Herbs

We've tried growing herbs several different ways. We've put them in pots, in the garden, this year we did them in the "tipsy pots", rarely do they flourish. Basil is easy. Rosemary is easy. The rest? I've never been successful. Italian flat leaf parsley laughs in my face. So after everything in the tipsy pots died off this year, I decided to try one last thing... growing them in mason jars inside. If they were going to be in my house, they had to be cute. I bought some stones from Target and filled the jars a little way up so it had some drainage. Then I planted the herbs on top.  The flaw? When you water it the soil runs down into the rocks. So I pulled the plants out and added a small piece of screen between the rocks and the plant. Success.

So they looked pretty, but would they grow? 
 

Holy cow. They grew! I might have to move them out of the window since they are growing so quickly.  Even the flat leaf parsley!  We've since added a dill plant, too. It's not in the picture because I haven't put the cute ribbon on it yet. The basil is out of control. We need to cut it back a little... maybe make a mini batch of pesto?

Hopefully we'll be able to keep it going and have fresh herbs year round. Can't do that when you grow them outside!

 

Garden Update, July 22nd

It's HOT.  The garden is confused a little bit. Feels like August. The good news... we finally have some tomatoes!!! Still green, but they are there!!  I'm ready for something red. Everything we've brought in so far has been green. It's getting a little boring.  We'll regret complaining about these tomatoes taking so long though... we're going to get TONS at one time.

Just to update on our red mulch & silver mulch experiment... it was a bust! The picture is a little small, but hopefully you can see how scrawny the plants on the left are (on the mulch) and how full and healthy the ones on the right are (without the mulch). We lost three of our four zucchini plants on the silver mulch this year. The tomato plants over there look awful, but are finally producing a little. The grass is growing  through the sides, up through the buckets, through the holes around the plants. We will say that the silver mulch did help control the bugs as promised. We still had some, but not as many as last year.

 We've also been preserving lots of food, too.  We've blanched & froze lots of zucchini, cabbage (yup, we  froze cabbage!), bell peppers and  jalapenos... lots & lots of jalapenos!!

Hoping to make some pepper jelly this weekend... one of our favorite ways to use all of our peppers. We have about 10 more bell peppers growing out there right now and lots of jalapenos!

Garden Update, June 17th

So sorry for the lapse in updates! I haven't been very good about updating. We've been busy and honestly, there's a lot I should still be doing right now instead of blogging! Oh, well!

Everything has really taken off. May was SUPER HOT here! I think our spring veggies had no idea what was going on.  I'll take you on a little photographic update of what's going on in the garden this week!

 Carrots are growing!

The process of preserving has begun. I actually don't like eating plain bell peppers, but like to have them on hand do use in things. Easiest way to keep them from going bad is to slice them into strips and freeze them individually on a cookie sheet and then put them in an air tight container. That way they don't freeze into a clump and you can pull out whatever you need as you need them. Same for jalapenos. I just recommend using gloves when you clean and slice them. Learned that the hard way!

Harvest to date:

Broccoli- 5*

Romaine Lettuce- 3*

Bell Peppers- 2

Snow Peas- 301

Jalapenos- 7

Strawberries- 289*

Asparagus- 41*

Cucumbers- 3

Zucchini- 5

Blueberries- 25

* things that are finished growing

BUST

(things we tried, but had no luck with):

Cauliflower

Spinach

Leaf Lettuce

Chinese Cabbage

Red Mulch & Silver Mulch

I had seen some things about plastic mulch so we started to do some research. There are a few gardening companies that sell red mulch, silver mulch, green mulch, etc.  Each has its own purpose. It's basically a sheet of plastic that you lay down in your garden to prevent weeds serve at least one other purpose. Red mulch is supposed to increase yield of tomatoes. Silver mulch is supposed to naturally repel certain insects (it's reflective, so I guess it confuses their little eyes?). Those are the two we decided to try this year. We planted our zucchini on the silver mulch because they were overgrown with weeds and eaten up by bugs last year. We planted tomatoes in the red mulch.

The issue with the plastic mulch is that it's not permeable, so you typically have to run soaker hoses underneath it to keep the plants watered.  On the way to work one day I thought, why don't we cut off the bottom of some two liters and put one (upside down) next to each of the plants. Kinda like those AuqaGlobe things. Jeff did it one better. He cut a hole in the middle of the "mulch" and dropped in a five gallon bucket with holes drilled in the bottom. This way we can add water to the bucket or it can collect rain water when it rains to water the veggies.

You can't see the tomatoes in the picture above... they are still pretty small since we started them from seeds. What you can see is our fast growing snow peas behind them!

We did have two nights of light frost last week, but everything seemed to hold up pretty well. And so far this week we've gotten some broccoli and quite a few strawberries out of the garden!

 

Garden Update, April 24th

POTATOES
I think I left out pictures of the potatoes last time. They are loving all the rain we've had and have taken off. Since our wonderful Tennessee ground is rocky and hard and mostly clay, we have to grow backyard potatoes a little differently. The last few years Jeff has built "barrels" out of hardware cloth (wire mesh). As the plant grows he covers it with more dirt. The potatoes grow up along the stem underground. We know they are ready when the plant on top wilts and dies off.  The last few years we have had several very small potatoes. This year looks like we'll get quite a few!


CUCUMBERS & ZUCCHINI
We got five cucumber plants and four zucchini plants in the ground yesterday. We used silver mulch for our zucchini to hopefully keep the bugs off of them this year and the weeds down. I'll post more on that later.

PEPPERS
Last week, Jeff planted four jalapeno and four bell pepper plants. We mainly grow these to make pepper jelly... yum.  They both freeze really well, too.

OTHER
Check out the "What We're Growing" page on the right column to see a list of what we're growing.

  

Garden Update, April 10th

It's been a couple weeks since the last update. The weather here has been all over the place, so we've not been doing tons out there. Our frost date is this Friday, so it's we'll be hitting things pretty hard soon!

As you can see there are quite a few blooms:

I got the herbs in the pots today... at least 2/3rds! For the second year and a row, I haven't found any flat leaf parsley yet. I'll try again tomorrow. We've got Greek Oregano and Cilantro in there now.  The broccoli has also started coming to life. Still not very big though.

Our sugar snap peas have found their way out of the ground (yum!). The strawberries we planted this year seem to be duds, but our strawberries from last year (that we thought wouldn't produce much this year) have flowers all over them. So hopefully we'll have strawberries soon.  We've also gotten tons of asparagus... probably more than 30 spears, which is much more than last year.

We, with the rest of the world, went to Lowe's after church and got jalapeno, bell pepper, and zucchini plants. Hopefully we'll get our tomatoes and cucumbers started soon too!

First Harvest!

May not look like much, but it's always fun to bring your first veggies of the year into the kitchen! Jeff snipped seven spears of asparagus yesterday and there are about 12-15 more growing still! They will make a nice addition to our salad tonight!

 

Week of March 20th

 Sorry I haven't updated, but things are coming together in the backyard!

  

There are a lot of new things we want to plant this year and were concerned with having enough room to do what we wanted. We needed to go vertical! I saw "tipsy pots" online or on TV last year and forgot about it until Jeff brought it up this year.  I found this tutorial online to build them.  Basically, you stack clay pots along a piece of re-bar.  We couldn't figure out how to cut re-bar without some major tools, so we used metal conduit that was easily cut with a hacksaw (I'm guessing it was easy... Jeff took care of that!). The base pot is 12" and the top four are 10".  We planted one variety of strawberries in two towers and another variety on the ground in front.

We got extra pots to make a smaller tower for my herbs!

We also started seeds for our summer vegetables in the house. We planted bell peppers, jalapenos and tomatoes (six each). Jeff also planted quite a few marigold seeds. Marigolds are a natural way to deter pests in the garden.  We've never tried it, but have read a lot about it and wanted to give it a shot!







Finally, Jeff set up his aquaponics again. According to Wikipedia (because we know they are the ultimate authority in everything), aquaponics is "a sustainable food production system that combines a traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment."  As far as I know, he's not put any fish or anything in that container, so maybe it's still just hydroponics.  He's growing Chinese lettuce in it.



Lot's happening in the backyard! I'm going to try and add a page to the blog with an ongoing list of what we've planted, when we planted it and how much was produced.  It's supposed to get near freezing tonight, but hopefully everything will be okay. We may have to throw sheets over some things.

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Look What's Growing!

About 3 or 4 stalks of asparagus have come up this week!

These plants are about three years old and have their own permanent place in the garden.

Mmmm... can't wait!

What's in the Ground?

As of today, this is what's in the ground:

• Cauliflower (8 plants)
• Cabbage (8 plants)
• Broccoli (8 plants)
• Onions
• Romaine Lettuce (8 plants)
• Carrots
• Potatoes (6)
• Asparagus (planted two years ago!)

Today we went to Old Time Pottery and bought clay pots to build Tipsy Pots for strawberries & herbs. They are having an awesome sale right now. We got three 12" clay pots, eight 10.5" pots, an 8" pot, and a 6" pot all for about $30. We're trying to save space in the garden and plant things vertically as much as possible. We've never built them before, but it seems pretty straightforward. I will take pictures when they are finished.

We'll start our tomatoes & pepper seeds inside soon!

Garlic!

This, so far, has been a successful experiment. We had been talking about growing garlic for a while, but never tried. Early last month, I had an old head of garlic that was no longer appetizing, so we planted the cloves in a flower box on our kitchen floor (it was still really cold outside). This is what grew... and pretty quickly. We've read that, like potatoes, when the green leaves die off it's ready to be pulled up. From each clove, a new head of garlic will grow.

I've also been reading up on preserving garlic, because while I like the stuff, I'm not sure what to do with 10-12 heads of it at a time. Apparently it freezes really well.  Good to know! I also read that to mince it and preserve it in oil is super dangerous. Even companies that sell it that way have a lot of extra measures they have to go through to do it properly. Bacteria grows in oil pretty quickly. I'll stick to freezing it.

We'll let you know what happens when we pull them up!

Signs of Spring

Here are a few quick ways to tell spring is getting close in our house. Jeff is itching to get things in the ground. Sadly, our frost date is still a month and a half away, but there are a few things we can do in the meantime and a few plants that we can get in the ground earlier.

We've started broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage seeds in cups. We never have much luck sprouting the spring veggies, but we always try.  We love starting seeds in party cups from Dollar Tree.

We also start them in the peat pellets in a mini-greenhouse with a heating pad underneath. I lose half of my kitchen this time of year.

And when that doesn't work, we go out and buy the plants. Only trouble with this is they all mature at the same time! It's pretty tough to eat 70 lbs of cabbage in a week, but we'll talk about preserving food later. Above is romaine lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.