15th July, 2011 - Posted by shawn - 1 Comment
Perennials waiting to go into the ground
It’s 5:30am here and I’m trying a new posting scedule for Earth to Eats. I’ve been reading The Amish Cook’s Anniversary Book: 20 Years of Food, Family, and Faith
and it has inspired me to try writing early in the day. This book is an enjoyable read for me and helps me keep my work in perspective. Reading all about an Amish family who get up at 4am and all they do before leaving for work or school motivates me to get more done. It is just amazing all they accomplish – and it is important things too like cooking, preserving and keeping their homes clean. It isn’t watching TV or playing video games.
I made some pickles last week in our front yard. Yep, in the yard. I forgot to take a picture of the jar, but they turned out good enough that I want to try them again. I just put dill in and not garlic and something was definitely missing. A little too much salt went in too since I didn’t have a gallon jar. I’ll adjust all that next time. You can find the recipe here.
I’ve been chatting with some folks from Paperbackswap this week and that is what pushed me to try a different writing schedule here. The discussions and ideas we are sharing there would benefit so many people if they were put here in this public forum so hopefully I’ll get more posts up. I especially want to thank Jamie G for chatting with me about frugality and making a better life for our families. You’ve been inspiring Jamie so keep up the great work!!
Above you see a picture of perennials I purchased at our local flower shop for .99 a piece. These are the ones she hasn’t been able to sell and it is a great way for us to extend our garden without spending much money. I got 40 plants for $39 or so and put in a perennial bed the other night. I need to take pictures of that and explain how I did it in another post. Yes these plants are pot bound something awful, but if you bring them home and soak them and then break up the root ball they do just fine. I even picked up one of my favorite plants – lemon verbena. MMMMMM….. Not a perennial sadly, but at least I’ll have it till frost.
Must get things moving here. Hope everyone has a great day.
27th June, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments
Location for new bag garden
Gosh it’s been a long time since I posted anything here. I’ve been busy over at www.amusementparkmom.com and with the kids and the garden so very little time is left over.
We’ve had a poor year in the garden this year, partially it is our fault and partially it has been the weather. We had too much rain early in the season and then it got really hot. And then there was the tornado, the flooding and it got hot again.
Because of the rain our suppliers were not delivering compost when we needed it most and many of our projects were abandoned due to lack of materials. We lost a lot of started plants to heavy rain and heat. We didn’t have a chance to get probably 50% of our seeds in the ground due to adverse weather and lack of supplies this year. So we are looking forward to a fall crop of those things that will grow.
What has happened though is we have had wonderful success with volunteer plants from last year. You know, dropped tomatoes and cucumbers that we missed that left seed in the ground? THEY are doing amazing! I didn’t plant a single cucumber seed this year due to weather but I’ve got twenty or so plants in flower and spreading. Tomatoes are up too on their own.
I’ve always admired Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes for self-seeding, but some of these are other varieties we’ve grown. The plants come up when they should and always bear fruit. Now they aren’t the earliest plants on the block, but our indoor started and store bought plants aren’t even in flower yet and the wild ones are so they will bear first anyway.
So, this has me thinking about not planting certain things at all next year and letting nature take it’s course. We’re going to try making seed bombs and see if we can get our garden growing by itself next year. I have no volunteer peppers, but they never grew well for us anyway. Mostly it is cukes and tomatoes and some flowers. Oh and a few squash of some kind.
We harvested garlic yesterday. I nice crop but small bulbs this year. Not sure if this is weather related or due to a lack of weeding.
Scott has been busy building beds and killing grass as we attempt to move to grass-free in a few years. We’ve set up a bag garden too but have not planted it. (Bag gardens consist of bags of compost/potting soil that you plant directly into. At the end of the season you remove the bag and it has killed the grass underneath and you have a new bed to plant in.)
Blueberries did not do well at all probably a combination of lack of pruning and lack of winter protection. We’ll try again next year.
Our strawberry patch is 3 years old and needs to be replaced. We planted new everbearing plants in the side yard and they are doing very well. Most berries this year are tasteless due to the heavy rain. No jelly this year.
Currants are a mixed bag. We have two plants and one is doing well the other appears dead. Elderberries are flourishing. Raspberries too, but no flowers so no fruit.
Poison Ivy is spreading like crazy and we have a new way to get rid of it that we are trying. So far it is marginally successful.
We had great luck sprouting sweet potatoes but had no place to plant them at the right time so I’m not sure what’ll happen.
Peas came up slowly and we have a few but not many.
Spinach was available for only a week before we got 90F temps and it bolted. Lettuce has been great, especially Tom Thumb, but it has bolted now too so we are out until fall.
Scott has been planting comfrey and sunflowers and the comfrey is blooming. The sunflowers got a late start and were damaged by too much rain but hopefully they’ll hold on.
I gathered chive seeds and columbine seeds yesterday. Hope to plant our fall perennials here soon.
Mint is going crazy as usual, but sage is suffering from overcrowding. Have to thin some room for them.
Astilbe was pretty but short lived, butterfly bush is blooming as is bee balm. We saw our first hummingbird last week. We’ll see a few more of those I guess.
That’s the update for now, can’t say when we’ll post more but Scott is hoping to get back to it and we are starting a new family project to eat more local food so there should be some info and book reviews on that.
Happy Summer!
12th April, 2011 - Posted by shawn - No Comments
- Garlic in our Garden
Last fall we planted some garlic that we purchased from our favorite supplier, We Grow Garlic. I was happy to see that it is doing well already this season.
We sheet mulched this section to a certain degree and weren’t sure exactly how the garlic would take to it. Plus this placement is far forward in our yard and sometimes gets hit with snow from the snowplow during bad storms.
But as you can see the garlic is up and doing well. It’s looking pretty happy.
If you’ve never grown garlic you really should give it a try. It’s as easy to grow as onions and the taste is a lot better than what you will find at the store. Planting time for garlic is in the fall for most varieties so if you are interested in growing it be sure to put it on your garden planner for this year.
We won’t have to do a thing to ours until we harvest it in July. You can see complete growing and harvesting instructions on We Grow Garlic’s website here.
8th August, 2010 - Posted by shawn - No Comments
Two years ago we tried our hands at growing garlic here in Central PA and we were astounded with the results. Growing was easy, harvesting was fun and eating was awesome! Scott has shared garlic with many online friends and we’ve gifted some to our family and friends as well. In fact we had enough that we didn’t need to replant until this year.
We get our garlic from Karen and Mike at www.wegrowgarlic.com. They are the nicest people (actually respond to emails themselves) and boy do they grow great garlic! We’ve found their prices to be reasonable and their selection outstanding. The first time around we missed out on many varieties because we didn’t order until September. This year we ordered a week after their shop opened (in July) and we still missed out on some – this stuff goes that fast!
If you have ever wanted to try garlic, make this year the year and go to Karen and Mike’s website here. We grew enough for two years of eating and sharing in a small plot so you don’t need lots of room. Want to know how to do it? Check out Scott’s post here on harvesting our garlic and you’ll see our tiny plot. Interplant with marigolds and you barely have to weed at all. The only thing you really need is decent sun and the plot should not have standing water – the bulbs will rot.
Come on… give garlic a try!
7th August, 2010 - Posted by shawn - No Comments
Normally our roma tomatoes do very well, but this year we had a whistlepig eat them during the flowering stage so they have produced very few tomatoes and now are mostly dead. So sad, but I guess groundhogs need to eat too.
We are lucky though that Spiral Path Farm CSA will be offering 25lbs of organic roma tomatoes for $6 to their CSA members at their next open farm day on August 21st. We are definitely going to take advantage of that and dry some for later use.
Our dehydrator does a great job with the tomatoes, but if we didn’t have one we’d still be able to dry them in the oven. For a well done video on how to oven-dry roma tomatoes check out this video by Keith Snow. He adds thyme to his tomatoes and I don’t like to do that – it can sometimes take on a burnt flavor in the oven. Better to just store fresh thyme in the jar with the tomatoes I think. Garlic cloves can work well here too since the tomatoes are to be kept in the fridge or freezer. Garlic in oil should NOT be left out on the counter or in the pantry. It can go bad even if submerged in oil.
27th July, 2009 - Posted by Scott - 1 Comment
We harvested our Garlic this past weekend and it is now hanging in the garage to cure. Now that we have been successful, I would like to take you through the process from beginning to end.
Last fall we ordered 7 different varieties of planting bulbs from We Grow Garlic. We chose to order from them because we could get individual bulbs to try without having to go with a pre-chosen assortment, there was plenty of information to get you through, the prices are very reasonable as you go by the bulb not by weight which can get pricey, and they were one of the only places with garlic left when we realized we wanted to plant some. We ordered in late September, having heard it was a late fall crop, only to find out that we should have placed the order in the beginning of August, just in time to get it fresh from the curing process. So, if you are reading this shortly after it goes up and you haven’t ordered, do it soon!
Once it arrived I spent an evening dissecting each bulb and choosing only the largest cloves from each one to go into the ground. From each bulb I was able to pull about half that were worth planting, for a total of 28 seed cloves. The rest went into a brown paper bag and a cool dark place to be cooked with later.
I prepared a 3′x4′ bed in our new front yard garden and followed the instructions provided. To make planting easier I pointed a 6″ long stick 1″ in diameter, marked 2″ from the point, to act as a dibber and planting guide. I spaced my cloves 6″ apart in staggered rows and was able to comfortably fit my 28 cloves in with a bit of room to spare.
Planting the cloves.
When they were in I marked each section with a wooden stake with the name of the garlic written on in permanent marker. Though this idea seemed great when I did it, and they survived admirably through the fall and light winter, once the spring rains and summer storms hit, they weathered quickly. And little did I know that the soft earth caused them to shift, completely destroying my ability to know exactly what was what. Next time around I will be planting singular rows well separated and clearly marked.
Once everything was done, I covered the garlic with 4 inches of straw and gave it a light watering. I continued to do so until late October, once the weather turned turned cold and threat of frost appeared. With the wet spring and coll summer so far, it did not need to be water and grew vigorously.
The general consensus was that as the outer leaves start to brown and die off the garlic is ready to harvest. With the Scotland like weather so far this year the plants continued to grown vigorously, which has us debating on when they would actually be ready to harvest. Finally we made the choice to get them out of the ground and realized it might be a little late. Thankfully it went well and we were happy to find that every clove planted yielded a nice bulb. There were no elephant varieties in the collection, so they look modest in size compared to the giant white bulbs you find in the grocery store. The softnecks were dug out gently while the hardnecks came free with only a slight tug. Three bulbs did show signs of being harvested a little too late, as they had started to split apart, but were debris and bug free so I kept them.
My teenage daughter collected the bulbs as my wife and I dug them up and was responsible for cleaning them up. After wiping off the heaviest dirt in the field, being careful not to damage the skin, she filled the utility sink with a few inches of water and gave them a quick rinse. I then sorted, wrapped, and hung them to dry.
Here is a picture of a group up to dry.
A bundle of curing bulbs.
I have four such bundles hanging in our large airy garage. They will remain there for 4-6 weeks until ready, at which point the stems and roots will be trimmed and they will be moved to our cool dry pantry for long term storage. Though I could use them to plant for next year’s crop, I am going to support We Grow Garlic by ordering a fresh batch.
Any questions? Please leave a comment.
