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.