The Pleasures of the Table - Organic Vegetable Gardening

Asparagus in my garden

Last night as we sat down to dinner, I realized that everything on the plate, with the exception of the thinly sliced and broiled pork loin, was grown in my garden. Organic asparagus...mashed potatoes and turnips...even the water I sipped came from the well outside my door.

What a difference in taste, texture, pleasure. A feast for the eyes and the senses.

The asparagus is growing quite nicely, so we tentatively snapped a few spears last night to steam for supper. The turnips and potatoes were harvested last year and kept in cold storage. I peel them, cube them, boil and mash them with a bit of butter. And that's it.

No artificial anything...no waxes on the turnips, no sprays or irradiation on the potatoes, no pesticides on the asparagus.

Food. Real food.

Potatoes in storage.

Sometimes I feel like we've forgotten the pleasures of the table. The slow food movement, the organic movement, the this or that movement. It's really just about food. Plain old, healthy, close to the earth food.  This is what I ate growing up. My mother made a meat, a potato and a vegetable. We couldn't grow potatoes, but if we could, we grew the vegetables and in the summer there was always a salad of home-grown lettuce and tomatoes. Considering I grew up not far from Queens, New York, and our backyard was around 10 feet by 20 feet, I think my parents did quite well growing what they could.

Beautiful home-grown turnips.

But our grandparents generation did even better. They knew how to grow, and can, and preserve food. I'm learning all of that slowly but surely. For the past five years, I've experimented with this or that. I taught myself how to can using the water bath canner from my husband's great-grandmother and the new steam canner he bought me for Christmas. I've had miserable failures (the pickled carrots are still slow-going, and the dried beans are still sitting in the pantry waiting a recipe) but I've also had successes. Pickled peppers and beets are delicious. My canned green beans rival any store bought cans.

I've taught myself how to grow potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes and garlic. I've had spectacular garden failures - terrible watermelons and cantaloupes, and if another cucumber beetle invasion gets my squashes, I have to just give up and buy them at the farmer's market.

But on nights like last night, when I stopped, fork poised over my plate, looking down at fresh vegetables grown not 20 feet from the kitchen, I am truly thankful for the gift of plants. For the ability to garden. For fresh air, and soil, and water, and the miraculous alchemy of sun that transforms seed into dinner.

The pickled carrots aren't great, but the beets? Wonderful.

Easy Vegetables to Grow

My vegetable garden (two years ago)

This weekend it seems as if the weather has finally turned the corner from winter to spring, and I planted easy vegetables to grow in the springtime. I guess the term "easy" depends on your perspective; my sister finds sewing a dress easy, but I find it as easy as completing an advanced calculus problem while singing operatic arias. However, these vegetables tend to be productive and abundant if given the right basic requirements.

Check with your local County Cooperative Extension Office (in the USA) for the planting dates for your area.

Radishes

Radishes are among the easy vegetables to grow. Some people report problems with stunted radishes or too hot radishes, but both of these problems can be prevented. Radishes require full sunlight and well-drained soil. Sow seeds directly into the garden in early spring after the danger of a heavy frost or snow is past, but while the temperatures remain cool. Stunted radishes occur from either too little water during the growing period of heavy clay soil; the radish roots cannot develop adequately. Firecracker hot radishes occur when radishes grow slowly or the hot weather strikes before they are mature. That's why it's important to plant radishes early enough in the season to harvest them before heat turns them bitter and hot.  

Lettuce

Lettuce is another easy vegetable to grow. Lettuce seeds should be planted around the same time as radishes. Water well, and continue watering throughout the growing period for good growth.  It's difficult to grow the perfect, tight iceberg lettuce heads you might be familiar with from the grocery store. If you like loose leaf lettuce or Romaine, these are easier to grow and do well in a variety of climates.

Slugs and snails tend to be the worst insect pests for lettuce. Use the old beer bottle technique to capture and kill slugs. Place a glass beer bottle on its side in the garden after removing (consuming?) most of the contents. You can also pour the beer into a pie pan or saucer set into the ground near the lettuce. Slugs will be attracted to the beet, crawl in and drown. Copper tape is another method of slug and snail damage prevention. It's a tape made from copper that is placed around the plants. Slug and snail secretions interact with the copper and zap the critters naturally without harming other animals or humans. It gives them a shock, which discourages them from crossing the tape to munch your lettuce plants. The tape must be a certain width, so just reusing old copper wire won't work. Visit your local home and garden store for copper wire. 

Rabbits do love lettuce. Unfortunately, the only way that I've found effective as an organic control for rabbits is a stout fence to keep them out.

Told you it was the best canned beet recipe around...my 2nd place ribbons from the 2011 fair.

Pickled beets (right) and carrots (left)

Beets

Beets are fairly easy to grow. As with many root vegetables, the soil must be well drained and free from rocks that impede root growth. A good water supply and abundant sunshine is also vital. Beets are grown from seeds sown directly into the ground as soon as the soil is warm enough to be worked. Thin the seedlings to about four inches between each plant; compost the unwanted seedlings.  Harvest when beets are billiard ball size. I like to feel around the top of the beet to determine the size or pull a test beet to determine if they are ready.

Beets can be canned with either a pressure canner or a water bath canner. If using a water bath canner, the recipe must be suitable for that method of canning, such as pickled beets. I love pickled beets, and the recipe in the Ball Home Book of Canning is fantastic.  It is my favorite canning book. I use canned pickled beets in several ways.  I add them to salads right from the jar. The salad needs only a light dressing of extra virgin olive oil to be complete, as the pickled beets add abundant flavor. I slice an onion thinly and add it to the pickled beets, and dress this simple salad with Italian dressing. Serve it well chilled and it is delightful on a hot summer day. Lastly, I transform jars of home-canned pickled beets into Harvard beets, using the recipe from the Fannie Farmer Cook Book, one of my favorites. It cuts the recipe time down to five minutes from an hour. You can't beat that!

If you're just starting an organic vegetable garden this spring, consider starting with a few easy vegetables to grow. Make sure your garden area receives at least six hours of full sunshine each day, and water your seeds and seedlings once a day if it doesn't rain. Within a few short weeks, you'll be rewarded with home-grown organic vegetables. 

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Spring Blooms, Feasts and More

Daffodils blooming in the rain on Easter.

Happy Easter! I hope everyone had a joyful Passover or Easter. Last week was very busy for me. I've been hard at work writing articles on business, education, animal care and some advertising copy, and am really enjoying these new assignments of late.

Since it's still so cold and rainy outside, most of my gardening tasks have been relegated to indoor gardening, but this past weekend we did get some vegetable planting done. We planted potatoes on Saturday, and onions, too.  I helped my husband add lime to the front lawn area and plant grass seed, and our work removing the old mulch out front and replacing it with new mulch is done. The area looks beautiful, but the cats keep digging up the mulch to use for their litter box needs.  Groucho got into the act on Saturday when we were planting grass seed. We were scattering the seed and he kept jumping up to catch the seed, getting grass seed in his coat. I said to my husband, "Watch, he's going to go and dig in the flower beds now." Sure enough, he raced for the perennial garden in the lawn island and immediately began digging.  I think he was trying to help us sow seeds, but he just sowed grass seed into the flower bed. If I have extra weeds to pull, I'm blaming the Grouch!

Easter was quiet and restful.  I sang with the choir on Thursday evening, then went to evening services on Friday, and sang again with the choir at the Easter Vigil on Saturday. I had the great pleasure of meeting for the first time someone I had friended on Facebook, a lady introduced to me by a mutual friend. She brought her whole family to the vigil and it was fun meeting a friend-of-a-friend, someone with whom I have only corresponded with, and to share with her the joys of the Easter Vigil at St. Theresa.

I spent the afternoon yesterday working on my counted cross stitch bedspread project while watching the Monk marathon on TV.  That bedspread project is going to take me forever. It consists of intricate counted cross stitch squares. Each one is completed, then sewn together with fabric patches to make a quilt.  I saw the counted cross stitch blocks at Heartland Fabric and the ladies there had sewn them into a beautiful pink quilt. So I went and found blocks with butterflies and pansies on them.  I didn't realize, however, that each block would take me between 6 months to a year to complete because of all the different colors involved. The ladies at Heartland Fabrics used a single color of thread and I am sure that went a lot faster.  I'll continue with my project for the time being since it makes a good project while I watch television at night. But I am also planning to work on my first quilting project. I love the look of quilts, and hope to make a few simple ones to start with.

That's all the news that's fit to print around here. Hoping this week for some sunshine days and some good blooms on the fruit trees. One of the peach trees is blooming, but everything else is almost a full month behind.  Soon...spring can't be far away!

Winter Vegetable Harvest

Harvest of Carrots and Garlic Chives

Savoy Cabbage

The winter vegetable harvest this year was wonderful, and quite a delicious surprise. In the fall, I'd planted carrots, turnips, beets, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. We enjoyed the broccoli, but the cauliflower never took off, and then my father in law got sick, and after he died we didn't have the energy to do much. So I let nature take its course and let the garden die back naturally. We ate some of the broccoli but I just left the rest.

This past weekend, we had glorious weather. It was sunny and warm. I decided to clean up the vegetable garden. There's nothing like pulling up rotten broccoli and cauliflower to make your day, although the smell will make you want to run screaming in the other direction. Whew! What a stink that stuff makes when it's "gone over"!

But then as I was pulling out the dead stuff, I realized that under some mushy outer leaves, two rather large heads of savoy cabbage were still there. I dug around in one of the raised beds into what I thought were weeds, only to find carrots - 20 pounds of them! The tops of the carrots had turned purple where the frost nipped it, but otherwise they were fine. We also found some garlic chives I'd forgotten to pull out of the asparagus bed.

Last night for supper, I made a roast chicken, cabbage and onions, and baked potatoes.  Everything but the chicken I grew myself not 20 feet from the kitchen. The previous evening, I served carrots and turnips also grown in my garden. And lunch consisted of a delicious salad topped with garlic chives and canned peppers that I had grown in the garden. Unfortunately, the lettuce isn't up yet, or else I'd have enjoyed a home-grown meal for lunch, too.

There really is something wonderful about growing your own food. I love the fact that turnips, probably one of the easiest vegetables I have ever grown, cost about 69 cents or more per pound in the grocery store. I must harvest 10, 20 pounds or more. The same with peppers - an abundance of peppers of all types grows easily and readily in my garden.  Those same peppers cost around 99 cents per pound. I can also grow my garden using organic gardening methods as I choose to do.

If you haven't done so already, plan your vegetable garden now. Soon it will be time to plant, and there's a lot you can do now to get ready.

Here are links to some articles I have written that will help you plan your vegetable garden:

• Tips on Growing Vegetables in Containers
• Three Easy to Grow Vegetables
• Different Methods of Building a Compost Bin
• Testing Soil pH
• Where to Get Soil Tested

A Bountiful Harvest from the Organic Vegetable Garden

Green beans and tomato

We've had a bountiful harvest from the vegetable garden in 2012, although some surprises and failures along the way. At the start of this year, I promised I'd share with you more about vegetable gardening - what worked and what didn't, how much it cost to grow what we grow and the estimated savings from the yield.  Here's the report, with a lot of guestimates thrown in since life got a tad bit busy on me this fall and I had a lot on my plate taking care of things on the home front.

We grew the following vegetables in the raised bed garden this year. All were grown organically - I didn't use any pesticides or commercial fertilizers, just a lot of compost and good starting soil, a blend of compost, clean fill, and peat moss.

What we grew and the estimated yield:

• Asparagus - newly planted, so we did not harvest anything this year. We spent about $16 on the plants. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of growing asparagus, but the plants all took root and grew large and fern-like. The fronds are changing to a nice golden color, but more brownish than gold.  
• Beans - green beans only this year. I did not spend anything on the seeds (had some leftover from last year). Even though the seeds were a year old, the beans were prolific. I canned about 32 pints of green beans.  We lost some to the frost, gave away some, and froze about two gallons of green beans. The frozen ones never taste as good as the canned ones.

Green beans...

• Beets - poor yield this year. I used seeds that I only realized until it was too late were about two years old, not one year old as I thought. Still, we ate about four meals' worth of fresh beets from the garden and I canned 8 pints of pickled beets. We are still enjoying pickled beets canned last year!
• Broccoli rabe - surprisingly poor yield this year. I love this green, leafy and slightly bitter vegetable and only grew enough for two meals. Seeds were $1.95 and only available by mail order. 
• Fruit trees - we actually had peaches this year and two pears. The few peaches we picked before the June bugs and squirrels got them were delicious. What a flavor - like nothing I have ever tasted from the store. A sweet vanilla-honey-peach taste that was outstanding. The pears rotted before we could pick them. Hopefully with each passing year, there will be more fruit. We are still waiting for the apple trees, plum, apricot and cherry trees to produce. 
• Garlic - ugh! My poor garlic! I spent nearly $10 on elephant garlic cloves and the yield was dreadful. I saved the tiny cloves and replanted the crop this fall.  The first time I grew garlic, I planted it around Columbus Day (October) and harvested around Father's Day (June) and it did well.  This year I tried a spring planting and it was disastrous. I'm going back to the fall to spring cycle and see if things improve.
• Herbs - I stuck with chives, basil and dill this year and all grew well. I saved a basil plant. It's in my plant room in the house and I love the fresh basil for cooking during the cold months.
  

Dill - with a bit of fall color

• Horseradish - horseradish was my experimental crop this year. I've never planted it before. We did get one root but I am not optimistic about it. I still need to grate it up and prepare it. It's sitting in the garage, a knobby, ugly thing.  I think I'm a little afraid of it. 
• Lettuce - nice crop of Romaine and fancy red leaf, oak leaf, and other lettuces this spring. Seeds were about 99 cents for the fancy varieties and 20 cents for Romaine.  When you consider that a head of Romaine lettuce at the supermarket is at least $1.50 for a conventionally grown Romaine lettuce, and I spent 20cents on seeds and green the lettuce organically, that's a true bargain.
• Onions - I spent about $12 on a variety pack of onion sets from a catalog and grew Texas sweets, yellow onions and red Spanish onions.  The yield was good, about 10-15 pounds or more, but they didn't store well in the basement and I lost some to sprouting and rot. The taste was excellent, and I was able to make several pots of onion soup as well as use them for other cooking tasks.  Best of all, we missed some during the harvest and it appears I'll have a spring onion crop as I've got another dozen coming up - surprise!

Lovely mix of onions from my garden this year.

• Peppers - the peppers, as usual, were prolific. I spent 99 cents on a seed packet of California Wonder, the big sweet bell peppers we love, and I had a garden overflowing with peppers. We ate sausage, peppers and onions nearly every week starting in August; I made pepper steak and stir fry recipes; and canned about 30 jars of peppers, as well as froze several quarts for wintertime use.  And I still have a bag of fresh peppers in the fridge. Yum! Talk about a value...organic peppers were $1 EACH at the supermarket this summer. I cannot begin to estimate how many peppers I picked from the garden this year but easily it was well over 100...so for an investment of 99 cents, the yield was $100 worth of organic peppers. AMAZING.

Peppers grew very well this year.

• Potatoes - I spent $2.50 on a bag of Kennebec seed potatoes.  They didn't even sprout. What did sprout were the descendants of the Yukon Gold potatoes my friend Mel gifted us with two years ago.  The Russet descendants were okay, but not great.  We harvested a total of 102 pounds of potatoes from the first year and I have another 20 pounds in a bucket keeping cool in the garage that we harvested this fall.  The Yukon Golds by far out performed the Kennebec and Russet potatoes, and they make excellent mashed potatoes, which are my family's favorite. Potatoes are easy to grow and although the leaves did get attacked by potato beetles, it did not affect the yield or quality of the potatoes themselves.  I just let them be, let the bugs take their share, and enjoyed my potatoes without any chemicals used on or near the plants.

Potatoes...easy to grow for me....

• Sweet Potatoes - back in 2010 when I first grew sweet potatoes, my $16 investment in the starter plants yielded 63 pounds of sweet potatoes that lasted a full year.  This year, that same investment yielded only about a third of that crop. The early heat and drought followed by more temperature and rainy weather seems to have set them back a bit.  Still, we do have some nice sweet potatoes in store to enjoy later.
• Squash - the winter squash was disappointing this year. I think I started it too late. I was trying to outwit the squash beetles. Every year, they swarm my plants and kill them - summer squash and winter alike. So I timed my planting to add the squash later, after the beetles finished their reproductive cycle.  They typically lay their eggs on the leaves and the nymphs kill the plants.  Well, no beetles and no nymphs, but early cold snaps killed the plants. Two acorn squashes for six plants is not a good yield. 
• Strawberries - the strawberry bed is maturing, and producing two crops per year.  The spring crop was great but the fall crop disappointing. 

I was picking strawberries right up until the first frost this year.

• Tomatoes - the tomatoes started out great. Then the derecho, the big straight line winds, hit in late June and knocked over all my plants. After that it was all downhill. I had a big, nasty jumbled of tomato plants and it was difficult to tend them. We did have some nice tomatoes during the summer, particularly the Sonic variety that my friend Liz told me would do well. Liz does a great program on tomato growing for the Master Gardeners and her advice was helpful.  I'm skipping the heirloom varieties next year; all were disappointing. Sonic, Early Girl, Beefstake and Sweet 1000's for us. 
• Turnips - great harvest yet again on the turnips.  99 cents worth of seeds and about 20 pounds of turnips. Love them. So easy to grow, so tasty!

Turnips...rich in vitamin C, and another vegetable I find easy to grow.

• Zucchini - I have never picked so many zucchini in my whole life. Zucchini that grew overnight. All those old jokes about leaving bags of zucchinis on the neighbors' porches came to life.  I baked a total of 122 zucchini muffins and a dozen loaves of zucchini bread.  We still have them in the freezer. Fortunately, they do freeze well, and it's nice to have fresh zucchini muffins in the cold weather.  A taste of summer remembered....

We are still awaiting the fall vegetable crop. The cabbage and broccoli look promising, but all I've managed to grow this year of cauliflower are some mighty healthy looking leaves...can't find a hint of cauliflower. But then again, until last week, I thought the broccoli wasn't going to produce, and there was a nice floret, hiding among the leaves. The vegetable garden never fails to surprise me. Year after year, we grow enough food to enjoy fresh throughout the season and preserved throughout the winter. And it sure beats paying expensive supermarket prices, especially for sub-par, older produce that may have been trucked from coast to coast.  I love walking out the back door and across the year, picking some beets, and making dinner. It just feels...right.

Fall Vegetable Gardening Plans

We planted seeds for the fall vegetables this past weekend, as well as seed potatoes for a second harvest.  In went another crop of green beans, beets, carrots, and turnips.  We planted seeds for the fall squashes too, hoping that at this late date, the voracious beetles that devour the spring zucchini and squash are finished their cycle and will leave them alone.  I love spaghetti squash, acorn and butternut squash, and we planted plenty. Maybe a few will live - who knows?

Broccoli seedlings emerging.  

On the front porch I have a tray of seeds starting outdoors. Broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower seeds have all emerged.  They seem to be stretching up towards the light, but I don't want to move the tray out into the full sunshine. I'm afraid that if I do that, I'm going to be spending all my time running outside to water them in the heat of the summer. Fortunately, it has been cooler than usual, and they seem to appreciate it.

Green beans in the garden

Cherry tomatoes

But don't forget the rest of the vegetable garden. The sweet potatoes, after straggling through the heat and drought, have finally been surging with growth and I am hopeful that we will at least get some sweet potatoes from the harvest in September or October.  The first crop of green beans has begun producing beans, but not enough yet to can.  The tomatoes have slowed down considerably. The derecho that ripped through here in June knocked them over and we never really were able to get the stakes upright and firmly into the ground again, so my tomato garden is a kind of mess right now of tangled plants, smelly rotted tomatoes hidden underneath the plants and a few lovely ones like the pictures here waiting for a nice sandwich or salad.

One of the last beefsteak tomatoes...maybe for lunch tomorrow....

Peppers, Peppers Everywhere

Orange pepper...reflected on my kitchen counter

It's that time of year when there seems to be peppers, peppers everywhere....now, I'm not complaining. I did plant a lot of them. But it's amazing how selective amnesia makes me forget that when peppers ripen, they all come in at once. We must pick a huge bowl full of them every day.  But what to do with them?

I've written about canning them...and making the delicious recipe from the book "Preserving the Harvest" for pickled peppers. It's a great recipe, but it is time consuming.  Any canning recipe can be time consuming.  First, the peppers must be washed, cored, washed again and sliced into strips. Then there is the preparation of the canning solution, boiling the water, cleaning the jars and so forth.  It is an all-afternoon task I typically reserve for the weekends.

Green peppers in my kitchen

One quick way I have found to save peppers is to blanch and freeze them.  I purchased square freezer containers in bulk and I blanch the peppers for as long as the cookbook says, then pack them tightly into the freezer containers.  I make sure to label them with the date and year so I know to use the older ones first.  When defrosted, they are great for pepper steak or stir fry recipes.

I don't do anything special to grow my peppers.  Good vegetables always begin with good soil. I start the seeds indoors in the spring, purchasing any good-quality green bell pepper seeds.  Then after the last danger of frost is past, I transplant the peppers into the vegetable garden area.  We did use the soaker hoses this year, which I think helped them young plants survive the early heat and drought.  The plants themselves remain small but are, as you can see, producing abundant peppers.

We're enjoying the fresh peppers in dishes such as stuffed peppers, sausage and peppers, and home-made stir fry with chicken.  But there are a lot of peppers....peppers, peppers everywhere!

Green Bell Peppers

Growing Gourmet Lettuce and Micro Greens

Vegetable garden harvest from 2010.

I've been harvesting gourmet lettuce and micro greens almost daily.  The seeds cost me a whopping $2 or so - I purchased several 25 cent seed packets for Romaine lettuce and spinach at the dollar store, and the other $1 or so went towards a package of mixed micro greens.  "Greens" is a misnomer because among the various lettuces is a gorgeous ruby-red leafed variety that has a beautiful crisp, slightly tangy flavor.  The lettuce was slow to start but has been growing robustly over the past several weeks, probably thanks to the soaker hoses we added to each of the garden beds.

I don't pull up my lettuce plants when I harvest the greens. I have a special pair of very sharp scissors in the kitchen. I simply take a metal bowl out to the garden and my scissors, snip the leaves I need for my meal, and leave the plants in the ground.  Depending on how hot it gets here over the next several weeks, I may get another harvest of lettuce or it may bolt and go to seed.  One type of lettuce from among the varieties in the mixed greens package has already bolted.  Bolting means the lettuce plant produces a long stalk with a flower on the end. The purpose is to produce seeds. Once you see that long central core, stem or flower, the lettuce is past its prime and generally speaking, unpalatable.  It tastes bitter. It's best to just pull up the plant and compost it.

Once the lettuce is harvested, I either rinse it under the garden hose or very, very carefully rinse it immediately in the sink.  Earwigs are plentiful among the lettuce. If you have never seen an earwig, it is a revolting little insect - harmless, I think, but disgusting nonetheless, with pincers and beetle-like features.  It's just one of those creepy things that I hate seeing in my salad.  A quick rinse with cool water chases them out.  That's why I like rinsing the greens outside - I can chase the insects back into nature where they belong, and not into my kitchen!

I dress the salad simply with extra virgin olive oil and a splash of either lemon juice or cider vinegar, salt and pepper. That's it.  The luscious baby greens and fresh-from-the garden organic lettuce is delicious on its own.

Remember how in January I promised to show you how gardening and growing your own vegetables saves money?  Here's how it looks so far with the lettuce crop (and I have more plants growing out there than I have harvested so far):


Seeds - Cost

• Romaine lettuce  - two packages of 25 cent seeds from the dollar store (.50)
• Spinach - for salads - one package of 25 cent seeds from the dollar store (.25)
• Mixed baby gourmet lettuce greens - $1.79  ($1.79)

Total expense for seeds:  $2.54 for seeds.

I am not counting the investment in the soaker hose, although if you are interested, a 25 foot soaker hose from a big box store cost about $9.  I think we had a coupon and saved a few dollars.

I used no special fertilizer other than good old fashioned garden compost.  The lettuce was grown completely organically with no pesticides or chemical fertilizers of any kind used on or near the plants.

I have harvested to date the equivalent of:

Estimated Cost if Purchased at the Store

• Two large bags of gourmet mixed organic salad greens.  Kroger (our local supermarket) sells organic salad greens by the bag for about $2.99 each.   Estimated value:  $5.98

• Two heads of Romaine lettuce. I can't find a price for organic Romaine.  Wal-Mart had heads of Romaine lettuce for sale for $1.79.  They were slightly bigger than mine and fuller. They were conventionally grown.  I will estimate my two heads of lettuce harvested to date at just $1.79. (But note, I have six more growing in the garden!)

Total estimated value of foods grown at home:  $7.77

$7.77 minus $2.54 for seeds = $5.23

So....although not a huge savings, I have saved $5.23 in salad greens this month. More importantly, I grew them myself. They are completely organic.  They weren't trucked miles and miles from a farm in California, but grew about 20 feet from my kitchen.  I have no way of estimating the health value of eating freshly picked greens over eating greens that have been picked several days ago and trucked or flown from one coast to the other, but my instinct says it is indeed healthier.

I spent very little time on the lettuce bed.  I weeded it once, just a quick pass-by with my weeding bucket and a quick pick up of some weeds. The hardest part of growing lettuce is simply remembering to turn on the hoses and water it when we haven't had rain for a few days.

How is your vegetable garden growing?  Did you grow lettuce this year? If so, how did it turn out?

Harvesting the Carrots

This weekend, I harvested the last of the fall/winter carrots. The little guy in the picture helping me is Flat Stanley.  He's part of a literacy project from my nephew's Long Island school. Flat Stanley travels around the world, and when he arrives at his destination, his host family writes about the local area. My nephew (and the other children in his 2nd grade class) colored their Flat Stanley cut outs and mailed them out.  We are supposed to take a photo, write a letter, or enclose pictures with Flat Stanley sharing our part of the world with the class. We debated taking Flat Stanley to the town of Appomattox, which is just about 15 minutes away and the place where the American Civil War ended. There is a museum there, cannons, and a lot of historic stuff, but we realized that 2nd graders probably have not studied the American Civil War.  The boys in the class would like the cannons but the girls wouldn't care.  So we decided to keep Flat Stanley closer to home and use this as an opportunity to show the children where their food comes from, since they are youngsters growing up in an urban environment.

We created a little booklet about Flat Stanley's adventures on our 'farm' and his visit to the neighbor across the road who raises beef cattle. When I first saw the coloring book character taped to a stick, I thought, "Oh no, this looks like a bad imitation of Mr. Bill."  That's the character from the old Saturday Night Live skits.  We had a lot of giggles about Flat Stanley meeting the paper shredder, Flat Stanley meeting the fireplace and all of that, but at the end of the day when we actually sat down to think about it we ended up with a really cute little booklet for the 2nd grade class.  I hope they enjoy it!  Flat Stanley helped me pick carrots, showed the children what Swiss chard looks like, pointed out peaches on a peach tree, and even posed with a neighbor's black Angus calf. 

The carrots were just so-so (although I believe Flat Stanley thought they were tasty.)  I left them in the ground too long. I planted the seeds last fall, and I planted too many, so I've been waiting and waiting to pick them since my refrigerator is full and I'm too lazy to blanch and freeze anymore.  But the beets won't wait, and we have only three of the raised beds in the vegetable garden area made without treated lumber. When we constructed the vegetable garden, we created three of the raised beds with untreated lumber and the rest from treated lumber, thinking that we'd put the root crops in the untreated bed.  Our research showed that for the most part, the modern methods of treating lumber make it safe to use in vegetable gardens, but we didn't want to take a chance. I have to say that treated or untreated lumber seems to have made absolutely NO difference in how long the wood lasted in the garden.  Several beds needed to have corners repaired this year.  The weight of the soil seems to be pushing out the corners and bowing the wood on the treated and untreated lumber alike. The only difference between the two types of wood is that the untreated lumber is already growing some sort of mushroom, like a log in the forest, but both types of lumber are showing wear and tear faster than we anticipated.  Treated lumber has some kind of chemical applied to the wood which is supposed to make it last longer and be more resistant to moisture and rot. We repaired them using metal brackets screwed over the corner.  John worked the drill while I pushed the wood into place.  We figure we will have to replace the beds every few years, and decided that next year we will begin a rotating schedule of replacement so that the entire group of raised beds is replaced in succession.

So the carrots were so-so, with many of them split, cracked, or with the telltale holes from the carrot fly larvae.  You can eat these but the holes mean more work cutting out the part that the insects got to. Some of the carrots were just old, with a texture like wood pulp, and these I composted almost immediately.  I pulled all the carrots on Saturday morning then sat in a lawn chair and cleaned them outside. I put the tops into the wheelbarrow to make it easier to move them into the compost pile.

We planted the beet seeds in the raised bed where we had the carrots.  A small corner of the bed now has the garlic, and it looks like the dill seeded freely last year as I have several plants growing among the garlic.  The garlic took off, and I have high hopes for it.  It really does pay to purchase good quality starter sets, roots and plants from a nursery. I am growing "Elephant" garlic - the huge heads with big white cloves.  It stores really well and I have stored it in the basement for up to two years.

I'm growing two types of beets this year.  Beet "Detroit Dark Red" is an old favorite and a traditional garden crop.  These are Burpee seeds, and I have excellent luck with them in the garden. The beets are sweet and tasty, cook up well and also can very well when I make pickled beets.  I also planted "Golden" beets, my favorite heirloom.  The beets are golden-apricot color and are just beautiful to look at. I first encountered golden beets in New York City, of all places, at a restaurant called Josephina's by Lincoln Center.  I worked around the corner from there and my friends and I would go to Josephina's for special occasions. One of my favorite dishes of all was a golden beet salad.  It consisted of dark green lettuces, with lightly steamed and sliced golden beets on top of the lettuce and a sprinkling of sweet onions and either walnut or pumpkin seeds. A bit of feta cheese and vinegar and oil and it was a feast for a king.  I'm counting down the 60 days to harvest on these beets and I will recreate my Josephina's salad with fresh beets from the garden!

Growing Asparagus in the Home Garden

Asparagus in the vegetable garden.

Growing asparagus in the home garden has been a fun learning experience for us.  I ordered asparagus "Jersey Knight" from the Burpee catalog - two year old crowns.  I paid a lot more for them, but the promise is that the more mature asparagus crowns mean I can harvest some asparagus spears next year instead of waiting two years or more.  At the rate my asparagus is growing, I'm wondering if it might not be sooner!

I chose asparagus Jersey Knight for its promised early harvest and disease resistance. While asparagus is a pretty hardy perennial vegetable, it can be subject to rust and fusarium root rot.  Planting crowns purchased from a reputable nursery helps ensure disease-free root stock.  Good cultivation practices also prevent problems.

Asparagus like a rich, sandy loam soil, which for most of us in Virginia is the exact opposite of what we have.  Most gardens around here are dealing with heavy clay to clay loam.  Our solution to this problem is of course the raised beds we installed in the vegetable garden.  We simply built the wooden raised beds and dumped in bags of topsoil, peat, compost (trucked in by a local company) and compost from the garden compost pile.  The result is a well-drained rich soil that's not exactly sandy loam, but a compost-rich loam that most of the vegetables plants seem to like.

The crowns came right on time from Burpee and we kept them in a cool, dark spot in the garage until ready to plan.  We had to move all the herbs out of the herb bed first.  I decided to move the herbs into the flower garden and around the edge of the clearing.  Really tough, invasive herbs such as mint, oregano and catnip were moved to the edge of the woods.  More decorative herbs and fragrant herbs such as lemon balm and sage I moved into the flower garden.  The sage loves its new home and is actually blooming profusely now, adding lovely purple flowers to the garden.  It is so big it looks like a shrub!  (By the way, both the mint and oregano are so invasive it grew right out from the raised beds and into the grass between the beds. When I cut the lawn each week, I'm assailed with the scents of mint and oregano.  It either smells like a Bath & Body Works shop or a pizzeria, depending on which area of the lawn I'm cutting, and when the two strong scents mingle together it's not particularly appetizing.)

Culinary sage blooming in the flower garden.

We lost more soil from that raised bed than we bargained for when we dug up the herbs, so we lost another day while Hubby ran out to Lowe's for replacement soil.  Several bags of soil later, we were ready to plant the crowns. We followed the directions carefully and spread out the roots, lining up the crowns to give the asparagus plenty of room. We just pulled up soil around the roots but left the crowns bare, and didn't fill in more soil in the garden bed.  We began a process of watering them daily.

Within about 10 days, a few signs of life appeared, and we cheered the first airy fronds. Then they began sprouting in earnest! It looks like a weird alien bed with the asparagus fronds waving about.

As of today, 22 of the 24 asparagus crowns are alive and producing foliage.  We added more soil once all of them appeared healthy, filling in the bed.  We also placed a soaker hose around the asparagus, making U-shaped pins to hold the hose in place from old wire coat hangers. (The frugal gardener's answers to expensive landscape pins.)

We are a long time away from harvesting the asparagus, but so far, so good.  It's fun to see them waving in the breeze and I can't wait to watch their development!

More information on growing asparagus from the Virginia Cooperative Extension office. 

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Starting a New Vegetable Garden

All that talk about working in my own vegetable garden inspired me to write a new article today for Hub Pages on Tips for Starting a New Vegetable Garden.  If you're new to gardening or you've just moved into a new house, these tips may help you start your very own home vegetable garden.   I've shared with you how my little investment in seeds and starter plants yields big harvest.  Not only does the garden produce food that saves me money, but I know exactly what went into growing my food, where it came from, and how it was harvested and stored. Think about it for a minute.

While I am not in a position to raise my own beef cattle, I can certainly raise my own lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, peppers and a bunch of other vegetables. I know that my vegetables haven't been doused with a bunch of chemicals because I take care of them. I'm fairly certain that the soil is mineral-rich thanks to the compost added to it over the years. More importantly, I know that it is fresh - and the fresher the vegetables, the higher the nutrient content. Important vitamins such as vitamin C degrade with time and yes, vegetables contain vitamin C. It's not just your oranges and orange juice that contains vitamin C!

So think about growing a few vegetables if you can.  Most people can grow a tomato plant in a pot, a few lettuce plants or some herbs on a sunny kitchen windowsill.  Whatever you can grow, I encourage you to do so. It adds so much enjoyment to your life - and frankly, tastes so much better than store bought food - that you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

March Madness in the Garden

Bartlett pear tree in bloom

It's March madness in the garden as the spring temperatures continue - and it's technically still winter!  We've had two weeks of highs in the 70s and 80s and evening temperatures in the 50s.  This is mid to late April weather, perhaps May weather, and the trees, shrubs and flowers are responding by blooming.  I saw multicolored butterflies and moths fluttering about the garden today and I can only hope that whatever plants are currently blooming provide enough sustenance for them all.  I can't remember such a warm spring, not here and not in New York where I used to live.  Oh sure, you'd get the occasional warm day - I remember sweating through my suit jacket at a conference at the Helmsley Hotel in Manhattan on a particularly hot 90 degree April day, with the hotel management apologizing profusely for not having the air conditioners working yet nor having fans to circulate the air - but weeks of this type of weather? Unheard of!

Not that I'm complaining. It just seems as if spring has arrived, and fast, and I'd better play catch up.

On Saturday, I started gardening at 10 a.m. and aside from a brief lunch break, didn't call it quits until 3 p.m. By that time, I'd managed to get my share of splinters, cut my finger pretty good on a pair of garden shears, and scraped my inner wrist so that someone looking at it did a double take this past weekend. I think the poor man thought I'd done something horrible to myself on purpose,  but honestly, it was a thorny vine entangled with a Buddleia we cut down that gave me three long scratches right on the soft part inside my wrist, just where my gardening glove ends.  John saw it happen. Honest!

Pierre, my gardening kitty

Pierre and Shadow came outside to help us garden.  Shadow proved her worth by following the trail of the resident mole who is making my walks in the yard miserable. That darn creature left the vegetable garden, thank goodness, but now he's created a maze of tunnels in the back near the garden shed.  It's ankle-breaking stuff, those tunnels. You're walking along and BAM, next thing you know, your foot has sunk into the earth up to the shin!  Well, Shadow found that mole hole and I think she smelled a fresh scent. Suddenly she was going crazy digging, digging, digging.  She dug out the hole but no mole.  Later on that day, Pierre was also running crazily near the mole tunnels, zig-zagging this way and that. He went to the same spot and stuffed his whole face into the mole hole.  I was hoping he'd catch the creature but alas, it was too fast for him.  Shadow chased it out of the vegetable garden last year and it hasn't come back since then, but it has made itself quite at home in the back corner of the field, and I'm hoping that between the two of them, they have made its life miserable!

Blooming peach tree with vegetable garden behind it.

I settled on asparagus Jersey Giant and the box of 24 arrived from Park Seed last Thursday.  I kept them in a pail of moist soil in the garage until Saturday.  We decided to move all the herbs from the herb bed in the vegetable garden and use that bed for the asparagus.  It was a good idea, but we should have moved the herbs sooner.  First of all, the oregano had not only spread out to about half the bed, but it crawled under the wood frame and has now infiltrated my lawn back in the vegetable garden. I've got mint growing in some areas and oregano in others.  Mowing the lawn releases some interesting smells - you can't tell whether you're in a Bed, Bath and Beyond from the mint or in a pizza parlor from the oregano.


The cat nip stinks but we moved it one of Pierre's favorite spots, near the garden shed. We transplanted two and if it spreads out - so be it.  We can live with it.

The lemon balm and sage made it into the flower garden. The sage is so tall that we've named it 'sage bush' half jokingly.  It really does look like a bush out there.   The lemon balm is now under the wisteria, and I'm hoping it takes hold there and creates a carpet under the wisteria.

Unfortunately, two herbs didn't survive the move.  My rosemary, which I especially wanted to save, broke and we seemed to have lost the roots.  I've got the big stems drying in the garage now, so at least it won't go to waste. And my huge patch of yummy garlic chives, which I love to dice up and add to omelets, also somehow got lost. I suspect I will have chives now growing in my lawn to complement the oregano and mint.  I did manage to pot up a few chives, which I'll keep near the kitchen when the omelet urge strikes.

Removing the herbs also removed a good portion of the soil from the beds, too.  On Sunday, I made a quick run to Lower's after church to buy some soil.  We turned the compost on Saturday too and I squealed with delight - worms!  Big, fat, red worms, the best kind to find in a compost pile.  I know, I know, you may think worms are gross. But they're not.  I've never spotted them in my compost pile until this year and a good group of worms in there means they are doing their job and helping compost down all those kitchen scraps.  We dug down into the pile, turned it, and found lovely dark, crumbly compost - the kind that looks like chocolate cake.  Into the asparagus bed it went along with fresh soil and a bit of peat moss!

The other vegetables that arrived included a sampler package of 60 onions - three different types, 20 sets of each.  I can see red onions, white ones and a smaller one.  We planted those on Sunday, along with 48 bulbs of garlic.  I also planted seeds for Romaine and fancy micro greens on Sunday, and spinach for salads.  I added radishes and my beloved broccoli rabe to the garden this weekend, too.  My mouth is watering thinking about sauteed broccoli rabe with olive oil and garlic and white beans.  I can live off of that and frequently do enjoy it for lunch throughout the spring.

Last but not least, we cleaned up the strawberry beds.  We moved some strawberry 'daughters' and added compost. 

The peach trees are almost finished blooming, and now the pears are in full bloom in the orchard.  This picture shows me standing next to a peach tree. Can you see me in my pink top? That shows you just about the size of the trees. I am tall, nearly 6 feet tall, so that gives you some perspective. The daffodils are blooming throughout the orchard too and it is just so beautiful.  I know it to be true, because both our mail carrier and the UPS guy said so.

The orchard - I'm the spec in pink next to the blooming peach tree.

March madness...spring gardening...and we are a few days from the official start of spring.  The windows are open, the bird houses are hung. Let the gardening begin!

Time for Serious Garden Clean Up

The bluebirds are darting in and out of the nesting boxes, looking very serious and business-like. I think the home inspection stage is over and it's time for nest building. I love to watch them from the kitchen windows in the morning.  They fly to the peach tree and perch on the topmost branch, waiting, swaying in the morning breezes.  Then they swoop away and return minutes later with pine needles.  I see the females standing on top of the fence posts by the vegetable gardens, and the males darting about too. Every bird is into the serious business of creating a secure nest for the babies to come, and making a house a home - even if it's a bluebird house!

The vegetables are all ordered, for good or for ill.  Seeds are purchased and waiting.  I walked Shadow through the raised bed garden last night and made notes on what needs to get done.  I'm already feeling a little overwhelmed but I need to remember that a little done every day adds up to a lot.

• The strawberry bed needs to be weeded and the plants separated.  I've got daughter plants too close to the mother plants, and a giant area of die-off in the bed.  That's actually good news because now I  have room to transplant those daughters!  Strawberries reproduce with runners, placing so-called 'daughter' plants at the end of the runners. The mother plants, the older plants, die away after a time. If you don't separate them out the beds get too crowded the they don't produce as much fruit. I've also got the weed from hell taking over another corner of the bed.  Where do these weeds come from? How come they are tougher than my vegetables?  
• We've got one of the untreated wood sides of the raised bed warped, split, and threatening to spill compost everywhere.  I need help from hubby to fix that one before I can get the onions and garlic into that bed!
• We still have dead chard plants, a few straggly cabbages, good looking turnips and carrots out there that need to be removed, composted or stored before the new plants can be added.

When I have a bit more time, I'll share with you the varieties I've chosen for the vegetable garden and why I chose what I did.  Gotta run now, and I have Master Gardener class tonight.   Class is going well and I am learning a lot more about other aspects of gardening that I don't normally tackle, so I'll have plenty to share with everyone in the weeks to come!

Diversity Is the Spice of Life

You'd think a bunch of grown people with three advanced degrees among them would be able to puzzle out the seed catalogs, but no - we're still in the throes of such debates as which varieties of lettuce to plant, whether kale is going to actually get eaten here (I say yes if I bake it into chips; the menfolk are doubtful that a kale chip will actually be edible), or whether to plant white onion, yellow onions, or red onions.

Yes, you read that right: white, yellow, red.  Big, small, tender, sweet, make your eyes cry onions.  Did you even know they came in so many types? Other than a Blooming Onion at Outback, when's the last time you actually considered the taste, the merits of the ubiquitous onion?

I spread all the gardening catalogs out on the kitchen table open to the onion pages.  We can choose seeds or sets, single varieties or variety packages that provide some of each type.  The question that others in the household keep asking, however, is:

"Will we like them?"

And that's really the kicker, the point at which I stop, peer into the crisper drawer of the refrigerator at the string bag of onions from the supermarket, and I wonder.

When did we go from pages and pages, dozens and dozens of varieties to one or two, or maybe three if you're lucky, of types available at the grocery store?

The plant world is chock full of genetic diversity. Plants, like people, thrive on genetic diversity.  And what nature didn't provide we clever humans coaxed out of the plant kingdom, crossing this and that to get something new, hardier and tastier.

Yet all across the country and indeed now in most parts of the so-called "civilized' world we think of vegetables the way we used to think of factory widgets.  If they're not all the same size, shape and taste meal after meal, we think something is wrong. Peas all have to be the same size and in a can. Green beans must all be snipped to a regulation quarter of an inch, no more, no less. Carrots must be peeled, coined and orange.  Bet you didn't know you can find white carrots or purple ones, did you? The Romans apparently loved white carrots.

You won't find this in stores, kids!

But we have so commoditized the simple act of eating to the point that most children, if not exposed to a garden early in life, think vegetables are 'yucky' and won't eat them unless they come out of a can with a label they recognize.  I remember when my godson visited this past summer.  He pulled a carrot right from the garden. He watched me pull, clean and cook beets. It was the first time he has ever tasted a beet and he will be 8 years old this month.  Beets don't taste so good from the can, but from the garden? He kept saying, "Mommy, this is yummy! You should make these too!"

I know that myriad economic factors encourage growers to grow the same varieties.  There are varieties that store longer, ship better, and achieve a uniformity that consumers have been trained to expect. But I cannot help but wonder at what a diversity of color, texture and taste the average person missed when they only buy prepared, packaged foods.

As I linger over the gardening catalogs, I'm faced with a cornucopia of choices. The only way to truly answer my family's question - "Will we like it?" - is to grow it.  And grow it we shall.

Now, which ones to choose?  Questions, questions....

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(c) Copyright 2012 by Jeanne Grunert. All rights reserved.  Linking to this post or my blog is encouraged. Copying my posts is punished by the fates in the form of hail, tomato hornworm, and blossom end rot. 

I love comments so comment away.  If you want to talk to me personally about this or any other posts, email me.

Growing Asparagus - Decisions, Decisions!

After lengthy discussion this past fall, we decided to remove the herb bed from the vegetable garden area and plant an asparagus bed there instead. I don't use the herbs nearly as much as I thought I would, and some, like the lemon balm that grew to the size of a small shrub, I grew for a friend who no longer wants or needs it. Our grand scheme for that particular vegetable garden bed this spring is to dig up the herbs and move them into the perennial garden to use as decorative shrubs and herbs in another new garden bed we're installing.  I'm afraid we're going to lose some, since the soil is literally like cement there (it's the area where we set up the cement mixer while pouring cement for the rocks along the walkway, and I think we spilled a little too much on that part of the garden during construction.)  Then we will transform the raised bed into an asparagus bed.

Asparagus is a bit intimidating for me to grow, mostly because no one I knew grew it in Floral Park.  As a perennial, I know you have to choose the site for it carefully, since a well-tended asparagus bed can last anywhere from 10 to 20 years, growing and producing edible spears of tasty fresh asparagus all the while.  I also know that it can get big, with the tall, frothy stems attaining heights of two to three feet.  One website said that people sometimes grow them as border plants in flower gardens because the foliage is so lovely.  That site promised that asparagus foliage turns from dark green to golden in the fall. That sounds like a beautiful sight to see!

Researching asparagus varieties is a bit confusing.  Neighbors in Virginia who grow asparagus told us to look for varieties or plants that produce spears in the first year; others, they said, would mean that the bed would need time to become established before producing anything worth snipping and cooking. Most people agree we can expect to get nothing from the asparagus bed the first year, and perhaps a meal or two the second year before it takes off.  Then I need to get my freezing or canning supplies ready to store the healthy harvest.

Asparagus need full sun, and according to most sources, they aren't terribly fussy about soil pH.  I will still amend the garden bed with plenty of compost and a few new bags of soil before planting the asparagus.

We're still going through all the gardening catalogs to choose our varieties to grow. There's Jersey Knight, which all the catalogs seem to have, and Jersey Giant, and all sorts of "Jersey" asparagus. I wonder if New Jersey is a good asparagus growing place?  Or why they got that name in the first place?

There's purple-tipped asparagus, purple asparagus, and the traditional green ones.  We're going to go with traditional green asparagus, but I still cannot quite decide upon which variety. Some are only $15 for a package of crowns while the one recommended in my Master Gardener manual is around $30 for a comparable pack of crowns.  My inclination is to purchase both and conduct a test, but I probably won't have the space or room to grow two types.

Have you grown asparagus? Which one did you choose?

Surprises from the Organic Vegetable Garden

I love the fall vegetable garden, not just for the abundance, but for the surprises.  Just when you think you've harvested everything, along comes a surprise potato...a carrot neglected among the weeds...or the cauliflower, which we thought was nothing but leaves, but which hides fist-sized heads of creamy-colored florets.

Some of the vegetables we left outside on purpose. The parsnips, turnips and carrots were so generous this year that we had absolutely no room for them in the refrigerator.  My freezer is packed with pint-sized containers of blanched and frozen carrots.  Turnips store fairly well, but we've already put up bags of them in the garage, which is now doubling as a cold-storage room until the spring thaw. So we left them in the ground, figuring that the soil would insulate them for a few weeks longer, and the cool to cold weather would slow their growth rate so that they wouldn't get much bigger.

The red cabbage is slowly forming into heads, and the cauliflower finally allowed us to peek inside the leathery green leaves to find the edible head. The broccoli continues to surprise us; the last stalks left in the garden not only produced another lovely head of broccoli, but it was so tender, so sweet, that even the broccoli haters in the household looked hopeful when I brought the bowl to the table.

Now is also the time for planning. The Parks catalog arrived, and I have already dog-eared several pages, including a page of asparagus for the new asparagus bed we are planting next year, and the sweet potatoes, which will once again have pride of place in the garden.  I sat down at the computer over the weekend and mapped out the vegetable beds, printing a blank form so that I can pencil in each variety.

Next year, my goal is not only to share with you the pictures, the progress, but also what I planted, when I planted it, and the yield.

In the meantime, as we start thinking about putting up the Christmas tree and writing out the Christmas cards, the Parks catalog beckons. I wonder if Santa can fit a few seed packets onto his sleigh?

Broccoli and Cabbage from the Organic Vegetable Garden

We picked the last of the broccoli and cabbage from the organic vegetable garden this past Thursday. Broccoli grown without any chemicals, without any pesticides, and left until after a frost or two has touched it is an incredible taste experience. It's sweet. I know that's hard to believe, especially for you broccoli haters out there (and you're numbers are legion.)  But it's true. Even my husband and his dad, who really don't like broccoli that much, perk up when they see me bring the bowl to the table now.

"Is that garden stuff or store stuff?" they ask me, spoon poised midway between bowl and plate with one lonely floret perched aboard.

"Garden."

"Good."  The spoon dips faster and faster into the bowl, and a big pile of broccoli moves onto the plate.

Organic cabbage, nearly perfect.

The cabbage this year was an interesting experiment. One beautiful head (shown here) is nearly perfect, without insect marks, blemish or issues. It's a tight head of cabbage, crunchy and sweet.  We have red cabbage growing too but it hasn't made a head yet. I don't know much about red cabbage and this is the first year that I am growing it, so I have left it alone.  If it doesn't do anything over the next few weeks I will harvest what we have and cook it to see what it tastes like.

We picked buckets more of turnips, beautiful globes with just the right tint of regal purple near the top like trim on a king's robes, and parsnips, long and gnarly, all resting in buckets in the garage. Since the garage is chillier than the basement right now, we're just storing them there until it gets below freezing consistently.  Then we will move them to the basement area where I've stored the potatoes.

Foreground; carrots and parsnip.  In the background: turnips and second sowing of carrots.

Late harvest: broccoli, cabbage, and a surprise find of dill that self seeded among the parsnips.

This year's gardening experiment were wonderful and helped me learn even more about what to grow.  We're busy planning for next year's vegetable garden. The herbs are going to be dug up and moved out into the unprotected portion of the yard - the space not fenced in.  They're really taking up a valuable garden bed, and we moved the mint without any issue. There's plenty now growing along the edge of the woods at the bottom of the orchard for our needs.  The oregano will meet a similar fate. It also grows like a weed, so come spring I will move the oregano, the remaining catnip plant, the sage and the lemon balm out of the valuable raised bed and into the open area. If the deer nibble it, so be it.

Next, we hope to add an asparagus bed.  I want an entire bed of asparagus. If I get a pressure canning device, I will continue to grow green beans.  I'm not going to grow the heirloom beans. They really weren't all that wonderful and the production was below expectations.  I will grow sweet potatoes again, and onions and I want to try leeks. I think the asparagus and leeks are going to be my big 'experiments' for 2012, but when the Parks and Burpee catalogs come in a few weeks.....I'll probably be enticed by something else.

To anyone reading this who is thinking about trying to grow organic vegetables - do it.  Don't wait and don't think you have to know everything. One of my pet peeves is that most gardening books make organic gardening seem like something esoteric, something difficult. They make it sound like you have to have a Ph.D. in chemistry and work all day long in the garden to get a single carrot.  Not so! Nature intended plants to grow organically! If you're just growing vegetables for your family, grow them organic. So what if a bug or two nibbles it?  You don't need the vegetables to live on - you're growing them to have fun, to supplement what you buy from the store. So do it.  Don't wait.  Grow your garden in 2012!

Rain drops on red cabbage leaves.  Nature creates beauty wherever I look.

First Harvest of Parsnips

Last night for Sunday dinner, I made a roast chicken and three vegetables from the garden - fresh baked potatoes, broccoli, and parsnips. Parsnips are a new vegetable for my family. Many years ago, I bought some at the store - a small bag, about 1 pound, for $2.99. I made a recipe out of Cooking Light. My family made faces and complained about the bitter taste. I figured that parsnips were one of those vegetables they just didn't like, and to tell you the truth, I didn't much like them either.

A short while after my failed parsnip experiment, I was away on a business trip at a large conference. It was one of those conferences where dinner is served in a hotel ballroom at round tables seating exactly 8 people. Everyone orders the rubber chicken, the burned steak, or the soggy fish, although of course they don't call it that. I ordered the rubber chicken and out it came from the kitchen served with whipped mashed potatoes and parsnips.  The best part of that meal (aside from the chocolate cups filled with vanilla cream as the desert) were the parsnips. The chef had cut them into matchsticks and sauteed them in butter. They were crunchy and sweet, with just a hint of zip.  I fell in love. I could easily have eaten an entire plate of just the parsnips and skipped the bouncy chewy chicken.

Reading about their growth and cultivation, I decided to grow them here at Seven Oaks this past year as part of my annual vegetable gardening experiments. Each year I choose a few new vegetables to try: this year, the experiment include horseradish (still underway), heirloom beans (not worth the effort), potatoes (lots of work but valuable) and parsnips.  Among the experiments, the parsnips were the very last to harvest, but worth the wait.

Parsnips always conjure up a musty image in my mind of a Victorian grandmotherly type in a long gray dress in a dusty house while a Victrola plays somewhere in the background. They really aren't in fashion, are they?  Kind of like the humble turnip, or a cabbage.  Perhaps in the south they are more popular than in the north where I grew up, but they do have that fussy-mussy, old fashioned aura about them.  Which is a shame, because not only do they taste good, they're good for you, and at least for me, they were easy to grow.

First off, parsnips need a long growing season. Depending on the variety, that's over 100 days, sometimes 120 days or more. I planted the seeds in April and haven't touched them since.  Every book and article I have read on growing parsnips states that you must leave them in the ground until the first frost; the frost transforms the root starches into sugars and makes them sweeter.

The first frosts occurred the last week of October, but we haven't had a meal where parsnips seemed like a tasty side dish - until last night.  I made the roast chicken, baked a few garden potatoes, and steamed some fresh garden broccoli as the side dish. Then I pulled out my favorite cookbook out all, the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, which provides how to information to cook all the basic vegetables, along with a few recipes to make them interesting. It was from Fanny Farmer that I learned how to cook beets and make Harvard beets, and once again the cookbook did not disappoint me on the parsnips.  Peeled, sliced, and boiled; then sauteed with butter, salt and pepper. I gave each family member a little spoonful but only told my husband what they were. If I serve him mystery food he gets annoyed with me.

The consensus was that they were delicious, and they were! The consistency was something between a potato and a carrot. The first taste was a bit like a potato too, with an aftertaste like carrots, but with a hint of something spicy there too.

According to my research, parsnips are actually related to carrots.  One thing of interest is that the ancient Greeks and Romans liked them a lot! Supposedly the foliage can exude a chemical that can burn the skin. Since I always garden wearing gloves, that's not a problem, but the books recommend harvesting them carefully while wearing long-sleeved clothing and gloves. 

I looked up parsnips last night and found that they are very good for you; high in fiber, potassium and vitamin C.  Given that they required no cultivation whatsoever, and weren't bothered by a single insect pest, I will probably plant a few again next year. All I did was sow the seeds, thin them out a little,  and nature did the rest.  What can be easier?

Parsnips - one experiment that worked this year!