The quality of soil is of prime importance in growing a successful organic vegetable garden. Unfortunately, our Cretan garden has poor, heavy, tightly compacted clay soil. To improve it, we double dig it, amend it with lime, add animal manure, organic minerals and grow plants -like legumes- that add nutrients into it. Vegetables are rotated each year. This helps them resist pests and diseases.
Everyone knows how hard it is to grow organic -and clay soil makes it harder- totally worth it though. Moreover, the short duration of vegetable crop makes us creative cooks while it lasts.
This morning our garden provided those beauties you see below …
The peppers were beautiful to eat. I stuffed them with chopped tomato and onion, mint, barley bulgur and raisins. The filling was sprinkled with salt, ground black pepper and olive oil.
I placed them on a bed of tomato/olive oil/ chopped garlic sauce and baked them at 180 C for about 20 minutes.
I also made a salad of tiny tomato and purslane sprinkled with sea salt and coarsely ground pepper, then sprinkled with virgin olive oil and vinegar.
Although melon is full of strong aroma, the mouth watering and thirst quenching watermelon is perfect for this hot, hot summer day.
But you already know it…
And, of course, if you grow some lavender, the second better thing is lavender ice cream!
