The Garden Grows

Literally. Exponentially. I think we may have planted a wee bit too much for this Summer, but there’s no way to know ’til it’s too late:

That would be:

32 tomato plants
2 husk tomato plants
4 pepper plants (2 squash peppers, 1 jalapeno, 1 spanish pepper of medium heat)
1 japanese eggplant
1 japanese cucumber
1 american space-saver cucumber
1 bok choy plant
1 mustard plant
2 butter lettuce plants
1 green/red lettuce plant
1 red lettuce plant
42 garlic stalks
1 artichoke plant
20-30 onions/leeks (or so) from the winter planting
100 onions/leeks from the spring planting (still waiting to be thinned)
1 mint plant
3 cilantro seedlings
1 rosemary plant
1 lemon thyme plant
1 greek oregano plant
1 marjoram plant
3 parsley plants
1 italian parsley plant
AND
1 strawberry planter full of delicious strawberries (seriously, they were even better than the CSA strawberries, which were wonderful!)

Plus seeds we are hoping will sprout of:
-okra
-nasturtium
-marigolds
-borage
-cress
-English thyme
-chives
-dill
-acorn squash
-butternut squash
-summer squash
-green summer italian squash (not zucchini, smaller and lighter green, more tender)

Not to mention the basil I haven’t transplanted yet…and a few unaccounted for spaces where I’m likely to plant even more seeds.

I think I may have a problem. Thank goodness that E and friends will be setting up the drip irrigation system this weekend. This is really starting to be too much to manage by hand.

Finally, before we say our complete goodbye to the winter garden, we should be thankful for the broccoli, cauliflower, sugar snap peas, arugula (!!), chard, cabbage, beets, radishes, and carrots. The last 2 categories were the last to be picked to clear the way for the Summer garden. We were impressed that the carrots dug below the top soil and deep into the clay:

Simple Carrot Dill Bisque

Tonight, we used the roots in the picture above to make a carrot dill soup.

1. Sautee the tops of leeks and any sliced radishes, with garlic and chopped baby carrots from the CSA (along with chopped pieces of our mature carrots) in olive oil;

2. Add salt, pepper, water and simmer until carrots break easily with a spoon. Add milk to taste and puree with a hand blender;

3. When you have the consistency you like, add chopped dill, stir until fragrant and serve immediately.

Wish us luck for a summer full of good harvests and creative recipes!

Planning the Tomato Madness

Today, we had several big garden milestones.

First, day 13 after potting, we finally got one sprout of Aunt Molly’s Husk, the last of the 35 varieties to sprout. Somehow, we managed to germinate at least one seedling of every variety we tried to grow (keeping the seedlings alive, of course, is another matter, but still).

Technically, Aunt Molly’s Husk is a husk tomato or ground cherry (like a tomatillo, which we are also growing), so it’s not a true tomato, but once we were growing 33 varieties of tomatoes, given that the cheery tomato seeds I ordered over the internet came with tomatillo seeds and Aunt Molly’s Husk seeds, well… who are we to resist? Salsa verde, here we come!

Second, the tomato seedlings were allowed outside for their first exposure to the real world today. It was only 2 hours, but they seemed to like it and rewarded us with 8 new sprouts between last night and tonight.

Third, at tonight’s 13-day post seed-potting count, we are at 199/257 seedlings sprouted, for a germination rate of 77.43%.

Fourth, and finally, we got the busted concrete debris removed, cleaned up a bit of the winter garden, purchased some redwood bark for the walkways between the garden, and started the final transition to this year’s garden madness, aka The First Summer of Tomato Madness.

And yes, in case you were wondering, that is a very dead Christmas wreath hanging to the right of our front door. Perhaps we’ll take it down tomorrow…

Our Babies

Well, as I said, E and I are committed to the garden this year.

And, I’m a tomato-lovin’ fool.

So, I’m trying to grow several varieties of tomatoes from seeds.

Basically, I’ve got a *grow room* in our garage:

And, it’s so cool.

When they first sprout, they look like this:

And, then, less than 24 hours later, after exposure to the one cool flourescent and one warm flourescent bulb, they look like this:

In the interests of safety in numbers, I planted roughly 250 seeds of somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 breeds of tomatoes and tomatillos. Even with the new construction, this summer, we have space for maybe 20 plants of this type if we want to have a summer garden with vegetables of any other type. It should be interesting to see how this plays out…

I take back *everything* I ever said about the winter garden

Tonight, E became an official winter garden supporter, when he stated the phrase above.

Until now, he’s been conflicted. It’s nice to have a garden year round, and it’s a fun hobby, plus, it keeps me less stressed, and it provides us with some nice additions to meals. But, at the end of the day, it’s mainly dark green leafy things, which, frankly, if you ask him, suck, compared to the glorious harvests of summer.

That is, the winter garden sucked until tonight.

Silly me, I waited ’til now to apply pork to the situation. What was I thinking? Pork makes everything better!

Herbed Pork Chops over Brussel Sprouts and Red Onions

-2 large pork chops, washed and dried
-2 sprigs fresh marjoram, leaves removed from the stem
-1 large sprig fresh rosemary, needles removed from the stem
-2 sprigs lemon thyme, leaves removed from the stem
-1 red onion, sliced into 1 cm rounds and chopped into quarters or sixths
-2-3 T olive oil
-1/2 meyer lemon, in quarters, seeds removed, ready for squeezing
-black pepper
-sea salt
-2 T pickled horseradish purée
-and, of course, from the winter garden, 1 stem of fresh brussel sprouts

1. Pre-heat oven to 400F. Wash and Prep vegetables. Remove all brussel sprouts from the stem, wash thoroughly, cut the stem-ends from the sprouts so that they have a flat end to set in the baking dish. (NOTE: If you are using a 9X13 Pyrex dish, remember to keep it fully on the counter while chopping brussel sprouts on the cutting board. Otherwise, it will weigh the cutting board down, on the portion of the cutting board that is not on the counter, and you will have many shards of pyrex to clean up…you could even lose a few brussel sprouts that had been placed in the dish…theoretically speaking.)

2. Layer onions and brussel sprouts (chopped stem flat-side down) into a baking dish.

3. Mince herbs. Mix with olive oil, salt, pepper, and horseradish. Sprinkle 1/2 the mixture over brussel sprouts and onions in the baking dish.

4. Wash and dry pork chops. Spoon mixture on all sides of pork chops and layer on top of vegetables. It should look more or less like this:

5. Place into pre-heated 400F oven for 10 minutes. At the 10 minute bell, remove the dish and flip the pork chops (they should be white on the side you put down and slightly pink on the side you put to the top). Squeeze 1 lemon wedge over the chops and vegetables. Return the dish to the oven and turn heat up to 500F, and set the timer for 10 minutes.

6. At the timer, check the dish. Turn the pork chops one final time. Squeeze the other lemon over the non-lemon-flavored side for another 5 minutes of heat.

7. Remove from the oven. Arrange on two plates, and allow it to sit for 5 minutes before eating a delicious meal (which could look something like this):

8. Enjoy! (And enjoy the validation of the winter garden because these truly are the best brussel sprouts you’ve ever had in your life!)

Winter Garden Update

Well, it’s been 7 weeks since we built the winter garden boxes and planted the first transplants and seeds. What have we learned?

1. Swiss Chard grows quickly, and is tasty or bitter depending on your perspective. If it gets an aphid infection that you don’t treat soon enough, the leaves will all curl and be useless and you have to cut it down to nubs. I hope some of them come back…

2. The Japanese cucumber plant in the pot is still going strong and producing cukes like crazy. Definitely the most prolific plant of the year:

3. The Broccoli, Cabbage, and Cauliflower seem to really like the soil and were doing quite well other than some holes in the leaves we were trying to identify. The peas seem to be flowering and growing well, too:

4. The first set of onion seeds all sprouted, we even had to cull, and the peas seem to be flowering and growing reasonably well. You can see the Chard between the peas on the left, and the onions on the right, trying to make a comeback:

5. The brussel sprouts seem to be growing well, but they too, have the holes in the leaves. In all of the plants with holes, they started as small shot-like holes, and then grew each week:

6. We planted two carrot seeds per indentation, and about half of the indentations sprouted. My gran tells me 50% is great yield. I’m not so impressed…

7. The beets are very sorry looking. We planted 9, 5 sprouted but 2 were destroyed by the squirrels digging nearby for their lost nuts (stupid, forgetful squirrels). To date, 3 are still hanging in there — 2 red and one yellow:

8. The French radishes were the easiest winter thing to grow from seed. They all sprouted, and produced radishes in 4 short weeks. They just keep getting bigger while we wait to eat the rest:

9. The transplanted greens for salad have been my favorite part of the winter garden. Very few pests. Arugula, I love you! Spinach, and mixed salad pack — you guys are awesome too. We regularly trim the outer leaves for fresh salads and then the baby leaves in the middle continue to grow outward. The parsely and chives on the far right are nice to have for fresh accents to meals (just like the herb box) Greens fresh from the plant are amazing:

10. So far, 41 of the 42 garlic cloves we planted have sprouted. I’m holding out hope for the last one because it was 40/42 ’til this AM when the late-bloomer 41 poked through, so perhaps 42 is just even slower. I can’t wait to have 42 heads of gourmet garlic next year! Also, at the far end, we planted more onions and 6 artichoke seeds. Supposedly, artichokes are hard to germinate and take up 3 feet of space per plant. We were shocked to find the 5 of the 6 seeds sprouted despite serious squirrel destruction in this box (they are much more attracted to plain dirt than dirt with plants, so next year we will intersperse the transplants with the seeds more evenly). We surrounded the artichokes with onion seeds, most of which were decimated by the squirrels. So, in a month or so, we’ll probably cull 3 of the artichoke plants and try with a third round of onions.

11. Remember the book about the Very Hungry Caterpillar?

12. Yeah, we finally figured out what was causing the tiny holes in our plants. At first, we just saw lots of black dots on the plants that seemed to grow bigger over time, and some of them were darker green. The Big Book didn’t have anything to say about the balls, so I’d spray them off with the hose and we made plans to spray the plants with Neem Oil Spray in hopes that it would ward off whatever was the problem:

13. It turns out, the balls are caterpillar poop that grow as the caterpillars (and consequently the holes in the leaves) grow (see the right hand of this leaf for super-small balls, the first sign we saw when we had small holes):

14. For some of the plants, I fear we did not act quickly enough:

15. But finally, we had an afternoon caterpillar genocide:

In our terrible scientific experiments, we learned that they will drown in plain water, but try to climb out. If you add bleach to the water, they don’t try to climb out. The neem oil spray also kills them if they are drenched.

16. The moral of the story is that this guy is not the friend of your cabbage, brussel sprout, brocolli, or cauliflower plants:

If you see one or more of these guys, and then you see small holes in your leaves, act quickly. I think next year we’ll try to proactively spray with neem oil.