Using My Bounty of Homegrown Pumpkins

For our Thanksgiving Feast, I made a most wonderful Pumpkin Pie using my homegrown pumpkins. It was a big hit at both of our dinners! These pumpkins were volunteers this year. After removing the seeds and other "waste" from the pumpkins, I spread it on the garden bed destined for next year's Volunteer pumpkin patch. The seeds are covered with a layer of soil and mulched with straw. When the weather is right in the Spring, the process will begin again. I love the circular pattern of nature. When we allow it to, Nature provides all we need...
Here are the recipes for both the Coconut Almond Crust and the Coconut Pumpkin Pie Filling. Enjoy!

Coconut Almond Pie Crust

Makes 1 pie crust

3/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut
3/4 cup almond meal

~Dry mix coconut and almond meal together.

3 tablespoons butter

~Cut in the butter with a pastry blender.
~Press mixture into an 8 or 9-inch pie plate.
~Bake at 325*F (160*C) for 15 minutes or until golden.
~Allow to cool before adding filling.

Coconut Pumpkin Pie Filling

~Preheat oven to 425°F.


~Makes 1 pie. 

1 1/2-2 cups pumpkin puree
1 can  Coconut Milk

2 eggs beaten
1/4 cup sugar


1/2 tsp. salt


1 tsp. cinnamon


1/2 tsp. ground ginger


1/4 tsp. ground cloves

~In a large bowl, mix pumpkin puree, Coconut Milk 
and eggs.
~Add salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves and mix well.

~Pour mixture into unbaked regular pie shell or use Coconut Almond Pie Crust. YUM!
~Bake pie at 425°F for 15 minutes then reduce heat to 350°F and continue to bake for 30-40 minutes. Serve at room temperature.

Revisiting the Pearson Community Garden

This summer I checkout the the Pearson Community Garden. I had heard about it for years, but did not even know where it was.. knew it was on Pearson Drive.. but never found it... well I took a workshop there in August and was pleased and delighted to see what they were up to there!
Meander down Pearson Drive farther than you thought that it could possibly go until you are near the end of it.. and there on your left is the garden. It is like a well kept secret and the end of the road!

Rows and rows of all sorts of goodies. Tomatoes, pumpkins, herbs, greens and more. Interesting trellises and supports for plants, a hoop house, a lean-to greenhouse on the tool shed, and cob structures: a composting toilet and a bread oven.

The Pearson Community Garden is one of the gardens in the Bountiful Cities Project. Bountiful Cities Project is an amazing organization. Here is an excerpt from their website:

Our Mission

To create, on urban land, beautiful community spaces that produce food in abundance and foster a learning environment for social justice and sustainability.

Our Vision

The vision of Bountiful Cities Project is to enliven and empower self-reliance, cooperation, and a stronger sense of community through providing an opportunity
to grow, harvest and eat fresh, local produce. We envision community spaces that serve as models for sustainability through organic food production, water conservation, ecological building, community celebration, and cooperative economics.

This vision is becoming a reality at our two flagship gardens: a permaculture-based vegetable garden on Pearson Drive in Montford and the Dr. George Washington Carver Edible Park at Stevens Lee Community Center which is home to over 30 varieties of fruit trees and an under story of berries and medicinal herbs.

408 Pearson Drive, Asheville, NC

The Pearson Drive Garden is the Bountiful Cities Project's model garden. It is over an acre of land that produces edibles for the community. We grow a diverse selection of vegetables, including a wide range of greens and peas in the spring, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, and pumpkins in the summer. There is some vegetable production throughout the year, as we grow cold tolerant vegetables under row covers.In addition to the traditional garden vegetables, we grow wild greens, culinary and medicinal herbs, and some perennial vegetables, like the Jerusalem artichoke. Fruits grown at the Pearson Drive Garden include strawberries, raspberries, and apples.

When the Garden was first conceived, the garden beds were arranged in pie-shaped wedges around a central area devoted to medicinal herbs. In 2005, this circular layout was converted to a square layout with linear beds. The linear beds allow for a higher level of food production, and also make it easier for volunteer gardeners to move through the garden.

Community Gardens and organizations like the Bountiful Cities Project  are great ways for would-be gardeners to get started and learn from others in a safe and supportive manner. These gardens also offer gardeners a chance to see ideas at work. I am always inspired to see what other people are doing.
Winter is a great time to be thinking about what you want to do in your home garden, how you might re-organize beds to make them more efficient, what to plant, what seeds to get started, etc. Check out a community garden where you live and support organizations like Bountiful Cities Project, they are there to provide both a model for you and inspiration.

On Pondering the Lessons of Last Year's Garden

The seeds are coming, the seeds are coming! I love this time of year. It all starts with getting the catalogs....WOW! I requested SO many catalogs, I just could't help myself. Then the browsing through all those seed catalogs and the lists.. oh the lists.. what worked last year? and what do I want to add for this year? Where will I plant things? How will I rotate repeat crops from last season? It is quite a process and one that I really enjoy, an annual reflection time and a chance to start all over again. A gray day like today has me pondering the successes and lessons from last summer's garden. I like this chance to review the past and look forward to the future.
I ordered from Johnny's, Gurney's, Cook's Garden, Territorial, Burgess, and Wood Prairie. I think that almost everything that I have ordered is finally here except for the fruit trees and strawberries.
I decided that it was time to start my mini-orchard this year. So I'll be putting in three bush cherries, one 5-in-1 dwarf apple tree, and one "fruit cocktail" dwarf tree. The fruit cocktail tree has nectarines, peaches, plums, and apricots all one one tree... it seems a little weird to me but interesting.. so we will see how it does. Hard to imagine how cool it will look!

Last year I had SO many volunteer tomato plants from the year before that one of the things I decided to do this year is cut back on the number of tomato plants that I start. The volunteers were so productive and healthy that I want to leave room for them in the plan for this year. I have added a new variety or two and we'll just see. I also plan to plant the basil along with the tomatoes again as we did not see a single horn worm. I had read that basil would repel them.. and it seemed to work. I was amazed as I never in my life grew tomatoes that did not attract dozens of horn worms!
Look for more pondering in my next post.