Ready to Garden

The weather here has been so nice (read as unseasonably warm - almost 80 degrees at the end of February!) that I have been itching to get into the garden. So far I have managed not to jump the gun too much, but I have gotten some onions, chard, and mixed lettuces planted. They are all even starting to come up. It's about time to put in a second planting as I started the first lettuce and chard about 10 days ago.

We've also done a bit of digging in the garden. I really wish I could go back in time to when they were building my mom's house and convince them not to bury all the trees they cut down - right where we want to garden! I've got a mass of tree trunks and branches at least 2 ft x 2 ft. It's not a solid mass, but I can't tell where one begins and another ends - and its all about 2-3 inches under the soil level! I did manage to dig out a whole bucket full of tree pieces yesterday and today. If we can't come up with some way to dig it out, we either have to try to arrange paths over that area (may be difficult as we may find yet more tree under new areas we are adding to the garden) or decide that that area will be a raised bed and bring in some fresh soil and heap it up there. It's very frustrating as it means that digging up new area is hugely more difficult than it should be.

Meanwhile I'm waiting for the results of the soil sample I dropped off last week, so we know what sorts of amendments the soil needs. And I think it is time to plant potatoes - last year it was way too cold/wet to work the dirt in Feb and we never did plant potatoes. I looked for seed potatoes a couple of weeks ago, but didn't find any. I need to look again.

Brrrr

It got cold today. Not just a little cool, but cold, windy, and wet. We even had some sleet, even though the weathermen were saying it was only well north of us. It was chilly in the house this morning, but we were all moving around and didn't feel it so much. Then I had errands to run, then bustling around putting stuff away and making lunch. I didn't really feel it until I went to sit down here at the computer (and instantly got a cat in my lap) and found my mouse hand getting very COLD.

So, once the cat left me, ON went the heat. First time of the season.

I covered up more of the garden than I had initially planned, because several of the peppers and tomatoes still have so much produce on them. I picked another 13 hot peppers today, plus some green tomatoes (the ones that had at least a tiny bit of red/pink on them).

Jack Frost vs the Garden

We've got a freeze warning for Fri, Sat, and Sun nights currently. I'm not sure it will actually get down to 32 or below any of these nights, but I suppose I must be prepared, for the sake of the garden.

I know the garlic (coming up nicely) and parsley will be just fine. I think we're going to cover the cherry tomato plant, as it still has a couple dozen unripe tomatoes on it. I'll pick any that are even remotely turning red, but then cover and hope for the best. I need to look at the other tomato plants more closely, but I'm leaning towards just picking all the tomatoes and pulling up the plants. Probably the same for the bell pepper and hot pepper plants, though all are still producing well - especially the banana peppers and jalepenos. I picked a good dozen today, off 2 plants. I may just try to cover them, after picking all the good size peppers.

The only other things still in the garden are the basil (almost dead), cilantro (self-sprouting like crazy), and the late potatoes. I know that spring planted potatoes are put in well before the last frost, so can they take a frost?? I've never planted potatoes before, so this is a total experiment...

Garden update

I dug the sweet potatoes today. The nights have been getting cooler lately and it is supposed to rain tomorrow, so it was time. Unfortunately the sweet potatoes didn't seem to do as well this year as last year. Last year we had some gigantic sweets. This year, the biggest ones were about 4.5 oz. (vs almost 2 lbs last year). Our entire harvest this year was only about 4.5 pounds.

We thought about harvesting the sweet potatoes a few weeks ago, but I'm sure they would have been even smaller then. And I just checked - this years harvest is one week later than last year, but last year we had already turned on the heat by then. This year we haven't yet, we've only had one night barely dip into the upper 30's.

I'm not sure why they did so much worse this year. Perhaps because I planted them in-between rows of green beans and they got robbed of sun or water or soil nutrients? I had planted the beans well before the sweet potatoes would be ready to go in, but then my first planting didn't germinate, so I was 2 weeks later. And then the beans just kept on producing, so I didn't pull them out as soon as I had anticipated. I'd been trying for a bit of the square foot gardening/interplanting techniques and making better use of my space, but if that caused my poor yields, I'm not sure its worth it. Alternately it could be that we went on vacation for 2 weeks and the garden didn't get watered as regularly. or just the vagaries of weather. I wish I knew....

The hot peppers and the cherry tomatoes are still plowing on full steam ahead. I picked 8-10 cherry tomatoes today and there must still be dozens on the plant. Last week, one branch of the cherry tomato plant broke off (with a half dozen green to slightly red tomatoes on it), so I brought it home and put it in a vase of water. The reddish ones have fully ripened now, and most of the others are turning red - just one resolutely green tomato.

I'll have to try to add pictures tomorrow...

The garden is starting slowly

The garden seems to be progressing slower than last year. I know some of that is that it was cold and wet over winter break this year, so we didn't do any ground breaking then. So, once spring break came, we had to do the new ground breaking plus some planting.

So far we have planted:

lettuce - something is coming up, but it doesn't look like lettuce

swiss chard - coming up slowly

green beans - planted 2 types, one is coming up, the other not yet

corn - some is coming up

parsley - nothing yet

Hopefully this weekend we will get some tomatoes and peppers in. Those will be plants, rather than the sees like the others.

Oh, and D planted some amaranth here in the yard - nothing coming up from it yet either.

Our Blackberry Patch is Gone!

I was over at the elementary school today, waiting to pick A up from his field trip, and because the bus was late, I decided to walk around the track. I was astonished to see that they have completely cleared out the blackberry canes! They have also cut down some trees and other brush. Some of the blackberry canes were not terribly productive, but about a third of them produced nice, big, fat, juicy blackberries.

I am really going to miss the blackberries, especially those big, juicy ones - and especially since they were away from traffic and close to home. Now, this spring, I have to be on the lookout for the telltale white flowers that tell me where the blackberries will be in the summer.

Caring for Creation Conference

Friday I went down to Macon (a bit over an hour away) for a conference at Mercer University titled Caring for Creation. It was "a scientific and theological response" to the subject of climate change.

I was a bit surprised overall at the casual atmosphere of the whole conference - I guess I'm too used to industry type conferences, whereas this was clearly aimed at the Mercer students. Check-in was a student writing down my name and not really knowing if I'd already paid or not, parking was free on the street, and our lunch ticket was evidently the fact that we had the green bags from the conference and looked too old to be students (students were supposed to swipe their ID for the meal). The speakers were all quite interesting. I wish I'd been able to clone myself to go to more of the talks.

At the first group plenary session, I was quite pleased to meet Amy, whose blog I read and get lots of good info on when to plant and harvest my garden. We each knew the other would be there, but not how to find each other. Because there were mostly students in attendance, it was easier, but I was still surprised that we connected even before the session started.

Amy posted a very nice synopsis of the conference sessions. I won't repeat it all (also because my notes weren't nearly so detailed), but note that I also initially found out about the conference from Sharon's blog - and the fact that Sharon would be speaking is the main reason I went. I really enjoyed both Sharon's talks and chatting with her a bit afterwards. She was just as interesting and entertaining in person as she is on her blog. And she seemed quite pleased that Amy and I had each come from over an hour away to hear her speak.

During the final break-out session, while Amy went to hear Farmer D, I went back to hear Judith Curry, who had spoken in the morning. She was going to be talking more about what climate change will mean for the Southeast. I must admit that I was a little disappointed - I didn't think that she added all that much new information over what she had presented in the morning. She discussed how we will see more extremes in temperature and rainfall - more flooding as well as more drought and more of our rain in big rainfall events rather than slow, gentle rains. She pointed out that even a fairly modest average temperature rise of 2 degrees F might lead to a maximum temperature for a specific area of 7F more. Dr. Curry also said that climate scientists knew that there was a reasonable probability of a flood in the Atlanta area a month before our recent flood and that there was a high probability a week in advance - but nothing was done to prepare the area or the residents.

Based on her comments, Dr. Curry had heard Sharon's plenary talk, where she told us that a very high percentage of climate researchers thought that it was very likely that the earth would warm by 4 degrees C by 2100. Dr. Curry heard this and did not seem to disagree with it (though all the information she presented was of a lower level of warming), but said that she didn't think she could go so far as to stop watching her big TV or traveling by air. If scientists in the field of climate research aren't willing to change their behavior, I worry how other people can be convinced to conserve and change.

Sweet potatoes

Here are the first sweet potatoes we dug up last week - these were just the ones that I could see poking up above the soil. That one on the right, nearest the phone is almost 2 pounds!

Here's another picture of all of them (sorry its on its side, I'm not going back to fix it now). The one on the upper right is the same big one as above.

I estimate that all these, plus the 2 we've already eaten, the 2 more my mom found a few days later when she used the shovel to dig up the whole area and the couple I left at her house - all told I think we got about 12 pounds of sweet potatoes. I could tell that we got more sweet potatoes from the areas where we had amended the soil better. There were a few plants at the back or right at the edge of the garden that didn't produce as well. Guess we know what we need to do better next year!

Finally!

Our giant Jarradale pumpkin/squash vine:

This vine has been growing and growing and growing all summer. First we saw lots of flowers, but no fruits. Turns out that the first flowers are all male, so no fruit setting there. Then we saw a few fruits that start out looking like this:

All too soon, though, they all seem to end up like this:

Sometimes they would get a little bigger than this, but they all seemed to wither and die. Imagine my surprise, then, to find this growing down the slope, away from the main plant and in the shade:

This beauty is 6 inches in diameter. Yes, I measured it, so I could be sure to let D know how big it is. We don't have any idea why the others didn't develop. Was it too much sun, not enough fertilizer, wrong amount of water, too hot out. Who knows?

I would have dragged D over to marvel at the pumpkin tonight, but it was raining. Definitely over the weekend, we'll check it out. I just hope it keeps on growing properly!

Garden pics

Here's our first cantaloupe.  rather ridgy, but decidedly a cantaloupe.

And here it is after we cut into it.  It was still just a little bit green.  I think it would have been better if we had let it sit for a day, but it was just too exciting to try. 

We actually have another cantaloupe in the fridge, probably to be eaten tomorrow.  It had been hiding back in the back corner of the garden bed, underneath cantaloupe and squash leaves.  I think it was the fact that it had started turning yellow was what finally let us see it.  

And then there is our squash/pumpkin.  We think this was supposed to get a good bit bigger, but it had stopped growing, so we finally picked it (a few days after this photo was taken - it was even darker orange and the bottom wasn't yellow anymore).  

Unfortunately, it also was a bit under-ripe.  The flavor was good, but it was very dry.  D had wrapped it in foil with butter, cardamon, allspice and thyme.  A thought that it tasted like sweet potatoes and was tasty, but dry.  D thought it reminded him of the white sweet potatoes (boniatos) that we had in Puerto Rico.  And M thought it was like a potato - yucky.  I wasn't quite sure what it reminded me of.  I wish I knew how to tell when it is ripe.

Our very own cantaloupe!

My mom called this morning and said that the first cantaloupe was ready.  She had gone out to check on things and the cantaloupe came off the vine.  Wow.  We split the cantaloupe and we had some of ours with lunch today.  It was quite good.  And there's another, larger cantaloupe still on the vine, nearing ripeness.

I'll try to post some garden pics tomorrow...

Blackberry Cobbler

I LOVE blackberry cobbler.  Especially when its hot and with a generous helping of vanilla ice cream on top.  YUMMM.  I made this cobbler last week with berries we picked behind the elementary school.  It was good.  The only problem is that was - its all gone now.  

I may have to go pick blackberries again soon in the hopes of having another cobbler.  Unfortunately, the berry patch at the school is smaller than it used to be - there used to be some patches back into the woods and they are basically gone now - I think the trees grew up and shaded them out.  I'm lucky if I can pick a quart when I go over there - nothing like the patches of my childhood, where we would each get closer to a half gallon and my dad would usually be threatening to spill berries out of his gallon milkjug.  That would be berries enough for multiple cobblers plus jelly.  

I never minded picking blackberries (the payoff in cobbler was definitely worth it), but my kids don't quite share my enthusiasm.  A helped a bit this last time and he does enjoy the cobbler, but M doesn't care for cobbler and would rather not pick anything.

Harvest continues

Our harvest from the garden is continuing nicely, although we have learned some things we want to do differently next year - like plant more beans.  The first planting of beans was 3 rows and that was ok - it meant we could have beans almost twice a week and so could my mom.  But this second planting was only 2 rows - it takes multiple days to get enough beans for a meal.  So far off this planting, we have only had one or two meals with beans (and even then one night the adults had beans and the kids had frozen peas).  The next planting of beans should be better - I think there are 5 rows, so hopefully we'll be eating beans at least twice a week, maybe 3 times one week.

Last night we had quite a bit of our own produce for dinner.  We had chicken fajitas with:

the last of our onions

the first of our green peppers

the first of our full size (not cherry) tomatoes

a bit of our chard

I know at some point we will probably be swimming in tomatoes, but for now the tomatoes are just barely keeping up with our desire to eat them.  And the green peppers aren't keeping up - I'm flat out of any peppers and ours are coming in rather slowly.  The hot peppers are doing better so far.  

Blueberries!

Our blueberries are starting to come in.  Yay!  and yummy!

I picked this many yesterday (we ate them all just out of hand) and then I picked a few more, but still just a handful today.  Those we'll have on cereal tomorrow.

Also, my mom says that the sign was up at our U-pick blueberry place on Saturday and there were quite a few people there.  I can't wait, but I think I must - if there were a bunch of people, it usually means that they have picked over the berries, picking too many of the almost ripe ones.  I think I'll wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to go pick my bucket full.  In the meantime, I'll get a handful each day from our bushes.

Today's Harvest

Before it got too hot out this morning, we all headed over to the garden to do some harvesting. We finally pulled the last of the red onions - this is about 1/3 of the total onions we got this year. None of them are very big, probably due to planting them a bit late.

A cucumber (and we left another about this size on the vine for my mom to pick when she's ready for it), 3 cherry tomatoes (A wanted to know if the tiny one would get any bigger - no, not if its already red!), and a sprig of parsley (just because).

Some Swiss Chard. D thinks maybe we are picking it too early, that it isn't getting as big as it could (and he's probably right that it would get bigger), but he wanted chard with dinner and I think its tastier when its smaller/younger.

A few green beans. These are about half from the first planting of beans we did (10 weeks ago) and half from the second planting (7 weeks ago). The first set of plants is about done producing. There are still a few more small beans on them, but very few - as soon as we get some more bean seeds, we are going to rip up those plants and compost them and plant some more beans. The first packet says we can plant beans through July in this area, so we'll plant more and hopefully harvest beans at least through August. I don't know how they handle the heat in August, but I guess we'll see.

We had to buy about this many more beans to really have enough to enjoy beans for dinner. Luckily the beans at the grocery store looked decent enough, unlike last week when they looked old and wizened.

Blackberries!

The first of the blackberries are ripe.  Yum.  We all sampled a few and I have first dibs for my cereal tomorrow.  I found the first 2 ripe berries in our yard and that convinced me to go check out the berries behind the elementary school.  Yep, ripe berries - not a lot yet, but there were some, and they were worth picking, thanks to all the rain we've gotten this spring.  All told I got maybe a cup full, so they'll all be gone tomorrow I'd guess.  But now I have visions of blackberry cobbler.

Garden

The garden is cranking along now.  We've had several meals with green beans and we're still harvesting from the first set of bush beans we planted.  I picked today and saw that the second set of bean plants are currently flowering (I planted them about 3 weeks after the first set).  I hope that there won't be much of a gap in beans.

We've harvested the first several cherry tomatoes.  As predicted, most have been eaten still in the garden (and mostly by A).  That's fine - its what we expected.  Any that make it into the house are just a bonus.

The regular tomato plants are growing like gangbusters - outgrowing our stakes and cages!  I haven't seen any signs of red on their tomatoes yet, but I do see growing green tomatoes.

This photo was from several days ago and the little cuke has grown bigger.  Enough so that we picked him tonight.  I think he's destined to become part of dinner tomorrow night.  There are at least 2 more cukes growing and plenty of flowers.

These cucumbers are already wildly more successful than the last time I tried growing them - I had spindly, pitiful plants that never produced a single cuke.

This is actually the 3rd pepper that this plant has produced - the tag calls it a hot banana pepper (we think it is probably the same as the Hungarian wax pepper we grew in Baton Rouge).  They have a little heat, but not too much and are quite tasty.  And this plant is definitely out-producing the banana pepper and the bell peppers (mostly just at the flowering stage still).

Lastly, a picture of the garden overall:

All that grass and weeds are in the walkway of the garden - it may not look the best, but overall the garden is doing well.  Where we've put it down, the newspaper and grass clippings are doing a good job of keeping down the weeds.  I guess we need to do a bit more of that.

I'm sure the garden is enjoying the rain we're currently getting - over 2 inches so far tonight.  I'm enjoying it too - it cooled the temperature off quickly (like 5 degrees in 5 minutes).  Also knowing that we won't need to water the garden or the blueberries for a few more days.

Speaking of blueberries, we've had one ripe one so far.  I expect it will be a few weeks before ours are really ripe (especially since ours are rather shaded).  I'm hoping that by next weekend the you-pick place near us will be open, though.  I have a single pie crust waiting for a blueberry pie.  Yummmmmm.

Garden update

The garden is mostly doing well. The peas are almost done - yesterday we got about 10 peapods, about half of which I opened up and we just ate the peas as the pods were getting tough. If we grow peapods again next year, we will have to trellis them somehow as it was very difficult to see the peas and they grew into a tangled mess. We also got a full meals worth of green beans yesterday. The kids ate theirs raw, but D and I found that 3 minutes in the steamer in the microwave was perfect.

**Oops, this never got posted last week - I think I was waiting for a photo - so here's the poor state of our peapods:

Wanting to Garden

I know it is still too early to plant many things in the garden, but it seems so nice.  I'll admit it's still getting a little cool at night (around 40), but the days are near 70.  The garden centers are full of tomatoes and peppers and other such plants.  But it is still 3 weeks til our last frost date AND I know that plants put in later often catch up or pass early plants in producing.  We had some beautiful tomato plants when we lived in Baton Rouge once - they had these wonderful big tomatoes on them in early May.  And there they stayed, still green, until it got hot enough in June for them to ripen!

I did plant some red onion sets this weekend, though.  Evidently it's a bit late to be planting onions and they looked kind of sad (sad enough that the guy at the feed & seed gave them to me for free), but we're trying.  I'd gone looking for seed potatoes, only to be told they were out and it was a month too late to be planting them.  Funny since everything I'd been seeing online said to wait to plant potatoes until after last frost.  Hmmmph.  I put a note on the calendar to check on onions and potatoes in February next year.

I'm also impatiently waiting to see if my parsley will germinate.  I know I shouldn't be concerned yet as its only just been 2 weeks since I planted and the packet says 14-21 days, but I really want to know if I'm going to have any luck with this batch or should I be starting some more.  I guess another week will tell...

Crazy Weather

Last weekend we had beautiful Spring type weather.  It looked like our local groundhog was right when he predicted an early Spring.  The flowers are blooming, the trees are budding... so of course, we have a freeze predicted for tomorrow night - its supposed to get down to 24.  Brrrr!  And only getting up to maybe 50 tomorrow, with plenty of wind.  I really hope it doesn't hurt the blueberries, which are about to flower.  Lets hope that they aren't at a stage yet to be hurt by a hard freeze.  Hope, hope, hope!

We'll also definitely be covering and uncovering the tiny little lettuce plants with our homemade cold frame windows.