots to learn, lots to try.  But for the purposes of the Challenge, anything I’ve grown before won’t be officially part of the Challenge.

Okay, so here are my choices for the 2008 garden:

Sweet Banana Peppers (I’ve grown — barely — bell peppers before, but I maintain that banana peppers are different!) — I have some Ferry Morse seeds (last minute grab from the local grocery)

Turnips — Purple Top White Globe from Ferry Morse (ditto)

Lemon Balm

Honeydew Melon (Afghan Honeydew)

Ground Cherry

Rhubarb (Victoria Rhubarb)

and, the one I’m most excited about:

Dipper Gourd.

Now, I haven’t done detailed research about which of these items are best suited to my bioregional climate conditions or to my microclimate yard.  But I don’t care.  I have a friend not too far from here who grows bamboo in her yard, even though the zone charts say that would never happen.  She just tried it in a variety of microclimates until she found three places where it survived.

I’m going to further experiment by starting a few seeds of each of these things now, and then when it’s ground planting time, in addition to putting my starts in the ground I will attempt to sprout them from seed directly into the garden at that time. 

This will be fun!

Eating From The Garden…

At R’s, I grew jerusalem artichokes in the garden.  I first grew them the year before last when a neighbor brought us some to try.  They grew fine, but never having eaten them before, I wasn’t sure how to use them.  So, I let them overwinter in the ground, finally harvesting them in spring as I was preparing the garden for the new growing season.  Immediately after harvesting, a last-minute week-long trip came up.  When we returned from the trip the ‘chokes had gone bad (even in the cool of the root cellar — I’d read that they don’t store well and they apparently don’t).  So I composted them, the same way we composted everything else at R’s — by burying them in a fallow garden bed.  Of course, that just meant that, later that spring, not only did some hidden unharvested ‘chokes sprout from the original garden bed, but the composted ones sprouted as well!  Double the yield!

Last week when I was at R’s getting another load of stuff from my storage shed, he gave me a plastic bucket with the ’chokes he’d just harvested, stored in sand.  I knew I should not expect them to last long, even stored in the sand like that.  So tonight, I tried a recipe I’d been meaning to for a while, one that had been mentioned last fall on the HealthyCheapCooking group.  Turned out yummy!

 Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

1 lb Jerusalem artichokes
1 tsp Lemon juice
1 md Onion, chopped
1 Tbs Olive oil
3 cups chicken broth
Salt and pepper
1 cup milk (or soymilk)
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted

Peel the artichokes. Cut them in half. Rub the cut halves with lemon juice and set side.

Chop the onion. Heat the olive oil. Add the artichokes and saute them, along with the onion, for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add the stock, salt and pepper. Bring the stock to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. When cooked, remove from heat and let cool.

Place soup in a blender in batches and puree until smooth. Return to a clean pot, add the soy milk and bring back to a boil. Serve in bowls, garnished with walnuts.
Makes 4 servings.

I doubled the recipe (though I didn’t realize until typing this that I forgot to double the stock part — I only used 3 cups, so the soup would have turned out somewhat thinner if I’d paid attention and doubled *all* the ingredients).  I estimated two pounds of artichokes:

After peeling and dunking in lemon juice:

End result:

Not sure why it looks almost pink in that photo — in actuality the soup was slightly green-tinged, almost like split pea soup.  Mostly a light brown caramel color, with that light greenish tinge.

I hadn’t especially liked the smells while it was cooking, so I was afraid I was going to dislike the taste of the soup.  But no fear, it was yummy!  It tasted very much like potato soup, with only the slightest of difference to my tongue.  The walnuts added a perfect flavor and bitterness (even though I used untoasted walnuts — I’ve not toasted walnuts before, and wasn’t sure if it was just as simple as putting them in the oven for a bit, but even if it *WAS* that simple, I wasn’t going to turn on the oven just for that).

I had one *big* bowl of the soup for dinner, with some good french bread and a salad.  And the leftover soup is enough only for a smaller bowl than what I had tonight.  So even with a bulked up recipe I still only got two hefty servings.  Maybe next time I’ll make 4x the recipe instead!

While I liked this enough that I will probably make it again, it *was* a lot of work.  I’m not really sure the ‘chokes needed to be peeled and dunked in lemon juice — that might have been just so the blended soup had a paler color — just like when potato recipes tell you to peel them, but it’s not really necessary and besides, the peel is good for you.  Certainly it would have been a *much* easier process to just scrub the chokes clean and perhaps slice off the rootlets.  But when I cook something for the very first time I tend to follow all the rules, just in case it really matters.  But I think for next time I might leave them unpeeled.  The blending and switching bowls was a  minor hassle — mainly the idea of getting two pots dirty was unappealing — but if I don’t mind a less homogenously-blended soup, I don’t see why you couldn’t blend and return each batch to the original bowl…

 Anyway, success in eating from the garden!