Adelaide Lemonade

Snow!

We got a ton of snow yesterday - finally.  It's not far enough into the winter yet where I hate the snow.  We actually hadn't had a whole lot yet this year - just one other big blizzard.  Now we have about a foot.  The kids were thrilled to have a snow day, and I worked from home.  

Even though I still had to work, it was nice to be in my p.j.'s and not have to get anyone ready in the morning.  Except for a few interruptions while I was in over-the-phone meetings, the kids were great about entertaining themselves.  One of the interruptions involved Addie sitting next to me for about 10 minutes - hiccuping.  I had to laugh out loud when it occurred to me later that the other people on the phone meeting probably think it was me.

Ironically, in the middle of this big snowstorm, I got my Seed Saver's Exchange catalog.  Isn't the cover pretty?

(Interesting, I just looked up their site to include the link - looks like there's a bit of politics going on there - will have to read more about that later.)  I just love poring over this as soon as I get it.  Each year, I'm getting a little better at holding myself back from buying way more than I can possibly plant in my little square foot gardens.  This is really hard because they have so many cool varieties.  I thought I was being reasonable the first year when I bought only 6 varieties of tomatoes, but one little seed packet really goes a long way.  

This year, I really want to have enough tomatoes to can, so I'm thinking of going with just one canning-type variety.  I always want to be able to grow all my salsa ingredients, but I never have any luck with cilantro, onions, or peppers.  I do always have luck with peas, so I think I'll plant some of those - maybe snow peas this year.  And some sweet peas - the flowers.  I just love those.

When I was in the UK in May, I had this leafy green a couple of times called "rocket".  You've probably all heard of it, but I hadn't.  My Seed Saver's catalog uses "rocket" and "arugula" interchangeably (according to Wikipedia, they are the same.  Hmm, or was it "wild rocket" that I had?).  I think I'll plant some of that too, and maybe some spinach.

I've never had a ton of luck with gardening - probably because I'm not incredibly focused on it (oh yeah and a little grossed out by all the bugs involved) - I mean there's crafting to do after all, but my goal this year is to just plant a few things and see how that goes.  I can supplement the rest from our great little farmer's market.

I better sign off and get to work.  Happy thoughts of Spring.

Gardening Depression

I just went out into my garden to check it's progress for the day, and I'm really depressed. My broccolini that I was so excited about looks like it's being eaten. The biggest and most promising plant is falling over, and many of the others are turning yellow and have holes in their leaves. It's gotta be some kind of bugs. The same thing seems to be happening to my spinach. (A gardening friend of mine who planted hers at around the same time says hers is almost ready to eat.) And my little carrots that were starting to come up have disappeared. How can that happen?! And my basil and marigolds are getting eaten, too. I thought those were supposed to be the plants that are so disgusting to bugs and other critters that they'll even stay away from plants nearby. My tomatoes still look awful, too. I was starting to think that they were perking up, but I changed my mind after tonight's inspection. We have had a lot of rain, but I just don't know. Oh, and my two little watermelon seedlings got eaten. It probably doesn't help either that my husband and kids play baseball out there, and I'm sure the ball has landed on my plants more than once. Patience is not my strong suit, but I think I can manage to wait for things to grow. On the other hand, if they're not going to make it, I should get started on replacements from the farmer's market soon. It's so sad to think that my little seedlings that I nurtured inside for so long and looked so healthy might not actually survive. I guess that's all part of gardening - trying different things to figure out what works, but it's not exactly quick feedback. Trying to think more positively, my peas are doing great, and my Forellenschuss lettuce is still looking good along with the mesclun. Oh on that note, another thing that's bumming me out is that I bought two beautiful bunches of Romaine from the farmer's market this past weekend and my fridge must be too cold, but it looks pretty much inedible after a night in there. I totally should have just left it out. The pepper plants look good although I did spot a hole in one of the leaves today. I'm really going to have to figure out what's eating them. Oh and my cilantro is up after I'd almost given up hope - I guess that's a good lesson. I pinched off a little leaf to make sure that's what it was, and it's funny how even when it's so little, it still has that distinctive cilantro smell. Maybe things will be looking up by farmer's market day this weekend then I can decide if I want to replace anything. Although I have to confess that I already replaced most of the broccolini with some eggplant plants that I bought there this past weekend. I got varieties called Little Fingers and Prosperata. I discovered that I really like eggplant after trying this caponata recipe from Epicurious. (Oh, I think I mentioned that in another post already, sorry.) Although I have to admit, I've only had it that way and in Eggplant Parmesan. I wonder if you can freeze eggplant. Let me know if you have any good eggplant recipes.

Frost

Yikes, they're predicting a frost for tonight. At the suggestion of a gardening co-worker, I covered up my frost-sensitive plants with sheets.

Anadama, Flowers, and Farmer's Market

It's 5:30 in the morning. The birds are chirping and the sun's debating about coming out. I love waking up early before the kids do and puttering around the house. I got up about an hour ago and started my Anadama bread for the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge that I mentioned in my last post. I'm waiting for the "sponge" to form before I can do the next step. I also started the "barm" for the next bread. As far as I can tell that's like a sourdough starter. I have to feed it everyday for the next four or five days. Hopefully I won't forget. Not too much work to do in the garden yet. I keep debating about thinning out my mesclun lettuce. It seems like the best part of mesclun is that it's a variety of a bunch of different lettuces. I don't want to thin that away. Maybe I'll thin just a little bit. My tomato plants seem to be struggling. The leaves are getting quite yellowish. It's really worrying me. They looked so beautiful and perfect when they were growing inside. I don't know if it's the cold or too much rain or the squirrels that keep digging around the tomato's roots looking for acorns. The darn things (the squirrels, I mean) are driving me crazy. I'll have to create a long tirade-like post about them another day. They probably won't read it though. Yesterday, I puttered around in the yard anyway. Quite a bit of the grass seed that I planted is coming up. I may try to scatter a bit around this weekend. My two-year-old and I picked some violets that are growing all over the place under the apple tree. While we did, apple blossoms were raining down on us. How romantic is that?! I picked some lilacs, too - just a few because they're really not quite ready. I put them in a vase that I had made in pottery class this winter. How's that for homemade?! I organized my nightstand a bit and executed a badly-needed dusting then put the vase of lilacs on top. Going to bed later was even better than usual. I read my Bread Baker's Apprentice book for a bit while taking in the lovely lilac perfume. What a great way to spend the evening! At 7:00 (depending on the state of my Anadama), I'm planning to visit our local farmer's market for the first time this year. I can't wait! I don't think there will be much available yet, but I'm mostly looking for some herb seedlings. It's always fun to see what there is though, and there's always more than I expect. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Labels: Anadama, Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, Farmer's Market, Mesclun

Garden Square #1 and More on Bread

Here's a diagram of one of my 4x4 foot raised bed gardens:I filled this one up with things I could plant before the last frost. Most of the seed packets said "as soon as the soil can be worked". I think I was a little too excited about that little comment. If I'd been a bit more logical, I don't think I would have planted so many squares of Broccoli Raab and Sweet Peas. I've been wondering what the number of days on the seed packets means exactly. My broccoli raab, for instance, says 45 days. I had assumed that meant that was how long until you'd be eating it, but maybe it means something else entirely. My little 1 inch tall broccoli raab sprouts have some serious work to do in the next week if that's the case. And do you start counting the 45 days from the day you planted the seed or the day you first saw a little sprout come up or what? Something else for me to research. I'm on the fence between loving the mystery of not knowing when I'll have vegies and loving the idea of knowing when to expect them. In any case, I did the date math to figure out when to expect them based on the seed packet dates, so we'll see how accurate that actually is. I ordered most of my seeds from Seed Saver's Exchange in Iowa which I had read about in Barbara Kingsolver's awesome book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. (I just reread it. I love to read, and I read a lot, but this is the only book I've ever read twice. It's really what motivated me to start this whole gardening thing in the first place.) I'm looking forward to trying to save some seeds for next year. The Forellenschuss lettuce is especially cool, since it's one of the vegies in the U.S. Slow Food Ark of Taste. It's still quite small, but you can already see the pretty speckled markings. (I'll add a photo soon.) Back on the bread subject . . . Yesterday, I googled the book I mentioned, Bread Baker's Apprentice, so that I could include a link to it in the blog post. When I did that I happened to spot a site that was doing a Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge. Wondering what that was, I checked it out, and it turns out a group of people are baking their way through the book - making one bread per week. Isn't that such a cool idea?! I thought about that for half a second then decided I wanted to do it, too. I just found out that I'm too late to officially join the group. Of course I can follow along anyway, but I'm not sure I'll do as well without the group pressure. I'm still going to give it a try. This weekend is Anadama. I'll let you know how it goes.

Labels: Anadama, Animal Vegetable Miracle, Ark of Taste, Barbara Kingsolver, Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, Seed Saver's Exchange, Slow Food

Bread and Apple Blossoms

Not much to do in the garden right now except wait. I do have a few more seedlings that I'd like to find a home for. I can't bear to just throw them away, so I'll have to find a spot in the yard somewhere. I'm also hoping to find some perennial herb seedlings (rosemary, oregano, thyme, and lavender) at the Farmer's Market this weekend to plant in the mostly empty landscape-type garden we have on the side of the house. That's where I may end up putting my extra veggie seedlings, too. There IS a lot going on with the rest of the vegetation around here. Our apple tree is blooming, and everywhere you go in the neighborhood, you see lilacs getting ready to pop open. There are lots of azaleas in bloom and little violets popping up everywhere (almost to the point of being invasive - but not quite). The forsythia and tulips are almost done. I've been thinking about planting some tulip bulbs in some of the square foot gardens this fall. I think they'd be just about done when it's time to plant all the plants that you can't plant until after the danger of frost has past. I wonder if I'd have to dig up the bulbs each year or if they can coexist with the tomatoes, cukes, or whatever. I'll have to check into that. Beyond gardening, I've been trying to get away from processed foods and prepare a lot more homemade stuff. I think it tastes 100 times better. I think the rest of the family would still rather have their Wonder Bread and Oreos. Baby steps. Yesterday, I was on a total bread-baking kick. I have this beautiful cookbook called The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. Every recipe I've made from it has turned out wonderfully. The only problem with it is that most recipes have to be started a day before. Like I said in the last post, planning is not my forte, so it's a bit of a stretch for me to have to do this, but it's well worth it. Yesterday, I made his "Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire", regular white bread, and Pain a l'Ancienne. I had made the Multigrain one other time. This time, I made it with ground flax seed, wheat bran, oatmeal, and 2T of quinoa for the multigrains in addition to the brown rice that the recipe calls for. I also used 2 3/4 C bread flour and 1/4 C wheat. I wanted to incorporate a little wheat flour but not have it be overwhelming. If this one tastes okay (I was too full from eating too much of the white bread to try it.), I'll up that to 1/2 C next time. The white bread was delish! We've been trying a Vegan diet for the last four months or so, so I substituted rice milk for the regular milk and Ener G Egg Replacer for the egg. The Pain a l'Ancienne is by far the best. It's the kind of bread you'd find in an Artisanal Bread Bakery (Well, okay, maybe mine isn't, but it's close and I think the recipe is meant to be.) with a crunchy crust and big giant air bubble holes inside. This was my best batch yet, but next time, I think I'll let it rise longer. You put the dough in the fridge overnight then let it warm up and rise the next day when you take it out. I let mine warm up for about 4 hours before baking, but the dough was still a little cold. Maybe because I had it in a metal bowl. Next time, I'll try 5 or 6 hours. I'm going to try to bake it a bit longer, too. I think I did about 25 minutes this time.

Labels: Bread Baker's Apprentice, Bread Baking, Homemade, Perennial Herbs, Peter Reinhart, Processed Foods, Vegan

Lesson Learned #1

I'm not a planner. I rarely do anything ahead of time. I usually wait until the last minute then get really stressed out about just finishing something in the nick of time. So I'm even surprising myself in saying that I think I actually started the whole gardening thing too early this year. In years past, I've always had trouble finding the supplies I need in stores because I waited to long. Not just with gardening either. With Halloween, for example, I always wait until the last minute to buy the costumes, then my poor kids are stuck with the dorkiest leftover Disney characters. (Yeah, I know I should be creative and make some cool costumes.)

Last year, I didn't really get the gardening bug until it was pretty well into the summer. Looking back at my garden journal, I planted my first 4x4 foot square on June 25th and the second a day later. It actually worked out pretty well considering and made me want to do more this year. So, on the first day in March (March 14th to be precise) that the sun came out and the temperature climbed above 40, I was ready to go. Inside, I planted 160 seedlings in those little expandable pellet thingies. Even at the time, that seemed a little crazy, since I already knew I was only going to have 64 square feet, but the seeds and their little dirt homes were so little then, and it had been a really long, cold winter.

Everything sprouted and did really well. I even had to replant 4 weeks or so after, and of course, I found it hard to just throw away the results of thinning the plants, so I planted those, too and ended up with even more seedlings. Mel from Square Foot Gardening says you really only need to plant one seed for each plant you want. Makes sense, but I guess I just don't have enough faith that they'll all sprout. It's probably better Mel's way, since you don't end up disturbing the roots when you yank out the keeper plants little friends. Maybe next year, I'll have more faith. I guess that's Lesson Learned #2.

I also didn't transplant everything into bigger pots. I wanted to see how they would do both ways (and was also getting a bit lazy after transplanting about 80 plants). I'd say it was about the same either way - at least at first. The basil that I planted in bigger pots seemed to do worse. It didn't look bad or anything. It just didn't seem to be growing very fast while the basil plants in their little pellet things (I'll have to figure out what those are called) were shooting up and getting new leaves. (That's one of them there on the left - happily in the garden now.) The tomatoes didn't really seem to care at first. If anything, the ones in the pellets grew more, but then since I planted so early, those started to fall over and grow sideways. Now that they're in the garden it's probably not a big deal because I know some people recommend planting them sideways anyway so that the bottom part of the stem can become the root. At the time though, it was worrying me. (That's one of my Italian Heirloom seedling there on the right.)

Needless to say, I was anxious to get these straggly, falling over things into the garden, so I planted everything on May 10th and 11th. A friend of mine had said that she read in the Farmer's Almanac that the danger of frost would be past after the first full moon in May. That sounded reasonable to me. Although when I think about it, is that true for everywhere? Because it really doesn't make sense that you'd plant at the same time in Florida as you would in Maine. Anyway, the last full moon was on May 8th, and I liked that date because, like I said, I was anxious to plant.

It got really cold here two nights ago and frosted in some places. That was of course after I had planted all my seedlings outside. I got really lucky, and I think they're going to be fine, but my lesson learned is that next year, I should wait to plant until May 20th or so. (Then again I could be rewarded big time by having the first tomatoes, basil, etc. We'll see.) And the second part of that lesson learned is to calculate a reasonable number of weeks backward to start seedlings inside and force myself to wait until then.

I don't know if any of you readers will benefit from this long-winded lesson learned, but I read a while ago that you can "slurp" (I think that was the word) a blog into a Blurb book. Blurb is my favorite site for creating photo books. I've done a couple, and I just love the way they come out. So I love the idea of "slurping" all this into a Blurb book for myself - sort of a high(er) tech gardening journal.

Labels: Basil, Blurb, Farmer's Almanac, Gardening Journal, Lessons Learned, Planning, Tomato

64 Square Foot Garden Paradise

So here it is . . . My 64 square feet of gardening paradise. I just finished planting everything last night then it got very cold. I noticed some frost on the ground this morning on my way in to work. Hopefully all my little plants made it through. They looked okay this morning. More later about what I planted, but the most interesting things in the garden right now are the peas. They seem to love the cold and are growing so quickly. It seemed like they took forever to sprout. I was worried the seeds had been too disturbed by the squirrels that keep digging in my gardens (more about that in another post, too), but they did finally come up. (I'll have to look back at my garden book to see exactly how long it took.) Now, they're by far the biggest thing in the garden. On Saturday, I rigged up this trellis for them with this cheap plastic fencing I got from Home Depot, some stakes, and some twist ties. I have two of them quite close together, since I have 9-12 pea plants per square foot. I'm worried that it might be hard to reach in there and harvest the peas, but I'll figure that out when the time comes. I'm so amazed by how the little pea tendrils figure out how to grab onto things nearby. (See in the photo how they already grabbed onto the trellis?) I'm sure there's a scientific explanation, but that just takes all the fun out of it for me. This little guy grabbed on just one day after I put up the trellis. I just think it's so cool. Last year, two of my kids and I were obsessed with watching the morning glories that we planted do the same thing.

Labels: pea tendrils, pea trellis, peas, square foot gardening

Welcome to my Urban Peasant Blog!

I'm currently totally obsessed with gardening. I think my friends, family, and coworkers are a little tired of hearing about it, so I wanted to start blogging about it both to keep track of what I've done and to share my excitement with others. (For some reason, I have a hard time finding other people who get as obsessively involved in their hobbies as I do. I like to think that I'm just a really enthusiastic person, but it's probably more that those people are much better at balancing all the parts of their lives.) We live in the city, and for some reason, ever since we (mostly me) started gardening, my husband has been calling us "Urban Peasants" thus the name of the blog. (Completely unrelated to the famous Canadian chef I just found out about in my web surfing.) Most of the time, I really like the "Urban" part. I love our city, and all it's conveniences and opportunities, but lately I've been dreaming about a farm with rolling grassy meadows with stands of lilac bushes and fruit trees and a big barn and chickens and on and on. Then I come back to reality and realize I can't even get grass to grow in our little yard. We're pretty lucky as far as urban gardening goes. We don't have to grow our garden on the roof or anything. We actually have about a sixteenth of an acre complete with several lilacs and one very big apple tree. Maybe if I can perfect our little urban farm after a few years, I'll graduate to something bigger. By then I probably won't want to leave all my perennials anyway. The "peasant" part, however, is getting a little old. I often hear people say that they don't want to be rich, they just want to not have to worry about money. I found myself thinking about all the different levels of not worrying about money. That used to mean to me that the car could break down, and I'd have enough money to get it fixed. Now, I'd like to be able to drive my kid to a school event in the next town and not have to scrounge around for the toll money. Oh well, again, I can't complain. I have a house, a job, really everything I need. Best of all, I was able to set up 4 4x4 foot square foot gardens a la Mel Bartholomew and his Square Foot Gardening. More about that tomorrow, since that's what this blog is supposed to be about. Thanks for reading! p.s. I'm off to read about composting.

Labels: Mel Bartholomew, square foot gardening, urban peasant