Fresh is Best

Every season has one!

2012-01-21T14:53:00.001-05:00

There's always at least one thing on the garden plan each year that has me the most excited to taste test. This year it's most definitely the Indigo Rose tomato, which popped up in several of the seed catalogs. You'll be hearing more from me about Indigo Rose later!

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Helpful tip for the gardener

2012-01-17T17:37:00.001-05:00

As you begin to accumulate new seed packets before the gardening season starts, check the packets to see if they include a "packaged for" type date on them. The month isn't all that important, but the year sure is. If there's no date on them, as is the case with Tomato Growers each year, write the year on the packet, at least if it's for something you know you won't use up completely this year (like maybe annual flowers, bean seeds, radishes, etc - something you sow a lot of at any one time).

Many seeds are viable for a number of years, and it helps to know what year the seeds were intended for. I don't have the best luck with lettuce seeds more than a year or two old. Tomatoes and peppers? I've had good luck with seeds I've had five years or more!

But if you have a packet of old seeds with no year on them, it's hard to know if you might want to save them another year, or if it's the same packet you keep saving "just one more year", and yet they're six year old duds!

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Ten pounds!

2011-11-20T15:00:00.001-05:00

That's what about ten pounds of lettuce mix, herbs, Asian greens, Swiss chard and kale look like all bundled up. Some is for the customers who requested it and some will be part of our Thanksgiving feast!

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Is this going to be our first frost?

2011-10-22T20:02:00.001-04:00

We're already a couple weeks past the first average frost...

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Packaging can be a lot of work!

2011-10-17T16:56:00.001-04:00

A bunch of different varieties of Asian greens, each labeled so my two Guinea Pig CSA members can report back on what they like and dislike.

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Lettuce cross our fingers!

2011-10-10T18:30:00.001-04:00

This will be the first winter with the raised beds I built inside the greenhouse - I wonder if these lettuce plants will tough it out if I treat them as cut-and-come-again, rather than digging up the whole plant when it's time to harvest?

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Rosemary

2011-10-10T18:27:00.001-04:00

All dug up and nowhere to go?

I dug up all my rosemary plants from the plum tree bed this weekend, and potted them up. Some had roots coming off branches that were touching the ground, which meant I got to cut them off and hopefully gain extra plants!

I think I've only ever successfully overwintered a single rosemary plant. I've tried a number of times, but the ones in the greenhouse died this past winter, and the ones I've tried in the basement usually die around February.

I'm going to give it another go this winter. I'll try some in the basement, some in the garage, and maybe even the greenhouse again (this time bundled up?)

Fingers crossed! All suggestions welcome!

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Eat your greens!

2011-10-10T18:18:00.001-04:00

Hey CSA customers... Remember I kept teasing that I hoped to provide some extra goodies a little later in the season, even after we'd officially shut down? Weeeell..... How's this looking?

There's a mix of Asian greens and lettuce here, and while it's the most packed bed, there's some additional stuff in a couple other beds as well.

Temps are supposed to start dropping again, plus we're supposed to start getting rain again this week...and that's a combination these particular growies love! So I have a feeling I'll be letting you know there's fresh greens/lettuce for you next week. Cross your fingers!

Check out the wire mesh over top of the bed. That's two of my larger tomato cages uncoiled and just holding on to the wooden frame of the bed. While I figure I'll only have enough bulk to share for a couple weeks, I'll leave smaller, less developed plants in the bed for us, and even if it gets cold or frosty, I can put protective cover over the wire mesh to shelter the growies underneath. Why didn't I try this with the cages before??

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192

2011-10-09T16:18:00.001-04:00

This morning this bed was loaded with peppers, eggplants, and marigolds...and after heavily harvesting the sparse amount of veggies left of the plants I cleaned out the whole bed, amended it, leveled it out, and just finished planting 192 "somethings" in it for next year - with fun names like Nordic Hammer and Chinese Pink.

Without cheating and googling those names can you guess what they are?

Another hint: some people just can't get enough. Learning that over the last couple of years, I ordered more than ever before and, oops, they won't all fit in this bed! Good news is I have another, smaller bed I'm willing to sacrifice for a good chunk of the year, so I'll be planting that with the remainder of this crop shortly. And my hopes are to have so much harvested next year to replant from my own *correctly labeled* harvest next year, meaning I shouldn't have to buy them anymore! (there was a slight labeling issue with the crop planted last year, so I didn't know what varieties I had come harvest time this summer!)

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Green goodness

2011-10-04T16:51:00.001-04:00

Cilantro? Check!
Red onion? Check!
Garlic? Check!

Sigh, if only I could grow my own avocados!

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Almost time to plant garlic

2011-10-02T11:06:00.001-04:00

And this year I'm so much more prepared! Next spring not only will I NOT be wondering what my different varieties are because I didn't make all-season-tough labels for them, but I will have all the vital info for each variety right there in the garden!

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Got mean yellow jackets?

2011-09-23T17:28:00.001-04:00

Here's how to make them docile. Let them stuff themselves stupid because you got a few days behind on picking the raspberries. At this point you can pick the berries right next to the ones they're eating, and they just ignore you.

Or they fall off the berry they're ruining, and still ignore the fact you just knocked them off because they're in a sugar high.

I think it's like humans eating turkey!

The only problem is that they've trashed a ton of the berries, and now I have to wait for those berries to be eaten or fall off. The next few days could get ugly while we duke it out for the newly ripening berries and then I can keep ahead of the yellow jackets again.

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Worms!

2011-09-21T16:18:00.001-04:00

These were collected from various brassicas (like broccoli and Brussels sprouts) and greens (which, I don't know, might include brassicas).

Yes, they're "cute caterpillars."

Unless you're a gardener, and then they're the larval form of the cabbage white moth. Do you know what that is? It's those pretty white "butterflies" fluttering all around.

They quickly land on a victim plant and drop off a tiiiiiny egg. You can see them if you look close enough. About the size of a period in the newspaper, but creamy yellow.

Once those hatch the tiny caterpillars grow up fast, devouring the leaves of the plants they were born on, and pooping "frass" all over the place.

For some reason, I don't seem to have any predators that like these caterpillars, so I hand pick them and toss them in the pond. You have no idea how satisfying it is to watch a fish jump up and gulp one down!

I have also been treating with a combination of Garden Dust (organic pesticide powder) and diatomacious earth (ground up dead diatoms from the ocean if I remember correctly)... These two powders DO help leave some caterpillar carcasses on the plants, but rain washes the powders away.

The best thing to do, which worked great on the spring broccoli, but I was lazy/crowded for space and didn't do for the late summer planting of broccoli, is to cover the young plants with floating row cover, a sheer fabric that lets through light and water but not insects. Stops the critters from ever getting laid!

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Brrrr!

2011-09-15T18:17:00.001-04:00

It's supposed to drop down to 41 tomorrow night? You can pretty much expect that's going to shut down most of the garden for the season!

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Just peachy!

2011-09-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Do these tomatoes look familiar to you guys?

I have to be honest - I didn't take that picture (although I did swipe it!).

That's the Wapsipinicon Peach tomato I provided for a few weeks - I think some of you got more than others, but you all got to try them. It's the tomato name I could never pronounce, and the tomato you almost didn't get just because I didn't think they were good. After the tomato plants got blown over (and ripped from the ground) by midsummer storms, these little guys started to appear but didn't look right. They didn't have the usual "gloss" that you expect on tomatoes, and they were an odd size and not a perfectly round shape. I seriously thought they were duds on a stressed plant!

Good thing my neighbor said he was going to try one, even though I was saying "no no, don't put that in your mouth - I think they're bad!" And here The Kitchn blog is spotlighting them as a great tomato experience from this summer!

I'd seen the seeds listed for at least a few years now, but never had the nerve to take up garden space by ordering them. This year I wanted something new, and ordered them from Totally Tomatoes, where I get a lot of my tomato seeds. They have a surprisingly fresh and juicy taste to them, and according to Totally Tomatoes, they're "Named after the Wapsipinicon River in northeast Iowa. Heavy yielding." That "heavy yielding" part would seem true - in a year where some of my plants didn't produce a single fruit that made it all the way through to ripening, this plant was a trooper.

Now that the weather's cooling off, the hours of daylight are shortening, and the annual tomato-plant diseases are wrecking havoc, these Wapsipinicon Peach tomatoes are fizzling out. I doubt we'll have any more to harvest this season. So what do you think - would they be worth growing again next year!?

Playing things a little different this time!

2011-09-06T07:00:00.000-04:00

Hey folks - because things have been so rushed since getting back from Kansas Sunday evening, and because I've been hearing more "I'm really not into such-and-such" comments, I'm doing things a little differently with my portion of your shares this week. As you can see here, there were a lot of super-sized veggies when we got home from Kansas:

Because I was short on time for sorting out individual boxes, I've sort of grouped a bunch of the items together into a pool (cukes, squash, eggplants, okra, large tomatoes, etc), got the grand total, and found that each person can have 14 "things" - that could include "a bundle of yardlong beans" (there's only one), raspberries (yes, it's true! there's three containers!), a large tomato or three small green zebra tomatoes, a cucumber, a squash, etc... It's first come, first serve, so the early bird gets best pick. (As you can see in the picture, there's plenty to choose from)

Each person is also getting a small container of cherry tomatoes (I don't think anyone's passed on those), a mix of herbs, and if interested, sunflowers! (You can pretend you were in Kansas this week as well!)

Hope to see you out in the parking lot at 9am!

New tool for the backyard garden

2011-09-01T16:51:00.001-04:00

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Out on the farm

2011-09-01T16:29:00.001-04:00

Visiting family in Kansas.

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Now we're talking!

2011-08-20T16:14:00.001-04:00

It's like a rainbow of veggies!

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More stuff yet to come?

2011-08-15T16:00:00.001-04:00

While many gardeners are complaining about all the veggies that just aren't doing well this summer, think back to those spring crops we enjoyed... Especially the lettuce.

Now while other spring crops didn't do so great (like there wasn't much spinach this spring, and the pak choi flopped ), we're about to get a second chance with some of the cool weather crops.

I just started seeds for a variety of lettuces, pak choi, and other Asian greens (many that I've never tried before!) this past Thursday, and check it out... They're already sprouting.

They might look awfully crowded in these pots, but most seedlings take transplanting quite well. I'll just wait till these guys get a little more mature, lift them from their pots, tease the roots apart, and tuck them into the raised beds. I'll also be finding some space to direct seed spinach before too long.

Let's hope this fall is better in the garden than spring was!

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First okra bloom?!

2011-08-15T15:54:00.001-04:00

It's about time. And a little out of focus.

But it looks like okra might not be too far off, which I'm happy to see. Now not everyone loves okra, but if you've never tried it before I hope you'll at least give it a chance.

One of the best ways to do that is get to your nearest Cracker Barrel restaurant and order up a side of fried okra with your meal. Yuuum!

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Are you getting cucumber fatigue yet?

2011-08-10T16:53:00.001-04:00

I tell ya. I've never had as good a cucumber year as this year. I may have many other things I'm griping about in the garden, with all the poor production of tomatoes, squash, etc, but it's definitely the year of the cucumber.

And the heaviest producer of them all? Pearl, the pale yellow-green one in this picture. I think there's only one vine, but wow!

Oh... A warning, if you ever try growing Pearl -it's got the most evil cucumber spines I've ever experienced! Some of them get in the skin, and stay there like a splinter!

I don't know how you guys are feeling, but I think we're starting to feel a little cucumber fatigue here at home. Last year it was the eggplant, okra and peppers that were going strong in my garden, and Mary was providing up to 20 tomatoes a week per person! This year it's the cukes...

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Oh yay...

2011-08-09T20:06:00.001-04:00

Even more rain!

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Now isn't that cute!

2011-08-08T17:10:00.001-04:00

Meet piccolo...

The Territorial Seed catalog says "a melt-in-your-mouth marrow squash with a unique new shape. Piccolo will hit the high notes in all your summer meals. The round to oblong fruit has eye-catching, dark and light green striping and creamy colored flesh. At tennis ball size, they look like mini watermelons and are tender and delicious. Healthy, productive plants provide a summer full of delectable harvests."

While it is a cute little guy, I can only hope they'll be as productive as hinted here. Here it is, August 8,and I've only just picked the first one! There's another, smaller fruit on the vine, and hints of more blooms coming so...so we'll see how it goes.

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First BLT of the season

2011-08-07T14:30:00.001-04:00

There it is! And that Supersteak tomato is a doozy! Now most of the tomatoes aren't absolutely perfectly ripe where they're really juicy, but many of them are just a day or two away from that stage I think. I technically could've had the first BLT two days ago, but alas there was no L to be had! I had a really good bacon, turkey and tomato, but we all know that's just not the same...

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Seven down

2011-08-01T15:48:00.001-04:00

The storm that just blew through dropped .7" of rain and took out these seven tomato plants. My socks are soaked now, but at least I've got the plants and their cages braced upright with posts. Not sure what permanent damage was done to the plants??

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How do you use your cucumbers?

2011-07-31T20:13:00.001-04:00

Brett likes them peeled (no skins on his cucumber!), sliced into sticks and then eats them plain or maybe with blue cheese dressing to dip.

I like them sliced thin, along with thinly sliced onion (red onion in the picture, but color doesn't really matter to me), and put in a container with a lid that has a good seal. Then I sprinkle them with a pinch of salt, pepper and maybe sugar, and then pour in roughly equal parts of vegetable oil, cider vinegar and water. Seal, shake, and let sit for a little while. I like them best when chilled. For two small or one medium cucumber I use a small to medium onion, and roughly a quarter cup of each of the liquid ingredients. This is to taste, so if you like it more puckery, go heavier on the vinegar.

I find if I use too much oil (compared to the vinegar and water), it can seem a little too oily, especially when cold!

Oh, and I've been known to include some snips of dill if I have it, but I don't usually have it around.

And another great way to eat cucumbers? Slices of pumpernickle, spread with cream cheese, topped with thin slices of cuke, and sprinkled with a little dill (dry or fresh). Soooo good! I've even done this on pumpernickle cut with a bat-shaped cookie cutter for Halloween parties. The near-black bread is great!

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Vampires beware!

2011-07-31T19:57:00.001-04:00

Your shares this week will include two smaller heads of garlic.... In previous weeks I think you've each gotten just one head, but it was usually a bit bigger. Now that all the garlic has been harvested (dug up) , cured (set out to dry), had the stalks trimmed off (easier to include in share/store), and had most of the dirt knocked off, I have a better feel for which heads are going to last longer and which are a bit questionable.

Since there are always plenty that a bug got into, or got knicked while being dug up, or have some soft/bad cloves in them, we want to make sure those heads are used up first. So this week each of your shares have two smaller heads of garlic... One that is a bit more picture perfect and should store longer, and the other is a bit iffy... It's the one you'll want to pick over, check the individual cloves, and use it up sooner. Trust me... You'll know if any of the cloves have gone bad... Peeeeuw! ;-)

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Kissy kissy

2011-07-30T17:27:00.001-04:00

Of the original 7 bunnies there are now only two in the nest. There was a third but it took off into the cabbages, and I thought I found it but about caught a big frog instead. That sucker hopped at least 18" into the air, landing in the pepper bed after I followed it out of the cabbage bed.

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Hurry!

2011-07-24T12:24:00.001-04:00

The rain has NOT been kind to these tomatoes... The plants are starting to die from the ground up. But as you can see, there's plenty of fruit on the vine. I think we'll be ok, plus these aren't the only tomato plants, and the others are faring much better... Fingers crossed!

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Good morning sunshine

2011-07-24T10:33:00.001-04:00

Hmmy, as a "farmer" I'm supposed to ensure this nest of baby bunnies is never a threat to my crops. What should I do??

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Suddenly by surprise!

2011-07-01T18:40:00.001-04:00

The funny thing about some veggie plants is they can be farther along than you realized... even when you stare at them every day! I swear that big one wasn't there earlier this afternoon!

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Happiness!

2011-07-01T18:38:00.001-04:00

Are you as happy to see this cucumber as it is to see you?

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Hunting

2011-07-01T18:37:00.001-04:00

We know there are more moles in here somewhere!

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Remember last year's eggplants?

2011-07-01T04:00:00.000-04:00

Those of you who were members last year probably remember how we were getting almost overwhelmed with eggplants, especially that long, narrow Japanese varieties. There were weeks where I was picking 75+ fruit!

So far this season the plants themselves haven't really started to take off yet. Because of the cooler spring, they didn't get set out into the ground as early as last year, and they're always slow to take off. Still, I'm pretty confident they'll be settled in soon enough and hopefully start to take off faster than the flea beetles can eat through their leaves.

We had a number of questions on how people prepare the tender-skinned, long, skinny eggplants last year. My usual methods were to either just simmer them with most of the other veggies coming out of the garden in a really chunky, flavorful sauce to serve over pasta (or even eat as a stew), or I'd grill them before adding them to recipes.

Near the end of the season, as everyone was burning out on the eggplant, I actually did an experiment where I washed, cubed, and dehydrated a bunch of the fruits in my dehydrator (along with sweet peppers, hot peppers and squash). (I have the Nesco FD-75PR 700-Watt Food Dehydrator if anyone's curious, and it's great for preserving veggies and herbs from the garden, making dog treats, making apple rings from apple picking in the orchards in the fall, making fruit leather and more!)

I think the dehydrated eggplants have been my favorite - in fact, just this past week I added some dehydrated eggplants to a pot of boiling water at the same time as seashell pasta, and when the pasta was done I drained the whole pot and added the pasta and rehydrated eggplant to a bowl with tomato, cucumber, lemon juice, parsley, mint, olive oil, salt and pepper - it was sort of a twist on tabbouleh (which is what I was really hungry for, but was out of bulgar wheat, and decided, hey, if I was changing it up anyhow, let's add the eggplant!). Turned out GREAT!

Here's a web video showing something else you can make with eggplant - Japanese Eggplant Ratatouille. Looks gooooood!

Reach for the sky!

2011-06-24T06:00:00.000-04:00

At least that's what it looks like is going on here!

After I worried and griped about how slow the peas were growing this spring, just sitting there at the same height (2"?) for soooo long, you can see here that they REALLY took off! Maybe it's hard to tell from these pictures, but here's the math (these things are taller than me, and I'm not reaching up to harvest peas!). The raised bed containing the peas is 12" tall, but I'd guess the soil filling the bed is probably only 8"-10" deep. The peas are climbing a trellis made of concrete reinforcement mesh - it's the same stuff many home gardeners use to make their tomato cages (as I have). Each square in the mesh is 6" square - so it's real easy to figure out how tall something is growing. In this case, there's 5' of mesh above soil level - and you can see some of those peas tendrils are easily a foot taller than the top of the mesh! Before long I might need a step ladder...

Speaking of peas, here's what's pickin' right now....three varieties, but you can use them interchangeably - you get a mix of peas, and they're great raw or only ever so slightly cooked (if using in soups, just drop them in a couple minutes before it's time to serve up). The first two peas in the picture below are both snow peas, and then the third is a sugar snap. Notice the difference in pod shape/thickness - snow peas are always flat, and sugar snaps look nice and plump. You never want to let these "edible pod" types of peas get too developed, or they get starchy, lose their sweetness, and the plant will stop producing. Basically the plant wants to get seeds out there for reproduction, and we keep picking off the seeds before they're full developed (and and we EAT them)... so the plant keeps making more while it still has the energy.

I hadn't planned on growing snow peas this year because I find they're not as flavorful, but then I came across the green variety on the left, called "Snow Sweet", which was advertised to be the sweetest snow pea ever. Yeah, I don't know about you, but I'm not finding these guys to be very sweet. The plant is interesting though - it's not even two feet tall, is only just starting to produce, and the leaves are the DARKEST green I've ever seen for a pea plant!

The next one over is "Golden Snow Pea", and caught me at a weak moment - I thought it'd be fun for the CSA members to get a yellow snow pea. Gotta say - it's really starting to get prolific, but the flavor's only mediocre.

But perhaps I'm not being fair to the snow peas because the sugar snaps just taste SO much better. That third one in the picture is called "Sugar Anne", and that's the 6+' vines you see in the pictures above. I was really skeptical - another sugar snap variety that was producing earlier (but hasn't gotten more than 3' tall) was really cranking out the peas while "Sugar Anne" just kept getting taller and taller. I knew it was supposed to get tall, but thought maybe we'd see some peas sooner. Suddenly, WHAMMO, now it's cranking out the peas, and I have to pick every couple days! Sugar snaps definitely have a more crisp texture and sweeter taste....while I think snow peas are more attractive than flavorful. What are your thoughts?

And speaking of plants that are producing...I told Mary I'd have to take a picture of the first pepper in my garden to send with you. I was in the garden trying to take a picture that looked good, but the lighting wasn't working with me. Only after I took several pictures did I realize I was seeing not ONE pepper, but several! Sure, they're not big yet....but there's at least three peppers that've formed. (Yes, there's still so few that it's fun to count them....that'll change real soon!) ;-) So if you click on the following picture to view the full-size, you should be able to find at least three peppers and some blooms. I've got onions interplanted with the peppers, so that's what the other things are in the pictures.

Kale Salad

2011-06-17T04:00:00.002-04:00

Well now here's something really interesting to do with the kale you're getting in your shares - Kale Salad with Apricots, Avocado and Parm.

I gotta say, that's a mighty unusual combination. I have had salad with romaine, dried cranberries, sliced fresh pear and almond slivers with a great dressing - so I suppose it's just a variation on a theme.

This one sure LOOKS good, and I like all the individual components. Be sure to let us know if you try it - or whatever else you're doing with your weekly veggies!

Will these be your new fava-rite veggie?

2011-06-16T16:03:00.001-04:00

I've never grown fava beans before... they have a very different growth habit from standard bush beans and runner beans. The flowers are really attractive. Can't wait to try the end result!

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The beginning

2011-06-16T16:00:00.001-04:00

Looking forward to tomatoes! Some of the blooms on this supersteak variety are huge. There's even a double, which will probably result in a strangely shaped tomato. It'll still taste great!

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Scapes

2011-06-10T06:00:00.000-04:00

Here's another picture of the funky garlic scapes starting to form in the garden:

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Image by Rubber Slippers In Italy via FlickrGarlic scapes are an odd-looking, often bent/curved, growth that comes out of the top of some varieties of garlic, typically those that are considered hardneck varieties. The garlic scape is basically the flower stalk that grows up out of the top of the garlic plant, and each year I've grown garlic it seems the scapes can be sitting there for a short while before you even realized they've formed! I have a feeling they actually grow really fast - which might be why they seem to tender and bendy?

It seems many folks just throw away the scapes after cutting them off to improve the growth of the garlic bulb down in the ground. This is a waste of a perfectly good piece of food you've grown! Garlic scapes have that pungeant scent and flavor that you expect of garlic bulbs, although from what I've read it's implied they're milder. I don't know about that - the garlic scapes I cooked last year were pretty strong!

Here's some sites with suggestions/recipes on how to use your garlic scapes:

Two Sisters Garlic

Closet Cooking (trust me, this guy always has great recipes!)
Image by maximolly via Flickr
Eggs on Sunday - Garlic Scape Pesto

Clagett Farm - Sauteed Garlic Scapes
Clear Sky Farm - How to cook garlic scapes

Oh, and btw - it's only fair that I warn ya - you're going to want to get something to freshen your breath once we start giving you garlic scapes! ;-)

Now THIS is how you irrigate!

2011-06-08T18:58:00.001-04:00

Ever since I started experimenting with drip irrigation a few years ago, I've found it makes life sooo much easier! Sure, this first year was a flop (SOMEONE doesn't read instructions very well, and has little common sense), and no, I haven't actually tested my "gallons per minute" like you're supposed to, but I've finally figured it all out, and I love it!

No, you don't normally plan to have the drip lines hovering in the air like these are (although I doubt there's any harm to it), but this is brand new line, so it's still got a lot of desire to coil back up. After running water through it a few times, plus some weathering, and it'll settle down. Sure makes a cool image though!

This bed looks pretty sparse on one side. The variety of leeks i'm trying here (Megaton) were more of a mega-flop, the carrots didn't do so great (storms washed them into one big pile), and the cucumbers just got put in yesterday. The peas on the far right are spotty... but they're climbing the trellis anyhow. The cucumbers are a mix of climbing and bush varieties.... hopefully they'll do better than the spring crops did!

Later this week I hope to try a new attachment for the drip irrigation... pour in concentrated liquid fertilizer (I have fish emulsion and kelp), and the hose line runs through it... picking up a diluted blend of fertilizer and water to drip out down the line. Garden nerd fun!

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Go meatless on the grill

2011-06-08T06:00:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaJust to help inspire you when you start getting more chunkier veggies this summer, check out Fine Cooking's Go Meatless on the Grill gallery of pictures and recipes! Mmmmm - grilled veggies! Just think of grilling onions, peppers, squash, eggplant and more - you can start with a simple toss in olive oil, and then a light sprinkle of salt and pepper if you like or go all out nuts with herbs, citrus juices, additional spices and more! Veggies turn out great on the grill, whether you're a vegetarian or a meat-eater!

Snake in the grass?

2011-06-06T19:57:00.001-04:00

Ok new CSA members... do you know what this is?? You're going to get to try working them into your meals real soon!

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Some of this week's goodies!

2011-06-06T06:30:00.001-04:00

Hi folks! We're starting the Monday delivery of food this week. I'm not sure what all Mary will be bringing in, but here's what's included in your bags from me. Since we're just getting started, the shares are still really small (new people: ask the folks who were members last year - there will come a time this summer where you probably WISH your shares are as small as they are now! Eat your veggies!)

First off, we've got the little bit of broccoli that one person will be getting this week. Remember, some plants really don't produce so much food that every person gets it every week, so I have a random order that you guys will get your food. Last week two of you got broccoli, and this week I barely have enough for one person. You'll be notified via email. These broccoli side shoots are much more tender than the big heads you buy in the grocery store. If you're someone like my Brett who only eats the flowery tips, PLEASE be open minded and try eating the stalks on these as well!! Maybe pick off the leaves... There's not a lot here, so maybe lightly/barely steam them (stove top or microwave), then submerge in cold water to stop the cooking and keep their green color, and then add to a lettuce salad.

Peas are the same way - especially at first. I planted a number of varieties of sugar snap peas, and so far only the "Sugar Ann" variety is providing (and they're the shortest!). I've got enough for two members - you'll get notified. If you've never had sugar snap peas, you eat the whole thing. Sure you can open the pods and pull out the little peas, but the pods are crispy sweet, and are fun to eat - even raw! Toss 'em in a salad. Or if you must, LIGHTLY steam them (on the stove or in the microwave.) I couldn't tell you how long - I never cook them. You might prefer to string them - sometimes the strings in sugar snaps are a little tough.

The order for pea-deliveries is:

Sandie Ribita
Kelly Shook
Alison Murphy
Carolyn Radcliff
Julie Gedeon
Diane Rupelt
Erica Lilly
Jennifer Wallace
Anita Clary

We've got two varieties of kale coming out of my garden this week - first is the very frilly looking Russian kale. These are more of a tough kale - you'll probably want to roll a bundle of leaves up like a cigar and then slice the "cigar" into thin ribbons before steaming, blanching or sauteeing. You might prefer to cut out that mid-rib first if you don't like the firmness - but I'm sure it's good for you. Eat it. Kale's great when sauteed with some olive oil, garlic, maybe a little crushed red pepper, and a squirt of lemon juice or a tiny drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Warning - a lot of this goes a little ways - meaning it'll cook down a fair amount (like when cooking spinach).

There's less of the Niro di Toscana kale, also known as Dinosaur Kale. This is excellent for making the very trendy kale chips that you might've heard about the last couple of years. I've made 'em - and they're good! Nothing like a potato chip, but they're kinda fun to eat!

Please note that few of the kale leaves included this week are young, tiny and tender...so I don't know that any would really be a good addition to a raw salad. Maybe later...

More lettuce! This time you're each two baby heads of lettuce - there's three varieties, and you'll each find two in your bag. There IS a risk there's a slight hint of bitterness in the lettuce - just make sure your salad dressing tastes good if these are bitter. ;-) Oh, and I haven't washed any of the greens, herbs, etc - so make sure you give a thorough washing and picking over.

You'll each find a bundle of herbs in your bag. I know some of you aren't as familiar or used to working with fresh herbs, so here's a quick rundown.

First is mint. You could probably stick your mint in a glass of jar, find it'll send out roots in a week or so, and if you get it anywhere near soil, it'll take over your whole yard! But it sure tastes and smells good! Great in Mediterranean marinades and lemonaid.

Sage - there's three varities here - you'll find one in your herb bundle. You can see the plain green grows much bigger. A little of this goes a long ways. Excellent in pork or poultry dishes. Don't just think Thanksgiving turkey, but DO remember it can be potent!

Oregano - mmmm pizza sauce, right!? To make it easy to get all those leaves, grab the oregano at the tiny growing tip with one hand, lightly pinch the stem with the other hand and pull your pinched fingers down the stem to knock off a lot of the leaves for mincing.

Looks like I forgot to take a picture of the rosemary, but it's in there too. Pine-y scented, a little can go a long ways. Excellent with all meats if you ask me.

To be honest, whenever I'm doing any sort of marinade for chicken or pork for the grill, I'll grab whatever herbs are doing well at the time - any mix will do. Chop 'em all up, toss 'em in a zip lock bag with the raw meat, salt, pepper, lemon juice and/or beer and/or wine, and some glugs of olive oil. Let that sit over night - and it'll be great on the grill the next day. Using a different combination of herbs each time adds variety. For the vegetarians - um, maybe you can do this with tofu or halloumi cheese? (Yup, there's a cheese you can fry or grill easily!)

The Guardian Toad

2011-06-05T20:36:00.001-04:00

Dear Mr Toad,

I'm sorry my dog and I scared you while you were wallowing in the cucumber and squash seedlings on the deck.

I promise we'll leave you alone. Please don't leave. I appreciate all the hard work you've probably been doing snacking on cucumber beetles.

Keep up the good work!

Farmer Jeph

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Tons of basil!

2011-06-04T12:30:00.001-04:00

Man, I hope you guys like making pesto! There's more than just this one pot of basil... trust me!

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TOMATOES!!

2011-06-01T21:47:00.001-04:00

Ok, maybe that's a little bit of an over reaction... but it's very exciting to start finding flower buds on the tomato plants.

For now I have two raised beds with tomatoes... seven plants per bed. This is in the first row I planted... remember the experiment where I planted extra early? The other row is about two weeks behind this row... so they haven't really gained any height yet.

The neat thing about these tomato cages is that they're made with a 6" grid, so it's super easy for me to see that the first bed planted has all the plants at about 18" tall right now. Very exciting this early in the season... give it a month or so and that won't be a big issue anymore.

Now just because there's flower buds forming doesn't mean we can expect ripe tomatoes anytime soon. While 6 of the 7 vines in this bed have their first buds forming, odds are the earliest buds won't come to fruition. I think some gardeners even pick off the earlier buds, pushing the plants to grow more roots and height rather than struggling with fruit production so early.

I should probably do that.

Man, that's going to be hard to do.

Sure, it's for the good of the plant, but to just cut off what are potentially the first tomatoes?

Ugh.

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Guess those peas haven't been a total waste

2011-06-01T21:38:00.001-04:00

Look what I was surprised to find this evening! Very few worth picking at this point... only one of the varieties is producing, and those are still mostly underdeveloped... but they ARE exciting to find!

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Speaking of things not going as planned...

2011-05-30T18:54:00.001-04:00

See this freshly planted patch of pepper plants?

This morning it was a patch of Asian greens that sounded so good on paper. While they DID like the colder, wet weather we've had this spring, they didn't care to much for the periodic heat blasts we've had. Rather than turn into nice lush greens perfect for stir fries and salads, they bolted and shot up tall spires of yellow flowers and turned bitter. Grrrr.

So, scrap the spring attempt at Asian greens, and we'll try again this fall. Looks like we're suddenly shifting from wet weather to hot n sunny. I'm sure no one's complaining, but we have to play fast and loose with the garden. Well, hey, at least we're looking at having good tomato and pepper weather. We'll have to see what the near 90 temps do to the lettuce and spinach!

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Peas and Cues(cumbers)

2011-05-30T18:43:00.001-04:00

So here's a dilemma... The initial planting of sugar snap peas got off to such a late start sprouting and are running so far behind iiiin the space the cucumbers were going to grow... and now I want to put the cucumbers in the ground. Granted I've never followed peas with cukes, but in theory it should've worked. The fun (?) thing about gardening is that whatever looks good on paper, and with carefully plotted calendars just doesn't always work out the way you want. I guess gardening is a very organic thing, right? ;-) Gotta be flexible!

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Lettuce teaser

2011-05-25T16:23:00.001-04:00

So many varieties! And Bambi's head is over to the left. Fresh is Best members will know what I'm talking about? ;-)

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Almost ready to eat!

2011-05-25T16:22:00.001-04:00

Customers's lettuce mix is LIGHTLY rinsed and spun before bagging. You should always give your lettuce another washing and pick it over for the rare spider, slug, maple tree helicopter, etc.

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Safe and sound

2011-05-16T16:17:00.001-04:00

The bird netting isn't up to protect the lettuce, rosemary and other short plants in this bed. It's actually there to protect my plum trees that I just planted this spring, which got nibbled on by deer last week. But don't you like knowing the CSA veggies are getting the benefit of the bird-netting fortress??

While we've been saying we're so worried about how poor things are growing this season, this round of lettuce that I started in the basement months ago are actually doing beautifully with the wet, chilly weather. In fact, I miiight have to start harvesting some earlier than the early-to-mid June "official" start date of this year's CSA!

I have another batch in a different bed started later, and planted out later. Smaller than these heads here, but also doing much better than the lettuce I direct seeded...

Ya just never know what you'll get with the garden each year!

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Garden ghosts?

2011-05-13T15:30:00.001-04:00

That's broccoli under the row cover, which is there to protect it from those "pretty white butterflies" you see flying around. They're actually cabbage white moths, and you don't want to eat their larvae (aka caterpillars) in your broccoli! ;-)

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The great gardening risk...

2011-05-10T22:21:00.001-04:00

I did something in the garden this evening that i've never done before!

No, no... garden naked day is this coming weekend! ;-)

I planted some of my tomatoes well before our last average frost date. Crazy, right???

The weather has shifted from cold, wet and gray to warm sunny days and a forecast of rainy but warm weather soon.

Now this is the first year I'll be growing my tomatoes in the raised beds... no more in-ground gardening with the heavy clay soil where plants rot in place. This means I have less space to crowd my tomatoes in. But it also means soil that warms earlier, is lighter/higher quality, and has better drainage.

So today I took a risk. I found I could fit 7 tomato cages along the length of one raised bed, and decided to plant varieties where I have a backup plant that's also really healthy. And for most of the plants I put in the soil, the cup actually had more than one very healthy seedling because I still hadn't thinned them (slacker!). So I snipped off the spare seedlings with scissors and stuck them in the bed outside of the cage... cut off tomato plants will sometimes root and keep growing!

Now this is all an experiment. If the weather gets nasty bitter cold, I can use the hotcap covers Mary gave me for my birthday to provide a mini greenhouse effect over the plants in the raised bed. And if they still bite the dust, I've got spare plants as backups!

Check out the root growth in the picture... I think I potted those tomatoes up maybe three weeks ago, and they already had roots spiraling around the base of the pots. This would be a really good time to pot the plants up into bigger pots, like maybe gallon size? That is if I didn't have enough going on already...

Fingers crossed that this all works out well!

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May 14 World Naked Gardening Day is coming!

2011-05-06T20:08:00.001-04:00

World Naked Gardening Day (WNGD)

Are you ready for it? You'll probably be happy to know that I probably won't be tending your veggies without my clothes on! ;-)

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Funky Favas

2011-05-06T19:18:00.001-04:00

I've never grown fava beans before... the seeds alone look very strange... I can't wait to see what the plants look like. I've been reading conflicting information on when to plant them. Before final frost or after was the big issue. We're still a few weeks before the average last frost, but we'll have to see how tough they are. I went ahead and interplanted them with the barely growing tatsoi, which I was really looking forward to, and may still take off... but just in case they're a waste of space, hopefully the fava beans will be a success.

From what I've read, fava beans (also known as broad beans) are supposed to be a very different taste from regular green beans. Definitely a stronger flavor, and one source implied a touch of bitterness. If picked really young you can cook the whole pod, like a snow pea. Allowed to mature a bit more and you shell them and cook the beans you pop out of the pod. Allowed to go even longer and I guess they're good, but you need to remove the outer skin from each bean (think lima beans?).

I feel like I haven't really seen fava (or broad) beans listed in too many of the US cookbooks I've read, but it seems like they appear in every British cookbook I have. If they do well, I'll have to include some preparation techniques and recipes here.

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Foul weather

2011-05-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

Seriously?

Ok, that just suuuuuucks!

Sun kissed

2011-05-04T19:14:00.001-04:00

Tucker is still coming down off of his catnip high. ;-)

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Eggplant replant

2011-05-04T17:06:00.001-04:00

Mary and I like to tease each other a lot about silly of strange things we do with the gardening. We've started saying "what kind of gardener are you that you would do such and such ", or after we hear something the other has done, we'll fire off a "and you consider yourself a gardener?? "

Wellllll, what kind of gardener would forget to water his baby eggplants to the point of killing off about 90% of the plants? And then to let them dry out A SECOND time???

The good news is there's still time to restart the seeds. It's a little later than I'd prefer, but this spring is so cold and damp that the plants won't be going out for weeks anyhow (besides, our average last frost date is May 20 I believe, and eggplants like WARM weather!)

So... Here we go again!

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Guess how old this lettuce is!

2011-05-03T18:50:00.001-04:00

This lettuce returned after winter... toughed out the cold, snowy winter, freezing temps, and yet looked deeead. But when things started warming up this spring, sprouts started popping up from what looked like rotted leaves, and before I knew it, these lettuce plants were showing full signs of recovery. This isn't where I plan to have lettuce this season, but I figure we'll have to enjoy them while they're up.

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Broccoli and more

2011-05-03T18:44:00.001-04:00

There's several different varieties of broccoli here. The ones down the middle are Pacman and Green Comet if I remember correctly. Those are storebought plants. Then down the right are Happy Rich and Santee - I started those from seed. They're intended to be used more for repeat cutting of small, tender sprouts. The ones down the middle are more large heading varieties, buuut.... once you cut the initial head of broccoli, you continue to get tender, smaller side sprouts, and apparently that's what most home growers really appreciate.

I can't promise huge grocery store worthy heads of broccoli, but hopefully we'll get to enjoy all the smaller tender sprouts.

Over to the left are leeks.

So the plan (in a perfect season) is that the broccoli would be harvested some before it's ever warm enough to plant tomatoes... and then if the broccoli is still doing well when it's time to put in the tomatoes, I'd rip out some of the broccoli in a checkerboard pattern, planting tomatoes in the newly vacated space, and those could shade/prolong some of the broccoli.

But that's in a perfect world. Who knows how it'll really go!

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Cold, wet veggies

2011-05-03T18:34:00.001-04:00

The spinach sprouts down the middle of this bed were planted about a month ago, but are only just sprouting. Last year at this time I was eating spinach!

And over to the right are the onion plants I put in about a week ago... they've really taken off!

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Babies!

2011-04-26T22:24:00.001-04:00

Here's just some of the pepper and tomato plants in the greenhouse. The chilly gray weather hasn't really encouraged them to take off and grow, but they're probably still getting over transplant shock from being potted up a week or two ago.

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There's hope after all!

2011-04-26T20:08:00.001-04:00

The peas are finally starting to take off! Don't ask me why there's an all yellow plant. This has nothing to do with the golden podded variety I'm trying this season. Odds are it's sickly or hit something in the soil it didn't like, like maybe something not fully composted? Will watch and see if it doesn't turn green soon.

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The Growing Season: A Horror Movie

2011-04-26T18:57:00.003-04:00

Dad, Andy at Chicken Thistle Farm and I have been exchanging many "I'M SO SICK OF THE RAIN" type emails, usually involving how stressed we are over not being able to get into the garden, which seedlings we're worried are rotting, etc. Earlier today I had to keep it brief but rattled off an email and Andy must've liked it ... that plus all this rain is giving him way too much free time cooped up in the house, clearly going a little stir crazy. He took exactly what I said and turned it into this really cool movie trailer..

And yes, I will be suing him for royalties!

Looks like we'll have to try something new this season...

2011-04-25T16:00:00.000-04:00

Dear CSA customers...

Considering how wet everything is already this season, and the forecast doesn't look any better, we're already behind on things growing in the garden. I think by this time last year I was harvesting lettuce and spinach from the gardens. At this point THIS year? The lettuce and asian green seeds sprouted a couple weeks ago, but have completely halted all growth. And the spinach? NO SIGN OF IT!

Each year you get something a little different - an earlier start, a later start, a really short season of spring, summer or fall depending on temperature and precipitation, etc. Well...taking a look at the backyard THIS year, I think you'll all be getting rice.

Just kidding! I wouldn't know where to begin with growing rice. Hopefully we'll get a warmer, dry spell soon with more sunlight to get all the little seedlings growing!

We might need to include breath mints this year!

2011-04-18T15:33:00.001-04:00

Check out all that garlic! I hate having an entire bed dedicated (or tied up) for so long for just one crop, but the garlic lovers know it's worth it. I've never grown this much garlic before... and it's sort of an impressive sight!

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First pea sprout of the season

2011-04-18T15:30:00.001-04:00

Well it's about time! I'm just hoping most of the pea seeds sprout rather than rot in place considering how cold and wet it's been. So far it seems like things are getting a much later start than last year!

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Planting leeks and disturbing worms

2011-04-17T21:53:00.001-04:00

Got over 150 leeks planted this afternoon, with plenty more to put in the beds where I find some space. So far I've filled all the areas that I have marked for leeks on the garden plan... now I just have to get creative with the rest.

I was reading an article commenting on how leeks tend to average about a dollar apiece when purchased at the store... and yet they're so easy to grow at home if you're just willing to give up the space for them long enough.

I learned a nifty trick for planting leeks a couple years ago. Most instructions have you planting the leek seedlings shallow, and then as they gain size you mound soil up around them to blanche the stalks, meaning shade as much as possible from sunlight so you get the more valuable white stalk and less of the tough dark green leafy parts. Only that means all spring and summer you're constantly moving soil around their bases, bringing it from somewhere else in the garden and/or worrying about damaging the plants.

With the technique I found, you "drill" a hole 1"-2" across and 8"-10" deep. You just drop the seedlings down the shaft and leave 'em. Don't fill in those holes right away! Watering, rain and wind will slowly knock soil down into the hole. And because this is happening slowly, the leek has time to set down roots and grow up upwards out of the hole. This worked great for most of my leeks the last two years.... although some of the leeks just never made it out of the hole.

So why all the pictures of worms? It seems shoving a 1x2 stake down into the soil nice and deep and then rotating it to form the shaft as you pull it out must remind the works of moles digging through the dirt to get them. You can be drilling a new hole and just a couple inches away a worm or two will shoot up out of the soil and start crawling away to safety.

If you look up worm charming or I think worm grunting online, you'll see how this is put to use.

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Black Cherry

2011-04-17T12:56:00.001-04:00

Tauton's latest issue of Grow ("Fine Gatdening's Guide to Vegetable Gardening") just came out this past week. In addition to articles on swiss chard, spinach, leeks, mesclun mix and building raised beds is an article on heirloom tomatoes.

Of the favorites the author lists, I typically grow two, including the Black Cherry you see here. These little guys are actually a wee bit bigger than your average cherry tomato, incredibly prolific, and oh so flavorful. I'd have to say they're my favorite cherry tomato.

I've also grown a variety called Chocolate Cherry, which I honestly think is the same tomato with a different name.... Perhaps a marketing thing? Either way, I know these little purpley-brown guys were getting lots of complements last year!

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Dear overwintered kale...

2011-04-16T18:07:00.001-04:00

Who knew you'd be popping back up here and there in the garden... Especially in the places where you DIDN'T do well last year because of weed competition in the ground.

Since then I've given up on the in-ground veggie garden space, putting in more raised beds last fall.

And there you are this spring, coming back up after a long, hard winter, some in the raised beds where you did well last summer, and some coming up from under the straw mulch around the edges of the new raised beds.

Looking pretty.

Looking tasty.

Well here's what happens when you look that good! You were great sautéed with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and crushed red pepper. Serves you right!

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Growies

2011-04-15T17:36:00.001-04:00

Radishes and spinach on top which I started in the basement and, yes, have been harvesting!

Just potted up tomato and pepper seedlings in the middle. The tomatoes look especially roughed up after their first real exposure to wind and sunshine.

Some storebought stuff on the bottom that could probably go out any day now.

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Moving on up!

2011-04-15T17:22:00.001-04:00

Here's some of the pepper seedlings after they've been potted up. I used a mix of potting mix and homegrown worm castings, so there were plenty of worms finding their way into the party cups. My *hope* is that they'll do just fine in the little pots, choose to remain there, keep improving the soil mix, and then go along for the ride right out to the garden in about a month and a half.

Now the trick is to figure out what to do with all the pepper and tomato plants. With extra protective layers of plastic plus a heat mat, will they do well in the greenhouse, even though temps are supposed to drop again?

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Which road?

2011-04-11T20:35:00.001-04:00

There's a "high road/low road" joke in here somewhere...

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First sprouts

2011-04-10T18:58:00.001-04:00

These komatsuna sprouts are the first direct seeded growies to be coming up this season!

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Warming up, and planting out!

2011-04-08T08:00:00.002-04:00

Seeing what the extended forecast looks like, I finally felt comfortable direct seeding the peas (mostly sugar snap varieties) Wednesday afternoon. I'm thinking I can also start considering planting out seedlings for kales, chard and cabbage, plus direct seeding stuff that loves cold weather, like spinach. Is it too early for some of this stuff?

Yup, definitely looks like the gardening season is upon us! Yay! Will we have another extreme drop in temperature, especially night time temps? There's no way to know, but if the weather IS going to be nicer like this, you can't NOT take advantage of it with a little risk... You don't want to wait til late April or even May to plant things like spinach and cold-temperature loving brassicas - they hate the heat and go to seed when it warms up too much.

Peas

2011-04-06T18:34:00.001-04:00

First round of peas: planted!

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Peeuw!

2011-03-29T15:20:00.001-04:00

The onion shipment has arrived! These were ordered from Dixondale Farms back in January... even though I also start some of my own from seed. I've found I have better luck with leeks started from seed than onions, and ordering from a reliable source has had better results for me than the cheap bags of sometimes moldy, often wimpy and rarely named sacks of onion sets we can buy locally.

Boy oh boy is this box strong smelling!

These plants may not look like much right now, and they won't even get to go in the soil for a little while - it's just too darn cold out - but if all goes well, we'll have lots of yummy onions come summertime!

The varieties here, just in case you're interested in looking them up, are Big Daddy, Candy, Cippolini, Red Zeppelin, Red Candy Apple, Walla Walla and Yellow Spanish.

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Helper

2011-03-27T15:34:00.001-04:00

Really Tucker? I've been doing this for enough years now that I think I've got it figured out. I wasn't really looking for assistance.

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The Flip Side

2011-03-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Ignore the mess in the background - this picture shows the right side of the greenhouse, where you can see I got the very first shelf (front right) installed with a bit of a forward tilt. Oops. While stuff still easily stays on the shelves - nothing goes rolling off - I'm sure I'll always shoot evil glares at that shelf like it's the red-headed stepchild.

Now to finish filling the new raised beds with good potting soil, and get some growies in there!! And I suppose I should finish cleaning out the mess in there as well...

Big garden project: Almost Done!

2011-03-21T19:09:00.001-04:00

Spent a big chunk of the last two days cleaning out winter experiments from the greenhouse, and items stored in the greenhouse over winter, and then building raised beds on either side which are then topped with "mini greenhouses" - the kind you buy at most big box stores that are typically made of green metal poles, plastic and wire shelves, covered with an optional clear plastic zip up cover.

I built the raised beds out of 4x4s, filling them with leftover potting soil from last year's pots, bagged composted manure and top soil, homemade compost, and bagged potting/veggie mix.

Each raised bed then had deep 5/8" holes drilled down into the front and back walls, which had 18" rebar stakes fit into them. Most of the rebar sticks out, over which I fit the green metal posts that run vertically in the mini greenhouses. From there I built up two layers of the greenhouse, basically splitting each mini greenhouse into two halves.

My plan is to try growing parthecarpic cukes and squash, and maybe a tomato plant or two, INSIDE the greenhouse this summer, using the raised beds. Before it's time for that the shelves will get used for seed starting and hardening off started in the basement. Stuff started indoors can't go straight outside... it's too drastic of a change for the plants.

Before too much longer I'll try starting the female-only veggies out in the raised beds... Hopefully they'll do well and start producing long before plants outside are doing their thing. Like squash, tomatoes, cukes etc can't go outside until late May around here!

The support braces under each wire shelf should double as support for tomatoes and cukes grown in the greenhouse.

Then come fall I plan to switch over to fall and winter veggies. Think spinach, lettuce, chard, kale, Asian greens, and who knows, maybe carrots??? Anything I hoped to grow out there last winter froze. But using Elliott Coleman's winter harvest technique, I hope this coming winter will be different. I can add layers of clear plastic domes and/or the mini greenhouse zip up covers to create buffered pockets, hopefully convincing the plants that they're a couple hardiness zones south of here. I can't do this to the point of growing heat loving plants like tomatoes - it's not just warmth they need. There's also the issue of daylight hours... those plants require a lot more sunshine each day to keep producing, and we have many days here in NE Ohio where we get less than 10 hours of sunlight. (Sounds depressing, doesn't it?)

Anyhow... this is all a revision on the greenhouse experiment... we'll see how it goes!

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Working hard

2011-03-17T19:04:00.001-04:00

I was done planting seeds when I took this (seed the pelleted lettuce seed?). Looks like the worm came up to see what I was doing and then decided to get back to work.

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Yup, it's that time!

2011-03-17T19:00:00.001-04:00

Who's hungry?

Ok, it's going to be a little while before we're eating yet, but it IS time to get the party started!

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The Importance of Soil Testing - pt 2

2011-03-17T11:59:00.000-04:00

San Jose garden guru Jessica Vaughn follows up with part two of her article series, The Importance of Soil Testing:

Once you’ve finished the calculations for each area, simply evenly add the measured amount of amendments to each bed and then turn the soil with a rake or shovel and water the area enough to set the soil and allow the amendments to be absorbed.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Soil testing - it’s only the most important thing you can do for your garden.(2)

As I said yesterday, this girl knows her stuff. I often find myself checking in with Jess for her opinion or brainstorming on a gardening idea, or to see what her experience has been with something. I know she likes to grow fava beans and, well, this year I've decided to give them a try. So it won't be much longer here before I'm picking through her older blog postings to see what all she has had to share on the fava beans. But in the meantime, if you're considering veggie gardening, do check out the first and second parts of her article on how to do your own soil tests!

The Importance of Soil Testing - pt 1

2011-03-16T11:59:00.006-04:00

Intrepid garden reporter in San Jose offers up the first of a two parter about why soil testing is very important for all veggie gardeners. Here's the teaser:

If you’ve been wondering why your vegetable garden last summer didn’t perform as well as the summer before or you’re just looking for the best way to prepare your vegetable garden for the coming season, the answer is: soil testing.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: Soil testing - it’s only the most important thing you can do for your garden.

Trust me, this girl knows her stuff. We've been online internet buds for, wow, a few years now? Jess was doing the raised bed gardening thing before me, and she's so much better about testing and amending her soil each season. I tried to follow her lead last year and do the home testing of my veggie bed soils, and I just never seem to have any luck - my "tinted water" that's supposed to be the crystal ball letting me know what's going on in the soil just always seems too clear.

Maybe I'll give it another go this year!? I totally trust Jessica's advice and instructions, and accept that it's just something I haven't done quite right. I tend to just wing it, adding more good stuff to improve the soil, but sooner or later this blind amending of the soil's going to bite me in the butt!

Seed starting: Trying something new

2011-03-07T16:42:00.001-05:00

This year I'm trying a mix of the Jiffy 7 expanding peat pots that I like so much (upper right) and soil blocking, where you compress a very damp mixture in a block making tool, and then a spring mechanism is used to squirt out the blocks. I should buy more jiffy 7s (which I just ran out of) in case my soil blocks are a complete failure... To make soil blocks, you need a different soiless mixture than the peat pots use... it needs to hold more water and bind together better to maintain its shape. The soil blocks you see above are using two different sized/shaped plugs... the small ones are intended for seed starting, but we'll see if the large squares aren't better for starting multiple seeds (I'll snip out all but the best looking sprout in each group).

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It's very different way over on the coast...

2011-03-02T16:25:00.005-05:00

Just came across an interesting article with a Comparison of Bay Area CSAs, which is written by my internet buddy Finny (aka Jessica), waaaay out in California where it's warm and they can grow more things, and they have much longer growing seasons. That definitely seems to affect what the CSAs are like out that way!

You want proof? Check out this really informative spreadsheet comparing CSAs that are local to San Jose. Then again, I suppose we could provide many more of the options in some of these CSAs if Mary or I had way more property, had chickens in our backyards (trust me, we both want 'em!), and had been established for a longer period of time. I actually have been planting a variety of fruit trees in my yard (most of which won't produce for at least 2-3 more years), and this is the first year I'll be able to harvest from my dinky crop of asparagus.

While there might come a time where I can actually include some asparagus or, who knows, maybe even apples or Asian pears in the CSA shares (gimme a few years!), I wouldn't recommend holding your breath on getting homegrown oranges or lemons. ;-)

Succulent wreath

2011-02-19T21:55:00.001-05:00

Not everything at today's gardening symposium was us sitting and learning... we had some interactive time where we got to play in the dirt, aaand play with pantyhose!

Now we wait and see if the succulent wreaths we made take off and fill out more. If all goes well, they should be looking great by summer!

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Seaweed!

2011-02-19T21:50:00.001-05:00

Look what I got at the gardening symposium Mary and I were at all day today. From everything I've been reading, or hearing in podcasts, it sounds like kelp is GREAT for plants. I guess they love the micronutrients available in the kelp?

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What every gardener needs in February?

2011-02-13T11:58:00.007-05:00

That small bag on top is just one of two 40lb bags of "manure and compost"....hopefully all well composted!

And the two bottom bags are 3.8 cu ft bails, and trust me, they're heeeeavy. I'll be mixing this stuff together shortly in the hopes of making an idea soil-block-making mix - the mix has to have just the right consistency to hold itself together, retain moisture, breathe well, and yet not compress into a solid block of concrete. Oh, and the plant roots have to like it too!

Who wants fresh veggies!??!

2011-02-09T15:40:00.003-05:00

Ok, maybe that's a bit of a cruel teaser, especially since it's bitter cold out there right now. ;-)

My point is, it's time to register if you're interested in joining the Fresh is Best CSA in 2011! The brochure/registration form is available online, and last year's members have already had a copy emailed to them. Woo hoo - can't you practically taste those sun-ripened tomatoes and fresh salad greens now?

Ok, maybe this is a bit of a cruel teaser, but technically not just anyone can sign up at this point. Up though Wednesday, February 16th, we're only accepting registrations from last year's members. We want to give the people who were members last year a fair chance to stay members...but don't worry, based on feedback and changing how we handle the CSA this year, I'm pretty sure we'll have at least a couple extra slots available when we open up the registration to people who weren't members last year.

To read what we're all about, and decide if you're interested in signing up with us, I'm making the brochure and registration form available online now. Former members already know how Fresh is Best works, and I figure it's only fair to give potential new members ample time to read up and see if they're interested in signing up.

Please feel free to contact myself and/or Mary if you have any questions - just leave your comments/questions here. Now we are planning to only have the one pick up location/time - that's behind the Kent State University Library, in the parking lot, at 9:00am Thursday mornings. Again, if you have any questions about this, let us know...

Let me know if you have any trouble accessing the PDF'd brochure - I'm trying MediaFire, an online file hosting service with free options for the first time, so we'll see how that goes... When you click on the link to get the PDF'd brochure and registration form, you'll see a page that looks something like the image below. It's ad-based, so you'll probably have a quick ad pop up on the screen. Just close that (look for the "close" option in the upper right corner), and then click "Click here to Download" - I've got red arrows pointing to it in the screenshot below.

I think maybe I'll go look through some more seed catalogs and pretend it's 80 degrees and sunny outside!

When is it time to plant my veggies?

2011-02-06T13:55:00.005-05:00

It's that time of year where we gardeners who start many of our plants from seeds (as opposed to buying already started plants at the garden centers, hardware stores, etc) need to start paying more attention to the date. Once you know your average last frost date, you can backtrack when to start the seeds for each variety of plant. You have to take into consideration whether or not you're direct seeding into the soil outside, or if you're starting your seeds indoors so that you are transplanting the seedlings (small plants) into your garden after they've already had some development time.I've had a Google Calendar set up for a few years now with my countdown of "how many weeks til last frost" (which is telling me we're about 15 wks as of yesterday), but I do double check with data each year...just to make sure I haven't goofed my future listings of the countdown somehow. And then, based on that info, I also have reminders in a different Google Calendar for what needs to be sown each week. You can see an example of that, for what things will look like April 9th, here:

(I made sure to pick a busier day a few months down the road - there's not much showing on the calendar right now!)

So how do you figure all this out?
Well, first you need to figure out what your average last frost date is. There's a number of places you can find that info online (just Google "last frost date " + whatever your zip code is. Dave's Garden provides a super informative version - check this out!

Yeah, that's a lot more info than I need to know, but it includes the basics, and let's me know I've got some wiggle room. It doesn't, however, tell me when to start each variety of plant I'm working with. Don't worry - there's resources for that too!

Just hop on over to Johnny's Selected Seeds for one of my favorite plant starting calculators!

(You can click each of these images to view them full size)

You'll notice in the screenshot from the Dave's Garden frost calculator I highlighted my "almost guaranteed" last frost date - May 10, 2011. Then I plugged that date into Johnny's calculator to figure out when I'll want to start my seeds. There's a lot of stuff on the list I know I won't be growing (like melons and mustard)....and with some of the other things, I know I'll scrap the info they provide because I've picked up other techniques over the years. Like they're suggesting starting tomatoes between March 22 and April 12. My dad taught me years ago to get started way earlier than that. You know those large tomato plants you buy at the garden center to put in your garden? Yeah, those aren't just 6-8 weeks old. Those were started during winter, and then potted up a time or two. And that's what I do. Warning - using this technique with your tomatoes (and peppers, and eggplants) DOES start to take up a lot more space in your house!

Hm, looks like my Google Calendar says April 9 for starting eggplants indoors, while Johnny's calculator suggests that's too late. Yup, need to update my calendar!

Oh, and my leeks? Yup, I started those earlier than recommended in this calculator - but I've learned a technique where you "drill" a hole (about an inch across) about 8-10" deep for each leek plant in your garden bed, and drop in a roughly 10" tall leek that you started in the middle of winter. DON'T fill in the soil. DO water the leeks gently, and that'll cause a little soil to wash into the bottom of that hole. And when you do future waterings, and when it rains, or the wind blows strongly, that'll knock a little more soil into the hole, SLOWLY filling it. In the meantime, that leek's taken root at the bottom of that hole, settled in, and started growing up out of the hole even more. This is a GREAT way to get the really long white shaft you want on high quality leeks. Whatever's buried is going to be "blanched" - meaning it remains tender and white - the part above ground is tougher and is what recipes usually tell you not to use. (Just don't pitch the tough green part - bag it, freeze it, and use it in stocks later!) So that's why I start my leeks extra early - I don't want to plant out super tiny wispy "hairs" and then have to keep hilling up the soil around them - that's alot of work. I plant out more mature plants, and just plant them deep.

Here's a teaser image of leeks from a previous season. Right now the only leeks we're enjoying are some from this past summer that I washed, chopped, blanched and froze. They contributed to an EXCELLENT potato leek soup yesterday!

Anyhow, as you can see from Johnny's calculator, you want to start celery indoors around this area on February 22. I'm not growing true celery like you'd get in the grocery store, but I will be growing a similar plant called cutting celery, so I'll start it then. Looks like I'll be wanting to start parsley (and probably some other herbs) in the next week or so as well!

And if so many things are so far off with when I really have to kick into gear with my indoor seed starting, why am I already worrying about the dates? Welllll....I'll get back to that with another post soon! I found another neat tool online, and I need all the seed starting data to help me with it!

The garden season - it is rapidly approaching!

Worm Tubes!

2011-02-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

Here's DEFINITELY something I'll be trying in the garden this year - worm tubes! So if you happen to come out to the garden this year and see tubes sticking up out of the beds, don't be too surprised...you'll know exactly what's going on.

Sure, I already have a compost tumbler, AND I have worm composting going on in the basement year round, but it looks like this will help lure in worms to the raised bed veggie gardens, and that's good news because they'll tunnel in and out of the tubes to get the contents I put in there, leaving tunnels every where they go, and leaving "worm droppings", which provide nutrients for plants.

Progress check

2011-02-05T13:53:00.002-05:00

Remember I got the first of the seed starting going two weeks ago? Well, here's how things are looking now...

In the foreground are a mix of lettuce, komatsuna, tatsoi, and mizuna, and in the background tray are leeks. There's more leeks not shown in the picture. I'm definitely gonna need to get those shelves for the greenhouse started soon!

Growing a Greener World covers CSAs!

2011-02-05T12:51:00.006-05:00

I used to love watching "Fresh from the Garden" with Joe Lamp'l, and then followed Joe on to his Joe Gardener projects and podcast. These days he's teamed up with Patti Moreno and Chef Nathan Lyon to produce Growing a Greener World, with a weekly show on PBS! Don't sit around to watch shows on TV often, or, like us, don't get the show on your local PBS channel? You can still watch Growing a Greener World at their web site (yay!). And I see that they recently had an episode covering CSAs. They cover all the good (and some of the risks) of being a member of a CSA...check it out:

http://www.growingagreenerworld.com/episode120/

Image via WikipediaBy now those of you who were our customers in 2010 know all about the whole "you take the good, you take the bad" pros and cons of being a CSA member - you don't know if something will have a crop failure, you don't know if the cucumber beetles are going to infect and kill all the cucumbers, you don't know if you really like swiss chard or kale, and you sure don't know what you're going to do with that glut of tomatoes at the end of the season, week after week!

But you also know about all the good things that come with being a member - all the fresh herbs and veggies harvested within 24 hrs of you getting to eat them, and being exposed to stuff you've never tried before.

Image by jephremley via FlickrMary and I are starting to gear up for the 2011 season. I should have this year's brochure/registration ready real soon (it'll include some changes in how we're classifying "a share"). We've got feedback from some of you on 2010's season thanks to the survey you've filled out. I've already got leeks and some experimental Asian greens growing in the basement. I've got worms composting our kitchen scraps in the basement, making wonderful worm castings that'll get worked into the garden beds to improve the soil's nutritional value (this doesn't mean I'm recommending eating the soil!). Before too long I'll be building shelves to put in the small 6'x8' greenhouse purchased with income from last year's CSA (thank you!). Mary and I have already attended one garden lecture this winter, and we have a few more garden talks we'll be attending over the next couple of months. And Mary and I have tons of seeds that we're itching to plant.

If you forgot to fill out the survey and are still interested, please feel free to do so...your input is greatly appreciated!

Wanna check out Growing a Greener World, where they're always covering interesting topics in gardening, sustainability, and stewardship? http://www.growingagreenerworld.com/

And hey, if there's anything you feel we could be doing to improve our CSA service, or even how we communicate with you guys, please let us know with your comments. I've started wondering - should we set up a Fresh is Best Facebook page??

Self-inflicted Homework

2011-01-30T16:01:00.001-05:00

It's past time to be getting this year's updated brochure done and sent out to returning- and potential-customers! But gee, it feels like homework doing this sort of stuff. Wouldn't digging out in the dirt be more fun? Oh well - I suppose I COULD be working on my taxes...

Let's get this party started

2011-01-23T18:17:00.005-05:00

Ok, I admit it, maybe that title's a little premature - it's not like we'll be able to go out and dig in the dirt for quite awhile yet - it's frozen rock solid! But with it being near the end of January, it actually IS time to start getting some seeds started for this year's garden. Hard to believe, isn't it? Now we're not talking juicy tomatoes, spicy peppers, snapping fresh peas, or anything like that - those won't get seeded for awhile yet. But when it comes to crops like those in the onion family - well, ya gotta start early! REEEEAL EARLY! And so that's what I did today - started four varieties of leeks from seed. This is my second year of growing leeks from seed, and I decided to try something a little different. As with last year, I'm starting them mid-to-late January in soilless seed starting mix in flats, which will sit on heat mats, as you can see below.

But take a closer look at that picture - it looks like I didn't finish filling in the flat of seed starting mix - right? If you look at the next picture, you'll see what's going on. I felt like last year's leeks were incredibly started off incredibly scrawny compared to what I've read about them and those that I mail-ordered as immature plants. Sure, they turned out great, really taking off by mid-summer and plumping up nicely. But I'm wondering if they could've been even bigger and even better!? So I decided to put a thin (1/2"?) layer of "homegrown" worm castings (aka worm poop) in the bottom of the flat, and then top that with the seed starting mix. It seems like that should give the leeks a nice nutritious boost once their young roots get down that far. Here you can see a more clumpy, solid looking layer in the bottom of the tray, and then the looser, speckled layer of seeds starting mix on top. (Those little red flecks aren't my worms - they're just shreds of paper (worm bedding) that didn't get fully processed before I scooped out the castings.

So here's what I'm trying for leeks this year, each with a different number of days to maturity (from the time of transplanting them in the ground), which I hope will help stagger their harvesting for the CSA. See how I feel about this later if I'm griping because I want all that garden bed space freed up for other crops! Anyhow, I'm trying:

Leek, Lincoln (50 days)
Leek, King Richard (75 days)
Leek, Megaton F1 (90 days)
Leek, Lexton F1 (110 days)
Garlic Chives, Nira

Yup, that's a pack of garlic chives you see that I'll be starting from seed. They're a different flavor, and flatter leaf, than the chives you're used to having on baked potatoes...and I might find it's easier in the long run to just buy a plant at a garden center....we'll see.

Anyhow, back to the experiment with the worm poop. I realized, as I was seeding the trays, that I wouldn't know if this year's leeks were really starting better because of the worm castings, or if there were other factors. Thing is, the first two packs of seeds I started were REALLY loaded with seeds - way more than the 50 I thought they were supposed to come with - and so they took up the majority of the first flat. This worked out pretty well - I'd already accepted I'd have to use a second flat for the remaining two packets of seeds (which, it turns out, contained much closer to 50 seeds apiece!) - and so I decided to try the worm casting experiment with them as well, AND to have a control group.

I used a seed/planting tray that was formed with six divisions - a 2x3 grid. In the image below, each type of leek is planted from front to back of the tray in 3 rows, but only the three sections in the front side of the tray have worm castings, and the back half is pure seed starting mix.

It was around this time I realized how few seeds came in the two packets I was working with, so I used the right-most two sections to continue the experiment, with the front half starting with worm castings. There's four different plants started over there (the right-most got cut off) - Skyphos red butterhead lettuce (pelleted), Tatsoi, Komatsuna, and Mizuna.

Uh, what?

Cover via AmazonYeah, those last three are VERY new to me! After reading a number of books talking about winter harvest crops, Asian greens, etc (including the incredibly good The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses by Eliot Coleman), I decided to give some of these more popular Asian greens a try....some might get combined into an Asian greens stir fry mix, while others might get included in the CSA on their own...assuming they're any good and successful. I have others I'm going to try, but these three seemed the most popular/common in my readings and the seed catalogs, and I had plenty of their seeds to experiment with.

So....check back periodically to see how the experiment is going!

It's easy being green...

2010-11-17T21:35:00.001-05:00

Yup, still getting plenty of green stuff!

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Still going strong!

2010-11-12T17:27:00.001-05:00

Even though the fall crop of lettuce came up too late for the CSA shares it's loving the mild, mid-range temperatures we've been having. Temperatures are supposed to start dropping again next week, which will probably slow down the plants, but for now I have surplus. If anyone's interested, let me know and I can probably harvest some for you next week.

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Fresh is Best

Every season has one!

Helpful tip for the gardener

Ten pounds!

Is this going to be our first frost?

Packaging can be a lot of work!

Lettuce cross our fingers!

Rosemary

Eat your greens!

192

Green goodness

Almost time to plant garlic

Got mean yellow jackets?

Worms!

Brrrr!

Just peachy!

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