A Beautiful Sight

I'm torn. I don't know which sight is more beautiful.

My son folding his own laundry:


OR
My tomatoes growing strong and some peppers already re-potted?

Gardening Season Has Officially Begun!

Or at least, I declare it has. For me, anyway. You can do what you want. :)

I have our chilis started, and I also jumped the gun on some Thai Basil...hoping I can get it going good indoors as it would surely add a lot to all the Thai cooking we've been doing lately. This week, I'll be starting the tomatoes and maybe getting the peas planted. One of the nice things about the raised bed gardening is being able to get a jump start, as they thaw pretty quickly.

But before I get going full steam on the seedlings in the basement, I need to CLEAN the basement. Too many spiders currently residing in there now for me to want to go down and check on things as often as I should. That's where shop vacs come in handy! :)

Gardening in January

OK, so maybe I'm doing more dreaming about gardening in January than actual gardening. Anything to get through these long, cold months. How my husband can love this time of year so much is beyond me! As I mentioned, we went to the meeting for the new CSA starting up just around the corner this year. Unfortunately, that merely whet my appetite to get in the dirt, but right now it is only about 9 degrees out. In the meantime, I've been looking over online seed catalogs, planning my garden grid and updating my spreadsheets.

I know you're all dying to see what we'll be growing this year, so here goes (in the number of "squares", since we do square foot gardening. Some are one plant per square, some 4, some 9...onions I just throw in and see what sticks):
3 Genovese Basil
2 Thai Basil
2 Cilantro
1 Chives
1 Garlic Chives
1 Sage
14 green beans
3 Bok Choy
7 Brussels Sprouts
4 Carrots (stubby round ones - for snacking while the kids are outside playing)
2 Chinese Cabbage
14 Peas
4 New Mexico Improved Chiles
4 Anaheim College Chiles
4 Mayo Chiletepine Chiles
2 Scallions
3 Shallots
2 Swiss Chard
2 Heirloom Beefsteak Tomatoes (Black from Tula)
2 Heirloom Beefsteak Tomatoes (Bloody Butcher)
2 Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes (Yellow Pear)
2 Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes (Koralik)
7 Heirloom Plum Tomatoes (Spitze)
1 Turnip Greens (for our bunny, Spy)
2 Butternut Squash
3 Delicata Squash
2 Autumn Cup Squash
2 Sunshine Squash
2 Acorn Squash
3 Spaghetti Squash
4 Sugar Baby Watermelon

31 different veggies. The CSA will hopefully be duplicating everything in one form or another, and perhaps I won't plant so much next year, but I'm just not ready to trust it entirely. We aren't planting any of the things that I can never keep up with - such as the greens that seem to bolt as soon as I've turned my back - or any sweet bell peppers (mine are always so tiny and slightly bitter). We'll just have to trust that all will go well and we'll have a steady supply of those. Even when the CSA we have selected has proven itself, there are some things I'm just not sure we'll get enough of to put up for the winter to provide for our family. I'll probably always grow tomatoes and peas and winter squash. We don't put up Brussell Sprouts, but we sure do eat quite a few, so now that we know how easy those are to grow, we'll probably always have a few of those going, too. We can eat the roasted sprouts like popcorn. :)

Now I just have to order the few seeds that I don't have leftover from last year and be patient until mid-February to get the chiles started and mid-March for the rest. Wish me luck!

Quick Update

Seems like life's been happening so quickly, I haven't had time to post. But that's not entirely true. I've still found time to play computer games in the wee hours, but by then I just don't feel like thinking to post. How sad is that?

Holidays were good - lots of family time and loads of snow!

One kid had pneumonia and another an asthma episode, so two out of three are on meds for the winter. But the asthma is under control now, so all is well.

Back to the snow - we had a BLAST last weekend. We invited 5 other families from church who all have kids the same ages as ours to go sledding at a nearby park. All totaled, there were 26 - 10 adults and 16 kids ages 2-11. After sledding, we all came back here for pizza, cocoa and popcorn. What a great way to spend the day. And what a blessing to have such a large group of friends with such well-behaved kids!

Yesterday evening, we went to a meeting about a local CSA that is starting up soon. (Mud Creek Farm - check it out!) We couldn't be more excited about this venture. And it is only 2.2 miles from our house, so we'll be able to be very involved if we choose to be. We'll still be growing our own garden, but we'll be able to focus our efforts on the things that we just HAVE to have and the things that I put up for the winter. Don't worry, I'll be posting on that effort as it gets under way. I've been poring over my spreadsheets and seed catalogs the past week or so getting ready to get started. I can't wait!

In the meantime, I'm re-reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I didn't do great at putting up a lot to get us through the long winter, but we do have some. So about 1/4 of our vegetable consumption this winter will be from local produce. We still have plenty of winter squash just waiting to be gobbled up and bags upon bags of plum tomatoes in the freezer begging to be used or turned into sauce. Then some fruit, whole, diced or roasted peppers of several varieties and even a little bit of corn. Not to mention the jams, which aren't going down quite as quickly as I anticipated. Anyone need some Mulberry jam?

Farmer's Markets - I guess you take your chances

So we went to the farmer's market yesterday. All part of the whole trying to eat more locally thing. We went to stock up on peppers for the freezer, squash to store for the winter and maybe a few fresh greens. Sounds easy, right? Well, when I went to buy the peppers, I couldn't believe the variety at one stand. And the back of his truck was loaded with bushels of them! The table was full of quart baskets with each variety. I requested 2 baskets of a few different peppers. The gentleman running the stand insisted that I didn't really want THAT many peppers. Those are all hot, you know. Didn't I want some sweet ones? I had to agree that yes, I would be getting to the sweet ones, and plead a few more times for the hot and left with a grocery bag full of peppers. About 8 of them were poblanos. Mmmm...fresh poblanos. So tonight, I made stuffed poblanos. I looked forward to it all day. I chopped up some hot peppers to mix in with Ben's stuffing so he'd have a little heat. Then we bit into them. They weren't tame, flavorful poblanos. They were flavorful, but HOT. Too hot for me to eat. Hot enough that Ben felt the heat from them more than the cherry bombs I had put in the filling. I was so disappointed. I guess that even with a great market to fall back on, I'll still prefer growing my own stuff so I know what it is.

But they sure did look good, didn't they?

The delicata squash is the same variety we grew, so we should be safe there. The brussel sprouts we got were good, but not as good as the variety we grew ourselves. But it's good to see the kids get so excited about something so good for them!

I hope my garlic turns out better - I had to beg with the couple selling that to buy more than a head at a time, too!

Mood of Success

I've decided that success, at least for me, is much more subjective than I once thought. I'm very much a rule follower, not just in the "do this", "don't do that" sense of things, but also in determining whether things are complete and meet a certain standard. That has always served me well in my academic and professional pursuits. While it hasn't crippled me in my personal life, I must admit that aspect of my personality hasn't always been to my benefit.

This spring, we decided to put in a much larger garden than last year. We had just started with the square foot gardening last year with two 4'x8' beds. This year, we added another 4'x8' bed and 8 1' square boxes for squash and melons. I started this endeavor with not only high hopes, but high expectations. With an entire bed devoted to peas and green beans, I assumed that we would have not only enough peas and green beans to eat fresh, but also a few to freeze. I expected to have squash coming out my ears. But it was not to be. I'll spare you all the details, but late frosts, snacky critters, wind storms and a wet end to the summer left us with much smaller yields than I expected.

Based on the criteria that I had for a succesful season, I'd have to give us a 'D'. Up until this past weekend, I was feeling pretty down about it. Trying to eat more local products is something that has become important to me. Our garden was to play a large part in that role. Also, my husband loves veggies. I had hoped to provide him with plenty of his favorite foods this summer, but without the bounty in the backyard, it was a little harder to do than I had hoped. Another failure. I don't know what it was, but somehow this weekend, I let myself stop feeling as if it had been a failure that didn't live up to expectations. Perhaps it was hearing that others had experienced the same problems that I had. Perhaps it was realizing how much I learned and how much hope there is for next year with improved gardening practices. Or perhaps I'm just getting too lazy to try to live up to my own standards. Whatever the reason, I started looking at what we DID get out of the garden for our efforts with a sense of accomplishment. The tomato sauce in the freezer, the baskets of squash in the dining room and all the produce still to be harvested - they all show me that all was not lost. We could have done a lot worse. So, whether it is a case of my standards slipping or giving myself extra credit for lessons learned, I would no longer give myself a 'D' for my summer gardening...maybe even a 'B'.

In case you're interested, here is our garden's report card (so far, anyway):

• Broccoli: was a waste of space - something ate the leaves.
  
• Green Beans: just enough for 3 meals - we'll cover the seedlings with a starter house next year to protect them.
  
• Peas: had 2 weeks of snacking on them - these need to be covered next year, too.
  
• Snow Peas: planted too late
  
• Chiles: We got 2 peppers. Total loss due to late frosts.
  
• Bell Peppers: Lots of late blooms that will never mature. Total loss due to frosts.
  
• Thai Basil: I didn't list all the other herbs we had scattered around, but this was our first year with this one. It did great and was a great addition to all our thai meals and curries!
  
• Eggplant: Harvesting one this afternoon. There are 3 small (tiny) eggplants on one bush. None on the second.
  
• Brussel Sprouts: still going strong. Hope to harvest something soon!
  
• Butterstick Squash: Did OK, but was cramped by brussel sprouts. Will be on a trellis next year.
  
• Zucchini: OK, but cramped by sprouts. This will be trellissed, to.
  
• Delicata Squash: We started out with 2 plants and 8 squash. Ended up with just one. The others were all rotten on the bottom before they were able to ripen. Being in the same bed with the tomatoes kept them too moist on the ground. We'll try these again next year on a trellis.
  
• Spaghetti Squash: All I can say is WOW! We had two plants and got 12 good sized squash. Lost a few to rot because I ran out of space on the small trellis so they were on the ground.
  
• Butternut Squash: Wow again. Still on the vines, and too hard to count, but I'm expecting about a dozen.
• Sugar Baby Watermelon: Watching 2 that might be ready soon. Harvested one beauty too early. :(
• Crimson Sweet Watermelon: Late contender when the chipmunks or squirrels kept eating the Sugar Baby seeds. Has a couple of melons close to ready, but I'm not sure they'll make it.
  
• Turnip Greens: Great! Not for us, but kept our pet bunny fed for many weeks this summer.
• Scallions: Terrific. And Matthew's favorite thing to pick for me.
• Tomatoes: Coming out of our ears at the moment. Anna picks and eats the cherry and grape tomatoes - only about half make it into the basket. None of the heirlooms did well at all due to frosts, but the hybrids that were still available for the third replanting did better than I could have anticipated.
  

Groundhogs

This year we let the area around the deck get a little overgrown and now we're paying the price. We made it far too tempting a location for a groundhog, so now we have a permanent guest. Any suggestions for how to get rid of it? Unfortunately, we can't use the 22 in our neighborhood. Wonder if pelting it with plastic BBs would have any effect... Or I can always sic my team of super heroes on it. (The kids made super hero t-shirts the other day, to go along with their secret identities.)



Aqua Boy (aka Adam), Super Dupe (aka Matthew), Super Supe (aka Desiree) and Super Girl (aka Anna)

Aqua Boy has super strength and can spray water.

Super Dupe is short for "Super Duper". He has super strength, super speed and super hincks, which is cleaning fastly.

Super Supe has super strength. (Matthew doesn’t understand how she can NOT want to be able to clean fastly.)

Super Girl has a super smile. It makes people too happy to be bad. And she can fly...sort of.