What a Weekend!

It all started with these garlic bulbs.  With the garlic I planted a couple weeks ago and these, I now have about 90 cloves planted.  This is my first attempt at growing it and I may have gone a little overboard, but I am always increasing the magnitude of my gardening undertakings, so I am not overwhelmed.  Here is what I planted:

"Early Purple Italian" 21 cloves

"German Extra Hardy" 16 cloves

"German Red" 14 cloves & "Inchelim Red" 21 cloves.

I planted them according to the instructions that Seed Savers Exchange was so kind to include with my purchase.  The only guideline that I didn't follow was the time to plant.  They said to plant after the first light frost, but I don't know what I am always doing everything single day,  so I may have jumped the gun and little.   No big deal.  It's been getting pretty cool at night and I would not be surprised if we get frost in the next couple weeks. 

So, yeah.  I had to make room for all this garlic, I had to bite the bullet and rip out my cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers. Let's just say it right now,  it was a great year for gardening!  I got more peppers than I ever remember getting, and I pickled all the hots.  I got about 22 pints all together off of 12 plants.  Not bad in my book.

Sorry for the meal picture, I know that I said that these types of pictures are for a different social networking site, but it is the only photo I had of my canned peppers from today.  That was the first pepper that I took out of a jar, and it looked so good in had to capture it.  Let me tell you, in my slightly biased opinion, these were the best pickled peppers I have ever had.

I simmered these jalapeño and cherry peppers for 5 minutes ever so slightly that it almost looked like they weren't even bubbling at all.  I used a solution of 3 parts vinegar 1 part water and crushed some garlic in there with them.  The recipe was from allrecipes.com.  

I almost forgot to mention, I covered my garlic beds in straw about 8 inches deep.  Now my backyard looks like a hayloft.  I have a lot of time and money invested in this garden and I have to protect it.  I have to protect my way of life.

On the hunt - UPDATE

I am on the hunt tomorrow to track down my garlic bulbs that were in the mail.  The postal service claims that they were delivered today, but they are not in my mailbox.   I'm going to march right down the reason soon as they open.

Anyway, as soon as that is taken care of, I think I need to start clearing out space for the garlic to be planted, compost has to be added and mixed in to the soil.  The tomatoes and peppers are pretty much done, and I had better just pick them all and preserve them in some way.  I thought about drying out the peppers, but I might can them. I don't know, I'm still debating it.

Another project I want to tackle is moving around my perennial flowers.  I thought about maybe breaking up the hostas and irises and putting them in pots to try and sell for a few bucks a piece next spring.  Like with any plant that I have watched grow, I can't stand to throw them away.

I should also start getting ready and area to start some new gardens next year.  Pollinator friendly flowers are my next goal, and I need to make prepare more ground before I do any of that.  It would be really cool if I planted enough variety of flowers to have something blooming at all times of the spring, summer and fall.

Pretty soon the leaves are going to be falling,  and I should get some bags full of leaves from the side of the roads.  I know it seems weird to most people, but serious compost enthusiasts like myself consider it normal.  I need to increase my compost production, and I don't have nearly enough trees around my house.

So, my work is cut out for me tomorrow.  I had better get some rest, because I need to get up early.  You know what they say: A farmer's work is never done!

UPDATE

I found them!  They were here all along, buy my wife forgot to mention this fact.  But look how nice they are, they have the nice mesh bag with a detailed planting and harvest guide.  We'll, now I'm off to the races! 

My Dream Garden - Part 1.2 UPDATE

So I am trying to plan my dream garden; the big challenge is making it fit on my small piece of property.  I have ideas of raised beds everywhere, an agreement with my neighbors to expand into their yards and "share the bounty" as P. Allen Smith says.  I would like to be able to plant enough to eat plenty of fresh vegetables and have lots more to share and to preserve for the following winter and spring.  I think this post will serve as an outline to begin my planning.


A. Summer Garden


1. Tomatoes
When people think of a vegetable garden, the first things most people think of are tomatoes.  I have grown them every year since I started, and I couldn't imagine not growing them.  I love eating them fresh, but canning homemade sauce, stewed tomatoes and salsa is also an important thing to consider in this planning stage.  I grew eight tomato plants this year and that was enough for fresh eating.  I'm going to take a wild guess and say that maybe if I planted 40 tomato plants and they did all rig, I could can enough stewed tomatoes to last the whole year.


2.  Cucumbers
I could eat a cucumber every day of the year and since I started harvesting them this year, I have eaten one just about every day. My first attempt at pickling was made this year.  I mixed cucumbers with zucchini and I think they came out pretty well.  I only grew one hill of cucumbers, so if I was to grow enough to make a years worth of pickles, I would have to grow at least a few more hills.


3. Peppers
This year, I did 12 hot peppers and 8 bell peppers and 4 Italian sweets.  That was probably enough hot, but I probably would need to quadruple the bells or maybe try to extend the season with some type of hoop house to keep them going into the fall.


4. Summer Squash
I had two 4'x4' beds devoted to summer squash this year, and it was probably enough.  I canned pickled zucchini and froze about 3 1/2 gallons worth of shredded zucchini for cakes, muffins, etc.


5. Winter Squash
Winter Squash did not happen this year due to a lack of space, but if I do, I would want to plant at least 4 different varieties.  Maybe butternut, acorn, spaghetti and buttercup.  If I got half as many of each of those as I got zucchini this year, I would definitely have enough for the winter.


6. Eggplant
This is another thing that I didn't plant this year because of space confinements.  I wouldn't need too much of these; we don't eat that much of it.  Four plants would be plenty.


7. Sweet Potatoes
I have never planted sweet potatoes, but I want to try.  I have done some reading on this Morning Glory cousin, and although they are a tropical plant, there are some varieties that will do fine in my climate.


8. Potatoes
2016 was my second year planting potatoes and they are incredibly easy to care for.  I still haven't harvested them, so I will have to conclude the numbers for my dream garden at a later date.


My goal is to add all of these things up and map it all out so I can figure out how much ot the neighbor's yard  I really need to intrude on.

....to be continued.

* UPDATE * 9/21

9. Beans
In my 10 years of serious vegetable gardening, I have only planted green beans.  This has got to change.  They are possibly the easiest vegetable to grow, and require very little care.  Don't get me wrong though, I love fresh green beans, but I need to work on doing succession plantings to spread out the harvest and I also need to broaden my horizons.  I need to dry planting some drying beans as well.  I love black beans, pinto beans, navy beans and cantellini.  With the vine plants, like beans, cucumbers and musk melons, I want to have them grow over a arched trellis and make a food tunnel.  I think that would be really cool.  Also planting corn with beans acts as a natural trellis as the beans grow up the corn stalk and I believe they are companion plants because of how they interact in the soil as well.

10.  Muskmelon
When I tell some people that I want to grow Muskmelon, they immediately turn up their noses and say, "Eew!"  Muskmelon is simply the family that cantaloupe and honeydew melons are part of.  There are also may lesser known varieties that I have heard rave reviews about. Part of the problem with all produce in the grocery store and especially melons is how they have to be picked before they are ripe in order to survive up to 2 weeks of shipping.  I  have listened to people describe what a fresh picked melon tastes and smells like, and I need to try this for myself.  They say that a single fresh melon can fill an entire house with sweet fruity fragrance and the flavor is exponentially greater than a store bought one.

11. Corn
I have been apprehensive about growing corn simply because you are supposed to plant a lot of it to ensure that it pollinates properly.  I looked it up and it looks like it could be challenging,  but I promised my kids that we would try to grow some next year.  Maybe they will get more interested in helping me out if we plant it, so it may be worth it.

B. Fall

1. Swiss Chard
I recently discovered this cool weather vegetable and I can't get enough of it.  It doesn't get the pests like kale, and I haven't seen any sign of disease on my plants this year.  If I had 12 good plants, it would be more than enough for me and the neighbors.

2. Spinach
I never had luck with spinach, but maybe it's because I always planted it too close together and didn't think it properly and I also planted it in late spring, so we will see how it does this fall.
3. Lettuce
I am watching some romaine grow right now, but I also want to trust some other types like bibb lettuce.

4. Mustard Greens.
I heard the it is a very attractive plant and it would probably look nice in my front yard alternated with some swiss chard and kale.

5. Brussels Sprouts
I have read that these are the heartiest of all the cabbage family.  People have reported that they were harvesting Brussels Sprouts out of snow covered plants.  We actually eat a lot of these, but I have never attempted planting them.

I forgot how much I like arugula!  A chicken sandwich was on the menu for supper and I didn't want to have just plain old chicken, so I spiced it up with a big handful of this complex-flavored green vegetable.  I'll save the pictures of my meal for a different social networking site.

I don't know where to start a description of the flavor, but all I can say is that it is spicy but mild, tender but textured, simple but not plain.  We got some rain today, so maybe that helped with add to the mildness and tenderness.

From what I hear, arugula tolerates the cold weather pretty well, so I am pretty excited about this new addition to my garden.  If anyone has any suggestions for recipes for arugula, please add them to the comments section.  I really want to hear from you!

Another garlic day is coming soon!  I just placed an order for 4 varieties of garlic with Seed Savers Exchange.  I read some articles about growing garlic and they said to plant several varieties in order to ensure that get a decent harvest even if one or two varieties doesn't do well for whatever reason.  They say to plant one clove every 4-8 inches, so I can plant about 64 cloves in a 4'x4' bed.  We'll see how many cloves are in each bulb that I bought I ordered 2 blubs of 4 varieties, so I should get about 64 cloves, maybe a few less.  I can always adjust the spacing if needed.  Also, a map should be drawn of where each variety is planted so I don't lose track of what is what.  Be sure, there will be more to come on the garlic situation.


In other news, yesterday I had a housewarming party to go to, so I had the idea to feed my need to put my hands in dirt and give the gift of a living thing to the new homeowners.  I purchased two plants, that tolerate low light conditions and decided to split them up and make a little arrangement out of them. 


It's not that I dislike big box stores as a concept; I like the idea of one stop shopping, but the management must not put a lot of passion into the houseplant section over there.  The plants were so dry and root bound, but the leaves looked okay so I asked an associate to water them thoroughly for me while I picked out a new potting container and a small bag of organic potting mix. 


When I got back to the house, I took the plants out of their pots and divided them up and separated the roots carefully.  The potting mix must have been sitting in a dry building for at least a couple years because when I filled the pots with soil and poured water over them and the water sat there as if static electricity was keeping the water from permeating into the soil.  Time was not on my side, so I had to mix it up with my hands and knead it like bread dough to ensure that the soil was evenly moist.  How does everyone else deal with this?  Does everyone else knead their dry potting soil?      


I was thinking all week about how I needed more low light houseplants at the office, so this worked out perfectly for me.  I bought 2 plants and ended up (after dividing them) with 2 plants for gifts and 2 to take to work (always with the ulterior motives).  Score!  Here is to cleaner indoor air.

*     *     *

If anyone has any suggestions for an attractive, safe landscape mulch that is also harmful-chemical-free and maybe organic, I would greatly appreciate the advice.

Today, back at the house I finished planting my Hardy Chrysanthemums.  They had a pretty good deal on them over at my local Whole Foods Market, 3 for $10.  I always like to buy mums when they are at the stage where none of the flowers have a a full bloom yet, but I can just barely tell what color they are going to be.  That way I can maximize the amount of blooming I get to experience.  I need to remember to water them as much as they need it because in previous years I have tended to neglect the landscape after October first.  I don't want to end up with half-bloomed, brown and crunchy mums.

This year is a little different because I have stepped up my gardening game.  Last winter was not even all that cold or long, it was quite mild, but I had the gardening bug from January on to today.  Gardening is my way of life now, and I want to continue this path of always improving my skills, my techniques and my landscape. 

I had a good chunk of time in the garden today and was able to pick all of these wonderfully ripe cherry tomatoes!  These are my main plants that I had planted from seedlings that I bought from the local garden center.   I also have several more vines of these that I propagated from the side "sucker" branches that grew from these vines.  It was the first time I propagated any vegetable plant cuttings and worked very well. 

The only thing that I would do different next time is take better care of the cuttings.  After I transplanted the cuttings and watered them enough to make them stop wilting I let them grow wild.  If I had taken as good of care of the cuttings as I did the main plants (planting 1 per square foot, pruning sucker branches and properly staking them) I could have easily double led my harvest.  Oh well, there's always next year. 

I'm still waiting to harvest more of my hot peppers because they I want to pick them all and can them at once.  They are way too hot to eat them all fresh and the plants have been bountiful.  The peppers were also purchased at the garden center and I got 6 different types in four-part for a total of 24 pepper plants, all of which were planted using the square foot method.  

I had a few issues with the peppers being mislabeled, but it worked out to be a blessing in disguise.  I thought that I had three types of bell pepper, but one of them was actually a sweet Italian pepper, I don't recall the name.  The other issue was my Habañero peppers came in the 4-pack, but one of the four looks different.  The leaves are lighter in color, the peppers are longer but they still have not ripened. I am assuming that the odd one is a ghost pepper.

I need to take some pictures of the peppers next time I'm out there.

Here is a view of some of the cherry tomato cuttings in a bed with romaine lettuce and peas.  As you can see, the wildly growing vines are very leafy, but they dont really produce enough fruit.

Harvesting cucumbers was the main highlight of the day; I picked them before work.  

I only have a couple of cucumber vines, and they started out very slow this year.  I didn't really plant them in the greatest location, but it was the only spot where I had enough room left.  They are in a place that may get about 6or 7 hours of sunlight per day at the peak of summer.  

Another early hindrance may have been the soil.  I planted the seedlings in the dirt as an afterthought because I knew that the location wasn't the greatest, but I figured that I ought to plant them somewhere and not waste these perfectly good plants.

As I said, they started off slowly, but once I top dressed the whole bed with nice compost, they immediately got greener by the next day and within two days, I noticed a new leaf growth.  I have gotten at least two dozen cucumbers this year or maybe more, and like my cherry tomatoes, there is no end in sight.  It was very warm out again today.

Other than that, I didn't get much done today except I made it another "bring your plant to work day".  Today I brought one of my many jade plants that I have cloned.  I also had to make a run to Walmart.  I was glad I did, because potting soil was on clearance and they had a nice organic worm castings potting soil.  I never tried this type of stuff, so we'll see how it does.  Gardening is my way of life, and I have not gotten too stuck in my ways yet, so I will keep trying new things for now.

Today was a maintenance day.   

As you can see above, I have some seedlings starting to grow in this bed.  From left to right I have spinach, swiss chard, more spinach, mesculin mix and White Icicle radishes.  All of these, I am planning on protecting to keep them over the winter.

Next is the arugula patch.  I may need to thin it out a little bit, and I will attempt over-wintering these as well.  On the bare side, I have some little kale and chard seedlings, but the kale is already getting destroyed by the cabbage worms.  I have some organic approved bug spray, but I am still reluctant to use it. 

Here is my pride and joy of the year!  These "Super Sweet 100" cherry tomatoes did incredibly well this year.  Using the square foot method, I planted 4 plants in 4 square feet and have continuously harvested them since mid July, and there is no end in sight.  I may have to pull them up soon to make room for more garlic and winter crops.

Despite the drought that we have experienced all year, my entire garden has done well with minimal watering.  It was 90 degrees and sunny today.  The only thing the plants are lacking is hours of sunlight at this point.  Last year was El Niño and we had an very mild winter. I am expecting that we may be in store for another crazy year of weather next year as well.

On a side note, I started research on some indoor plants that I can keep at work in low light conditions.  This morning I transplanted a few I'm patients into a small container with hopes to keep it indoors over the winter.  I am also considering a prayer plant, philadendron and maybe some kind of fern.  

Nobody else in my office really has a gardening bone in their bodies,  so I am kind of an outsider in that respect.  Today I brought in a geranium and I immediately got picked on by a coworker.  

"Why did you bring that?"

"I think you brought bugs in with that plant!"

Blah, blah blah!  Whatever.  They will never understand. Gardening is my way of life. 

I find that when I have plants on my desk, it makes the 8 hours in a cubicle more bearable, and they make me actually want to sit there.  That and the small amount of gardening before work also gets me in the right mood to get to work.  

Today is garlic day!

I planted some garlic, saved the small cloves for cooking and grilled up some fresh peppers and with sausage.  Fresh picked peppers are practically a different vegetable from the peppers you buy at the store.  They are incredibly aromatic and tasty!

I had written a long wordy post tonight for everyone's enjoyment, but the blogger app decided to have an error and I lost about 10 paragraphs.  I'm not re-writing it all.  Sorry folks!  I'll try again tomorrow!

Monday is Swiss Chard Day

It's Monday, and today, I decided to pick that gorgeous Swiss chard plant and try it out for the first time, and may I say, it was delicious!  I didn't have any fresh garlic, but I used the minced garlic in a jar and it came out really good. 

I had read some articles about it earlier and they said to simply cut the stems off first and cook them a little longer.  So, I cut them up like you would cut celery for a salad, and I chopped up the soft leaves and it was done in about 15 minutes. 

I don't even remember what I did before I learned the simple way to cook any vegetable.  Maybe that's why I never really cared for vegetables in the past; I was cooking them all wrong.  Nowadays, I simply use olive oil, salt and pepper.  Maybe I  will throw in some garlic, a few herbs here and there, but mostly, I stick with the basics. 

When I say "some garlic", I mean a ton of garlic.

Anyway, the Swiss Chard was good.  I initially grew it because I had tried juicing it and it had such a nice mild flavor, I had to see how it was to grow. 

Growing it was quite easy.  It was a little slow to germinate, and was very slow to grow through May and June.  I think the first big leaves started showing up in mid July.  One thing about the chard that impressed me, was how as my kale was being slaughtered by cabbage worms, the chard was practically untouched.  I decided, that I needed more of this in my life.

In the beginning of August, I planted a few trays of it, because I heard P. Allen Smith talk about how well it grows in the winter and how gorgeous of a plant it is in fall.  My seeds did not do very well in terms of germination rates, but now I have 10 plants in the ground and that should be plenty.

Now I just have to work on my preparation of it, to try and get the kids to eat it!

Introduction

Hi everyone, Mark the Gardener here.

I just decided to start this blog since I won a blue ribbon for my vegetable display.  I didn't have much competition in my small town, but it was the first public recognition I have ever received from in my 20 years of plant keeping.

Let me give you a brief history of my gardening experience.

I first got the "gardening bug" in my wild teenage years, while perusing a High Times Magazine.  I'll let you guess where my intentions were.  After being set straight by my mother, she took me to the local nursery/ greenhouse, where I immediately had a new passion and hobby.  That year, instead of buying people gifts for Christmas, I propagated plants for everyone.

The next year, I took over the landscaping at our apartment house, and it progressed from there.  I took over the care of plants that people would be about to throw away, bringing them back to life.  I collected houseplants and experimented with vegetables in containers.

A major stepping stone was when my wife and I moved to single family home with a big yard.  Immediately, I knew I had to start a vegetable garden in the ground.  We moved in on the first day of November, 2006 and before winter, I had already leveled out a spot with rock retaining walls and had my plot ready for spring to come.  
That winter, I read a book all about homesteading.  I need to find it again, not for the information, but just to remember what ignited this fire inside of me.  It described the fundamentals of gardening, composting, harvesting firewood and building sheds, root cellars, greenhouses, etc.  I planned out my garden on paper and anxiously waited for spring.

Fast forward to today and now I have my in-ground vegetable garden on its third piece of property and it is doing better than ever.  In the past 10 years, I have learned a lot of good techniques from several books, but I have also learned that I am not the one in control of my garden.  Whatever you choose to call it (God, Mother Nature, Weather, etc); that is what is in control.  No two years have been the same, and from what I have heard, they never are.  We can only use our knowledge, experience and creativity to overcome the challenges that are given to us.

This fall, I am trying to get some people on board in my town to start a community garden.  I spoke with some people on two different town committees and everyone liked the idea.  Let's see where this goes.

Until next time, may peace be with you! 

Signing off.

-Mark