Spring Garden

Finally, FINALLY I have time to write about the garden! I've been so busy trying to get things in the ground, weeded, prepped, covered, mulched, etc etc. So, here is the update:

One of the new things we're trying this year is corn. Corn! I've never grown corn. I picked a variety from Seed Savers Exchanged called Blue Jade. It is a sweet corn that only gets 2-3 feet high, so it is ideal for containers. And I know corn is best grown in clumps (not rows, per say, unless you clump the rows) so I planted it in the half whiskey barrel we have by the porch. We'll see how it goes.
The radishes are giving such a great burst of color here in this patch. Also planted here are peas, beets, parsnips, and carrots. The carrots didn't sprout. Not. A. One. I don't know why. I think I planted 6 different varieties, and nothing. I'll put in a late batch in a different bed in July, probably, and hope for the best. Everything else did ok in this bed. I'm at a loss.
The two head lettuces I grew this year: Tennisball (right) and Dazzle romaine (left). Aren't they gorgeous? Notice the baby in front. I started a few more from seed, then transplanted them today so when I cut the heads of the older plants, the babies will be established and I'll have another batch coming along.
Another pic of the lettuce. I haven't tried the Dazzle yet, but I'm really happy with Tennisball, which I got from Montecello when we were there a year or so ago.
A flat of things waiting to be planted, including but not limited to tomatoes, lettuce, squash, and okra. Some have been planted since I took this picture.

Also, I have seeded beans and cucumbers, and put in some of the pepper plants. The garlic scapes are starting to show, the red shallots are starting to flower (but not the gray shallots yet), peas are on the vines, potatoes are flowering, blueberries and blackberries are in their infancy, parsnips are flowering (I'm collecting seed this year), and some of the tomatoes are flowering, too!

A Few Updates

I dug the last of the parsnips and carrots today. I'm going to can the parsnips but for the carrots I think I'm going to slice and dice them and dry them. Anyone have experience with this?

I planted the peas on Sunday, 5 varieties:

• Sugar Snap, of course
• Little Marvel, which did so well for me last year
• Eclipse
• Lincoln
• Green Arrow

I have no experience with the last three, they were given to me by my friend Barbara in Virginia. IIRC, Green Arrow was her favorite. I'm looking forward to seeing how they do.

The Artichoke seedlings are coming along, too. Actually, I had (at last count) 26 come up. 6 of those have gone to live with Angie:

Our friend Vino came by a couple weekends ago to help nail up plywood. I think we've scared him off, he hasn't been back. We've nicknamed him 'Thor' for his, ah, ability to handle a hammer.

I *finally* got Matt to Fitzgerald Pottery in Dillsburg. He seemed just as in love with their stuff as I did, and we came home with 2 new mugs and a small bowl. He was very partial to the light green, while I liked the brick and dark greens and blues better.
Not much work got done on the garage this weekend even though the weather was gorgeous. Matt came down with a stomach bug on Sunday and he was out of commission pretty much all day.

Is the TSA Checking for These Things?!?!

Back in December, I took the infamous Bags Of Leaves that I'd gotten from my dad and put them on top of the Parsnips and the Carrots and just left everything in the ground. Since then we've had a really intense cold weather/wind spell, and I had no idea what to expect. I took our long shovel and went to do some digging about 2 weeks ago.

It turns out there was no need to worry! The carrots pulled right out! The ground was so soft and nice. It was a bit frozen where two bags would meet, where there wasn't so much insulation, but still.

Parsnips did need digging but not because the soil was frozen. They needed digging because of the size. Last year my parsnips looked like this. This year? A couple of them were bigger. Two were at least 4 inches across the crown and 16-18 inches long. I kid you not.

Which leads me to a really great story. Matt scrubbed everything up (thank you dear!) and I bagged the larger parsnip up in a clear plastic bag, put a twist-tie on one end, and I took it to work for my coworker.

She didn't come in until around noon, so I sat the parsnip on her windowsill, pointy end up, behind the curtains where it would keep cool.

One of the federal employees came in, like he usually does at lunch, to do some research for a project he's working on. Two things you should know about him: 1) he is known nationally as Mr. Emergency Management (seriously, he is THE go-to guy for this stuff), and 2) he has a reputation for being rather, um, arrogant, but really it is just natural shyness. It's been years before we finally broke the ice.

So, he asks me if I had a nice weekend. I told him I did, I dug some carrots and parsnips. He looked at me and said, "Parsnip.....what's a parsnip?" And I said "Hold on, I have one here," and (smiling to myself devilishly) I went over to my coworkers desk, reached behind the curtain and pulled out The Monster.

He had been following me over and literally jumped back two steps when I showed it to him. His eyes went W I D E. His jaw dropped.

"HOLY MOLEY!!" He said. "Is that normal?!?! You could kill someone with that thing!!" He tentatively took it from me. He wielded it like a club.

"Does the TSA check for these at airports?!?! This is a serious weapon!"

About then my coworker came in. She sized up what was going on and said "I'm not going to ask what you two are doing."

Mr. EM went on in this vein for about 10 minutes. He was seriously impressed. He did say at one point, "Did you notice my first thought was of destruction? Yeah. It's what I do."

So, frequent fliers beware!! They're going to start carrying parsnips soon.

Late Fall Harvest

For a garden blog I haven't been talking much about the garden, have I? Here is a bit about what is going on:

This is the broccoli on November 15:
I had 13 broccoli plants this year (14 originally, one didn't make it). I bought them at Lowes in Lexington, VA, because my local greenhouse was sold out by the time I got to them. I really wasn't sure I was going to get broccoli this year because by the middle of October they were but wee little broccoli wannabes. When I picked the first batch at the beginning of December they were huge:I got a great Fall broccoli crop! A little wormy, but I took care of them (for the most part. I hope). You can see the size here, my gloved hand is at the left: A week after I picked the first snow-covered batch we were having a cold and windy spell and I decided to pick the rest before the wind got to it. It has all been blanched and frozen now.

I also cut into the single Australian Butter squash I got, and 'Butter' is the perfect word to describe the flavor. Fantastic! I will grow these again:

1/3 of this squash went into this apple and cranberry dish for Thanksgiving:The remaining 2/3 was cooked (too much, I think) and frozen. This is a great squash.

My remaining carrots and parsnips are still in the ground. I covered them over with the now-infamous bags of leaves to try to insulate them some. Next warmish spell I'll try to dig them up. The cabbages, I fear, are toast. Just got them in too late.

Winter

I haven't updated this in a while, so I thought I'd kick one out here for the new year.

Garlic is coming up, but I'm worried that the 2nd batch I planted got in too late. None of it has come up yet, and it rained like 2" a couple days after I planted it, I hope it didn't rot. Or freeze.

Publish Post

Parsnips were wonderful for Christmas dinner, roasted. Not tough or woody at all, which had worried me because they were sooo big,

We have plans to expand the Paw Paw Patch (named after my paternal grandfather, a post on him is to come sometime in the future) to include a larger section for paste and sauce tomatoes. We're going to call that the Grandma Mary V. Annex, for Matt's maternal grandmother who died this past summer. She did literally HUNDREDS of cans of tomato sauce every year, so it seems appropriate to invoke her presence for that.

The compost bin didn't get a 2nd batch out this year, but it will work very quickly once the weather starts warming up, and I just keep adding to it. The green house is totally finished and re-inforced. My potting bench is done, too, I will get some pictures of that sometime for a future post.

And the catalogs keep coming. I got a burpee catalog, which went directly in the trash this year. I got the Seed Savers Exchange catalog a couple weeks ago quickly followed by Seeds of Change, and a new one called Pinetree Garden Seeds out of Maine. They seem to have a nice variety with more than a few heirlooms and such, so I may order from them this year, too.

All I need now is the John Scheeper catalog, and then I can toil away making lists, researching, fretting and pacing to and fro, trying to decide on the perfect varieties for this year.

The Roots of All Evil

It was a beautiful summer that year, full of harvesting and enjoying the best tomatoes straight from the vine. Sure, there was weeding, too. Messy, difficult weeding with slugs and aphids, but it didn’t taint the feeling that this was a good year full of good vegetables, and all was happy in the land of Morris.

But they didn’t know….what lies below!

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Early spring. Unsuspecting gardener Jody gleefully prepares the carrot and lettuce patch.

“Gee,” she thought. “I really like parsnips, I wonder if I can grow any?”
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Summer was coming to a close, the last of the tomatoes came in and became sauce and salsa. Broccoli was planted, one stalk harvested and then….chaos. Something ate everything in the garden. The broccoli was no more, an ominous sign of…what was to come!
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“Huh,” She thought. “Parsnips have a really long growing period. Seed them early in the spring, then let them go through the first good frost of the fall. I wonder if it will be worth it?”
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Mid fall. Garlic is planted in the hopes that it wouldn’t be too late. The parsnip tops had disappeared along with some of the spinach. Was it too late? WAS ALL LOST?
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“Well, it’s late fall. We’ve had frost AND some snow. Probably should dig the parsnips and see if we got anything.”

(insert ominous music here)
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MONSTERS! MONSTERS TAKING OVER THE GARDEN! RUN! RUN, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, THE ROOTS ARE TAKING OVER!!

Monthly Update 9/21/08

Again, not keeping up with this as much as I’d like. I somewhat got derailed when Max had his medical emergency and never got back on track (most recent Max update on my other blog). It wasn’t just this, though, I got off track with the garden, too. I’m going to be playing catch up here over the next couple weeks with a bunch of my infamous So, what do you do with….? series, and I will do a couple bits on flowering things from the summer.

Tomatoes are starting to wind down. There are still a LOT of fruits on the vines, but they are taking a long time to ripen. Same with the peppers.

Cucumbers are done, as are the beans. Not at all thrilled with the beans I grew this year. The Roc d’Or yellow beans were terrible, did not like them at all. And they were spotty and bug-chewed very badly, so I pulled the plants and I’m going to burn them (as opposed to putting them in the compost bin, since they’re diseased or something). The Kentucky Wonder pole beans were very tasty raw, but cooked they were mushy and tasteless. I may grow some next year, but only for eating raw. Otherwise, I’m in the market for a couple new varieties of beans.

I started some fall crops, I have broccoli in and just planted some spinach seedlings. I planted some fall radishes that are pink on the inside, white skins. They’re called watermelon radishes. I also put in some more beets, but I may not get any out before it turns really cold.

The parsnips are still in the ground, I did pull the 5 smallest ones to see how they’re doing. They were very nice, smelled wonderful. I hope to get a good batch out, and will probably grow them again next year.

I have 2 orange pumpkins and one winter squash of the Triamble variety.

Now is the time to be planting garlic, but we aren’t quite yet. No place at the moment. I may put them where the beans were this year and between the broccoli. We’ll see.

Weekly Veggie Patch Update 5/26/08

Clear weather the past few days, finally. It’s heating up, too, which should make the tomatoes and peppers happy. I have had a lot to do and no time to do it due to the weather, so OF COURSE it clears and warms up….the weekend I have to work. And not feel well, so I got one whole hour of work done all of Saturday.

I pulled my first radish this week, still a little small but I had to do something to make me feel like this was all worth it. And the little radish was perfect and round and dark pink and had a real bite to it. I’ve pulled more since, maybe about a quarter of what’s there. I’m seeing few carrots, though. A bit bummed about that. And I have no idea if and parsnips are coming up or not because I don't know what they look like.

I did my annual herb-shopping trip to Ashcombe’s on Wednesday morning. I had to drop Matt off at Gettysburg so he could pick up his new work van (at 7:15 A-freaking-M), and figured, well I’m halfway to Ashcombe’s I might as well just go. So I did, got there just before they opened at 8 and wandered with my cappuccino and looked at roses outside until they actually opened the doors.

I grabbed up 3 basils, 3 thymes, a culinary sage, a white (smudging) sage, 2 bok choys, 2 flat-leaf parsley, 2 oreganos, 2 borage (for the veggie patch, to bring in bees), a patchouli, a marjoram, and 1 other thing that I can’t remember now for the life of me. I also picked up two huge bunches of asparagus crowns 50% off, 2 African violet pots, a pack of turnip green seeds for a coworker, some strawberries, and 3 coleus. I had wanted to get some lemon grass, dill, and other basils but they didn’t have them out.

I planted the bok choys and the borages in the veggie patch. I also planted more bush and pole beans. The spinach bed needs weeded badly. Something (birds, I think) ate 2 out of 3 of the melon seedlings, so I replanted them and put some floating row cover over them. Kale and heading lettuce is doing well. I think one, maybe both, of the peppers I started from seed may bite it. If so, I can use that space for more bush beans.

But, I did get most of the mounds in place for the squash and got them planted after I got home from work on Sunday. Pumpkins, too. Matt is going to dig two trenches for me so I can plant the asparagus. I can also plant some things down the middle of the rows for a few years, like beets or onions, so that’s good.