So I took the Springtime off......

I can't believe how little happened in my garden while I wasn't there to lovingly care and tend for it, (when I was working all day in an office, away from my family, my home, the soil and the sun and the plants).  Now that I've resigned from my job, I'm going gangbusters on the yard and on the garden.  While I was working, I decided to scale back how much I planted to compensate for my lack of time, so this Spring I had some lettuce, a couple of radishes (the others just didn't get picked) and some broccoli this Spring.  And, we just recently harvested a ton of carrots!  Love those things!  So easy to grow from seed, homegrown carrots taste completely different from store-bought carrots, and tomatoes love them (supposedly)!  Now, the garden's growing tomatoes (trying fewer plants on trellises this year without espadrilling them.....I laid them down in the dirt because I read that roots will grow all along the hairy stem and you get more fruiting branches that way), yellow squash, nasturtiums, zucchini, zinnias, a sweet pepper and some purple crowder peas that I saved from last year's crop.  I've also planted a couple of containers of lettuces and radishes (supposed to keep the lettuce from tasting bitter from the heat), and a muscadine grapevine.  She likes the wild boy muscadine that's growing in the brush behind our yard, and we've got a nice little crop of baby grapes coming along!  My zucchini blossoms keep dropping--I vaguely recall having this problem before, and I think I need a second zucchini plant to fix this problem.  Still waiting for my first squash to get big enough to be more than two bites before I pick them, but the four of them are happily taking over an entire bed.  I let my first blue lake beans dry on the vine while I was in DC, and last week I popped the beans inside into the ground, and this week I've got new plants starting to poke through the dirt.  I also have a red onion growing that had sprouted in the cabinet....who needs a seed packet when you can grow what's in your kitchen?

As for the yard, we had some landscapers come in and clear out all that old monkeygrass, which has left me a blank slate to work with (in the backyard--Craig wants to get a landscape design done for the front yard).  So, while Meghan and Michael are at camp this week, Matthew's attending Mommy's Art Camp--the medium is plants.  What's the cheapest way to buy plants?  In a hanging basket!  You can get them basically at "buy two get one free" this way.  What you can't find in a basket, go find at Hillbilly Produce.  They're having a buy one get one free sale.  I save my plant containers, and I spent the afternoon planting new containers for the deck and the yard using combinations of all these plants.  What fun!  I hope this Miracle-Gro Moisture Control potting soil is all they say it is.  Time will tell.

The garden's growing!

Matthew and I spent a couple of hours outside yesterday, thinning out our turnips in bed #3. We've got carrots starting to sprout in bed #4, and they'll need thinning soon. The beets are starting to sprout, I'll wait until they're the size of microgreens before I thin those.....those leaves are too yummy to waste! The radishes have sprouted in between the lettuces in bed #5, and so has the kale. Don't see how those tiny kale sprouts will ever turn into something huge. Ever doubt God's power? Take a look at a kale seed, and watch what happens to it with just a little dirt, water and sunshine.

What's planted now....

Never know what you're gonna find....

While I was turning up the soil to plant some peas this afternoon, I discovered that Meghan's carrots had actually grown. We've tried to grow carrots before, with great success in growing the green part, but not much success in producing edible roots worth mentioning. Maybe it's the depth at which we plant the seeds. Maybe it's what we plant them with. Maybe it's the seeds we plant. Regardless, the carrot seeds Meghan planted near our tomatoes last summer have produced a crop--of three carrots. Thankfully, just enough for each kid to have one, and for Mom and Dad to steal a bite. I'm sure that bite will be worth the 2 seconds I spent handing the seeds to Meghan to plant.

Speaking of carrots, I planted some more, in the exact same spot in bed #4 today. I also planted peas on our old tomato trellises, turnips, onions and rutabagas. These were all planted in the same bed, and are companion plants. Peas and carrots are mutually beneficial, and are the perfect planting partners. Turnips like to grow near peas, and rutabagas like to grow near turnips. Please notice, I did NOT plant any onions in this bed--peas and onions do not mix.

To finish out bed #5, Craig cut down our fall broccoli plants to see if we can get some more broccoli out of them--after the first cutting, broccoli plants no longer produce heads, but they will produce more florets. Since we've been eating broccoli florets since Christmas, I don't know if we'll get any more off of these plants. It's simple to replace the plants if the experiment doesn't work. I interplanted the broccoli plants with beet seeds and more turnips, and with almost all of the onions. I have just a few more onion sets to put in with the strawberry patches. My Spring garden is almost completely planted. Just a few more seeds, and we'll be set.

It's Planting Time Again!

You can start planting some of your favorite Spring vegetables on February 1 in our region. While I had the best intentions, and was at Renfrow's on 2/1 with my garden plan in hand, the plants and seeds I bought didn't actually get into the dirt until yesterday, the 7th.


Here's my plan for bed #5 this Spring. This bed gets the most shade once the trees in my yard leaf out, so I've designated it my main Spring bed. Yesterday, I planted lettuce plants, swiss chard plants and spinach plants with Early Scarlet Globe radish seeds and Sweet Georgia onion sets planted in-between. I also planted Dwarf Blue Curled, Vate's Strain kale seeds with Detroit Dark Red, Morse's Strain beet seeds in-between. Each box on my plan represents 1 square foot. I've planted companion plants together (i.e. radishes and lettuce), and I've chosen only plants that grow well together, such as onions and beets for this bed.


I'm not planting as many items in this bed this year since I found I had more lettuce last year than we could eat. Each head of lettuce will generate more leaves whenever you harvest some for a salad, reducing the number of heads you need to plant. That lesson learned saved me a considerable amount of money at Renfrow's this year! If you're thinking of planting a garden, then take a trip to Renfrow's. They have posters showing (by season) whether you should buy plants or seeds for each vegetable, they can give you the NC State Cooperative Extension chart listing planting dates for each vegetable, and if you don't want to think too hard about it all, they can pick out the plants you'll need to plant right now. Tell them I (the lady with all the kids and the red-headed husband) sent you!

More Like This < Sunset's favorite heirloom tomatoes and recipes - Sunset.com

More Like This < Sunset's favorite heirloom tomatoes and recipes - Sunset.com

How to harvest and store tomato seeds - Sunset.com

How to harvest and store tomato seeds - Sunset.com

Father's Day Harvest

I harvested our next-to-last serving of beets out of our garden, and I have to say, they were delicious. My cousin swears her favorite way to eat beets is "Harvard Beets," so I gave this recipe a try last night. Meghan says they're "candied beets," Michael will eat one or two bites, Matthew says, "bleh" with the obligatory stuck-out tongue, and Craig and I both agree, they are "top of the class," hence the name, "Harvard Beets."

Here's the recipe....

16 oz. can of beets (or use fresh beets, peel them, boil them and reserve the liquid)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
butter
salt to taste

Add vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, butter and salt to beet liquid, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium, stir in beets, and heat through.

Cousins & Zucchini....

So, I'm enjoying my 2nd annual Cousins' Reunion at my cousin's place in the mountains yesterday. My cousin and his girlfriend arrive bearing a huge amount of yellow squash and zucchini and even a cucumber from his Mom's garden, and I'm immediately jealous. My cousin (and my sister of the heart) gets that gleam in her eye and starts planning what she's going to can with it all, and I realize that I'm having dinner with a Southern States store owner and a County Extension Agent. Woohoo! I'm finally able to ask someone who might know WHY my zucchini plant hasn't produced anything yet and the blossoms keep falling off.....here are the answers I heard.

"What'd you plant it in? Potting mix?"
"Well, how 'bout phosphorous?"
"Actually, my specialty is animals, so I'd have to look this one up."
"The old people would tell you that you planted it during the wrong phase of the moon."
"Honestly, I think you should just ask Momma."

So, I took the Extension Agent's recommendation and looked it up....the answer is that the blossoms that have fallen off are male blossoms, and the blossoms still on the plant are most likely female blossoms.

Here's a wonderful resource: http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/vegetable/why-zucchini-blossoms-fall-off-the-plant.htm

Are your ears burning?

$3 "Grub Club" today at Latta Plantation from 3 - 4 pm

"Gardening can be exciting....Join us for this hands-on monthly offering in which we will learn about different aspects of vegetable gardening. Each month will be a different topic, but the first month we will be planting seeds and the last few we will be harvesting the vegetables."

My friend Shannon says the Montessouri method is to let kids harvest something and THEN teach them the seed cycle....well, I figure my kids have harvested enough strawberries and onions this year that this is the next logical step in their garden education.

Luckily, there are still 10 out of 12 spaces available today, and this class is only $3 per kid. Come on out and join us!

http://parkrez.co.mecklenburg.nc.us/Activities/Activities.asp?SCheck=887325182&SDT=40708.3363033218

Some interesting info on tomatoes from Southern States

This article shares some interesting information on common tomato problems. Seems like mulch and regular water are key to a bumper crop.

http://www.southernstates.com/articles/lg/controltomatoes.aspx

Last Day of School Harvest

To celebrate the last day of school, I cooked Michael's favorite dinner (well one of his favorites) of meatloaf and potatoes and our very first serving of homegrown squash. What a hit! I roasted potatoes and the squash in Italian salad dressing in the oven at 350 degrees for the whole time the meatloaf was cooking--super simple, and delicious! Meghan and I have also enjoyed our very first homegrown grape tomatoes this week--definitely worth the trouble and the wait! After I harvested all of our lettuce, I was left with an empty bed....so I experimented with taking cuttings from squash and from tomatoes and planting them in the new bed to try to make new plants. While the squash experiment didn't work, the tomato plant experiment did! I now have 3 new Mr. Stripey tomato plants growing! Since I'm training the tomatoes to grow vertically on a trellis, I have to do a pretty serious pruning every couple of weeks. I'll be planting a couple of pruned branches every couple of weeks, and will hopefully have tomatoes through Thanksgiving! :) See, squash and tomatoes are a lot like kids in kindergarten. Once you get them started the right way and in their routine, they just don't stop until it's all over! And, as Meghan put it, "there's nothing like a homegrown tomato." So, our end-of-the-year teacher gifts were 4 tomato plants with a card that read, "Let's "ketchup" sometime" and included our blog addresses. Hopefully, these fabulous ladies who took care of my kids and got them started the right way this year will think of them and smile every time they pick a ripe tomato this summer. Enjoy!

June 1 Harvest

Meghan was checking out the carrots as I worked on weeding the flower bed, and discovered a few were full grown. Matthew then proceeded to pull up each and every carrot, totaling in a harvest of 7 full grown carrots, and 5 partially grown. Surprisingly, Matthew didn't harvest any of the surrounding beets or onions...proving that my son who is unable to drink water without spilling it can successfully maneuver an overcrowded garden of full grown carrots, beets and onions without any sacrifices. Go figure.

I was able to pick the "fruit of my labor" and harvested my first yellow squash, along with a spring onion that's looking suspiciously like a sweet onion you'd buy in the grocery store--something or someone helpfully knocked it out of its hole for me overnight.....that or it just got so gigantic that it fell over from its own weight.....that's what counts as a "fish tale" in farming.

Speaking of fish tails, I don't have much trouble from rabbits, my total casualty list consists of one head of romaine lettuce this year. Truthfully, I'd bet money that had more to do with Matthew (my two year old) than with rabbits, although we do have plenty of chipmunks. We have a champion mouser named Bob who has the run of the place, and he's doing a pretty good job of hunting down our chipmunk population--the babies that is. I've read that the Native Americans used to plant a fish in each corn hill to increase the nitrogen or something....wonder if I could teach Bob to bury his kills in my garden for me? That would be a LOT better than another dead baby chipmunk left on the sidewalk for all to admire.

We also have a barred owl who hunts in our backyard--at least I hope it's hunting in our backyard what with all the noise it makes. There are two red-tailed hawks that roost on the steeple of the church behind my house as well. Between the raptors and the cat, like I said, we don't have much trouble from rabbits.

Memorial Day Harvests

Last week, the forecast called for insanely high temperatures, unusual for this time of year. I'd been putting off harvesting my ridiculous amount of lettuce http://back-yard-farmer.blogspot.com/p/2011-garden-plans.html resulting from my overzealous planning back in February, when all this food was just a dream......however, I knew that the high temperatures would cause my lettuce to bolt, resulting in a bitter taste, and wasted effort. So, instead of packing for our camping trip, I spent two days harvesting lettuce, rinsing lettuce, bagging up lettuce, and finding spots in my refrigerator and in my friends' refrigerators for all this lettuce. I gave lettuce to my kid's teachers, to the occupational therapist, to the OT's receptionist, to some unsuspecting neighbors.....all with the promise to bring more produce if they returned the bags. ;) My family had vegetable dinner that night--roasted baby beets, roasted spring onions, baked potatoes with spring onions and a great big salad. We all feasted, and fell in love with our backyard farm.