Category Archives: Vegitables

Fall Gardening – Converted Cold Frame Pulls Double Duty for Seedlings

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Fall gardening, for me this year, means keeping it easy.

Mostly because the squirrels and sun aren’t on our side come late September.  I’ve started cabbages and kale and lovingly transplanted them to well-prepared containers up and down our stairs in autumns past, only to have squirrels dig them up daily until the sun lost itself behind the neighbor’s house.

Never again.

This year I have my magical cold frame I converted to a squirrel-free grow box – I simply swapped out the glass lid for a hardware-cloth (wire mesh) lid.  Anything I plant outside of this box will be on a whim and left to its own devices on the squirrel front.

Inside the box, we took our freshly emptied summer pots, seeds leftover from spring, and planted mesclun mix, turnips, radishes and a few onion seeds.

With heavy rains forecast for the following few days, the kiddo and I dragged out an old shower curtain, tucked it under the lid’s edges, and weighed it down with scrap wood for good measure.  These rains would be remnants of Hurricane Isaac, and all summer has been either no rain or crazy-windy-big-storm rain, so might as well add the wood.

The kiddo, B, who had methodically pinched the tiny seeds from my palm and less methodically sewed them, was very into storm proofing the cold frame. She’s three now and loves a good project, especially a short one she can get her helping little hands on.

The next day we got nearly 4 inches of rain in two hours.

I didn’t touch anything for two more days.

Today, SEEDLINGS!!!  Tiny sprouts!!!  No washout from the rain!  Not wanting to further starve them for light, we set the scrap wood cover aside but kept the shower curtain.  The weatherman says we’re still at risk for all-or-nothing rain the next few days.

Let’s see if we can squeeze a few beet, spinach and kale seeds into the squirrel-free, rain-shuttered box in a few days.

DC State Fair – Even You Can Enter the Fermented Vegetable Contest

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Our fridge: filled with delicious things in glass jars

 

Our own DC State Fair celebrates the growers, the makers, the brewers, the bakers and the fermenters.

Fermenting vegetables?

It’s not just for the Germans, Koreans and bachelors who never clean their fridge.

You can do it – do it this weekend.

You don’t have to grow your own veggies to ferment, just bebop yourself down to your farmers market, buy some stuff to ferment and get to it.

It does take a little planning. Get details below, but you will need non-iodized salt (such as sea or Kosher), an acceptable vessel (a clean glass jar with a lid or a crock) and some recipes call for non-chlorinated water.  You don’t need full-blown canning supplies. See how easy it really is:

  • Dr. Ben Kim: He wants you to buy stuff from him, so block those pop-ups, but his How to Make Kim Chi gives step-by-step pictures and cheer leading.

Once you’ve filled a few jars of fermented, locally grown, organic, hand-picked, biked-it-home epicurean treasure, you’re ready to register for the DC State Fair Fermented Vegetable Contest!  (Note: Your veggies do not need to be organic, local or transported by bike to be eligible to compete.  DC State Fair suggests reading over these researched recipes for fermenting success.  Only 50 entries can be accepted so get busy and register, $5 per entry.)

If your drunk roommate tosses your kimchi at 4:00 a.m. thinking it’s an appropriate time to clean the fridge, you should still join the 2012 DC State Fair fun Saturday, September 22nd, 2012.  As part of the Barracks Row Fall Festival along 8th Street SE on Capitol Hill, there will be a little something for everyone.

Even your hungover roommate.

Fall Gardening – Double Up and Catch Up

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Fall gardening.

Fall gardening frustrates me. We don’t have deer coming through our DC neighborhood but the squirrels pick up the slack for garden carnage. Fresh pots of soil read as “First Month Free” on a U-Store It for squirrels.

We also loose the midday sun behind the neighbor’s house way before first frost sets in, abruptly turning our full-sun back yard into a shade garden.

As a glutton for punishment, I’ll slide in under the wire this weekend with a scaled-back agenda of spinach, mesclun mix and radishes.

The fall gardening opportunity for some crops has passed, but check the following resources for your zone to feed that fall gardening bug:

  • Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: Growing Guides & Library (excellent info for everyone but planting dates are for the Southeast and mid-Atlantic)
  • Washington Gardener Magazine: The August Enews gardening checklist can’t be beat for the mid-Atlantic
  • Johnny’s Selected Seeds – Growing Guides (some of the tools are spreadsheets, but good info)
  • D. Landreth Seed Co – No “when to plant” look-ups, but sit and watch their home page as images of what you should be planting now rotate through and you’ll get excited for fall gardening.  Since 1784… Landreth has been around.

If you’re kind of done with gardening for a few months – you enjoy it but don’t really want to talk about what happened over the summer – don’t sweat it.  Fall harvest festivals abound with pick your own apples, pumpkins corn and ready-to-buy jams and pickles.

If you’re hard-core, you stopped reading this post at about the second line, you already have most of your fall seeds in the ground.

But do you have your bulbs ordered?

County and State Fairs – Scratch that Competitive Itch

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Runner-up beans at the 2012 Montgomery County Fair

Do you love the county fair?  Did your parents ever take you to the state fair because there was more fair there?

Remember wrist-band day?  It was caution-to-the-wind as your parents said, “Meet me back here at the grandstand at 6:00.  Sharp.”

You – two bags of cotton candy.  Your best friend – dares you to ride the Gravatron for the fifth time.

We were just at the Montgomery County Fair in  Gaithersburg, MD yesterday.  I’ve been to many fairs and this one blows me away.  Aside from the delightful animal barns with their wooden stalls and open-air construction that encourage you to admire the livestock, the farm, garden and flower contest entries will make any gardener flush with envy.  Tomatoes beckon like seed catalog illustrations and impossibly plump pole beans lay alongside sun flowers that cast shadows.

The Montgomery County Fair just happened to fall on the week following the 2012 Summer Olympics.  I can’t help but wonder if the non-ribbon-winning contestants for Corn – Feed Grade feel it’s an honor just to compete, or, if like McKayla Maroney, they are not impressed with the category’s blue ribbon winner.

What about us in the city?  Can we podium with the spoils of our summer labor on our balconies, tiny front yards and sidewalk tree boxes?  County fairs have strict rules that competition entrants be raised or grown within the county, likewise for state fairs.

Our own DC State Fair answers that call to celebrate – and compete – in agriculture and craft of the urbanite.

If 80 percent of success is showing up, then the 2012 DC State Fair’s broad spectrum of twenty+ contests has a little something for everyone – pick one and show up.

From homebrewing to photography, kid’s art & poetry to beekeeper honey, pie baking to cupcake-ing, knit & crochet & sewing contests to bike accessory making, home pickling & fermenting to vegetable growing – pick your favorite hobby (or learn a new one!) and see how easy it is to register to compete.

Some contests have limited registration capacity, others will accept entries the day of, but plan ahead and envision what you’ll do with that blue ribbon.  (Can you say Instagram gold?)

If your main hobby is socializing, join the fun and cheer on the ag-athletes!  The 2012 DC State Fair will be held Saturday, September 22nd, as part of the Barracks Row Fall Festival along 8th Street SE on Capitol Hill.

Do you live nowhere near DC but want to get in on the grow-your-own and make-it-yourself competitive spirit?  Find your state agricultural fair here or simply Google your county fair for dates and location.

Get the kids involved, or cultivate your own blue ribbon wishes, the fair is for everyone.

Blue ribbons for days at the Montgomery County Fair

Traveling – Photosafari in Brooklyn

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These days I give things I grow.  Friday afternoon we moved the luggage aside and placed a potted tomato alongside to give our weekend hostess.

Memorial Day weekend took us to New York visiting friends and family.  Specifically, to Brooklyn, since we are of a certain demographic whose friends have all left the Lower East Side and are either engaged, married and/or with children and/or dogs in Park Slope and its neighboring neighborhoods.

The weekend sweltered with humid 90s and a few soaking rains.  Park Slope parents pushed past with spendy strollers and Williamsburg baristas took pitty that we could possibly live more than a bike ride away.  Heatwave and glances aside, we love our treks to the belly of all things awesome.

Container gardens abound and I noticed more edibles than visits past.  Brooklyn spills with tiny gardens as lush and tough as its people.  Street fashion gets all the buzz but street gardening makes the bigger statement.

Hopefully growing edibles sticks around longer than neon flats.

Fast Forward – Blossoms to Beans

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Friday we left our bush beans blossoming while we visited friends and family in Brooklyn for the holiday weekend.

Five days later – 120 hours later – I return to our bush bean patch sporting lovely baby beans.

Everything else grew ridiculously over the hot rainy weekend as well, but that’s amazing.

I should leave town more often.

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Kitchen – Glazed Young Beets via Julia Child for #SundaySupper

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Beets.  They’re what’s for dinner.

Recipes are flying between garden bloggers as seeds sown turn into dinner.  The #SundaySupper movement came my way earlier in the week and I will likely feed one post a week towards it.

Yesterday we took fresh farmers market beets and made sister dishes of glazed beets and sauteed beet greens with garlic and mustard seed (prepared exactly like sauteed kale with garlic and mustard seed).

Beets snuck into our kitchen a few years ago through our weekly CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box and I’ve never looked back.

After a few reminders from the husband that he “doesn’t really like beets” I finally fell into two cooking methods we all love: roasting and glazing.

I’ve been glazing carrots as directed by Julia Child and recently applied it to beets.  Score 1 for the home cook.  It’s easy, you can adjust the sweetness while cooking, you can cook them firm or tender, they reheat nicely and they’re an easy sell to reluctant beet eaters.

Disclaimer:  I am not a food writer nor a food photographer.  My food pictures are incredibly bad and I cook daily but rarely write about it.  As such, the recipe below is nearly verbatim from the source with my comments preceding and following it.  I encourage you to play with the recipe, make it your own and share your results.

The Set-Up

The following two recipes are adapted from “The Way to Cook” by Julia Child, copyright 1989.  The master recipe is for a variety of root vegetables and the carrot recipe is what I use for beets.  A few weeks ago I glazed a medley of young beets and turnips to great success.

Following the recipe I note what I do differently and successful substitutions I use for butter, water and sugar.

BOIL-STEAMING: BRAISING (Master recipe)

Rutabaga, carrots, turnips, and beets as well as green peas and onions

Peel the vegetables, and leave them whole or cut them into neat pieces or chunks, depending on your final intentions.  Boil-steam them in a covered pan with water, salt and optional butter.

Fill the saucepan with enough water to come halfway up the vegetables, bring to the boil, and add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and the optional 2 Tbs butter.  Toss up once or twice, cover the pan, and boil 8 – 10 minutes – adding more liquid if needed, until the vegetables are tender.  If it is done and liquid remains, uncover and boil it off.  (Cooked this way, no flavor escapes: it is all reabsorbed into the vegetables.)

BOIL-STEAMED CARROTS

And braised and glazed carrots

For 6 servings

6 – 9 carrots 8 inches long, peeled and cut into long wedges
Salt

For glazed carrots
3 Tbs butter (2 for initial cooking, 1 for glazing)
1 1/2 tsp sugar

Preliminary cooking.  Boil-steam the carrots in a covered saucepan with water to come halfway up them, and salt, as described in master recipe; add 2 tablessppons of butter if you are to glaze them.  When tender, and the liquid has evaporated, the carrots will begin to saute in the residue of their juices.  Correct seasoning.

Glazing.  Just before serving, add the additional butter and the sugar.  Toss gently over moderately high heat to glaze them with a buttery sheen.

My notes:

1. This cooking method is extremely forgiving.  You can vary nearly everything as long as you bear in mind that you are cooking the liquid off as the veggies boil-steam.  You want a little fat remaining in the pan at the end to add sheen and keep them from scorching.  That fat can be any cooking oil or butter (or combo).  If using butter alone, add more at the end as directed above.

2.  I use a 9″ enameled cast iron skillet instead of a saucepan with a light loose-fitting saucepan lid.

3.  You can cut your beets how you like but try to make the resulting pieces similar in size for uniform cooking.

4.  Cut the greens off entirely off, sacrificing a little beet meat, to ensure sand isn’t carried into the pan.

5.  Trim the stringy root tip and any other root strings.

6.  You do not need to peel baby beets.  I did not peel the beets pictured, which I would call young but not baby.

7.  I don’t use sugar but do add something sweet when I add the water.  A little maple syrup (about 1 Tbs) or substituting apple juice or apple cider for the water will make it sweet enough.  I also finish the dish by turning the heat down to low towards the end and caramelizing the beets slightly, letting their natural sugars develop.  Keep a close eye so not to scorch or burn them.

8.  I start with about 2 Tbs olive oil in the pan first, add the beets, then add water until halfway up the beet chunks.  I often add about a pat of butter with the salt.

9.  You can skip the sugar entirely by making a strong tea with fenugreek seeds and adding with the water in the recipe.  Simply place 1 Tbs fenugreek seeds into a mug and fill with boiling water.  Let steep while you prep the beets (at least 10 minutes).  Use the tea but not the seeds (they are hard and bitter) – it tastes and smells like maple syrup.

10.  I don’t time how long the lid is on since I end up with different sized beets and chunks each time I cook this.  I start poking the beets with a fork, checking for tenderness, after about five minutes.  Once they start to soften I ditch the lid and let the liquid boil off, keeping the heat medium-high.

Now go get beets and get glazing!

Kitchen – Sautéed Kale with Garlic and Mustard Seed

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#SundaySupper

That explains this recipe.

Our farmers market saw its second Sunday today and we brought home two different kales for dinner.  One was very tender and tasted like mustard greens, the other had slender tear-drop leaves that grew from a stalk.

A few days ago Bren, from BGgarden, turned me onto #SundaySupper and Family Foodie on twitter.  The mission is to get families around the table for Sunday sinner.  Family Foodie asked me to share what we made from the farmer’s market tonight.

Behold – My go to kale recipe.  I can do this blindfolded now.  It always comes out tasty.  Some nights it’s stunning.  I tweak it, use multiple kales (sometimes together, as in tonight), multiple mustard seed varieties, more liquid, less liquid, sometimes cook it very quickly, sometimes stretch it out a bit with the fire low at the end, I reheat it the next day and I make it at least once a week throughout market season.

Recipe: Sautéed Kale with Garlic and Mustard Seed

  • Bunch or two kale: remove stems, tear or chop greens
  • 1 – 2 TBS olive or peanut oil
  • Salt: 1/4 tsp kosher or coarse
  • Garlic: Few cloves peeled and chopped (do not mince, should be pea-sized or larger after chopping)
  • Mustard seed: 1 or 2 tsp, any variety
  • Optional: 1/4 cup liquid (broth, water, apple juice/cider) see below
  • Heavy bottomed skillet over med-high heat:  Heat oil and mustard seed until seeds sizzle (tiny bubbles form around mustard seeds).  Add kale and toss with a pair of spatulas/wooden spoons until well-coated with oil and mustard seed seems distributed.  Sprinkle with salt and garlic and toss again.
  • If you want tender kale:  Add about 1/4 cup liquid (water, broth, apple juice/cider, etc) and immediately cover losely with lid.  Let it steam a minute or so then toss kale in the skillet.  Cover for another minute if you desire more tender kale.  Uncover and let liquid cook off, tossing kale with a pair of spatulas to move what’s on the bottom of the skillet to the top.  Before the skillet goes dry, turn kale out into wide shallow bowl.  Top with garlic, mustard seed and any liquid from bottom of skillet.
  • If firm kale is desired:  Loosely cover with lid for 30 – 60 seconds to let steam with its own moisture.  Remove lid and toss kale until cooked to desired doneness.  Keep the kale moving as you finish – use a pair of spatulas/wooden spoons to move what’s on the bottom to the top and mind the garlic, trying to keep it moving with the kale.  Turn out into wide shallow bowl.  Top with garlic and mustard seed from bottom of skillet.
  • Can’t decide:  Shake  you kale after washing but don’t let it dry.  Cook as firm kale above but be careful – the hot oil will spit and sputter.  It’s manageable, just be warned.  The water droplets help steam the kale just enough.

The times are not exact.  You can’t really mess it up, you can add more oil and liquid (if using) as needed.

You can wash and prep the kale the day before.  It stores best if you salad spin it, pat it dry or air dry before bagging it.

Don’t mince the garlic – it will cook too quickly, burn and taste bitter.  You don’t really want the garlic to even brown (the browner, the more bitter).  I’ve cooked the garlic to a crisp many times – it’s fine.  Try not to, tenderly cooked garlic refines the dish and lets the kale flavor shine.

If overcooking the garlic makes you nervous, cook it in the oil over medium heat first, until just tender and still white.  Remove the garlic, add the mustard seeds to the oil and proceed as above on med-high heat.

The mustard seed adds a wonderful nutty flavor and looks nice.  You can add a little flaked red pepper while cooking if you want to make it spicy.

If you cook you kale the firm method (without adding liquid), a few edges may brown or crisp.  This adds great texture.  However, don’t let all the kale brown and crisp in the pan or the dish will end up tough and chewy.

I’ll update this post if I ever find the original recipe.

The only way this dish could be easier is if the kale washed and prepped itself.  Or if another family member did it.

Post-publishing note: Antsy over posting a recipe for something I cook on the fly, I’ve refined a few lines above.  Please share how your kale turned out!

Potting – Pepper and Tomato Frenzie

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Pots!  Get the pots!  Need more potting soil!

That about sums up the last week.

Some of the tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings finally started taking off.  Plus, I am about to take off for a long weekend, so I sorted what to keep and give away, and got to potting.

The Jimmy Nardello’s Italian pepper, Celebrity tomato, Garden Peach and Eva Purple Ball tomatoes were the first chosen and potted.  The rest of the week blurred by with Flower Mart, The DC State Fair seedling swap, more potting and more planting.

Companion planting scratches that itch to magically make containers produce more with less fuss.  I am obsessing over borage this year but have never grown it.  It deters tomato hornworms and is a best friend to nearly everything, so I stuck a borage seedling in with each big pot I planted this week.  This may have been wishful thinking since they grow 2 – 3 feet tall.

I mixed and matched other tomato companions: marigolds, basil, carrots and chard.

I heard from Midwest gardeners on through to the East Coast and South saying they were slammed busy between rains this week.  I think we were all on twitter during the rain and outside when it wasn’t.

What did you plant this week?

Update – Scalions from Salvaged Kitchen Onions

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A month ago I planted two sprouted pantry onions in a pot and sewed a little spinach alongside.

Today I fulfilled my intent and cut the greens of one to use as scallions.  I cut a single shoot this morning for sandwiches.  They taste wonderful – stronger and a little tougher than spring onions but delicious.

My inclination is to quick-pickle nearly anything small I want to keep longer than a few days.  This evening I flat-topped the rest of that salvaged onion, thinly sliced the greens, placed them in a little jar with rice vinegar and a pinch of salt.

The tangy onion-y joy sat for about an hour while I made dinner.  We spooned a little on our burgers – delightful.

These vinegared onion greens will perfectly garnish soup, salad, sandwiches, sausage, scrambled eggs, hors d’oeuvres, burgers – you get the idea.

Pretty exciting for onions salvaged from the brink.

Hearsay – Pruning Tomatoes

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Don’t go crazy.

That’s about the only real tomato pruning advice you should take from me.

This article really breaks it down.  This one keeps it short, focusing on pruning suckers.

The more you look into it, the more you realize there are two types of tomato growers: Those who prune and those who don’t.  That’s until you start looking into whether to stake, cage or trellis your tomatoes, then you realize tomato growers fall into cults.

Last year I grew two Jet Star and one Early Girl, sticking with the most consistent advice gleaned informally by polling friends: Wait until the first blossoms then cut any branches below those.  I left all the suckers that grew above the first blossoming branches.

Those three plants bore delicious fruit until October.  The fruit was a bit small but plentiful.  This year I’ll have twice as many plants in only slightly more space.  I plan on pruning more suckers to promote air flow and ease crowding between the heirlooms.

I have one tomato way ahead of the game here in DC (Zone 7a).  My Floridian mother-in-law sent us home with an extra Celebrity tomato in early March.  This is a determinate hybrid so I will not be pruning suckers, but I clipped the lowest branches when I first transplanted.  This let me plant it deep in the pot and bury the stem (both to grow more roots and allow the plant to fit within the cold frame for another month).

The upper branches carried blooms when I transplanted the Celebrity into its final pot a month later.  I pruned the lowest branches once again to bury the stem a few more inches.  That will be it for this plant, all the suckers will stay.

The photos, while for a determinate tomato that you shouldn’t prune, illustrate how to prune the lowest branches of any tomato if you plan to do so.

You know what’s awesome?  I didn’t realize that gift Celebrity tomato was a determinate until looking it up for this post.

It’s a bonus plant.  I have four other varieties started from seed and am giving away extras to friends.  The pictures look good.

Thankfully I didn’t go crazy pruning suckers.

Seedlings – Get in the Ground!

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Miss B’s and Mr. O’s beans look great and look huge in their Ben and Jerry’s pints because they’re beans.

Mr. O is out of town but they left a shiny new toddler wheelbarrow in the backyard to share.  What better inaugural run than filling it with dirt to transplant a pair of beans!

Don’t take bean growing advice from me, I tried growing them in the fall of 2010 to pathetic results.  No matter, it’s spring 2012 now.

B was seriously into getting the first bean into the ground, telling it to do so as I separated the pair and eagerly digging a hole for it.  As for transplanting the other into our repaired pot, once she helped fill it with dirt, she was out of there.

She had bigger plans for the wagon.

 

Kids – Growing to Eat

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I posted the pic our two year old eating chives on tumblr yesterday.

The Greedy Gardener summed up in a comment my entire philosophy on the importance of providing real food to our children:

I think the best way to encourage kids to eat veg is to grow it at home – it becomes part of every day life rather than a penance rewarded by cake

I was scarred for life when Bunny (our child’s nickname, one of many) was a few months old and we stayed with friends who had two daughters, about ages 4 and 6.  If it didn’t come in a package or look like white pasta, they wouldn’t eat it.  Period.

So much packaged food is something to eat, but it isn’t food.

Children 100 years ago didn’t survive on squeezable fruit sauce and puffed toddler snacks.  They ate food that was cooked and prepared in a kitchen.

Children of developing countries don’t have Go-Gurt.

Toddlers in India eat – wait for it – Indian food. 

Spices and all.

Street food in Rio de Janeiro (and everywhere else we went in Brazil) is real food – kids have cups of fruit, pastries filled with meat and cheese, sticks of roasted cheese…

Not everyone can grow vegetables for their kids or manage a garden – the reality is people work multiple jobs, don’t have the know how to get started, don’t have the hours in the day to get it going or the space for a few containers.  But the importance of farmer’s markets and access to real grocery stores (produce at Wal-Mart and Target matters, regardless of the farming practices) is so fundamental.

Smart phones are bringing the internet into households that never before had it (to both low income and rural communities).  Buying fresh vegetables, looking up how to cook them and serving them with meals is a vital part of raising healthy kids.  Even if only a few times a week, it matters.  Adding them to a frozen pizza before cooking it is legitimate.

I’m preaching to the audience if you’re reading this.  But realize your influence as gardeners.  You can grow a child’s love of herbs, fruits and vegetables:

- Invite a busy neighbor and their child over to pick a few strawberries.

- Let your nieces and nephews smell all your garden herbs and choose a few for dinner.  Better yet, make grilled cheese sandwiches in a skillet with the herbs.

- Help the Sunday School teacher do a few lessons on sowing seeds and reaping the rewards (radishes are fast and fun – you can scare up something to grow them in and you can tote back and forth to church for a month).

- Bring bunches of mint to the BBQ and let the kids munch on it and add it to their lemonade.

- Ask your own kids how you should share your garden.

Last spring, Bunny wasn’t quite 2 and I called her over to the chives.  “You can eat these, would you like a taste?”  She opened her mouth.  I gave her a piece and she cried.  I gave her a cracker, told her “It’s ok” and that they taste better when added to other foods.

This spring she has been really into smelling everything, especially the rosemary (which I constantly cook with).  When we got to the chives, she said they smelled like onions and that she wanted to “taste it.”  Her eyes got wide and she said “Those good, mom!”

Now she picks them at will, bringing me a few to eat as we get ready to garden.

What’s Growing – A Few Chilly Days til May

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DC spring decided to switch gears to cold rain with May a week away.

One last hurrah from the Winter that Never Was.

Checking on the plants in the cold drizzle showed just how far the garden has come since setting the first seed pots in the cold frame two months ago.  April weather dipped cooler more often than March and the seedlings have gone through growth spurts between holding steady.  The cold frame is protective but only gets a few hours of good sun thanks to the rowhouse canyon of our backyard.  Each day their sun time increases thanks to the earth tilting in our favor as spring heads towards summer.  Things are growing, albeit a little slowly.

I’m wildly satisfied.

The Update

1.  Turnips!  The top: March 21st, four days after sowing.  Bottom: April 23rd.  I need to thin them out.

2.  Parsnips!  The right: Radishes alongside the parsnips last week.  Left: Radishes thinned to let the parsnips grow.  Originally sown March 17th.

3.  Beets!  The top: Sown March 17th.  Bottom left: The few that sprouted looking noble last week.  Bottom right: Either heavy rains or a bird flatted two, April 23rd.  Sadly, I need to thin the few that are growing.

4.  The Camilla!  Top: The last bloom hanging on five weeks after the first opened.  Bottom: Those that let go below it, April 23rd.

5.  Zinnias and Marigolds!  Top row: Transplanting them from their egg carton seed pots, around April 4th.  Bottom: They were the first to get kicked out of the cold frame a few weeks ago.  Short, but growing, April 23rd.

6.  Chives blooming!  This herb box welcomes its fifth season with the same chives, thyme (also blooming) and golden sage (not pictured).  I should replant the box but don’t want to touch it (other than my usual fertilizing and mulching), the inhabitants seem happy as is.  It survived Snowmageddon and Snoverkill in 2010.

7.  Mesclun!  Sown March 31st, pictured April 23rd.  Tiny salads at our first 2012 BBQ this Sunday!

8.  Bush Beans!  Top row: Planted by and for toddlers, April 5th.  Mid row: They sprouted(!) April 17th.  Bottom: Thriving, April 23rd.

9.  Wine-Box-O-Root-Veggies!  Top row: Prep, sow, grow (radishes a few days past April 5th sowing).  Mid row:  A few tiny beets on the left, carrots on the right and radishes all over, April 23rd.  Bottom: Carrots in front of radishes, April 23rd.

10.  Onions!  Top: Reclaiming pantry onions for their greens, April 11th.  Bottom: The stalks look great and spinach seeds sprouted alongside, April 23rd.  I’ll harvest the tops as scallions this weekend, they should regrow.

11.  Potatoes!  Left side: Planting a sprouted potato so the foliage will hang off our stair rail (just for looks), April 11th.  Right side: It’s growing, April 23rd.  I do this every year.  The pot is too small and it’s never as lush as the ornamental sweet potatoes, but it grows.  To really grow potatoes, you do it differently.

12.  Fresh seedlings!  Left: Balsam, 10 days after sowing.  Right: Borrage, 10 days after sowing.

13.  Freshly sown!  Trying to slip under the wire with this cold snap: onions, spinach and mesclun, sown April 22nd.

14.  Tomatoes!  I have yet to count how many tomato seedlings we have, same principle as counting chickens before they hatch.  I kicked a few out of the cold frame April 20th and two days later the 48-hr cold rain came.  I huddled them behind the covered bike to protect them from the 40 mph predicted wind gusts, picture April 23rd.

What’s not growing?  Basil.  After fighting off cutworms, they died after transplanting.  They were tiny and I think succumbed to damping off.  I’ll try again in a week or so.  I’ll also direct sow a few in the big tomato pots when the tomatoes are ready for final transplanting.

Not bad.

Not bad, at all.

Seeds – The Toddlers Say “Grow, Beans, Grow!”

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Miss B (mine) and our buddy, Mr. O, got a good look at their beans pushing through the soil today.

They were thrilled. They both kept coming back to get another look.

In the two weeks since we planted them, we gather round the little basket they’re in and chant “Grow, beans, grow!” whenever we’re in the back yard.

They both stood over the beans this morning pointing, beaming, giggling, and gave a believing “GROW, BEANS, GROW!”