Not-Quite-Spring-Yet Gardening

My favorite spring comic by Dan Piraro.

Spring is showing up early this year.  The grass is already getting green.  I noticed a neighbor might actually have to mow this weekend or next.  It's kinda crazy.  But, we all know what spring really means.

Gardening.  Yup.  That's right.  Early spring gardening.

This last winter, I discovered a new YouTube channel called Hollis & Nancy's Homestead.  I was hooked from the first video.  Hollis & Nancy are in Virginia which is a couple of USDA hardiness zones warmer than mine.  But, I don't need to be in Dixie to glean a ton of useful information about things I already grow as well as learn a bunch of stuff about things I don't grow (yet).  I'm also learning a little about Asian cuisine through Nancy's Asian/Redneck Fusion cooking videos.  While I don't agree entirely with the way Hollis does all of his gardening, I can't deny that his methods seem to fill their larder and their freezer pretty darn well.

Plus, he's given me a few new ideas.  For one, I'm going to grow potatoes in big containers!

I know, I know.  Growing potatoes in containers is not a new thing.  I've even tried it before with dire consequences.  However, after watching the videos tracking his potatoes from planting to harvesting, Hollis has convinced me to try it again.  I can see where I went wrong before and I'm ready to go again.  I have five kinds of potatoes to plant this year:

1. Red Norland: Classic, red skin potato
2. Russet Norkotah:  They make good baked potatoes 
3. Magic Molly I:  A fingerling potato that is either blue or purple.  It's hard to tell from the picture.
4. Pinto Gold I:  Another fingerling potato with gold flesh and red skin with gold patches.
5. Yukon Rose:  A gold potato with red skin.  Honestly?  We had these with fried chicken last week and they were so good!  I just took a few from the bag I bought at the grocery store.  I have them in the window and I hope they chit.

As usual, the packaging that accompanies the seed potatoes I chose is not terribly forthcoming with information.  Through Hollis, however, I have learned that, like their kin tomatoes, there are basically two kinds of potatoes: determinate which set and yield their fruit pretty much all at once and indeterminate which will continue to fruit until the plant just dies.  Indeterminate potatoes are difficult to locate in my neck of the woods as there aren't a lot of indeterminate varieties to start with.  So, mine are all determinate.  What's the big deal?  Well, I'll tell you.  It has to do with 'hilling'.

Ask any old timer you know who has grown potatoes and he'll tell you that you gotta hill 'em up as they grow so you'll get a better yield.  Well, yes and no.  For determinate type potatoes, the hilling in question does more to prevent the potatoes from being exposed to sunlight and thus producing chlorophyll and turning green than actually producing more potatoes.  There's an old wives tale that holds that green potatoes are poisonous.  They do contain a toxin called solanine which can cause headaches and bellyaches if you consume enough.  However, it is unlikely that you could consume enough by eating green potatoes to actually be dangerous to your health.  That said, I would always recommend NOT eating the green ones.  They don't taste as good anyway.

'Hilling' indeterminate potatoes will increase your yield not only by eliminating green potatoes, but by actually growing more potatoes along the stem. By incrementally burying the stems as they grow, you will encourage the potato plants to create more 'stolons' which are where the baby potatoes are born and raised.  Hollis does an excellent job of explaining this in this video here. As both he and I can attest, doing this to determinate varieties does not work.

Thanks to Hollis & Nancy, I'm trying a couple of new vegetables this year.  One of them is Watermelon Radish.  It's basically a GIANT white and green radish that is reddish pink on the inside.  Hollis swears it's not hot at all.  Nancy makes a couple of interesting dishes with it.  So, I'm in.  Let's try it this year.

Also new to the garden this year is Chamoe or Korean melon.  Since I don't read Korean, I had to hunt pretty hard online to find the seeds, but I finally did find some on eBay.  I plan to grow them on a trellis as Hollis has done in his garden.  I must say I am really looking forward to seeing how they do in my zone 5b garden.  If they do well, I plan to save some seed for next year.

Well, that's it for today.  I have a lot to do in the garden after all.  I didn't get much done last fall before the weather got too cold for my liking.  It's just as well spring is a little early this year.  That gives me more time to get ready!

Season of Change

A couple of days ago my position at work was eliminated.  I knew it was coming months ago.  I have had a plan in place to make the transition as painless as I possibly can for a long time now.  I have lined up a part time job that starts this weekend and will become full time in the near future.  It seems I've managed to keep my affairs in order.

Still, it stings a bit to be told you're no longer needed in a job you've done, and done well, for the last 16 years.  So I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself these last weeks and especially the last couple of days.  I admit to spending a bit of time not quite certain what I ought to be doing consumed with an empty, nagging feeling that I've forgotten...something.

It seems I've always had something to do.

It's not that I don't have anything to do.  Perish the thought!  It's just that my routine is disrupted.  The things I had to do before are no longer on my to-do list.  Things like getting up at the crack o' dawn to drive an hour and a half to work.  Or like packing my lunch the night before and shopping for special lunch items that travel well and making sure I have something clean to wear to the office.  It's really a pretty long list.  I don't really miss that part so much.

No, the things I have to do now are simpler.  Take out the trash.  Wash the dishes.  Cook some dinner.  Mow the lawn.  Putter in the garden.

Ah!  The garden.  Now there's a change of scenery.  So much happens so quickly in the short time we have our growing season here in the heartland. 

I took some pictures.

The tomatoes are crazy tall.

New to my garden plot this year is the Indigo Rose tomato.  A friend at the aforementioned job grew them last year and gave me a few to try. They were cute and tasty.  These are still green, but when they're ripe, the bottom of the fruits will be red and the top will stay purple.

Just today I got my very first cherry tomato of the season.  I don't have a picture of that tomato because it didn't make it 3 feet away from the plant before I chowed it down.  But here are some its kin:

Right next to the tomatoes, whether I wanted it there or not, is a massive row of volunteer dill plants that are every bit as tall as the tomatoes.  They even came up in a bucket of dirt I had nearby.

Speaking of volunteers, I have a few in the garden this year other than the dill. Here are the petunias:

 The petunias I plant on purpose never look that good!  

There are, of course, sunflowers:

And these brown-eyed susans and catmint:

 And let's not forget this onion that I missed pulling last summer:

Onion flowers are quite pretty, aren't they?

The garden is really going well in spite of the record amounts of rain we've had this year.  Lots of the local farmers had to abandon hope of planting anything at all in some of their soggy fields.  I'm fortunate in that I garden pretty much exclusively in raised beds.  Minor flooding really isn't an issue.

After harvesting most of the potatoes and the last of the peas last weekend, I decided to plant some late crops.  I put in these pole beans where the peas just finished up:

Beans are almost instant gratification seeds since they germinate so quickly.  These yellow summer squash seedlings are coming up right where I dug the potatoes.  They come up pretty quickly, too.

The cucumbers are not really a late crop for me, I just got them planted later than usual.  I heard if you delay planting until after June first or so, the plants will do better and be more resistant to damage from insects.  I hope so.  Those cucumber beetles are a menace.

These are a bush variety that I've never grown before.  The plants are still pretty small and I'm not sure how big they'll get in the end.  Looking forward to cucumbers soon.

This year I was fortunate enough to harvest an adequate amount of black raspberries to make a whole pint jar of jam and still have enough fresh berries to snack on while I did the picking.  Here's the plant with the spent canes removed.  Those are the new canes that will bear next year.  I learned recently that if you let the ends of those canes get so much as a whiff of the soil, they'll set roots and start a new plant.  I have room for another bush, so I might just do that if I can get the plant to go where I want it to go.

The large daylillies in the front garden are going gangbusters this year. They look especially nice with the native bee balm right beside:

Today's blog closes with a parting shot of my latest garden toy.  Yep, that's right.  It's a tractor seat on wheels.  Now I can sit and pick tomatoes in comfort and style.  Just don't look when I try to scoot around the beds on that thing.  It's not a pretty sight.

Have a good one!

April Garden Update

It's garden time.  Can you dig it?

Yep, I'm giddy with anticipation.  At last I have dirt under my carefully manicured fingernails.  It happens every year.  Just about the time I get my fingernails to the perfect length and shape to look really nice and elegant with nail polish, garden season arrives and screws the whole works up.  But, I don't really care much.  The season has begun.

Last weekend I was hunting through what is left of our potato harvest from last year in the bitter hopes of finding a couple of unsprouted spuds.  No luck there.  But, I decided to make lemonade out of those lemons and I planted a dozen or so pre-sprouted red taters in a nicely prepared bed out back.  I can hardly wait to see if they will actually grow or not.  Someone told me once that they won't if they're already sprouted when you plant them.  That sounds sort of foolish to me, so we'll see.

Tonight, after a week of on and off again rain and a smattering of snow yesterday, I planted my peas, some radishes, a row of carrots, a row of beets, and 100 yellow onion sets.  I got lucky and found the onion sets on sale for 99 cents a bag of 100.  Less than a penny apiece!

So, naturally, I bought three varieties.  As usual, I will plant way too many onions and I will have to tuck them in where ever I can find a little space.  We somehow manage to use them anyway.

Now that it's getting dark outside, I realize that I need to take some new pictures of the garden.  We modified one of the beds and made it deeper.  All of the beds are practically overflowing with composted goodness.

I also found some dill seedlings when I was planting the carrots.  It really is true.  Once you've had dill, you will always have dill.  My mother-in-law was right about that much.

The Tater Menace and my Very First Garden Ever

No.  That photo is not from my first garden ever.  It's the potato patch from last year.  But it reminds me of my very first garden.  Today, I was chatting with a friend about getting my garden started and I suddenly remembered the first thing I ever grew.  At least, right now it seems like it was the first thing.

I was somewhere between seven and ten years old.  We were living in a rental house in Seward Nebraska.  One spring evening, I was helping my Mom with dinner when I found a potato in the back of the cupboard that had sprouted a bit.  She said we wouldn't be able to eat it and I should throw it away.

Now, we had been talking about food production in school and I had recently learned how potatoes were grown.  I became intrigued.  Was this something I could actually DO?

I asked if I could plant it.

Mom said she didn't think it would grow.  After much begging and many 'pleases', she relented and even gave me a second tiny potato she didn't want to peel.  Then, she told me I'd have to wait until after dinner because it was nearly ready and I shouldn't get all dirty before I eat.

The wait was interminable.  But, finally, dinner was eaten and the clean-up was done.

I grabbed my potatoes and hurried out to the swing set. Everything cool happened at the swing set.  In the gathering twilight, I found a pointy stick we had been playing with the day before. I dug two holes in the ground near the end of the swing set and planted my potatoes just under the surface in the heavy, compacted clay of the play yard.  I figured they'd be safe from trampling feet there.

Turns out they were.  It also turns out that the extra bath I had to take that night was totally worth the trouble.

I don't remember being particularly vigilant in my treatment and care of the potatoes or if they even produced.  I do remember bouncing for joy on the day I saw them both sprouting from the ground and being super protective of my potato plants.  Our neighbors had a three-legged dachshund that I was suspicious would try to pee on my garden so I shooed it away every time I saw it.  Looking back, I realize that the dog was also about 20 years old, badly crippled, and nearly blind.  Furthermore, when he was outside the house, he was nearly always on a long tether that let him roam slowly around the grassy bank in their backyard and nowhere near the alleyway that divided our yard from theirs.

Poor old Sam was probably not the tater menace I made him out to be.

Catching Up

Summer is a busy time here at The Slice.  The garden is planted and growing gangbusters.  We've had a bunch of rain and plenty of sunshine.  It's all lush and green out there just now.  I haven't really had to water until this last week.  It's been wonderful.

Just the other day I dug up the first planting of potatoes and harvested a huge bucket full of reds, whites, and yellows.

Out of curiosity, just now I went out and weighed yon bucket o' taters.  They tipped the scale at 29.2 pounds.  I guess I know who is going to spend some time looking for ways to preserve and prepare potatoes.  I have another bed twice the size interplanted with the tomatoes.  This could get dicey.

A couple weeks ago I managed to pick enough black raspberries to make a small batch of 'jam' for ice cream topping.  To. Die. For.  I'm telling you.  If you have any room at all, plant raspberries.  You might want to consider making room.  You don't really need a garage, right?

This stunning specimen is my latest garden conquest.  Last year's broccoli died a horrible, crooked, warty-looking fungal death.  This year, I get this beauty.  That stuff you get in the store doesn't hold a candle to the home grown variety.  Extra tasty.

Yep, that's my big ol' hand in there just for scale.  That's one big head of broccoli.

Of course, in order to dig the potatoes, I had to pull up the onions I planted in the bed with the potatoes.  Most of them were ready anyway.  My onions never get very big, but I did notice that the ones that had become mostly uncovered over the course of their growing season were much bigger than the rest.  The ones on the left side of the picture below were basically sitting on top of the soil with just their roots in the ground.  They are the largest onions of this batch and might be the biggest I've ever grown at about 2 1/2 inches across.

This year I pleaded and begged and wheedled and whined until I got my husband to build a bed just for growing cucumbers and pole beans.  Here it is:

Yep.  It's a classic all right.  Those two round dealies at the top are genuine recycled bicycle wheels.  I painted them with black spray paint before he fastened them to the top of those posts.  All told, they're just a bit taller than I am.  I think they'll provide ample growing room for pole beans and whatnot ('whatnot' will probably = cucumbers most of the time).  There's a third little section in the middle that currently houses the zucchini production facility.

This year's pole bean selection is of the purple podded variety.  They don't look it right now, but the beans are supposed to be very purple.  Unfortunately, they lose their purple color and turn bright green when cooked  Still, it's fun to say: Purple Podded Pole Beans.  Try it once...or twice.

As usual, the garden this year is full of surprises.  What garden is complete without its fair share of volunteers?  This year we have:

Black-eyed Susan

Sunflower of unknown origin most likely my bird feeder.

Second sunflower of unknown origin also likely my bird feeder.

Fernleaf dill

A long time ago, I was told by a very experienced gardener that once you plant dill, you will always have dill.  She didn't lie.  I planted dill once about four years ago and I have it every year whether I plant it or not. 

Probably the biggest success in the garden this year so far has to be the zinnia bed.  In a word, it's tremendous.  Most likely the best zinnias I've ever grown.  It's so amazing, I can't even get a good picture of it.  This is the best I can seem to do.  To quote a good friend of mine, it's STUNNING.

Perhaps the individual flower shots are better looking:

This one might be my favorite.

My husband asked me the other day if zinnias are a perennial.  Sadly, no.  But, I can try to save the seeds and grow them again next year.  He seemed satisfied with that answer.  I like the idea of saving my own seeds.  I don't know what will happen with the zinnias, but I'm going to give it a try.

Can You Smell That?

It's in the air.  I'm not talking about the feed lot on the edge of town although that odor is omnipresent in the atmosphere these days.

No.  I'm talking about spring.  Here we are just past the Ides of March and spring is definitely in the air.  I'm talking robins.  I'm talking greening grass.  I'm talking crocuses poking up from the ground.  I get spring fever really bad and this mid-March weekend was glorious for my garden and my spirit.

This year's tax refund treat was a little electric tiller/cultivator by Earthwise.  I bought it with my own hard-earned money stripped shamelessly from Uncle Sam's hand.  What do I love about this tiller?  Many things!  First of all, no gas or oil to mess with.  Then there's the push button starter.  That's right, no pull cord to yank my shoulder out of joint.  It weighs about 25 pounds so there is no struggling to guide the tiller and it goes after the soil like it's collecting a debt.

Yesterday, I assembled 'Tilly' and took her for a test spin. In about five minutes, I had turned over and incorporated the leaves and grass I used to mulch these two beds last fall.  Another five minutes of work and they'll be ready for planting.

Emboldened by my tilling prowess, I escorted Tilly to the opposite end of the garden where we had not yet broken ground for planting.  After about an hour, Tilly and I had created this:

No.  This is not a grave site.  At least I hope it's not.  This is the site of my potato patch for this year.  I am anxiously awaiting construction of a nice, wooden raised bed about 8 x 8 feet square.   I am very impressed with the performance of this little tiller and I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a small tiller/cultivator.  This is the one I got.

Yep, it's time to think about potatoes again.  I remembered this when I went to the Big Town to get a new dog bed for Lucky.  In a fit of pique triggered by God knows what, last week he managed to flay and gut his old bed.  The gore factor was pretty significant and we had to haul the carcass away forthwith.  He went without a bed for almost a week.  The way he acted you'd think he had been consigned to the garage floor.  The living room has perfectly fine, if soiled and somewhat worn carpeting suitable for lounging by the canine crew.  Nonetheless, he moped and carried on while restlessly shifting from one spot on the floor to another heaving heavy sighs until I broke down and got him a new bed this afternoon.  Here he is 'enjoying' his new bed:

You're stealing my soul!

Lucky isn't super fond of having his picture taken.  I have more shots of the back of his head than anything else.  He's a beautiful animal with amazing blue eyes.  If I didn't have the pics from his puppy hood, I'd never be able to prove it.  In contrast, here is Dotti-dog on the same bed less than 30 seconds later:

Caught her mid-lick. This dog always makes me smile.

Back to the potatoes.  After much hemming and hawing at the display in the garden center carefully weighing the qualities of the available varieties, I went with the early season Yukon Gold and a white, mid-season called Superior. Stay tuned for performance critique and results as the season progresses.  I hope to plant by the first of April.

When I think of planting potatoes, I also think of planting onion sets.  This year is no different and the varieties are the same ol', same ol' I get every year.  Generic white, generic red and generic yellow.  The shallots grew gangbusters last year and they were right tasty so they went in the cart as well.

Yes, I know 300 is a lot of onions.  Typically I wind up discarding about 15-20% of the sets due to decay and then only about half of what's left will actually grow.  Plus, I've never gotten an onion any bigger than a tennis ball out of my garden.  Small onions don't bother me though.  I hate to leave a part of an onion in the fridge.  It never seems to get used up and pretty soon the fridge stinks of onion.  I also decided to try growing onions from seed this year.  It's a new thing for me so I'm reluctant to not plant onion sets as well.  I may have an abundance of onions at the farmer's market this year...which is another topic coming soon.  My first farmer's market experience as a seller!

So that's where I'm at.  I've started a few seeds...peppers and eggplants and the onions of course...but I'm not ready to talk about those.  For now, I'll dream about taters with sour cream and chives.  At least until the snap peas come on.