June 27th, 2012

June 26th, 2012

Garden Bounty
As I mentioned yesterday, we recently pulled up all 34 heads of garlic.  We have eaten two meals with the garlic so far.  So far, it seems much spicier and potent that the stuff we get from the grocery store.  If you take a bite raw, it really hits you.  When cooked, it takes for the most part like store bought garlic, but maybe with a little more flavor and a little more kick.

We have eaten two more cuttings of kale also.  That small little corner of kale is really producing right now.  We just keep cutting the side closer to the sweet potatoes to give them enough sun, and it just keeps growing back.

We can't keep up with all the lettuce.  We have made a few more salads, but we have more than we can eat.  With all of the baby activities, it is hard to find the time or energy to wash, spin, and dry the greens just to make a salad.  This is nothing new however.  We get into this same predicament every year.  For some reason, the lettuce more than other things, makes me acknowledge people who make salads from the garden ever day.


If you look at the back left corner of the picture, you can see that some of the Bibb lettuce is starting to bolt.  These are the plants that I started indoors and transplanted.  The lettuce plants that were started outside are still a bit behind.

Updates
About 20 cucumber seedlings have broken the surface this week, and they are about 3 inches tall now.  Things are growing so much more quickly now that is 80+ degrees outside.

The Mortage Lifter tomato plant has tomatoes bigger than my fist already, however there is still no hint of any of them turning red yet.  Some of the tomatoes on the Super 100 plant are at the right cherry tomato size, but they are also still 100% green.

Mortgage Lifter

Some of the onions bulbs are protruding above ground at this point.  At least 2 or 3 of them look to be the size of pool balls, or slightly smaller.   A lot of the onion stalks have fallen over. I'm not sure if that is normal or not.  I know you are supposed to bend them over a few weeks before you remove the onion, but I think most of ours have either been pushed around by other veggies or have been knocked over by the hose.  I'll have to look it up.  Maybe it is a sign they are getting either too much or not enough water.  

The sweet potato slips have started to shoot out into vines; very similar to ivy.  They have all definitely taken hold.  The question now is how to train the vines.   Up?  In a circle?  I thought they would go in multiple directions, but it looks like each vine is just heading in one direction.

I also sowed some new marigold, basil, and brussels sprout seeds in a seed starter.  I'm keeping it outside, and they have all started nicely. I tried to sow basil seeds directly into the herb garden twice, but both attempts failed.  Too much activity (leaves, animals, etc) maybe.  In less that a week, all three seem to be doing great in the flat.

Emily said my posts end abruptly, so this is me ending my post politely:  Thank you for visiting -- Please come again ;)

Garlic Harvest

On Sunday I dug up the Garlic, totaling 34 heads.  We were away from Thursday through Sunday, and I think that they might have been ready a few days earlier.  On some of the heads, a few cloves started to outgrow the main wrapper.  From what I have read, those heads won't store nearly as long.   Overall, I think that we will just eat those first and that it will be just fine, but time will tell.  

Garlic is pretty cool in that one clove becomes one head.  We planted the 3-4 heads (split into cloves) last fall, and harvested 34 heads 8 months later.  

I think we could have planted them a little closer together. This year I tried to give each head 4 inches on each side.  I think we could do between 2.5 and 3 inches on each side and get more out of the same space, but who knows -- it could crowd them out and cause them not to get as big by doing that.  

I kept them on that table for less than an hour.  I have read that you do not want to expose them to much sunlight, as it changes their taste.  I hung them in the shed, where they will stay for around two weeks to dry out.  Then I have to figure out where to keep them in the long term.  

To celebrate, we made a simple garlic and green been saute, both of them picked that day.  It was as good as it looks :)

"Timeline" and "Currently in the garden" pages

A while back I added some permanent pages that you can reach by clicking on the top navigation bar.  Here are some links:

2012 Garden Timeline (in pictures)

Also, do you want to know what is "Currently in the Garden"? 

June 19th, 2012

Garden Bounty

We have had some bibb lettuce salads, and I picked some more green beans and froze a batch.  Also, Jonas  ate his first item from the Garden.   We gave him some of the peas inside of the last of the snap pea pods, and he liked them.  

Updates

The tomato cage is finally up, as you can see from the picture above.   I'm not sure I love the placement, because it is right in front of the garden, but there are not really any other areas that get as much sun as that spot.  I also moved the strawberries inside of the tomato cage.  I'm not sure what has been eating the strawberries, but they have all been eaten so far, which I kind of expected.  If nothing else, it will be interesting to see how they do in the cage.  

The peas are gone, replaced with two types of cucumbers.  Marketmore and Poinsett.   One is more the size of a pickle, and the other looks a lot like the supermarket cucumbers.  They both did really well last year, right around when Jonas was born.   It might be too early for them, but we'll see.

I pulled the first head of garlic, and it looked perfect, according to what I read.  The bulbs have filled in their shells, but have not outgrown them.   I turned off the mini-sprinkler heads in that patch, as you are supposed to not water them for the last few weeks.  I'll probably dig them all out soon.

  

The sweet potatoes all took, even the ones that did not look so great.   They have all grown some new leaves, and I think I'm going to have to cut back some more kale shortly to give them some room.  

Here are some pictures of the things growing by the side and front of the house.  Everything is doing well at this point.  

Butternut squash

Acorn squash and cantaloupe

Another butternut squash

Pole beans starting to climb up the string.  Summer squash in the middle, and a Dahlia in the front right.  There is also one bean plant and some cucumber plants growing closer to the back fence. 

June 14th, 2012

Garden Bounty

I harvested, blanched, and froze the first round of collard greens.  After picking and washing them, I placed them in boiling water for 3 minutes, then iu an ice bath for another 3 minutes.  I packed them into two freezer bags and put them in the deep freezer. 

Last night I filled up a colander with more green beans. We ate half, and I am going to save the other half in the fridge.  In a few days Ill pick some more and I'll have enough to blanch and freeze.  

Updates

The original four tomato plants all have green tomatoes on them now.  The volunteer tomato plant looks a bit sad and might not make it. Around this time last year is when I set up the cage on the side patio and moved the containers.   I decided that this year I am going to lay down some weed blocking fabric underneath the containers and build the cage around where they are now.  It it goes well, next year I'll skip the containers altogether and build a cage around the whole tomato row.     

The peas are just about all dried up at this point.  Last night I picked the last 25 peas, some of which were dried up or diseased.   In the next few days I am going to pull back all of the pea shoots and figure out what to plant in that area next.  I'm thinking that cucumbers might work the best.   

Another view of the backyard

Dahlia update (and other flower updates)

So after all of the Dahlias got eaten as soon as they broke the surface, I waited a week and hoped that some of them would pull through.  Nothing.  After another week I decided to order 4 more online.  Of course between the time I placed the order and the time the order came, all but two of the plants shot up additional shoots.   The Sluggo really worked.   As I read more, I also have leanred that at least with the Dahlias, the slugs are a very common nuisance.  

But that is all in the past now.  I have been adding more sluggo every other week, and the plants are doing great.  Some are about 6 inches, and some are more than a foot tall at this point.  

This weekend I planted the 4 new Dahlias that came, and actually found the 8th from the first group.  Even that one seems to be coming up now.  

The Tithonia and Celosia are both doing really well now.   The Celosia has looked good since it went in the ground, but I am actually kind of suprised that the Tithonia finally took hold.   

Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower)

To close out the post, here are some pictures of the two flower beds in the front of the house.   Hopefully this will serve as some good "before" pictures for comparison once everything starts blooming.

June 5th 2012

Garden Bounty


The garden has definitely started to pump out some good food.   In the past week we have eaten peas, green beans, radishes, lettuce, and the mixed asian stir fry greens.

For the radishes, we made a soup out of the radish greens which until last week, I did not even know you could eat.  It was not the best thing I have ever ate, but it was pretty good for something that was almost going to be tossed into the compost.

Updates in back

• The cherry tomato plant has a few tiny green tomatoes on it.   
• A few strawberries have matured, but they keep getting eaten by squirrels.   When I build the tomato cage, I'm going to have to bring in the strawberries.  
• One of the pepper plants that I never planted in the ground (still in the seed starting tray) started to flower, so I transferred 4 of them into the shrub bed on the north side.   It should be an interesting experiment.
• The Asian stir fry greens mix was starting to shade out the peppers in that bed, which is why they had to get cut.   They were delicious, and now peppers are getting much more sun.  
• The radishes were getting so big they were starting to knock over the garlic.  That was the main reason I pulled them.  The garlic now has room to breath again.   
• The first planting of snap peas is starting to dry out.   The second planting is producing nicely.  
• The green beans are going strong now.  We have picked about 30 or 40 at this point, and some of the younger plants have not even started to flower yet.   We should be good for quite a while.     

Updates in front

• The pole beans finally made it past a week.   I think the sheer number of the beans planted had a big role to play in the success.   At least 5-10 of the 20-25 beans I planted got eaten, but around 10-15 made it
• The summer squash also made it this time, although I don't think any of them were eaten. Maybe it was the sluggo, wood ashes, and/or the cage.  All 10 of them made it.  I uprooted 3 of the 10 and planted them in another spot.  
• The cucumbers did not have nearly the same luck.  Almost all of them were eaten.   
• The butternut squash (from seed) all seem to be doing really well.  
• The acorn squash (from Home Depot) is starting to flower, and looks really good.  
• The cantaloupe true leaves got eaten at first, but I think they might be staging a comeback.  We'll see.   

Volunteer tomato finds a new home

I was looking at the peas last night after transplanting the sweet potato slips, and I realized that a tomato plant was growing in between all of the pea vines.  It was long and lanky (most likely because it was shaded by the peas), but it was about 1 foot high and looked healthy.   I have no idea what variety it is, but my guess is that the seed was left over from one of the dozens of tomatoes that the squirrels half ate and then left on the ground.

So I transplanted it to a pot, put it down really deep, and covered it with a bunch of garden soil (bagged), soil from our garden, and doubled that with leafgro (compost).  A nice little unexpected experiment.  It looks like a better boy, but I'm not sure.

The sweet potatoes have arrived

The sweet potato slips came in the mail yesterday from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.   I ordered 12, and received closer to 18, but some were really small, and on some, all of the leaves had turned yellow and shriveled.   Even on the best ones, one or two out of the 6-10 leaves were yellow.   I have no clue if that even matters.  They might all do fantastic, or all but 2 or 3 of them might die.

I picked two thirds of the Kale, and left the section on the North side of the bed.  It won't block sun to the new  transplants, and I'm guessing it will take a while for the transplants to take hold.  Actually, that makes me think of a note I should make for myself for next year:

Rather than plant the spinach and Kale all the way across the row in two halves, I could plant the kale the full length of the row, the long way, and the spinach the other half of the row the long way.  That way the spinach will be done by the time I have the sweet potatoes in.  That is of course if I even do spinach again next spring.  Maybe I'll go back to chard, and save the spinach till the fall.



Back to the Sweet potatoes --- With the remaining slips, I "healed" them into the ground, which means I dug out a small hole, placed all of the remaining slips in the ground, and lightly packed the soil around the roots to make contact.  I;m guessing that I will have to either use them or give them away pretty soon, otherwise the roots will all bind to each other.   If the first set takes, Ill give them away.   If any of them don't make it, I can use the backup slips.