I seriously love Adirondack chairs. I have this recurring daydream where I buy a pair of them and paint them a bright, happy yellow. Then I plop them down in a sunny spot in the lawn, turn off my phone, close my laptop, and read a mystery novel all afternoon.

Unfortunately, buying Adirondack chairs is not in our budget right now. But reclaiming pallets and building these adorable chairs totally is! You can download plans for making this chair and a matching bench from studiomama–Nina Tolstrup’s London-based design studio–for £10.00 (about $16). There’s plenty of time between now and spring to build them. And while you’re at it, you could also put together a custom pallet potting bench.

In this episode of Grow. Cook. Eat., Jon and I make a fresh garden salad with our favorite salad add-on: baked chevre toasts. I also demonstrate my method for sowing tiny salad green seeds and how to harvest lettuce. We filmed this episode in early summer, but there is still time to get some lettuce seed and lettuce starts into the garden, especially if you give the greens a little extra love and construct a hoop house over them.

I am not normally a huge fan of garden gadgets, especially plastic ones, but I am intrigued by FIGO connectors. Basically they allow you to quickly snap bamboo poles together in almost any configuration, no twine required.

Each FIGO has three or four plastic sleeves that snugly hold the bamboo poles in place. The sleeves are flexible, so you can orient the bamboo however you like. I especially like the idea of being able to easily protect newly sown seed and little seedlings by building a quick bird netting box over the bed.

FIGO connectors were developed in England, but Lee Valley Tools sells them in their online catalog as “cane connectors” for $2.40 a piece.

If you listen closely, a collective sigh can be heard from gardeners around the West Coast. We had a royally bad summer. It was cold. It was cloudy. It was horrible tomato weather.

In the spirit of looking on the bright side, I’d like to think that this crummy season gives us the opportunity to try some new green tomato recipes. I asked for your ideas and you guys really came through, submitting recipes for everything from chutney, to sweet and savory pies, to green tomato jam, to fried tomatoes and “unfried” tomatoes.

So don’t throw all those rock hard tomatoes in the compost pile. Pick them and get creative. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find a recipe you love so much, you won’t miss ripe tomatoes. Thanks to everyone who submitted both their own recipes and published recipes. Let the cooking begin!

Celina loves the Squash, Bean and Cheese Enchiladas With Green Tomato Sauce from the Oregonian newspaper.

Sonia makes green tomato pickles with this recipe, but she substitutes green tomatoes for the cucumbers.

Monika likes this Green Tomato and Red Onion Relish recipe so much that she doesn’t even buy or make regular relish anymore.

Jessica recommends sauteing chopped green tomatoes with radishes and balsamic dressing and using the mix as a salad topping.

Sandy pointed out that the Ball Blue Book of Canning has a salsa verde recipe that calls for green tomatoes rather than tomatillos.

Flower thought that Green Tomato and Corn Salsa sounds good, and I totally agree. Probably because anything salsa related piques my interest.

This recipes sounds like a good excuse to make a batch of corn bread—Nicole has tried making Green Tomato Soup with Country Ham and reports that it is good, but she doesn’t blend it because she likes a chunkier consistency.

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This summer Jon and I filmed ten episodes of an online garden to table cooking show for eHow.com. The series is called Grow. Cook. Eat. and each episode focuses on how to grow and cook a single vegetable. The series was so much fun to make! We worked with great video and production teams and we are so excited that we got to make videos about what we love most: cooking from the garden. This first episode stars our hens, Inky, Clyde, Bumble and Boo Boo, and Jon and I demonstrate how to make one of our favorite breakfasts: creamy scrambled eggs with thyme. I’ll be posting a couple episodes each week for the next month or so and I hope you enjoy them.

Apartment Therapy is hosting Design Showcase 2010, a contest where independent designers can submit their designs for AT readers to vote on. I am really loving Lesli Ott’s ClearlyHerban Garden. The clear rectangular container mounts to a wall, swivels 360 degrees, and can be removed from the arm for easy watering and harvesting. The coolest part is the container is customizable—there are narrow opening along each edge  that allow you to slide in a piece of art or panoramic picture. How cool is that?

Ott came up with the idea because her cat was constantly eating the plants in her small apartment. This design allows her to grow herbs out of reach. Even though I don’t have a cat, I’d love to have this mounted next to my kitchen window! To vote for Lesli’s design, click here.

My garden is full of tomatoes right now. The only problem is they are almost all green. And it is September 3rd. The forecast for the next few weeks isn’t exactly calling for sunshine and rainbows. Nope. It predicts rain and unseasonably cool temperatures, which does not bode well for my tomatoes ripening.

So I’ve decided to turn to you guys for help. I desperately need some ideas for using my green tomatoes. Please send me your recipes for fried green tomatoes, green tomato pickles, chutneys, and chow chow. I’ll gather up all the green tomato recipe goodness and put them in one big mammoth post, because I have a sneaking suspicion that I am not the only person with a green tomato glut this year!