Cleaned out the summer vegetables from the garden today. Pulled out zucchini and tomato plants and put out a bunch of seeds - lettuces, carrots, radishes, leeks, turnips, spinach, brussels sprouts.
There are still a few things left to be harvested sometime soon - sweet potatoes, sweet banana peppers (which keep on giving and giving!), and a few potatoes which re-sprouted after we thought we'd pulled and harvested them all about a month or so ago.
As I was perusing my catalog from Wood Prairie Farm like a girl looking at a Christmas catalog, I realized that I should share my favorite places with everyone. I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours!
So, without further ado, here is a list of my favorite places to buy non-GMO no-Monsanto gardening goodies:
Wood Prairie Farm - I tried their King Harry potatoes and loved them. A lot. They sell all kinds of potatoes and a mix of other seeds.
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - almost all of my seeds come from here. With their seeds I've grown lettuce, chard, carrots, beans, tomatoes, oh my... The list is neverending. And I can't even look at their site without being tempted to buy more. And I do. not. need. any. more. seeds. (squeezes eyes shut while copy/pasting the link)
Green Mountain Garlic - So, I ordered three or four varieties last year. Each variety came with 3-5 bulbs that you then split into cloves, and plant individually. I now have more home grown, delightful, amazing, bountiful, garlic than I will be able to consume in the next five or so years. And I love garlic.
So, those are my "top 3" for now, I'll add more as I may think of them. Enjoy!
So I will post here until I can find it!
Planted today in the left side beds:
Bed 1 (closest to house): Hardneck Garlic "Music"
Beds 2 & 3: Hardneck Garlic "Belarus"
Bed 4: Softneck Garlic "Red Koch"
All from Green Mountain Garlic.
I posted recently about garlic spray, which can be used to control pests as well as disease such as late blight. One pest that I am in search of a good solution for is the tomato hornworm (Manduca quinquemaculata).
Tomato hornworms are closely related to (and sometimes confused with) the tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta).
One natural control for these pests is the Braconid Wasp, which lays its parasitic eggs on the back of the hornworm. These eggs then eventually kill that hornworm by eating it from the inside out (uhm, yuck)... The moral of the story is, if you see a caterpillar that looks like this, it is a host for an insect that will kill the caterpillar's brethren (not to mention, he's about to be wasp larvae kibble), so you might want to leave him there.
There's a great publication on minimum chemical gardening available from the Virginia Cooperative Extension's website. It includes tips such as tilling, crop rotation, etc... Very good general low-chemical-use information!
I read that you can use naturally occurring Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) to kill the tomato and tobacco hornworm, and this might be the easiest route. I looked to see if BT is bad for bees (since this will be one of my primary concerns!) and found somewhat mixed information. I don't think I'll be doing much with BT in my garden, especially not in the first year of trying to get my hives established.
For my own garden, I'm going to stick to the "find and pluck (and SMUSH!)" tactic. I've read that the best times to find the hornworms are early morning and evening, they'll be more active on the plant at this time. During the heat of the day they'll hide under the leaves. You can follow their poop (which from what I hear looks like little hand grenades!) or the destruction to try to find them if all else fails.
Good luck with this year's pests, and happy gardening! Let me know if you have any tried-and-true tricks to share!!
Great weekend working outdoors. I love it! Yesterday was insane weather; we started out with severe thunderstorms in the morning, which blew through by early afternoon and were followed by sun and crazy wind gusts to 30+ knots.
The apiary (thankfully still empty at this time) blew over, which sent John and I out in search of wind break plants to put nearby, and straps to strap down the apiary until the plants grow in. We get some really incredible wind here in the New River Valley.
As a result, we installed two white False Spirea, intended to be a wind break for the apiary, hopefully in the very near future. Their leaves are gorgeous! While at Lowe's I saw that they had azaleas on sale for $2.50 each, so I picked up three Hershey Red to put in the front bed, which we installed today.
My friend Laurie asked me about a recipe for garlic spray, and I noticed a great recipe in one of my favorite books that I thought I'd share.
Garlic Spray
Excerpt from Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte:
"Take 3-4 ounces of chopped garlic bulbs and soak in 2 tablespoons of mineral oil for a day. Add one pint of water in which one teaspoon of fish emulsion has been dissolved. Stir well. Strain the liquid and store in a glass or china container, as it reacts with metals. Dilute this, starting with one part to 20 parts of water, and use as a spray against your worst insect pests."I've used a simpler form of garlic spray (garlic olive oil + a small amount of dish soap + water) to treat late blight with good success (unfortunately, that year we were getting unheard of amounts of rainfall, and you have to reapply the mix each time to control the blight as it will get washed off).
Finally some of the long-awaited pictures! This post will be brief in words, but will give you a better visual on what's going on around the old humble homestead.
Charles and the (empty until next Tuesday) apiary, by our back fence:
Looking back at the house (that's John on the back deck way down there, between the windows and the double doors; our six raised garden beds are to the right):
Tiny leek shoots and cabbage (collards?!). For some reason the "auto" setting on my Nikon washed all of these pics out, so I had to mess with the settings to get anything to show up... Sorry! Learning about how to fix that is something on the "to-do" list, when (if?) some of my other activities slow down!
Those tiny green twigs amongst all the mulch are the Josee reblooming lilacs:
This incredibly unflattering picture (after a long day of gardening) is proof that I did, in fact, try to learn how to fillet a fish:
The final meal - the fish fillets (give or take a little!!!*) with some of the mashed potatoes left over from the Shepherd's Pie (I'd made the whole bag of potatoes up versus saving a few that would start to grow in the pantry), and some garlic steamed broccoli:
This fish has the lovely and romantic name of Loup de Mer, or Wolf of the Sea, also known as Seabass. We compared it's final flavor to Tilapia - this could very well have been poor technique on my part... By the time I finally got done filleting that (those! there were two) poor sucker(s), and having gardened all day, I wasn't feeling terribly creative to go looking for complicated recipes. I wound up sauteing it with onions, butter and lemon juice.
* I'm pretty sure that, while what I was attempting was to fillet the fish, I actually just butchered it. I think we own some pretty decent and sharp knives, but none of ours could get through the thick and slick fish skin without a sawing motion, which I think is probably, combined with my inexperience and lack of overall technique, the kiss of death for a good fillet.
Time is flying by. I can't believe it is already APRIL! And, with this week (5 weeks before our last frost date (I err 1 week toward the more conservative end of the last frost date window), it is time to plant out the leeks and cabbage that I started from seed back on March 6.
There is something that seems to happen to me every time, maybe you can help me with a suggestion on how to avoid this. It seems that no matter how carefully I make up and situate the tags, I always wind up getting a few of the same type (different variety) of plant mixed in together. The tags are too huge to poke directly into the seed pods I use, so they are laid next to the plants, and this can be confusing when you have a 72-slot planter with 2 Brunswick Cabbages next to 4 Early Jersey Wakefiled Cabbages next to Georgia Southern Collards and Long Island Improved Brussels Sprouts (which BOTH happen to look just like the cabbages at this stage, and BTW aren't supposed to be planted out for another 2 weeks). I can tell the two that are the Mammoth Red Rock Cabbage (they're RED!), but the two varieties of green cabbage, I have no idea which is which. Frankly, at this point I just hope I didn't grab the collards or brussels sprouts by accident.
Next year, I'm thinking popsicle sticks stuck into each plant. I had been trying to use one tag per each variety (multiple plants) because the plastic tags are "spendy" (that is so not a term I use but I've known folks who use it and I really like it in a weird sort of way). Popsicle sticks, on the other hand, are a couple bucks for 100, so I can go to town!
I've already started getting everything ready outdoors. It took me a few weeks, but all six raised beds are now weeded, and we just had some dirt delivered to top them off (each year it settles down a bit more into the bed). John took what small amount of compost we had (it wound up being only 1/2 wheelbarrow full or so) and spread it among the beds before the new dirt was added to the top. I planted a Columbine that I bought at the farmer's market this morning, as well as a Johnny Jump-Up that someone had given away at one of the Master Gardener meetings a few weeks back.
====================
I started the draft above Saturday morning, and BOY, was it a busy weekend! I have pics that I'll upload later.
Transplanted out:
- Cabbages and surely inadvertently some of the collards :p
- Leeks
- Garlic
- Onions
Started seeds:
- Peas
- Collards & Mustard
- Beets
Planted out (plants) - these are the ones I referred to in this earlier post:
2x Lilac (still need to find a home for the last, sad wilty looking one)
3x Knock-out roses
3x Russian Sage
3x Peony
Well, the seeds are sprouting beautifully. Everything sprouted except the Tropeana Round Onions, and I'm betting that's because those seeds were 2 years old (I just threw them in to fill up the last 6 grow pellets in the mini-greenhouse). Never fear, however, those grow pellets did not go to waste. I had a few extra leeks and one cayenne pepper that were thinned which got moved over to the available slots and are doing fine. It's just as well, since I'd ordered onion sets which I received recently and need to plant out.
The only problem is, onion can be toxic to dogs, and as soon as I set the box on the ground to work with the sets, Charlie was in there trying to eat them. I put several in some planters up on the table on the back porch, but I have no idea what I'm going to do with the rest! I suppose I'll have to try and rig a makeshift fence around each raised bed to keep the dogs out somehow, but I didn't have enough light to deal with it tonight.
Started the tomatoes today:
8 Amish Paste
3 Paul Robeson
3 Cherokee Purple
and 2 Arkansas Traveler (which may or may not germinate, some more 2 year old seeds)
The bees will be coming in mid-April, and so I've also been thinking a lot about the decorative gardening I want to do. I want to be sure to have plenty of flowers and plants for them to choose from for pollen within our yard. I have always coveted a cottage garden, and thinking of plantings around my apiary brings this style to the front of my mind. I've ordered a few plants to start building out the "bones" for a garden of this style, namely (so far):
Russian Sage
Mme. De Verneville Peony
First: drawing updates. On day 3 I discovered the eraser, and it was good. Also, in case you were wondering, I never intend to draw eggs.
Day 2:
Day 3:
I had to adjust the "shadows" quite a bit to get all the pencil to show up under the flash, so this isn't quite so dark in person. Also, those white lines in the shadows of the bottom image are some kind of phantom from the flash, quite possibly from where I'd erased and re-drawn something.
And, a couple of updated pics of seeds that are going. These pics are a couple of days old, these suckers are growing like gangbusters. I need to get the next ones going very soon - tomatoes are up, week of 3/18 is 8 weeks before average last frost; tomato starting time!
Cabbage and Brussels Sprouts beauty shot:
Leeks finally sprouting:
What's that in the background? Thinned seedlings trying to make a go of it in the plastic lining!
The cabbage and come of the collards are up (they were really close yesterday, and today they have leaves!). Some of the leeks are about to pop. Nothing much out of the peppers (it may not be warm enough for them in our ~68 degree house). I love watching this spring miracle.
Well, we're finally at that point in the year that we can start GARDENING! At least, start growing seeds indoors. One of my favorite resources for this is courtesy of Little House in the Suburbs, it is their Spring Garden Planner. It says 2009 but will work for any year since you fill in the dates inside yourself. It has very helpful info about what to start indoors at various points, and also what to start outdoors. Thanks to their handy little guide, tonight I got the following seeds started:
2 x Jalapeno
2 x Cayenne
4 x Brussels Sprouts - Long Island Improved
2 x Cabbage - Mammoth Red Rock
2 x Cabbage - Brunswick
2 x Cabbage - Early Jersey Wakefield
4 x Collards - GA Sourthern
4 x Collards - Morris Heading
10 x Leeks - Autumn Giant
10 x Leeks - Bleu de Solaise
6 x Onions - Tropeana Round
Have I mentioned lately how much I love Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds? That's where the majority of these are from.
Coming soon? Tomatoes!! I guess I'll back off a bit from the 32 tomato plants we had (which went to seed because we couldn't keep up). I have 15 on my plan for this year. Which brings me to another great resource - GrowVeg. Highly recommended.
Also on the plan (but may or may not be getting started soon: cantaloupe, bush beans, cucumber, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, carrots, summer & winter squashes (various), peas, beets, turnips, swiss chard, and a whole mess of various herbs.
GARDENING SEASON IS HERE, PEOPLE! I am so excited.
Life isn't perfect, and neither am I! I have this voice in my head saying I should wait to write this until I have a perfectly composed post, organized thoughts, meaningful and specific things to say. I've waited for that day before and I find that it never comes... Instead the doubt and judgment manifest themselves as long absences from being present and sharing the jumbled mess that I actually am. No more!
Here's a quick, messy, placeholder of a post (and, just to let you know, I have another one coming right up, but slightly more interesting, according to my inner judge).
I'm in the Master Gardener program through the Virginia Cooperative Extension. I am loving it. I am learning more than I remembered that I could learn in three hours. I want to know more. I'm really bad about reading my homework beforehand, I just show up and absorb. But that's good enough for now - the papers will be there when I am ready for them later.
The first class was Botany - a fantastic subject taught by an amazing dynamic man named Dr. Alan McDaniel. What a fantastic teacher! He taught us about the magnificence and miraculous nature of plants... too much, too much! They amaze me.
The second class was Pesticides... Don't use them... they scare me. If you have to choose them, choose "Caution" on the label (least damaging) and AVOID at all costs "DANGER" or (worst of all) "DANGER: POISON" with the skull and crossbones. Wear plastic unlined gloves (is "unlined" the best way to say, not those fancy plastic gloves with the nice, cushy, absorbent-of-all-things-harmful fabric or feltish lining?). Just say no.
The third class was propagation. More plant amazingness. Grafting, layering, so much, so many ways for a plant to survive and thrive.
So much. I love it! This year is amazing already.
So much going on lately!! I know, I know, I haven't posted in forever.
John and I went to a beekeeping class yesterday, and today I ordered two packages of bees...! They should be here around the beginning of May. We still need to put our order in for the hives, but we have a bit of time on getting all that together (albeit not too much). We have a fairly large back yard, and are going to set the hives up near the back fence. They'll be a good 100'+ or so from the edge of our back deck, and not too near any of our neighbors, which is probably good!
I'm starting to think about this year's garden. Last year I didn't start anything from seed, but still kept the garden going with a variety of plants bought at various sources. Last years' garden included 32 tomato plants (yes, possibly a few too many), zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, chard, bell peppers, various basil varieties, and two new additions - sweet potatoes and cantaloupe. Both were so easy to grow I don't know why we didn't grow them sooner!
This year's garden plan includes Cantaloupe again, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, winter and summer squash, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, chard, cucumbers, green beans, turnips, cabbage, leek, carrots, and brussels sprouts. Well, that's the untrimmed list! I'm just opening up GrowVeg to plot out the space to see what we will and won't have room for. :)
Anyone will tell you, I've always been a fan of Growing Your Own. Why spend your hard-earned money on expensive imported stuff that's traveled hundreds of miles, when you can grow it yourself, in your very own house?
We're here today to talk about growing your own... live veggie sprouts! Hahaha!!!
If you've ever had a sandwich or a salad topped with raw spinach or broccoli sprouts, you know what I'm talking about. Fresh, live, vegetable goodness!!
And you've probably had mung bean sprouts in your Chinese food at one time or another.
I've grown my own mung bean sprouts in the past, but haven't tried any of the salad seed varieties. I was recently reading some of the info on the raw foods trend (which is a bit too extreme for me to make any commitment to, but interesting nonetheless) and remembered how good, easy, and fun it is to grow your own sprouts. Oh, and did I mention that it is *cheap*?!
Rather than investing the $26 in one of these doohickeys that I was really tempted to get, I just spent the $4.50 or so and got plastic, mesh-like canning jar tops that fit on the wide mouth jars (I got them at Eats, in case you want to get some... though I'd probably just skip it or go the tray route next time, these aren't ideal).
While at Eats I also picked up a small quantity of mixed salad sprout seeds and a small bag of their mixed stir-fry sprout seeds in their bulk spice section. I bought a bag of mung beans on the cheap at the Oasis Food Mart. I started out by soaking the seeds overnight on Saturday night, and the beans are already sprouting (it's Tuesday). I wound up with too many mung beans, so have 2 jars of mung beans and 1 jar of the salad mix. I haven't tried sprouting the stir-fry mix yet.
Above is a shot of sprouting the salad mix, which includes lentils, broccoli and radish sprouts, and a few other unidentified seed varieties (the white "tails" are the sprouts starting to come out). The mung beans:
One last beauty shot of the salad mix...
I can't wait... in just a few more days I'll be eating fresh, homegrown (albeit, small!) produce!!
So here are a few updated pics of the garden, including one showing all six beds that we finally got finished up with about a month ago, thanks to John's dad who was in town visiting and helped wrap up the last two. The first pic below shows the bed with various leaf lettuces, including Forellenschluss, Merveille des Quatre Saisons, Val D'Orges, Rocky Top Lettuce Salad Mix, and European Mesclun Salad Mix. All are from seeds from my favorite seed company, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. The 2nd pic is some of the organic zucchini plants in bloom. Pic 3 is some of the tomato plants that are finally starting to get a bit stockier, and the next to last pic is of the sugar snap peas, this one plant is growing quickly and all the rest seem to be floundering.
We've had a lot of problems with pests eating the plants, in some cases completely destroying them by eating them down to the stem. After all this hard work I wasn't going to sit back and watch as everything I'd planted was eaten alive by what I think is a significant flea beetle problem... I broke down and bought some 5% Sevin dust. This goes against the grain since I'm here buying heirloom seeds, starting them from scratch, trying to grow my own food and get a bit back to nature... But when it is me versus the pests, and the pests are winning...
Well I just said "Hell, no!" And got out the big guns. I'm open to suggestions on alternate treatments, if you can guarantee their efficacy and universal use for all plants & bugs. The Sevin dust is doing it's work so far, and the plants are recuperating, albeit slowly.
Pics of my 2 new rose bushes and blueberry bushes to follow.
These gorgeous roses are blooming all over the rose bush in my backyard... In spite of my poor care! Thanks to Robin and Malachi for this one...
"When the night has been too lonely,
and the road has been too long,
and you think that love is only
for the lucky, and the strong...
Just remember, in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun's love
in the spring
becomes the rose."
Saturday was a perfect weekend day for me. We started out our morning at the farmer's market and then headed out to Floyd. I bought the awesome hand crafted coffee mug shown below, we looked around a bit and hit my favorite store on the way back toward Blacksburg. We stopped in Christiansburg and picked up some gorgeous flowers for the front porch and mailbox and headed for home. I spent the afternoon putting the flowers out, and John and I followed it up with a fantastic dinner on our front porch. Great shot of John & Gracie, pre-dinner, below.
On Sunday we did some work in the garden. I planted out a bunch of the tomatoes I'd started many months before indoors, as well as some cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, white bush scallop squash, table queen bush squash, bell peppers, okra and eggplant. Now all I need is a bit warmer weather so that everything will start to grow faster!! The beans I put out direct seed a week or so ago are starting to come up, as you can see in the 2nd pic below.
Come on, warm weather!
Interesting / gross development I found yesterday...
I was out watering my gardens and noticed that along the side of one of the beds, the interior dirt was pulling back from the board. As I looked closer, I discovered that there was some of this nasty thing lovely gem growing down under the dirt, against the board, between the board and the main part of the bed.
The pulled out version looks like somebody's old macaroni that was cooked too long and got stuck together, then buried in the dirt. Trust me, this is no macaroni. It was actually not just along the edges, but ALL THROUGHOUT the beds. In the beds, it looked sort of like a whitish brain form sticking up through the surface of the dirt, once I started watering the beds and washed the top layer of dirt off. Yuck!! John and I tried to dig it all out, but I'm sure it will grow back in some places, and is probably still in there in others that we didn't find.
The spores must have come in with the dirt for those first two beds, which was sourced from a different place than the second set of two beds (the last two beds still sit empty, looking exactly like they did in my recent post showing all six... no time!).
Does anybody know what this disgusting thing could be? Anybody know how to get rid of it without killing off all my veggies? Are my veggies even going to be safe to eat after they've been growing next to this stuff?
At this point I'm a bit horrified and grossed out.
I think this is what it is, but John doesn't (because it supposedly only grows out west): http://www.mushroomexpert.com/
Here is what he thinks it is:
http://www.mushroomexpert.com/ductifera_pululahuana.html
What do you think? Do you have any suggestions? Help!
Here are some more updated shots of the garden - you can see all six beds (including the two that aren't totally leveled and filled in yet). There's also a shot of the psuedo deer rigging. I'm not sure what deer's favorite food might be, but I thought the lettuces might be the thing to tempt them and so I started with fencing those in. We'll follow suit on the other beds shortly. You can't see it too well, but basically there is plastic netting (like you'd use to keep birds out) strung up around the bed on the PVC. Then one whole side is separately netted so you can take it out for easy access to the beds.
Everything is growing great so far, and just about everything that I've planted out from seed is sprouting, except two of the three darn pea varieties! One is coming up, but the other two, nothing. I'm starting to lose hope that they're going to germinate at all. I need to figure out what the one that is coming up is, and put more of those out! Nothing better than spring peas.
More to come!
Here's what's started so far... I'm pretty sure I went a little seed (and a LOT tomato) crazy...
On 02/27/09, these seeds were started (indoors, under lights):
Purple Beauty Pepper
Quadrato d'Asti Rosso Pepper
Quadrato d'Asti Gallo Pepper
Val d'Orges Lettuce
Thai Yellow Egg Eggplant
May Queen Lettuce
Little Gem Lettuce
GA Southern Collards
On 03/16/09, these were started (indoors):
Chadwick Cherry Tomato
Thai Red Turtle Egg Tomato
Riesentraube Tomato
Cherokee Purple Tomato
Gold Medal Striped Tomato
Arkansas Traveler Pink Tomato
St. Pierre Tomato
Super Choice Tomato
Quadrato d'Asti Giallo pepper*
* Now, you're probably wondering why I started more of these seeds, it was because the ones started in February hadn't germinated. Come to find out, I moved them indoors (from the basement) and they all germinated just fine - just a bit later than originally planned!! So, for future years' reference, I'll know that the peppers and eggplant won't germinate in the cooler basement temps.
The week of 04/06/09, I direct seeded outdoors:
Sugar Daddy Snap Peas
Sugar Snap Peas
Oregon Sugar Pod II Peas
Early Purple Vienna Kohlrabi
Florida Broad Leaf Mustard
Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach
Cook's Custom Mix Radishes
I also ended up moving all the tomatoes into bigger peat pots (from their seedling dirt discs) for their stay indoors for the next month or so. I transplanted out the GA Southern Collards, and planted a (very) few red & white onion sets. As of this writing (04/20) only one of the Pea varieties (I don't remember which it is; I'll check later!) has germinated, but the Kohrabi, Radishes and Mustard are going strong. The spinach still hasn't germinated either - it seems to take FOREVER!
On 04/11/09, I direct seeded outdoors:
Various mixed and heirloom varietals of leaf lettuce
Vulcan Chard
Canary Yellow Chard
Fordhook Giant Chard
Ching Chang Bok Choy
And I started these inside:
Hill Country Heirloom Red Okra
Perkins Long Pod Okra
Table Queen Bush Squash
Early White Bush Scallop Squash
Certified Organic Yellow Crookneck Squash
Certified Organic Dark Green Zucchini
Bush Champion Cucumber
Sweet Market More Cucumber
On about 04/16/09 I transplanted out these (the ones started back in February):
Little Gem Lettuce
May Queen Lettuce
Val d'Orges Lettuce
Whew! More pics of the garden to follow.
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