216 Onions

So yesterday I actually decided to plant 9 onions per square foot - 216 onions planted!  It's amazing how quickly it goes - right index finger pushed into soil an inch, do this for 2 sq ft, plop in 18 onions and cover them...on to the next 2 sq ft.  No time at all.  I highly doubt that the two of us will eat them all, though, especially if they reach full size, so we'll see how many we use and plant accordingly next year.

The worst part is that something was already in the garden today digging them up.  I had to replant 7 of them after I got home from work.  Probably a squirrel, but I don't know why - they don't eat them.  I highly doubt it was a deer, they usually don't like the smell - but I know they were in the garden last night because a number of our hostas got eaten.  I'll just keep replanting and see how it goes.  Every night I come home from work and "walk the garden" - pulling up the maple tree sprouts and any newly sprouted weeds, replanting if needed or propping up plants that have fallen over.  Therapy.  Even in 40 degree weather it's a pleasure to come home and walk the garden.

Onion sets!

My onion sets came today!  Long-day sampler from Burpee...and I'm working from home, so perfect timing.  They'll need to be planted right away because they're a little dry, but they look good:

They are Walla Walla, Red Zeppelin, and Spanish White.  I know the Walla Walla is not a good storage onion, but the Red Zeppelin is a storage onion, and the Spanish White I'll just have to learn about.  I don't mind freezing the onions to store them, and I have a dehydrator to dry them as well.

The directions say to plant them about 6" apart, and I have 24 square feet set aside, which means only 96 onions (and I received 225).  That's very strange since I usually plan carefully to maximize the use of the plants I order.  So I looked up the planting instructions in the Vegetable Gardener's Bible and it says to plant 4" apart.  That would have been 6 per square foot, taking care of 144 plants.  That's more like it.  I'm going to try the 6 per square foot and see what happens.  The rest I'll give to neighbors and friends/colleagues at work.

Plants in the garden

The temperature is dropping fast, but the cold weather plants should be ok.  At least I hope they will be.  I planted not only the kale and cabbage, but also the broccoli and cauliflower as well.  Here they are with the thinings (we used those for lunch) and the garden plan.

Here they are in the garden:

Cold weather crops are going into the garden behind the garage, where it's a bit more shady.  Two different locations within that garden house the cabbage, kale, cauliflower and broccoli.

I love the square foot measuring tool Dianna made for me.  Wooden yardsticks from Home Depot.  A 3X3 with a 3X1 extension.  It really helps me figure out how to place my plants..

And here are the peas and radishes:

Eggplant sprouts & cabbage

Today will be a very busy day.  Despite the fact that the weather report says we'll be in the upper 30's tonight and tomorrow night I've decided to plant the kale and cabbage.  They're too big for the starter cells, I don't want them to become root-bound, and it's not worth it to plant them into larger containers when I would just plant them outside next weekend anyway.

Then, I need to get the eggplant sprouts into starter cells.  One of my neighbors said she was told that eggplant is difficult to start, so she puts them in wet paper towels in a baggie in a warm spot.  I put them on top of our refrigerator.  That was 3 weeks ago.  Here's what they look like now:

Definitely ready to be put into soil.

I'll upload pictures of the kale and cabbage in the ground later today, along with some pictures of the sprouting peas.

Daffodils

If only you could eat them.  They would be the perfect flower.

How beautiful is that?!?!

Dandelions in salad

We do not use any kind of pesticide or herbicide (or chemical fertilizer) in our gardens or on our lawn.  Until you look close no one can tell, the lawn is green, it's just not all grass.  But that is a benefit in more ways than one - no cost for weed and feed on the lawn, and you save money by having additional greens for your salad.  Yes - we eat dandelion greens, and we don't pay gourmet prices for them because we harvest them from our own lawn.  (I've actually seen them sold in high end grocery stores...people pay for dandelion greens, really???!!!!)

Many chefs are using dandelion greens in their salads as if they're some outrageously rare commodity.  We all have them in our gardens, let's use them!  Every spring I go out and pick dandelion greens to add to our salads.  They seem to get more bitter in summer when they start to try to bloom, but they're great right now.  It's a wonderful way to add foraged food to your home grown food.

Peach blossoms

Because of the super early spring, out peach tree is blooming!  It's so beautiful.

Last year we got 15 peaches from this little tree.  This year hopefully more, but it won't be a ton, the tree is still too little.  I read that they are very brittle and thus you have to thin the peaches quite a bit.  But eventually I want to be self-sufficient in fruit just like we're self-sufficient in veggies. 

We have 3 blueberry bushes, 1 currant bush, a cherry tree, this peach tree, a raspberry stand and a blackberry stand.  We also have a bed of strawberries which I protect with bird netting so the chipmunks don't eat them all.  This year we want to add a plum tree, another cherry and at least one apple (it can cross-pollinate with our neighbor's apple tree). 

Oooh radishes

I plan to pickle them...in the meantime, grow baby grow  :-)

20 Minute Terrarium centerpiece

This is so simple:

I have been wanting to create a terrarium for a while now, and finally just decided to do it.  I put rocks at the bottom, then collected moss and succulents from the garden.  I put the rocks on the bottom, placed the moss over them, then inserted the succulents into the cracks in the moss.  Then I put a couple more rocks on the moss and went looking around the house for things to create the scene.  Seriously, this is what took the most time.  I had a small statue of Durga riding a tiger (Hindu goddess - I have a ton of goddess statues around the house) and a crystal (ok, I have a bunch of those around too).  I just placed those strategically in the apothecary jar and viola a new dining room centerpiece.

More photos of the terrarium:

It was also extremely inexpensive - I had everything (including the apothecary jar), so I spent no money.  If you don't have an apothecary jar handy, however, don't go someplace trendy.  I found a set of three last year at Hancock Fabrics for about $30 - $10 a piece.  (And I just searched Amazon and you can get a very suitable one for $13.)  The rest of the creation process is simply finding things you already have in your garden and house.  I went with moss and succulents because they don't need a lot of soil or water to flourish.

Here's another inspiration from hallready.blogspot.com:

Multi color tomatoes

So I planted Mary Robinson's German and Ananas Noire despite the fact that they weren't very productive last year.  I'm hoping that their low productivity was because it was such a cold year and that this year will be different.  I really hope they produce well because this is what they look like (taken last year):

Ananas Noire

Mary Robinson's German

How beautiful is that?!  And they taste great too.

A great start to spring

My basil (planted in the basement 2 and half weeks ago) is all up.  The cilantro is starting to come up, and so are a few of the parsley.  No celery yet though.

This weekend was busy, I have had the feeling that it's going to stay warm and so I started seeds way before I would typically start them.  So not only did I direct seed (see my post from Sunday) I also started seeds in the basement.  (By the way, I was looking in the garden today and some of the radishes I planted already are splitting and starting to grow.)

This is for Paul - it's time to start your seeds, I'm pretty sure.  At least I'm starting them, so go for it.  Don't direct seed anything but cold weather plants, so wait with your squash and cucumbers, but feel free to start seeds indoors for both cold weather and hot weather plants.

I started lettuce (11 types) in 72 starter cells.  I also started my tomatoes (18 types) and peppers (8 types).  And I started purple and green tomatillos and two types of eggplant.  Lettuce always does great for me - all of these types grow well.  I've put notes by each of the tomatoes and peppers when I have something to say about them - the problem is that last year was so cold that I can't judge how well some of the varieties I tried for the first time will do this year.  Obviously I'll keep a record here so you can know which do well and which do not.  To make matters worse, the people at work who took my plants had different experiences with them than I had - microclimates do affect productivity, so take what I write with a grain of salt and experiment for yourself.

Here's my list of seed I started this weekend:
Lettuce:
Sweet valentine
Red deer tongue
Merlot
Emerald oak
Asian red
Forellenschluss
Dark lollo rossa
Red sails
Amish deer tongue
Beleah rose
Little gem

My favorite lettuce Forellenschluss:

Tomatoes:
Lemon boy (nice color)
Garden peach (didnt' plant last year, but the 2 years before that they were productive)
Japanese black trifele (this did great last year in very cool summer and short season)
Striped roman (also did pretty good last year)
Violet jasper (a small tomato, but extremely productive last year, and very early)
Black mauri (same comments as violet jasper, smaller)
Black krim (the best tomato I've grown - always productive, and the best tasting I've had)
Amana orange (large tomato, and productive every year I've grown it)
Illini star (I didn't get a single tomato from this plant last year)
Sub-arctic plenty (these matured extremely late last year, and I only got a few)
Koralik (I didn't get any tomatoes last year from this plant)
Royal chico
Dr Wyche's yellow (I've planted this tomato 2 years in a row and have never gotten a tomato)
Bison (nothing last year)
Ananas noire (not productive last year, but the 3 tomatoes I got were beautiful)
Peacevine cherry (I didn't have luck last year, but a colleague said it was super productive for her)
Anna russian pink (nothing last year)
Mary Robinson's german bicolor (like the ananas noire, only a couple of tomatoes, but super pretty)

My favorite tomato, Black Krim:

Peppers:
Quadrato d'asti rosso
Orange bell
Roberto's cuban seasoning
Albino bullnose (last year these were the first to produce, but know that the peppers are tiny)
Patio red marconi
Jimmy Nardello italian (good producer last year)
Corno di toro rosso (good producer last year)
Anaheim (terrible last year, didn't even grow, but am trying again because I want a mild hot pepper)

All of these I planted in the basement under lights.  The eggplant I put in damp paper towels, folded them over and put them in a plastic bag on top of the refrigerator.  They haven't started growing yet, but when they do I'll put them in dirt.  It supposedly takes a long time for them to sprout, and I haven't grown eggplants before, so it's all a mystery.  The tomatillos are also under lights in the basement.

(Note that I took these images from the web - I looked for the pictures that looked most like the crop I get.  Some of the pictures don't look even remotely like what I harvest, but these are representative.)

Good luck!

Too hot for soup

So this weekend I decided to use my frozen carrots and celery as soup starter.  Frozen veggies are good for soup.  Add in beans and squash and basil, arugula, and fines herbs pesto....

And soup is always a good thing in the cool spring weather...but it's been hot, not cool.  It's been 35 degrees F warmer than normal here in Illinois. I made soup, we ate soup, and now I feel like I have to freeze it.  It's too hot to eat soup!

Today I saw the first butterfly of spring.  Probably this species, it was black with yellow spots:

Also, the first chipmunk.  And on my way home from work I heard the frogs singing.  This is wonderful, but ridiculous.  It's March!

Spring before it's time

Today I spent the day in the garden, way before I should be in the garden.  Typically the highs are 48 F around now, today it was 64 F and the week is supposed to be similar.  We even have blooms!  (Crocus in neighbor Lisa's grass.)

My other neighbor, Celia, who has gardened for years was planting her lettuce out, and the ground was workable (not too dry, not wet) and so I decided to plant also.  Not lettuce (I start that from seed in the basement) but peas, favas, arugula, spinach, carrots and radishes.  It was beautiful outside and I got to hear and watch the cranes as they migrated back north to have their babies.

 How beautiful they are, and how wonderful to be able to plant so early this year.  And spend the day outside in Birkenstocks in March!

More cool plant art

So here's a great place to look for nature mixed with art: trendhunter living furniture designs.  Remember I was thinking of planting lettuce on my indoor walls?  Well, here's how it would look (only I wouldn't put it over my couch):

And who wouldn't want a light like this...????

Gotta love it.  And once again kudos to Shirley for finding this!  You eco-rock!

Second citrus scale treatment

Here are some pictures of the effects of scale on my Meyer lemon.  This might help you diagnose your citrus.

Sticky scale secretion:

Affected lemon:

The scale itself (brown spots):

Had to treat the tree again obviously - this time I used rubbing alcohol instead of Absolute vodka.

Organic coffee

Trying to live as sustainably as possible I grow all my own veggies, eat meat raised organically and free range from Farmer Nick's LLC - a local farm - and try to buy organic and local for most of the rest of my purchases.  Local turns out to be very difficult for coffee.  And I like my one cup in the morning.  Very much.  And it's great to spread around organic coffee grounds in my organic veggie garden.

I decided I didn't want to buy the organic coffee from the grocery because it's expensive and usually not fair trade - plus I want to buy so that as little as possible goes to the middle store.  So I started looking around for a source, and not being able to help myself I went to Amazon - they have free shipping after all, and usually a great selection of stuff.  So we first tried Coffee Bean Direct.  As the reviews stated, it was dry and not very flavorful, probably due to little oils left in the beans.  That was too bad, apparently if you order direct from Coffee Bean Direct it's better, but I was ready to be on to the next thing.  This weekend we had Equal Exchange.  What a difference!  I knew it as soon as I was pouring the beans into the grinder - they had a rich color and their oils were apparent.  The taste is great, and I will order Equal Exchange coffee again.  But I'm still searching.

I've decided to try Pachamama Coop coffee next.  I read about this group in Hobby Farms Magazine (I don't know why they had so many things I lusted after this month) and you can find them here.  I haven't tried them yet, but will write about it when I do.

If you have tried their coffee I'd love to hear about it, and if anyone has a favorite source for organic, fair trade coffee that they love please let me know.  I am trying to create as small a footprint on this earth as possible, and I know that the shipping is a huge drain on natural resources, but I'm hoping to offset that with paying fair prices for the coffee bean farmers.  One day, I'm hoping others will want to pay me fair prices for whatever I'm producing, and what goes around comes around after all.

More seeds started

Yesterday:
24 Basil (Thai, Emily, Genovese & Lettuce Leaf)
8 Celery (Tango & Self-Blanching)
8 Parsley (Flat Leaf & Plain)
6 Cilantro (All Slow Bolt)

I realize that I have to plant more though - I have space in the garden for 16 celery plants (4 square feet with 4 plants per square foot), and obviously I will need more cilantro.  The good thing about cilantro though is that it self seeds and comes back every year, so I am just planting these as supplemental cilantro to the plants I know will grow in the herb garden by themselves.

The plants from Monday are already coming up - Thai Sai, Bak Choi, Early Jersey Wakefield, Kale, and three types of broccoli are up (Nutri-Bud, Calibrese, & Purple).  The cauliflower isn't up yet and neither is the DiCicco broccoli.

And today I also started saving my coffee grounds again.  I had almost no snails in the garden last year after I started spreading the coffee grounds around the lettuce and cucumbers!

Winter cole slaw

So today I finally cut down the cabbage I had taken out of the garden and planted in containers at the end of the season.  They've been growing over the last few months in the basement, near a window.  Basically I think I've just been saving them for fresh greens in the winter - they really didn't grow much at all from when I transplanted them.  But I don't mind.  It snowed yesterday, there is snow covering the ground outside, and inside I was chopping cabbage, basil, shallot and garlic - and squeezing the rangpur lime over top. 

I altered the cole slaw recipe in the Alice Waters cookbook "The Art of Simple Food" and added my red clover sprouts.  It turned out great - now it's in the fridge, flavors mingling.  I can't say how much I enjoy my basement greens in the winter.  I will do this again even though the cabbage never formed a head.  The lettuce, sprouts, and now cabbage are the only fresh veggies I get the whole winter.  All the rest are the veggies blanched and frozen during harvest season and obviously they're cooked.  Growing up in southern California and Florida I really ate mostly raw veggies.  Winter up here kills me, so this is a true treat. 

If you want to do it too, just transplant your fall cabbage into large pots and put them somewhere in your house where it's cool and they get sunlight.  Apparently they stay healthy and ready to eat for months.  I'll be doing this again next year!

Confused garlic

I worked from home today, which meant that I had time to feed the birds this morning.  I have 9 bird feeders so it takes a while, and usually during the week I do this after I get home when it's pretty dark.  Considering that and the fact that I was on vacation all last week, I really haven't been in the garden during the daylight much in the last couple of weeks.  As I was out in the back I saw that the daylilies had started coming up.  Ah oh.  Immediately I went over to look at the part of the garden where I planted the garlic.  Sure enough.  The garlic was up.  Brown tops from where it froze.  And this evening - more snow.  Poor, confused garlic.  I wonder how my harvest will go this year.  For the last two years I have grown enough garlic to get us through the entire year.  I don't know about this next year.  I planted 48 cloves - more than enough if the weather was normal.  The question is, will they do OK with all this fluctuation in temperature.  They are just coming up way too early.

In fact, it's been so warm that the garlic in the basement is already starting to grow.  It's early for that too.  I'll probably have to chop and freeze the garlic so I can keep it.  Look at how it's growing!

But not the hanging garlic as much:

Inspiration

So this evening and today, every spare second I had, I was daydreaming about what kind of artistic eco-friendly design I could do at our house.  I started thinking about plants on walls.  I've seen that.  How about lettuce on walls?  Inside.  I could grow my lettuce and herbs right in the kitchen.

My partner thought this was funny and proposed that we wouldn't have to use plates anymore, just walk up to the wall and graze like deer.  LOL.

But I looked up plants on walls anyway.  There are some interesting websites out there, and to purchase the equipment really isn't that expensive.  The problem is the price per square foot of edible plants - it would be cheaper to buy more grow lights...and then there's the fact that I don't need the extra lettuce or grow space, I have plenty of room for it downstairs.  Oh, never mind.  I'll look for a new inspiration and let you know...