Bake Your Beets

Beets are a great vegetable to grow at home. In addition to the color they add to your garden, beets are packed with potassium, antioxidants, and sweet, sweet flavor. Recently I wrote about using beet greens as a nutritious and colorful salad or soup supplement. Today I'll be writing about another recent discovery of mine - baked beets.

Until last year, I always boiled my beets, and I was left with a feeling that a lot of the nutrients must have been lost in the water because that's where a lot of the color went. To remedy that, I drank the water just in case my hypothesis was right. Also, my beets lost the deep purple color that I love, and turned a little whitish.

The solution? Bake the beets.

Baking your beets takes longer (about 45-60 minutes for two or three big beets), but you retain flavor, nutrients, and color, and you don't have to peel the beets beforehand. Those are all worth the extra time to me.

I've created an illustrated cooking guide for the visual learners out there, and for the linguistic learners, I'll also list the few easy steps for baking your beets.

1. Harvest your beets (or let your kids do it - it's loads of fun for them to pull stuff out of the ground) when the root is starting to show above ground. I use this rule of thumb for carrots, too.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

3. Wash the beets and remove the tiny ancillary roots.

4. Remove the greens.

5. Place the beets on a sheet of aluminum foil and drizzle with oil (I used olive).

5. Seal up the beets in the aluminum foil.

6. Bake for about 45-60 minutes. This is a great time to prepare your beet greens for a salad. Your beets will be done when you can cut through them easily with a fork.

7. Peel the skin off the beets. This can be done easily using your fingers.

Now your beets are ready for eating. If you want to use them in a salad, simply let them cool off first.

Beets are really fun to grow, and a tasty addition to your table.  Have a good time in the garden.  Happy harvesting.

Cheers!

Start a Garden

I started gardening three summers ago completely by chance.  I came home from work, and my father-in-law had placed several little plants around my backyard, including tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers.  Little did I know that I would get completely hooked on growing my own food. 

If you're going to start a garden, I have a few suggestions:

1.  Start with food you like.
2.  Start with plants that are easy to grow.
3.  Start small, and build on your success.

Start with food you like
You won't be interested in spending time watering, fertilizing, and observing the growth of your plants if you aren't excited about eating the results.  If you don't like vegetables or fruits at all, maybe try an herb garden.  Herbs are awesome for adding fresh flavors to soups, meats, and casseroles.  Personally, I like rosemary, parsley, and basil the best.  A little bit of these herbs goes a long way, and most herbs are beneficial for digestion and can help soothe an upset stomach.

Start with plants that are easy to grow
I still haven't successfully grown cilantro, and my dill always dies before I can use it.  I love growing
radishes, peas, and tomatoes, though. 

Radishes grow quickly, so you can celebrate a quick success while you wait for other plants to catch up.  If you have kids, radishes are a great way to introduce them to gardening because they grow quickly and can be harvested easily by your youngsters.  The leaves are also edible

To grow peas, you'll need some tall thin stakes or a trellice for the vines to climb, but it's worth this small additional purchase.  Peas help the soil by taking nitrogen in the air and fixing it in the ground.  This is useful if you grow tomatoes or corn in the same area, because these will take all the nutrients they can out of the soil.  Peas grow relatively quickly when it's warm enough, and you can get a real robust crop if you plant new peas every couple of weeks.  If you have kids, they'll love pulling the pea pods off of the vine, and you can have a sweet high fiber, high protein addition to your meal within minutes. 

Tomatoes are my favorite to grow.  You get a lot of bang for your buck with these plants, and cherry tomatoes are particularly gratifying because you get a lot of little fruits growing in clusters of usually 6-8.  They'll start of white, then turn green, and are ready to harvest when they're red.  My daughter loves to harvest them by just pulling them off the plant.  Then we wash and eat them right there within seconds.  I recommend harvesting these in the morning so they're still cool and more pleasant to snack on. 

Start small
I started with 4-5 plants, and this is probably a good number to max out with at first.  To achieve faster success, buy young plants from your local nursery or Home Depot.  If you want, save the seeds from some of these fruits and replant them next season.  Once you've had success, expand your garden to include a wider variety of plants.  In my second year of gardening, I really got into herbs, so I grew about the same number of veggie and fruit plants, but expanded by growing a variety of herbs. 

Other tips and considerations
If you don't have a spot that gets a lot of sun in your yard, then buy some pots that can be moved in to sunny areas.  Vegetable, fruit, and herb plants all need 6-8 hours of full sun to grow successfully.  If you're lucky, you'll have a south-facing wall in your back yard that gets a lot of sun year round.  If not, then buy some pots.   

If you're planting in the ground, buy some garden soil to mix in and add nutrients.  If you're planing in pots, use potting soil.  Potting soil holds on to the moisture longer, and soil in pots will dry out faster than soil in the ground.  For garden soil, I use Kellogg garden soil.  For potting soil, I'm using Miracle-Gro Moisture Control soil.  I get them from Home Depot, but you could compare costs with a local nursery to find the best value. 

I hope you enjoy growing your garden.  Don't overthink it.  Just get started and learn as you go. 

Cheers!