Lunch Now and Later

Lunch today.  You want this.  At least Ernie was excited!  (It's hummus.  Please ignore my lack of food styling finesse.)  I'm pretty sure if you pair up corn chips with bean hummus, it's a healthy lunch.  There was milk involved, too.





This concrete is where a hot tub used to be.  Now it has three garbage cans of mulched leaves, and a whole lotta dismantled retaining wall.  Wait till you see what we have planned!!




Cole crops!  They're sprouted!  In fact, everything but the brussels sprouts have sprouted...I don't know why I'm surprised, since those same seeds never sprouted last year either....durrr.  The kids are pretty excited to see these little green things, and I'm really hoping that means some cruciferous vegetables will be eaten in a few months.  Yum.

Mr. Baby Face has been a bad napper this week, and we've had insane and hail when he HAS slept....but by golly, I WILL get my peas and spinach planted soon!  I've been watching Spring start to happen around here- most of my bulbs are sending up shoots, the azaleas and rhodies are budding out, and so are the raspberries and (new!!) blueberries.  The birds are coming back- robins, blue jays, crows, and finches.  No starlings yet, though.  All their spring songs are so different, Ernie keeps asking me what the noises that she hears are!  The squirrels are still running around, but that's no big surprise, they've used our deck stairs and railing as a highway all winter.  The railing is actually a launching/landing pad for them, because the highway runs across the deck you see above, up the stair railing, onto the upper deck railing, and then they LEAP into the cedar tree that's nearby.  (Then down the trunk, and onto the fence, and off to who knows where.)  We're going to trim that cedar tree soon, it's practically growing onto the deck.  And boy does my husband want  a camera running when the first squirrel leaps off the deck to the tree branch that used to be there.  

Fresh Starts

I can't believe it's only Tuesday.

We started our cole crops last week, because hope springs eternal. I only tried starting brussel sprouts last year, and not a single seed germinated. (And the leeks I started all got about 3 inches tall and stopped growing, and the peppers just up and died after a week or two. I start seeds WHY??)  (Oh...cole crops are things in the brassica/cabbage family.  Cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli,  brussel sprouts, bok choi, etc.)

But, the girls and I had fun mashing seed starting mix into my tray, and throwing in seeds and labels.



These are in the sunniest corner of my house (flanked by a north AND a west facing window,) so until I have a better place to put them  (oh, and I will...just wait!!), fingers crossed!  I'm trying to be smart about what we plant out this year- I doubt we can use more than 3 or 4 cabbages in the spring, so that's what I'm growing.  Ditto on the cauliflower and broccoli.  Brussels sprouts I kind of went crazy, because NONE of them germinated last year so I'm hoping that if I plant way more than I need, I'll stand a chance to get at least some.  But, you  know, there are quite a few nurseries within spitting distance, so all is not lost if these don't work out!  (Fall crops will be planted straight in the dirt in August.)

Now that all the snow is melted, we are over due to plant our peas.  I plan on planting LOTS AND LOTS of bush peas this year- the kids love them, and they're great for the dirt.  Besides, they won't need fertilizing OR watering because we're still in our wet season(s), so they're an easy thing to harvest and deliver to the neighbors for brownie points.  Or to make up for the mess that our yard was last year.  Or to lay to rest any niggling doubts about our choice of landscaping (urban garden.) Take your pick  ^_^  

Planting

(July 2010, building the boxes)

It's time...to plan your gardens!!  Around here, with a frost-free-date in mid-April, our first veggies hit the dirt late January/early February (starting transplants, peas, spinach) so now is the time!

You can see my schedule here...are you growing a garden this year?

More Work in the Yard

We're waking up from a too-long hiatus on our front yard work (something about getting fired and being pregnant and starting a new company and being pregnant and building the new business and....and....well, we kind of really REALLY lost steam on that particular set of projects.)

The Burly Men from my family came over yesterday, and discovered (like so many before) that we are not on top of dirt. Our house is actually built on a pernicious blend of baseball-sized rocks and clay, with the exception of trucked-in dirt from generations of previous owners trying to make this yard into something that plant life can thrive in. Just add our dirt on top!

The Burly Men blasted a huge hole in the ground to plant our poor fig tree in though. Hooray! They took a vine maple down to the ground- vine maples are the worst weeds we get. If you miss one when it's small, they are impossible to pull up, and sprout new branches like a green Hydra. They marked where the flower bed will run along the wall, and started pick-axing that dirt and shoveling it into a wheelbarrow to add to our dirt piles in the back. Oh, they also found the drainage pipe I most awesomely forgot to tell them was located directly under where they were so manfully swinging their pick axe. Luckily, the awesome Wonder Daddy is now a pro at fixing and and installing drainage pipes, and we had a scrap piece of pipe that fit in perfectly. (Have I used the word "awesome" enough in this paragraph? Awesome.)

We have five yards of dirt coming on Saturday, so we WILL get the flower beds dug out and hopefully get the veggie beds built so that by Saturday night we will be buttoned up for Winter.

Left to do:
1) Weed. Umm, remember that hiatus? Shameful. I am full of shame. One big ball, soon-to-be-sneezing, shame.
2) Build garden beds and dig out about a foot to fill in with good dirt
3) Dig flower beds out to make way for beautiful rock-free dirt. Not clay.
4) Dig in manure to existing dirt
5) Shove dirt around the yard and level it all out, fill in beds, etc. We have 2 or 3 yards in the back too, that will probably get pulled out to the front as well.
6) FUTZ! Is that a word? It's what I do. Planting, sowing seeds, "fluffing." You know, stuff I can reasonably do during nap times or with the girls in tow. I have rose bushes heeled in in the backyard that need transplanting, bulbs, etc.

(Well, actually I intend to use the girls a LOT for number 1- I am the proud happy owner of a new scuffle hoe, and I figure if I hoe and rake, the girls can do all the bending and put the weeds in the bucket! My belly does not allow for so much bending any more, at least not without a lot of complaint.)


Oh my heck, we might actually have a yard soon. We've been living in a mud pit/construction zone since we started our "2 or 3 weekends TOPS" project last February. As a reminder, we simply intended to uncover the existing wall, and build beds out front. How we ended up with construction crews, back hoes, concrete trucks...well, that's life isn't it?

Garden Update

So.  Did you hear about the state that Summer forgot?  Yeah, that's us.  Not even the EASTERN half has had enough good weather to ripen their tomatoes.  Everyone who was on top of things and got their basil in the ground on time had to watch it rot away.  Tomatoes didn't go in the ground till at least July.

But hey!  Let's take a look and see what's going on in the front yard!

My tomato patch- sunny and warm, they like it!  Some are staked with cages, some are simply enjoying their space.


Bush beans.


Yellow pear tomato


Early Girl


Sweet 100


Roma (these are delicious and tart- they'll be great for sauce!)


Not-a-bush-bean?  Do bush beans produce tendrils, if given the chance to climb a pole?


Hello tomatillo.  Where did you come from?  There must have been seeds from last years patch in the dirt we threw down here- it looked like a weed when we left on vacation, and I came back to a 2-foot-tall plant a week later!   I wonder if we'll get any fruit before the frosts come in October?  August seems awfully late to start from a seed like this :)  I know if there IS any fruit, I can pull the whole plant out and let the fruit ripen on the bush in my garage.



I have beans cooking on the stove, and we need to throw sweaters in the car "just in case" when we leave the house.  I feel like we totally missed summer!  I'm grateful for the nice days we've had though- they've been gorgeous :)

Harvesting the Potatoes

The girls and I pulled our potatoes out of the cans yesterday (I drill old garbage cans full of holes on the bottom, throw about a foot of dirt in, and plant 4 or 5 sprouted potatoes. As they grow, cover all but the top four inches or so with dirt, compost, or straw, until you've filled the can. Keep adequately watered, put them in a hot spot, and when the plants DIE, dig out all the dirt to find the potatoes!)

This year was our most disapointing harvest ever. Normally I find potatoes in the bottom half of the garbage can, this time I only found them in the bottom foot. We've had a very cold summer, and this might be why. I didn't use seed potatoes this year- the purple ones were organic potatoes from my CSA, and the yukons were just from the grocery store. Both got too old to eat, right around the time I was going to plant, so I threw them in the cans.

Next year I'm going to fill the can with more dirt before I plant, maybe even half full, and see if that helps. I didn't realize how short a season these particular potatoes had- I believe I planted these in March, and harvested in August. Yukon Golds, and a heritage purple potato.


One of our yellow summer squash plants seems to have some sort of disease- do you see where it looks like it's been eaten on the end? Every single squash gets about 4 inches long, then start disappearing like something's eating it, until it's mostly gone. IS something eating it? My friend had the same experience last year, and a nursery told her it was a fungus. Anyway, the plant right next to it has not been bothered at all, so I think I better pull this one up and throw it in the yard waste cart, because I'm not getting any squash off it, and I don't want whatever bugs or fungus it has to spread!

First Summer Harvest!

OK, so my dreams of an enormous veggie garden kind of went *poof* rather fantastically, but look! A tomato from my yard! This has never happened before, in 5 years of growing tomatoes. It's red, it's not cracked, it's a decent size....I like it! The purple carrot, yeah it was a bit premature...but I wanted to make sure Ernie understood that we. are. growing. carrots. Like her favorite vegetable, ever, coming straight out of our garden. (Purple carrot on the outside, orange carrot on the inside- she forgave the purple for the sake of the orange. Why do I keep forgetting she is not a fan of the new and strange?)

WIP: Front Yard

Here are the "After" shots. I'd rather start with the good stuff, wouldn't you??

This is the result of...4 Saturdays of work? We had four extra hands and 3 extra wheel barrows on Saturday- we made some progress!

My civil engineer brother kept harrumphing and shaking his head and grunting "This is SO illegal. Should have a blah blah grade, and blah foot of drop for every blah feet" and all I heard is "illegal" and I SO want this project to finish! Granted, it's only going to be that steep for another few days until we get out there again on Saturday. I'm calling rock guys this week to build the retaining wall- we've gone as far towards the house as we intend to.

We'll move more to the right- there will be a change in the slope, and a partial retaining wall at the corner. I'll dig up all the daffodils and move them when the time comes- for now I'm just enjoying their blooms and grateful they're easy to move! I KNOW it's just $20 worth of bulbs, but...they're alive! And I love them! Anything that blooms in Spring is my FBF (flowery best friend.)

Ah, this is where we were before the extra help on Saturday- Wonder Daddy finished clearing out all the grass, so we could see where to dig to.

I never realized HOW MUCH dirt there was to move until I saw the cliff we made on Saturday. This little slope doesn't look so bad! :)

And yes- this is going to be gardening/landscaped veggies. Tomatoes, peppers, cool season veggies, summer squash, melons, beans...I have pumpking seeds, but knowing that a SINGLE pumpkin vine can take up 5 feet of space, SQUARED...well, I don't know that we'll be growing any pumpkins this year. Sad, because I love pumpkin bread. I love zucchini and summer squash more though, so I'm hoping those do well!

Early Spring

Our "early spring" has arrived! (As in, everything listed as "blooms in early spring" is alive and kicking. Man am I ever glad to see these ladies and gents put on their spring finest!)

Forsythia (I was glad my neighbor was at work when I snapped this picture- it's HIS bush, and I was nearly pointing my camera in his kitchen window!)

Daffodils

Lungwort- this came from my grandma's yard. I pulled it up from our last house right before we moved- I felt guilty about not telling the new owners, but also was very sad to leave behind all the other plants from Grandma's yard. I knew they would be missed though- this is nearly invisible once it stops blooming. I've collected more of most of the plants I had to leave behind- I'm waiting to see if they survived the winter! If this lungwort ever dies though, I'll be so sad- Grandma's was composted (by a well-meaning friend who thought it was dead) shortly after I took a piece home.

Lemon balm- it hitched a free ride when I brought mint from Grandma's garden, and is threatening to annihilate the mint. I didn't think anything could out-crazy mint, but lemon balm can. It's earlier, faster, and bigger. And I have no idea what to do with it! I'm going to try sorbet this year. I'm not really big into drinking tissanes, but I'm sure that would be yummy too.

Other friends I've seen in the yard: crocosmia, day lilies, tulips, and lots and lots of weeds. I'm starting to look like a gardener again, with lots of dirt under my fingernails and on my shoes! Mimi out-dirts me, though: I have gloves :) I think she must roll in the dirt while I'm not looking, that child goes though SO many outfits these days! She was crazy excited to go outside before lunch today, and refused to put on clothes. I looked at the thermometer (43), looked at our deck (damp in places), looked at my child (nothing but a diaper, and pleading.) Out you go! Five minutes later she was at my side holding her outfit, her parka, and her shoes. Smart kid :)

WIP: My Tiny Garden Plot

See that lawn? That lush moss and crab grass lawn?

It's not long for this life. Meet your Compost Pile Doom, horrible lawn!

We never water you. We never fertilize you. We hand pull your weeds. Wonder Daddy mows you every week during the summer, and sometimes TWICE.

Henceforth your iron grip on our front yard shall be curtailed. You will be pushed back and defeated. You will be replaced!

Step down, wretched sod.

Apparently our yard used to be full of flower planters, until the previous owners brought in truck loads of dirt and dumped it over everything, then built a shoddy retaining wall on top of a crumbling wooden edging along the driveway- the wall leaned back so far in places, it was a Life Goal for Ernie to be able to walk the entire length of the wall without falling off. (It took a year of trying, but she made it.)

In adition to that rotten wall, the entire lawn has been heaving into weird aquatic shapes- it was relatively smooth when we moved in, but has since settled into hills and valleys. We plan to push it back to at least where it was pre-dirt-dump. There's actually a retaining wall UNDERNEATH the grass. Did you see the yellow ridge in the first photo? There's only 2 or 3 inches on top of a boulder wall. We're bringing it back, baby.

See the barked strip on the right? That's the former dwelling place of the Tomatillos That Could Not Stop. It gets lots of sun.

Wonder Daddy spent last week pulling out all the wall stones and carting them to the backyard- they weigh 50 pounds each, he's kind of sore now, and buffer than he was.

You asked if I had a HUGE backyard. We kind of do, but it's almost entirely shady. This front yard is what I'm pinning all my gardening dreams on. That, and Wonder Daddy's amazing designing ability, to make it look Good. And not something the HOA will send us a letter about.

It helps that all our immediate neighbors have *always wanted* to do edible landscaping, but haven't gotten around to it/didn't know what it would look like. Our next door neighbor really wants a blueberry hedge between our houses- my parents have some berry bushes in their crying out for sun, I think they're going to take a trip to our yard this year or next! Our neighbor also wants chickens.

I love our neighbors.

I'm in big trouble

Fred Meyer (a local we-carry-clothes-milk-bikes-and-gardening-supplies-and-we-have-a-huge-bulk-section-too kind of store) had their yearly "40% off" coupon for gardening seeds.  I got in all kinds of trouble with this last year (that's how I ended up with "yard long" beans that produced one, eighteen-inch bean a week, and how I got so many durn tomatillos!)

I was only going to get tomato, marigold, and basil seeds.  Just normal things that we eat all the time, and things I didn't have seeds for yet.


Please add these to my list for this Spring:
Early Wonder Beets
Olympia Spinach
Giant Musselburg Leeks (already missed the boat on these, but I'm going to try anyway)
Genovese Basil (see! I can stick to a list!)
Cilantro
Royal Burgundy Beans
Roma Tomato
Sweet 100 Tomato
Yellow Pear Tomato
Early Girl Tomato
Carpet of Snow Alyssum (white)
Starfire Signet Mix
Royal Carpet Alyssum (purple)
Heavenly Blue Morning Glory
Lemon Queen Sunflower

Oh, and I found an extra stash of seeds in my cupboard I didn't get in the ground last fall, so add kale, broccoli, mustard spinach, and peas.  Plus the nasturtium seeds in my freezer.

And please know that I am going to give a lot of the veggie seeds to my mom to start in her greenhouse, and she doesn't do things by half: SHE WILL PLANT THE ENTIRE PACKET.  Bless her heart (although she might not bless mine when she sees what I've done!)

So, if you live in the area, prepare yourself.  If you thought the Great Seedling Giveaway of 2009 was a big deal, wait till you see what happens this year with FOUR kinds of tomatoes, plus basil, leeks, and whatever else we have more than we can possibly fit.

And if I misled you last week, I am sorry.  This is what my deck looks like right now:

The green onions I planted last year have survived multiple harvests, but as you can see...not what it was last July.  But I have high hopes for this summer!

Yours in wishful thinking-
Myrnie

Hometown Seeds

I was recently approached by Hometown Seeds about their new website- they sell non-GMO flowers, herbs, vegetables, and what they call "Survival Seeds."  In fact, they offered to send me a free "survival seeds" packet (a $35 value) if I posted a link to their survival seeds page.  Ordinarily I wouldn't have responded, BUT they also gave me a coupon code for you guys...I felt bad leaving you out of that loop :)

So, I'll tell you guys all about the survival seeds when they come (it's going to be a vacuum-sealed mylar bag, with enough seeds to plant 3/4 acre and a freezer life of 10 years.  The thought is to be able to grow enough food for my family in event of an emergency.)

They have this to say about GMO seeds:
"Seeds are the core of our business and vital to life on our planet. We must protect this foundation as a safe and genetically stable source for future generations. We pledge that we will not knowingly buy or sell genetically engineered seeds. We are not confident in the safety of GMO seeds and therefore will not sell them to our valued customers. We believe they are being released for public use prematurely. More research and testing is necessary to further assess the potential risks of genetically engineered seeds."

Go check out Home Town Seeds- they have good prices, and a great selection of veggies and flowers from what I see, and reasonable shipping.  There aren't a lot of varieties of each vegetable, but there is a good total selection of the garden workhorse plants (artichoke, asparagus, tomato, kale, etc.)

Use the coupon code "thanks" to get 10% off your total order, until February 28th.

The 2010 Garden Plan

It's time for gardening!  Why yes, it IS January.  Apparently, cold-hardy truly  means cold hardy!  At time of writing, peas have been planted.  Kale, beets, spinach, and green onions are all on the bench to go in next time I step outside.  I've (unwittingly) already missed the window of opportunity for leeks and onions.



Our final frost day is April 1st- after that, melons, squash, beans, etc. are all cleared for planting.  Nothing like planting the garden to make us feel a little better about the last days of winter!



Here's the lineup for this year:
green arrow pea 
tom thumb pea 
golden zucchini 
ground cherry 
table queen squash 
blacktail mountain watermelon 
early silverline melon 
rainbow chard 
calypso bean 
royalty purple pod bean 
red potatoes 
genovese basil
mint
lemon balm
beets
carrots
nasturtium
marigold
small roma-type tomato

And if you're seeing my ground cherry intentions and laughing...my friend pulled these seeds from her own plants. She promises they're the real deal. (Yes, last year I planted ground cherries. 23 of them. And they were all tomatillos. My family loved the salsa they all got for Christmas. So did the friends. And most of my congregation.)

Most of my seeds are ready to go, thanks to my ground-cherry-promising friend, Mama Papaya- she pulled all kinds of goodies from her garden and sent me home with an armful of bagged seeds. (Everything with a fancy name up top came from her garden, which in turn came from Seed Savers.) Lovely, lovely lady. I just hope I don't kill them all.


Have you started your plans for the 2010 garden? Is it in the ground? In your head? Just a pipe dream?


And listen, if you're wanting to start gardening but really don't have space or time, here are a few things to throw on the back porch.

• Potatoes in a garbage can. I've done this twice now, it's magic every time to dump out my can and find real food in that dirt.  (You can purchase ORGANIC potatoes at the grocery store to use as seed- conventional potatoes are normally sprayed so they don't sprout. That's no good for gardening, is it?) I recently read of someone doing potatoes in burlap sacks. That's wonderful!!
• A big fat pot of basil. Start seeds indoors (my mom starts mine, and uses big 20 ounce cups so she doesn't have to transplant until planting time.) When they're nice and big, about 5 inches, put about 8 in a great big pot, like the size a tree comes in from the nursery. (Last year Trader Joes had nice big basil plants for a good price, if you want to just buy starts.) Trim them right when you harvest, and you'll have fresh basil all summer long!

• If you have an isolated patch of dirt, tap a friend for some mint- just dig up a chunk in the spring and plonk it in the ground. You'll have more mint than you know what to do with. (I haven't had good luck with this in pots, but others have.)
• If you buy green onions at the store and just use the green part, put the white bit with roots into a glass of water- it will keep growing! If you like, you can plonk it in the ground when the roots have grown out a bit. Green onions are amazingly cold hardy.

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For more winter home ideas, check out Melissa's Carnival at The Inspired Room!

The CSA experiment

Last year we started an experiment: I signed us up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share from a local farm.  We wanted to 1) support local agriculture 2) eat organic produce 3) try new fruits and vegetables.

Every other week, I drove downtown and picked up our box.  The quality of the farm-grown produce was amazing.  Comparing it to grocery-store produce was like...comparing a tin whistle to a flute, or a Palmer's chocolate easter bunny to a Lindt truffle.  The convenience was outstanding, too.  Our CSA is different than a lot of others- they have drop off points all over the area, so I just had to make the 10 minute drive.

It was easy having someone else make the choices, too.  When faced with all the variety at a farmers' market or grocery store, it's too easy to stick to the classics.  But when handed 3 pounds of a new vegetable, it's time to look for new recipes!  We found out we don't like kale all that much, but bok choy is alway delicious.  We like our chard harvested young, and leeks are as amazing as everyone says.



I noticed our CSA brought in outside produce.  If they could find a reliable, organic source, they'd throw it in the box.  I wanted local, so I normally logged onto the website and substituted with something from the farm.  Now that we're deep in Winter, the only local offerings are things in storage: apples, potatoes, onions, squash, parsnips, carrots.   I log on and say no to the oranges, the persimmons, the lettuce.

 Another reason we chose this farm was that we could order on a week by week basis, rather than pay a large sum up front and receive a box each week for a set number of weeks.  There was also no requirement to go work on the farm.

I've cancelled this week's box: we have more than enough squash, potatoes, onions, apples, and parsnips.  I think our time with the farm is ending, as I simply can't justify the cost right now based on the amount of food in the winter box.  I'm planning next year's garden (more on that later) and we'll start visiting the farmers' market again in the spring.

Based on what we wanted from this experiment, it was a raging success.  We bought local, we bought organic, we tried lots of new things.  The boxes were expensive, but much cheaper than prepared foods or meats: our total grocery bill went down.  But, time to move on, I think!

What about you?  Have you thought about a CSA?  Do you belong to one?  Did you know what it was before this post?

Harvesting: Potatoes!

For the second time, we grew potatoes in a garbage can. MUCH better harvest this time!

I used organic spuds from the local feed store (the first time, 2 years ago, I grabbed a box of spuds from the hardware store- not the nicest specimens, to be sure.)

(Yes, those are our weekly beans. Ugh, what do I do with TWO beans every week?!)

Here's my largest spud. Isn't it beautiful?

The largest...and smallest. It's smaller than my thumbnail!

A mouse?

This time around I drilled MORE holes in the can, elevated it from the ground with a few blocks of wood, and used all dirt and no straw. There were no potatoes in the bottom 8 inches, and no potatoes in the top 12 inches, but everywhere in between. Getting them out was backbreaking work, scooping all the dirt into another garbage can and sifting it with my hands to make sure I got all the spuds. I could have turned the whole thing onto a tarp and made it easier, though. I waited to harvest until the vines were completely dead- dry, brown, and hanging limply over the sides of the garbage can. Since some of the spuds had started to sprout, perhaps I could have harvested a little sooner but we've been out of town. They're all in the garage now, drying out a bit so they can be stored.

I'll definitely be growing these again- this crop came from 4 seed spuds (which I didn't cut, just planted whole.) I picked up some more garbage cans on Freecycle, and look forward to trying a few more varieties next year. I'll probably mix a little sand in, too- I've been told they like fast draining soil. This year they were just planted in cheap bags of top soil from the hardware store-the dirt in my yard has too much clay to use for this. They were super easy to grow- water occasionally, and add more dirt a time or two. That's it!

Now...what do I do with our gorgeous spuds?