Sunny spring days are a gardener's friend

Wow, two semi-sunny days in a row!  This caused a kitchen remodel furlough.  So we decided to prepare our beds, plant our seeds & transplant our starts.

Friday, we planted out our plot at the Orchard & Vine Community Garden.

We planted:
Sugar Lace Snap Peas (seed)
Cippolini & Red Onions (seed)
Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage (transplant)
Lettuce- Bon Vivant Blend (seed)
Kohl Rabi- Purple Vienna (seed)

Today, we made a lot of progress at our home garden.

We pulled out most of the remnant veggies from our fall crop. 

This is supposed to be a rutabaga.  It was the largest one of the crop.  We should have thinned out the seedlings.

Note: beautiful green leaves with no bulbous rutabaga... so sad.  We could cook up the greens.

"Mine, all mine..."

We also pulled out the bulb onions that never quite formed bulbs last summer, but had nice greens.  They would have flowered this spring, but we wanted the space for other things.  So, we pulled them, cleaned them up and will use them for soups or stir fry.  We also gleaned a few sad turnips, turnip greens, carrots, rutabagas, and a bok choy.

After we cleared the beds, we added some compost and turned it in.

Time to leave the nest, my little brassicas

In this bed, we planted brussels sprouts 'Roodnerf', cauliflower 'Early Snowball', Broccoli green and purple, and a red cabbage.

Since we didn't harden off our starts like we should have, we searched the basement for materials to make a plastic row tunnel.  We had some random bits of PVC pipe and lots of plastic sheeting.  This should do for a couple weeks until the transplants have acclimated to the outdoors.  

In this bed, we transplanted chinese cabbage 'Winter Elf', red cabbage, and 'Early Jersey Wakefield' cabbage.  Again we put up some plastic to help prevent transplant shock.  Maybe Smithers will crawl in there and keep them warm.  

We seeded this bed with lettuce and carrots.  Our favorite carrot varieties have been 'Parisian Market' and 'Nantes Coreless'.  We're trying "Little Finger" this year.  

We transplanted the Sugar Snap Peas into the trellis bed.  

We draped the plastic over the bed.  To secure it we used sections of lath from our kitchen remodel to tack down the edges.  

Grow Peas Grow!

I transplanted some chives that had grown into a big mess in the pea bed.  We grew them from seeds a couple years ago.  I moved them into an empty bed to give them more space.  This is way more chives than any one household needs.  Chives, anyone?

We planted Green Arrow Shelling Pea seeds in this bed.  No plastic needed.

We got a lot done, but there's still much to do.  Now, if only we could get a few more sunny days.

Smithers' & Oso's Old House: The time has finally come to remodel the Kitchen! ...

Smithers' & Oso's Old House: The time has finally come to remodel the Kitchen! ...: "The time has finally come to remodel the Kitchen! I dug through the photo archives to find evidence of what we've lived with over the past ..."

We'll be blogging about our Kitchen Remodel at our old house blog rather than our garden blog.

Who needs Sugar Cane when you can grow Sugar Beets

Have you ever thought about where your sugar comes from?  I hadn't, I assume because we were inundated by TV commercials as children.  Remember the jingle..."C&H, pure cane sugar, from Hawaii, sweetened by the sun"...?  Well Hawaii isn't very local, neither is any tropical region where sugar cane grows.

Last year, a friend of Terry's, told us about sugar beets and how his family grows them to make sweetener like our families did in the old country.  All three of us have some roots in Northern/Eastern Europe, so this was an "ah-ha moment".  He was able to give us a few sugar beets last fall to taste and they were super sweet, way more sweet than regular beets.  I could taste why they are cooked down for sweetener.  

Yesterday, he gave Terry a packet of Big Buck Blend Sugar Beet seeds from Millington Seed Co. in Michigan.  We are excited to give them a try.  If we can grow enough, maybe we can wean ourselves off of tropical sugar cane.  Wish us luck.

Click the link for more historical background information on Sugar Beets.    

Who is eating my Peas?

Last year, we had to replant our peas a few times due to mice and pill bugs.  This year we tried a different strategy and started our peas in cups full of fresh potting soil set high in our metal trough planter instead of directly in the garden bed.  We, initially had covered the trough in clear plastic for warmth, but we neglected to ventilate and some of the peas started to mold.  So, we snipped off the moldy bits and secured the plastic in such a way that the ends were open.

The peas were missing some leaves, but I assumed that was from the mold.  Then, we just happened to check them after dark one evening.  We turned on the patio lights and there they were... cutworms!  The buggers were happily munching away.

Cutworm on sugar snap pea

Cutworms feed at night.  During the day they curl up under the soil.  They are an inch or so long and brownish.  They emerge late winter and feast on tender foliage before they turn into brown moths.  Those pesky moths that get into your house during the summer when you leave the windows open in the evening start off as these cutworms.  The moth must have laid eggs in the soil in our metal trough planter.

To get rid of these pests, my heroic husband, plucked them off, threw them on the concrete, and stomped them while I kept my distance and gagged.  The squished remains were full of half-digested pea greens.  For several evenings after our initial discovery of the cutworms, we went out to check for more.  We found and killed a few and the peas seem to be recovering.  

Cutworm damage

More Cutworm damage

This is what all the peas should look like... a few inches tall with full leaves

So the lesson for this year is that if you notice that your seedlings are being devoured, look for cutworms after dark and kill them.  Last year, the lesson was if your peas don't come up at all, look to see if they're still under the soil, if not put out mouse traps.  If it's not mice, put up some kind of barrier to keep the birds at bay.

A general tip for dealing with pests is that every pest has a season where it's a problem.  A lot of insects are going to come out when the weather starts to warm up ready to hatch, feed and mate.  Many pests are also particular to what types of plants they go after.  This is the time to really observe your plantings and figure out how to deal the pests in a sustainable way.  

When we started vegetable gardening, we did not have many pests the first year because they hadn't discovered our garden yet.  By the third year, we found that pretty much every vegetable has some kind of pest associated with it.  The key is to use the power of observation and then do some research in books, on the internet, or ask other gardeners to identify the pest.  Once you know what you are dealing with you can try different methods for handling the situation.  Now that we've dealt with different pests, I have found that before I plant something, I like to read up in my gardening books about what kind of pests and diseases to look for, so that I am prepared with a little information before I encounter a problem in the garden.  

What pests have you encountered and how did you deal with them?

Planting Potatoes 2011

We started planting potatoes last weekend.  Last year, we planted potatoes almost one month earlier, but the weather has been a lot cooler this year.  While we have been waiting to plant, the potatoes from last year's harvest were sprouting wildly in their bags in the basement.

 We had some leftover russets, russian fingerlings, purples and a few reds.  Since the old potatoes were ready to go, we decided to focus on getting them planted.

We also wanted to grow more reds and golds, so we went to Gardensphere to see what they got in.  We bought German Butterball, Yukon Gem, Russet Burbank, Red Sunset and Chieftain.  We put them in the basement to let them sprout a little before we plant them.  We'll plant them in a few weeks or so.

We're planting the potatoes in a different bed this year than last in order to "rotate" our crops.  Terry dug trenches. 

I snuggled the potatoes into the bottom of the trench.  

I tossed in a little all purpose fertilizer and covered them a few inches.  As they grow up, we will hill soil around the tops.  

The Kitchen- the other side of growing food

When one decides to grow a kitchen garden, it is usually done with the goal of eventually eating the food you grow in mind.  In between the garden and the plate, the harvest usually has to go through a"special" place called the kitchen.  Our existing kitchen is "special" alright... especially awful.  Bad floor plan, bad lighting, no dishwasher, a very leaky faucet, squeaky cabinet doors and drawers that are hard to open and leave wood dust all over the contents.  These classic features may be considered charming and have stood the test of time.  We think some features are original 1920, others are from the 1950s or 1960s.  However, an unenjoyable kitchen makes for unenthusiastic cooking.

We love growing vegetables, but someone has to make use of the harvest and then someone has to wash the dishes.  A typical summer day for us consists of spending almost every second of daylight in the garden, coming inside around 9:00 pm and then staring at each other hoping someone will make supper.  We also tend to grow way more than we can use fresh and while we intend on "putting up" our excess crop, I tend to shove it away deep into the refrigerator until it turns to compost.  So, after 6 1/2 years, we are finally going to start our kitchen remodel.  

We plan to start demo tomorrow, so my to do list for today includes:

• finish making freezer meals that will be easy to heat up in a toaster oven
• finish setting up our temporary kitchen
• empty the cabinets- throw away old pantry items and pack the dishes

We're not sure how long this remodel will take, but it's March 18 and we're hoping to have it done by June.  Wish us luck!

If you have any advice or encouragement please leave us a comment.
   

Here are some BEFORE shots of a typical messy day in our kitchen...  

Our Seedlings are Growing

We planted a bunch of seeds on February 20.  This is what they look like now, almost a month later.  A bit leggy from reaching for the elusive sun.  As they get bigger, we'll start thinning them out down to one or two per cup.  Also when they are less fragile, we may divide and transplant some in order to bury them a bit deeper.  You can transplant them into soil up to their first set of real leaves, so that their stems will become strong.

We also have started adding fertilizer to their water.  Most potting mixes don't contain the nutrients the sprouts will need to keep growing well.  (We learned the hard way a couple years ago when everything stunted and looked sickly yellow.)

It's not too late to get your seeds started.  If you want to grow tomatoes from seeds, you really need to start now.  It's predicted to be a below average temperature year, so invest in short-season varieties that do well in the PNW and cooler climates.

Happy Planting!