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....

Growing Onions from Sets

Onion harvest today

 
Growing onions from sets and learning how to grow onions was one of the easiest gardening projects I've undertaken this year at Seven Oaks. I've grown onions off and on since moving to Virginia, but never had much luck. We'd get a few but not many.  This year, we had a good harvest. 

I started by buying the Park Seed Catalog "Short Day" (Southern) Onion Plant Sampler. It was a $14.95 investment, but well worth it, because it gave me three different kinds of onions to grow, and they were supposed to be suited for my Virginia climate. I think that was one of the keys to successfully growing onions from sets this year - I started with varieties that from my research, should and did grow well in my gardening zone and climate.

We did get the soil tested this year and the result was that in all of the raised beds, the compost mixture we'd added was rather acidic. Some lime, applied according to the test results and recommendations, fixed that problem just fine. (Not only did the onions grow well, but I didn't have the same problem I've had each year with tomato blossom end rot.  Already we have harvested cherry tomatoes and one delicious "Early Girl" without any hint of blossom end rot. Seems like it was indeed a pH problem with the soil that was preventing the absorption of calcium.) You can get your soil tested at the local County Cooperative Extension office.  There is a fee, but it is worth paying it.  They can walk you through the proper steps for sampling your soil and help you understand the test results and recommendations.

We planted the onion sets in late March or early April, and then we added the soaker hoses.  The soaker hoses or drip irrigation seemed to be the deciding factor for all the vegetables this year.  We weren't just watering the tops of the plants with the sprinkler - we were dripping moisture to the roots, which is where the plant needs it.  And it is not just the time when you have the hose running that the vegetables get watered.  The water continues to drip for a good period of time after you shut off the hose.

All in all, I'm very happy with the harvest.  We used NO chemicals, no pesticides and no fertilizes other than the compost in the soil, and the onions are large and healthy. No signs of insects or diseases at all.  We have Red Creole, Texas Early White and Texas Supersweet (which are supposed to be the parents of the famous Vidalia onion) to try.  They are drying on the front porch now and will spend some time in the hot, dry garage.  Then I will transfer them to a half bushel basket for storage in the cellar pantry.

So for my $14.95 investment, this is what we achieved:

• $14.95 for the onion sets (starter plants)
• Harvest: about 20 - 25 lbs onions, organic, including "gourmet" Red Creole
• I found a price online of $3.99 per 3 lb bag for organic red onions, which seems about right.
• Doing the math....
• 24 lbs divided by 3 (estimating my harvest/3 lb bag) = 8 "bags"
• 8 "bags" of organic onions x $3.99 each = $31.92 worth of onions

So, give or take, I've got over $30 worth of onions from a $14.95 investment - about double my money, just by letting nature do her work and adding water when needed.

How can you beat that? Gardening is amazing.

Onions drying on the front porch after harvest.

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?

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.

Growing Your Own Organic Vegetables Saves Money

After a fun yet exhausting Sunday afternoon canning, my husband and I decided to tally up all the vegetables I had dried, canned and frozen this year - and put into the basement for storage.

All of these vegetables were grown using 100% organic gardening methods. I am estimating everything; please understand that this in not a scientific, mathematically accurate estimate. It's just an example to show you the amazing power of growing and preserving your own vegetables.


 The 2011 Tally 
(and there's more out in the garden, so I'm not finished yet)

• Carrots:  7  half pint jars pickled and canned;  6 containers of 1 1/2 pints each, frozen
• Peppers: 26 pint jars pickled and canned, 2 contains of 1 1/2 pints each, frozen
• Beets:  22 pints canned
• Dill pickles: 4 pints and 4 half pint jars canned
• Green beans: 2 contains of 1 1/2 pints each forzen
• Tomatoes: 4 bags of 24 tomatoes each, frozen
• Dried beans: approximately 1 pint, dried
• Potatoes: approximately 20 pounds grown and stored
• Onions: approximately 5 pounds grown and stores

That's the 2011 tally to date, as of October 1.  Despite the cool night time temperatures, I still have peppers in the garden, tomatoes, winter squash (acorn and butternut), plenty of carrots, parsnips, turnips and eggplant left.

We did a little experiment.  We added up the cost of buying in all of those vegetables if we purchased the canned or frozen equivalent at the store. I know that prices vary drastically, and if you have coupons or there's a good sale going on that can change things. To make things simple, I estimated the value of a pint jar and a half pint jar the same.  Here is what we came up with in terms of the value of what's in the pantry, freezer and storage cellar today:

• Canned vegetables and pickles: estimated at $1 each = 63 jars = $63
• Frozen vegetables:  10 containters (I estimated the bags of tomatoes as 1 container each) = $10
• Potatoes: Estimated 5 lb bag at store, $3.99 each so 4 "bags" worth x $3.99 each = $15.96
• Onions: Estimated weight, about 1 bag of onions, $3.99 = $3.99
• Dried beans: One bag at the store is about $1.49

Total: $94.44


That estimate doesn't include all the fresh vegetables we have consumed since planting the garden this year and the potential cost savings there.

Now we looked at the expenses. We did NOT include the cost of the canning jars and freezer containers. Why? Because these things can be used year after year until they break, so there are an unknown number of times of use out of them. The only cost is replacement seal lids, which are $2 for a package of 12, and that's negligible. I also did not include costs of vinegar, sugar and spices used to pickle and can the food.

Seed costs:
Beets = $1.99
Green beans = $2.29
Cucumber seeds for pickles: $1.49
Dill herb seeds for pickles: $1.49
Heirloom bean seeds for drying: $4.99 (two packages)
Peppers:  four pack of plants, $1.79 bought from a local farmer, plus two seed packages at $1.49 each
Tomatoes: Two seed packages of $1.99 each
Carrots: Two seed packages, $1.49 each
Onion set: $2.99
Potatoes:  half a bag received at no cost from friends; $2.50 for bag of seed potatoes from local store
Total of seeds and starter plants: $24.50



Round up all these numbers, here's the bottom line. Again, these numbers omit the investment into the canning jars and the costs of ingredients such as vinegar, sugar and spices. I'm also rounding up and estimating a lot, but I think it makes my point:

An investment of $25 yielded for me $100 in organic vegetables.

No special equipment...after planting the vegetable seeds, the only time I spent is tying and staking tomatoes, thinning vegetable plants, and harvesting potatoes (which was more labor intensive than I'd thought it would be).  All of the vegetables were grown organically, so I am guessing that buying the organic equivalent at the store would be more expensive than the conventional brands.

Not only do I know precisely WHAT is in my food, I have grown it all less than 30 feet from my house in a backyard garden.  Instead of fossil fuels burned trucking it from California, Florida, and other parts of the country, by growing my own food I have reduced some of that burden from the environment.

You might not have the space that I do to grow vegetables. But you can really grow quite a lot in small spaces.  My dad grew many vegetables in a tiny area in our yard; when I moved to another house on Long Island, we had dense shade in the yard and only some direct sunshine onto a patio and deck, so I planted tomatoes, peppers and many other veggies in pots on the desk.  You CAN grow vegetables no matter where you are.

In the fall of 2008, I wrote on this blog about my first efforts at canning. I was so afraid to try it. I was afraid I would do it wrong and poison my family.  Now I feel confident with the hot water bath canner - so confident that I have asked for a pressure canner for Christmas!  With the pressure canner, I can can garden vegetables without pickling them.

We harvested our first fruit from the orchard this year - one pear, and about six peaches.  When we planted the fruit orchard trees in 2008,  we read that it might take up to 5 - 10 years, depending on the trees, before we saw some fruit. Once those trees begin producing abundantly, I will be able to dry and can that fruit too.

I was born and raised in the big city. I grew up on Long Island, and worked most of my career in New York City.  Canning was foreign to me. It was a skill only one generation removed; my grandmother canned her garden produce and canned sauces and soups, but she moved when I was 8 and died a few years later, and I never had the chance to learn from her.

As I lay down to sleep last night, it wasn't the thought of saving money that made me smile. It was the thought of self sufficiently. There is a deep, strong appeal to me of the thought that I am beholden to no one for me food. I can grow it and preserve it on my own. If at some point we decide to raise some chickens and other animals, we can reduce our dependency even further.  It's definitely a lifestyle choice, but if self-sufficient living appeals to you, I urge you to try whatever you can in your little corner of the world. When I lived in the equivalent of a big city, I grew vegetables in pots on the deck.  I started small with my canning projects and now I can can close to 20 pints in one day and feel confident about it.  Each time you try something, you'll learn.

Yes, you CAN!

A Full Pantry of Fresh Organic Vegetables

Let me see a show of hands. (Peering out at my reading audience...).

How many people feel a great sense of satisfaction when the pantry is full of fresh, home-grown organic vegetables? When you see rows of canning jars neatly lined up and labeled, or a freezer full of labeled bags of fresh produce? A kitchen table groaning under the weight of garden produce?

Isn't it a great feeling to know where your food is coming from?

Not everyone agrees with me. I've met people who think it's stupid to grow your own food. They think, "Why would I want to do that when I can just run to the supermarket and buy whatever I want when I want it?"

They have a point. Right now we are picking pounds of tomatoes a day, peppers, eggplants...and some green beans.  The onions and potatoes are harvested, dried and stored in the cool dark basement. I've got 16 pints of canned beets and another two dozen or more beets still in the garden. Today I'm stopping off to buy some freezer containers for carrots because I have a huge garden bed full of them, and I plan to plant more seeds today to try to get another crop in this fall.

I've been eating tomato sandwiches and tomato salads for lunch every day, followed by squash and eggplant at dinner.  So I can see their point.

Yet I still feel quite a sense of accomplishment when I walk into the kitchen and see my giant metal chef's mixing bowl, pictured here, filled with vegetables.  I actually have two big bowls now on the kitchen counter filled with organic vegetables from the garden. In the pantry, the current tally is 16 pints of pickled beets, 8 half pints of dill pickles, and 6 pints of pickled peppers. Today I will add more peppers to the mix, since they don't freeze well for me. In the basement, I have over 30 pounds of potatoes stored, enough onions for the winter, and garlic from the crop almost two years ago, plus sweet potatoes leftover and still keeping nicely from last fall's harvest.

Last year, I calculated that the sweet potatoes alone saved me a bundle of money. I spent $16 on the sweet potato "slips" or plants and the harvest was well over 70-80 pounds of sweet potatoes; at $1 a pound, the very cheapest you'll find them, that's still considerable savings.  This year, the potatoes alone are making me sit up and notice the money-saving benefits.  I spent $2.50 on the seed potatoes and got a bag of Yukon Gold seed potatoes from our friends, Mel and Joan. I have about 30 pounds of potatoes now stored in the basement. How much would that cost me? Well right now potatoes are going for $5.99 for a 10 pound sack. You can do the math...

Beets are $1 a can, and a can is less than a pint.  My 16 pints of pickled beets are probably worth $16 - $32, yet I spent $1.79 on the seed package.

So there you have it.  Oh and another benefit? The other day I was wearing a sleeveless top for the first time in years. It was really hot and I was wearing a tank top and shorts. I was sitting in the living room reading a book, and the television screen was off. It caught my reflection and I realized that I had actually developed some muscles in my arms! I have definition in my upper arms now thanks to lifting, digging, pushing a wheelbarrow and a lawn mower and carrying those heavy pails of gravel.  I have also lost a little weight since May, thanks to the extra walks I have been taking as well as all the gardening. Oh, and those tomatoes for lunch every day!

Truly, can you beat gardening? The benefits are amazing.  And every time I walk into my kitchen and see the fresh vegetables, I feel all happy inside.

Second Vegetable Planting

Did you know you can grow a second harvest of many vegetables? I just learned about this and am excited to plant beans again and make use of the now-empty garden space where the potatoes, lettuce, and beets used to be.  After dinner tonight, I plan to head out into the vegetable garden and dig through the remaining dirt in the potato beds to find any remaining Yukon golds. They are so delicious and tender that we have been enjoying the fingerling potatoes for many meals. I'm not a fan of eating potato skins, but when they're grown 100% organic and I know exactly what is in the soil, I even ate the skins and boy were they good. I plan to plant more Dutch brown and Jacob's Cattle heirloom beans. I've been collecting the seeds, but the yield is disappointing. I was too tentative in my planting this spring. After planting way too many green beans in 2009, I was hesitant to plant more than half a bed of each, but honestly when you're growing heirloom beans to dry and use the seeds, it's a different thing altogether. Green beans have to blanched, frozen and/or canned (if I had a pressure canner, which I don't); heirloom beans are solar dried and shelled, and that's it.

Now according to the Cooperative Extension sheet I printed out last night, my fall veggie should go in around August 20th.  I'll probably push that planting off a few more days, but I've already got turnip, Brussels sprouts and broccoli seeds waiting.  Maybe I will have better luck this year and not have to fight the worms and moths for them - wouldn't it be nice to have that last harvest, crisped by the frost, just in time for Thanksgiving?

Please enjoy my latest article today for Main Line Gardening, written on this very topic and with more instructions on how you can get a second harvest from the garden.

Read: Vegetable Gardening-Second Planting.

Homesteading and Self Sufficient Living

Tomatoes and green beans from the garden

 Last night I tackled some vegetable garden chores and reflected on both homesteading and self sufficient living.  I pulled up the insect infested squash, cucumbers and zucchini; they're ruined, but I do have a bowl full of cucumbers begging to be made into cold cucumber soup, a delicacy I love each summer.

Dried beans

 
I harvested dried bean pods and thought about what it would take to grow food for completely self sufficient living. I planted one 4' x 8' bed with beans solely for drying - Dutch Brown and Jacob's Cattle.  Dutch browns make baked beans, and Jacob's Cattle supposedly keep very well.  After all my hard work, this is what I have so far -


Maybe enough for one meal?






Then I dug spuds. Potatoes. This is the first year I've grown potatoes. After a spring of plentiful rain, the drought and heat came.  I grew Yukon Gold potatoes from seed potatoes my neighbor Mel gave me and Russets from a $2.50 bag purchased at the local discount store, Roses.


Here's what I harvested so far - about 10 pounds of potatoes. The biggest ones are the size of baseballs, but most are the size of ping pong balls.  There are about a dozen plants still green and living in the potato bed, so I left them there.

First potato harvest on drying tray

I harvested herbs last night and placed a tray of catnip in the garage to dry. Pierre doesn't like fresh nip, so it's safe until dried. Then all bets are off.

Herbs solar drying

Here's what I realized from spending two hours last night harvesting and shelling beans, harvesting onions and cucumbers, weeding vegetable beds, throwing tomatoes with blossom end rot over the fence, pulling up bolted lettuce, and digging potatoes until it got too dark to see: homesteading is hard work.

Yeah, I know: "Duh!"  But seriously, did you ever consider as you pile your shopping cart full of Bush's baked beans, canned peas, plastic-wrapped loaves of bread and cartons of milk the sheer WORK that went into producing the food you buy so casually?

Self sufficient living sounds great on paper, but what do you do about droughts? I have a garden sprinkler on a tripod, but I don't like tapping into the household well too much. When you realize that if you drain your well you're going to have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for a new one, not to mention dig up your lawn and garden, you treat water like the precious commodity it is.

Vegetables pickled for the pantry

I look at the beans and think about our pioneer ancestors for whom homesteading was a necessity, not a luxury.  Those dried beans formed the winter staple diet. The beets I pickled and canned last month, the peppers waiting to be canned along with things like the onions and potatoes dug last night, the beans drying in the kitchen - if I were truly homesteading, I would have to survive on this. Those herbs that looks so picturesque in the garden would be my medicine; the flowers I love to look at would supply medicine too, the Echinacea roots. The peaches in the orchard would need to be canned, dried, preserved to feed my family.

Not just a pretty face; if I were homesteading, this would be my medicine.

Could I actually feed my family from the garden like a pioneer woman? Yes, I could...but it's true; our ancestors did indeed work sunup to sundown. Think about tending the gardening, harvest, drying, canning, preserving the food. Think about sewing clothing and cleaning the house by hand.  Think about it.

Peach in our orchard today. The mesh keeps deer from the lower part of the tree.

As I consider the work needed to produce the scant vegetables, fruits and herbs I've managed to grow this year, I wonder how difficult true homesteading is in reality. We play at self sufficient living; we play at homesteading. Gardening is a hobby, albeit a passionate hobby for me.  What if I had to live only on what I could grow? What then?

Planting Peas and the Folklore of Peas

Plant your peas on St. Patrick's Day....longtime readers of my blog know that every year, St. Patrick's Day reminds me not of the good Irish saint nor of Irish things but of Mr. Hoffman, my next door neighbor in Floral Park, who taught me so much about gardening when I was a little girl. He was like an adopted grandfather for me and on St. Patrick's Day, I'd race home from school to find him ankle deep in his old workboots in the muddy field next to his garage where he grew so many vegetables.  He'd hold a paper sack in his left hand and neatly drop peas into long furrows in the mud. Weeks later he would knock on our back door and hand my mother a giant pot of pea pods.  I'd sit on the back stoop and shell the peas, pushing the sweet tender peas into a collander so that my mother could rinse them.

One year, my elderly grandma who lived with us tried to cook the fresh peas in the pressure cooker. I do not remember this but my father told the story over and over again. Poor grandma either shouldn't have cooked peas in the pressure cooker or she did something wrong because the steam blew the lid right off the pot, spraying green pea mush all over the kitchen!  Took days to clean it out and I think my dad had to repaint the ceiling!

I write regularly for MainLine Gardening, a lovely upscale garden center and design service out of the Philadelphia area. Today's essay is all about peas - from my memories of Mr. Hoffman to some tidbits and folklore I picked up by searching online. The photo today is stock photography from Morguefile.com, alas not from my garden. I have little baby onions peeking up through the soil today but I did not grow peas this year.  Sorry, Mr. Hoffman.

Enjoy the essay - Planting Peas on St. Patrick's Day.

A New Use for Kale

I like kale.  I really do. Which made it all the worse when I found a large package of it at a super low price at Kroger, the local supermarket, and brought it home in January.  And then it sat in my crisper drawer...and sat...and I forgot it was there. Until the smell began.  Faint at first. Then growing ever more persistent until I was forced to open the crisper drawer and discovered..."adventures in indoor composting."

So my latest use for kale; direct composting!

My tomatoes each year so far in the Virginia garden have blossom end rot.  That's usually a signal that calcium and other trace minerals are lacking from the soil.  Well, kale is high in calcium, right?

So I dug a big trench down the center of the raised bed, held my nose, opened the huge bag of now inedible kale, and poured that whole mess right into the vegetable bed.  A quick scoop of soil later and the kale was buried in an unmarked grave.  And I, hopefully, have discovered a new use for kale - food for my tomatoes!

Gardeners Sharing Their Harvest With Food Pantries

Two years ago I was introduced to the group Ample Harvest, a non profit that helps connect gardeners with food pantries nationwide. The idea is simple: Donate your excess garden produce to a food kitchen in your community. Find them through the Ample Harvest program. It's a simple idea, but the simple ideas are usually the best, don't you think?

Click the link below to learn more:

Gardeners Sharing Their Harvest With Food Pantries using AmpleHarvest.org

With the economy still struggling and unemployment high, more families now than ever need food assistance. You can certainly donate money. But there's something special about donating actual home grown vegetables.

Of Tomato Plants and Old Bedsheets

After nearly 10 days straight of staring longingly at my garden as it basked in the hot, humid July weather while I waited in air conditioned comfort, I couldn't stand it anymore. Heat wave or no heat wave, I needed to get out and do something. I needed to get my hands dirty, to feel the earth gritty under my fingernails and smell the pungent scent of tomato vines, cut grass, and marigolds. With the shed key in hand, I unlocked the shed, scaring a gigantic skink that had somehow evaded Pierre's expert hunting skills.  I rolled out the old-fashioned push mower and mowed the grass among the raised vegetable beds. I could barely get the lawn mower around the tomato beds. Large stalks flopped out of the beds, tomatoes dangling precipitously near the mower blades. I headed back to the house and without thinking much of it, grabbed an old sheet from a pile we have folded in a box in the basement to use as rags and drop cloths.  I settled onto a chair on the front porch with Shadow and Pierre by my feet, a little breeze tinkling the wind chimes, and an old sheet to cut up to use as ties for the tomato plants.

Someone had already hacked off a corner of the old sheet, probably to use as a rag. I smoothed it out on my lap. It felt cool and a scent from long ago wafted up. With a start, I recognized the scent, the linen closet from my childhood home, detergent and soap.  I looked more closely at the green and pink plaid sheet. It was from my parent's linen closet.

I remembered that sheet.  I remember peering down at my sleeping mother, the sheet pulled up to her chin, whispering, "Mommy, I don't feel good. I want to stay home from school."

I remember that sheet flapping on the back laundry line. My mother had a peculiar habit of whistling through her teeth, the sound even more strange when she had a bunch of clothespins in her mouth while she pinned sheets to the line.

I remember countless times folding that pink and green plaid sheet with my dad, helping him neaten up the linen closet after my mom died. He was actually better at folding sheets than I was, but somehow when he pushed them onto the narrow shelf in the linen closet they'd all bunch up and some would fall off and on top of the vacuum cleaner and we'd have to start again.

How old is this sheet? I wondered as I held it out to judge how long a strip of cloth I could get out of it. Cloth strips are the best for tying up tomato plants. My grandma taught me that.

The pink and plaid had spots so worn I could see through it, the cotton polished like velvet.  If I was whispering to my mother that I didn't feel well and didn't want to go to school, and the sheet looked new...I was probably 9, 10 years old? Which would make the sheet at least 20, 30 years old.

It is on its last bit of life, that pink and plaid sheet.  I tied up the tomato plants last night with parts of the old sheet.  Strips flutter from the recycled tobacco sticks my neighbors gave me to use as tomato stakes. The long, sturdy, solid cloth connects me to my past, my present garden to the past that nurtured me. Like the tomato plants setting down deep roots, it reminds me of the place that helped me set down my deep roots, roots strong, straight and true. 

Garlic Harvest Time

The first of the garlic harvest is in and my front porch smells like an Italian restaurant. This is the first time I have ever grown garlic. No one that I knew back on Long Island grew it, maybe because none of our root vegetables ever came out nice. With the raised beds I do very well with root vegetables so I gratefully accepted a bag of cloves to plant last fall from my neighbor Patty.  She told me the folklore of planting garlic: Plant on Columbus Day (around October 12) and harvest on July 4th.  Well it is about two weeks early for the harvest, but the tops are brown and falling over which is a sure sign it's time to pull them up. I had to use my hoe to dig into the ground a bit to get the bulbs out hidden under the earth. Some of the tops had already rotted off. After pulling them out, I put them in a big bucket, then sat on the porch and cut off the tops and bottoms. I used a stiff bristle scrub brush to scrub off the outer layer of skin on the bulbs, which also gets the dirt off.  Then I put them in my trusty roasting pan and left the whole batch out on the front porch to dry. With today's high temperatures expected near 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it should help them dry out. I have mesh bags in the garage saved from the fall tulip and daffodil planting and I will store the batch of cloves to plant this fall in one of the bags.

Garlic has such a long history and so many myths around it that I decided just for fun to look up some of the folklore.  All of the information below comes from a website called American Folklore.

Did you know that...

• The ancient Egyptians swore oaths on garlic much the same way we swear an oath on the Bible. A group in lower Egypt actually worshiped garlic bulbs.
• Egyptian slaves were given a clove of garlic a day to eat. The belief was that it would ward off illness, which isn't so far fetched after all. Today, a lot of research shows that garlic lowers blood cholesterol and  enhances immune system health.
• When King Tut's tomb was excavated, archeologists found cloves of garlic scattered around the tomb.
• The Prophet Mohammed equates garlic with Satan. When the Devil was cast out of Eden,  his left foot touched the earth, and garlic sprang up, while onion emerged from the footprint of his right foot.
• Garlic has always been thought to keep evil spirits away, and in many cultures too. Koreans ate garlic before going through mountain passes to keep both tigers and evil spirits away. The Greeks placed garlic at the crossroads for Hecate, who would also keep evil spirits away.  Greek midwives hung cloves of garlic in birthing chambers to keep evil spirits away from mother and child.  And of course, garlic wards off vampires.

So I am safe. With that big tray of garlic on the front porch, an evil spirit dares not cross my threshold today!

June in the Vegetable Garden

I spent the morning tending my vegetable garden. Nothing lifts my mood more than gardening, and this morning as I weeded among the tomatoes, the scent of rich earth and pungent tomato leaves brought my back to my grandma's side, circa 1970-something, as she tended her tomato plants in the backyard garden in Bellerose. I could even hear in my mind the rustle of her navy blue house dress and see her feet in their tan orthopedic shoes as she bent, sunlight glinting off her cat's eye glasses, to tie up her tomatoes with rags.  Many things trigger memories of my grandmother; gardening and cooking, mostly.  It's nice to imagine her at my side when I'm doing these homey chores.

I weeded each bed and was pleased at most of the vegetables' progress. The sweet potatoes made me smile - those sickly looking twigs are now robust vines. I took some closeup pictures because I could hardly believe that these were the same spindly-looking things I got in the mail!  They are really taking off with lots of robust new growth. The tomatoes look wonderful too, with lots of flowers, and so does the zucchini. One of my favorite summer dishes of all time is simply sauteed zucchini with onions in a little butter or olive oil. I've been known to eat that for days on end in the summer.  And I have a great zucchini bread recipe, which I'll post to my sister blog, Recipes from the Garden.  Zucchini bread is hard to get just right - some recipes, the bread comes out like a brick, while others it's so moist it doesn't bake. Not my recipe.  Stay tuned....

The corn perked up after getting knocked down by the rain, and the cantaloupes and watermelons are really going strong.  I have one volunteer watermelon, a baby Moon & Stars, that is growing next to the seeds I planted this year, a giant variety named Congo. Does anyone know if they cross pollinate? I don't want horrible watermelon and I could pull up Moon & Stars.....someone let me know if you think they'll cross pollinate!

Plenty of cucumbers and my butternut squash looks fine. I did have one plant so wilted it was a bit odd, so I pulled it out in case it's got a virus or something.  Carrots are doing fine - I pulled one out by accident and was surprised at how far along they are. I can harvest them in about a month. Same with the garlic; the bulbs really will be ready by the 4th of July, just as the old wives' tale says (plant on Columbus Day, harvest on 4th of July - check, it really works!).

Peas - got my first pea pods today!  It's a pitiful harvest but I'm going to eat my raw peas for lunch. All six of them (hee hee).

The herbs got hacked back to a reasonable height.  The only bed where nothing is growing well are the onions and beets.  Last year I had abundant beets and onions. This year, tiny, sickly looking beet plants and really awful onions.  Not sure why.

We had some excitement too while we worked. As I weeded, John used the edger to trim the tall grass the push mower can't get between the raised beds. We had Shadow out with us and Pierre. He's really an indoor cat, but he loves being outside, so we allow him supervised jaunts outdoors. Suddenly John let out a yell, put down the edger and went running back towards the house. Pierre had been sunning himself on the back deck.  As Pierre raced around towards the front porch, I saw something big and black hanging out of his mouth.  We both took off in hot pursuit with Shadow eagerly at our heels. She loves nothing more than to herd Pierre, proving you CAN herd cats if you really put your mind to it.

Pierre hid behind the hydrangea at the front of the house but not before we saw him release a large skink. I think it is a type of lizard. It was black with gold racing stripes.  And no tail! Poor guy lost his tail somewhere. We have a mesh screen to keep wildlife out from under the porch, but the holes in the mesh are large enough so that Mr. Skink slunk under the porch. Poor Pierre....mewing and struggling, voicing his protests, we brought him back into the house.  He's been pacing by the front door ever since, hoping for the chance to get back for round two with Mr. Skink.

Happy gardening Saturday!

Vegetable Gardening Saturday

I don't normally get excited over power tools. I know some gardeners who love their rototillers, for example, or who wax poetic about their John Deere riding mowers. We do have a lovely riding mower to cut the lawn - after all, with over 2 acres of grass, you need something pretty hefty to mow the lawn.

But back in the vegetable garden, I've got narrow pathways among the raised beds, and it's all fenced in. Last year it was a mess. I mean a total, awful mess. Tall grass, weeds, and brambles retaking the pathways. I felt like I spent half my summer out there with a string trimmer just trying to hack back the weeds. We have an electric string trimmer too and the battery lasts a whopping 10 minutes. It's supposed to last 30. So much for going green. I went more blue, as in my language cussin that thing!

Originally we were going to put down gravel between the pathways, but I warned John last year that I thought gravel would reflect too much heat back to the vegetable beds. At first he didn't agree, but earlier this spring, he said the same thing to me - "Let's leave the pathways as grass." So I knew we would keep the grass.

We went to Lowe's and found what I wanted. A nice, old-fashioned push mower, the kind I used to use as a kid in Floral Park cutting Mrs. Anderson's grass for $2 a week. All you do is push it and voila - cut grass. It's perfect for the pathways and it mulches the grass clippings back into the paths, or I can rake them up, as I did yesterday, and compost them.

We spent about two hours yesterday fixing up the vegetable garden. The radishes are up and I think the lettuce seeds, but no sign of the peas. The onions look like they're taking well, and the garlic is thriving.

Mrs. Moleworthy, as we have now dubbed the garden mole, appears to be concentrating her tunnels now on the herb beds. From people's comments to me I think she won't harm anything so I am leaving her alone. My next project is to paint a little sign for Mrs. Moleworthy's garden. I think she has moved in for good. As an organic gardener, I look forward to any way that nature has for keeping the insects down to a minimum. I've chosen to view Mrs. Moleworthy's presence as a gift, for moles are supposed to eat insect larvae, grubs and all the nasties that attack my plants. As long as she tunnels away from the root crops and doesn't disturb anything, I will be her landlord, and hopefully she will be a good tenant.

Planting Peas on Saint Patrick's Day

Happy Saint Patrick's day! I don't have a drop of Irish blood in me, but I am Catholic, so any day when secular folks decide to mention a saint is okay by me. I just wish the celebrations didn't involve so much drinking.



When I worked in New York City, us native New Yorkers snidely called this day "amateur day". There are two "amateur days" in New York City: New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day. Meaning: all the amateur drinkers come out to play and get in trouble. I tell you, I don't miss the commute on St. Patrick's Day. Not a year went by when someone didn't throw up near me or spill sticky alcoholic goo on my briefcase. I used to arrive home stinking like a gin mill. Now is that the way to honor Ireland's patron saint, I ask you?!


Seriously though, today holds a special place in my heart for other reasons. The phrase "plant peas on St. Patrick's Day" may be familiar to you. Mr. Hoffman, my next door neighbor in Floral Park, taught it to me. On St. Patrick's Day I'd rush home from school. Mr. Hoffman would be tending his vegetable garden. He had purchased one house lot and half of the next lot, and on the half lot he kept a vegetable garden. By New York City standards it was huge, and of course I was small, so it looked even bigger. He grew rhubarb, strawberries and sweet corn; green beans, spinach, tomatoes, and of course, peas. (For those who grew up with me in Floral Park and also attended Our Lady of Victory Church, you knew Mr. Hoffman...he was the sextant there for many years). (What the heck is a sextant? Here's the definition. It's basically a church officer who carries the keys and takes care of the building. You'd see Mr H running around with the wine and vessels before Sunday Mass, keys jingling...he'd open the choir loft up for me before Mrs. Cook got there....he was always opening and closing those big stained glass windows at OLV).


He'd wait until I got home from school, then he'd hand me a brown paper sack of peas. Together we'd walk down the row of moist and freshly turned earth and place peas in the furrow. He'dplace stakes along the row and string some twine for support. Weeks later, he'd call me over to shuck peas. There is nothing that tastes better than a pea just picked from the vine; the sweetness of a raw pea will make your mouth water.


I found a New York Times article that perfectly captures my childhood experience - this lady also knew the beauty of a freshly picked pea!


Mr. Hoffman grew up on a farm in Elmont, Queens. He was from a family called the Rottkamps that had lived on Long Island since Colonial Times. The farm was near what is now Belmont Race Track; in his day, he said, it stretched all along Elmont Road. My dad would point our strip malls and 7-11's and say "This is where Mr. Hoffman's parent's farm was" and I'd nod, but I'd never really pictured it as farm. It was always concrete and stores when I was little.


My dad was an avid gardener, and my grandma had a wonderful European-style kitchen garden that my dad had designed and built for her as a Mother's Day present. But leaping over the tiny hedge separating our driveway from Mr. Hoffman's driveway...picking mint from the herbs growing next to his patio and crushing them between my fingers....and taking armloads of lilacs to school for May Crowning from the bushes growing against his garage are my fondest memories.


And pansies. He'd give me pansy plants every spring from his own garden, lovingly grown from seed.


Today's photos....Mr. Hoffman's house. I loved taking pictures of houses when I was a kid. I think I was obsessed with home and garden even then! And May was and is my favorite month, when all the world is abloom. The second photo is me - yes, mini me, age 5 - tending the pansy plants from Mr. Hoffman.

Here's the eerie thing about these pictures. My sister found the one of my planting pansies in my mom's photo album and sent it to me. My mom wrote the date on the back: May 12, 197 - something (ha, you think I'm going to tell you the year?). I snapped the photo of Mr. Hoffman's house when I was in high school. I took lots of photos of houses around Floral Park that year so I'd always remember them. I don't know why I did it, but I'm glad I did.


Guess the date on Mr H's photo?

May 12.


I absolutely love it when things like that happen!


Today, I'm planting not only peas (received from the folks at Hometown Garden seeds; thank you) but also my sweet peas, those heavenly old-fashioned flowers.

God bless you, Mr. Hoffman. I miss you. You've been gone from this earth for a long time, but you live every time I plant a pansy or plant peas on St. Patrick's Day.

The Catnip that Ate the Carrots

I'd always wanted to grow catnip.

Now I know better.

Innocent little me. I thought I'd grow a few plants, harvest some organic nip for Pierre, and that would be the end of it.

The catnip had other ideas.

I planted three plants in the herb bed, but they looked so small....I planted three more in root vegetable bed, next to the carrots. I'd read somewhere that catnip repels pests from carrots.

And it grew. And grew. And grew.

On Sunday, Hubby asked me to help him with some work outside. We hauled cartload after cartload of compost out to the back lawn, and Hubby sprinkled compost on the bare patches of lawn, then seeded. He asked me if I wanted help pulling up the last of the dead pepper plants in the vegetable garden, so off we went.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to a huge silvery green bush that spilled out of the raised bed and onto the pathway.

"Catnip."

I eyed it. It sneered back at me. It was time for battle.

The catnip had grown. Three tiny plants in each bed had turned monstrous, tentacles reaching into every other herb, swallowing them whole. I took my spade. I whacked. I struggled. I removed four plants, leaving two that I trimmed back to the crowns.

And there among the bed...carrots. Another dozen carrots. Spindly and weak to be sure, but growing all year in the shade of the catnip.

I'm told carrots are all the sweeter from the frost. They're going to be all the sweeter because I wrestled them away from the catnip that ate the carrots!

November Garden Surprises

Back on Long Island, the November garden was a dreary mass of matted oak and maple leaves and the occasional surprise burst of orange from a marigold that had somehow escaped the frosts. It's different here in south central Virginia. Although we'd had some cold nights and one good, rip roaring frost (27 degrees F), the days zoom back in the 60's and '70s. The rolling hills and sheltered spots also seem to produce amazing micro climates. I've got cool weather annuals like my snapdragons just fine and dandy back by the garden shed, but a few were nipped in the flower garden next to the driveway. Ditto for the petunias; they're still blooming next to the garage, but just green out in the flower garden.

And the vegetable garden never ceases to offer surprises. The garlic is doing well, sending up robust shoots that are making my mouth water with thoughts of Italian recipes to make next year, but so is the Chard. Not unexpected, but it's rapidly overtaking the bed again. The spinach struggled along, strangely so, since I expected it to be more vigorous, but the biggest surprise has been the calendula. It's an herb whose flowers are used for skin balms. I looked out the kitchen window this morning and saw some orange peeking out from behind the catnip. And there were new calendula blossoms on a plant I thought was dead. The picture today is my little bed of calendula. I harvested the blossoms, and have them in a Mason jar next to my lavender; both will come in handy this winter.

I'm loathe to dig up anything right now. Plants that look dead revive under a few days of warmth and rain, and plants that "should", according to the garden books, be dug up and discarded are still going strong, so I'm just leaving everything alone and enjoying the long slide into winter.

Random Bits & 20 Pounds of Carrots

Random bits of what I've been up to this weekend.

Picked the rest of the organic carrots. We've grown about 20 pounds or more from a 99 cent package of seeds from Lowe's. The carrots are amazing...sweet, straight (for the most part) and just yummy. I planted the seeds and did nothing else the entire growing season. Just let the carrots alone. I did plant catnip heavily in the area, which may have helped keep the bugs at bay. The carrot patch was 4' x 4' and we grew over 20 pounds without one single pesticide, chemical fertilizer, or special anything. I will do another post on the specifics of growing these yummy organic carrots later this week.




Loved this carrot. It's perfectly braided. It just grew that way. Leave it to a gardener to take pictures of a crazy carrot!







Now what to DO with all those carrots? Five pounds are in the fridge. Later today I will blanch and freeze more. To blanch the carrots, cut off the ends, peel, and slice into coins. Boil water and make sure it is in a good rolling boil. Fill a metal pan with ice cold water and ice. Place the carrots into the boiling hot water and boil for 2-3 minutes. Drain and quickly immerse them into the ice water. I leave them there a few minutes, drain, pat with paper towels, and pour into zip-lock freezer bags. Label, date and DONE - they pop right into the chest freezer in the pantry.


I went around the garden and checked on all the volunteer seedlings. There are over a dozen buddleia (Butterfly Bush) babies. A few I will dig up and move, and some will be potted up as gifts for my gardening neighbors. I took these photos in anticipation of another blog post this week on Garden Volunteers, Part 2. This silly white petunia is growing in the gravel in my driveway. What's astonishing is that I didn't plant ANY white petunias this year - this is a seed from last year's bed of petunias, grown about five feet further down the driveway, that somehow blew upwind, found its way into the driveway gravel, and decided over a year later to sprout. Amazing!




What else did I do this weekend? Let's see...


I cleaned the house top to bottom. No photos of that, I'm afraid. But we snapped this picture of Pierre examing Hubby's new 3-volume set of Tolstoy. I guess he thinks Russian literature is a "must-read" for cats.

• I took photos of the herb garden...hoping to do a new series on the herbs I am growing, particularly GROWING STEVIA. Yes, I grow my own, dry it and voila - natural sweetener. More on this one coming soon!
  
• We went shopping, stocked up on groceries and I checked out the new fabric store at Miller's Country store. And joy oh joy - they have quilting supplies, cross stitch kits, AND the ladies will do alterations to your clothes. Thank you ladies for opening a real old-fashioned sewing store!
• And now I am off to church to sing with the choir at 10:30. Today is the church picnic and I may stop by. Sometimes I feel funny because everyone else is with family and it's just me, but I will play it by ear and just see how I feel....
• ...and later today, blanching more carrots, green beans, and baking CARROT MUFFINS. Recipe will go up when it turns out good; I downloaded this one from Cooks.com, and I want to try it before I recommend it.

Enjoy your day, everyone!