Tag Archives: grow your own

Garden duty

I’ve traded mommy duties for garden duties for the next few days.  It’s not a bad swap, since one of the major tasks is picking [and eating] strawberries.

At this point, the berries are just starting to trickle in, and (like so many crops), they would be best grown in your own yard, where you’re there to pick them fully ripe every day, instead of at a commuter garden twelve miles away.  I draw the line at hopping in the car every day just for a few strawberries, so I’ll be headed there every other day at the most.

Also on my garden task list for the day:

  • Pick asparagus (there was none)
  • Pick lettuce, arugula, and spinach (now have WAY too much lettuce, as I’d been planning to give some to my FIL who ended up with plenty of greens in his CSA share)
  • Squash flea beetles on eggplant — success!
  • Water areas with recently planted seeds

I also harvested some cilantro and mint (not quite sure what I’m doing with the mint).  There may be something else, but that’s all I’ve got at the moment.  Of course, it’s a three-thousand square foot garden — there’s MUCH more that I could have done, but I am, alas, a slacker gardener.

Also, I made it a quick visit so I could run by the farmers’ market and buy strawberries.  I know, I know, I just wrote about how I’m picking strawberries at the garden, but I’m not sure our harvest this [first] year will be enough to yield much for the freezer.

As long as I was out and about in the car, I decided to hedge my bets.  Once at the market, instead of buying tons of berries (as I’d originally planned), I ended up with a very moderate three quarts.  The price break for buying eight quarts was less than fifty cents per quart, and I just wasn’t sure we needed that many.  Turned out I could have gone by bike after all.

After spending the morning on spring bounty, I spent the afternoon working with some of last fall’s bounty.  Yep, we still have winter squash and sweet potatoes!  With possibly the coolest temps we will see for months, I fired up the oven and roasted three large squash, plus some sweet potatoes.

After all that, I thought about biking to Forest Park for some Shakespeare action, but I really just wanted to call it a day.  If you can’t give yourself a break, who will?

In other news, gardening . . .

Our extra-special Sunday distracted me from other weekend-activity posts, including some stories from the garden.*

I joined Matthew again at the garden on Saturday.  With all the rain we got last week, it was too wet for planting, but we worked on moving/turning a couple of compost piles and laying out the irrigation system.

While relocating the compost piles, we were on the lookout for the friendly garter snake, which Matthew suspected made it’s winter home in the compost pile.  He hoped it would slither out as we started working on the pile and find a place safe from our pitchforks (snakes help control garden pests, so he is a welcome addition).

We saw movement, but instead of a snake-slither, we spotted a rodent that looked like a large mouse or a small rat, but with a fuzzy tail (rather than a naked tail).  Regardless of it’s exact identity, rodents in a compost pile near the garden are not ideal, so we Matthew embarked on a bit of critter-ridding.*  Not pleasant, but sometimes necessary.

The artichokes and garlic are the two prominent growers in the garden right now, the artichokes having survived a Missouri winter in the low tunnel.

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The artichokes are the crazy huge plants in the foreground, and you can see the garlic bed in the background.

After his nap, Sir drove pedaled up in his tractor.

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As far as harvest, we’re continuing to get a bit of fresh spinach, as well as some asparagus.  Peas, lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli, cabbage, and potatoes are all in the ground and growing.  As are the perennial fruits: strawberries, red and black raspberries, and blackberries — can’t wait!

Back at the apartment, we have some crazy huge tomato plants (too big to be called seedlings, I think), waiting to be transplanted into the garden.

What’s growing in your garden?  Or, if you don’t have a garden, have you started getting local produce yet?

*As for the bed bugs, I am currently hoping that Sir eliminated them with his particle thrower.  That could happen, right?

**A bit of internet searching that evening revealed that the rodents in question were probably voles, which, as herbivores, actually cause more garden damage than carnivorous moles.

Fuel for active living

Active transportation is one way to incorporate more physical activity into your daily life, but it is not the only means of active living.  Despite a distinct lack of bicycling over the past few days, our lives have not lacked for activity.

The cool, wet March weather has Matthew a bit behind where he’d like to be with planting, so on Saturday, I joined Matthew at the garden.  We planted over forty pounds of potatoes (ten different varieties) and transplanted more of the onion seedlings.  When the sun came out mid-morning, we enjoyed unexpectedly lovely weather, lifting spirits and prompting fun outfits:

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Someone knows how to garden in style: coat, leggings, and rain boots, sans pants, of course.  He grabbed the lantern in case we decided to work into the dark (we didn’t, but it has been known to happen).

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We fueled our efforts with leftovers of colcannon, a dish consisting of mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale (I used a mix of red cabbage and Swiss chard).  The potatoes were leftover from our potato taste test the previous weekend — some of the purple color is the cabbage, but we are also growing a variety of ridiculously dark purple potatoes.

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We went from fifties, sunny, and no pants on Saturday to over a foot of snow on Sunday.  The winter weather prompted us to alter our Sunday brunch plans.  A mile into our eleven mile drive to UCity, on a very snow- and ice-covered main road, we opted to turn back — not worth it.  With the car safely parked again, we headed out on foot to a new neighborhood coffee shop — walkable wins again!

In addition to gardening, PLAY is also a form of active living, great for kids and adults alike.  Today’s slightly warmer temperatures and sunshine were perfect for playing in the still-abundant snow.

While Gabriel tramped around the back yard (in pants), I brought this guy to life, complete with squash stem mouth:

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I scaled back the size of his midsection when I couldn’t lift my initial creation.

After our exertions, we headed inside to warm up and refuel with dinner leftovers: farinata with carmelized onions (the onions make cheese unnecessary); couscous with Swiss chard, toasted almonds, and sundried tomatoes; and roasted sweet potatoes.

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Have examples of how you’ve incorporated physical activity into your life over the past few days?  Please share!

Carrot taste test

This post has been in the works for quite awhile now.  If you’ve already ordered carrot seed for your spring garden, don’t despair — these results are from our fall grown crop.  Given our growing conditions, fall-sown carrots often do best here anyway, as the early heat of summer often limits the sweetness and growth of spring-sown carrots.

Carrot taste comparison (and far less rigorous growth comparison due to differential germination and thinning) – Grown Fall 2012, tasted January 2013, overwintered in low tunnels prior to harvest.

Taste comparison for carrots grown fall 2012 in St. Louis, MO in double dug clay soil after potatoes and prior to that lawn, probably a little on the acidic side.

Tasted sliced to ~1/8” or 3/16”, both raw and steamed for ~7 minutes, until soft but not mush.

We rated each carrot on a scale of one to four, one being best, with rating for how well that carrot grew (the number in parentheses) and how it tasted, with notes on taste both raw and cooked.

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Favorites

  • Danvers ½ Long – great germination and growth (1) fairly sweet & carroty; steamed – very sweet and flavorful 1
  • Cosmic Purple – (1) raw – mild sweet & spicy; steamed –sweet, spicy, flavorful 1
  • Dragon – (purple) (2) (raw) – carroty, mild sweet good flavor; steamed – mid-sweet, spicy, flavorful 1

Next best

  • St. Valery – great germination and growth and size (2) raw – good, not amazing, mild sweet, mild spicy; steamed – pretty good, not best 2
  • Yellow Carrots (j.o.d.d.) – (2) – raw – firm, crunchy, sweet gentle carrot flavor; steamed – mild, sweet, carroty 2
  • Chantenay Red Core –  (2) Smaller Carrots – Raw – Sweet full flavor, carroty; steamed –good flavor, but not amazing 3

Eh, don’t bother

  • Muskade – (4) poor germination – tasty to slugs  – Raw-not sweet, watery, not favorite; steamed – worst flavor, watery, not sweet, slightly carroty 3
  • Kuroda – very good germination and growth (3) Raw – carroty; steamed –decent flavor, but not amazing 4
  • Scarlet Nantes – beans ’11  (4) poor germination Raw – Carroty; steamed –poor flavor
  • Atomic Red – (4) – raw – a bit harsh, very carroty; steamed – carroty but not very sweet, still a bit harsh 4

Keeping the varieties separate while harvesting, cleaning, prepping, and cooking was truly a labor of love (i.e., huge pain in the butt), and something we don’t plan to repeat often.  Now that we have our results, we will focus our efforts on growing our favorites, allowing the purchase of a larger quantity of seed, which saves money.

Out of garlic

Send in the vampires because the sad day has arrived, my friends.  We are out of garlic.

Back in July, around the time he harvested many big, beautiful bulbs of garlic, Matthew also came across a guy selling his own locally grown garlic for a decent price at the farmers’ market.  Knowing how much we love garlic — I start most dishes with the assumption of a nice-sized bulb — and knowing that he would be saving the best of our bulbs for planting this year’s crop, he bought thirty bulbs to supplement our harvest.

Over the last several months, we made the most of that garlic — garlic in almost every dish, roasted garlic here and there, and a nice batch of bagna couda later, our stockpile dwindled.

Unfortunately, the bought garlic was not nearly as high quality as what we grew — it did not store as well and had smaller cloves which are less fun (read: more work) in the kitchen.  Whether it was garlic variety, growing conditions, and/or harvesting conditions, it just didn’t measure up.  Still, I made the most of it, salvaging what I could toward the end and dealing with the small cloves.

So, here we are in early March, with our last bulb of garlic (yes, our kitchen counter tops are, in fact, purple).

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A bulb in the hand . . .

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This guy started to sprout, but with four or five nice, still-firm cloves, I had no complaints.

After stretching things out as long as possible with a jar of minced garlic we received as a gift, it was time.

I used our last bulb of garlic in veggie fajitas on Thursday night.  In my effort to not overcook the garlic, it ended up a bit on the raw side — not ideal, but what can you do?

We currently have over 400 bulbs of garlic in the ground, waiting for harvest in June.  Though we’ll be saving some for planting next year, we may have enough to get to this point next year without supplementing.  Until then, I guess it’s back to the store for garlic.