Harvest Monday May 20, 2013

Well, will you look at that? Those four peaches came off the tree I planted about a year and a half ago. I didn't use any fertilizers or pesticides. Simply organic peaches. We tasted one right after the picture. Amazing! It feels like a miracle to get organic peaches off your own tree.

And the first of my Louisiana Purple Podded Pole beans and Ruth Bible beans came in this week, too. I have been eating them raw in my salads, and cooked our first "mess of beans." Oh, how I love fresh green beans from the garden.

There is much to be thankful for this week, what with home grown peaches and the first of the green beans. :)

See what others are harvesting at Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Mondays.

The Garden Right Now

I don't post as much as I used to.

I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures of the garden right now, though.

This is my front yard garden by the garage. This is also my favorite
garden. Currently, it has some red flowered fava beans, milkweed,
cardinal's cap, celosia, and nasturtiums in it. Along the trellis are
green beans, vining nasturtiums and passion vines. 

This is the Twenty Foot Garden. In front of the box, is Swiss Chard.
In the garden box itself, I have Ruth Bible beans and Lousiana
Purple Podded Pole beans, regular and cherry tomatoes, a
Tromboncino zucchini, 6 cucumbers, 24 okra in 3 varieties and
Mississippi Cream peas. 

This is the bed by the front door. I have Easter lilies coming up
everywhere, but they haven't bloomed yet this year. There is lemon
balm and thyme in the bed and the purple things are ornamental
cabbages. The bird bath on the ground is for butterflies. They use
wet sand to get their drinks and salt intake. 

Much Delayed List of Garden Books I Read in 2012

Beth asked me to post a list of the gardening books I read in 2012.

 Slow Gardening: A No-Stress Philosophy for All Senses and All Seasons


The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family for a Year  (This is a funny book about one woman’s attempt to eat solely off her ¼ acre piece of property for a year. And how she drags her children and husband along, kicking and screaming.)

I liked this one, too. It is also the story of one woman and her garden.

The Heirloom Life Gardener: The Baker Creek Way of Growing Your Own Food Easily and Naturally   [HEIRLOOM LIFE GARDENER] [Hardcover] ( I loved this book and keep it by my bedside.)

Notes from an Italian Garden

Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World (Not all of this book is gardening, but he tackles it in an attempt to live a more simple life.)

Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (More of a nature book than a gardening book, it is very deep. It took me a long time to get through it. I know that what he has to say is valuable.)

Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving, and Cultural History Great quote from the book: “Heirlooms seeds, saved from year to year, worked into our gardens and eaten at our tables make a much stronger statement for their survival. The foods produced from heirloom seeds must also be part of our daily lives if we are to actually preserve them for the future.” Page35

The Beginner's Guide to Growing Heirloom Vegetables: The 100 Easiest-to-Grow, Tastiest-to-Eat Vegetables for Your Garden Gardening with Heirloom Seeds: Tried-and-True Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables for a New Generation

Gardening with Heirloom Seeds: Tried-and-True Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables for a New Generation

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone (Actually short stories of different people’s food obsessions, which for the most part, they only really practiced when alone.)

Wildly Affordable Organic: Eat Fabulous Food, Get Healthy, and Save the Planet--All on $5 a Day or Less

Edible Gardens (BBG Guides for a Greener Planet)

The All You Can Eat Gardening Handbook: Easy Organic Vegetables and More Money in Your Pocket  (Loved this one!)

Newspaper, Pennies, Cardboard, and Eggs--For Growing a Better Garden: More than 400 New, Fun, and Ingenious Ideas to Keep Your Garden Growing Great All Season Long



Your Farm in the City: An Urban-Dweller's Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals

Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden: Creative Gardening for the Adventurous Cook

 Vertical Gardening: Grow Up, Not Out, for More Vegetables and Flowers in Much Less Space (This book helped me a lot. I have only a really small space, and this book gave great ideas for using the area above the ground in order to pack in more food in the space.)

 My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm (Another tale of one man’s attempt to live off the land. He didn’t want to live this way. It was an assignment. And he really does not provide a good view of the simple life.)

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer

The Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Grower's Guide: Steve Sando's 50 Favorite Varieties

(Very funny back to the land book.)

 Growing at the Speed of Life: A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden (I really liked this one, too.)

In the French Kitchen Garden: The Joys of Cultivating a Potager

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (This was a great and challenging book in the line of No Impact Man. I am not sure I could follow in her steps, because it was too radical. I like what she had to say, though.)

Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets

Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

The City Homesteader: Self-Sufficiency on Any Square Footage

  (This is the book that gave me the idea to plant a sunflower garden for the kids. We have started it. It is their project, so when they get finished digging they can plant the seeds.)

Nature-Friendly Garden, The: Creating a Backyard Haven for Animals, Plants, and People

The Naturescaping Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide for Bringing Nature to Your Backyard

Flowering Shrubs and Small Trees for the South

Great Natives for Tough Places (Brooklyn Botanic Garden All-Region Guide)

Proven Plants Southern Gardens

(This was a good book, in which the author speaks to different long-time members of Seed Savers’ Exchange and explores their reasons for seed saving and seed sharing.)

Harvest Monday February 11, 2013

Broccoli side shoots and 5 Color Silverbeet from the garden

I love Harvest Mondays, hosted by Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions. It is always fun to read what is going on in gardens around the world. I read them almost every week, even if I have nothing from my garden to report.

These days, the garden is producing one harvest about every other week.

I harvested broccoli side shoots and the first of my Swiss chard this week. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but that is a pretty big bowl of chard. It cooked down considerably, though. My entire family, including the kids (ages 8, 6, and 3) liked the flavor of the chard. It reminds me somewhat of mustard/collard/turnip greens, though the flavor is somewhat different.

I count it as a very good thing when I find a new vegetable my kids enjoy. We will definitely continue to grow Swiss chard. I am going to find an rare heirloom green variety to grow, because I have a partly shady spot that I want to devote to Swiss chard. With a bed devoted to Swiss chard, I should be able to let it go to seed and then save the seeds from year to year. (Maybe I will even post them to Seed Savers Exchange.)

You can see what others are growing and harvesting at Daphne's Dandelions.

Harvest Monday 1/28/13

Every Monday, Daphne hosts Harvest Mondays. It is always interesting to see what others are growing in their gardens. Hop on over and check it out.

To comfort my youngest daughter, because her older sister and brother both ran over to friends' houses, I told her that she could help me harvest the side shoots of our broccoli.

harvesting broccoli

We ended up with quite a bowl full!

Broccoli! It's what's for dinner.

I also harvested a big bunch of dill to dry. I am hoping to pickle cucumbers and banana pepper rings this summer. I will need dill for both.

Speaking of banana peppers, they have sprouted. (Along with 3 types of tomato seeds I planted. This year, I am trying an heirloom cherry tomato for the kids, a yellow tomato from Irina in the Ukraine, and Mamie Brown Pink from Seed Savers Exchange.)

Banana pepper seedlings to left and tomatoes to right

They are really small still, but I sure am hoping for yummy harvests. :) Here's hoping that your harvests are bountiful. 

Harvest Monday 1-14-13

My middle daughter with broccoli. This has been a surprisingly
popular vegetable with my kids. 

I have been taking a little blog break, trying to catch up on housecleaning and general everyday things now that I am over all the surgery restrictions.

But today, I was taking a break from the housework to read the blogs. I read all the wonderful Harvest Monday posts,  and decided to post my own. I always enjoy Harvest Mondays.

We have harvested broccoli three times, Swiss chard a couple of times and the kids eat the peas from the garden almost every day. They have even convinced the kid across the street to eat English peas raw in the garden. All the kids, even the neighbor, fight over them.

Happy Harvest Monday, everyone. I am glad to be back among you. 

Planting Seeds

Last year, I planted as many seeds as I could fit under my lights. When they got just a little bigger, I couldn't fit all my seedlings under the lights. This year, I decided to limit my seed planting to 20 seed pots. That way, when they grow there will still be room for them under the lights.

I find it easiest and cheapest to use toilet paper rolls with cupcake wrappers at the bottom.

My children wanted to help, so I waited until Saturday. We planted 8 banana peppers, 1 Riesentraube tomato, 5 yellow round tomatoes from a friend, 6 Mamie Brown's Pink tomatoes ordered from Seed Savers Exchange catalog.

Here's hoping that everything grows beautifully!