Early June 2015 Garden

Garlic scapes are about ready to cut.

 I planted my tomatoes early in wall O waters this year, so I already have little tomatoes forming.

Several of the trees I am doing espalier with are coming along.

Pumpkins planted in the landscape fabric area.  Melons are in the bed with nothing growing yet, and one of my two potato beds is on the bottom left.

Perennial (and a few annual) flowers planted in the front flower beds.

Corn with green beans around the edge.

Lettuce.

This bed is full of peppers but I did a row of beans around the outside like the corn bed.

Roasted Chili Peppers

Check out my tutorial for roasted chili peppers (I used Anaheim Peppers from my garden) at Feminist Mormon Housewives. 

July 2014 Garden Update

This was my garden in May:

And here it is in July.  A lot happens in two months.

Peppers and melons.

Tomatoes.

Summer squash, cucumbers, ground cherry, kale and mini pumpkins.

Green beans.

This is the green bean bed that the birds got to and I didn't have enough seed to replant.  It has some beans, and I added two pumpkins plants and three sad clearance tomato plants.

Corn.

Winter squash.

Jerusalem artichokes and pole beans.

Artichokes.  These died a few times and I replanted.  Hopefully the two remaining plants survive and produce next year since they're not doing much this year.

Green onions (I grew roots on the ones I bought at the store and planted them.  I just keep cutting the tops off and they keep growing back.  I read that if I let one flower and go to seed, those seeds will come up next year).

Chicken Waterer.  Eventually this system will be hooked up to our automatic watering system.

Baby watermelon!

Banana pepper (for pickling!).

Anaheim pepper.

Another Food Post

Clearly I need to post about gardening stuff more often, because now I have two food posts in a row.  I've been a bit sidetracked.  My beans and corn never came up.  At least not more than a handful of plants.  I'm not sure if birds ate the seeds as they sprouted, or if my hand watering just didn't go deep enough and the seeds were too dry to germinate.  I replanted beans in one bed, and got a couple of pumpkin plants to fill in the other bean bed.  I also replanted the corn bed.  Then I bought soaker hoses so hopefully they'll water more deeply than my spraying-with-hose method.

In good news, the winer squash plants are growing like crazy, and I have several more jerusalem artichoke plants up.

The thing that has kept me the most busy for the last few days has been the cherries.  So far I've been juicing and dehydrating them, but I'm still planning on freezing some for smoothies and pureeing some for cherry fruit leather.  Hopefully I'll get a post up soon on the cherry harvest.

Back to the food: I'll be contributing semi-regularly to the blog Butter, with a side of Bread.  My most recent post is Spinach Chicken Pasta Salad. It's a really good light summer dinner, or a great dish to bring to a potluck or BBQ.

Hardening off plants

Check out my Inner Pioneer post over at feminist Mormon housewives on how to harden off plants you grew from seed.  If you don't harden off seedlings, they'll die when you plant them outside.

Hardening off plants

2014 Seed Starting

The weather here as alternated between snowstorm, and warm spring.  Warm enough that I want to start planting.  I'm holding off a bit longer, but I did get my seed starting trays out, washed them, and got them planted.  Somewhere in the moves of the last several years, I lost all but the top cover of my third seed starting tray.  Since I'm holding off starting perennial flowers and ground cover for the yard until next year (or maybe just later in the summer) when the sprinkler system is finished and the yard is leveled the way we want it with rocks in the right spots, I don't really need the third tray, but it was still a bummer to find it missing.  It's probably in a random box out in the garage.

Here are the two planted trays.

I have 48 Opalka tomatoes.  We've grown this variety for three or four years now and really like how solid they are.  They're perfect for making salsa and canning.  Thin skin that comes off easily and thick meaty flesh.  Shaped like a large hot pepper.

4 California Wonder, bell peppers that I picked up a couple of years ago at a local store.  I think they were Martha Stewart brand.

4 Sweet Banana Peppers.  These are a first-try seed for me.  The plan is to pickle them.

4 Isis Candy Cherry Tomatoes.

16 Scarlet Kale.  These are also a first-try. If we can't eat all of it, we'll share it with the chickens.

4 Jalapeño pepper plants.  Hopefully these seeds germinate, since they're several years old.  I use jalapeños in our salsa, and also for pickling.

4 Quadrato Asti Giallo Peppers.  This was the new variety of bell pepper seeds I decided to try out this year.

12 Mortgage Lifter.  This is my second year with this variety.  They are big juicy slicing tomatoes.  Great for eating with a little salt and pepper.

12 Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry.  These are an experiment for this year.  I remember a neighbor when I was a kid growing these, picking the fruit off the ground, covered in little paper husks.  My grandmother made choke cherry jam, so when I saw these, I was hit with nostalgia and decided to try them out.  The seeds are tiny!

Finally, I have 12 Emerald Globe Artichoke plants.  These have been in my freezer for two years now, since I forgot to take them out to plant last year, with the house building.  Hopefully the seeds think they're well over-wintered and produce this year.  Last time I did artichokes, I planted the whole packet of seeds (which was only 8 or something).  5 plants survived, and only one of those survived the next winter.  We'll see if I can find a more protected location this year to try to get more to survive.  These are perennials in areas that don't get so cold.  Here we have to baby them to make it through the winter.

Garden Resolutions: 2013

Our new house is getting closer to being done.  The drywallers have finished, the gypcrete has been poured on the main floor (gypcrete is a soupy concrete-like material that we're using under the tile on the main floor to add "thermal mass", thermal mass acts as a heat sink, moderating the temperature of the house.), and the next thing to do is paint and tile.

With feeling like we may actually be able to move in at some point, I've been getting excited and overwhelemed  at the idea of creating a garden from scratch.

My plan is to fill the south side of the house with raised beds.  The raised beds may have to be unframed and we'll box them up a couple each year until they're done.

The east side of the house is going to be my "forest" and maybe at some point there will be a pond in the corner near where we buried Taja.  The west side will be the grassy rectangle for the boys to play and run around, and we'll surround it with raised beds like we did at our last house- those raised beds will hold the grapes, strawberries, raspberries, and whatever else I can think of.

One side of the very long driveway will be our "orchard.  I'll probably plant a peach tree, an apricot tree, a plum tree, and a nectarine tree.  I'm debating doing some espaliered apple trees...

It's going to be a lot of work and I'm sure it will take several years to get things the way I want them, but eventually it will be great.

If I can manage to get anything done besides just getting things going, my plans for reclaiming my inner pioneer this year include:

Growing my own mushroom logs.

Trying round 2 with bees.  Try #1 didn't survive the winter (we may have squashed the queen...).

Try #2 with the potato tower (this time I'll make sure to get the right kind of potato).

Try artichokes again.  Last time, I was able to get one plant through the winter, and it produced several artichokes, but I'm thinking they would fit really well up against the house on the south side of the yard.  In between the window wells...

Putting the Garden to Bed, and Storing the Harvest

The last post of the season is up over at fMh.  Go check it out, and learn what you need to do to make sure your garden is ready to go in the spring, as well as how to get your fall harvest to last as long as possible.

Also, it looks like LDSLiving.com picked up some of my Inner Pioneer posts in their Mormon Report section.  Yea me! 

Now I just need to get out and finish putting my own garden to bed.  I only dug about half the potatoes, and there are a lot more sunflowers out there.  My Mister likes to eat sunflower seeds to keep him awake while driving, so maybe he can eat home roasted ones.  If you have any great flavor suggestions, let me know.

Salsa Tutorial Plus lots more...

I posted over at Feminist Mormon Housewives this week, head on over and learn how to can your very own salsa, it's easy, and Oh So delicious!

While you're there you can check out my other "Inner Pioneer" posts:

 Pickles Tutorial

Pollination (bees baby!)

Foraging

Lessons from the green bean patch.

Backyard Chickens, they're easier than you might think.

Make your own yogurt: a tutorial.

Tips for simplifying gardening.

How to grow and care for your own berry patch.

Edible Perennials make for low-work gardens: Asparagus, Rhubarb, Garlic

So you grew garlic, here's what to do with it...

Jam Tutorial

Soil- keeping it healthy helps your garden grow!

TIps for growing healthy tomato plants.

Garlic Scapes and Garden Update- June

Last week I finally got around to cutting the garlic scapes.  Garlic scapes are the stem that the flowering head grows on.  They should be cut off to allow more growth to go to the bulb.  

You cut them at the point they meet the leaves.  I think I had close to 25 scapes.  Cut just below the flower bulb and discard the upper part (I fed them to my chickens).

Coat scapes with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt.

Put on a hot grill (this was a bedtime snack...)

It's just like cooking asparagus.  They were tasty, but the two of us could only eat so many.  The rest I pureed with olive oil, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts- garlic scape pesto.  We ate some on pasta for dinner the next night and the rest, I put it in little containers and froze for later.

This morning when My Mister got back from a scout campout, we headed over to my cousin's house.  She's out of town and said we could pick her raspberries.  We picked about a gallon of berries.  Two trays full went in the freezer, and we saved a bowl for eating.  Some day I'm going to have a patch like that.  We'd have plenty to eat, make jam, and freeze enough to last the winter.  Also canning.  I canned a few jars last year as an experiment, and while we didn't like them for eating, My Mister loved them for putting in smoothies.  I'm all for smoothie fruits that don't take up freezer space!

After picking berries, we took naps (we all had late nights) then I planted this rocoto pepper plant that we started from seed.  It's in a self-watering container, which hopefully means I don't kill it off.

I planted three small cherry tomato plants in a larger self-watering container.

I mowed the patio-yard with the reel mower.  Plus My Mister moved the dog kennel since the backyard is now fenced in.  The property value just took a jump up.

My Mister moved things around and weed whacked around the chicken coop.  The chickens get the dog kennel and now have a much bigger yard to roam in.

I watered the garden, and My Mister put the last of the grass clipping pile and spread it out on the pathways.  The garden is looking great, although the sprinkler system is not working.  The control box malfunctioned.  It's getting replaced tonight- I'm tired of hand watering.

My Mister mowed the field.

I buried the potato plants again.  I'm mildly concerned about the potato box.  Apparently late season potatoes work better, and I think the variety I have here is a mid-season.  Hopefully I'm not disappointed this fall to take the thing apart and have only a hand full of potatoes.  The plants have grown really well, so whatever happens, I'll do it again next year, but I'll be more careful about selecting a good variety.

Early Morning Watering and Garden Puttering

This isn't garden or puttering, but you can never have too many cute baby pictures... Baby E playing on his "computer".  We train them young around here.

I *think* this is a cucumber.  There are so many weeds that look similar that it's hard to know for sure- so I'm not pulling anything until they get a little bigger and I can better distinguish weed from plant.

The transplanted raspberries seem to be doing pretty well- we only lost a couple.

Beans are up, and I'm happy to report that the saved seeds appear to be coming up at the same rate as the purchased seed.

Finally, potatoes!  There are only three plants up, so hopefully the others pop up soon, so I can bury them all again...

Some of these are weeds, but most of them are sunflowers.  It's going to be fun to have the long row of them edging the garden.

Blackcaps.  Even without the bees, they seem to be thriving and there are lots of buds where fruit will form.

****

I didn't take a picture, but the tomatoes and peppers are being hardened off, so we'll get them planted on saturday.  Also, there are three cracked eggs on the garage floor that I've been putting off cleaning up... I put them in the pocket of the stroller canopy to bring to the house, and when we got to the garage, baby E pulled the canopy down, dumping the eggs.  I about cried because we have two or three broody hens and eggs aren't as abundant as they have been.