Harvest Monday - August 15th

Head on over to Daphne's Dandelions and scroll on down to see what everyone else is harvesting.

On the 10th I canned 10 Quarts of green beans.  I'm loving the wide mouth jars for this.  I used my 23 quart Presto Pressure Canner.

On the 12th I harvested the first of my tomatoes and 1 squash.  I have 2 squash plants and they are producing just the right amount for what my husband and I can eat.

Here is today's harvest, August 15th.  There is an infestation of caterpillars.  They have orange red heads and black and grey stripe the long way.  They are all over the house and it was amazing to me that they were on everything and didn't care that it was a jalapeno, pumpkin, or onion.  I'll post a photo when I can calm down enough to get one.  They've just about destroyed my green onions.

If you've never tried a lemon cucumber you need to.  It's delicious! This one was a little bigger than the size of a baseball.

I accidentally got my first heirloom tomato.  Oops.  I love the character. This is a pink brandywine that's still green of course. I'm going to let it sit in the window sill and see if it'll ripen.

 I also did my 3rd green bean picking.  It's slowing down.  They cut the alfalfa in the field next to the garden and the grasshoppers have moved in.  Wish they'd eat the caterpillars instead of the green bean blossoms.  

And this had me super happy.  The jalapenos are starting to look good.  I didn't really need this many but I did chop up 4 and needed 3 for my pico de gallo.  It's heavenly to eat fresh pico from fresh produce.  I'll post photos soon.

I haven't done a total before so I thought I'd start today.  I think it's such a great idea and something I want to include in my garden journal from now on.

Today's Total

Alliums: 5.15 lb

Cabbage: .88 lb

Cucumber: 1.1 lb

Green Beans: 4.41 lbs

Jalapenos: .25 lb

Kohlrabi: .10 lb

Squash: .44 lb

Tomato: 3.7 lbs

Garden Harvest

This is a small harvest from the 5th.  I picked two small onions because I needed room for the larger onions to grow.  Finally harvested my first squash - that's my fault - I planted 2 and late because of the soggy wet spring.  And two kohlrabi which will sit in my fridge until I get the guts to throw them away.  

On Sunday I picked two bell peppers and one onion for fajitas since my mom and niece were here.  It was a great way to end Fast Sunday.  My mom even noticed that the bell peppers were a prettier green color than she'd ever seen in the store.  She was right.  And much more delicious!

Cold weather veggies - not really

I think the cold weather veggies are my favorite to photograph. And even though it's now quite hot, they are just starting to catch up.  It's just been a weird year.  Love the purple kohlrabi.  So far I've harvested 1 columbia cabbage and two kohlrabi.  I put them in the Moo Goo Gai Pan.  Yum! They are so refreshing. 

I love having the photos to compare them to other years.  It's been super handy it figuring this whole garden thing out.

Chicken and snow peas

Lets start with the smallest head of cabbage from my garden EVER.  But it was tasty, I can say that. I will grow the Columbia River cabbage again except I will put it back between the rows of corn for better shade.

 And some of the green onions I've grown too.  I love the green bunching onions.

 Purple Kohlrabi, regular green kohlrabi, and a bit of garlic (it wasn't quite ready and I hadn't cured it so it wasn't very strong). I like the garlic tops to fall over and after you pull them up you let them dry in the hot sun for 2 weeks and this is what it takes to get great flavor. Learned about that from this show although the garlic feature is no longer there.

The last of the snow peas.  They were like candy.

 Here is the cabbage all chopped up and in the pan.

And here it is beginning to cook with a little olive oil.

And here are the snow peas with the sliced water chestnuts. The nice thing about snow peas is that by the time you get sick of them, they stop growing for the season.  I'll let you know how the fall crop goes.  I haven't wanted to grow one before but having my own Honda Mini-tiller really helps! Today I added 2 more rows of green beans and 1/2 row of lettuce.

I pulverized the chicken then cut it into small pieces. Very tender that way and super fast to cook. Here is the link to the recipe I sorta used. Moo Goo Gai Pan

Transplanting cold weather veggies

As you can see I finally got my transplants into the ground. The kohlrabi can actually be planted closer than I thought.  And so it shares the row with the lettuce.  We found out recently what a terrible deer problem we have.  Every night 13 of them hang out in our yard. Our neighbor across the street said his dog barks every night around 10:30 or 11 p.m.  He took out his spotlight and saw 13 pairs of their alien eyes looking back at him.  ugh.  I'm trying organic garlic clips to see if they help keep them away from my apple tree.

 Columbia Cabbage

 Purple Kohlrabi - it's really kind of pretty!

 And these are not transplants but I had to share how big my alliums are now and the deer don't like um.

My new garden toy

I received my check for a class I taught recently and cashed it, except for the part that goes for tithing.  Then I ran to the Honda dealer and garden store and spent it all.  I've been wanting one of these for years.  So I talked Tyler into letting me have my check for gardening purposes.  I didn't think it would be enough for this but it was.  It's 9 inch wide Honda F110 mini tiller.  I wanted it so that I could keep the weeds out of my flower bed and use it between the rows of my vegetable garden to keep the weeds down.  I just don't have the energy to hand weed.  And it's too windy to put most of the things I'd like to grow in a square foot garden.  

I tilled up half my garden plot the other day.  And finally got my lettuce, cabbage, onions, peas, and kohlrabi in the ground.  Photos soon, I promise!

Growing our own food

So I found out the tomato seeds really like sprouting in these peat cups much more than they like the little  trays - see the last photo.  The cold weather vegetables really did well in those trays, especially the romaine lettuce. We are growing Roma tomatoes and Early Girl's.  I want to grow the Romas for tomato sauce that I want to can this year.  I tried just a little last year and froze it.  It was wonderful in our spaghetti sauce.  The Early Girl tomato plants produce like crazy.  They are great bottled too.  I love them in my pico de gallo salsa like stuff that I freeze in the Ball freezer jars.  

Someone was feeling bored here waiting for me to say we could head outside and let him plant the peas. Daddy was at school for birthday lunch with our oldest.  He brought donuts for her class.  And he brought Subway sandwiches so she wouldn't have to eat school chili. After lunch he came home early and then we picked up the steer compost and covered our garden with it. 

And these plants are nice and prepared for cold.  They just desperately need to go in the ground.  As soon as it's dry enough to till - I promise.  It's been soaking wet this spring even with the lake melting earlier.

Cold weather Vegetables

It's seriously been so cold this spring.  These poor plants are still in my window sill.  They are going outside next week regardless of whether they'll live or die.  And the peas are going in the ground.  Had I purchased the compost last fall like I had originally planned, I probably would have done this already.  The ground is just too hard and the soil too compact to get away with another summer without the 4 inches of compost I've been wanting to add.  It's really hard to add it into the garden when the wind is blowing you away and little bits of ice are stinging your face.   

And another thing I want to purchase this year is a mini-tiller.  Who needs 3 foot aisles?  And I can't get away with square foot gardening because of the wind. So many options!

    

Gardening - Cold Weather Vegetables

I love Erin's idea in her Photography 101 class at ReneePearson.com of photographing through leaves, so I decided to experiment a little with the idea myself.  There aren't many leaves around here this time of year.  These are actually the cold weather vegetables I started indoors.  Yep, they are sitting in my window sill in my bedroom and the white behind them is actually snow.

I put this one first because I love it the most.  What do you think? 

Click on it to see it larger.

Romaine Lettuce

Columbia River Cabbage

Big Daddy Onions

Purple Kohlrabi

I can't wait to get these in the ground.  The lake has thawed. That means good things around here.  It snowed this morning but it's already gone.  The tulips are starting to poke up through the ground out front and I pray the deer leave them alone.  I cannot wait to see how the alliums do. I purchased 2 types of purple alliums and I know the deer don't like them.

Don't forget to get your cold weather vegetables outdoor hardy before planting them in the ground.  Don't know how? Find out more here...

(Registration for Erin's class ends soon and my class, Photo Preserves begins next week - giving you until the first week in April to get registered.)

Sprouting in my window sill

We planted columbia cabbage, romaine lettuce, and purple kohlrabi on February 1st.

Here are the sprouts on the 11th.

The Kohlrabi wasn't sprouting so I stuck the heating pad under it.

I set it to LOW and it's only on during the day. We now have 8 of 12 sprouted.

And the Romaine Lettuce is coming along.  The Big Daddy Onions are too. I learned a few things about Onions HERE.  Some onions DO NOT STORE WELL.  I've been getting onion sets from Anderson's Seed and Garden.  I usually get a red and a yellow.  Walla Walla and Candy Red.  Last year I decided to try Big Daddy.

The big Daddy Onions are doing really well and so easy to store.  I didn't put them in the best spot of ground so they didn't get very big, but they are tasty and I still have a few left as you can see from the last photo. I decided to try and start them from seed so there is less of a problem with them going to seed this summer.  So far so good.  They seem really hardy.

It's nice to see something sprouting indoors even though it went from 50 back down to the low 20's.

It's February 1st!

Gardening Already??? I know, it's 10 degrees today. I just needed to feel a bit better about this weather.

I'm sure many of you are used to buying seeds in these cute little packets.  That's what I grew up with.  That's what we purchased the other day - a few anyway.  They don't have Genovese Basil at the garden store I love.  I labeled the upper left corner with the month and year.  Many of the seeds we buy are good for a few years. There are guides out there to help you on that.

And then I was introduced to Anderson's Seed and Garden.  They sell seeds in bulk.  I get exactly the number of seeds I need for the length of the row I plan to plant.  And it's less expensive. The nice thing is that they have this nifty planting guide divided up into cold plantings, just before frost, after frost, and fall.  Everything on one sheet. Get your copy here! Print and laminate that puppy. No more trying to keep track of dirt covered seed packages.

Here's my little helper.  The lettuce was the easiest for him to plant.  The round kohlrabi and cabbage seeds got away from him. I've never tried these window sill peat starters.

We are going to try them out on the cabbage and kohlrabi, oh and the romaine lettuce.

I had no idea I could plant lettuce so early.  I like the romaine because the deer don't.

It only needs to be 25 degrees. And I love kohlrabi - no bugs like broccoli.  And it's great in stir fry.  And Mike at Anderson's says the purple is more tender.  We shall see...

 

And here you can see that it's all in the window sill.  We can transplant in about 6 weeks which is when the boxes say to move the starts out. As long as the garden dries out a bit, we can.

I labelled them with painters tape. Nothing fancy.

Don't want to garden this year? It's always a good idea to keep some seeds stored along with your food storage.