December 11th, 2009
Does winter mean we have to forgo the pleasure of eating fresh vegetables? If you live in the Midwest US like I do getting those fresh veggies from your garden ended a couple of months ago (unless you have shelter for your plants). It’s only 10 degrees F outside, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some delicious fresh vegetables that are in season right now.
With the advent of transportation and improvements in refrigeration over the last century many of us can and do enjoy vegetation in our diets year round. During these colder months we can look forward to finding fresh versions of these veggies in our grocers produce section:
* Broccoli
* Brussels Sprouts
* Collard Greens
* Fennel
* Leeks
* Pumpkins
* Sweet Potato
* Turnips
* Winter Squash
You can make delicious sautes, sauces, soups, salads, and slaws out of these bountiful veggies. If you’ve ever seen Good Eats with Alton Brown on Food Network you know there are endless ways to prepare these winter vegetables in tasty and interesting ways.
Tags: broccoli, brussel sprouts, collard greens, fennel, leeks, pumpkins, sweet potato, turnip, winter squash, winter vegetables
Posted in How's The Weather? | 1 Comment »
December 9th, 2009
Our first snow of the season and it has to be a yucky one. Monday morning it started snowing and it left about an inch on the roads. Tuesday it was more of the same until about 6 PM.
Wet, heavy, slippery snow started to fall in blankets across the landscape. Great for plants, bad for driving. I called my mom who’d come to visit us earlier in the day with dad and they were on their way home at about 8:30 PM. They’d been trying to get a hold of my brother because he had stayed to work late with DH. Dad wanted me to convey the message that if he could stay where he was to do so. The roads were treacherous and the visibility low.
By the time I called DH to let him know they had already left the office. The next 45 minutes was tough. This will be 4 years since our bad accident that left my husband broken and my car in pieces. The last thing anyone wanted was for that to happen again. I had a knot in my stomach and I thought for sure I was going to lose my supper. Finally at :15 after 9 DH walked in the door and I could relax. Then my thoughts went to my brother. He lives with my parents an hour north and therefore in the middle of the heavier snowfall.
Thankfully he was also OK. I called him an hour after my DH got home just to make sure he’d made it home OK. He said you couldn’t even see the main roads and that the country road they live on was like a washboard with drifts of snow 5″ deep. Yikes.
Today we are in for lots of wind, rain and snow. There is actually a wind warning in our area. You can hear the wind howling or “talking” as my daughter calls it outside the house. It’s a little unnerving. Hopefully we didn’t leave anything in the yard that will get blown away by the 70 MPH gusts.
Tags: snow, storm, weather, wind
Posted in How's The Weather?, USDA Zone 5 | No Comments »
October 12th, 2009
It is so gratifying to be able to make meals with vegetables and herbs harvested from your own garden. Yesterday I made a mushroom soup that called for a mixture of herbs like sage, thyme, marjoram and rosemary. I had all but the marjoram - which I substituted with oregano - right in my garden. It felt really good to do that. I have a huge load of tomatoes that I need to process - chop and freeze or allow to ripen.
I did get one small watermelon from my garden this year. There were about a dozen sweet dumpling squash I was able to harvest. I might make some soup or pies out of them. Next year my plan is to make the garden even bigger so we can have more of a variety.
Tags: herbs, vegetables, winter squash
Posted in Gardening - General, Vegetable Gardening | 1 Comment »
July 19th, 2009
My computer is broken so I haven’t been able to regularly update. I was able to expand thesize of my garden by 6 x 12 feet. I filled thespace with mounds for zucchini, cucumber, watermelon and squash. It’s been really dry so I’ve had to water with the hose almost daily.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
April 18th, 2009
It’s Saturday morning and though I got a late start on seeding my flats this year I am pretty happy with my progress. I have one mini greenhouse, one milk jug and 2 of the 10″ x 20″ black plastic flats with clear plastic domed covers planted. After just 4 days I even have some sprouts from one of the flats.
Green Mini Greenhouse: The Basil Flat
I had forgotten how many varieties of basil I had until I went through my seeds the other day. This will be my second attempt to get some decent plants out of these seeds. Instead of using store bought peat pots or plastic trays in this mini greenhouse I used my hand rolled newspaper pots that I made a few years ago. There was enough room for 11 rows of 7 little pots. I labeled the lid with the seed name and L for left and R for right and the base with L and R so I could keep tabs on which row was which. They were planted, watered and set in a south facing window with the cover on and vents closed on 4/14/09.
These are the seeds planted in the mini greenhouse from left to right:
- Cinnamon Basil
- Purple Basil
- Italian Sweet Basil
- Dwarf Bush Fineleaf Basil
- Spicy Globe Basil
- Greek Basil
- Fino Verde Basil
- Summerlong Basil
- Siam Queen Thai Basil
- Lime Basil
- Easter Egg Plant (no this isn’t basil, but I had an extra row :))
Flat 1: Tomatoes and Peppers
I have a myriad of tomato and pepper seeds. Since they have similar requirements for temperature and light I decided to plant them in one flat together. The flat has 16 rows of 8 cells each. The seeds were planted, watered and covered and placed over the top of my 30 gallon aquarium on 4/14/09. The temperature above the aquarium and aquarium light is about 80 degrees providing a warm enough temperature to encourage germination. After 3 days some of my tomatillo seeds (that are 6 years old) already started to sprout. Yesterday morning, the 17th, I moved the flat to the south facing window. This morning I noticed that one of Robbie’s Tomatoes had started to sprout.
These are the seeds in Flat 1 from left to right, and bottom to top (or front to back):
- King’s Choice Hybrid Tomatoes/Beefsteak Tomatoes
- Robbie’s Tomatoes/Spike’s Tomatoes (unsure of varieties, harvested from relatives gardens 2 years ago)
- Mom’s Tomatoes/Mystery Hot Pepper
- Olena Ukranian/Italian Market Wonder/Bonny Best/Golden Queen - only had a few seeds so I planted 2 of each
- Costoluto Genovese/Cosmonaut Volkov/Marglobe VF/TigerLike Tomatoes - 2 of each
- Assorted Tomatoes/Speckled Roman Heirloom
- Tomatillos
- Delicious Tomato/ Mystery Tomato
- Jelly Bean Hybrid (commercial ‘07 pelleted)/commercial ‘08 pelleted/harvested ‘07 fermented
- Chile Arbol
- Chile Bola
- Chile Guajillo (4)/Cajun Tabasco (2)/Cuban Hot (2)
- Chile Ancho (aka Poblano)
- Green Bell Pepper/Red Bell Pepper
- Jalapeño Early Pepper/Serrano Pepper
- Marconi Red Pepper/Cayenne Pepper
Milk Jug Greenhouse 1: Mary Washington Asparagus
In this milk jug there are 19 hand rolled newspaper pots with Hoffman Seed Starter mix. There are air holes cut in the top and sides and drain holes in the bottom. The pots were seeded and watered and placed outside on 4/16/09. The Mary Washington Asparagus seeds from 2004 season were put in warm water and allowed to soak for 10 days (hope it wasn’t too long; I kind of forgot about them 
).
Flat 2: Herbs and Veggies
This 10×20 flat was filled with 8 9-cell trays. Each tray holds one variety of seed.
These are the herbs and veggies planted in flat 2 listed as laid out in each tray (since I didn’t plant them in rows per se):
HTML clipboard
| Fennel |
Oregano |
Lemon Balm |
Summer Savory |
| Marjoram |
Curled Parsley |
| Early Golden Acre Cabbage |
| RadicchioMilano (1) |
Early Golden Acre Cabbage |
|
Broccoli Waltham |
Well then here is the start of my planting for the 2009 season. I truly hope I didn’t get started too late. I think this afternoon Yeyda and I will go outside once the baby falls asleep so we can start cleaning up the yard. It feels phenomenal to have the windows open finally after being trapped in the house for so many months.
Tags: herbs, peppers, Seed Starting, tomatoes
Posted in Gardening, Gardening - General, Herb Gardening, Seed Starting, USDA Zone 5, Vegetable Gardening | 3 Comments »
April 6th, 2009
Last week I noticed as I looked out the window that my tulips are peaking out of the ground as are my daylilies, wormwood and phlox. It won’t be long and we will have a lush display of many shades of green with different textures and shapes of leaves. It made me itch to do some gardening.
My “winter” sowing has become a moot project. Since it is officially spring I’m going to try the same technique but without the benefit of snow cover or so I thought. Last night in an effort to keep my little 3 year old entertained I asked her to help me go through my seed collection and remove seed pods from some dried out sedum flowers. She thought that was great. Later I checked the weather report since it had been raining most of the day and it mentioned something about snow on Monday.
Today so far has been a soggy, messy, rain/snow mix. Not enough to look pretty or stick, just enough to make you feel blah. My only consolation is that my flowers and plants that are in the ground are getting plenty of water right now.
I’ve picked out the seeds that I want to start indoors today. Tomatoes, basil, and easter egg plant are among the candidates. I also have several varieties of peppers that I want to get going before it gets to late. When you think about 90 days to mature that means I’ll need to have plants ready by the first part of June if I want fruits before the first frost. Any later than the mid part of June and I’m asking for a very short window to harvest any fruits off my warmer weather plants. I’ll keep you posted how things go. 
Tags: snow, Vegetable Gardening
Posted in Backyard Nursery, How's The Weather?, Vegetable Gardening | 1 Comment »
March 18th, 2009
Yesterday I joined the 350 Challenge to help fight climate change. The thank you message I received from Brighter Planet explains why I was inclined to do so even though they had already reached their goal of 350 bloggers. Check out the Brighter Planet 350 Challenge badge in the far right sidebar of my blog.
Thanks for joining the 350 Challenge!
By displaying our badge, your blog will help us offset 122,500 lbs of CO2 — that’s like turning off 38,000 light bulbs for a day! With your support, we’re putting more clean energy on the national energy grid, and together, we can help fight global warming, one blog at a time.
We’ll check out your site today so that we can add you to the list.
Thanks again,
Adam
Adam Rubin
Chief Technology Officer
Brighter Planet
Tags: 350.org, Brighter Planet, carbon offsets, Conservation
Posted in Conservation, Energy | No Comments »
to bridge the gap of communication between people and plants. They have created a sensor which monitors the plant’s moisture levels and sends Tweets to your mobile phone when it needs watered. It even sends a “Thank You” when you show it love by watering it. In an effort to show the public how this works they have a tweeting plant set up named 