Garden Goodies

I sometimes don’t think our little garden is giving us that much to eat for all the effort and dreaming, but then I look back through some of the pictures I’ve taken and realize we have actually gotten quite a bit already this year.

We don’t do lettuce salads really frequently, but I really enjoyed my crunchy lettuce on sandwiches. Now, however, the lettuce is gone.

We harvested some of the beets. They are the ones we overwintered in the hoop house.  I’ve got some kale and chard I need to freeze as well.

This was our first year growing broccoli, but I really wanted to try since my boys love it.

Once we got all the little heads inside it was a pretty decent amount. I thought the plants might give us a few side shoots, but now I’m not so sure.

Little baby cabbages. I’m not sure when to harvest these. . . or what to do with them for that matter!

Of course we already harvested the onions and garlic as well, but now we have tomatoes ripening! I send my boys out “hunting” for ripe yellow pear tomatoes. We have quite a few plants, and we got four volunteer plants from where we had a large overgrown plant at the end of last summer as well! But these are perfect for just popping in your mouth anytime. Jeremy and I have grown these every year since our very first summer gardening in pots at our basement apartment.

Bring on the Compost

This sign brought great rejoicing to our house last week.  We’d been getting the runaround from the transfer station who we wanted to buy compost from, so. . .  fine–we got some free from the university research farm instead.

I love how it says: The Safe Earth-friendly Fertilizer!

They had huge mountains of compost, and we came equipt with tools and a great tip from some friends. . .

We brought along brown yard bags, and shoveled compost into them, then put down the seats and lined them up in the back of our van.  Mess-free.

Here’s one of our two garden beds in the front yard.  I’m a little sensitive about how they look since they are out front.  I try to keep them looking nice and neat.

Yes, much better with the compost.  We hope the compost will help keep the weeds down, as well as keep the moisture in the ground–since we can’t seem to get a decent rain around here.  As well, of course as being a great natural fertilizer.  Grow, cabbage, grow!

Bones of a Vegetable Garden

We finally pulled this out of the ground last week and couldn’t be more happy.  Yes, it’s a clothesline pole.  The problem is there was only ever one (I would have used it if there were two).  It’s mate had been pulled from the ground long before we moved in, so it was just an eyesore, and right in the middle of the sunniest part of our backyard.

With that pole out of the way I can fit 2 more 4/5 foot garden beds back there.  (I’ve dug up that one on the right.)

But my favorite project we’ve worked on is using fallen branches to make the frame for a bean teepee!  I am so excited, and I think (hope) I’ve gotten my kids excited about it as well.

Yes, as the bones of our vegetable garden become more apparent–this is shaping up to be a great year of backyard gardening.

Overwintered Beets

I planted beets in my hoop house in the early fall.  They grew for about a month until it got cold, they they stopped growing but just kind of hung out waiting for the next few months for it to warm back up again.  They have started growing pretty well again, and the leaves are bigger than any beets I’ve ever grown before.  (I have lot’s of gardening failures!)

The interesting thing is that the leaves that overwintered are a dark purple color and the new leaves are a bright green.  They are very interesting to look at.

The chard and kale did great in the hoop house–they might even survive fine out in the open–we’ve gone out and harvested a few leaves here and there as we need them and they just keep growing more.

The last thing I put in the ground last fall (outside the hoop house) was garlic.  Once in Salt Lake City I attended a community garden workshop all about hoop houses and fall gardening, and one of the presenters was a garlic farmer.  Just. Garlic.  But the interesting thing about garlic is that you plant in the fall and cover with mulch or leaves and it just starts growing automatically when it’s the perfect time and temperature–that is my kind of gardening.

Each clove you plant will grow a whole new bulb.

I’ve heard people talk about using the greens or “scapes” as they call them, like chives to give a fresh flavor to food.  Have you tried it?  My real question is does cutting the scapes to cook with stunt or halt the growth of the garlic, or can you cut them a few times and still harvest a large bulb of garlic?

This is one thing I love about gardening. . . There’s always something new to learn.

Transplanting Seedlings

Some of the seeds we started under the grow lights sprouted their second set of real leaves, so it was time to transplant them out of their itty-bitty starting pods into something bigger.

I had a “helper”.

It was all tomatoes to transplant thus far–they are doing great and it’s nice to know that our grow lights are working out.  We’re growing yellow pear tomatoes which the boys love to snack on.  We’re also growing Roma tomatoes.  I’ve had a lot of success with growing Romas in the past and they are an excellent paste tomato for making sauces and sun-drying.  The third variety we planted is Brandywine.

We had one Brandywine plant last year and we got one most delicious tomato off it before the hornworms came.  It took a while for the plant to bounce back and we only got one more tomato off it later in the summer which wasn’t as good as the first one.  This year we will have lots of Brandywine tomatoes!

All these containers I transplanted into were ones I saved in the shed from the starts we bought last year–nice to avoid waste  and have the perfect containers I need for the job this year.

Backyard Carrot Harvest

We decided to pull up all the carrots from our hoop house on Tuesday. It’s been so unseasonably warm and dry that they weren’t doing very well. The tops were starting to look depressed so we just harvested them.

Normally we would wait until early March when the ground thawed out and we were getting ready for spring planting–However, our ground is currently not anywhere near frozen–such strange weather. . .

I was amazed by how long some of the carrot roots got with these long stringy roots on the tips that went deep into the ground.

This was a yellow carrot variety which you could see better once we got the dirt hosed off. We also planted a purple carrot variety, but they didn’t grow at all for us.

Jonas was ready to eat the carrots fresh, and we chopped up more to steam and add to pasta that night. We still have more to use and we are loving doing so.