Crow in Garden

Onions!

2011-08-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

Finally, after weeks of waiting, drying, and curing, I have a firm total of onion's harvested.

5lb and 6oz.

Wow. I've tried growing onions in the past, but I've always had miserable luck. I've planted seeds for the 'Copra' variety at least twice but was never able to keep the plants going past August. If I got plants at all. My first attempt to grow yellow multiplier, or potato onions, was abortive. When planning this year's garden last winter, I decided to give sets a try. Previously I'd avoided going this route, since it's more expensive than buying seeds and a lot of books say that sets are more prone to disease. But I figure you should try exhaust every option before calling it quits.

So I purchased a set of 'Stuttgarter' onions from Pinetree Garden Seeds for a mere $5, certainly the cheapest you'll fine. In early spring I received a pound of tiny yellow onions, which I promptly planted, and in less than a month was entreated to nice healthy onion leaves. Not the spindly little things that wilted once June hit. Of course, I waited patiently for the leave to yellow, though we ended up stealing a few spring onions here and there out of desperation. As each plant started to go dormant, I removed them from the soil, let them dry on a screen for a day or two and then stored them in the mudroom to cure.

The flavor of the 'Stuttsgarter' variety is good. It has a good bite that's not too overpowering, making it good for fresh eating or cooking. The bulbs themselves are almost perfectly round and prone to flattening around the root. My onions did not get too big; the largest is maybe 2"-3" in diameter. According to one site I found, this seems to be normal. One onion of this size is just enough for two servings of most any dish (barring onion soup), but your mileage may vary. Sadly, a good lot of the onions I harvested are smaller, closer to shallot size. A few didn't grow to a useable size, so I'm planning to save these and experiment with planting them in fall.

I think that 5lb of this variety of onion will last 2-3 months, but it's hard to say. If I decide to make a big batch of French onion soup, they will certainly not last that long. We do get a reliable supply of onions from our CSA, which helps.

So...my first successful onion harvest. Truly, this is my most productive year.

Kale and Potato Hash

2011-07-28T13:24:00.001-07:00

kale
Originally uploaded by kusine

Been a month since my last post, but the garden is still humming along. I've kept tracking harvests in my garden journal and am mostly pleased with how well everything's been doing this year. I promise some posts about the onion and chard harvests soon.

For now, I'd like to post about something I've been meaning to post about for a couple of weeks, which is the surprise harvests of kale. Specifically, the dwarf Russian kale I've been growing for the last couple of years (a variety you can find in the photo above). In 2009, kale seemed about the only crop my garden did really well at. Last year, after I moved the garden to another part of the yard, the kale crop was abysmal. Most of it succumbed to cabbage moths and aphids. This year, despite my lack of real effort or attention, the kale has done quite well. While a pound or two is hardly a bumper crop, it's certainly better than last year. I can't say whether it's my rotation plan or earlier start or covering of the crop in spring. The particular bed in which I'm growing was not amended with compost last fall, so it's certainly not that.

When you realize you have a much of kale, the next question is, "Well, how do I use this?" Growing up, the only time I ever saw kale was as a garnish on salad bars or plates. Once or twice I tried eating the stuff and was grossed out by the bitter taste. As I've gotten older and my palate has expanded, I discovered that kale and other bitter greens are actually pretty good when paired with the right ingredients and cooked a certain way. Personally, I like greens best when stirred into soups, but sautéing and braising are also excellent methods to tone down the bitter flavor. Kale especially has an affinity for garlic, sausage, and potatoes, and you'll find that many recipes capitalize on one or more of these ingredients.

Since we've been getting lots of produce from our CSA and plenty of other vegetables from the garden, I had to figure out another way to use kale besides dinner. I remembering seeing some breakfast hash dishes that featured the usual potatoes with some greens thrown in and, remembering that potatoes are awesome with kale, decided to invent a potato-kale hash. Mind you, I'm not very good at inventing my own recipes and prefer to tweak already existing recipes. Every Sunday I like to make a big breakfast for me and the SO as a special treat, which means I've gotten very good at frying potatoes and sausage without having to follow instructions. I've made up a few hashes and scrambles before, so coming up with a recipe wasn't much work. The first attempt was OK, but I added the freshly washed kale to the potatoes, which turned the potatoes a bit soggy. On the second attempt I removed the potatoes from the skillet, then added the kale, which turned out to be just the right fix. I thought I'd share the final recipe with anyone reading. It makes a nice breakfast for two and can be tweaked to suit your palate.

Kale and Potato Hash

1lb potatoes, any kind, cut into 1/2" cubes
1/2lb sausage or 4 slices bacon
1/2lb-1lb kale, sliced and washed
1 onion, halved and sliced or 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs

Put potatoes into saucepan and fill with enough water to cover. Heat to boiling, remove from heat, and drain.
Meanwhile, heat skillet (cast iron is best) over medium heat. Cook sausage or bacon until browned and then drain on paper towel.
Drain fat from pan, leaving a bit of a film. Add 3-4 tablespoons of oil to pan (peanut or canola is best, but olive oil is fine too). Add drained potatoes and cook for about 15-20 minutes over medium heat, turning as they brown. Cook until golden brown and then drain on paper towel.
Add onions or garlic to pan and cook until fragrant and softened. Add kale to pan and cook, stirring, until wilted and water has cooked off. Add potatoes and sausage or bacon and turn heat to low, keeping warm while eggs cook. Season to taste.
Fry eggs in separate pan, preferably over-easy or sunny-side-up so you have runny yolks to flavor hash. Serve hash with egg on top or on the side.

Notes:

Some people will insist you can only use baking potatoes for frying. I use whatever's on hand. If using boiling or new potatoes, you might want to boil until the potatoes are a bit softened, or just increase overall cooking time.
Spicy or sage sausages are best for this recipe, since they add lots of flavor.
You can save as much fat from the sausage or bacon as you like. Personally, I find it doesn't lend the same crispness to the potatoes as vegetable-based oil, but I like to retain some of it for the flavor.
Any kind of savory fresh herb, such as summer savory, sage, thyme, or rosemary, makes a great addition to this recipe. Just chop it up and add with the kale in Step #4. This is especially a good idea if you decide to omit the meat or eggs.
If you hate fried eggs, you can modify the recipe into a scramble by beating the eggs beforehand and stirring into the kale and potatoes.

Harvests, 6/2-6/21

2011-06-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

So I've been bad over the last 3(!?) weeks and not recording my harvests on this blog, but as usual there's always something going on in the garden and plenty of work to do. Since my last post, I have planted the tomatoes and laid more seed, focused some attention on my herb and flower borders, and tried to catch up on weeding. My sprained foot is slowly healing, but I am able to wear regular shoes now and do more than I was doing before.

Here's what I've harvested since my last post:

6/2
7 baby bok choys

6/4
small bunch of arugula
radish greens

6/5
4 cups 'Jericho' and 'Flashy Trout's Back' lettuce (chopped)
bunch of young yellow multiplier onions
small bunch of chives

6/17
1.5lb Swiss chard

6/19
3 baby 'Detroit Red' beets w/greens

6/21
17 'Shandong' garlic bulbs

As always, there are some missing odds & ends, such as the pod peas that I harvest each day, freezing the peas as accrued. It's also hard to say how everything gets used, though usually I can roughly guess.

Two of the baby bok choys filled out a basic chicken stir-fry, while the rest were frozen for use in a winter stir-fry (I was only able to manage one bag). The arugula was just beginning to flower during the last harvest and ended up in the usual spring pesto, while the radish greens were blanched and frozen to use later (roughly 2 bags worth). The lettuce probably ended up in a tasty taco salad.

I was most please with my last harvest of Swiss chard, which is probably the most I've harvested at once. The 'Fordhook' seems like a steady producer, though it is not getting as big as quickly as the 'Bright Lights' I planted last year. A volunteer chard plant, presumably the white/green from the 'Bright Lights' mixed, turned up in my pepper bed and has been producing enormous and wrinkly dark green leaves. Yum. About half the chard ended up in a pasta dish with an Italian sausage and tomato sauce my boyfriend really liked, while the other half was blanched and frozen the next day for later use.

And though the beets were pretty small, I went ahead and added them to the CSA beets I pickled on Sunday. Sadly, only one jar, but it will make an excellent side once fall hits.

The garlic I harvested only a couple days ago and was fairly impressed with the results overall. The bulbs seem to lose their purple streaks the longer they're left in the ground, and the hardneck in quite a few seems to have gone soft. A lot of the bulbs are smaller than I'd like, but the cloves are quite big. I already know that the taste of the 'Shandong' variety is excellent, spicy and strong without overpowering whatever dish they're used in. As recommended, I will be saving my largest bulbs for fall planting, so I can have as good a harvest next year.

As a final note, I started harvesting raspberries from the last year's canes yesterday. Last year I decided to cut the old canes, which supposedly directs energy to the new canes, resulting in a bigger late summer and fall harvest. Since I've been unable to do as much yardwork this year, I sorta let the old canes go. Honestly, I didn't notice a big difference in my harvest last year and was even a bit disappointed. The old canes are pretty heavy with berries, so I think that overall this is a better plan. as they say in netspeak, YMMV. Most of the raspberries I harvested yesterday ended up in this morning's breakfast smoothie. If I can gather enough in the next few days, they might end up in a dessert or preserves.

Harvest, 5/30-5/31

2011-06-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

The harvest season is picking up in my garden, and there is much to be pulled up and picked. On Monday I dug up 14 garlic bulbs to make way for the tomatoes. It's a bit early for a full garlic harvest, as only one leaf layer has dried and they haven't yet bloomed, but there are still lots more left. 'Shandong' is also an early variety of hardneck garlic that should be harvestable before July. I'm drying half the bulbs and storing the other half in the refrigerator to use fresh. Of course, it's hard to track how the garlic will be used, since I use it in just about everything. It's an essential ingredient in Asian, Middle Eastern, Italian, and French cuisines--all favorites. So chances are it will end up in a lot of things. Maybe a stir-fry, maybe some hummus, maybe a batch of arugula pesto?

Last night's harvest was 8oz of spinach and chard leaves, which went into an spicy Indian-style shrimp curry served with brown basmati rice. The particular varieties I planted were 'Bloomsdale Longstanding' and 'Fordhook', both of which are heirloom varieties that seem to be doing well. While harvesting I noticed that the spinach was already going to seed, but I pulled off the seedheads and am hoping I'll be able to harvest more soon. Most of my cool-weather greens are starting to go to seed, so I have to harvest bok choy, raab, and more arugular before it gets much hotter.

The radishes, too, are on the verge of bolting, and yesterday I also managed to pull at least half a pound. The bulbs were still quite piddly (presumably due to the heavy rains we had last week), so I am just using them for greens. I'm thinking about freezing some greens, since right now there's an over-abundance from the garden and our CSA. On a side note, the 'Sparkler' cultivar strikes me as too finicky for my garden, and I will likely not be planting more after this packet is done. It may be that they're a fast-growing, early season variety, better suited to cooler conditions with less rainfall. I had better results last year with the 'French Breakfast' radishes and might give one of the varieties our CSA offers as well.

Harvest & Market, 5/16-5/28

2011-05-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

This year I have been meaning to keep better track of my harvests so I have a better sense of what my garden produces. A couple of weeks ago, I did start weighing and measuring and recording those counts in my garden journal, but I have yet to post. Since that's what this blog is for, here's the rough count for the last two weeks:

10 oz 'Sparkler' radishes (with greens)
roughly 2 cups lettuce, chopped (a mix of 'Jericho' and 'Flashy Trouts Back')
2 small bunches of arugula
bunch of chive flowers
small bunch of yellow multiplier onion flower buds
8 oz 'Shandong' garlic greens and young bulbs

The radish greens were combined with the first batch of arugula for an arugula/radish pesto, while the radishes themselves ended up with the lettuce and chive flowers in a salad topped with sliced chicken. The second bunch of arugula was combined with another bunch I received from our CSA for more arugula pesto (a brilliant recipe from Serving Up the Harvest and my favorite way to enjoy it). The garlic greens ended up in a stir-fry, and I have been using the young bulbs in a variety of dishes.

This is Year 3 with the Fair Share Farm CSA, and we picked up our second week's worth of produce on Wednesday. We get too much to list here, but we've gotten plenty of radishes, lettuce, and greens. Along with the tasty hakurei turnips they offer each season, which are far sweeter than other turnips and are great eaten raw. I like to use them in stir-fries and salads as well.

Another habit I'd like to get back into is tracking our "take home" from the City Market, which we try to visit as often ass possible. Today we took home:

2 quarts blueberries
bunch of rhubarb
2 pints strawberries & a bunch of 'Chioggia' beets from Goode Acres (one of my favorite growers at the market)
bunch of large spring onions
appr. 1lb broccoli
honey from Busy Bee Acres in Odessa, MO

I'm planning on making some preserves from the blueberries, as well as making some rhubarb/strawberry preserves. The 'Chioggia' beets look like little bull's eyes and are far too pretty for pickling, so I am thinking about making some roasted beet chips (for which I will need a mandoline).

Right now, the garden is looking great, in spite of the wet/cool conditions of late. I am planning on harvests of spinach, chard, raab, and kale in the next week or two. And possibly an early harvest of some garlic to make way for the tomatoes. 'Shandong' is considered an early hardneck variety, so it's ready for harvest by June. I haven't seen any scapes yet, so I don't know. The radishes look great but aren't really producing bulbs. Some quick reading informed me that excess water may be the culprit. Guess we'll wait and see how things go!

What's going on in the garden?

2011-05-03T15:21:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, after transplanting lots of plants and cleaning up a part of the herb border, I decided it would be nice to post some recent photos and do a virtual walk-through of the yard. The last couple weeks have been pretty tough. We had a good week or so of rain, during which time I twisted my ankle while at a bar with friends and ended up with a sprained foot. So once the rain cleared up, I was stuck on the couch reading, avoiding as much physical activity as I could. Thankfully, my condition in the last week has improved and due to a severe case of cabin fever, I've been trying to do as much in the garden as my foot will allow. A number of the photos I'm posting were taken prior to the rain and damaged foot, but I did manage to get a few great shots of the front garden, which I tend to neglect far too much.

And so, without further ado....

Here's one of the currant bushes I planted the first week or so of April. I can't recall the variety offhand, but I chose currant bushes for the backyard as they can tolerate partial shade and like mildly sloped locations for soil drainage (check and check). Much to my surprise, all three bushes are taking off and look even more fecund than in this photo. I won't be able to harvest until next year, however.

Nearby, there's a Solomon's Seal I planted last year. This variety has variegated leaves, which I thought would be more eye-catching than the old-fashioned variety.

And some adorable unknown flower blooming beneath the serviceberry, also planted last year. The leaves and flowers looked very familiar, but I can't seem to place a name on it. Any guesses?

If you look closely up in this tree, you'll see one of our crows overseeing the backyard. I say "our crows" because we have (for the second year) a pair currently nesting in our spruce up front, which the other crows also gather in during the winter. It's a bit of serendipity that my favorite bird and the namesake of this blog sees fit to guard my little domain.

Moving on to the vegetable garden, here's a shot I took way back on April 20th. You can see that a lot of plants weren't yet in the ground. I like to harden my plants off by setting them roughly in the spot where they're going to be planted, so they get acclimated to the conditions.

A photo of the raspberries from yesterday. This year I've decided to drill some holes into the posts and create a proper wire trellis system, since the twine I've been using tends to buckle after a few good rains.

And here are some lettuce plants just after they've been planted, under a handmade trellis that will be used to support cucumbers and zucchini.

Here's a volunteer lettuce I spotted early in the season, along with several others of the 'Flashy Trout's Back' and 'Winter Density' variety. I'm so happy that they've decided to self-seed and will be sure to let this year's lettuce go to seed. My little ecosystem is humming along.

Onions, chard, beets, and spinach. I space my seeds when planting to conserve them as much as possible, usually 2-3 seeds which I thin later. I don't always do this, but it is a useful trick I learned from square-foot gardening that works for me. Not as useful for small seeds like carrots, but works great for big seedsed brassicas and chenopods.

A close-up of one of the beds, with yellow multiplier onions, 'Jericho' lettuce in the pot, and arugula seedlings just sprouting. This is my second attempt at growing the yellow multipliers from bulbs in autumn. The last time I tried this in 2009, my bulbs ended up rotting. This year I'm taking the advice of Territorial Seeds and not clipping the leaves, which can draw water to the bulb. Live and learn, eh?

A view of the same beds from the east. I'm impressed with how lush the radishes look, especially since they have been getting smooshed by squirrel and kitties.

Full view with path, cold frame, and rain barrel. As you can see, things are a bit of a mess. We still haven't fixed the layout of the flagstones or gotten the mulch over all the landscape fabric. The farthest south path was also destroyed last autumn when our new neighbors had to repair a pipe running through the yard and will need to be redone.

But let's not talk of these things. Let us move on to the lovely front border. Again, a bit of a mess, as I've not cleared out all the violets and weeds. But I am happy with how everything's filling out. It looks like more of a thought-out garden than when we bought the house in 2006.

As I said, I have not cleared out all the weeds. At least they're pretty, though.

I'm in love with the color combo here of the reddish violet tulips and burgundy/silver heuchera leaves. The tulips are the lily-flowered 'Ballade' variety, which starts out with more white on the tips.

Another shot of the 'Color Dream' heuchera. Despite their current ubiquity, I love these plants. The frilly leaves and soft little flowers. And so many colors to choose from. I might have to plant more.

I also love chive flowers. After dividing up some plants in the herb garden last year, I brought a few into the front border. The buds are almost as interesting as the globe-like flowerheads. They're edible, too.

Back to the tulips! The 'Violet Beauty' cultivar looks especially gorgeous this year. I've noticed that these and the 'Ballade' are the more dependable than my 'Cum Laude' and 'Queen of Night' tulips in terms of perennializing. I've also noticed that 'Violet Beauty's has somewhat grayish leaves, which I find very attractive against the lime green sedum ground cover.

The flowers are even more gorgeous close-up. Look at that veining! Sigh...

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the tour. More to come soon!

In Defense of the Lowly Dandelion

2011-04-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Spring is in full swing here in Kansas City and the flowers are in full bloom. Though the crocuses have now faded, the mid-season tulips are out, along with the daffodils and muscari. The spring "weeds" are in full force, too--the purple and blue ground ivies, the violets, and the dandelions. I say "weed" because I don't think in the terms of many gardeners; I try to assess each interloper by its function or aesthetic value. For instance, ur yard is full of violets because I love the leaves and the flowers, and they fill in the spaces the grass refuses to inhabit. I usually only remove them to make way for other plants. The weeds I dig up are the ones I have no use for.

Everyone knows that the lowly dandelion is the worst "weed" of all, so of course it is the one most vigilantly combated. An overgrown dandelion can really ruin the look of a flowerbed, and once it's gone to seed you're guaranteed another batch to dig up in the summer. Thus the cycle never ends.

As for myself, I've learned to love the lowly dandelion and don't struggle much to keep them at bay. Growing up, I was always charmed and fascinated by fields of the cheery yellow flowers and the shimmer little seed globes that fell apart in the wind. When I read Bradbury's Dandelion Wine in my teens I was mesmerized by his description of a family gathering the flower heads to make wine:

The boys bent, smiling. They picked the golden flowers. The flowers that flooded the world, dripped off lawns onto brick streets, tapped softly at crystal cellar windows and agitated themselves so that on all sides lay the dazzle and glitter of molten sun.

"Every year," said Grandfather. "They run amuck; I let them. Pride of lions in the yard. Star, and they burn a hole in your retina. A Common flower, a weed no one sees, yes. But for us, a noble thing, the dandelion."

I never knew anyone who made their own dandelion wine (or any wine, for that matter), but I always imagined eventually tracking down a bottle or making my own.

The dandelion, despite its common weediness, is an immensely useful plant with a history of human cultivation going back some centuries. Every part of it is edible and considered to have medicinal properties. The bitter leaves, mildest before the plant has flowered, are similar to arugula and can be eaten raw in salads or sauteed with some oil and spices. The raw flavor is too strong for my tastes, but I love using it as a replacement for arugula in a pesto recipe from Serving Up the Harvest. The mature root of a dandelion can be dried or roasted, then ground into a coffee substitute or additive similar to chicory, which is popular in New Orleans and France. Last year I ground a bit with my usual coffee and found it added a very subtle but nice smoky flavor. And of course, there are the blossoms, which are most often used to make dandelion wine, something that I am finally attempting this year. Lacking proper winemaking equipment, I sought out a basic home recipe and found this one from Texas Cooking. I can't tell you yet whether it worked, but I should know in a few months.

Another thing you can make from dandelion blossoms is jelly (or preserves), which sounds a bit odd but turns out to be quite good. I made up my own recipe using Pomona's Universal Pectin based on this recipe for violet jelly. The process is basically the same (and quite similar to making dandelion wine): you make an infusion by pouring boiling water over the blossoms, then let it steep overnight to deepen the flavor. Once the infusion is made, it is similar to any other jelly. Here is the specific recipe I came up with:

Dandelion Jelly
1 C dandelion blossoms
1 C boiling water
2 TB lemon juice
1/2 tsp calcium water
1/2 C sugar
1/2 tsp Pomona Universal Pectin

1. Wash dandelion blossoms thoroughly and remove any stems. Pour boiling water over blossoms and let steep up to 24 hours, covered.
2. Pour infusion into non-reactive pan and then add the lemon juice and calcium water. Mix together sugar and pectin.
3. Bring infusion to boiling and pour in pectin mixture. Bring back to boiling and cook for 1 minute. Pour into one pint sterilized jar or two half-pint jars; process for 10 minutes.

The flavor of this jelly is interesting, sort of light and floral and "dandelionesque," with none of the associated bitterness. As noted in the base recipe, this can be adapted to any other kind of floral/herbal jelly (if using flowers, obviously make sure they're edible and not sprayed with pesticides).

Besides the practical uses of dandelion as a food, there is evidence to suggest that the oft-loathed taproots may actually be beneficial, drawing up nutrients that might otherwise be locked in deeper soil layers. Taproots can also be a helpful way of breaking up dense, clay-ridden soils.

I'm not suggesting that every gardener stop pulling up these lovely and useful weeds altogether. We all have a certain aesthetic standard we'd like to maintain in our gardens, and too many weeds can disrupt our enjoyment. Nonetheless, it is surprising how little people consider the practical value of the plants growing around them (many of which, like the dandelion, have escaped cultivation) and spend all their time fighting the poor things in a quest for the perfectly neat lawn. Permaculture asks us to rethink the ways we live within our environment, whether there are not more harmonious ways to deal with it. So I'll keep letting a few dandelions grow and enjoy what they have to give.

P.S. For an overview of uses and lore associated with the dandelion, A Modern Herbal is worth checking out. Also information on various wildflowers and herbs with medicinal/culinary value. One of my favorite online plant resources.

New Seeds for 2011

2011-03-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

I order my seeds a month ago, but I'm running a bit late this year and only just planted them last week. This evening I checked the soil in the garden and, even after a snow on Monday, the temperature registered nearly 60F. So it would appear that spring is nearly upon us, hinting at the harvest to come.

This evening was actually my first harvest of the year, though I must admit I cheated. I pulled this cup or so of lettuce from the cold frame:

Yes, the lettuce survived throughout the entire winter in the cold frame. Through the snow and ice and 0F temperatures. Some minor burning from the frost (and heat, as the temperature has warmed), but the cold frame continues to be one of the best investments we've made into this garden.

Speaking of investment, I bought quite a lot of seeds this year, due in part to all the expired seed packets in my stash. I was unable to keep to my $50 minimum, but I didn't go too far over.

Here's this year's haul:

From Pinetree Garden Seeds
Arugula (Roquette)
Beet, "Detroit Red"
Cauliflower, "Amazing"
Cucumber, "Miniature White"
Melon, "True Charenais"
Parsley, "Prezzmelo Gigante d'Italia"
Pumpkin, "Musquee de Provence"
Rutabaga, "Wilhelmsburger"
Spinach, "Bloomsdale Long Standing"
Summer Squash, "Striata d'Italia"
Sweet Pepper, "California Wonder"
Swiss Chard, "Fordhook"

From Seed Savers Exchange
Foxglove, "Giant Spotted"
Leek, "Giant Musselburgh"
Hot Pepper, "Fish"

From Territorial Seed Company
Basil, "Aroma"
Broccoli, "Purple Peacock" (actually a sprouting broccoli/kale cross)
Hot Pepper, "Mulato Isleno"
Lettuce, "Jericho"
Shell Peas, "Canoe"

As usual, I stuck with my favorite mail order seed companies, Territorial and Pinetree. A couple of years ago, I tried some seeds from John Scheeper's, which are beautifully packaged and of good quality, but much like Burpee their prices tend to run a bit high for my taste. I looked into a few other companies and finally decided to try some seeds from Seed Savers Exchange, who do much to support plant diversity, a cause that interests me a great deal. Not only that, they're currently selling the "Fish" variety of hot pepper I've been itching to get my hands on for a few years now.

I believe the "Aroma" basil is an F1 hybrid, but otherwise I stuck with open-pollinated varieties, from which I can collect seed and grow more plants that will remain true to type.

The melons and pumpkins are not something I'll be able to grow in my boxes, but I believe they'll work out nicely in the border among the flowers and herbs. Another of my goals this year was to try interesting/exotic varieties I've not yet tried, along with certain plants that I've yet to grow, such as leeks and rutabaga. Additionally, I looked for multi-purpose plants (like the rutabaga or the "Purple Peacock" sprouting broccoli) and plants with long production seasons (such as the heat-tolerant "Jericho" lettuce or Swiss chard).

The soil outside appears to be warm enough that I can start the peas this weekend. With the right planning, I should be able to harvest from my vegetable garden in another month or so. Without the cold frame, of course.

What will you be growing this year?

2010 in Review

2011-01-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

Overall, 2010 was perhaps my best year in the vegetable garden. While I still have a ways to go towards self-sufficiency, I completed a couple of big projects and had some decent yields. As with last year, the weather was wet and often predictable, with a mild autumn that extended the season somewhat. I didn't spend much time in my other little gardens, but I did start a woodland garden in the backyard and began the base for my grotto.

The Cold Frame

In February and March, we built a cold frame from an old window cedar 2x4's and installed it just as the soil was beginning to warm. You can read more about building and installing the cold frame in this entry. In April I was able to put out some seedlings started in the basement, but as soon as the temperature edged towards the 60's and 70's, nearly all of them were fried. First lesson learned. Always keep the lid of your cold frame open when it starts getting warm.

I continued playing with my cold frame through the year, setting seedlings out to begin hardening off and planting seeds inside to see what would grow. In September and October, I planted a hardy lettuce mix and some lettuce seedlings, which I've been closely monitoring since. Even after temperatures began dropping in November and a Thanksgiving snow, the lettuce plants persisted and are still holding up. Admittedly, I am growing cold weather varieties and it's turning out to be a mild winter, but I hardly expected such success.

Relocating the Potager

In March and April, we tore down the old vegetable garden and built new frames for the new location on the south side of the house. I wrote an entry about the process right after we finished. It was a lot of hard work, but it seems to have been worth it. In general, my plants have been stronger and not as leggy, and I've had better yields with larger fruits, especially with the sun-loving plants like bush beans and chile peppers. Because I got a late start transplanting and lost many plants in the cold frame, I was not able to grow as much as I planned, and I ran into many of the same issues with squirrels and insect pests. Nonetheless, I was harvesting cold weather greens into November and digging up parsnips in December, so I'd say it that the new potager is an all-around success.

Growing Successes

First, the new varieties I purchased this year from Territorial and Pinetree...

2010 was the first year I grew parsnips, a staple vegetable in Old World cuisine that has largely fallen out of favor, despite some renewed interest in the foodie community. Part of the reason might be that they require a long season to grow to full size and cold weather to fully develop the sugars that give them their distinct flavor. I grew the "Harris Model" parsnip, an open-pollinated variety noted for its flavor and dependability. Before we got a hard frost, I dug up a small root and gave it a taste, only to discover that it was starchy and lacking the pleasant sweetness of a store-bought parsnip. After the ground froze in December, I fought through the hard soil, broke a couple of roots, and was happy to taste the sweet root I had been seeking. Altogether, I yielded 2lb of parsnips, not a lot for a 2'x2' plot of soil, but enough for a couple of meals. The flavor of a fresh parsnip is well worth the time and effort, though.

Another plant I grew for the first time was the common radish, which I found fast-growing and unbelievably useful. The heirloom "French Breakfast" cultivar doesn't produce a big meaty radish, but the flavor and texture are distinct, far better than any store-bought variety. I noticed that the flavor of the young radishes was very strong and would be a good addition to salsa. The mature flavor was more delicate and tasty on buttered bread. Much like turnips, the greens of the radish are edible, making them doubly useful in the vegetable garden. Combined with arugula or dandelion greens, they made an excellent spring pesto.

Another successful crop this year was the "Bright Lights" Swiss chard. While I lost the last season's crop to bugs, I was able to harvest a couple of decent sized batches. Chard is one of my favorite vegetables, one I love braised in pasta dishes or folded into a gratin. The "Bright Lights" mix includes a wide range of colors, from yellow to red to green, so it looks just as lovely as it tastes.

In August I ordered a couple of "winter" seed mixes from Territorial, the "Provencal Winter Mix" and "Arctic Tundra Blend." Both were successful, and a few plants started from these mixes are holding up well inside the cold frame. From the Provencal mix, I harvested three French lettuce varieties (Continuity, Salad Bowl, and Brunia), chervil, and lots of endive and roquette (otherwise known as arugula), which I used in several batches of pesto. Territorial does not specify the varieties in the Arctic Tundra blend, but it seems to be a mix of red and green looseleafs. I kept a close watch on the plants as the temperature dropped, and they seemed to survive the nights down to freezing well enough. If you're looking for dependable late season crops and like salad greens, you might want to try these blends.

As far as seeds saved from last year are concerned, I had wonderful luck with carrots this year, producing enough for several meals. I really loved the "Mokum" variety I bought from Territorial in 2009, which grows quickly and has a beautiful sweet flavor. I also planted the "Danver's Half-Long," a long season carrot better suited to storage use; the roots were noticeably thicker and took quite at least a month longer for the flavor to develop (even then I didn't find it especially sweet compared to the Mokum).

I also got better yields on the Jade and Gold Crop bush beans I planted, in addition to the black turtle beans I planted late season. This was also the best year I've had for jalapeno peppers. I am not sure if pruning off new leaf growth aided in the higher yields, especially since the bulk of the crop came later than usual. Nonetheless, I had jalapenos coming out of my ears! Herbs were another big success this year, and I had more basil, parsley, dill, and cilantro/coriander than ever.

Semi-Successes

I was able to harvest a few baby fennel bulbs of the "Perfection" variety. Because my fennel got a late start this year, my expectations were pretty low. Flavor was typical licorice-y fennel flavor. Can't say much about seed flavor/production, as I was growing only for bulbs.

Yields for shelling and snap peas weren't that great either, but I started them at least a month late, so the bushes started to dry up before they hit their peak.

Tomatoes were another disappointment this year. Despite getting a few tomatoes and ending up with plenty of green ones to last through October, most succumbed to squirrel (and possibly bird) attacks during our weekends (and weeks) out of town. I did make an effort to purchase varieties that were new to me, but since I was forced to pick most early, I'm not sure if I got optimal color and flavor. The "Country Taste" hybrid was a solid beefsteak variety with a meaty texture and classic tomato flavor that I would gladly use as my main crop variety. The "Japanese Black Trifele" was an interesting heirloom variety with a flavor that's hard to describe, sort of smokey sweet with a bit of bite. I was already familiar with the "Chocolate Cherry" via our CSA; it's a cherry variety with a flavor similar to "Cherokee Purple." And lastly, while I did not get a chance to taste a really fresh fruit, I did enjoy the "Cuore di Bue" oxheart, which is low in seeds and juice and has a wonderfully tasty acidity that would make a brilliant sauce. Definitely trying this one again.

Another thing I had only middling luck with this year was broccoli. I was able to harvest a few tiny heads and side shoots, and that's about it

Failures

Perhaps the major failure of 2010 was my attempt to grow rhubarb from seed. Based on my reading, it's a notoriously difficult plant to grow from seed, since it is so slow to germinate. Twice I planted the seeds to no avail. Because I am so committed to the idea of growing perennial food plants, this year I'm going to buy some crowns and give it another go. I will have my rhubarb pie!

Otherwise, I cannot seem to grow spinach. I tried three varieties this year--"Giant Noble," "Viroflay," and "Giant Winter"--and had only disappointing results. I can get the seeds to germinate, even grow a few little leaves, but they always end up dying before I get any spinach. Maybe this year I'll have better luck.

Not quite failures but not quite in the realm of success, the squash plants I started this year took off like wild fire but were quickly quelled by infestations of squash bugs and vine borers, which destroyed the fruits and wilted the plants to nothing. In a similar vein, my cabbage and cauliflower transplants grew quite big yet failed to produce anything. My kale, raab, bok choy, and collards also did quite badly. But again, late start, inconsistent use of covers, etc.

Plans for Next Year

1. Make better and more consistent use of floating row covers. These are honestly the best technique I've used for keeping cabbage butterflies off my cole crops and, used consistently, eliminate a lot of the headache of picking off caterpillars and spraying aphids. Back in August I researched remedies for squash bugs and vine borers and learned row covers are just as useful for young squash plants, so I'll be testing this out as well.

2. Spend more time in other parts of the yard. Yes, I started my woodland garden in the backyard and added a few more plants to the south border, front border, and rock garden, but overall I neglected various chores and didn't allow myself to enjoy the space surrounding our house. The front border, especially, needs a major overhaul.

3. Keep building the woodland garden. I planted a serviceberry tree, lots of hostas, a Solomon's Seal, and a lily of the valley. This year I am purchasing some currant bushes. Some other plants I'd like to add: wild ginger, jack in the pulpit, monkshood, cyclamen, hellebore, some kind of sedge, and some kind of fern.

4. Finish the grotto. I've been putting off this project for two years now. Except for the mortar, I have every supply necessary. No more excuses.

5. Plant more perennial fruits/vegetables. I've already decided on currant in the woodland garden. Other options include: rhubarb, asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, Good King Henry, and sorrel. Need more Zone 5B options.

As always, patience. Watch and learn and continue working towards self-sufficiency. 2010 was a pretty good year for gardening. Here's hoping 2011 is even better!

Experiments in Food Preservation: Wild Grape Jelly

2010-12-14T09:46:00.000-08:00

If you regularly keep up with this blog, then you might recall my post some months back about our trip to the Smoky Mountains. On the way back through Missouri, we stopped in the Eleven Point District of Mark Twain National Forest, spending a night at McCormack Lake and a few hours hiking the Irish Wilderness. Hiking around the lake, we came across numerous persimmon trees, whose fruit was not quite ripe, and discovered a bevy of wild grape vines. We discovered more wild grapes while in the Irish Wilderness, where we decided to grab some plastic bags and forage enough to bring home, leaving plenty for the birds and animals to eat.

There are several species of wild grape native to Missouri, though vitis riparia and vulpina are the ones most familiar to wild foragers in the region. There is another species, most commonly seen on river banks, called vitis rupestris, recognizable for its red stems. They're all quite common in the right location and, as far as I know, edible to humans (though usually quite sour and not as juicy as the commonly cultivated Mars or Concord). For the last couple of years, I have been gathering a few of the wild grapes growing as "weeds" in my yard and am slowly attempting to cultivate the vines for food.

Now, personally, I've never been a big fan of grape jelly. Compared to strawberry jam or orange marmalade, I've always found the stuff just sugary and bland, and I've never been fond of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches either. I love fresh grapes, though, and usually buy a few bunches of the Mars variety when I see them at market. This year I decided to experiment with low sugar grape jelly, just to see if I could.

The process of making grape jelly is pretty much the same as with any cultivated grape, like a Mars or Concord (both of which are native cultivars derived from vitis labrusca). Following the Pomona recipe, I started with a pound and a half of grapes, which I then mashed and simmered for ten minutes, cooled and poured into a cheesecloth bag to drip for about one day. Since I was using the wild grapes, I added a bit more sugar than I would have done with a sweeter cultivated grape. Final tasting proved that the finished jelly was just as sweet as my previous batch of Mars grape jelly.

Wild Grape Jelly

1 1/2 lb wild grapes (vitis riparia or vulpina)
2 tb lemon or lime juice
1/2 cup - 1 cup sugar or 1/4 cup - 1/2 cup honey
2 tsp calcium water (included in box of Pomona pectin)
2 tsp Pomona Universal Pectin

1. Remove stems and mash grapes and mix with 1/4 cup of water in saucepan. Bring to boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour cooked fruit into jelly bag. Let drip until juice stops.

2. Pour juice into saucepan, leaving sediment undisturbed. Mix with lemon juice and calcium water. In a separate bowl mix together sugar or honey and pectin.

3. Heat juice mixture to boiling and add pectin/sugar mixture. Stir vigorously 1-2 minute to dissolve pectin, then bring mixture back to a boil and remove from heat.

4. Fill jars to 1/4" from top and seal. Store in fridge up to 1 month or process for 10 minutes in boiling-water bath.

With Christmas coming up, I'll be giving at least a couple of jars of this jelly to family and friends as gifts. Usually I print out nice labels for the jars, listing the date canned and ingredients, then top off the jars with a pretty holiday-themed circle of fabric, a ribbon, and gift tag. Just about everyone appreciates a homemade gift, especially one with a story attached. Imagine the joy or pride in telling someone their preserves came from the Ozarks or straight from your garden.

Experiments in Food Preservation, Part 2: Raspberry-Jalapeno Jam

2010-11-23T20:31:00.000-08:00

This autumn the weather has been fairly mild, meaning that a number of harvests have held out longer than usual for Kansas City. I only just pulled up my jalapeno bushes last week, and they showed no obvious signs of being finished for the season. While chili peppers are typically at their peak in August, I got my most spectacular harvests in September and October and was stuck with about 2 pounds worth of the little buggers. Normally I like to make a few batches of salsa, but this year's harvest of tomatoes wasn't that great and October isn't exactly the tomato peak at market. Another great preservation technique for chili peppers is pickling, which I find just as flavorful and useful for salsas and other Mexican dishes (even Asian, if you're so inclined). But there's only so many jars of pickled peppers you can eat in a year and only so many you can give as gifts. Eventually it's time to try new things.

This year I decided to experiment with jalapeno jelly. Last year I followed a recipe from Preserving the Harvest, which I found far too sweet when paired with the usual cream cheese. I was hoping for something more like the perfectly balanced mango-jalapeno jam I bought a couple of years ago at the City Market. Walking through the garden one day and plucking some ripe raspberries from the vine, I glanced back at the jalapeno bushes and thought of that blend of sweet and spicy and wondered if maybe this combination was worth a try. And thus, I came up with the following recipe:

Raspberry-Jalapeno Jam

1/3 cup chopped jalapenos
1/3 cup white vinegar or apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup mashed raspberries
1 teaspoon calcium water (included in box of Pomona pectin)
1/4 cup sugar or honey
1/2 teaspoon Pomona Universal Pectin

1. Mix jalapenos and vinegar in saucepan. Bring to a boil; cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

2. Stir in mashed raspberries and calcium water. In a separate bowl, stir together sugar/honey and pectin.

3. Heat vinegar mixture to boiling and add pectin/sugar mixture. Stir vigorously 1-2 minute to dissolve pectin, then bring mixture back to a boil and remove from heat.

4. Fill jars to 1/4" from top and seal. Store in fridge up to 1 month or process for 10 minutes in boiling-water bath.

My original sketch of the recipe included a homemade raspberry red wine vinegar (far better than the abortive attempt at raspberry-vanilla vodka), but I found the results a tad heavy on the raspberry. In the future I'd use a more neutral white or cider vinegar, and I've made the change to the recipe. I'm also curious whether using the jalapeno-infused vinegar is really necessary, or whether simply cooking the jam is enough to draw out the spiciness. Thoughts?

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results of this experiment and will likely continue tweaking this recipe next year. It's quite tasty spread on wheat crackers with some cream cheese and would probably be equally good mixed with a goat cheese spread.

Experiments in Food Preservation, Part One: Watermelon Jelly

2010-11-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

I know it's November and nearly the end of the harvest season, but I've been meaning to post about this year's experiments with preserves and figured now was as good a time as any. Ever since I started preserving my own jams several years ago, I've been looking for some kind of base recipe to play with. The one book I own on the subject, Carol Costenbader's well-known Big Book of Preserving the Harvest, isn't very helpful in this regard, and the author warns against any changes made to a recipe. Much of the reason for this is that sugar helps to preserve the food, so any decrease in amount or changes in produce can throw off the balance within a recipe. Last year, after some frustration with my preserve-making skills, I discovered Pomona Universal Pectin, which is a wonderful dry pectin that allows you to make low-sugar, honey, or what I call "fake sugar" preserves. Better yet, they provide a recipe sheet that includes instructions for developing your own recipes for preserves. I've been using the stuff for over a year now and can't say enough nice things.

This summer I came into the possession of many watermelons and cantaloupes via my mother's garden. Much as I love melons, I find it really hard to use them before they go bad, so I looked into preservation methods. Because all melons have a high water content, it's difficult to do much with them. But they can be cut up and frozen for later use in sorbet or granita, or you can freeze the pressed juice or puree. A less common method of preserving melons is to turn them into jellies. Though it truly sounds odd, I was intrigued enough by the possibilities to give it a try. Much like grape, or anything other sort of jelly, you start out with juice. To make watermelon juice, you just cut up the flesh and press it through a sieve. The folks at Fair Share Farm posted simple directions for watermelon juice back in August. Yum. Once you've got the juice and the Pomona pectin, the rest is pretty easy.

Below is the recipe I came up with, based on Ponoma's recommendations. This makes a small 1-cup batch, roughly enough for a half-pint jar. I've adjusted the amount of pectin, since the batch I made turned out a bit too thick.

Watermelon Jelly

1 cup watermelon juice
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon calcium water (included in box of Pomona pectin)
1/4 cup sugar or honey
1/2 teaspoon Pomona Universal Pectin

1. Stir together watermelon juice, lemon juice, and calcium water in saucepan. In a separate bowl, stir together sugar/honey and pectin.

2. Heat juice to boiling and add pectin/sugar mixture. Stir vigorously 1-2 minute to dissolve pectin, then bring mixture back to a boil and remove from heat.

3. Fill jars to 1/4" from top and seal. Store in fridge up to 1 month or process for 10 minutes in boiling-water bath.

So now you're probably wondering how it tasted. Well, to be totally honest, it tastes a bit weird. I tried it with some buttered Farm to Market French Farm bread, and it wasn't bad. My significant other tried some on a peanut sandwich with less success. But give it a try next summer during melon season and see what you think. Maybe you'll love it.

P.S. Once you're done with your watermelon flesh, consider pickling the rind for a sweet winter treat!

Cheekwood Gardens and The Great Smoky Mountains

2010-09-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

So...I haven't kept up with this blog as planned. But part of the reason is that we (my significant other and I) were on vacation for over a week, which involved lots of planning the week before and the requisite decompression thereafter. We drove from Kansas City to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and back, with stops in St. Louis, Nashville, Memphis, and The Ozarks along the way. It was a great trip filled with the requisite tourist stops and some beautiful natural scenery. I definitely came away with a fondness for Tennessee as a state, at least in terms of aesthetic appeal.

While in Nashville, we spent a couple of hours at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art, formerly the residence of the wealthy Cheek family, who made their fortune off Maxwell House coffee. It's quite large, with different themed gardens throughout the space, including a color garden and Japanese style garden. My favorite of the gardens we walked through was probably the color garden near the main entrance. The space was full of striking combinations that took full advantage of the dry, full-sun location:

What I like about the above photo is the combination of the cool dusty miller and perennial salvia with the deep, bright reds. There were also complimentary combos of bright lime green with a wine red, in addition to contrasting textures. It was a great example of contemporary styles of garden design that place emphasis on large naturalistic swaths of color and texture. I don't have the space for these kinds of mass plantings, but it was definitely inspiring.

Right now, Cheekwood having an exhibition of glass works by Chihuly throughout the gardens and inside the museum. As an artist, I'm not a big fan of Chihuly. Once you've seen a couple of his pieces, you pretty much get the idea. There's also controversy surrounding the fact that he doesn't blow his own glass or build the larger structures most are familiar with. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see how the vegetal/floral glass sculptures were integrating into the garden, contrasting or complimenting the shapes and colors. Some of the most interesting pieces were the floating "globe onions" in the reflecting pools near the Japanese gardens:

The Great Smoky Mountains were a rather different experience, a mostly untouched natural world instead of the cultivated world of Cheekwood. Parts of the park contain old growth forest, a rarity in much of the United States (if the world). The variety of plant life we saw throughout would definitely inspire any observant gardener. Despite it being the last yawn of summer, we saw plenty of wildflowers, many of which are familiar in gardens. For instance, there were quite a few cardinal flowers growing wherever they could find a scrap of sunlight:

I was especially excited by the Joe Pye Weed in its natural setting:

I've loved these flowers for a long time and have more recently considered planting some in a spot of the yard prone to flooding. I'm not sure which species these were, but they were quite numerous along the banks of Noland Creek. If you look carefully in the background, you can see the rhododendron bushes that were incredibly common throughout the park. I can only imagine how gorgeous the forest is when these things are in full bloom. The tropical-looking leathery leaves add plenty of interest on their own. They'd make a wonderful addition to a shade of forest garden.

Of course, that's just a portion of how we spent our vacation. I might post some of the photos I took during our visit to Mark Twain National Forest once I have them uploaded. Now that we're back in town and summer has settled down, there will be more posts, I promise. Hope everyone reading had a great and relaxing season!

Pickling Hot Peppers

2010-08-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

This is my second year participating in a CSA and I'm still enjoying the weekly batch of produce I pick up each week at Badseed Market direct from the farm. Last year I didn't really take advantage of the bulk list, which would have provided more opportunity for preserving food over the winter, but this year I've ordered a few bags and already have much fuller cabinet. Our last order included basil for pesto, pepperoncini peppers, a pound of tomatilloes for salsa verde, and a bunch of jalapenos. If you've been keeping up with my garden blog for a while, then you'll remember last year how I extolled the virtues of pesto; there's already a fat bag sitting in the freezer, waiting for the frost to hit. That particular entry also extols the virtues of salsa, canned and fresh.

Of course, one can throw only so many jalapenos into salsa before it becomes barely edible, and after you're used up all the tomatoes or tomatilloes, it's time to find something else to do with the little buggers. Probably my favorite way to preserve peppers is to pickle them. Pickled jalapenos are a good replacement in any recipe that calls for fresh, and they're an awesome topping on nachos and fall chili. The recipe I use from Andrea Chesman's Serving Up the Harvest is very basic; you don't need much to augment the flavor of chiles, just a bit of salt, sugar, some garlic, and some mustard seeds (I didn't have any mustard seeds in my cupboard, so I left them out). Process 10 minutes and viola!

While planning what to do with my jalapenos, I remembered a recipe I found online 2-3 years ago for a pickled condiment, not unlike a Mexican giardiniera, featuring hot peppers, garlic, onions, and carrots. It's called escabeche, and you can find the recipe online at Simply Recipes. The recipe requires a bit more labor compared with a basic hot pepper pickle, but as I recall, the flavor is richer and more nuanced. I'm sure this comes from the additional vegetables, spices, and frying everything in olive oil first.

Here's a photo of the two recipes after processing:

Looks tasty, eh? All but a couple of those peppers came from the CSA, since my jalapenos have not been supremely productive this year. The carrots, however, came from my garden.

After I spent the day pickling hot peppers, I took the time to reorganize my cabinet, so the oldest items were in the front. It was already quite packed with the whole cucumbers I pickled in July and the strawberry jam I made back in May. I can't wait to see what everything tastes like in another few months when the flavors have had time to blend.

My preserves stay inside an old Hoosier cabinet my mother bought as a birthday present last year:

I'm very fond of the cabinet, since it provides me with an extra work surface and nice dark places to store preserves and potatoes.

Last weekend I picked a bunch of cucumbers from my mother's garden and am planning on making some relish before the weekend is through. Do you have any plans to pickle before the season begins to wane? Or will you be making that last batch of salsa or pesto instead? Do tell!

Long time, no post!

2010-08-05T11:30:00.000-07:00

Though the garden has been quite busy this summer, I've been horrible neglectful of this blog. Has it really been over 2 months since my last post? My heads been full of various ideas for entries, but for whatever reason I've lacked the impetus to post. I want to change that. I'm going to start posting at least one entry per week and cover more issues pertaining to sustainability, local food, and urban homesteading. I'll also "redecorate" at some point and redo the layout of this blog, in addition to re-organizing/adding links. So expect lots more activity from now on!

To cover the time I've been away from this blog, here are some bits & bobs from late June and the month of July...

In June the lavender bush bloomed, and I gathered the flowers to dry. I believe it's the 'Hidcote' cultivar, whichever variety is well adapted to wetter, temperate regions. I've had the plant since 2008, and the bush has gotten progressively larger since then, blooming profusely in the summer and showing off its grey-green foliage through the winter. I don't have proper drying equipment, but it's very easy to collect the flowers, tie them into bundles, and hang them around the house for a bit of perfume. The flowers in the photo were too short/small to bundle, so I let them dry on paper towels. When they were finished drying, I pulled off the flowers and stored the herbs in plastic bags.

Here is one of the hornworms I found on the tomatoes near the end of June, thrown into the grass for the robins to find. Usually, I don't have problems with these little guys, maybe one or two a year. This year, in the new vegetable garden, I found a whopping three hornworms. OK...not that many, but more than I'm accustomed to. Haven't seen a one since I took this photo. Cabbage worms are generally a bigger problem for me.

Pretty bronze fennel flowers. My plants returned this year, and the one along the south side of the house is well over 6 feet tall. Amazing. I'm letting the flowers go to seed so I can get some use out of these plants. They don't bulb like Florence fennel does, and their stalks tend to be rough and stringy, so they're not ideal for cooking, but you can use the leaves as an herb/garnish, and the seeds taste just the same.

I just love this combination of textures: the large, broad leaves of the squash with the small, feathery leaves of the cilantro going to seed. I'm not sure if these are "correct" companions, but they seemed to do well together. Still waiting for the seeds to dry so I can have coriander. This is a 'Discus Bush Buttercup' winter squash and 'Caribe' cilantro.

Leaf from the 'Rond de Nice' summer squash, which is the closest to a proper bush variety I've found in this family. Actually, only today I figured out that this was the summer squash, not the 'Discus Bush Buttercup' I also planted (which forms less of a proper bush, more of a stocky vine).

When July came, I decided to visit some plant sales and found quite a few good deals, including this coneflower and oregano plant. When I moved the vegetable garden this summer, I had to rearrange the flagstone path somewhat and pulled out the once-thriving oregano, which I inevitably waited too long to re-plant. The oregano died, so I bought a new plant for a mere $1. Hope it does better!

Another shot of the coneflower, the ubiquitous 'Magnus' variety, of course. I like my echinicea pallida plants, but they have less immediate impact, and I thought some variety might be a good idea. I love coneflowers, though. Can never have too many.

The 'Stargazer' lilies in the front border, putting on their yearly show. I especially like the 2nd photo, because you can see the black seed pods from the baptisia, which is impressively big this year.

One of the lobelias I planted back in May. After I saw these on a camping trip last September, I had to have one. The flowers are on a tall spike and pretty small, but they look a bit more striking in groups. Given the right conditions, these are supposed to spread very reliably. They're native to this region, like wet conditions along river banks, but hold up well through droughts. I'm sure they'd be perfect for a rain garden.

A few weeks ago, we visited my mother and stepfather's house in California, MO and were impressed by how well her garden is doing this year. She planted 3 types of melons, which covered probably 20 square feet or more. They weren't yet ripe, so I just took pictures.

I've avoided growing melons myself, because they tend to put out very long vines and I've yet to find a shorter vined or bush cultivar. If any wayward readers can recommend that works in small spaces, I'd love to hear about it!

A Walk Through the Garden

2010-05-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

Since the backbone of the new vegetable garden was completed, the last month in the garden has mostly been filled with busy work in between heavy bouts of spring rain. The last several days have been thankfully dry, leaving me plenty of time to wander around the garden. So I thought it might be nice to give a walk-through everything that's been going on.

Starting from the backyard, here's Molly busy with her usual chore, patiently waiting for squirrels:

Of course, looking at this photo, I'm reminded of all the weeding that needs to be done on and around the path. The violets I let grow by the steps and now threatening to overtake the steps, and you might see the walnut seedling growing nearby. Maybe you can also see the yarrow, creeping thyme, raspberry, bronze fennel and mint? This bed is a bit formless, an afterthought compared to other beds, very much a work in progress.

Turning to where the old vegetable garden used to be, you'll notice big changes:

The beginnings of a woodland garden. Back in January, my mother and stepfather moved to a new house along a lake with plenty of garden, much of it filtered shade. Lots of hostas, more than she wanted. So when we were down a few weeks ago, she dug up a bunch and gave them to me. They're already serving as excellent filler, and there are plenty more to plant along the fence.

The focal point of the woodland garden is a serviceberry (sometimes called juneberry) tree purchased from Suburban Lawn & Garden:

It's an understory tree that does well beneath the filtered shade of the redbuds and larger trees that surround our yard. In spring it produces a show of white flowers and produces small edible berries that attract birds. Apparently, the berries make good preserves, but much like crab apple, the fresh taste is too sour to be enjoyable. The tree should get about 20 feet high when fully mature, and we are attempting to stretch the trunks for a more open shape.

Turning back towards the patio, there's the new rain barrel we installed next to the gate:

We might make further changes to the spot behind the gate, since we overshot the length on the downspout and the gutter is still prone to overflowing. Rather than struggle with the water, I'm considering building a little rain garden. This might also be a great spot for a native plant I really love called Joe-Pye weed.

Walking through the gate, you can see the other rain barrel we installed on the south side:

We got the rain barrels from a local non-profit called Bridging the Gap, which facilitates recycling and other environmental programs in the Kansas City area. They do workshops teaching folks how to build these things, but we decided to purchase a couple of pre-made barrels instead. At $65 a piece, they were a far better deal than anything from a catalog or online. Not so pretty, but I don't really care so much about that. With all the rain we've been having, I've already watered my plants from the barrels several times.

In this photo, you'll also notice my tomato cages and filled-out flower/herb border. The lavender and thyme plants have really taken off this year. Here's another photo taken a few steps down the path:

You can see how the yarrow, salvia, and perovskia are doing quite well. The pale coneflowers are a bit too slender and diminutive to be seen in the background, but I'm hoping that with some time they will spread. They get around 3-4 feet tall in summer.

Along the path near the gate, you can still find some pennyroyal:

Beside the gate is my new bed for the raspberries:

As mentioned previously, it's 'Caroline', ever/fall-bearing variety that produces big juicy red fruits from August to October. Soon I'll string some wire or twine along the posts and bring a bit of order to this bed. I'm waiting until fall/winter pruning before filling the box up with soil.

On to the vegetable beds! Look at the lovely little surprise I discovered a couple weeks back:

It's a volunteer potato in my hot pepper and basil bed. When we dug up the soil from the old boxes, I searched for any remaining potatoes and other bulbs and roots, but found nothing. So imagine my surprise when this little baby popped up. It's probably on of the 'Caribe' potatoes I grew last year. I'm going to let the vine grow and flower and see if it produces more of those violet-skinned beauties.

Elsewhere in the vegetable garden, a bush beans waits:

I've got two 2'x1.5' bush bean plot, but I failed to mark them after planting and am not sure which is the 'Gold Crop' and which is the 'Jade'. Guess I'll know when the pods start appearing this summer.

What else is growing in the vegetable garden? Well, we have some Swiss chard:

Typically, chard and spinach are started outdoors, but I started a few indoors, all of which died in the great cold frame debacle. The plants started outside have suffered a few insect attacks and are just now getting their 3rd and 4th leaves. I've had to cover the spinach and chard plots and do a bit of reseeding, but the chard is holding through admirably.

Despite similar insect attacks on the raab and cole crops, the plants have continued to persist:

Actually, I fashioned makeshift cloches to ward off further damage until the plants got large enough to hold their own:

I'm sure you can tell that it's just the top of a soda bottle, the cap of which can be removed to let cooler air in. I've been saving these a few years for just such a purpose, and they work pretty well.

And here's a partial view of the vegetable garden from the east:

The mulch we bought ended up not being enough to cover all the paths, but at least we've got the landscape fabric to stifle the weeds. I also wish the beds looked more abundant than they do, but I'm hoping it looks more impressive by July.

Anyway, on to the front border I never seem to talk about anymore:

The Siberian irises look quite impressive, and the baptisia makes for a wonderful backdrop when in full bloom. The current plan is to remove the tall red-orange Asiatic lilies that clash with my relatively cool color scheme and give them a new home, perhaps elsewhere in the yard or with family. The 'Stargazer' Oriental lilies, which are a more pleasing fuchsia-streaked white, will go in that spot. Or perhaps that's where I'll put the lobelia syphilitica. I like how the reddish tones and white pop beside the blue and violet. The lobelia won't bloom until late summer and fall, at which time it'll be the main show.

But those irises look lovely...

Don't they?

Elsewhere in the front garden are little surprises:

Finally, there's the rock garden I started last year in the northeast yard along the rock wall, a spot that is dry and gets a fair amount of sun during the day. The 'Ultra Violet' hybrid salvia (or desert sage) I planted last year is now in bloom:

I think the yellow flower of the sedum makes a lovely contrast. Below that is one of the purple hens & chicks that I started with last year, along with a blue-green sedum I bought about a month ago:

I'm still looking for more succulents and alpines to fill the space, but as with most of the plots in my yard, I've decided to take a slow-paced piecemeal approach to design. Wandering through my garden, I'm starting to really love how everything's taking shape and looking more like the space in my head.

Rebuilding a Garden

2010-04-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

Back in December, I discussed my plan to move the vegetable garden from the backyard to the space on the south side of our house. This spring we've been working hard to turn plans into reality, in spite of circumstances intervening and things going slower then planned.

In March, Rob dug up the forsythia, which ended up taking a couple of hours and a sledge hammer. The results left a nice little pit of dirt and at last no stump to contend with:

After that was done, I pulled up the old beds we built back in 2007 and took a look at the boards. My assumption was that the bottom portions would have some decay but would be otherwise usable in the new plot, so I was a little surprised by the severity of the decay on some of the boards. Here's a photo to illustrate what I'm talking about:

The heaviest decay occurred on the boards further downhill, which is lightly shaded throughout much of the shade and obviously gets more water when it rains. It's also worth mentioning that we built the beds with 1"x8" untreated pine boards. After 3 seasons in-ground, some decay is to be expected. Less expected were the termites that infested 2 or 3 of the boards; our house suffered minor termite damage in the distant past, but we've never seen any sign of the critters. When I first discovered all this, I was afraid we wouldn't be able to reuse the boards at all, but after further assessing the damage, we were able to salvage half for use on the small 2'x2' and 2'x4' frames. Not bad!

For the rest of the boxes, we settled on untreated pine 2"x6" boards, which would give us a good bed height without having to double them up. Initially, I considered the more rot-resistant cedar, but it wasn't as cost-effective. In theory, the sunniness of the new spot and the thicker weight of the boards should help stave off decay longer than in the previous plot.

But before we actually built the frames, it was onto the new step, which was clearing out the grass. Originally I considered doing what a lot of raised bed gardeners do, which is starting right on top of the grass and blocking out weeds with cardboard, newspaper, or landscaping fabric. We'd lay some cardboard along the paths to kill the grass and eventually lay some pebbles or mulch. This idea wasn't really that great, though, since it would end up diverting more water down the path, which would pool up near the gate. Not cool. So we decided that removing an inch or two of sod would be a better idea.

Last weekend we rented a sod cutter and spent an hour or so ripping out lawn:

A bit of a spotty job, but nothing a shovel can't fix.

The last step was building the frames and installing them, which takes more effort than you can imagine. It's hard to tell in photos, but the south yard slopes ever-so-slightly, necessitating the leveling of each bed. Once this task was finished, we broke up the remaining layer of soil (mostly clay), removed offending root masses, and brought in the wonderful soil from the original vegetable garden that took 3 years and a lot of compost to build. We ended up having lots left for the future woodland garden, the backbone of which we'll start building in another week or two.

While the renovated vegetable garden has gone brilliantly, I've had an awful time with seedlings and have lost most while in the cold frame. It does a terrific job trapping in heat during the hottest parts of the day but seems not quite able to block out the frost. 2 weeks ago we had a few nights when the temperatures dropped near freezing, effectively killing the bulk of my seedlings. It's also possible that I have not left the cover on long enough to generate the necessary heat. Whatever the issue, I'm going to try and work it out before autumn, so I'm able to extend my crop a bit longer than usual. I look forward to the challenge!

Happy Equinox!

2010-03-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

I took this photograph about a week ago, when the temperature hit a balmy 60 degrees and evidence of Spring's arrival was sprouting throughout the garden. Spring officially dropped by on Saturday, but you wouldn't know it from the weather. Snow fell from morning to night, and the temperature hovered in the 30s. I transplanted lots of spring bulbs the day before--daffodils, hyacinths, magic lilies, and Stars of Bethelehem. The cold spell was luckily too brief to kill them, and much of the snow melted today. Here in Missouri, Spring is always a precarious endeavor.

How to Build a Cold Frame

2010-03-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

The title is not completely accurate, i.e. this entry will not lay out detailed instructions on building your own cold frame. Instead, it's about how we (my significant other and I) finally built our own cold frame from an old window and some 2X4 cedar boards. For the uninitiated, a cold frame (or cucumber frame, as they say in some parts) is sort of like a miniature greenhouse with a basic frame and a hinged roof on top. What's the point of building a cold frame? Well, it's a good way of extending the season in your vegetable garden. You can start plants early inside the frame or keep plants inside after frost hits. You can also protect young seedlings from possible frost in the early spring.

As I mentioned in some entries last year, I've been planning on building a cold frame for a couple of years. Last spring I made a makeshift cold frame using one of my raised beds and a glass window, and it worked well enough for protecting seedlings at the time. I toyed with purchasing a frame, perhaps a high quality cedar box, or a cheaper plastic box, but since a lot of people makes their own using an old window and a wooden frame, things we had access to, it made more sense to go the handmade route. So I chose the biggest window in the basement (the previous tenants kindly left us plenty) and measured it. 61"x28". Plenty of room. I consulted a number of websites, including some videos on YouTube, on the construction. This particular demonstration was especially helpful:

We decided to go with cedar, since it resists decay better than pine, and I want my cold frame to be a more or less permanent structure within the garden. Most of the construction was done by Rob, who laminated and screwed the boards together to ensure sturdiness and keep out any drafts. The photo above should give you a clear enough sense of how he put it together. Very basic, nothing fancy. Once the box was finished, we painted the window and the box, using the same trim paint the previous owners had so graciously left behind. We attached the window with two hinges and used an old metal pull we found on a cabinet in the basement (more leftovers). While the paint was drying, I dug up almost a foot of dirt from the spot where I planned to place the frame, lined the square with bricks for the frame to stand on, and then added a layer of gravels and rocks for drainage.

And here's how the cold frame looked yesterday:

While the cold frame is about 6 feet long, it looks pretty small in context of the landscape. The fact that it's buried about 6" in the ground helps too. It's going to be another week or two before I can tuck some seedlings inside, but I've already noticed the window collecting condensation and how warm the soil inside is compared to soil outside. I don't have a thermometer to test it, but I'd guess there's a 10 degree difference.

So that's how we built a cold frame. The task that had been persistently dogging me for over a year is officially finished, and I'm looking forward to another spring. Next, we'll be ripping out the grass along the south strip, tearing down and rebuilding our raised beds, and relocating the vegetable garden to make way for a woodland garden in the backyard. Perhaps we'll make headway on the grotto this summer? Stay tuned!

New Seeds for 2010

2010-02-05T21:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyknit/ / CC BY 2.0

It’s February and just about time to start seeds for spring crops. I’ve already purchased my seeds for 2010, fewer than last year, since I’ve been thrifty and managed to save quite a few packets. But I am trying out three new tomato varieties and testing a couple of varieties of spinach. As with last year, I am focusing primarily on open pollinated varieties in order to achieve my long-term goal of self-sufficiency.

Here’s what I got this year:

From Pinetree Garden Seeds
Parsnip, "Harris Model"
Radish, "French Breakfast" (heirloom)
Spinach, "Giant Noble" (heirloom)
Spinach, "Viroflay" (French heirloom)
Swiss Chard, "Bright Lights"
Tomato, "Country Taste" (F1 hybrid)

From Territorial Seed Company
Fennel, "Perfection"
Rhubarb, "Victoria"
Tomato, "Chocolate Cherry" (cherry tomato)
Tomato, "Cuore Di Blue" (oxheart sauce tomato)
Tomato, "Japanese Trifele Black" (Russian heirloom)

Territorial is currently throwing in a packet of "Nantes" carrots for you to plant and donate to a food bank or soup kitchen, which is a neat idea. Hopefully I’ll get a decent return this year and have enough to give away. I highly recommend ordering through Territorial. Their seeds are high quality but not too expensive, and they sell a lot of heirlooms and open-pollinated seeds, in addition to organically grown seeds that can sometimes be hard to find elsewhere.

If you’re looking to spend less money for something unique, Pinetree is another great company. They sell smaller packets of seeds than most companies, about all you need for most kitchen gardens, and they specialize in heirlooms and ethnic vegetables and herbs. I always have a good experience when I order from them and spend about half as much.

Before I begin seed-starting, I need to assess my equipment and see if anything needs to be replaced. I also desperately need to get my gardening area in the basement in order and buy a proper bench or table to store my collection of odds & ends. I’m pretty methodical about seed-starting in that I try not to plant more than I can use. This happened a couple years ago; I planted 2-3 times more tomatoes than I actually needed and was never able to find homes for several plants. What I do now is figure out how many plants properly space will fit in each square plot and throw in a few more in case some seedlings don’t make it.

I’d be curious what methods any of my wayward readers use to start seeds. Do you reuse containers or make your own? Or do you, like me, have better luck with seed-starting systems (like the ones Gardener’s sells)? Cowpots, perhaps? What other methods have you tried?

2009 in Review

2010-02-02T18:45:00.000-08:00

Better later than never. 2009 was, for the most part, a disappointing year in the vegetable garden. Though I was able to harvest earlier than in 2008, I did not manage the kind of yields I’d hoped for, apart from a few specific plants. Part of this was due to weather conditions; the 2009 growing season was about as wet as 2008. The snails and slugs were abundant, as were the crickets in late summer. The mold that was rampant on some plants in 2008 was mostly absent, however, and I’m not sure if this was based on some subtle shift in conditions or better monitoring on my part. But there were a few happy discoveries and surprises, and gardening for food continues to be a learning experience. So here’s an overview of what I grew, the successes and failures, and some hopes for 2010.

Successes

As mentioned in my spring 2009 review, I had good luck with fast-growing spring greens and lettuce. The kale held up through mid-summer, and I was able to plant more kale, bok choy, and raab for a second late fall harvest. I will likely continue with this plan for next year, planting as soon as we build and set out the coldframe in February or March.

But the biggest success in 2009 was the almost continuous harvest of raspberries from August through October. Back in 2008, I planted 5 "Caroline" raspberry bushes in the south garden and backyard. Two of the plants ended up dying that year, but the rest held through the winter and produced their first scant harvests in the spring of 2009. Not expecting much in the way of a second summer/fall harvest, I was surprised when I found the plants abundant with flower and eventually fat red berries. For a few weeks, I was throwing berries on my cereal and yogurt every morning at breakfast. I made several small batches of jam, a few jars of which were given as Christmas presents. After a disappointing season in the vegetable garden, it sure is satisfying to enjoy homemade raspberry jam on your toast.

Another small success came with the “Black Turtle” shelling beans. While the total harvest after shelling turned out the be less than I thought (enough for one meal), I was impressed at the speed with which the plants produced fat pods of black beans in the summer heat. Like most shelling beans, I was able to use them as snap beans when they were young, but most I allowed to dry for later harvest.

The only variety of tomato that produced a steady crop in 2009 was the “Enchantment” saladette. Nice little tomatoes, decent flavor, but definitely not something I’m itching to plant again as my main crop hybrid.

Additionally, I had good success with most the annual herbs I planted, especially the parsley and the dill. The cilantro performed well until mid-summer, after which it died back, a typical habit in this region.

Semi-Successes

While I didn’t get as good a harvest of potatoes as last year, it was solid enough for a meal or too, and I can certainly recommend giving the purple-skinned "Caribé" variety a try if waxy potatoes are your thing. I had decent harvests of the “Jade” and “Gold Crop” bush beans, though it was really only enough to augment what we got from our CSA. The “Dakota” shelling peas and “Sugar Sprint” snap peas also garnered mild yields, but I had hoped for better performance overall. I got a few “Cherokee Purple” and “Striped German” tomatoes, a scant harvest at best. And I harvested a few tiny heads of the Nutri-Bud broccoli.

Failures

I failed to get a harvest from the following:
Fava Bean, "Broad Windsor"
Buttercup Squash, "Discus Bush"
Romanesco Broccoli, "Shannon"
Broccoli, "Waltham 29"
Cabbage, "Early Jersey Wakefield"
Cabbage, "Danish Ballhead"
Cauliflower, "Early Snowball"
Summer Squash, "Ronde De Nice"
Tomatoes, "Black Krim"

Thr brassicaes held up well through the spring and summer, but around the time they started developing heads suffered critter attacks from which they were unable to recover. I do think that if they had been planted in a sunnier locale and able to develop larger heads faster, they might have stood a chance. But alas, it was not to be.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, the fava bean plants only produced one pod before wilting in the summer heat. And the summer and winter squashes were doing quite well until succumbing to stormy conditions.

Lessons for Next Year

The main lesson I’ve learned over these few years of vegetable gardening is to pay close attention to weather conditions, to light and shade and wet. As I pointed out in my previous entry, I misjudged the conditions of the space I chose, which has led to struggles with certain pests, fungi, and overall plant sizes and yields. Luckily, I had a back-up plan in case the space did not work and am going forward with implementation. Rather than being irritated at having to move everything, I’m pretty upbeat about the project and hoping for greater success this coming season.

Another thing I learned in 2009 was the benefit of extending the season with early spring and late fall. With a makeshift coldframe (a glass window over one of the smaller beds, I was able to set out lettuce and spring greens in March when the frost had not quite subsided. And I was able to harvest raspberries, kale, raab, and bok choy through October and into November.

I’ve already started planning for this year’s garden and have bought another batch of seeds, which I’ll be discussing in my next entry.

What were your best and worst gardening experiences of 2009? What did you learn?

Planning

2009-12-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

Not surprisingly, I've managed to allow nearly 3 months to slip by since my last post to this blog. In that time, I've finished the last harvest of the summer crops, planted a few greens for fall production, and attended to various end-of-season chores. Next month I plan on doing another end-of-the-year wrap-up, covering the new vegetable and plant varieties planting and posting some favorite photos from the year I haven't yet posted.

In this entry I'd like to talk about one winter garden chore that's already underway, which is the replanning of the south strip of yard that dominates most of my gardening activity. When we moved into this house, there wasn't much in the way of a garden beyond the somewhat neglected border along the east front walk. The sunny strip of lawn leading to the back gate contained one forsythia bush, lots of spider lilies, and not much else. The backyard was worse, containing only a brick patio and a small untended plot that had maybe been planted with marigolds at some point. I'd complain about weeds, but I've always liked the collection of violets, clover, and mock strawberries that grow throughout our yard. I spent a year holding back and just evaluating the space, deciding what I'd like to do with it. I checked the footprint and boundaries of our lot, measured the details (like bushes, fence, air conditioner, etc.), and in 2007 drew up the plan you see on the left. From the very beginning, I've always shot for a simple, organic design, building everything off a single undulating, snake-like path. While I'm pretty pleased with the execution of the concept overall, I've since realized that I didn't do a very good job accounting for the light conditions throughout the season. While there is a good strong patch of light on the deck and patio throughout the day, most of the backyard is dominated by filtered light throughout the height of the growing season. Of course, you wouldn't see this if you were looking at the backyard in late autumn through early spring, when all the offending trees lack any leaves.

I've been asked if it's possible to keep a vegetable garden in filtered or part shade conditions, and the answer is yes...sort of. More experienced gardeners are probably aware that spinach and other types of greens handle shade pretty well. Most other plants will survive at 4-6 hours full sun per day, but after two years of such conditions I can't honestly say they will thrive. Sure, my crops have been productive, but most of the fruits have been small. Not to mention the yields.

I began to think about this last year, concluding that I'd wait another year, see how the crops did, and move the garden if I continued to run into the same setbacks. One of the major problems in a small city lot like ours is finding space with reasonable levels of light, without trees or houses to block the sun. The optimal strip in our yard has always been dominated by the forsythia bush:

Now, I love forsythia bushes as much as the next person, but this one has just been a problem. It's so big that, for the throughway to be at usable, we're forced to trim it back in the late summer when it's sending out new shoots. These trimmings are apparently what's been keeping the bush from producing those gorgeous yellow flowers in early spring. Not that we've had much of a choice.

So, Step #1: Remove forsythia bush. Like so:

Now, I don't recommend removing an overgrown 10+ foot tall forsythia bush unless you absolutely have to. It's not quick, easy, or especially fun. But if you have to, start by trimming down the branches. Cut everything down to the stump. It'll make the rest of the job a lot easier. The only other step is to grab a shovel and dig the thing out. You'll notice that we haven't done this yet, having decided to wait until late winter, when the branches and roots are brittle and some of the plant has (hopefully) died.

Having cleared up that problem and feeling impatient to begin, I measured the details of the space and began laying the new plan out on paper. Along the strip where the bush had been, now covered in grass, I wanted to set new boxes where they would get optimal light and use roughly the same amount of square feet as in my current space. While it would have been convenient to move all the boxes we built in 2007 straight to the new space, the restrictions prevented that from being a possibility. I spent an hour or two sketching out rectangles on tracing paper before arriving at the final plan on the right. The skinny 2' wide raised beds turned out to be a lot more flexible in the narrow strip in terms of space, and they're also easier than the 4'x4' raised beds to reach into (for a shorty like me, at least). I was able to eke out roughly the same square footage and will be adding a box around the raspberry, which is one of the easiest ways to manage the brambles. Between the boxes, I will have the same 2' wide paths, possibly covered with landscape fabric or mulch (I haven't really decided). I'm trying this time to avoid removing large tracts of sod, since it's back-breaking work and not absolutely necessary when planting in boxes. Many potager and square-foot gardeners simply lay something at the bottom of the box to block out weed and tree growth. The hardest part of this new plan will be dismantling and rebuilding boxes from scrap and building new ones as needed. Not to mention moving the layers of soil and compost I've built in the last two years. Honestly, I'm looking forward to all the work ahead of me this spring. I hope it will bring me closer to my goal of producing a more substantial portion of my own food.

As far as the space left over when the vegetable garden is moved...well, I'll be working on replanning that this winter as well. As mentioned in my previous blog, I'd like to create a beautiful woodland habitat of mostly native plants with some edibles thrown in. More on that in the future!

Permaculture in a Nutshell

2009-09-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

Long time, no post, eh? My effort to stick to a monthly schedule with this blog hasn't exactly panned out. August saw us fulfilling our work commitment at the farm from which we get our CSA; we dug up potatoes, picked beans and tomatoes, and peeled onions and garlic. Harvests in our home vegetable garden have not been so abundant, which has prompted me to consider moving everything to a strip along the south garden and converting the backyard to more of a woodland habitat. Nonetheless, we have had a steady supply of snap beans and black beans for dry use. I've harvested plenty of tomatoes to augment the offerings from our CSA, and the last 3 weeks or so has been abundant with raspberries.

This morning I finished a book checked out from the Crossroads Infoshop (where I've been volunteering for the past 2 months) called Permaculture in a Nutshell, by Patrick Whitefield. Permaculture is design system that is compatible with organic, sustainable gardening, but goes well beyond such techniques by modeling itself after natural ecosystems. The clearest example of this would be a forest garden built with trees and multiple layers of undergrowth. Most of the plants would be perennial and multiple use. Layers of mulch would replace plowing.

Without going into ornate detail, Whitefield describes the basic principles of permaculture design and offers examples where it has been implemented. I was especially interested to learn that permaculture goes well beyond garden plots, addressing our food systems and use of land and resources, both in the country and the city. For instance, permaculture also promotes the LETS system, where goods are exchanged for services; unlike bartering, one can accrue credits. Community Supported Agriculture is another system permaculture supports.

If you'd like to learn what permaculture is and how it works, this is an informative, easy read.

I was enthused enough that, when I finished, I decided to research local permaculture resources. It would seem that most permaculture design resources are scarce and fairly scattered, especially in this region. The Permaculture Institute is probably the leading world resource for the permaculture system. There is also the Midwest Permaculture group, based out of Illinois. And a man named Deny Henke is blogging about his permaculture homestead in southeastern Missouri. Vajra Farm in Kansas also follows permaculture design practices.

As far as implementing the practices in my own garden, I'd love to introduce some more perennial and self-seeding edible natives into the garden, especially in the shady woodland garden I plan to build. But it's going to require more research into native plants. Another thing permaculture recommends is keeping a garden where you can easily see it. While the new location won't be as convenient from my back deck, I will be able to see everything from my dining room and kitchen, which is where I first look out every morning. I plan on keeping my boxes, since that system works well enough for me, but I will certainly be using permaculture as a means to think about my garden and lifestyle in general. According to Whitefield's recommendations, I'm already halfway there!

The Joys of Summer: Pesto & Salsa

2009-07-16T12:45:00.001-07:00

It's mid-July and some of my favorite crops, basil and tomatoes, are entering their peak periods. It's no wonder that the two are often served together, particularly in Caprese salad or atop bruschetta. Both have been staples in my garden over the past 3 years. A total no-brainer.

Like many herbs, basil is easy to grow, preferring a sunny spot and well-drained soil. Most books and seed packets recommend pinching leaves off the tops of seedlings to encourage sturdy, bushy growth. I would amend this, however, by suggesting you hold off pinching leaves once the plant is mature. Allow a week or two to pass between mature trimmings, so the plant can recoup and produce larger leaves in abundance. Most sources also suggest not allowing the plant to flower, since this will induce woody growth along the stem and stave off leaf production. Just pinch off the flowers as they come. You can get several harvest from a well-managed basil plant until the frost hits.

Though I like basil added to tomato dishes and otherwise, I like it best as a base for pesto. Since I starting shopping the farmers market and keeping a garden in my backyard, the production of copious amounts of pesto has become something of a summer ritual. Because our CSA has offered plenty of basil in addition to the 12 or so plants growing at home, I've already made and frozen a couple of batches. Of course, I love pesto so much that it doesn't last very long in the freezer.

My first pesto recipe came from the Betty Crocker Cookbook, which also offered a winter variation with spinach that was surprisingly tasty (though just not as good as the classic basil variety). Because I didn't yet have a food processor, I would make it in the blender. It was an arduous task, and if you're as serious about pesto as I am, I would highly recommend just shelling out $100 for a good quality food processor. In 2005, Everyday Food published a Basil Pesto recipe specifically designed for freezing, which omitted the cheese and ingeniously instructed one to quickly blanch and shock the basil to retain color. More recently, I've been using the recipe in Andrea Chesman's Serving Up the Harvest, which includes the cheese, and have not discovered any issues with its inclusion. On Sunday, Emily from Everything Begins With an E posted her own recipe using a local cheese.

With the right equipment, pesto is very easy to make. It really shines with high quality fresh ingredients (local if you can) and is a great addition to pasta, minestrone, or toast. I've even thrown it in omelets with good results. Plus you can freeze it for those long winter months, when basil is less abundant.

Another simple summer dish I love, and am gearing up to make this weekend, is salsa. Jalapenos are popping up on the bushes, and this week I've harvested a few of 'Enchantment' hydrid saladette tomatoes. In addition to the sweet onions and heirloom tomatoes I received yesterday from the CSA, I have the makings of quality salsa. Usually, I make the cooked down sauce variety you get in jars or at restaurants. This is the base recipe I use:

1 gallon quartered tomatoes
2 cups jalapeno peppers, chopped
1 cup onions, chopped
2 cups white or cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup pickling or kosher salt

Cook over low heat until thickened.

This recipe was given to me by my boyfriend's father a couple of years ago. Cook time depends on your preferred consistency. If you like really thick salsa, you might need to leave it on the stove up to 5 hours or whip out the crockpot. And don't take the recipe as biblical truth. I usually add a few cloves of garlic and cut the sugar by at least half, since I find the original recipe too candylike, covering the already sweet flavor of the tomatoes. I also like to cut the vinegar with lime juice, throw in cilantro at the end, or switch up the tomato and pepper varieties, depending on what I have onhand. If you want to can it, ladle into hot jars, seal, and process at 220F for about 10 minutes. It will also keep in your fridge, unprocessed, up to a month (possibly more, because of the vinegar) and can be frozen for future use.

In addition to the traditional sauce variety, you might like to try some fresh salsa, which is more like pico de gallo. Alex at Unaccustomed Earth posted a recipe for this dish on Tuesday. I made something it yesterday as a topping for nachos. My version used 2 saladette tomatoes, a jalapeno, juice from half of a lime, and some baby shallots quickly dug from the garden and washed. It's a great addition to most Mexican dishes and a good way to get rid of excess tomatoes fast. Just don't leave it in the fridge any longer than a couple of days.

As the height of the season continues, I'll no doubt be spending more time in the kitchen, whipping up more batches of pesto and salsa. What dishes do you make to take advantage of the season?

On the South Side

2009-06-12T15:46:00.000-07:00

Since I've spent the last few entries focusing on my vegetable garden, I thought with the next batch of posts, I'd explore other areas of the yard. One area that's undergone the greatest evolution is the garden on the south side of our house. When we initially moved in, the space was dominated by cracked sidewalk that was blocked by the air conditioner. The only plants remaining were what are colloquially known as spider lilies and elsewhere called Resurrection Lilies or Naked Ladies (Lycoris squamigera, if you're curious). So, 2 years ago in 2007, we tore out the sidewalk and built a flagstone path that curled around the air conditioner and between the forsythia.

The space you see in the photo is what you see as soon as you leave the backyard. Since 2007, it's been in a sort of limbo--me uncertain what to plant. I knew that I would be planting creeping thyme along the path, along with the Roman chamomile (which grows lower than the German varieties and survives the winter). And though it wasn't my original plan, the spot east of the lavender along the foundation has been perfect for tomatoes. Much of the rest was up in the air.

This spring I decided to take some initiative and fill the space in. The first goal was to find a plant tall enough to block off most of the air conditioner, but small enough to fit the tight space (it's only about 5 feet from house to path). Once I decided on that plant, I would choose some shorter plants to add interest. After spending hours combing my catalogs and notes, I decided that a Russian sage was closest to what I wanted. I'd add a salvia and something else and be done with it. It took some searching to find a proper variety. The first nursery had only dwarf hybrids available, but they had the fantastic 'Caradonna' variety of salvia, which has deep violet flowers and stems and leaves tinged in purple. I found the sage at the second nursery and brought it home.

Because of this spring's abundant range, I was forced to put planting off for a while. When I was finally able to do so in May, I had had time to think things over and strategize my design. Here are the results:

Of course, right now things are still filling out, but this gives an idea. The yarrow comes from another part of the garden, where it was too tall to fit in. Here, it should be fine, since it should stay shorter than the sage and the pink and white flowers will make the salvia pop. I also tucked in a variety of creeping thyme, 'Minus,' with tiny, tight leaves to cover the area between the stepping stones.

I'm happy with the results, though it's going to take another year or two before everything fills in to my liking. At some point this summer we're going to be removing the forsythia that you see in the right side of the photos. It's just too big and hard to keep from growing over the path without deep trimming, which prevents it from fully flowering in early spring. Removing it will also allow more light to hit everything I've planted.

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Eventually, there will be another rain barrel in this area and another one on the other side of the fence. I was going to purchase another pre-built model online, but I discovered that a local non-profit, Bridging the Gap, sells kits as well as cheaper pre-assembled rain barrels. Since I support their efforts to promote environmental issues locally, I think it's the best option. If you're composting your yard and kitchen waste and don't yet have a rain barrel, consider it. You'll be preventing run-off, in addition to having a supply of free water for your garden.

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Additionally, a friend of mine in Kansas City, Alex, started her own gardening blog a few months back called Unaccustomed Earth. If you're interested in urban gardening and exotic houseplants, I recommend having a look. I've found a number of her entries useful and entertaining, and I've even learned about carnivorous plants.

While I haven't been keeping up with garden blogs as regularly as I'd like, I have been reading a local food blog out of KC called Everything Begins With E. Emily belongs to and volunteers with the Fair Sharm Farms CSA and much of her blogs charts how she uses food from the CSA, as well as other local sources.

Spring in the Vegetable Garden

2009-05-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

A shot of the garden as it looked earlier today.

It's been nearly a month since I last posted, but things have been busy in the vegetable garden. Since my last post almost everything (save a few herbs) has been planted for spring; the peas are flourishing, and the beans are growing tall; the cabbage plants are starting to develop small heads. There have been quite a few harvests, so I thought I would share some of what I've been eating in roughly the order of each harvest.

Raab, 'Sorrento'

I covered this in my last entry on the first harvest in late April. You can read my thoughts in that entry. The plants have continued to send up stalks since that harvest, but the leaves and heads are much smaller. I attempted to use the whole stalks in a pasta dish one night and, despite blanching and sauteeing them, found them far too tough. Last night I just used the leaves and heads and found them quite tender.

Overall, I'm liking raab (or rabe or rapini, etc.), but I have previously expressed my love of greens. It's definitely more useful in its initial leafy state, although the fact that it continues to produce something edible after that initial harvest is a plus. Another plus I've discovered is that most pests, especially cabbage butterflies, tend to avoid it.

The bok choy and kale together...

Kale, "Improved Dwarf Siberian"

I already knew I liked kale, which is why I decided to plant it this year. The primary advantage of this variety was the (fairly) flat leaves and dwarf size that would presumably tolerate close spacing. Kale must typically grow rather tall, because I estimate the full grown leaves at about a foot. I've had a few bites raw and used this kale in a few stir-fries, and honestly, in terms of flavor, I haven't noted a substantial difference in flavor from the Scotch varieties. If you're like me and dislike the thick, curly leaves of those varieties but like the flavor, this one is worth trying. Another thing I really like about kale is that it grow leaves quickly, so you can do a measured harvest every 1-2 weeks.

Dwarf Pac Choi, "Ching-Chiang"

I tried some dwarf/baby bok choy from a local grower at the City Market last year and really liked it. The water content in the stalks seems lower than the full-sized varieties, which makes it a bit more flavorful. Also, with the close-spacing I use and only two people to feed, dwarf plants tend to make better sense. The flavor on this variety is good, somewhat similar to cabbage but milder and lighter. I used a couple plants for stir-fry one night and then the remaining four for dinner the next week.

I noted that the cabbage butterflies also avoided the kale and bok choy. For whatever reason, they seem to prefer the brassicaes with the broader, leathery type leaves, i.e. cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, collards. My theory is that it related to the scent of the leaves.

Now on to the lettuce! Since I planted only crisphead and romaine varieties, I had few thinnings to munch on while waiting for the heads to develop. I did experiment a bit and clip a few outer leaves from a couple varieties, apparently to no great detriment to the plants. After a few nibbles of the 'Reine des Glaces,' I decided to back off and let it develop full juicy heads, so I'll just cover the other two varieties I planted.

Romaine/Cos Lettuce, "Flashy Trout's Back" (Organic)

This is an heirloom variety which, absurdly, I just received in this week's CSA share. Like most romaine varieties, this one forms a sturdy head with pale, crisp leaves in the center, but you'll notice from the photo that the outer leaves are quite loose. The spread of the leaves gets to be problematic as they grow, so chances are next year I'll space them a bit further apart. Otherwise, I real like this variety. It's a bit softer than most romaines, in some ways similar to a looseleaf or butterhead variety, but it has more of the bite one expects from a romaine. I've found it pretty adaptable--good with a Mexican salad or a side salad dressed in mustard vinaigrette. The lime green, red-speckled leaves also add some much-needed visual interest.

The lovely & interesting leaves of the 'Flashy Trout's Back' lettuce.

'Winter Density' lettuce beside some young 'Bull's Blood' beets.

Romaine/Cos Lettuce, "Winter Density"

This is, in a lot of ways, just a good basic romaine lettuce, with a nice deep green color and thick, tasty leaves. What I like most about this variety, and what I'd primarily recommend it for, is that it develops small compact heads, not much bigger than 8" high. It's awesome for close spacing and small servings.

The main problem I've been having with my lettuce is snails or slugs munching on the leaves at night. This is a typical problem with lettuce and not one I've made much effort to solve. They've been mostly attacking the outer leaves. And since the rain let up last week, they appear to be less active.

I'm pretty happy with the vegetable garden thus far. One great thing about starting a cool weather garden is that by May you already feel a small sense of accomplishment. In previous years, I've had to wait until June or July for that feeling. While I'm certainly nowhere near where I'd like to be in terms of production, I've still been able to contribute to a meal or two a week for nearly a month now.

Regarding what I've been making, I've been following a lot of recipes from a great book called Serving Up the Harvest, by Andrea Chesman. I'm really still exploring the book, but I love how it's divided according to seasons, along with the selection of basic recipes that can be modified according to what's on hand. If you find yourself online quite a bit, searching for recipes to match whatever's fresh from the garden or market, like I have, it's an extremely useful book.

First Harvest: Raab

2009-04-22T08:07:00.000-07:00

I had been hoping to finally plant the remaining cauliflower and broccoli plants last weekend, but on Saturday we had yet another spell of rain, so I was forced to wait once again. On Monday I wandering through the garden with Rob, seeing what needed to be done, and was surprised to find a yellow flower blooming on one of my raab plants. Now, I'm no expert on broccoli and its many relatives, but I'm pretty sure that's a sign your raab is ready to harvest.

Because I've never actually cooked with raab before, I decided to search for and try out a new recipe. The Hearty Peasant Soup from Whole Living sounded good, similar to minestrone, which I like. Anything with cannelini beans (or chickpeas, which are offered as another option) sounds good to me.

I cut the stalks for eating Monday night, leaving behind some little leaves in hopes of another harvest, tied them with a rubber band, and stuffed them in a plastic shopping bag overnight. Next time I think I'll harvest them the day of eating, so the greens do not turn limp. Also, freshly picked vegetables are loaded with more nutrients.

In case you're curious, this is what a stalk of raab looks like:

You might notice the little flower-head that looks like a mini-broccoli. The plant, though, is smaller and more loosely formed. They're grown primarily for greens. This variety is an open-pollinated cultivar known as "Sorrento."

Before washing the raab, I removed the big leaves like so:

After which I cut the leaves, stalks, and heads, then dropped them into the colander to be washed:

Finally, after I had sauteed the onions and garlic and thrown in some tomato paste, balsamic vinegar, and a can of diced tomatoes in the pot, I piled in the raab:

I served the soup with a an Italian bread from Farm to Market. I like to slice it up, brush on a bit of oil and salt, and toast it in the oven. Yum! The recipe recommends a whole wheat bread, which would definitely suit the sweet-tang of the tomatoes and rough texture of the beans and raab, but I think a nice rustic French farm loaf would also do.

If you're wondering how raab tastes, it's comparable to mustard, turnip, or collard greens (all close relatives). If none of those flavors rings a bell, think of a stronger, spicier spinach. Like most greens, when it's cooked down or mixed in something, the flavor turns somewhat milder. It adds a nice texture and bite to anything. A few years ago, I wouldn't have thought myself a fan of greens, but now I love them. Raab is definitely a green worth trying. I'll be planting more when Autumn nears.

Changing Seasons

2009-04-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks has been interesting, to say the least. Not long after I wrote about veritably spring-like temperatures, everything got cold and wet. The next week we got snow. I'm afraid this is typical for Missouri--not very temperate, is it?

The day after the snow, the weather warmed fast. I walked outside to check on the garden and found that the weight of the snow had broken the glass of a window I've been using as makeshift coldframe. The plants below got squashed and cut by the shards of glass, but for the most part they made it through the trauma just fine. And luckily the weather warmed enough that I didn't need to cover the plants.

Last week, things stayed on an even keel. The tomatoes sprouted and so did the herbs. I raked up the remaining leaves and tore out dried-up iris leaves in the front. The muscari bloomed. The poet's daffodils sent up buds. On Saturday, the high was 70. It was cloudy but otherwise gorgeous (of course, if you're like me and like cloudy weather, it was gorgeous anyway). I decided to finally plant some of my lettuces in the ground while the neighbor's children watched through the fence. It was a good day in the garden.

That night, however, the temperature began to drop. On Sunday we had rain and sleet, and the frost inevitably re-appeared last night. I hadn't thought far enough into advance to cover my vegetables, but I worried over it as I went to bed. While most of the plants outside are varieties able to withstand light frost, there's always the possibility that they won't.

So this morning, after throwing some coffee in the pot to brew, I walked outside with a couple of old sheets and quickly examined my young crops. The cole crops looked a bit flimsy, but they had not shriveled up. The lettuce and remaining plants were a bit cold, but it was toasty in their glass-covered house then outside. I covered up my cole crops and also my peas (just to be safe) and walked back inside to eat breakfast.

All in all, quite a scare and a good reminder to never trust Missouri weather too much. Just when you think it's spring, winter returns. While I think climate change is playing into these strange shifts, I do think this region is just prone to it. Hence the old maxim, "If you don't like the weather, just wait another week." Or a couple days. Whichever.

Spring Has Sprung!

2009-03-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

Officially 3 days into spring, and everything's busy preparing for the oncoming season. The temperature has sustained around 50°-60°, with very little frost at night. Today's high is predicted to be 70°. I suppose I should work on a few spring chores before it rains tomorrow.

The garden, of course, has been enjoying these conditions. The tulip leaves have been popping up, and the crocuses are in bloom in the front garden. I was surprised by a few daffodils in the south garden among the spider-lily leaves. Lately, I've been noticing daffodils everywhere in the neighborhood and recalling how much they delight me with their cheery selves. Save for the crocuses, the front flower garden is so void of color. So I think I might tuck a few daffodils in next autumn. I'm thinking also of adding some more crocuses, especially some smaller varieties, to add more interest. For now I'll just have to wait for the muscari, tulips, and allium to flower.

The vegetable garden is progressing slowly towards production. I planted peas outside last week and started some tomatoes and herbs indoors. Just yesterday I was able to plant a few of my cole crops in the ground--the bok choy, kale, and raab specifically (which you can see in the photo). If you look in the upper right corner of the photo you'll note what appears to be glass. This is one of the old windows I've been using as cover at night, just to stave off any late spring frosts. When we moved into our house in 2006, we found all sorts of odds and ends in the basement and attic. We have several windows and window screens, along with doors and what the inspector called "museum quality" knob-and-tube wiring. But my boyfriend and I are natural packrats who like old, weird things, so we look at such objects as opportunities, rather than landfill fodder.

Anyway, speaking of vegetables, may I entreat you to plant some kale?

I've eaten the stuff several times, but I've never grown it until this year. It germinates and grows very rapidly compared to nearly everything else I've planted. I have very little doubt that in less than another month I'll be rewarded with a bevy of leaves to sautee or throw into a tasty minestrone soup. This is a Russian variety, which means that the leaves are flatter and less curly than the Scottish varieties you often see in grocery stores.

Yes, it is a wonderful vegetable.

Lastly, yesterday Rob (my boyfriend) and I attended the orientation for our CSA. "CSA" stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It's like a subscription service for direct-from-the-farm produce where, for a few hundred dollars, you get a weekly supply of vegetables throughout the growing season. Our CSA, Fair Share Farms, maintains a blog to keep members up to date. I chose them because they had the most convenient drop-off point in the city and are committed to organic methods. There were a lot of people at the orientation and sign-up yesterday, which was both hectic and heartening. I'm glad that so many people like me are getting interested in supporting local agricultural economies and caring more about where their food comes from. Another interesting benefit of this CSA is that we are required to work a few hours on the farm in Kearney. We signed up for a couple weekends in August, so it will be a while before we contribute, but I'm looking forward to seeing the farm and how it operates. I'm excited!

If you're interested in joining a CSA, I recommend this website as a starting point. You can just input your zip code, and they'll throw out a few farms close by. There are over 2000 CSA's throughout the country, so chances are there's one in your vicinity.

Seed-Starting Begins

2009-03-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to write a new post for over 2 weeks now, but alas, I was waiting for all my seeds to arrive before blogging and one company was running a bit slower than usual it seems. I finally got all my seeds in last Friday and then spent the weekend out of town to celebrate my nephew's first birthday.

This year I'm trying to improve on my planning and get as much out of the garden for as long as I can. I'm also maintaining my crop rotation design (based roughly on suggestions in Rodale's Illustrated Encylopedia of Organic Gardening). Already I've got lots of plants sprouting, some of which will be ready to plant once the soil dries.

Here are the varieties I ordered this year:

Territorial Seed Company
Fava Bean, "Broad Windsor"
Potato, "Caribé" (Organic)
Dwarf Pac Choi, "Ching-Chiang"
Shelling Peads, "Dakota"
Buttercup Squash, "Discus Bush"
Romaine/Cos Lettuce, "Flashy Trout's Back" (Organic)
Kale, "Improved Dwarf Siberian"
Bush Beans, "Jade"
Crisphead Lettuce, "Reine Des Glaces" (Organic)
Broccoli Raab, "Sorrento"
Sugar Snap Peas, "Sugar Sprint"
Romaine/Cos Lettuce, "Winter Density"

John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds
Shelling Beans, "Black Turtle"
Romanesco Broccoli, "Shannon"
Collard Greens, "Morris Heading"
Tomatoes, "Enchantment" (F1 Hybrid)
Cilantro, "Caribe"

Pinetree Garden Seeds
Bronze Fennel
Nasturtium, "King Theodore"
Flat Leaf Parsley
Dill, "Dukat Strain"
Basil, "Italian Large Leaf"
Broccoli, "Waltham 29"
Broccoli, "Nutri-Bud"
Cabbage, "Early Jersey Wakefield"
Cabbage, "Danish Ballhead"
Cauliflower, "Early Snowball"
Yellow Wax Bush Beans, "Gold Crop"
Summer Squash, "Ronde De Nice"
Tomatoes, "Black Krim"

That's a lot more than last year. One of my big shifts in strategy was to focus attention primarily on open-pollinated strains in order to eventually achieve a level of self-sufficiency. I've also invested in early and late season brassica varieties, so I will ideally be able to harvest in late spring and autumn. I'll see how this works out as the season progresses.

Reminiscing...

2009-02-12T21:11:00.000-08:00

As an addendum to yesterday's post, I assembled a photo montage from last year's vegetable garden. I like reminding myself how awesome everything looked at the height of summer...

2008 in Review

2009-02-11T14:41:00.000-08:00

Late autumn and early winter were quite busy for me, far too busy to think about gardening. I hardly read any garden blogs in December and have only been seriously planning for spring since mid-January. I've been getting back into the swing of reading and just placed seed orders yesterday, so the slow crawl to spring has begun. Of course, this is Zone 5/6 and we officially have another 2 months until the last frost. Missouri has notoriously difficult weather, though. Right now it's utterly spring-like outside at 60 degrees, but forecasts suggest the usual 20-30 degrees by the end of the week. A couple of years ago, we had an early thaw in March only to suffer a late frost in April. Many fruit crops weren't able to recover.

In other words, I'm not planting anything outside until at least March. I envy those in warmer climes.

While I wait for my seeds to arrive and the seed-starting season to begin, I thought I'd share an assessment of some vegetable varieties from last year. Maybe they'll help you decide what seeds are worth buying for your own garden. Or maybe which varieties to look for at the market? Since I suffered a few setbacks, I'm including only the varieties that matured and produced, noting susceptibility to disease, yield, and flavor.

First, there's the Bull's Blood beet. While my plants failed to produce any bulbs, I did harvest a few meals' worth of lovely dark red leaves, which is what this heirloom variety is noted for. Beet greens have a flavor similar to spinach or Swiss chard (they're all close relative) and look great in salads--though, beware, they'll turn your pasta pink! Definitely something different with added decorative potential.

A 'Carmen' sweet pepper...great for roasting...

Next, there was the Carmen sweet pepper, an Italian variety bred especially for roasting and grilling. The walls are thinner, with a lower water content than your grocery store bells, but the sweet flavor is more concentrated and the roasted peppers weep less as a result. While you can use this variety the way you'd use any other sweet pepper, I don't recommend it sauteed or stir-fried. If you like to roast and freeze peppers, this is probably the variety to get. Regarding the plants, they are rather tall and seem to like a bit of support. Yield is pretty good, though my plants produced more towards the end of the season.

A variety of tomatoes from the garden: 'Early Girl,' 'Big Boy,' and a 'Striped German' on the bottom.

Tomatoes are always a big crop for me, and my goal last year was to branch out and try a few different varieties.

Because I like to can a lot of salsa, I thought I'd try a paste variety. Burpee's Big Mama, with its big, enticing fruits, looked like a variety worth getting, but as noted in a previous entry, it's very susceptible to blossom end rot. Initially I had assumed this was simply related to my container grown plant, but as the in-ground tomatoes matured, I quickly discovered this was not the case. I followed the same watering schedule for all my plants, but it would appear that this variety prefers that the soil remain moist at all times. Reading more about Roma/paste varieties, this problem is quite common.

Overgrown 'Big Boy' bushes in the south garden.

If you like productive hybrid beefsteaks, I can heartily recommend the Big Boy bush variety. The flavor is good and sweet, if not terribly unique, and grown in a good full-sun location it should produce nice big fruits.

'Early Girl' tomatoes (with a 'Big Boy' on the top right).

Another hybrid I tried as the Early Girl, a smaller early variety that failed to produce anything substantially earlier than the other varieties. Taste was somewhat bland, too, so I can't say I'll be planting it again.

I will, of course, be planting some seeds from the Cherokee Purple tomatoes I planted last year. It's not as sweet as the ever-popular Brandywine, but there is a mellow smokiness that adds a depth I really like. It makes a fantastic salad or bruschetta, and is pretty good on its own too.

Young 'Cherokee Purple' tomatoes on the vine.

I try a lot of different heirloom varieties when I go to the market and save seeds from the varieties I like. Last year I planted some Striped German plants from seeds I saved in 2007. While the plants aren't as leafy and robust as the Cherokee Purple, they have a certain "weediness" that's part of the heirloom charm. The fruits are a mottled orange and red inside and out and like the Cherokee Purple prone to a bit of cracking at the shoulders. More acidic than sweet but fairly balanced overall. I like it more on sandwiches or in addition to another tomato in a salad than by itself.

'Blue Lake' pole beans.

Another vegetable I always make an effort to include is the snap bean. In 2008 I tried the Blue Lake pole bean, which produced consistent yields from August to September. It likes lots of sun and water when it begins to flower (like most pole beans) and seemed to hold up through some bouts of mold. The beans were around 5"-6" long with a straightforward snap bean flavor and texture. Overall, this variety seems dependable.

'Dark Red Norland' new potatoes, freshly scrubbed.

I've previously mentioned my delight at growing my own potatoes, certainly one of my favorite vegetables and one I would like to keep growing in the future. I tried the Dark Red Norland, which did not garner high yields but was dependable in the production of tasty new potatoes. Thin-skinned and waxy, I would say they are best steamed and paired with green beans (preferably a filet variety) in a fresh nicoise style salad. Or make a light and vinegary potato salad.

'Jalapeno M' hybrid jalapeno peppers--small, but tasty!

Lastly, I planted the ever-dependable Jalapeno M, a hybrid I attempted in Vegetable Garden 1.0 and was mostly pleased with. It doesn't produce the big honking jalapenos you might be lusting after, but the yields are consistent and dependable, even after the high heat of mid-summer. The bushes are nice and compact and don't seem to require any support. The flavor is classic jalapeno, a low to medium heat that's great for salsa. Also good pickled.

Was there anything you tried last year that you would plant again or recommend to others?

Autumn Already?

2008-10-17T12:18:00.001-07:00

It's still hard to believe we're already a month into fall. Since August, I've been neglecting this blog, and though I tried to hammer something out last month, it just didn't happen.

Things are slowly beginning to wind down. I've pulled the carrots, the bean towers, the peppers, and the eggplants. All the tomatoes are gone, save for the plants on the south side, which seems to retain heat. I've covered the tomato, solanaceae, and cucurbitaceae boxes with a layer of compost, dug it in with the soil a bit, and planted garlic, shallots, and multiplying onions from Territorial Seeds. I've chosen not to plant any flowering bulbs this year, though I will be switching out a couple tulip patches.

I haven't really been able to get a leg up on fall cleanup in the front yet. As you can see from the photo on the left, our sugar maple has taken on its beautiful golden fall hue, which means lots of leaves to clear up along our curb. But the weather has been dismal, lots of rain and cold, so it hasn't really been ideal.

Once we are able to rake the leaves up, there will be lots more fodder for the compost pile, after which that pile will be "decommissioned" and a new one will begin where last year's was spent. I'm pretty pleased with my compost this year. It has been a year in the making, and I am still picking out the big chunks of wood, branches, and spruce cones. But I seem to have a lot more compared to last year, so much that I'm thinking of places other than the vegetable garden to apply it.

I guess once all that's finished, it's time to start thinking about plans for next year, time to tend The Imaginary Garden. Well, I am trying to follow a crop rotation model, so I have some limits to work within. Next year will mean lots of brassicaceae and papilionoideae, so I've been thinking of bok choy and cabbage, along with something for dry bean use. I'm getting better at thinking ahead and figuring out what to plant that can actually be used. I want to work even harder at planting open-pollinated varieties so that I can get to a point of at least quasi-self-sufficiency (I'm not sure I'll ever be at the fully self-sufficient level).

In the meantime, I'm going to read more blogs by self-sufficient gardeners and farmers, as well as local foodies. I want to read more books about local and slow food and perhaps make an effort to try the few gourmet restaurants in this area that specialize in it. I'm planning also to sign up with a local CSA, which might involve volunteer hours with a local farm. It might be a good way to learn how others work, especially at a large scale.

What's funny is I used to think of gardening as more of a seasonal task, but now I'm thinking of it more as year-round and ongoing. What are your plans for next year?

Harvest Season

2008-08-08T09:36:00.001-07:00

TOMATOES!
Originally uploaded by saintartaud

The above photo was actually taken 2 weeks ago, a day or so before my boyfriend and I left for the weekend to spend time with our family. In order to avoid the possibility of losing any tomatoes to squirrels in our absence, I picked every tomato with a touch of orange. Most of these tomatoes have since been eaten or given away. There might still be one or two sitting on the window sill in the kitchen.

With August here, there have been many changes in the garden and plenty to harvest. The sweet peppers are turning red, and the pole beans are in flower. I've been harvesting tomatoes continuously since our return and throwing fresh jalapeno peppers into fresh salsa, burritoes, and a tasty Thai stew. The carrots are still not big enough to use, and my onions didn't hold through the days of hard rain we receive shortly after our return. Perhaps the biggest loss in my garden was of the cucumber, zucchini, and squash vines. Some sort of beetle or borer took over, and within a week, everything died off. I'm not sure what I could have done to prevent or stop the attack. Despite these setbacks, I feel like this year's garden has been a more of success than the last couple of years.

Here are some things that worked:

Planting more than one variety of tomato and including hybrids
Next year I will likely limit my ordering to one or two hybrid varieties, or possibly include another heirloom, but otherwise this concept has worked. The heirlooms produce fewer tomatoes that take longer to ripen, while the early variety provides a quick and constant supply. A beefsteak variety is good to include for size.
As an aside, the 'Big Mama' plum hybrid I planted seems extremely susceptible to blossom end rot.

Potatoes
I never realized these were so easy to grow. I didn't harvest a great deal, but it was enough for a few servings of new potatoes. Sadly, the seed potatoes I saved from my order got wet, so I was unable to plant another batch after pulling up the rest last week.

Including more than one plant in each 4'x4' plot
Even though the cucurbitaceae, spinach, and lettuce died, I have plenty of plants to fall back on. Assuming that I can keep most of the plants alive, I should be able to harvest throughout the seasons, from spring to fall.

Planting beets under cover
A number of my reference have advised against planting beets and spinach indoors under cover, but in comparison to last year, when I planted all my chenopodiaceae outdoors, this batch has done far better. What seemed to be happening was that the insects would attack before the plants had any strength to defend themselves. Also, by the time the mid-July heat came, the weak plants would just dry up. I was able to harvest a teeny bit of chard, but no beets or spinach. So, this month, my goal is to plant the remainder of my beet seeds indoors for a fall harvest of greens. It is possible, and it seems more reliable than my other option.

Things that still need doing:

Building of "the grotto"
A friend donated two large tubs of beer and wine bottles to my cause. Some have been stripped of labels and cleaned, most have not. The heat lately has been pretty obtrusive to getting any outside work done, so I've been putting it off. I could still plausibly get this project going within the next 3 months.

Building of the cold frame
Mostly a matter of sizing up our supply of old glass windows and modeling the plans after that.

Blooms & Vegetables

2008-07-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

I missed yet another Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. This time it was due to problems importing photos from my camera to the computer. By the time I got them all uploaded, it was very late, and I was very tired, too tired to make an entry. Oh well, maybe next time?

In the mean time, I do have some blooms. Most of my garden is suffering the mid-July dry spell, which I am slowly working to correct. One of my online acquaintances told me that it takes years to really get a garden going, and I'm beginning to see what she means. I keep reminding myself to take things slow and really consider what I want out of the space. Each year is an improvement, and I learn from every mistake.

I always try to keep some impatiens around, since they do well in the part to full shade conditions of the front porch facing east. This year I grabbed a few pinkish/lavenderish Elfin hybrids, which have added some much needed color.

The stars of the front flower garden right now are the 'Stargazer' Oriental lilies, which have mostly turned out more pink than I imagined. But wow, they are beautiful and smell fantastic.

In the backyard, the vegetable garden is holding up well, though it's barely produced anything for a meal. Last Friday I decided to dig for potatoes and found these little beauties:

I washed them and then hid them in the pantry for later. On Monday I made a nicoise salad for two, with my steamed fresh new potatoes and green beans from the farmers' market. The beans were a little tough, but my potatoes were tasty. Though, to be honest, I could not discern much of a difference in texture or flavor compared to the store-bought variety. Even so, on principle, I prefer the homegrown variety. I never realized how easy they are to grow.

Otherwise, I have no carrots, no green onions, have harvested one jalapeno pepper, and two tomatoes that turned out to be rotted inside. Two weeks ago, I harvested all my beet leaves and used them to replace Swiss chard in a pasta dish, which turned the pasta pink--but boy did it taste good. I have tons of tomatoes, a few of which are just itching to turn red. Odds are that August will be the major harvest season, and I'll have more than I know what to do with.

By the way, that acquaintance I mentioned keep track of her garden online, if you'd care to have a look. She and her partner (C.P. McDill, proprietor of ambient music label Webbed Hand Records) utilize many principles of permaculture in creating a garden that is organic and sustainable, a place that is capable of producing a majority of the food they need--but also beauty and color. I've found it particularly inspiring.

A weed by any other name...

2008-07-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

Just a few days ago, The New York Times ran an article about the role weeds might play in our changing climate, which I found rather interesting and thought I would share.

One portion that especially caught my attention:

“Weed” is a subjective label applied as a matter of personal judgment, a point that becomes obvious when you consider how many “noxious weeds” — plants now marked for destruction by federal, state or county authorities — were deliberately introduced into North America by individuals convinced of their beauty or utility...

There are countless definitions of weeds, ranging from the hardheaded one necessarily observed by farmers, that a weed is any plant that interferes with profit, to the aesthetic (a popular gardener’s definition of a weed is “a plant out of place”), to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sanctimonious assertion that a weed is “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” But all agree on the central criterion: to qualify as a weed, the plant in question must be viewed with disfavor by humanity. Simply put, any plant, if we dislike it, becomes an intruder in our landscape and so a weed.

Arguably, then, there was no such thing as a weed until mankind developed the need to discriminate, which came with the development of agriculture.... In fact, many of the wild grains like red rice or wild oats that are among our most troublesome agricultural weeds today were valued food sources until we graduated from the hunter-gatherer stage of our existence.

One interesting idea is that our efforts to rid our gardens and farms of unwanted guests actually aid in their adaptation. That is, the plants best able to cope with such attacks are the most successful, produce the most seed, and become more tolerant to herbicides, etc. They don't get better with such treatment; they just get worse. The main gist of the article is that maybe invasives aren't such a bad thing, since they're filling in gaps within native ecosystems and might be better able to thrive when the climate warms and levels of CO2 increase. They could plausibly even be used for bio-fuels.

Certainly a different way of looking at weeds and invasives!

2008-06-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

Since I've had my camera back for the last couple weeks, I've been meaning to finally take part in the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. While I did venture into the garden to take photos, the day completely passed me by, and so now I've decided to post my backlog of leaves and blooms from the last week or so.

Here's a half-grown Echinacea pallida, a native coneflower not as commonly cultivated as the 'purpurea.' I planted it last year from seed because I loved the narrow pink petals.

The hyssop, another plant I cultivated from seed that never flowered last year. It just started flowering a few days ago and is quite pretty. The leaves, when crushed, smell a bit like lavender and sage. I'm going to try brewing them for tea.

And some 'Rudy' Tritelia flowers from the front garden.

A 'Cottage Red' marigold. I love marigolds, but I'm so sick of the full French varieties. This Mexican cultivar is more diminutive, but the coloration is so lovely.

Here's the Oakleaf hydrangea I recently planted in the front garden. I absolutely love the flowers, though they are so heavy that they weigh down the branches.

But let's not forget my 'Annabelle' hydrangea in the backyard, which is now (mostly) in full bloom.

The nasturtiums are not yet blooming, but their leaves are so lovely I couldn't resist including a photo (please ignore the weeds). And those are 'Bull's Blood' beets in the background for some lovely contrast.

The yarrows, threatening to bloom. These were part of a sunny seed mix I received from Burpee, none of which bloomed last year. Only the yarrow held through. Which is good; yarrow is a traditional part of any herb garden.

Here's a better photograph of the pale coneflower mentioned above. While it looks almost white here, the color is really more of a lavender/pink.

An earlier photo of the 'Annabelle' hydrangea, which I like almost more than the full bloom. Or maybe I just like the photo itself more.

And for more of a surprise bloom, here's one of my cucumber vines.

And here are some tomato blossoms. I've already got something like 10 baby tomatoes. Here's hoping the squirrels stay far away from the fruits of my labor.

By the by, did you know that yesterday was Bloomsday?

Photographing the Garden & Thinking about Design

2008-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

The last week or so I've been making an effort to go out in the garden and take some photos. I've missed a day here and there, but it's still a good habit to get into. There's always something going on this time of year, and I often find myself wandering aimlessly, looking at everything or nothing in particular.

More importantly, my Creme de Cassis hollyhock is in bloom:

With all the weevils sucking at it, I was afraid it might never bloom. The leaves are pretty chewed-up, and the stalks are bent, but the flowers are lovely. I realize now that I should have saved some bamboo poles or bought some sturdy stakes to keep the plants upright. Aesthetically, they are not as nice as they could be. Still, hollyhocks always strike me as the flower for a cottage garden, which is roughly the vibe I go for. With any luck, they'll reseed and continue to delight for years to come.

Other Matters

For some reason, I have a subscription to Domino. Many of their ideas are quite out of my realm financially and don't really fit with my lifestyle, but I do like any design/decorating mag as a resource. I have my own idea of style, which I try to maintain against whatever trends are out there, but I don't mind having a guide show me the way around.

Anyway, the most recent issue has an article about gardening design personalities, which highlights a number of names worth remembering. If you've read previous entries in this blog, you'll notice that I'm really interested in the design and "theory" aspects of gardening, so I thought I would list all the figures mentioned for personal reference and share them with you.

Beatrix Farrand
Edith Wharton's "The Mount"
Tony Duquette
Madame Ganna Walska's Lotusland
Garrett Eckbo
Thomas D. Church

I own a book called Creative Gardens, by James C. Rose, who studied architecture at Harvard with Eckbo and was similarly pivotal to Modernist landscape design. Some images of his work can be found here and here.

A view of the garden

2008-06-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

This is what I did during the month of May:

I'm very happy with the way everything's going this year. Gardening is definitely a slow process to get even somewhat close to where you are headed. It has helped that this spring has been very rainy, but knowing Kansas City summers like I do, odds are this won't last too much longer.

Now that I have my camera fixed, expect more entries. I'll likely be catching up on the garden blogs I been neglecting to read lately as well. Of course, my G5 is currently down, so none of this may happen as soon as I would like. Nevertheless, things are starting to fall back into place.

Spring 2008 Update

2008-05-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

Has already been a month since my return to the states? It feels like hardly any time has passed, but I have kept busy, so time has not been completely wasted. I decided I would take the time to catalog all the goings-on in the last month.

The Vegetable Garden and Backyard

When we got back from Europe, I found all my seeds had finished sprouting and were taking over the basement. There was still a light frost that week, so planting them wasn't feasible. I transplanted as much as I could into every pot I owned, but it wasn't enough. I didn't even have enough window ledges to set them on. It was crazy.

After week or so, it warmed up, and I planted carrot seeds, which are doing quite well and will hopefully produce some carrots by the end of the summer. I planned ahead this year, in a very detailed fashion, and purchased a few pounds of sand to break up the soil some. They'll be sharing the space with the onions, which are supposedly good companions and require roughly the same conditions. I also planted some spinach and a mix of lettuce in another plot.

At this point, nearly all the spaces have been filled in, all seeds planted, including the beans, squash, and nasturtium. It's nice to have the satisfaction of most everything accounted for. There are just a plants that need to bulk up before planting.

The other major project for the backyard will be taking place this weekend. Just yesterday I got five 'Carolin' fall-bearing raspberry plants, which are currently soaking out back. We just need posts which with to build the trellis. I'm really excited about this. One of my goals with my garden has been to provide as much as my own food as possible. While we're quite a ways from self-sufficient urban homesteading, finding fruit to work with our space & light requirements is an important step.

It'll be a while until the garden is producing anything of note, though I have been able to add some fresh greens to salads and picked plenty of herbs for dinner and tea.

The South Garden

We never got around to completing our cold frame over the winter. Though we have glass windows to serve as the topper, there's still the matter of figuring out the design and dimensions, how much and what kind of wood we'll need, etc.

But I have been able to plant some chives, and I just planted another creeping thyme that I grew from seed. My hyssop is thriving, at least 3 feet wide and 2 feet tall. Only two of the 4-5 hollyhock I planted have returned, and while they're growing pretty tall, there an infestation of boll weevils I'll have to deal with soon. I just hope they bloom.

The Front Garden

Last year I did some major cleanup on the strip of irises, and this year it really paid off! Most of the irises are in bloom or about to. The peony suffered from last year's last frost, but as this year is turning out to be fairly "normal" (for the Midwest), I have buds and am waiting expectantly. Also, the rose is actually showing a few buds, which means my intensive pruning last year did some good. This strip of plants was fairly neglected when we bought the house, so it's niceto know that just a teensy bit of attention did some good.

As for the other plot in the front that I've been working on the last year and a half now, all the tulips I planted last fall came up and looked gorgeous. All but the 'Negrita' now have faded, but they put on a lovely show of violet and lavender. The tulips planted in '06, however, fared less well, no doubt due to the squirrels that infest our block. Only one 'Cum Laude' showed up, along with three each of the 'Blueberry Ripple' and 'Queen of Night.'

I'm still brainstorming and adding plants where needed. I rethought the scheme beside the front steps and am planning on setting a viburnum or hydrangea in that spot and placing the foxgloves more upfront. The only difficulty is that it's a tight spot, only about 3 feet wide and 6 feet tall to the window.

I wish I had some photos to go along with my text, but I broke my new camera in Berlin and am waiting on a repair, and a friend swiped the batteries to my old digital camera. So words will have to suffice for now.

Finding Inspiration in Cemeteries

2008-04-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

Well, we've been back from Europe just a few days, and the experience is still sinking in. Though Paris and Berlin were both cool and rainy during our two weeks, spring seemed farther along than here in the American Midwest, and there was much lovely greenery all around us. Paris is more a town for gardens, and the influence of formal design is still apparent, though some of the newer parks are a bit wilder looking. An unlikely inspiration came when we visited Paris's two largest cemeteries, Pere Lachaise and Montparnasse, which are older and wilder looking than any local cemetery. Though fake flowers are as common, real plants decorate many of the graves.

I liked the miniature attempt at formality with this arrangement. I noticed that the French are very much into bordering beds with ivy, which has a tendency to obscure the center plants.

These pots were set on top of Charles Baudelaire's family tomb, where he is buried with his father, mother, and brother. I liked the arrangement of the brightly edged waxen leafed ivy with the fuzziness of the purple flowers.

I have no idea what sort of plant this is, but I assume it's a wild thing native to Europe. The leaves and flower are quite small and dainty, and the plant has a trailing habit that is very pretty. I love these sorts of plants, but I doubt it's something I can find in America. I especially worry it's invasive; French gardeners probably pull it out on sight.

A garden in the middle of Montparnasse:

The blue grape hyacinths were also in full bloom. One of my favorite bulbs. Not terribly exotic, but they have a simple unfettered charm I like. They look great when they've gone wild.

This plot looked untended, but I liked the messiness of it. I notice I best like plots that are slightly wild and overgrown. What pulls this together is the color scheme, based around the yellow/lime green/orange and violet/purple tones. It looks unplanned, but there is a logic to it.

This was not taken in a cemetery, rather the gardens at the Museum of the Middle Ages. I was surprised to find an iris in bloom. One of my favorite flowers. Even the everyday purple hues are good enough for me.

At Lachaise. I just like the layering of the composition, with grass at the foreground, the mix of shrubs in the middleground, and the tall evergreens flanking everything in the background. The basics of artistic composition at play.

I love the sword-shaped iris leaves peeking out of the soft, eroded stone, covered in moss.

Since I've been home, I've managed to transplant about 25 tomato seedlings to larger pots, and yesterday I planted carrots, spinach, and mesclun outside. Today, I plan on transplanting as many seedlings as I have pots for and planting more seeds inside. I will also have to plant the green onion seeds I forgot to plant yesterday. I also have the front and side flower/herb beds to bolster. I'm planning on getting some baptisia (false indigo) and heuchera (coral bells) for the front bed. And berry bushes for the back garden too!

Spring is almost here!

2008-03-11T16:11:00.000-07:00

Spring is a week away, but the garden is already showing signs of life. I believe the leaves above are crocuses, though I often forget what the previous tenants planted. These beautiful leaves are growing throughout our backyard and are so much prettier than the ugly brown grass.

Last weekend, I purchased a new digital camera, a nice Canon SLR. I wanted to get it before our vacation, though it is not expressly for that purpose. In college, I majored in printmaking, but a good chunk of my studio narrative was focused on photography. I'm fussy, and point & shoots frustrated me. My previous camera, a little Olympus purchased in 2002, wasn't very high quality and showing limitations. SLR's are a lot cheaper now than they were 6 years ago, and I still have some money to spend, so I figured why not?

Me and the camera:

Why make note of this? Well, hopefully a better camera means better photos of the garden. I'll actually be able to get a close-up that isn't blurry and doesn't need to be developed in order to share.

I've already taken a ridiculous number of photos, but today I thought I'd focus on gearing up for spring. I went into the raised bed with the overwintering carrots, removed all the straw (which now covers the bald patches on the garden paths), and found a few tiny, misshapen carrots:

Though I amended the soil with sand on my second round of planting, I don't believe the younger carrots had enough time to grow or the right conditions for it to matter.

Carrots this year won't be planted until after our vacation in April. I chose 2 varieties, one ideal for early use and the other ideal for storage. Many storage carrots can be picked for early use, but not all early varieties can withstand the cold as well as storage varieties. Makes sense. One thing I learned last year, despite my lack of abundant yield last year, is that garden-grown carrots in their early phase are better-tasting than any carrot from a grocery store. The texture is softer, but the taste is so much sweeter. These carrots, which have been growing through the winter under 6 inches of straw, feel more like grocery store carrots, hard and thick. The taste is not as sweet, but it's still fresher.

Fresh carrots are among the multitude of reasons why I can't wait for spring.

Preparing for Spring

2008-02-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

It's been over a month since my last entry. I guess there just hasn't been much gardening going on. There are potted herbs to water, catalogs to look through, nothing to start planting yet.

Right now is the time to start seeds for spring, but as I will be out of the country during early planting season, I don't plan on starting anything for another week or two. I'll be starting beets, cucumbers, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes indoors, and before I leave for Paris, I'm hoping it will be warm enough to plant potatoes, spinach, and mesclun outside. Last year, I bought a two tier light garden from Gardener's and have been using the APS systems they sell. It works pretty efficiently, and I'm thinking this year of purchasing a couple more systems.

After our vacation, in mid-April, I'll be planting carrots, onions, scallions, and shallots outdoors. The seeds I start indoors will be transplanted after frost, which hits around that point here in Kansas City.

So mostly I'm looking forward to what's coming, not what's currently here.

What are your current garden tasks at the moment? What are you most looking forward to this spring? What vegetables and herbs will you be planting this year?

Wow.

2008-01-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

I just had to note how impressed I was regarding my order from Territorial Seed Company. I placed my order on Tuesday night and just received my seeds today. Usually, I expect seed orders to arrive in two weeks, sometimes more, even if I order online. They don't pack any auxiliary information with their orders, just a packing slip and the usual garden related ads. Even so, the service is impressive.

Looks like I have a company to add to the regular list.

Also, I mentioned before that they specialize in organics, but they also have biodynamic seeds, which I've not seen any other catalogs carry. For those who are unaware, I've mentioned this method of agriculture before. It was developed by Rudolph Steiner, who was also responsible for Anthroposophy (a splinter of Blavatsky's Theosophy) and Waldorf education. It's essentially organic and treats the farm (or garden) as an organism. According to the Wikipedia entry, it has never been shown to substantially differ from other organic methods. Some of the preparations are just plain weird, like yarrow blossoms stuffed into deer intestines and buried underground.

Seed Orders

2008-01-15T13:12:00.000-08:00

I just finished my seed orders last night.

From Burpee:
Carrot "Danvers Half Long"
Cucumber "Picklebush"
Hot Pepper "Jalapeno"
Tomato "Big Mama Hybrid"
Tomato "Bush Big Boy Hybrid"

From Johnny's Selected Seeds:
Eggplant, "Rosa Bianca"
Sweet Pepper, "Carmen (F1)"
Green Onions, "Evergreen Hardy White"

From Territorial Seed Company:
Pole Beans, "Blue Lake"
Buttercup Squash "Discus Bush Buttercup"
Carrots "Mokum"
Spinach "Space"

From Pinetree Garden Seeds:
Basil "Italian Large Leaf"
Potatoes "Dark Red Norland"
Shallot "Bonilla"
Onion "Copra (F1)
Acorn Squash "Cream of the Crop"
Pumpkin "Orange Smoothie (F1)"
Zucchini "Eightball (F1)"
Cucumber "Homemade Pickles"
Tomato "Early Girl (F1)"
+ a couple packets of mesclun, Pinetree Lettuce Mix and Misticanza

While I tried to stick with my list of must-haves, I ended up with another tomato hybrid (I couldn't resist the huge paste tomatoes), as well as squash and cucumber (the extras of which will likely go in pots or get planted in empty spaces throughout the yard).

This is the first time I've ordered through Territorial Seed Company. I really liked their catalog. The prices were reasonable, and they had lots of interesting specialty plants, along with heirlooms and mainstay hybrids. Also, they sell a lot of open-pollinated and organic seeds.

And while I have looked through a couple Johnny's catalogs, this is my first order with them. Like Vesey's, where I ordered last year, they're oriented mostly towards market growers, offering dependable hybrids at reasonable prices. Their catalogs alone are wonderful references on when and where to plant what.

One difficulty I had was finding varieties of pumpkin and winter squash that can be grown in 2'X2' space. There are only so many bush and semi-bush varieties, which greatly limited my selection.

In order to fulfill my goal of maximizing yields throughout the season, I ended up tossing out the rotation I had been following and thought more about what could be grown next to what and in what conditions. So carrots and onions go together, with early, mid, and late season varieties to fill out the year. Cucumbers go with their squash relatives, and eggplants go with peppers and potatoes. I'm going to fill certain dead spaces with flowers and herbs, seeds leftover and saved from last year.

I'm limited in how early I can plant things out because my boyfriend and I will likely be vacationing in Europe in early April. Everything has to be planted indoors in February and March, or planted outdoors in late April to May. Once I figured out a planting and harvest schedule, this wasn't too difficult. The dates for the trip are not quite set in stone yet, but we are planning on staying in Paris and Berlin, roughly 5-6 days each. I'm hoping the parks in Paris will give some inspiration, along with a possible sidetrip to Versailles and Giverny and some forests near Berlin. I know we'll be missing some lovely countryside in the rest of France, but hopefully a train ride through Germany will make up for that?

The Coming Year

2008-01-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

It's almost time to order seeds again. Last year I waited too long to start seeds and didn't time plantings as well as I should have, but this year arrives with knowledge from lessons learned last year and some new ideas.

Carol at May Dreams Garden has written a couple of blogs on the subject of ordering seeds from catalogs that I found insightful and interesting:
How to Read Seed Catalogs Without Going Mad
Understanding Seed Catalogs

I see of few of the same catalogs in my stack in those photos. Pinetree is a wonderful company. I find their catalogs a bit odd to navigate, but their prices are amazing and they have some really unique ethnic varieties and heirlooms.

Since this is the time of year for setting goals, one of the major goals in my vegetable garden is to produce higher yields and a more regular supply of fruits and vegetables throughout the growing season. In the front garden, I would like to add more perennials and find some interesting (yet still cottage-y and not too exotic) sun/shade annuals to fill the dead spaces. The south garden needs to be filled out as well, and I've already got a few herbs that can be transplanted once the frost fades in April.
Other goals include:
The planting of blackberry or raspberry bushes (since we don't have the space and light conditions for fruit trees);
The building of a coldframe from old windows and wood;
The building of our grotto from salvaged cement, stone, and glass;
Laying stone along the border of irises on the northside.

Lots to do. I can't wait!

Winter Settles In

2007-12-26T11:03:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything in this blog for a month now. I considered posting for Bloom Day and Muse Day, but the dates passed me by and I'm afraid I had to miss out (not that I would have had anything to post as far as blooms go). Since Thanksgiving, we've been inundated with snow and ice here in Kansas City, yet the weather has generally been quite mild. As we left for Christmas with family in Jefferson City last Saturday, we were trailed by clouds full of more snow. I'm unsure how much we got, however, because most of it has melted off.

The photo on the side here is how the vegetable garden looked just 3 weeks ago, taken right as the snow was falling over a layer of ice. I believe we got a couple of beautiful inches that day.

And here's the Egyptian lady in the front garden, covered up in snow. I never bothered cleaning up this area, but I think the dried-up foliage adds a lot of interest to what would otherwise be blank space. The sedum and irises look particularly nice.

My indoor herb plants have taken over sections of the living room, essentially any space I can eke out, as the sunlight is very limited. This project led to a Goodwill search for any sort of small table or plant stand I could find. We found a little cart that fits quite a few plants and can be wheeled around. I'm not exactly sure what the intended purpose of this thing is, but the rack on the bottom seems like it would fit magazines or something of that nature.

For Christmas this year, I decided to go homemade and made gifts of preserves and pumpkin bread. We had a great deal of preserves left from last summer and fall-- apple-ginger marmalade, salsa, and a green tomato dip--but I also made some apple butter and tomato marmalade.

Pumpkin and/or squash bread has been a sweet staple for the last few years. The original recipe comes from a Martha Stewart Living magazine from 02/03 and is originally intended for buttercup squash, but I've figured out it works just as well for any other type of winter squash--including pumpkin. Halloween being my favorite holiday and autumn being my favorite season, I usually buy as much squash for decoration as I can afford to. But after the season is over, these vegetables tend to get thrown away, which strikes me as such a waste. If you compost your vegetables, it's not as big a deal, but that's still a lot of food to throw away, if you ask me. For the last 2-3 years I've been roasting, pureeing, and then freezing pumpkin and squash in an effort to be more frugal and create less waste. While it's true that jack o'lantern pumpkins contain more water than the smaller and more dense pie pumpkins, I've used them for pies, pumpkin bread, and even pasta sauce. Despite what some will tell you, I've not noticed a discernible difference in flavor.

While roasting and pureeing in the fall can take some time, it's worth the labor later on. It's actually pretty simple. For smaller pumpkins and squash, cut the vegetable in half and pull out the seeds. (If you want to, you can hull the seeds and roast them, or dry and save for planting next year.) For larger pumpkins, cut into pieces to fit on a cookie sheet or roasting pan. Cook at 450º-500º for about an hour or however long it takes for the flesh to get soft. You want the skin to dent completely when you touch it. Scoop the flesh into a blender or food processor and puree. Spoon puree into plastic containers or freezer bags. That's it! Now you have puree for pies, bread, cakes, pasta sauces, and maybe more.

To celebrate the season, here's my recipe for pumpkin/squash tea bread. Copy it and make a batch at home. It makes one regular loaf or 4 mini-loaves and freezes beautifully. Since we tend not to eat a lot of sweets, I will freeze half a loaf for later.

Squash or Pumpkin Tea Bread

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cup flour (unbleached preferable; can be cut w/whole wheat)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup roasted squash or pumpkin puree (sweet squash like butternut or buttercup)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Butter and flour a loaf pan (or 4 mini-loaf pans) and set aside. Into large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt; set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, squash puree, melted butter, and 1/4 cup of water. Fold squash mixture into flour mixture. Stir in pecans.

3. Pour the batter into loaf pan and bake until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Turn bread onto a wire rack and let cool.

Here are 4 mini-loaves made last Friday. This year I tried a low-sugar bread cut with a Splenda/brown sugar mix, and it worked fairly well. My stepfather is a diabetic, so it's a bit easier for him to enjoy this version for breakfast. The low-sugar variety is not as sweet and rises a bit higher when baking. The color is also lighter, but if you're watching your sugar intake, it's something to try.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Some Odds'n'Ends

2007-11-26T15:10:00.001-08:00

Last Wednesday, we got temperatures below freezing and a mild snow. Not much stuck on the ground, but it was bad enough to turn the broccoli and cabbage limp. While we were gone for 4 days visiting family for Thanksgiving, the squirrels gnawed on some more plants and knocked our suet feeder loose. So today I ended up doing some minor maintenance, pulling up the plants that probably weren't going to make it much longer and harvesting the tender broccoli heads. Maybe we'll get a couple heads of cabbages before it gets colder; it's hard to say.

I am doing a lot of indoor herb gardening right now and reading what I can. Current picks from the library include:
Carrots Love Tomatoes, Louise Riotte
Bob Flowerdew's Organic Bible
English Herb Gardens, Guy Cooper, Gordon Taylor, Clive Boursnell
I've flipper through all three, and I'm sure I'll discuss them all later.

What I'm really wanting to learn more about, which I could find no books on in the library, is permaculture. I know a little about what it is and already apply aspects to my gardening, but I'd like to develop a more detailed understanding of its practice.
I might just have to buy a book on the subject, but I'm not quite sure where to go. If anyone reading has suggestions, please let me know.
Don't know what permaculture is? Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive article on the subject.

Another thing that fascinates me is biodynamic agriculture, which is another type of alternative agriculture, which in this case derives from Rudolf Steiner, founder of Anthroposophy. It's one of those odd practices that segues into a full range of non-garden interests of mine.

Cleaning Up the Vegetable Garden for Winter (or not)

2007-11-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

With bulb planting complete, this November has mostly been about clean-up and preparing the vegetable garden for winter.

The vegetable garden has been the major project this year. Originally, the backyard had a sunken patio of concrete bricks and a roughly 4'x4' plot of dirt (but mostly weeds). Last year, I double-dug this plot, mixing the soil with a conditioner, and grew beans, pumpkins, peppers, and tomatoes. For various reasons, only the beans and peppers grew successfully. We also started a compost pile from the brush left by the previous owners, dead leaves, and kitchen scraps.

Even though it was very much a beginner's attempt, I learned a lot about the quality of soil in the yard and the movement of the light. While the space does not perhaps get the best light, being obstructed on nearly all sides by trees, it's private and easily accessible from the kitchen. Initially I had planned on setting plots between brick paths, but another difficult of the space is that it slopes. We began considering raised beds to create "terraces" without having the hire a landscaper. My boyfriend and I built the beds ourselves out of 1"x8" untreated pine boards and brackets, which were a lot cheaper than the cool brackets I saw in the Gardener's catalogue. It only took a couple days to build and assemble the beds, and we filled them with soil bought from Soil Service Center nearby. We left the paths open while working on the stone patio and pathing, but over the summer we covered the dirt with landscaping fabric and the mulch you can see in the photo.

Preparation for winter began when th night began getting colder in October. Pretty much all I had to do was remove the basil and marigolds and turn the soil, which I overplanted with winter rye back in August. I left the tomatoes alone until they started wilting, then removed the plants and turned the soil over. All three plots were covered with compost.

Otherwise, there hasn't been a great deal to do, since most of what I've planted can withstand frost. I bought a bale of straw a couple weeks ago to cover the carrots, since I read that they can usually overwinter with some protection.

The carrots were an interesting learning experience this year. The soil in the boxes was looser than the native dirt, so I figured I could get away without adding sand to the mix. Not so! The carrots I was able to harvest were twisty, wobbly little things. They taste fantastic, better than any store-bought carrots I've ever eaten, but there wasn't much to use, only enough for an Asian pickle dish and thrown into a chicken potpie. Of all the lessons learned this year, the major one has been, "always mix the soil with sand when growing carrots."

Despite the near-failures with the carrots, I have been mostly satisfied with the cabbages and broccolis that have turned out to be the bulk of this garden. One nice thing I've discovered is they all hold up to a bit of frost and are still as sturdy and strong as they were in August. In fact, these plants have become more productive in the cool weather, and I've been able to use a few small cabbage heads for eating.

For both crops, I went with the All Season Blend from Vesey's, which I'm not sure I'd recommend. Since it features early, mid, and late varieties, it was difficult to know how much and when the plants were to produce. While it eased the headache of figuring out when to plant the varieties, next year I think I'll go with a heavy producing variety of both early and late.

The broccoli, though, is doing better with the cool weather, and there are several plants with reasonably sized heads, like in the photo. Just when it felt like I would never get broccoli, I walked through my garden and saw this. It's not as impressive as the heads in the supermarket, and it doesn't look like the broccoli in the catalog photos either, but it's good enough for me.

Here's another view of the broccoli bed. I'm not entirely sure why the plants began to lean like this, but the squirrels (or maybe raccoons) have taken advantage, gnawing at the stalks of some and even stripping leaves. Kansas City is overrun with grey squirrels, and we have a veritable army of the little buggers in our neighborhood. Because of squirrels, I had to cover the soil in the beds with chicken wire. I lost most of my tomatoes while they were still green, too. Our dog, Molly, is a devoted chaser of squirrels, and tries her best to rid our yard of them, but there's only so much she can do. I imagine this will be a continual struggle in this garden.

On a much brighter note, here's my compost pile. The construction is very simple, just cedar post and chicken wire. While it's located in a shadier corner of the yard, it's still pretty effective and I've been able to use compost begun last year for several applications. Now both side of the bin are filled with raked-up leaves, ready to go for another year. Compost has to be one of the more satisfying projects. Even if you don't fuss over it, you eventually get something, and that something is always good.

Of course, we have a lot of trees in our yard and all those leaves won't fit into the bin, no matter how much you push them down. The rest of the leaves from the backyard got piled along the south section of the fence to offer some protection to the hydrangea (in the right corner of the photo) and the wild grape vine (the trellis on the other end). I've been letting leaves remain along the mulched paths and in the patches of mint near the gate. I prefer the look of dead leaves to bare dirt any day.

And that's pretty much it for winter preparation. I'm letting the cabbage and broccoli remain until the cold prevents them from producing, which may be a while if the winter is as mild as this fall has been. With winter drawing near, I'll be flipping through catalogs and books in preparation for spring.

Planting Bulbs & The Front Garden

2007-10-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I finished planting bulbs for spring in the front cottage garden. Now come the long 4-5 months of anticipation before the big reveal.

While last autumn I spent well over $50 for a wide variety of bulbs, this year I limited myself to a mere 6 for a little under that amount:
Triumph tulip, 'Negrita'
Lily-Flowering tulip, ' Ballade'
Allium aflatunese, 'Purple Sensation'
Single Late tulip, 'Violet Beauty'
Oriental lily, 'Stargazer'

The Negritas were purchased, for fairly little, from a wonderful nursery nearby, Soil Service Garden Center. The 'Ballade' tulips and allium were ordered from Brent and Becky's Bulbs; the 'Violet Beauty' tulips and 'Stargazer' lilies were ordered from White Flower Farm. In the future I will likely continue ordering from these smaller companies, since I've discovered they sell larger quantities for less than the bigger names, like Breck's, and with relatively quicker shipping. I am still learning how the discern quality of bulbs, but they seem fresher as well.

I'm opting for a cool color scheme in my front garden, blues and violets with the accompanying greens, mostly because this is my favorite range of colors. However, I am trying to add more brilliance and a bit of "pop" by tucking in some reds and red-violets (even fuchsia), wherever I can.

My approach to designing is a bit messy in that I have a rough scheme drawn out, but I try to give myself enough leeway to invent the structure as I go. I've noticed that this is very similar to the way I make art or write, in that I require sketches and some level of planning but do best when there's room for accident and invention in the process. Cottage gardens are very attractive as a concept, since they thrive less on structure than a kind of ordered chaos. Because bulbs have a tendency to multiple and aren't terribly fussy, they seem well suited to the form.

The front garden is really more a work in progress, as you can likely tell from this montage of photos I've taken since the spring:

This is really only a quarter of a rather long strip of dirt, which the statue is meant to break up some (in addition to the bush you can't see off to the right somewhere). I've received a number of compliments on the statue, which was purchased at Van Liew's, a local company that specializes in beautiful and unique fountains and lawn ornaments. She reminds me of a movie starlet from some Art Deco silent film set in a fantasy Egypt, and the oxidized patina adds to the feeling of age, which I love.

The spear-shaped leaves are Blue Flag irises (I believe), which were originally in the garden when we purchased the house and merely transplanted. The sedum at her left was also transplanted last year, and the salvia behind her has been moved to the very right edge of the patch of irises. And the clump of leaves to the right in the last photo are the asters I planted last month. I'm attempting to play with combinations of color and texture, to see what works and what doesn't.

I really can't want until spring comes around and I can start seeing what I only have pictured in my head. I can't wait to plant even more perennials and give this little strip more fullness and texture. The worst part of gardening is the waiting. What a wonderful means of learning some patience!

First Briefing

2007-10-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

This is the inaugural post for what I hope to be a monthly garden journal. It might end up being more than monthly, depending on whatever is on my mind each week.

A bit of introduction for anyone passing by:

I currently keep another blog devoted to my interests in cinema, art, and literature, which is hosted on my domain. While I enjoy keeping that blog (despite not updating as regularly as I should), I haven't enough room to cover my growing love of gardening. Since I read a number of gardening blogs via Blogger, I decided to free up some space on my domain and resurrect my dormant account for this purpose.

I grew up and still live in the Midwest. I'm not many generations removed from farm folk, mostly of German descent. My early love of gardening and nature was fostered primarily by my maternal grandmother, who grew up in the country and kept a vegetable plot in her backyard. There was also my stepmother's family, who owned a family farm. As children we played hide & seek in the corn, fed calves, and gathered eggs. Beyond these experiences, I spent a lot of time alone as a child wandering whatever forest was nearby and learning whatever I could about the natural world.

When I was about 11 or 12, I developed an interest in our backyard garden at home, digging up irises and daffodils and transplanting them to see what would happen. I helped my mother plant her yearly plot of annual vincas, and she would usually consult me each year as to what plants to add or remove. In high school, I experimented more with splitting irises, sedum, and even a prickly pear. I stopped gardening outdoors when I started college, and for some reason I've never had much luck with houseplants.

In 2006, my boyfriend and I bought an adorable little bungalow on the southside of Kansas City. Since that time, I've been able to get back into gardening, and we've also undertaken a number of do-it-yourself landscaping projects. Last spring we built our own raised beds, and over the summer we laid a stone patio and path. While the improvements inside have often been chores (besides painting, which I enjoy), the outdoor improvements have usually been fun, if often challenging.

A few thing I hope to cover in this blog:

Organic gardening. I've been interested in this concept since before I had a garden, but I've only recently been able to increase my knowledge as to its application through various readings. This interests me from so many angles, which I'm sure will come up as I begin to update.

Horticulture and other science nerdy aspects of gardening. One of my future goals is to propagate as many of my own plants as possible. Also, gardens attract so much interesting wildlife, even in an urban setting.

Theory and design. I'm an arty sort of girl, so anything I bound to touch is going to relate to how things look and feel.

In gardening, these things are inextricably intertwined, but defining topics lends some scope to this blog.

There are going to be many things to cover in the next month or so, what with last harvest coming and bulbs to plant. Once I settle on a proper schedule, I'll be posting as soon as I can.