Groceries, Garden and Dinner

Overdue garden pictures

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 22:35:00 +0000

Bed # 2 2011

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Thu, 19 May 2011 13:07:00 +0000

The kale are the big plants you can see.

Bed #2 still has some growing to do, but here is what I planted:

Row 1 (top row) Danvers Carrots, American Flag Leeks, Red Acre Cabbage, basil
Row 2 (top row) Danvers Carrots, American Flag Leeks, Red Acre Cabbage, parsnips and turnips
Row 3 (top row) Flyaway Carrots, American Flag Leeks, Red Acre Cabbage, Red Russian Kale
Row 4 (top row) Purple Dragon Carrots, American Flag Leeks, Red Acre Cabbage, parsnips and turnips
Row 5 (top row) Danvers Carrots, American Flag Leeks, Danish Ball Cabbage, Red Russian Kale
Row 6 (top row) Danvers Carrots, Evergreen Bunching Onion, Red Acre Cabbage, parsnips and turnips
Row 7 (top row) Scarlet Nantes Carrots, Evergreen Bunching Onion, Red Acre Cabbage, Red Russian Kale
Row 8 (top row) Scarlet Nantes Carrots, Evergreen Bunching Onion, Red Acre Cabbage, basil

Here are 3 turnips on the top and a short row of parsnips on the bottom. They will need to be thinned soon.

Pepper and eggplant varieties

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Wed, 18 May 2011 21:32:00 +0000

I have a single 32 sq ft bed for peppers and eggplants this year. Here is what I planted (today).

8 bell peppers (from a mix, so these might be green, purple, red, orange, yellow or white)
5 jalapenos
4 Fooled You (not spicy jalapenos)
3 Sweet Spot (banana type)
3 Sweet Banana
3 Golden Treasure
1 Poblano (wanted more, but that is all that germinated)
1 Rosa Bianca Eggplant
1 Black Beauty Eggplant
3 Pingtung Eggplant.

Hopefully they all do well squished in their 1 sq ft allotment :)

Tomatoes are planted!

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Wed, 18 May 2011 20:52:00 +0000

It seemed like the day would never come but I finally planted out my tomatoes today. I tried to plant a few extras our on May 9th, but the frost got them.

Here is the list of tomatoes that made the cut. Many of them are new to me :)

Black Cherry
Black Tula
Roma #1
Green Zebra
Yellow Brandywine
Red Cherry #1
Red Cherry #2
Tommy Toe
Ace 55
Beefsteak
Virginia Sweet
Togo
Rutgers
German Pink
Brandywine
Rocky
Roma #2
Roma #3

I might try and squeeze a few extras around the yard. Any bets as to which plant will give me the first ripe tomato? Are you growing any of these varieties?

Bed #1 2011

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Tue, 10 May 2011 09:36:00 +0000

I have eleven 8 ft x 4 ft raised beds. My guy gardens in one of them and I pretty much take care of the other ten. This doesn't include the tomato bed, the strawberry beds, the kids' beds and the random other places where we tuck edibles.

I thought I would list what I have planted in each over the next few days.

So in the same arrangement as the photo from top to bottom, left to right:

1)Rosemary, Diciccio broccoli, Waltham 29 Broccoli, Early Snowball Cauliflower
2)Jersey Wakefield Cabbage, Diciccio broccoli, Waltham 29 Broccoli, Long Island Brussel Sprout
3)Jersey Wakefield Cabbage,Waltham 29 Broccoli, Early Snowball Cauliflower
4)Jersey Wakefield Cabbage, Diciccio broccoli, Waltham 29 Broccoli, Long Island Brussel Sprout
5)Jersey Wakefield Cabbage,Waltham 29 Broccoli, Early Snowball Cauliflower
6)Jersey Wakefield Cabbage, Diciccio broccoli, Waltham 29 Broccoli, Long Island Brussel Sprout
7)Jersey Wakefield Cabbage,Waltham 29 Broccoli, Early Snowball Cauliflower
8)Jersey Wakefield Cabbage, Diciccio broccoli, Waltham 29 Broccoli, Long Island Brussel Sprout

There is also a bit of self sown lettuce popping up that I will let grow.

I will be adding the other nine beds as I find time.

Harvest Monday/dandelion jelly

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Mon, 09 May 2011 17:07:00 +0000

We have had quite a bit of lettuce from the cold frame, but our largest crop by far is...

Dandelions!!

I had three dandelion pickers to help.

We let the yellow tops steep for a few hours.

After straining, we ended up with a brownish liquid.

We added lemon juice, sugar, pectin and vanilla.

10 minutes in a water bath.

We ended up with 5 half pint jars of really pretty maple syrup colored jelly. The taste is reminiscent of honey (but a little more sour from the lemon juice.) I thought it was a little too sweet, but the kids love it!

Here is where we found the recipe.

See what everyone else is harvesting at Daphne's Dandelions

Sifting compost

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:21:00 +0000

I will be ready to plant out my tomatoes and peppers in the next few weeks so I asked my guy to sift me some compost to add to the planting holes.

Here is a sun chips bag from over a year ago:

Wordless Wednesday 5/4/11 edition

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Thu, 05 May 2011 01:18:00 +0000

Garden Update

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Mon, 02 May 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Our daffodil finally opened. It was worth the wait.

The tomato and pepper seedling are still looking good and are ready to get out of their pots and into the ground. They are also apparently being closely guarded by a caveman or Visigoth warrior or something which makes me feel quite good regarding their safety.

The cabbages and broccoli are looking good, but still pretty little.

So far I have harvested 59 ounces of greens and a couple asparagus. I figure this would have been worth around $20. You can see my tracking spreadsheet here by clicking on the "harvest total" tab.

To see what others are harvesting today, go to Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday

I planted a lot of edible bushes/trees yesterday. I have seen blossom buds on 2 Asian pears, 3 of our 6 apple trees, our Reliance Peach, a nectarine and our plum tree. I will be so excited if we actually get some fruit from our trees this year. I am also expecting fruit from our blackberries, raspberries, aronia and goumi.

Do you get a sizable harvest from any of your perennial plants, trees or bushes? Are you planting more this year?

Today I planted...

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Sun, 01 May 2011 21:21:00 +0000

2 hazelnut seedlings
2 pawpaw seedlings
6 tulips
2 daffodils
2 hyacinths
1 Invicta gooseberry
1 Hinnonmaki gooseberry
purple daylilies
annise hyssop
bee balm
rosemary

Is that all...it seemed like a lot more holes.

Consequences of Lawn Care Chemicals

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:57:00 +0000

Here are a few articles that bring to light the health consequences of applying herbicides and pesticides to our lawns and gardens. It is a health and environmental issue that demands more deliberate thought.

" A 1986 National Cancer Institute study found that farmers in Kansas exposed to 2,4-D for 20 or more days a year had a six-fold higher risk for developing non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Five years later, another National Cancer Institute study showed that dogs were twice as likely to contract lymphoma if their owners used 2,4-D on their lawns."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mckay-jenkins-phd/the-lawn-chemical-ritual_b_852215.html

"While birth defects were highest among babies whose parents were pesticide applicators, the general population of areas with high pesticide use also experienced increased rates of birth defects. "

http://toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/General+Health

"School-age children have lower IQs when their mother's are exposed to pesticides during pregnancy."
http://www.panna.org/blog/3-new-separate-studies-confirm-common-pesticides-harm-kids-cognition

Some information about organic lawn care:
http://www.richsoil.com/lawn-care.jsp

Garden fertilizer

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 20:53:00 +0000

My ultimate goal is to be able to produce enough compost to feed my garden without many additional inputs. Since we don't have any mature leaf producing trees or any manure producing animals, it just isn't happening yet.

I use this recipe:

Organic Fertilizer Recipe

Mix uniformly, in parts by volume:
4 parts seed meal*
1/4 part ordinary agricultural lime, best finely ground
1/4 part gypsum (or double the agricultural lime)
1/2 part dolomitic lime

Plus, for best results:
1 part bone meal, rock phosphate or high-phosphate guano
1/2 to 1 part kelp meal (or 1 part basalt dust)

I don't add it in near the quantities that it recommends because that would get expensive, but I do add our homemade compost as often as it is available. I usually sprinkle some on every month during the growing season and will add some to the planting holes of my tomatoes and peppers.

I found all the ingredients at the local farm store. For the seed meal, I will mix alfalfa, soy meal or corn gluten depending on what is available. I also added the bone meal and kelp meal (which is the expensive part).

I pretty much only add this to the raised beds where veggies are growing intensively. I don't fertilize my fruit trees, but I have comfrey growing near and I top-dress with compost occasionally.

So, do you add fertilizer (organic or otherwise) to your veggies? Do you make enough compost to make everything happy?

Weed and herb identification help needed

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 20:52:00 +0000

I am not always the most organized gardener and I sometimes end up with plants that I can't identify. Does anyone have any ideas on these four?

Some clues: The first one might be a weed of some sort. The last three were deliberately planted and I am guessing they came from an assortment of medicinal herbs that I don't know much about.

My guesses:
#2 Valerian?
#3 motherwort?

Bad weather organization

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:45:00 +0000

The weather has been super yucky here lately with daytime highs in the 30s and 40s and lots of wind and drizzly rain. I haven't had a chance to be out in my garden at all. I decided to stop pouting and get things organized.

In addition to purging the kids playroom and bookshelves, I attempted to organize my seeds in a binder with baseball card holders that I had lying around. The super big binder was found in a free bin a few years ago and is covered with a really gross faux suede from the 1980's.

I usually order 10 or so packs of seeds each season, but have been given some and will buy them on clearance when they are cheap, so I have a pretty nice collection.

In the past I have kept them in a disorganized box and ziplocs in the freezer.

Here is what I ended up with:

Note that I am also putting in the labels that I hope will last more than one season.

What do you think? I think I need more gardening friends to share my seeds with :)

I am going to try and make a better effort at saving seeds this year. Especially for easy things like tomatoes. I did save purple lettuce and daikon radish seeds last year which have both germinated already this year.

A demoralizing blow to team Spring Gardening

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 14:20:00 +0000

Pretty in Pink

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:32:00 +0000

Phlox:

Arctic Fantasy Nectarine:

I just planted this tree this year, so there is no hope for fruit, but isn't it pretty!

Spring is about to pop!

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:10:00 +0000

Everything around here looks like it is about to burst with Spring.

Blueberries:

Daffodils:

Methley Plum:

Shinsheiki Asian Pear

Holiday Apple

Reliance Peach:

Asparagus (I had to dig under the straw for these):

Goumi:

Highbush cranberry

Brand new Lapin Cherry (Anyone know if the leaves are supposed to be red like this?)

Aronia:

Medlar:

Hydrangea:

Peony:

Hostas:

I am taking these pictures so I can compare next year!

This counts for real!

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:30:00 +0000

It doesn't feel like the gardening season has really started until the first veggie seeds start coming up out of the ground (outside of the cold frame.)

Lettuce:

More lettuce:

Spinach:

Carrots:

Parsnips? ( I've never actually had these germinate before):

Peas:

More baby trees...

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:09:00 +0000

The order from Miller arrived on Monday and I hurried to dig my holes since the cherry tree was starting to leaf out.

I planted:

Lapin's Cherry
Pawpaw seedling (a pollinator for my existing Sunflower pawpaw)
3 more blueberries (Ivanhoe, Harold, and Atlanta)
Valentine rhubarb (which I accidentally broke in half thinking it was packing material. Oops. I planted both pieces in different spots... gonna have to cross my fingers on that move.

Harvest Tracking

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:05:00 +0000

I added a Harvest Tracking tab to my spreadsheet which can be viewed by clicking the the link on the right hand side. Look on the bottom of the spreadsheet for the harvest tab (as well as one listing our fruit trees, veggies and flowers).

I try to do this every year, but once tomatoes start producing, I forget all about it and I never get a clear picture of how much my garden produces. This year will be different (yeah, right!).

We are still only getting greens from the garden, but I think these things have some potential to be future "Harvest Monday" specimens:

Peas:

Tomato in Wall o Water experiment

Rhurbab:

Raspberries, just poking through:

To see what other are harvesting today, visit Daphne's Dandelions.

Hard work is fun!

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 20:19:00 +0000

New Herb Bed

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 01:19:00 +0000

I'll let the pictures do the talking here.

I'll post more pictures after it rains to settle things. I can't wait to start planting some herbs in there!

Coconut Oil--bright idea.

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:39:00 +0000

We are trying to move away from industrially produced super processed food oils such as canola, corn, and soybean. We do use olive oil, organic butter and coconut oil. I have ordered some grape seed oil to try as well.

One of the problems with coconut oil is that it is solid at room temperature which makes it hard to use I decided I was going to melt it and portion it out so I can add it to baked goods as needed.

I think it melts around 76 degrees...which isn't going to happen in our house until July or so.

I poured the melted oil into mini-muffin pans. Each well holds 2 tablespoons.

It looked kind of funky as it cooled:

I stuck it in the freezer to speed things up a bit. They popped out easily.

I will store them in the freezer so they don't turn into a pile of goo in July!

Harvest Monday

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:17:00 +0000

We got another great bunch (5.5 oz) of greens out of the coldframe yesterday: lettuce and spinach. I planted a bunch of lettuce and spinach outside the coldframe yesterday too. I hope last night's thunderstorm didn't wash the seeds away. We also dug out a bunch of Jerusalem artichokes that were pushing up the cinder blocks in the kids' garden.

Since I am not harvesting much yet, I thought I would list some of the things we were able to preserve last year that made it through the winter. I am trying to get better at preserving our homegrown foods, both by increasing my skill set and by making sure I schedule time to do it.

Here are a few of the foods we put up last year and what we are still eating.

diced tomatoes
frozen apple pieces (great for baked goods, we picked the apples for free)
applesauce and apple butter
butternut squash and pumpkins
frozen bell peppers (haven't found a good use for them)
frozen corn (froze 4 bushels over two days...might last until July)
dehydrated kale (I add this to soups for extra nutrition. It is almost gone, but kale will be growing soon.)
frozen zucchini (mostly gone...used in soups and zucchini muffins)
aronia syrup
crushed red pepper

Here is what we ran out of already

tomato sauce
strawberry jam
garlic-it got moldy
potatoes (gone by October)
frozen green beans

Head over to Daphne's to see what others are harvesting today

New baby fruit trees

noreply@blogger.com (ali) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 16:43:00 +0000

Last year I ordered some fruit trees from a less than reputable fruit tree company. They all arrived dead. They did offer to replace them and finally sent the replacements...in November...in Iowa. The ground was frozen already, so I couldn't plant them. I stuck them all in a bucket in the garage, watered them once in a while and hoped for the best. I was so surprised when the buds started swelling, so we planted them today. They even have tiny new roots. We are getting mulch later this week.

Compact Stella Cherry:

Tiny new roots:

Plumcot hybrid:

American Elderberries (3):

Concord grape:

We also planted an Arctic Fantasy Nectarine which may or may not survive the winters here. I forgot to take a photo of that one.

We dug up a bunch of Jerusalem artichoke tubers that we missed last year. If anyone locally wants a few tubers to plant, let me know. They are kind of invasive, so read up on them first so you know what you are getting into.

Here is a picture of my personal hole digger/brick mover/ lawn mower hard at work :) The bricks were lifted by the Jerusalem artichokes, so he had to re-lay them.