Home Grown

I had the utmost satisfaction tonight making dinner. Most of the things I prepared were from my garden. It hasn't been the greatest this year, in comparisons to other years, but I do have one, and I made roasted beets with carrots and garlic (all from my garden), pasta with pesto (the basil and garlic were homegrown), and quinoa tabbuloeh with cucumbers from my garden and tomatoes from my neighbors garden, filled me with such glee.

I harvested some onions and squash also, but didn't use them tonight. The squash is from seeds I saved from last year. Despite the fact the resulting vegetable looks somewhat alien, I think it will taste alright. I have tomatoes, but they have not ripened yet. I also have eggplant, well I did have eggplant, but some squirrel or ground hog grabbed the two golf sized fruit right off the stalk.

I just love having really local, fresh produce, that came from my own back yard. It is so satisfying that I can grow something, harvest it, and prepare it for my family. I feel as if I am honoring my roots as this is what my ancestors would have done every night. What a great feeling.

Contest

The other day I was talked into entering a garden contest. The judging is going to be in July and I am all excited. I usually don't think my garden is much of anything. It pleases me and yes, sometimes I blog about it but entering a contest is usually nothing I would think about. I don't think it is really that good. 

It took the picture below the other day before the I spoke to the person.  I showed it to the person who was asking me to enter. She apparent thought is was good enough and said I should enter. Now I am all worried about what needs to be done. There is a lot on my mind and. I have been going through it slowly. I also ordered some plants online and hope they are situated enough when the time comes. It is two months after all.

I have also enlisted the help of my husband, which actually helps because he always needs a kick in the pants to finish anything. He has been working steadily on the rain barrel collection system since this weekend so maybe that's helping. I think it will be finished soon. So wish me luck!

My Winter Garden

Over the weekend I started my first piece of yard work for the season. We had a tree fall just before winter hit and had not had the chance to stack the wood better.  I love this time of year when you can see the new plants poking their heads above the sol to make an appearance for the new season. It is so exciting to push aside some brown dead leaf and se something green. It makes you aware of the circle of life.

After working for about two hours I then sat back and surveyed the property. There are a few things that I definately want to get, plant-wise as well as otherwise. I would like to get a piece of sculpture for the new tranquility garden, and of course this year I will be needing to lay down the flat stones and get to planting the creeping thyme or other fragrant plant between them. 

I am getting very excited for the start of planting season. I do have some things started in my little basement greenhouse with the grow lights. I swear the neighbors must think there is some funny business going on down there. But there really isn't unless eggplant and veggies are illegal. Spring is here even though snow happened yesterday.

2014 Garden Started!

Started my garden today.  I am using my little greenhouse that I purchased a few years back (this picture is from back then).  The gardening app told me that it was time to start the celery.  I also started some lettuce, parsley, basil, kale, and spinach so that I could have those on hand for salads growing inside.  I really should have started them earlier, so that I would have the stuff to eat, but I didn't think of it.

Gardening is such a great way to help with gratification, sustainability, and satisfaction. It is also a way to help get rid of the winter blues when the weather is so horrible so much of the time.  By growing things inside, you have something that takes a little of your attention and know that spring is coming soon and there will be a time for you to get the outside gardening started.

I am really psyched this year for some reason.  I have my garden fence up, the beds are waiting there for me, and I have big plans for the outside.  Starting these little seedlings inside means that those plans are just a little closer to becoming a reality. As one of the people I follow on YouTube says: keep on growing!

 

Destruction

I used to think squirrels were cute.  However, these ears of corn that are pictured, are the only ears of corn that I got this summer.  Why?  I had planted several rows of corn back in cold March and some more in April - which the malicious little rats with bushy tails quickly attacked and dug up.  The plants got nice and tall but one by one they disappeared at the hands of those nasty creatures in my yard. For a while, the corn bed had a fence around it, but part of the fence was a cast off metal one and my husband noted that the squirrels could sit on the top and munch as the ears were at that level.  So we took the fence down.  Bad mistake. The next day - after I picked these four - the rest of the bed was destroyed.

Most of my gardening life is centered around trying to fend of various animals who are intent on devouring my food.  I throw out scraps plenty of times but I suppose they are not enamored of those even though the food quickly disappears.  No, if they can get into my garden, they love to nibble most anything that I have planted.  I did resort to shrouding my fruiting bushes with netting to protect the berries from the birds, and my vegetable garden is surrounded by construction fencing that is stapled to wooden stakes around the beds so that the groundhogs won't get in under the fence. But this year's corn was kind of open until we put the makeshift fencing up. Next year we plan to cover it completely in either netting or a thin row cover.

The squirrels are the bane of my gardening life.  They also dig in the flower gardens, as well as flower pots.  I have a large planter of day lilies and after I had added some bulbs in it, huge chunks of dirt, along with the new bulbs were missing shortly thereafter.  Of course they get at my bird feeders and almost completely destroyed one that was made of wood.  They dug up my tulip bulbs despite my little piles of small logs on top of the newly planted items.  Short of getting a gun I am kind of at my wit's end. I may just end up posting recipes for squirrel at some point.

Frankencorn

From the what have they done to our food section, the article I read this morning puts a lot of questions in my mind about the safety of our food.  Christina Pirello presents things about the wonderful summer corn that we all enjoy this time of year, and what GMOs have done is truly disconcerting.  I am not sure I want to engage in this game of Russian Roulette on my health.  I am taking the time to buy organic corn, when I can find it, and growing my own.

I have never grown corn before and this is really more of an experiment than anything else, but I can see little ears starting on my stalks.  The corn is sequestered in this new little raised bed surrounded by fencing so the squirrels don't get to it.  This picture is weeks old and the corn is now much taller than the fence.  My husband remarked when he got home from work the other day that the corn fields he saw were as tall as mine is, so we are on track.

I am excited to be able to pick my own corn that was grown under conditions I know about except whether the seed was actually organic because I bought these before I knew about the dangers of GMO seeds.  But next cycle when I plant more, not having had some experience, I will make sure to plant organic corn rather than treated corn.  Again, as I have said before, we need to speak with our wallets to make sure we are getting food that is helping us to survive and not making us sick.

Bale Gardening

I cam across an article about bale gardening the other day. It is a method where you condition a bale of straw and then plant in it.  The picture in the article showed a bale strapped to a city apartment railing with all kinds of vegetables growing out of it.  It is an ingenious way to contain plants on a balcony and grow your own food in the city.  I don't have an apartment, but it would be cool to try this method in my garden for some of the things that I want to grow.

Bring the Inside Out

In the recent issue of Mother Earth News magazine there is an article about creating outdoor rooms.  It appears the newest design trend is to create the space outside your house as well as inside.  In the summer weather it is probably smart as being outside on a cooler summer day will help to reduce the amount of electricity used for indoor living.  When you use your outdoor grill you don't use energy using the stove.  When you sit outside and read, you don't use energy for light.

I have started to begin to create some outdoor spaces myself.  I have my veggie garden, my flower garden, my herb garden, my corn garden (new this year), and the patio.  I thought about this concept for a while and ended up starting a little corner of the garden which I call my tranquility corner. It is a little outdoor room where I can have my morning coffee and prepare for the day enjoying some moments of quiet.  I have a bird feeder there and some wind chimes to provide some distraction if needed. It is really quite lovely even though it is not totally finished.  What is left is to strip the grass there, put some flagstones down, and plant some fragrant step-able plants like creeping thyme in order to bring some scent to the area as well. I also want to get a little side table and maybe another little chair so that it is not so obvious it is a room for one.

I really like this concept of outdoor living.  Like many of you, I work inside an office all day and being outside helps clear the head.  Between biking, gardening, and meditating, I get to experience all that God has provided rather than just stick to man made things. I am fortunate that I have a little space to create this garden of mine and I hope that others can create one for themselves.

Crazy Corn Bed

I don't know why I thought that putting a bed of corn out there in the middle of the yard would not attract varmints.  I must have been out of my mind to think it would not be touched. Of course it would.  So before I lose any more plants, I have surrounded the bed with fencing - any kind of fencing that I could find to keep it safe.  So now I have a corn bed that looks like something crazy.  But it is safe.

This is the first year I have done corn and this is a new bed that was build specifically for this purpose. I don't know what corn looks like when it is first coming up and I planted two varieties so there are things that definitely look like corn and others that look like grass. So I am going to let it go for a while until I can tell the difference.  That's how you learn.

So in the meantime, my corn is in prison, but as bad as it looks at least it is safe. Next year I will be prepared for whatever I plant in this bed will be protected right from the start.

White Flowers

So this little patch of garden space is the start of my new white flower garden.  I saw this idea in a gardening book that I had received some time ago.  The idea is that a garden filled with just white flowers will "sparkle in the sunlight and glow in the moonlight". I thought this part of my yard would be a good spot...well let's put it this way, this was one of the places I wanted to put it and it was confirmed by my husband and neighbor who used to work with a landscape architect. Anyway, my other thought was that with all the color from above, the white would stand out and compliment the colors above and behind.

I ordered some things online and last night the first shipment came in and I went out there and put them in.  I got a small hosta with white flowers, Achillea Angel's Breath (a plant that looks like baby's breath), and Achillea Ballerina (flowers that look like white carnations).  Still coming is a white rosebush, white phlox, a white clematis, and white tulip bulbs.  I know that it won't look like much now, but next year things will come up nicely.

I had the white ceramic rabbit in another part of the garden and I thought he would look nice here among the white flowers when they come in. He belonged to my step-father and had sat in my house in a corner until last year when I brought him outside.  The vertical slab standing in the corner is a brass rubbing of a knight that I found which to me reminded me of the white knight so I thought it fit.  I can't wait until next spring when these flowers get established and the garden takes off.  This is my new favorite spot in my garden and it is next to my bench, so morning coffee will be extra special next spring.

A Moment of Tranquility

This morning I had a little time before work and I went out to the garden to check on the state of things.  It had rained yesterday and I wanted to make sure the the pepper plants I had hardening out there had gotten some water.  I decided to sit on the bench and relax a bit and snapped this picture.  I realize that I have to repaint the little statue, but just sitting on the bench was so tranquil and peaceful, it was hard to imagine that my house is in the middle of a city like environment.

I spent some time trying to imagine living in a big city where many people don't have a space to call their own and came to the realization that I would not be able to handle that situation.  I imagined that I would have to have an apartment with a roof top garden or something where there was some plant life at least.  I have read a lot about Urban Gardening and know there are many things one can do with small spaces.  I feel very fortunate that I have a yard that I can have my flowers and vegetables growing and have dirt under my feet - not to mention my fingernails which always seems to be the case having a garden.

I ran out of coffee last week and haven't had any for a week because I didn't have time to go to the grocery store last week.  At first I thought it was really going to bother me, but found it hasn't.  I only mention this because sitting out there this morning I really missed having a steaming cup of coffee and made a note to myself that when I get coffee for my morning cup, it should be in this very spot.  The little bit of time I had this morning really set my day off right.

Little Things

It’s the little things that excite me.  As you may know my husband built a cold frame for me and I ordered an automatic opener for it.  If the temperature goes up above 60° the lid will open.  As you can see from this picture, the lid did open the day after we put it together.  I am so excited!

I know that it is silly that I get so excited over this, but I don’t want my plants in there to have issues because it is too hot and I am not there to open and vent the cold frame.  Since I leave early in the morning, these temperatures don’t rise until well after I have left and I am not really in a position to run home to take care of it.  Even though it is advertised as solar powered it doesn’t have panels, the opener operates on with a piston that adjusts to temperature inside the cold frame or the greenhouse.   When I had heard of these things I thought maybe I would have to run electricity out to the garden, so not having to do that is great.

The one thing I do have to remember is to water.  I do see a fair amount of condensation on the plastic panels so I know that some moisture is happening in there, but I have set up a schedule to water, or at least check the cold frame, weekly to determine if it needs to be watered.  It only takes one 5 gallon watering can so it is not that much and I don’t have to drag the hose out there as I did during the summer.  Maybe next year I can get a water source closer.  My husband did talk about a rain water collection system but it never got done.  I will have to work on him for that. His honey-do list is quite full!

Cold Frame

 

This weekend my husband helped me build a cold frame for the garden.  We got the design from the book Year Round Vegetable Gardener by Nikki Jabbour, who I heard talk at the Flower Show this year.  She lives and gardens in Nova Scotia, so I think she really knows what she is talking about.  I had to do a little re-arranging in my garden to accommodate the new structure and it involved moving two pepper plants which are going to go anyway, but maybe I will get a few more peppers before then. 

With our first estimated frost date looming on October 28^th, the cold frame could not have been done any later.  I checked our extended forecast and it indeed shows that we are expecting temperatures in the 30s at the end of the month.  We made the cold frame moveable so that it can sit inside the frame of the raised bed and we can put it on any bed in the garden depending on what I have planted so I can practice crop rotation easily with this. 

This year I did a fall planting of lettuce in the first bed, so we put it over that.  I then planted carrots, radishes, and spinach once the frame was built and in place.  We are expecting temperatures not unlike spring temperatures in the next two weeks so I believe they will grow since they are cool weather crops.  We’ll see.  This whole thing is an experiment because I have never done this kind of thing before.  I hope it works out.  

Homegrown

I should have taken a picture, but forgive me.  I am pretty sure you all have seen sweet potatoes before.  The other night I was in my garden and looked into the potato box.  The sweet potato vines are immense and as I have never grown sweet potatoes before I was looking to see if there was any way I could tell when to harvest or even if I was going to have a harvest.  In the corner of the box, sticking up was an end of a sweet potato!  I pulled it out eagerly and I suppose I could have waited because it was more like a large carrot than the tuber sized ones I get at the store.  Since I had picked it and it was really not big enough for a meal, I roasted it with other thing; garlic, onion, and eggplant all from my garden along with a store-bought organic carrot.  I sliced them into coins and drizzled a little olive oil on, then added some salt and pepper, and put it in a 400° oven for about 20 minutes.  It was delicious.

I am anxiously waiting for more now.  I still have to research when to harvest.  Most of what I have found says that they take about three to four months after planting the slips, so I have to look through my garden journal and find out when I planted.  I did read that frost and cold weather can hurt sweet potatoes, so they recommend harvesting right before the first frost.  The frost apparently kills and blackens the vines above ground and if you don’t harvest, decay can start in and get below the soil. In this same article, it said that if your sweet potato plants suffer a frost one night, cut the vines off right above the soil first thing the next morning. That way you may be able to leave the potatoes in the ground for a few more days. 

You are supposed to cure them for a while, so I guess my using it as soon as I picked it was not recommended.  They say that curing should be done for 10 to 14 days keeping sweet potatoes in a warm, dark place with some ventilation. The temperature should be 80 degrees with high humidity. Under these conditions, bruises and wounds will heal quickly, sealing out rot organisms.  I don’t have a root cellar so maybe just an open box in the basement will suffice. Bottom line is that now I am really anxious to see what my garden as wrought.  It is another new garden experience.

A New Method

Last year, you may remember that I started a lot of seeds in a portable greenhouse that I had gotten.  I was using a grow light but since it could not hang from the top of the greenhouse, I mounted it vertically behind.  That really didn't work as the plants were stretching to find the light and did not grow short, squat, and healthy.

This year I am trying something different.  All of the blogs that I have read about starting seeds say that the light source needs to be right over top.  So I modified the lighting quite a bit.  The greenhouse has four shelves, so I got  eight extension cords and daylight colored 75 watt CFL bulbs and set up each shelf like the picture.  I put some broccoli seeds in little containers that were growing (rather unsuccessfully on the window) and put them in there.  As you may be able to see, the plants look very good.  Like the other set up, the lights are on a timer and get 14 hours of light.  I can see a difference already.

My gardening app told me that this weekend was the time to start celery seeds for a fall planting.  So I put in another bulb (you can see a small portion of it in the lower left hand corner of the picture) and put the celery seeds in seed starter right under it.  It will be interesting to see how they do.  This is kind of a trial run for the seed starting "season" that I anticipate for next year.

Total Devastation

I went out in the garden today for the first time in a few days and came upon a horrible sight.  My zucchini, which was doing pretty well a few days ago, was lying crumbled in the garden. The culprit was an infestation of squash bugs.  The bugs are all over the spaghetti squash too but plant is a little larger and there is still a vine or so there.  Not for long though.  There are hundreds of those rotten bugs all over the place and short of setting fire to the whole thing I am at a loss as to what to do. 

This year has been a terrible year for me as a gardener.  I was so looking forward to a beautiful garden after putting in the raised beds, and spring was a great time with a wonderful harvest of lettuces and radishes, but as soon as the weather turned, my garden went downhill fast.  Being a fairly new gardener this is very disappointing to say the least.  I have had some things come up, but if I was planning to be self sufficient and totally grow my own food, I would be starving by now.  About the only thing that has gone okay so far is my herb garden but at this point I am not so sure.  

Well there is always next year.  I will rotate the crops next season and see if I can’t put some preventative measures in place to avoid this from happening again.  I did get some insecticidal soap and sprayed that around the plants, more as a way to stop anything further but I am not sure if that is going to work.  I will have to do some research to see if I can salvage the rest of the what I have.  

Sweet Smell

During my lunch break today, I went to a local seed and feed store for a bale of straw.  In order for it to fit in the trunk of my Passatt, I had to fold down the rear seats.  My car smelled so good on the way home I was picturing grazing horses in a field.  The reason for the bale is that I am going to be using it in my vegetable garden as mulch.

There are advantages for using straw for mulch according to what I have read.  First of all the straw mulch theory is supposed to drought proof the garden.  With these really hot days, most of my plants are being stressed out from the heat.  That could be the reason my tomato plants are not producing.  They are fruiting but the fruits are not large and are not ripening.  Adding the straw as a protective blanket around them will keep the soil moist and conserve a little water, which is very important this being the worst drought since 1956.

The second reason is that not only is the soil kept moist, but it is kept cooler and I am preparing the soil for my fall planting which doesn’t like soil over 85 degrees.  I am going to attempt this year for the first time to plant peas, lettuce, broccoli, brussel sprouts, for the fall and they don’t like the warm weather as much as the other vegetables I have growing now.

as I understand it, you have to remember to mulch with straw rather than hay as hay contains grass seeds and they could germinate in your beds.  You also have to remember to not put the straw right up the base of the plant as it allows slugs and other pests an easy way to get to them.  At any rate, in the next few days I will be putting down the straw, which I really should have done a few weeks ago.  I hope that my garden improves and that the sweet smell of the straw will also correlate to the sweet smell of success.

Lemon Tree Very Pretty

During the month of March I ordered a Myer Lemon tree online which was received very quickly.  I promptly put it into a pot and kept it in my dining room near the window.  As the weather got warmer I would put it outside from time to time and after all danger of frost passed kept it on the patio.  Shortly after receiving it, it broke out in a profuse of wonderful smelling blossoms, which have now turned into tiny prospective lemons.  Two of these lemons are now the size of a grape and two really tiny ones, no bigger than a nail head turned yellow.  I assume they are ripe, but they are way too small to do anything with. There are many others which I gather will fatten up shortly.

Yesterday I noticed more blossoms on the tree. It already has a plethora of tiny lemons and with the new blossoms it appears that I am going to have more lemons than I can use!  That is if all of them ripen.  I currently use lemons for my iced tea but I am looking into many more uses including making fresh lemonade now. 

There are also many other things that I have to start using lemons for in regular cooking such as steamed broccoli and other vegetables, not to mention fish.  I tend to forget about them since I am not a huge lemon user regularily. But lemons are quite good for you aside from being a large supplier of vitamin C.  Apparently they also have strong antibacterial, antiviral, and immune-boosting powers as well as containing many substances--notably citric acid, calcium, magnesium, vitamin C, bioflavonoids, pectin, and limonene. This is more about lemons than I ever knew and something you can read up on here.

So even if the lemon tree is very pretty and the flowers are wonderful smelling, the fruit gets a big thumbs up from me and something that I am going to add to my diet.

Magnificent Flower

The peony in my garden has finally bloomed and it is magnificent!  I love those flowers but it amazes me so that they are so top heavy and without support flop all over the place.  I wonder what was done in ancient time or in the wild to make them stand tall.  This is actually the first year I have used supports.  I traded a support for some strawberry plants with a coworker.  I am so glad I did because I think I have never seen the blooms on this plant look so good. 

Seed Company

For the last few seed orders I have ordered online at Victory Seed.  They are a company that specializes in open-pollinated and heirloom seed varieties.  I have found that they have a great selection, their seeds come well packaged, and they have speedy delivery.  I ordered Arugula back in March and I have harvested many great tasting leaves since then.  I am doing successive planting of the lettuces and radishes and have had a wonderful supply of salad greens since the last week of March.  I almost have too much for my husband and me!

I recently became more aware of the importance of planting organic, open pollinated seeds.  Hey, what can I say, this gardening thing is still relatively new to me!  I am leaning more toward open pollinated seeds because I am growing now to be able to save my seeds later, and with the hybrid stuff I understand it could be a gamble that you get the plants you put in the ground and what comes back from the seeds with the hybrid stuff.  In addition, I am trying to get more and more organic and the idea of open pollinated seeds appeals to me.

So give these people a try and see if you like them.  They also have a blog.