Category Archives: Garden

Using up and starting anew

‘Tis the season for finishing what remains of last year’s harvest, getting some early tastes of this season’s bounty, and prepping the garden for much goodness to come.

The Old

  • In the “root cellar“:
    • Potatoes — For awhile there, I really wasn’t sure we would make it through all of these.  I’m planning a new potato triage strategy for this year’s harvest (more below).
    • Winter squash and sweet potatoes — Also a decent  bit to use yet . . . .
    • Onions — a couple of pounds of small (i.e., pain-in-the-butt to use) onions left.  The fact that I pay three dollars for a single (large) organic onion at the store may motivate me to put in the effort to use these.
    • Garlic — what’s left is a bit dehydrated, but still okay to use.
  • In the freezer:
    • In general, items in the freezer aren’t as urgent, but still good to make room for this year’s harvest.
    • Loot includes shredded zucchini (for zucc bread), red raspberries, chard, pureed winter squash, green peppers, and fennel.

IMG_3765

This meal made use of some of our stored potatoes (Purple Viking, which are white inside, and an all-blue variety, which look dark purple).  Plus canned beats.  The cabbage for the slaw was not from the garden.  And, alas, we don’t have chickens, so the eggs are from the farmers’ market.

So, potatoes.  They store best if you leave the dirt on after harvesting, but by this time of year, when they’re a bit wrinkly, cleaning them is a pain, especially the little ones.  For this year’s harvest, my plan is to immediately (i.e., within a few weeks of harvest) sort out all of the littles, wash them when their skin is still nice and smooth, and then prioritize eating them within a month.

The New

Thanks to the voles (ha!), we didn’t leave much in the ground this winter.  Instead of one long low tunnel (or a couple of shorter tunnels), as in winters past, Matthew put up one relatively small tunnel, mainly to keep the artichokes alive.  He also planted some arugula in that tunnel.

After the winter we had, I didn’t expect anything to survive, tunnel or no, but lo-and-behold, the arugula made it, and we’ve been having arugula salads for the past few weeks.

IMG_3774

It’s so nice to taste fresh, raw veggies at this point in the year, after lots of cooked veg all winter.  The meal also included some freezer goodness: green peppers, red peppers, and tomatillo sauce, plus some of our homegrown corn meal went into the corn bread casserole.

In the ground

As of this past weekend, the spring garden is in great shape.  The potatoes are planted, along with all of the cruciferous seedlings, fennel, and onion starts.  So many plants ready to be outside and growing!

We are also starting a number of things from seed: peas, beets, lettuce, spinach, and chard — all in the ground!  Matthew’s mom made this awesome planting grid, that makes planting easier, faster, and so organized (I love that last one!).  I hope to get some pictures of the grid in action this weekend.

#Spring

Sure, everyone and their grandma is writing a “Spring” post today, but I can’t resist.  This is what we’ve been waiting for, through the cold, snowy winter!

Spring in the garden
Matthew took a vacation day today, so that he can spend both today and tomorrow in the garden.  (Unfortunately, his productivity may be limited by a respiratory virus he seems to have picked up.)  There are potatoes to plant (just a wee bit later than past years) and onions and leeks to get in the ground.

He’s going to hold off on the fennel and cruciferous, since there is still more cold in our forecast.  Those seedlings are hanging out here with me, in a temporary chicken-wire cage to protect them from voracious rabbits.

IMG_3736[1]

Realistically, even with two days at the garden, he probably wouldn’t have time to get these in the ground this weekend anyway, so it’s not the end of the world.  We’ll bring them back in under the grow lights for the cold nights.

IMG_3739[1]

Awaiting our longtail
As of two weekends ago, we pretty much finalized everything for our bike, including picking out handlebars and tires.

When I posted a couple of weeks ago, a reader and bike shop owner informed me that the Yepp Maxi Standard was not the seat that was compatible with the  Xtracycle Edgerunner.  Bummer, because I’m not sure that my original EBay purchase is returnable, but better to find out when we were still waiting on the bike and had time to get the correct seat (still trying to sell the blue standard seat on Craigslist, and hoping the spring weather will generate more interest).

Our Yepp Maxi Easyfit arrived on Wednesday, so we now have the correct seat to go on our bike.  We decided the lime-colored seat was our top choice, and I managed to find a used one on Amazon, which I wasn’t expecting!

IMG_3741[1]

I would call it more of “safety yellow” than “lime green” — it’s not a bad color, but definitely not my favorite.   It will certainly be visible, which is something.  Also, it will be behind me on the bike, so I won’t really have to look at it all that much!

Now all we need is the bike — fingers crossed for no more delays!

Happy Spring!

Raising a foodie toddler

In response to yesterday’s meal post, a friend asked, “Does your son eat all of these recipes?”  It was a great question, and I want to share (and elaborate on) my reply.

As a note, I conducted childhood obesity research in grad school, so I’m fairly familiar with (and perhaps take for granted) a lot of the basic tips for helping kids learn healthy eating habits.

[Sir] eats almost everything, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  Some nights he looks at his plate and announces, “Need mo’ food,” which translates to, “I want different food.”  We always encourage him to try what’s on his plate, and we rarely offer alternatives.

Finishing the meal with some frozen blueberries
Finishing the meal with some frozen blueberries

When he’s less enthusiastic about something, I’ve found that simple things, like letting him serve himself, or making a slight modification to the dish (e.g., adding some chopped peanuts), can really help.

While we don’t force-feed him, or make him eat everything on his plate, we do sometimes help feed him the first few bites of something he’s uncertain about. If he takes to it, great, if not, that’s okay, too.

Nature or nurture?
All-in-all, he’s a pretty adventurous eater for a toddler. I don’t know how much of this is nature, and how much is nurture, which would include our use of the Baby Led Weaning approach.

We’ve basically offered him the same food he sees us eating, right from the start.  While there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with offering some pureed food, I dislike the new trend of the “squeeze pouches.”  It’s one thing to use one every once in awhile, for a snack on the go, but using them at the table, as a substitute for eating real meals, is a slippery slope.

As pointed out in this post on getting kids to eat vegetables, constantly offering alternatives at mealtime is also a slippery slope.  If given a choice, most kids (Gabriel included, I imagine), would choose grilled cheese or pasta over a quinoa dish.  Offering alternatives is tempting, to make meal time “easier” in the short term, but it can quickly become a cycle that creates the so-called “picky” eater that most parents hope to avoid.

Finally, involving Sir in as many aspects of “food to table” as possible seems to really help.  During the growing season, he spends almost every Saturday at the garden with Daddy and Baba, getting a hands-on lesson in where his food comes from, harvesting and nibbling fresh green beans, broccoli, and cherry tomatoes.  You don’t have to have 3000 square feet of garden to get your kids involved.  A small raised bed is a great place to start!

He loves to help me get his oatmeal ready every morning, and I involve him in other meal prep and kitchen work, time (and my sanity) permitting.  Recently, he’s enjoyed helping tear arugula for salads, though he was eating about as much as he was prepping — just raw arugula, no salad dressing required!  While I’m careful about not snacking close to meal times, I’m always happy when he wants to nibble on the vegetables I’m chopping.

The gardener never rests

Guest post by Matthew, AKA Farmer Brown

It’s March 3rd, and there’s an inch of ice on the ground and single digit temps outside, of course nothing’s going on with the garden, right?

Well, actually, over the weekend, I harvested 2 gallons of arugula (from under the low tunnel), turned compost piles, and took more anti-vole measures (more on that in a future post).

I have nine trays of seedlings growing, including onion starts and fennel seedlings that are itching to be transplanted outside.  Nine trays exceeds our grow light capacity by one tray, so the leeks are hanging out on the sun porch, along with a bit of lettuce.

IMG_3636[1]
Seed Starting
There’s almost always something to do . . . .  I planted leeks and onions December 1st.  I have my best onions transplants ever — many are roughly pencil thickness.  I seeded four seeds to a 1 ½” block and they’ve been under our grow light set-up, getting 16 hours of light a day.

IMG_3638[1]

I seeded fennel, celeriac, celery, flat and curly leaved parsley, and artichokes on January 4th.  I planted cruciferous (40 varietals of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, rapa, collards, and kohlrabi), eggplant, bluebells, and breadseed poppies at the beginning of February.

IMG_3641[1]

Peppers and Tomatoes got planted 2/25 and 2/26 because I was feeling antsy for my 3/1 planned date.

Most everything germinated on my homemade heat boxes, since our basement is rather chilly right now.  The tomatoes and peppers are getting treated to an extra blanket of foam cloth to trap more heat for the seeds.

Now we just need the soil to warm-up enough for spring planting!  What are you planning to grow in your garden this year?

Big things from the garden

Exhibit #1: A ridiculously large sweet potato

IMG_3565

Shown with a grapefruit and my hand for some sense of scale, what this guy lacks in beauty, he makes up for in size, weighing in at just over 12 pounds.  He suffered some damage from voles during the growing season, and his growth outpaced their eating.

I made a huge, way-too-thick batch of this sweet potato peanut bisque, which I originally read about over on Spatoola, with half of it.  I roasted the other half in big chunks, and stuck them in the freezer for a future batch of mashed sweet potatoes.

Exhibit #2: Lunga di Napoli winter squash

IMG_3628

Unlike the sweet potato, which was abnormally large, this lunga is rather par for the course for this variety.  It’s just a big ol’ squash.

We sliced and roasted about a fifth of it as a dinner side earlier in the week.  For the remainder, I roasted big chunks to puree into a simple soup consisting of squash, coconut milk, grated ginger, and a bit of salt.  This very simple soup perked up significantly with the addition of some carmelized onions, plus Paul’s beans.

I actually thought this big guy would go further, perhaps yielding some extra puree for pumpkin bread or pumpkin butter.  I guess that will wait for the next squash.

After a failed attempt at pumpkin butter last year, I finally figured it out several weeks ago.  Turns out that it’s pretty simple — you just have to let it simmer for. ev. er.  That’s the trick.  Anyhow, we’re about finished with my first batch, and I’m looking forward to making more.