Our Garden

We love the garden this time of year. It looks healthy and we are getting a lot of my favorite vegetable--Kale! The cabbage harvest has been very nice also. Daniel is the gardener of the family. I simply do a little harvesting here and there whenever I need something for the kitchen. He actually does most of the harvesting as well.

I'm proud to say that everything you see in the these pictures was started from seed (except some onions were started from sets). The indoor grow light station (go here for a post that we wrote last year on our indoor seed starting) that Daniel created was a big success for all the tomatoes, cabbage, kale, collards, chard, eggplant, peppers, and flowers.

lacinato kale (garlic in the bed to left of kale)

We are using the pvc pipe drip irrigation system again this year. Go to this post to read more about how we made and installed it. This is hopefully allowing for deep watering and saves us lots of time and water. There are shut off valves at the top of all the rows. Daniel has even recruited the girls help in turning them on and off during the week while he is at work. (We water 2 rows at a time.)

potatoes

tomatoes

mix of onion, flowers, chard, kale, collards

Daniel getting the stakes ready for the tomatoes

Saturday Harvest with Beets and Onions

• 3 pounds collards
• 3.5 pounds kale
• 11 pounds potatoes
• 4 pounds bok choi
• 14 ounces chard
• 1.5 pounds beets

We ordered all of our seeds including the multiplier onions pictured below from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. We are very excited about the success of these onions. We have harvested a portion of the bed and now they are curing (drying) in the shed for a few weeks. Most of the bulbs are a nice size and much bigger than anything we've ever grown. We also harvested garlic this week but did not weigh them (or the onions) yet. We've decided to wait until they dry. We noticed that the local organic garlic was selling for $2 a bulb at the farmer's market! I look forward to doing a cost analysis to see how much money we are saving with growing the food in our garden.

Beets! This is another crop that we are successfully growing for the first time this year. We don't have very many but the ones we have are beautiful! I love the deep red color. I'd love for a suggestion on how to cook these. I'm going to try roasting them tomorrow. I don't usually buy beets so I'm going to have to experiment with some new recipes:)

Painting and planting. House, shed, and garden updates

I'll start with the shed. Daniel put a new roof on while we were at the beach a few weeks ago. Then he painted it purple and brown. It looks so much better and very cheerful next to the garden.
Next is the kitchen. I couldn't decide on a color. It was a pale green color. Here it is while I was sanding and trying out 4 different colors. I thought I could be bold and use a nice blue or rusty red, but I was too scared.
I went with a neutral taupe/tan color. Next I'll be sanding and painting the cabinets and replacing the hardware. Sorry about the bad pictures but you get the idea of the color.

In the garden we've (I really should say Daniel since he does about 95% of the work) made quite a few changes. He cut down all the bush beans that were finished then cut out the brussels sprouts that didn't do much. He pulled out all the potatoes and planted more bush beans. He has also pulled out the tomatoes that got blossom end rot (or some disease) and has planted a cover crop of buckwheat in all the empty spaces.

This is the bed of bush beans. You can see how he has put lots of wheat straw on the bed. The beans are growing right up through it.

Here's a shot of the buckwheat coming up through the straw. There's a cabbage and some peppers still at the end of this bed. We've harvested 3 medium cabbages and have loved having that for a change. There' s still a few out there.

Here's a close up of the okra. I'm sorry that flower is not open. I could grow these plants just for the flowers because they are so beautiful. We've got a lot of okra but not too much yet. I've really enjoyed it this year cooked in everything -- soups, sautes with pasta or rice, on pizza and of course deep fried.

Here's a few butternut squash on the vine. Daniel already harvested a large one a week ago. I haven't cooked it yet since it stores well.


The watermelon, okra, and sweet potato patch.
We have four o'clock flowers in several spots around the yard. Most of them are yellow, some are pink and some are like this one below.

Greens

I love this time of year. I get to harvest fresh salads and greens every morning! I take my basket outside and pick the biggest heads of butter crunch and red leaf, a few leaves of chard, kale, or collards, some mesculin mix, and a head of broccoli (that's what's pictured below). We should have enough planted to do green harvests like this for another month. I store all this in the fridge for the day then wash and prepare with dinner tonight. I'll add some nuts, fresh green onions, and oil and vinegar. Yum!The winter/spring garden is nice because there aren't as many bugs and pests out yet. The onions, potatoes, and garlic don't require much water or extra feeding. Basically they go in the ground and we don't really worry about them till harvest which should be coming soon.

This is just a picture of another harvest from a few days ago. Being in the garden with all the colors, textures, and sounds is such a nice way to start the day!
This is a portion of the broccoli bed which is growing nicely.
Here's a row of lettuces, cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccolli, and onions.
Lettuce up close.

Happy Spring

Today is the first day of Spring and it has been a gorgeous day. I've been taking pictures throughout the week of some things we are doing in the yard. We have lots of winter stuff coming up in the 3 long rows that we have started. Most of them are transplants that we started from seed in January. We did have to replace a few of our plants with store bought ones. We had a hard freeze for several days after we planted and we lost a few. We were not discouraged and took it as a learning experience. Note: It is a good idea to check the weather and not plant during a week of hard freezes next year!

Here's another picture of the garden from the other side. Our potatoes are starting to sprout (hills on the bottom left of picture). We got these seed potatoes from a neighbor who said he grew up on a farm and that we needed to plant them in February to get the best results. They were just potatoes that sprouted in his cabinet. They are all coming up. We had already bought about 10 lbs of organic seed potatoes. We'll have to find another place for them somewhere else in the yard. Onions (started in Feb.) are in middle bed and garlic (started in Nov.) all the way to right of picture.

Daniel has gotten the water barrels hooked together and hoses attached so that water flows easily from 2 barrels down into the garden. Remember these are the barrels we got for free from the local Pepsi plant. Daniel found hardware and attached old hoses to develop this great water system. Sure will make watering easier this year. Last year we syphoned water with hoses or carried it in watering cans to the beds.


Here's the summer stuff we started in early March.
We are excited about our strawberry bed. Last year they really spread out and were doing great. We did not put them in a fence so the dog has been walking right through them. We discovered a few flowers this week. Daniel cleaned out the bed a little and put a small fence on one side to keep Blue from trampling the young plants. Can't wait to see how these turn out. I love that strawberries are perennial.


We planted some sweet peas between potato beds and the fence. We lost some peas in that hard frost I wrote about before. These we started in early March and are coming up quickly.

This is our little herb garden. There is a big holly tree that shades this area for part of the day. We had these rosemary, sage, thyme, mint, lemon balm, and oregano in the front of the house and moved it here over the winter.
Happy gardening everyone. I hope you are enjoying this beautiful spring weather.

Semester over and more time spent in backyard

All of these pictures and the idea for this post actually happened last week. But, the days kept passing and I'm just now getting to it. Daniel finished up his semester last week. Congrats to him for completing his final semester of course work towards his PhD. We have been taking a little break and spending a lot of time in the yard before summer school starts next week. This first picture shows the big bed. Since it was taken last week some of the beds actually look a lot bigger already! You can't really see what's going on in each bed but I thought it was nice because it kinda gives you an idea of what's going on in the yard. We've had requests to show the whole yard. It's really not that big there's just a lot going on! So here you see the bed, the holly tree with hammock underneath, the new bean trellis in front of shot and the pomegranate on the back left of the picture. You can see a little bit of our back deck as well.
This is a close up of the potatoes that Daniel spent several hours last weekend hilling. We started the seed potatoes in trenches. Once they got to be about a foot above ground he piled up soil around the plants and created little hills to provide more room for growing the potatoes. We have russet, red and yellow potatoes coming up.
While playing around in the backyard Daniel spotted this swarm of honey bees. It was so cool. They were on one of the tree branches in the hedge along the back side of the yard. We watched in amazement for a little while. Since they were in search of a new hive they didn't stay here long. They were gone the next day.
Another thing we have been doing is keeping better watch of the compost pile. We always have a big one in the back corner of the yard. This time we started it mostly with horse manure and leaves from other people's yards. After turning and watering it we tracked the temperature every day. The first day after turning it was 80 degrees (same as temp. outside). The next day it was about 90, then the next day 100-110. The temp steadily increased and by the 4th day it was at 140. We were very excited!We will turn it again soon. I should post a more detailed description of composting or at least what we do in case anyone reading would like to start one. Here is a great article I read online (I was reading in bed on Mother's Day!) that can get anyone started turning their yard and kitchen waste into "gardener's gold." Of course you can find books all about it at your local library too :)
We've talked about our rain barrels before. We have set up 5 different ones in the back yard. Two are under down spouts of gutters next to the house. Then we have 2 that are right next to the garden. During big rains, Daniel siphons water with a hose from the ones closest to the house to the ones in the garden.
Daniel and I installed these gutters on the shed a few weeks ago and he rigged them to pour into the 5th barrel.