In Need of Support

Since my husband was off on a business trip, I had the car today. So I took all morning running around trying to find some 4' T-post to support the raspberries. They grow next to our patio and last year they sprawled all over in the way. So this year I wanted to get them out of the way.

I went to Home Depot and they didn't sell 4' posts. They had some 5' ones that were just huge, but I thought they would be too tall not to mention too intrusive visually. So I kept looking. If I had known they would be so hard to find I would have called around before I left. I finally found seven of them at Mahoney's, but only seven. I needed eight. Luckily I have a few extra T-posts I'm not using right now. I'll try to replace it later.

I also got the rest of the hardware to put up the trellis, but for some reason my brain wasn't working. I bought four of those little doohickeys that that tighten wire, when I needed eight. Some days are just like that. Nothing quite goes right. So the bottom support is up but not the top support yet. I'll pick more up next time I'm at a hardware store. And while I was playing with the raspberries I thinned out the canes. I'll have to do it again probably as many are still coming up.

And look what I found on my doorstep. I ordered one mother of a ball of twine. I bought one that was a kilogram last year and I had used most of it up. This was about the same price but so much larger. Part is that the twine is thicker, but part of it is that there are 5000' in there. Do you think that might last a while? I'm hoping.

Addendum: I put this photo up at the request of Dirtdabbler. I forget its name but it tightens the wires. All you do is spin the middle part and the wires get closer or farther apart. It has a hook at one end and an eye hook at the other. I did a lousy job of putting them on. I might have to remove it so I can tighten it more. We will see.

It's Alive!

Yes I did a walk through of the garden this morning. Everything seemed to have survived the heat. The brassicas that were planted last week wilted amazingly in the heat. I watered everything during the height of the heat in hopes it would cool them off. The Asian greens lost their bottom leaves. They just shriveled up. But the rest of the plants still seem healthy.

We got to 92.6F yesterday. The calendar claims it is April, but I swear it is July right now. In an average year we only get 13 days over 90F all year long. I've seen a 90 degree day before at the very end of May, but never this time of the year. But the 92 was at my house. I have a weather station. I'm a gardening nerd. I love statistics. I don't think Boston got that high, but haven't checked it out.

Tomorrow the heat breaks and we are back to being just a little above normal. That will be nice for the plants. Then I can get the lettuce planted.

Harvest Monday - April 16, 2012

This week had the last of the asparagus. The female plants that I was harvesting from were ripped out and replaced. Most people don't do this. They live with the female plants, but I had to order a bunch to replace some deaths in the patch. I had enough to replace the females (the ones with the berries last fall) so I did.

Then when I was prepping a bed there were a few over wintered carrots. So I got a tiny little harvest of them too. But of course I forgot the photo.

Those were the tiny harvests. Most of the harvests this week were huge. I was preparing for the heat coming today. The predictions are for 88F which is bound to cause havoc with any overwintered green. So I harvested a lot of them. Basically any green that had overwintered was harvested to the ground and frozen for later use.

A good portion of the cilantro was ripped out. I didn't bother to take it all out as I had way too much with this harvest.

The kale was shared with my townhouse mates. We both are freezing for later. At over 8 pounds there was plenty.

And the spinach. This is almost 5 pounds of spinach. That is my kitchen counter it is on and it is a full width counter. My big harvest basket was dwarfed by the harvest. I ate some. Gave some to my townhouse mate (though not half of it like the kale). It still took me about an hour and a half to prep it all as the leaves were pretty sandy. But I've got 11 servings all frozen for later. I need about 30+ packets when I'm all done, but it can be either spinach or chard. If the hot weather doesn't make the overwintered spinach bolt, I'll get another harvest from these plants. If it does, I still have the spring spinach that is small. I usually don't start harvesting any of that until the end of the month or into May. Well maybe a few thinnings, but not enough to freeze.

I was kind of sad to have to harvest them all because of the weather. I would have preferred to harvest about 3/4 of the spinach for freezing and leave the rest for harvests over the next couple of weeks. But I figure better safe than sorry as everything bolts.

I did spend money this last week on tools. I bought a rake, a hoe, and a really expensive trowel. I tend to break trowels. I've got one that bends if you use it. I've got one that the tip has broken off. I was getting down to just two that were any good. And one sits near the compost pile to move things around when putting in new kitchen scraps. You'd think that would be enough, but its not. I like to be surrounded by them. I tend to leave them all over the garden. This one like my rake and hoe has a red handle so I can find it better. I do tend to lose them in the mass of green later in the season.

• Asparagus 0.16 lbs
• Carrots 0.34 lbs
  
• Greens 13.29 lbs lbs
  
• Herbs 3.34 lbs
  
• Weekly total 17.13 lbs
• Yearly total 38.12 lbs
• Spent 54.89
  
• Tally -$505.52
  

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

Beating the Heat

The predictions are that today will hit 80F along with the next couple of days. Monday for us is a state holiday. Patriot's Day. It is the day that the Boston Marathon is run. I feel really sorry for them. The predictions are 88F. In April. I still can't wrap my head around the weather we have had. I need to plant my lettuce, but decided that it wold be best to wait until Wednesday when it cools down a tad. Today I'll bring the plants inside out of the sun. I don't want to be in that weather either. So I decided to get most of my chores done yesterday.

The first chore was to plant some seed. I prepped the rest of the pea bed before planting. It is also the bed for the random plants, mostly greens and annual herbs. Though they aren't getting planted yet, I did plant a 3' double row of beets. Then behind my chamomile I planted some zinnia seed. And behind the cilantro I planted some sunflowers.

Cilantro trimmed off before removing the roots

The main cilantro bed had to be prepped first. The main part of that was taking out a ton of cilantro. I was leaving just a strip to go to seed. The area behind that I wanted to be sunflowers and some new cilantro. I planted the sunflowers, but I figured there was still enough cilantro seed in that bed that just turning over the soil would make it sprout. I hope so. I'll keep all of these places that I seeded well watered over the next few days.

Then it was time to plant the asparagus. It showed up in the mail late Friday. I like to plant live things from the mail as quickly as possible. The package had 11 plants. I tried to pick the best nine of them. Last year I planted 22 plants but six of them died and three of them were females. So these are the replacements. I'm just crossing my fingers that there are no females, but I'm guessing there is at least one in there. And some may die again too. So I may have to go through this again next year.

I have a short list of chores that need to get done. Thin and transplant the baby Asian greens bed, plant the lettuce, plant the cosmos, divide and plant the dianthus along the path, find a place for the extra thymes and plant, get some kind of support up for the raspberries. But those will all wait until after the heat wave is over. During I'll just make sure things are well watered.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Well no silver bells and cockle shells here. I do have peas however. So far I have about 11 feet of peas up. I want to finish planting the last 5 feet of the row. I decide this year to plant them in stages. I'm hoping the harvest will be more even and last longer. I don't know if it will work or not, but I'll probably plant the last of the peas this weekend.

The allium bed is planted in garlic in the front and four kinds of onions in the back. It is growing pretty well. I'll probably give the onions some fish fertilizer soon. I don't use the stuff often as it smells dreadful, but for good onions, I'm willing.

The kale got chopped down today. It might put out side shoots as time goes on or it might not. It started to bolt. So I chopped off their heads. I'll be blanching and freezing again today.

The Asian greens are struggling. The Fun Jen and tatsoi are doing well. Both have newer seed. I think the seed is too old for the others now. I'll have to replenish the seed on my next order.

The radishes are all coming up. These are all French Breakfast. And yes I know I'll have way too many and they will all get ripe at once. At least they keep well in the fridge.

The carrots are germinating as are the weed seeds in the bed. I'll weed out that clover soon enough.

The rhubarb is jumping up. Well one of them is. If you look in the right lower corner you will see the second rhubarb. It has just a couple of leaves. I don't know why one is growing like crazy and the other is struggling so much.

This is my volunteer lettuce. I had some over winter. This would be that. It is starting to grow. I don't know whether it will make good lettuce or not, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. It might bolt prematurely. I have some lettuce blocks ready to plant but I won't put them in until the heat wave is over.

I haven't shown you the herbs. I have tons of cilanto still and the rest of the herb garden. I also have the spinach that I showed you yesterday and the brassica bed I showed you earlier in the week when I planted it up. I would say the garden is doing well. The heat wave that is going to hit might cause problems. I hope not. It won't last long before the normal cool weather is back. Wednesday is predicted to be normal temps. These swings have got to be hard on the plants.

More Planting

I buckled down and did the pruning. I've been very hesitant since I don't know what they heck I'm doing. But I figure, better to do it wrong than not at all. I'll learn. I also watered the circle garden. The rock wall garden is still to go. We did get about an eighth of an inch of rain yesterday which is not nearly enough.

Today I prepared the mustard bed. It had a lot of cilantro that I just composted. It isn't nearly as nice as the stuff near the foundation of the house. So no need to eat it. It was a fine cover crop though. I know you usually turn under cover crops, but I tossed mine in the compost. Then I spread some manure and fertilizer and aerated the bed.

With my new spiffy rake I raked it smooth and measured out the rows. I'm not sure how far apart to put the plants. I've never grown mustard for seed and most of the instructions are for mustard plants for the leaves. I placed my rows 8" apart. I hope that is enough. The seed was put about an inch apart. OK the seed was not well spaced, but I'm OK with thinning. If you remember, this seed is my grocery store seed. I'm using half yellow mustard and half brown mustard. They did fine in their germination tests.

Before Harvest

After Harvest

Afterwards I picked the over wintered spinach plants. All of them. I didn't pull them out but picked all the good leaves. Some plants I was very careful and picked leaf by leaf. Some I just cut the whole thing with my scissors. The weathermen have finally come to a consensus about Monday's weather. It will be somewhere between 84F and 88F. This is not mid April weather. This is July and August weather. I'm thinking the overwintered spinach might well bolt. If not then the leaf miners will be out very very soon. The overwintered spinach is probably not long for this world. Better to pick and eat it all. Processing it all took forever.

I hope that the spring spinach that is on its way will survive the heat wave. Right now it looks so cute. And it is protected from the leaf miners with a row cover. So at least that won't be a problem.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

Some days in the kitchen are very, very sad. No I'm not crying because I'm cutting an onion. I'm crying because I'm cutting up the very last onion that I stored from last year. I do have some frozen, but this is the last of the onion braids. Those onions lasted quite a while. I started eating them in August and now it is April. Eight whole months I ate them. Now I'll have four onion-less months. OK not really. I've already bought the replacements. I move on so easily.

But what to do for your very last beautiful Redwing onion? Why make some noodles of course.

Whole wheat noodles for soup. I combined the onions with some garlic (also from the garden), mushrooms, and broccoli. Then I added some broth for a soup. I had saved the broth for a special occasion. I think this counts don't you? The broth is from our local hot pot restaurant. They have the best broths. All sorts of interesting spices that I don't recognize. When we go there, I always bring some containers so I can bring back the left over broth.

Well that used up half of my last onion. I wonder what I'll do with the other half? Sniff.

Join Robin and others for Thursday Kitchen Cupboard over at her blog to see what others are cooking up from their gardens.

Brassicas

This week I got the major planting of brassicas into the garden. I did half of it on Monday and the other half today. Monday was very very windy. It wasn't the best time to plant but the forecast had wind for the whole week. It turns out they were wrong. Today was relatively peaceful.

The first thing I did was fertilize and fork over the garden. Then I tried to rake it smooth. My rake decided it had had enough and committed suicide.

Ah well. Now I have a new one. And I bought him another friend. My old hoe was bought at the same time as my old rake, over a couple of decades ago. It looked like it was on its last legs too. My last garden didn't have a shed. So all the tools sat out in the rain over the season. I put them in the garage for the winter, but mostly they were outside. Considering their treatment, they lasted quite a while. I hope this next pair lasts as long.

The weather here has been very windy and dry. In the last six weeks we have had about a half inch of rain. This is very abnormal for us. We average 4" of rain every month +/- 0.5" and this is our rainiest time of the year. I don't remember a spring where I had to water the garden. Yes transplants, but not the established plants.

I couldn't plant them in the dry soil. So I dug holes where each of them would be planted and then filled them up a couple of times before the plants got put in.

I hope they will be happy. This is half of the plants. They are the ones that got in on Monday. They are my Swiss chard and broccoli.

Today I planted the rest of the brassicas out. Michihili, Soloist Chinese Cabbage, komatsuna, Joi Choy, cabbage, kholrabi, and Japanese turnips. If you look in the upper right corner you will see my sprinkler. I gave up and watered the whole garden. More than half of the garden has been seeded with something or is already growing. So I figured I'd finally water the whole dang garden. It seems like a really bad sign for me to be watering so soon. I hope summer isn't so abnormal.

There they are. All snug in their row covers. Hopefully they will grow. We seem to be headed toward another warm spell. I hope it stays in the 60s and doesn't get any warmer. The weathermen have been going all over the board with the temperatures for the beginning of next week. Several times 80s have popped up in the forecast only to go back down. I'm fine with the 60s which is 10 degrees above normal. I so don't want it to be any warmer in April.

Harvest Monday - April 9, 2012

Sadly not all of the things I picked got photographed and weighed. The weird thing is that I photographed this on the scale, but never put it in my tally sheet. There were a few other harvests of the asparagus. It is the second year for them and I'm harvesting all the females of an all male variety. I have replacements coming in since some plants died last year. I figured I might as well replace the females too. But until then I get to eat their tiny harvest.

I harvested a small amount of spinach and cilantro for scrambled eggs one day. There were even two leeks that I had missed last fall that overwintered. They were pretty small.

And my big harvest was lots of kale. Not only did I eat it myself but I brought it and lots of my frozen carrots to a large passover dinner. It takes a lot of kale for 20 people. It really cooks down. I brought about the same amount of both and was surprised that more kale was eaten than carrots. I usually think of kale as being looked down upon compared to carrots. But it was eaten right up. Whoohoo for kale!

• Alliums 0.1 lbs
• Asparagus 0.08 lbs
  
• Herbs 0.04 lbs
  
• Greens 5.9 lbs
  
• Weekly total 6.34 lbs
• Yearly total 20.99 lbs
• Tally -$509.67
  

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.

Potting Up

The sweet potato slips were looking good yesterday.

Their roots had grown quite long. If I waited anymore time I was afraid the roots would get tangled together and I wouldn't be able to separate the slips without breaking the roots. All of the slips had formed roots except one.

Which was convenient since the flat fits 12 4" pots. I have three slips of each variety. I'm expecting these to vine at some point and I'll get the slips that go into the garden from them. Sweet potatoes are usually planted late May to mid June around here. It really depends upon the weather. I was looking at one study from NH and the year it was so cold (2009 I think) they planted on June 26th. That wouldn't give them much time to grow, but they did get a harvest.

The sweet potatoes that are in water waiting to get slips are just starting to sprout this week. I might only get one sweet potato from each variety sending out slips, but one is enough and doing it with three will give me a good sense of my success to failure rating for supermarket sweet potatoes.

I also made a whole flat plus a little more of soil blocks. The flat is the smaller Asian greens. I tried direct seeding them in the circle garden which is the warmest spot. I was hoping things would be warm enough for them to grow. They are still very small. The indoor transplants that were planted three weeks later are huge. These have been in the ground for about 6 weeks. They germinated, but are slow. So I sowed a whole flat to plant up the other side. I'm wondering which side will produce first.

The other 12 blocks were for my basil. I finally started the first of my warm weather plants. Next week the tomatoes will go in. And no I still can't eat them. I hold out little hope at this point, but if I can't my townhouse mates will still appreciate them. And I have a friend who grew one of my Market Miracle transplants last year. He has a yard with very little sun. I'd say he gets from 5-6 hours in the sunniest spot. It still produced decently. Not many varieties would. So I'll grow him another this year too.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

Many of the meals I make don't have real recipes. I follow my whims. Sometimes they come from recipes I've used in the past. The following meal was inspired by a Canyon Ranch recipe for terriyaki salmon. What I follow is not its recipe but the idea of using concentrated apple juice as the sweetener instead of sugar. Apple juice really imparts a unique and wonderful flavor. I have made their recipe as stated. I even made it for my kids B'nai Mitzvah party years and years ago (only a crazy mom caters her own kids' party).

I'm going to try to recreate what I made here, but remember, I didn't measure anything. I tasted to see if it needed more of this or that. Also some of the ways I do things are based on the fact that my husband hates vegetables. And honesty the vegetables can be anything. I used hearts of palm because of the recent Costa Rican influence (and seeing them at Trader Joes). I used so much cilantro because it is overflowing in my garden right now. Both additions really added to the dish, but at other times of the years it might be kale, carrots and onions.

Veggies used

Daphne's Terriyaki Salmon (serves two very small eaters, though the veggies serve one as my husband won't eat them)

• half a pound of salmon

• 3 T soy sauce
• 1-2 t rice vinegar
• 2 T ginger wine
• several slices of ginger from the ginger wine
• clove of garlic sliced
• 1/4 c apple juice concentrate
• T orange juice concentrate

• T sake
  
• 1/4 c chopped chives
• 1/2 c chopped cilantro
• 1 /4 c chopped heart of palm (one piece from my jar)
• 1/3 c steamed green beans cut into thirds (note that they are already cooked)
  
• 3 oz fresh washed spinach
  

I combine all the ingredients for the sauce (middle section) and mixed. I tasted it to make sure it didn't need more soy sauce, vinegar, or apple juice. Then I added the salmon skin side up to the bowl to marinate for about 45 mins. Then I removed the salmon and baked it for about 20 mins (give or take based on its thickness).

While the salmon was baking. I thickened the sauce with some cornstarch. Some people would remove the garlic and ginger, but I'm happy eating slices of both so I leave them in. Once it was thickened I removed half the sauce to pour over the salmon. The rest I left in the frying pan. I added the sake and all the veggies. And cooked until heated through so the spinach is just wilted.

When everything is finished put it together with some cooked rice. Any extra sauce gets to go over the rice. Yum.

This and That

I much prefer to bike and walk so I don't own a car, but my husband does. When he goes on business trips I used to always be sad. But now without a car, I take it as an opportunity. I made a rule that when he goes he has to leave me the car. He can't leave it at the airport. So yesterday he was gone and the car was mine. I went to Home Depot to pick up bricks for my herb garden.

Though the circle is not a perfect circle, it is pretty good. I wanted the spokes to look straight and even. So I used my handy dandy bamboo measuring stick. I didn't measure anything, but it did tell me if I was straight or at least straightish.

Here is the garden finished. As soon as those herbs fill it in it will look really pretty. And though I think it would look prettier with the thymes together and the chives together, I like them separated. They like to grow together and though their leaves are different, it is easier to make sure they don't overwhelm the other if it is very easy to tell apart.

Some days good shit happens. A friend of my townhouse mates dropped off some composted horse manure. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Two 20 gallon trash barrels full. It probably isn't as good as cow manure as I think it has more weed seeds in it, but still I was thrilled.

I hadn't had enough compost to cover the garden last fall. Two of the beds had nothing. So yesterday we covered one and a half. The other, as you can see, has its pile just sitting there waiting to be spread. I'd like to pick a lot of that cilantro before I do the spreading though. Also there are just a few overwintered carrots in there that need pulling. After that I'll spread it. She asked me if I needed anymore and I said I wouldn't mind another load. I would love to have it in my empty storage bin for adding over the summer as crops get rotated.

Today is going to be in the 60Fs so it was time to start hardening off my brassicas and chard. I put them on my kitchen stairs to harden off at the start. I have a place that gives them direct morning sun but dappled midday and afternoon sun. I'll keep them there for a couple of days, bringing them in at night. They will get moved farther out every day until they are in direct sun all day long. Then I'll plant them. My cabbages are still under lights though. They are in the other tray. I might put them in a small container and bring them and the cosmos out too.

The Circle Garden

I didn't really have anything to do in the garden yesterday. Or at least I had forgotten all the chores I had. I do that sometimes. One day I'll have a really long list of things to do in my head. The next day it is all gone. But I went out to weed the whole of the veggie garden and rock wall garden. When I got to the circle garden it popped back into my head what I needed to do.

The herbs in the center were getting a bit over run with one another. I wanted to buy some bricks and separate the herbs. Then I could tell where to keep them chopped off so they don't intermingle as much. I don't want one to take over the other. Last year the center was planted with seven different herbs, but the sage had died. I have two other sages around the yard. I thought about replanting one of those in here, but decided that it was best to just have six. The herbs had mostly spread. Well three of them had. So I needed to transplant things so they were all evenly spaced around the circle.

The one plant I didn't want to move at all was the rosemary. So that one stayed in the same spot. Then I put marks in the soil to tell me what were the spots for the plants. I moved the French thyme to the other side close to where the sage had been. Then I cut back the Greek oregano and English thyme so they didn't go out of their sections. They weren't centered by any means, but they will grow into it. They are both spreaders.

Then I dealt with my two chives.

The garlic chives above I split into three. The plant hadn't spread all that much. So I wanted it to have three sections and fill the spot up by the end of the year. I just put my shovel down through the roots of the plant. Chives are hardy things. It ought to recover.

The regular chives seemed to be spreading more. I just hacked off a small part and put it to the middle of the circle. I think the chives will spread enough. I hope so.

The circle looks messy right now. I don't have the bricks to separate the sections yet. I want to get those today and finish. I once tried separating my herbs with bricks before. I didn't like it since it made the soil too dry. I'm really hoping the sections are large enough for that not to be an issue. If it is I'll pout and try something else.

Oh and do you see the little wooden sculpture? I bought that when I was in Hawaii over a decade ago. He is Lono, the god of agriculture. I thought it fitting for him to live in my garden.

Harvest Monday - April 2, 2012

You have to love spring. There isn't much variety, but things are growing. Even if there aren't huge harvests, there are promises of future harvests. Right now I anticipate peas. Not that I'll get to eat them for a while. They are only a few inches tall, but I am dreaming of being buried under them come harvest time.

This week my first harvest was some spinach and chives. I really have to get out to the over wintered spinach and do a real harvest for the freezer, but this was just for fresh eating. These are the first of the chives I've harvested. I did harvest another bunch but they never got weighed or photographed. During harvests seasons the scale sits on the counter, but I was still keeping it in the cupboard where I'm too lazy to get to it usually. So the scale has made a come back to the corner of the kitchen counter again. Hopefully I'll be better about weighing everything, but you just know things will be forgotten anyway.

I also harvested some more kale. The Red Russian kale is sprouting all along its stem and making small leaves. I'm guessing it is getting ready to bolt soon. But the weather has been very moderate this last week and the leaves grew but not many signs of flowers yet. The one flower I see there, I'm watching and isn't even big enough to pick and eat.

• Herbs 0.03 lbs lbs
  
• Greens 1.44 lbs
  
• Weekly total 1.47 lbs
• Yearly total 14.64 lbs
• Tally -$520.30
  

Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, how you are saving your harvest, or how you are using your harvest. If you have a harvest you want to show off, add your name and link to Mr Linky below.