Veggie Starts

Plant me, Please

      Sometimes things actually work out too well.  Like when you plant lots of seeds and most of them come up!  Then grow on to when they should have been in the ground last week.  So now every day I am trying to put something in the ground.  To make way for the next wave of warmer weather seedlings.

Broccoli and Purple kohlrabi, 4/18/11, Bellevue

Broccoli in with onions

      Here it is only the middle of April, and I already have an overcrowded garden.  I walk around the garden looking for spots that some plant can go in, knowing that something else will soon come out or at least won't cast too much shade.  So these two plantings are squished in pretty tightly in a bed already planted with onions.  I think they are OK on the companion planting idea.

Purple Kohlrabi, 4/18/11

 

Back yard greens, 4/18/11

      The two frilly looking plants in the lower left hand corner are Tango lettuce from Fedco Seeds that overwintered without protection!  So did the parsley at the bottom right.  What would those do with only minimal protection?   The row right of the Tango lettuce is Tango starts and the four little seedlings next to that are Thick Stem Chinese Mustard.  The last three seedlings are Red Stemmed Dandelions, quite attractive and tasty too.  Well, at least out of the porch and into the ground.  The back yard garden gets a fair amount of shade from the large pin oak, so many of my greens seedlings should do fine there.

Keep it for the Soil

      To get good productivity from a garden, you need good living soil.  As you take produce away from the garden, those nutrients are being lost.  Therefore I recycle everything from the garden right on site.  The compost pile sits right in the middle of the garden, so it is never far away.  Weeds, veggie trimmings, leaves and whatever else organic goes either onto the compost pile or directly to one of the wood chip paths.

Sunflower stalks, 4/17/11

      The sunflowers that I rescued last year as baby volunteers from some of the grassy areas next to the gardens grew to be twelve foot monsters!  New volunteers from last years seed heads are coming up now.   Sun flower sprouts are delicious, so if there are too many volunteers, some will find their way to the salad bowl.  The picture above is the pile of stumps or stalks from the sunflowers that were too large for me to break up by hand.  I tried whacking them on the edge of the compost bin, but knew that that would result in a broken down compost bin.  So I rescued a black locust log from the wood pile and hauled it to my garden.

 

      The two pictures above are of the log and a piece of a red oak board to be used as a whacker.  And one of the monster sun flower stalks that was being ornery.  I started breaking up the stalks in a bed, but that meant picking up the pieces afterwards and moving them to the path.  Much easier to move the log to the path, and do the whacking there.  All I had to do was put about two inches of the sunflower stalk hanging out over the stump.  Whack that two inches with the red oak, and it ususally broke off to the path with very little trouble.  Some pieces took several mashings to break them up.

No more sunflower stalks, 4/17/11

      The lighter colored pieces are the newly broken chips.  Now everything can stay at the garden to be recycled.  The sunflowers did fight back a bit, as when I washed my hands I found a totally popped and angry blister on the palm of my hand.  Maybe I should have done the job a little more slowly.  I would like to find a log about three feet long so it would be at a better working height.  That should not be too hard to find.

Greenhouse project update

Free for the knock down, 4/14/11

New to Craigslist today:

barn,was 32x30,,4x4 uprights/2x8's,all free/u tear down. (dagsboro)

I can't quite imagine this as a greenhouse/shed.  As antsy as I am to get started on my project, I think I will let this one slide.

Lettuce Eat

      This past Sunday the family got together for lunch after watching Austin and Ella sing in the children's choir.  What a great job they did!  It was Pop Pop's responsibility to provide the salad greens, though I did ask Em to bring some of hers.  But hers were late in coming, so we went all Bellevue garden.

 

      The first step was using the greens I had picked a few days ago and had left in the fridge in the "salad spinner".  To these, I added the freshly picked greens just spun as shown below.

Fresh Bellevue greens, 4/9/11

      I forget whose idea it was to use a pillow case as a cheap salad spinner, but it sure works well.  We look kind of funny swinging a pillow case around on the front porch in inclement weather, but the proof is in the spinning.  Then you can even store the greens in the damp pillow case in the fridge and they look great for days.

      What would a salad be without some form of onion?  These are fresh onions picked as scallions before they reach the bulbing stage.  These had been onions that were not large enough to bother cutting last year, and got put back in the garden in October to grow on again.  Recycling.

Scallions, grown from last year's small white bulbs

       The last picture is the bed of greens waiting for a little color addition of sweet red pepper slices and black olives.  My what a fresh tomato would have accomplished.

Salad greens in walnut bowl, 4/9/11

      Probably fifteen or twenty years ago my father had a large walnut tree blow over on his property.  He commissioned the very talented wood carver Jack Smollens to create seven salad bowls from the large trunk piece.  Our bowl is certainly destined to become a family heirloom.

Miner's Lettuce

Miner's Lettuce, Bellevue, 4/12/11

      Miner's lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata, is a cute little plant that I currently have in my veggie starts on the picnic table.  The picture above is from my Bellevue garden, where I have this beautiful little specimen that was a volunteer from some soil that I transported from my home garden.  It sparingly self seeds, so I was delighted to spot this plant.  I certainly would not have known what it was had I not grown it two years ago for the first time. Also sometimes known as winter purslane, I purchased the seeds from Fedco Seeds Company because they have it listed as super cold hardy.  Interesting because the plants I had grown two years ago are not out back.
      Miner's lettuce has a very pleasant mild flavor, somewhat like chick weed if you are familiar with that one.  The plant supposedly got its common name during the gold rush when it was one of the few greens available, and so was important to ward off scurvy.  The flowers blooming right atop the leaves makes it almost too cute too eat, yet I pinch off a few leaves for instant enjoyment with each visit to the park.

Spring Fever Project

Scavenged treasure, 4/8/11

     I got an email from a friend last Thursday inviting me to have his old storm windows if I were crazy enough to want them.  Of course I was.  Friday morning I had a new stash of building material.  His wife was thrilled to see the windows leave the attic.  Needless to say, the wife here was not so thrilled to see them arrive.
     But who among us gardeners has not fantasized about having a greenhouse?  Maybe eight out of a million?  Maybe six?  The only things stopping me from me from having a greenhouse are money, deed restrictions, money, imagination, reckless abandon, room, and money.  The windows are the seed idea to get something started.  They also are a way to start collecting materials for a greenhouse on the cheap.  The deed restrictions are a tough one.  Don't think it would fly in the back yard.  Room.  Even if I could get it approved by the building committee, I am not sure I want a greenhouse in the back yard where it might create neighbor problems.
     So on Sunday I had to put on the saleman's cap when both daughters were visiting.  Hey girls, look at my new supply of windows.  Wouldn't they be neat in a greenhouse?  Silence.  Nothing.  Then, you go for it Dad.  No girls, I was thinking of a combined greenhouse/garden shed type of thing.  On one of your very spacious lots.  Then Pop Pop could visit the grand kiddies more often.  Still not much.  Here I thought one of them would be mad NOT to get a greenhouse, yet I couldn't get either interested.
      Barb called last night after dinner.  Yes, Rob thought it was a neat idea.  Whew.  Now I can transport the windows down to Barb's house to begin the scavenge process.  On Craigslist this morning: We have a few hundred sheets of used 1/2" & 3/4" plywood. Must bring your own truck and help. Take all or some. Must be gone this week.  What a start, what a good omen!
      And planning.  Even I think this greenhouse should be attractive rather than just functional.  I would love it if we could end up with something like this:
 

     http://gardentenders.com/projects/175

      It feels fun to start thinking about this project.  Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.  Unless you want to shoot down the thoughts about this crazy greenhouse folly.

      Other interesting or helpful sites:

  http://montanawildlifegardener.blogspot.com/search/label/Greenhouse
http://www.hobby-greenhouse.com/FreeSolar.html
 http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/hortcult/greenhou/building.html
http://just-sheds.com/Free_shed_plans.html 

Seeds to Be

      For the last couple of years, I have been leaving some plants to go to seed.  Some to collect, and some to be left to self seed for volunteers.  The other added benefit is the attraction of beneficial insects to the flowers, especially the early blooming flowers from the cold frame plants.  The members of the cole family supposedly cross pollinate very easily, so it is not suggested to save seed.  I figured that since you can eat the leaves from broccoli, cabbage, kale, collards, etc., what difference would it matter if you did get a cross.  Having harvested seed from last summer, everything appears to be breeding true!  Go figure.  With that in mind, I will be letting many more veggies go to seed so that I can collect for next year.
      Another benefit to allowing plants to flower, is that the young flower stalks are edible.  Our salad at lunch today was graced with yellow mizuna flowers and pretty little white arugula flowers.  The flowers taste just like what the parent crop tastes like.  The following pictures are of plants that overwintered successfully in the cold frames.  They are flowering now, as most of these veggies flower in the second year.

Territorial Chinese Cabbage, 4/9/11

      The plant above is a miniature chinese cabbage from Territorial Seed Co. called Tenderheart.  It is best grown late in the summer for fall harvest, and is great because the heads are smaller than some of those big chinese cabbage that can take two weeks for two people to polish off.  The glass frame at the right of the picturr is an attempt to keep the deer off of the radicchio.

Tatsoi gone to flower, 4/9/11

     

Mizuna mustard, 4/9/11

Arugula with white flowers, 4/9/11

Mild volunteer mustard, 4/9/11

      The mustard plant above overwintered with straw and leaves covering it as deer protection.  It is a very tasty mild mustard green, and I am thrilled that it is throwing a flower spike.  I am certainly going to save this seed, and need to come up with a name for the seed.
      The seeds collected soon from these and other overwintered plants will provide fresh seed for the starts of the 2011 fall garden.  Recycling at its best.