Lots and lots of seeds in pots

written by Yvonne

Last weekend I opted to sew instead of garden. But, alas, there is much work to be done if we are to have a bountiful harvest. According to the 10-day forecast, the lowest evening temperature we're lookin' at is 48.  (Guess we're not going to get a real winter this year.)  Therefore it's time to take the row covers off and prep the soil for Spring/Summer.  A Jerry Baker Spring Soil Booster was made with beer, mouthwash, dish soap, corn syrup and instant tea. I applied that to all four beds.

Here's what poppin' up: Buttercrunch lettuce, radishes...

Beets, red sails lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, kale and mesclun (I can't seem to find a consistent spelling of this word... sort of like hummus/houmous/humus)...

and basil, chamomile, and marjoram.

Out in the boxes, both types of peas have sprouted - well more than sprouted actually. This cowpea was planted two weeks ago. The cowpeas that wee planted two weeks prior to that, have not come up.

These snow peas are taking off.  It isn't visible in this photo, but two of them have runners.  Gotta get the stakes out so they'll have something to grab on to.

The arugula has fed us well, but it has flowered and thus needed to be removed to make space for something else.

I think coleslaw is on the menu for this weekend!

Swiss chard, collards and spinach (which you can't see very well - it's between the collards and the cabbage) are producing quite a bit.  We ate Swiss chard this week and we'll have collards tonight and this weekend. Now that it's getting warmer, we'll be pulling the collards out in the not too distant future.  In the meantime, I'm going to use as many of these greens over the next few weeks as possible.

Garlic - 'nough said.

No snow this winter, but darn cold

written by Yvonne

Germination of seeds planted two weeks ago has occurred. Namely butter crunch lettuce, radishes, and onions.  Here you can mostly see the lettuce.

This week I planted batch #2 of the butter crunch lettuce, radishes and onions in pots.  Also started were beets, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, mesculm lettuce, red sails lettuce, and all of our herbs including basil, cilantro, rosemary, marjoram, chamomile, chives, bergamont, and oregano (I think that was everything.)

A friend of ours gave us this handy seed sorter. It worked for some seeds, but not all.

Everything was put into the mini-greenhouse with the hope that it's warm enough in there to encourage growth.

Olive and I also planted batch #2 of the carrots and peas (hee hee).

Two of the snow peas from batch #1 have already come up.  They just can't wait to push through and start producing!

Tom finally got to feeding his worms.  He said they're doing great and producing lots of castings. Now that we're starting the majority of our seeds in pots, we'll be using more worm casting than ever.  Once it gets a little warmer outside, and once he's taken care of whatever is pressing with the bees, he'll do another harvest of castings which I'll mix into the potting soil used to plant our seeds.

This sure does look like a lot of green stuff growing, doesn't it?  Well it is, but only some of it is what I want.  The dark green, fuzzy stuff on the left is dill and the two patch to the front-center and right are thyme. Everything else is weeds which I pulled out.  (Guess I should have taken an after picture to show the difference.)

Cabbage plants EVERYWHERE but only a few developing heads. A certain someone advised another certain someone that it was too many to be planted in one area.  I, er, uh, that someone was right.  So that same someone went though and pulled out any plants that were small, crowding another plant, or didn't have a head.  This is the before...

And this is the after.  Some actually did have heads forming which is great because I didn't think any were.  Now THIS looks like the right amount, wouldn't you say?

Here the collards, dog head, and Swiss chard are all doing well.

This item perplexed us. It's at the end of the of the Swiss chard row.  Both of us agreed it looks more like arugula than chard... and yet there are leaves that look like chard too.

Upon further investigation, it was both. There was an arugula plant (right) growing super close to the chard (left) and they had become intertwined.

I preformed a little open chard surgery (Tom came up with that one) and did my best to gently separate the chard from the arugula.

The surgery seems to be a success but we'll need to keep a close eye on it to see if the chard makes a full recovery.

With the large arugula successfully removed...

it was time to commence eating!

Update on winter growings

written by Yvonne

Winter is FINALLY upon us here in Charlotte and boy, was it wintery-cold this weekend! It made for good indoor activities like fires and cooking soup. Motivation to do anything outside was nonexistent.  So getting our seeds started will have to wait yet another weekend.

Here is how things look in TYs winter garden...

I'm super impressed that dill is growing.  Thanks to our mini greenhouse, we started these seeds in fall, transplanted it, and because of the hoop houses it not only survived, it's growing!

Same with the thyme.

(Sorry that a few of these photos are blown out a bit). The garlic is doing fantastic...

as is the arugula. I pulled out one plant because they are getting a little crowded and so we would have some to eat for a few days.

I harvested about a dozen of the larger spinach leaves and tossed them with the arugula to make several hearty salads.

I also harvested collards and threw them in a soup for lunches this week. I have a new collards recipe to try this coming weekend that promises to be quite tasty.

TONS of cabbages coming along.  The heads are just starting to form.  This is a good illustration of why we are going to succession plant.  All of these cabbages are going to be ready to eat at the same time.... that's a LOT of coleslaw, my friends!

The harvested bounty for the week.

If you're looking for updates on the bees, go to TsBeesHoney.com.  While you're there, fill out the Contact T's Bees page and you'll be notified when honey is ready for purchase.

VEG: Last post for 2011

written by Yvonne

Although it may seem like there's not much going with TYs Veggie Patch these days, you'd only be partially correct. We've been enjoying the collards, lettuce and arugula that have been growing these last several months under the hoop houses. And we started some turnips, onions and parsley in the green house which we planted earlier last month (pictured here).  They've been slow to take off but we haven't given up on them - yet.

This past week we took off the row covers to take advantage of the rain and sun. What a mild winter it's been so far! We pulled out the remnants of the last lettuce plants and harvested some collards, which we'll be enjoying with grits for dinner tonight.

The seed catalogs have been arriving which is super exciting. I've updated the current seed inventory so when we map out the spring garden this weekend, I'll know what seeds need to be ordered. Soon I'll be making newspaper pots and Tom will be getting worm compost ready for us to start the seeds. We're really going to maximize use of our small green house and get a jump on spring.  No wimpy spring/summer garden for us this year!

VEG: A bit behind in our reporting

written by Yvonne

We are a bit behind in our garden/bee reporting, but we should be able to keep up from here forward. Had a few busy weekends which kept us out of the garden but Tom has also been working on a big garden project over several weekends which is now complete (full coverage of that in the next post).

As you can see by the date stamp on the photos, these were taken a while ago. This was the very last batch of bell peppers.

We put them on baking sheets and roasted them in the oven. Someone asked what we do with them all. This batch we canned so we'd have them through the winter.

Cabbage that we started in newspaper pots seem to have taken hold.

And the Swiss Chard has taken hold too.

The collards are really taking off now. I see sauteed collards on the menu for this coming weekend.

Lettuce is ready to start munching on. I made three huge salads last weekend and harvested a bunch to give to a friend. After all that, it didn't look like I even made a dent in what's growing.

Arugula still small but growing.

We now get our seeds from Sow True Seeds out of Asheville. All the seeds are heirloom so maybe in a year or so we will attempt to saving seeds from what grows to replant from year to year. Here Tom has parsley, onions, turnips and squash seeds in water to help the sprouting process.

After 24 hours of soaking, Tom planted them in newspaper pots and parked them in the greenhouse.  At the moment the turnips and onions have sprouted, but nothing on the squash and parsley.

VEG: TY Gets Ready for a Fall Garden

written by Yvonne

I know, I know.  It's been a month since we've posted any happenings at TYs VeggiePatch. The reasons for this are as follows:

1. One weekend we went to Asheville for a Yoga workshop and a little time away.
2. One weekend we did dog stuff (hike, etc).
3. We are each the head of a study group (Cartooning Club and Sutra Study Group) and we've had to spend time write lesson plans and studying for those meetings.
4. Tom had bee stuff to attend to.
5. I participated in an outdoor craft show.
6. And lastly, there really hasn't been much to report.

It's the end of September and our tomatoes are just NOW getting ripe. Let me tell ya, we've been enjoying the heck out of them regardless of what month it is. We created a meal called Garden Pasta.  We take basil, tomatoes, peppers and garlic (all grown from the garden), cut them up, toss them with some fresh pasta and olive oil and that's dinner.

This will likely be the last batch of peppers for the season. There are still some on the vine but they're pretty small. We'll hang on to the plants as long as they produce fruit and until the cold gets 'em.

Now that the weather is cooling down, Tom has been working on his grill master skills. A few weekends ago he grilled a 15-lb turkey on the Weber charcoal grill (show below)! It was impressive. Tonight he's grilling two whole chickens and all the peppers.

He's gonna get them all blackend up (the peppers, not the chickens). We'll cover them with foil and wait for them to cool, then peel the blackend skin off and we'll have roasted peppers.This is the black skin we're looking for in a roasted pepper.

Last weekend we started a new batch of seeds. Here we have spinach and one variety of arugula...

and here we have another variety of arugula, cabbage and swiss chard. Some of each type of seed sprouted within four days of being planted!

We ordered three varieties of garlic to plant from The Garlic Store. We'll brake the bulbs apart, stick them in the ground, and forget about them until next July.  The garlic we harvest this summer has been fantastic.  It's now a staple for the garden and we'll never have to buy garlic from the store again!  (Mind you, there's nothing wrong with garlic bought from the store, it's just super cool that we can grow our own.)

Here are two varieties of lettuce we started in newspaper pots and they are doing great. It will only be a week or two before I can come to the backyard to clip off some leaves for a salad.  Can't wait!

We weren't sure if the collards would take hold, but they did.

Many weeks ago I'd trimmed back the basil and discovered that our turnips actually had started growing. After they were exposed to the sun, they grew like crazy.  In fact they grew so fast, we didn't get a chance to thin them out.

As you can see, two have grown very close together but that's OK. They came up so quick I think we may have time to get more in the ground before the super cold weather hits - they don't do well when it's too cold.

Also growing under the shade of the basil was cilantro (left). It likely won't last through the cold months, but since we're going to use cover clothes and keep as much going as possible through winter, we'll see if it hangs on. One of my students gave me a cutting of oregano from her back yard.  I planted it in the bed several weeks ago (right) and it's taken hold as well.  Thanks Pam!

The broccoli is certainly taking over... but still no signs of flowers or anything that can be eaten.

We've completely ignored the sweet potatoes and they have really overtaken.  Hopefully that means something good is going on underground.

The berry bushes are growing like crazy up against the side fence. We haven't had any berries except for one or two in the spring just after they'd been planted. Hmmm... this makes me wonder if someone's been enjoying the berries before we could get to them.

It's obvious we can grow cabbage. We've never grown cabbage so this was supper exciting for us.

I'd been instructed by Tom to go to the butcher and buy bratwursts as well as some good, hearty buns because we were harvesting this cabbage to make a vinegar-based cole slaw to top the brats.  I did as I was instructed; bought brats and buns and made the only kind of cole slaw Tom has ever liked, using our first, very own, home grown cabbage. Tom was one happy camper. (I had my coleslaw on the side with a veggie burger.)

Guess this is why they call it a "head" of cabbage - it's as big as your head!