Kale

Last year the kale I grew was dwarf. I do not usually grow many of any plant because there are only two people to grow for so ten kale plants is typically plenty. But, dwarf makes lots less. This year I got it right and am growing standard plants which are quite generous placing Green Soup squarely on the menu. I have written about this wonderful soup in the past but here it is again. Any green combination works-collards, rutabagas, broccoli, Swiss chard, spinach and of course kale. Do. Not. Skip. The Lemon! It is critically important! Salud!
https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/basic-green-soup

New to the soup rotation is Tuscan Bean Soup. As with Green Soup, any leafy green is good. The parmesan rind really is a game changer, though it is still good without. It is a hearty vegetarian soup.
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/01/30-minute-tuscan-white-bean-soup-recipe.html

I pulled some Sparkler radishes to serve with Christmas dinner and served our own broccoli as well. Both were lovely contributions! Only slightly spicy they were pretty on the deviled egg plate! Oh, right, a leaf of parsley atop deviled eggs is festive after sprinkling on paprika. Merry Christmas, it was!

Grown under cover they are a sweet, slightly spicy vegetable in fall. Many more to come!

Experiments

This year I am trying a few new, to me, winter vegetables. I bought Napa cabbage seedlings, planted in one of my 4x4 raised beds, it survived Hurricane Florence and prospered. It is magnificent and very tasty. I bought shallot bulbs and they are up and doing well.
Now for the one that excites me most: fava beans. I have meant to grow them for years but, not sure exactly how to grow and tend them, did not buy seeds. This year I watched some videos did some reading and bought seeds. It took a lot of self discipline to wait and plant them late Fall but I did it. Doubting they would come up I pretty much forgot to check them but when I did there they were! Fifteen of the sixteen seeds germinated and are producing leaves. They will bear in early Spring if all goes well.
In other news, we have just a few more broccoli heads to harvest, mustard is still producing, the kale is beautiful, radishes are thriving under cover as are lettuce, arugula, Swiss chard and (gasp) spinach. We have abundant parsley this year. I gave away parsley seed heads at a regional Master Gardener event and was advised to rub the seeds off the seed head without covering with soil. I tried it and now have a now have a nice bed of parsley! I will never tease off the seeds again...

The broad bean experiment begins. 

Broccoli

Broccoli. The ubiquitous brassica we take for granted is truly a thing of beauty. In truth, I think all brassicas are pretty. I did not grow up eating from this category of food at all. Rarely were they served, not even the most Southern of them all, king collard. Food for the poor, I had no idea how to cook them when I finally grew them. A friend explained the process and I read recipes to come up with a method.

Back to broccoli: I microwave for less than three minutes in a covered dish with a splash of water. Squeeze on lemon juice and that is it! Food for the gods. 

Now the greens: Collards and turnips are strong stuff so I add in other greens-kale, mustard, rutabaga-to tame them a bit. A tip; a grating of nutmeg rounds out the flavor.
For those who buy their greens: Use kale for Caesar Salad following the America's Test Kitchen recipe. No kale rubbing required. There is a trick. Soak the torn greens in 110 degree water to tame the sharp notes of the green.
Saluda!

Which is the fairest of them all? It is a hard call. (Curly kale)

An aside: My personal favorite is mustard. Every year I let a few plants go to seed and save them for the next year. As they bloom the bees, all types, harvest the pollen. Bees love brassica blossoms! Also, the flowers are quite tasty in salads, especially mustard which adds a spicy, bright yellow kick.    

Spinach!

I planted spinach multiple times this season. There were plants before Hurricane Florence, and her cousin Michael, but they literally evaporated sometime while we were busy preparing, recovering, and putting things right. I tried again. Nothing. It was too hot, too wet, too humid, too dry for weeks after the storms. One last go, I thought. What have I got to lose, I thought. Nothing, I thought. So, two week ago when the days were warmish and the nights outright cold I planted again. Then I covered my raised beds (Agribon 19) of lettuce and Swiss chard and assumed the worst. Yesterday I uncovered to check the lettuce and...behold! the spinach has germinated and seed leaves have emerged. I could only laugh. I think I've found the right formula. Warm-ish soil, days in the 60's, and cold nights under cover. Forget the planting guides. They were right before climate weirding but our epic storms have shown me anything goes.

Look closely. Radish to the left of me, lettuce to the right, here I am...

Also, Charles Dowding (No Dig guru) informs in his video on spinach that Spring plantings are forced to send up flowers when the days get longer and warm. explaining my Spring planting failures. In his climate, which is much cooler than ours, he over-winters seedlings which then produce when the days lengthen and the air warms. Now I understand my failures. These babies will probably not produce until months from now. I can wait.  We've got kale! :)

Peppers

We picked a peck and more of bell peppers this year. They came off steadily. Keeping well in the fridge we ate them every few days, many ways but they have come to the end of it's run with these cool nights. I had Scott take a photo of me with the largest, most productive pepper yesterday. It is almost as tall as me. Fun.

All the Fall and Winter plants are perking right along with rains coming every few days. They need little tending-no weeds, no watering, no bugs, no covering. Broccoli is starting to head. Kale is pretty. Brussels sprouts are growing. Parsley is flat out amazing. I followed a tip from an ag extension agent who recommended I just rub the seeds from a seed head and scratch them into the soil. Ka-ching! I think they all germinated and they all look good. I do really like parsley. A season without parsley is really sad to me-something I learned the hard way.

Fall is here!

We skippity hopped right past Indian summer and into mid-Fall! In a matter of days I put away all my summer clothes and pulled out winter garb.
The sun came out today encouraging me to get out and dig, clean, compost and mulch. I checked on some lettuce, arugula, radishes and spinach planted a over week ago growing under cover and found all have germinated but the spinach. I also planted more garlic. All are planted in 4x4 raised beds. The lettuce varieties are  Oak Leaf and, new to me, Spotted Alepo bought at the Monticello gift shop. The radishes are Sparkler. In an adjacent 4x4 bed are magnificent Chinese cabbages just heading up and more lettuce: Marveille de Quatres Saison (an heirloom French variety that grows right through winter) and Black Seeded Simpson. Swiss chard is doing OK.
Today's harvest? Okra pods full of seeds for next year's summer harvest.

Recovery

Our little town and my little garden endeavor endured unbelievable amounts of water from Hurricane Florence. It bends the mind to have nature turn in such a way, more so because we, at least me,could not imagine worse than Hurricane Matthew. Florence shattered records and many more lives than Matthew. In the plus category we were as prepared as we could be for an epic storm we thought would never come.
Into the bardo we slid, oddly resigned, preparing best we could knowing the garden would drown which, it did. This time the woody herbs died within days. Gone were the sage, tarragon and rosemary, poof. The root vegetables evaporated too tender to put up a fight. Oddly, the basil and okra survived though they are known to withstand heat and dry. Our brassicas- broccoli, Brussels spouts, mustard, kale and cabbage-not happy for want of sun and too much rain looked sad but have miraculously rebounded, I think. In the past week I have planted leafy fall vegetables like lettuce and spinach slowly rebounding from the same reaction I had to Matthew's floods which was, inexplicably, to recoil from gardening altogether.
Putting one foot in front of the other in order to order oneself I participated in the Robeson County Agricultural Fair as planned, won a handful of blue ribbons, and volunteered as a Master Gardener going through the motions akin to living while grieving grave loss. I have cried many tears and many times on account of  this regional catastrophe. After Matthew I felt we had done the worst. Now, I wonder if it will get worse, when, and where. In the meantime, I carry on differently.

Chinese cabbage in raised beds post Hurricane Florence 2018. 

Lists

Hurricane Matthew destroyed our garden beds with at least 24 inches of water here on Chestnut Street. It was an awesome lot of water. Our internet service was also down the better part of a month. Fun times. I escaped to my daughter's house where I mostly talked about hurricanes and...my garden. Then I went to Fifth Season garden center and bought seeds, in particular broad beans which I have never grown.
I have been asked to make a list of my favorite websites. Here goes.
https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/fragrant-tuscan-herb-salt
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/
https://www.motherearthnews.com
https://www.ces.ncsu.edu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvUUpBvbCaY (Charles Dowding videos)
https://www.weather.gov
This is a start.

Red okra flower. Isn't she pretty?

Second Summer

It has been a long, hot summer. Looking back at my journal high heat and humidity eased up on us the last week of June and has been here with, maybe, three days off-just the facts, y'all. We are now moving into our third month of summer misery. All gardening takes place between dawn and 10:00 a.m. I liken August to February in that we are mostly trapped indoors in conditioned air.

Now is that time when I am planting a second crop of early summer veg. Fungus attacked my first plantings of green beans. Combined heat and humidity is bad, really bad for all but field peas and okra which are chugging along just fine.

They were so cute!
(Cherokee yellow wax bean)

Success!

I declare our Summer 2018 backyard garden a success! We added a new space where our river birch died using the No Dig method. Peppers, tomatoes, Swiss chard, herbs and dwarf corn grow there. The corn seeds were a gift from son Jonathan.  About four feet tall, if they managed pollination during this rainy spell, we will have enough for a few meals-another experiment. So many things can go wrong from seed to seed. These are an heirloom, sweet, blue corn bought from Hudson Valley Seed Co. Check them out. They have the best rutabagas I think.

The No Dig method is a subjective success. I do not weigh produce to compare from year to year but Charles Dowding, an English market farmer, does. He has revived and revised Ruth Stout's no dig method. His data shows that No Dig is as productive or more than when we till and turn garden soil. I have used it throughout our beds because it's time to stop beating myself up growning vegetables. Watch his videos on Youtube. His germination method mimics Craig LeHoullier's tomato germination method which is along the line of more is more. If you grow your plants from seed you gotta check out their videos/blog. There is much to know.

Volunteerism: I advocate such and allowed our summer garden to do so. From our in garden compost, from the bird feeder and self-seeding survivors,  sunflowers, pumpkins, holy basil, and butternut squash all volunteered, delighted, and produced. I may be able to enter pumpkins in the Robeson Regional Agricultural Fair this year. I have harvested seven nice sized butternuts squash this past week. Sunflowers will be left for the birds, holy basil will be dried and harvested for tea.

June 2018

Ground cherry in husk. 

The fruit. 

The garden is all things beautiful. Green, flowering, lush, producing fruit, and making seeds. We are eating and enjoying watching grow tomatoes, ground cherries, pumpkins, squash, Lima beans, peppers, basil, sunflowers, Monarda aka Bee Balm, okra.

Today I finished harvesting borage seeds. Soon the mustard seeds will mature and dry, parsley too.
This year I will try save tomato seeds from those that are heirloom. The tomato/straw bale/pot experiment is generally a success. There have been loses but there are also tomatoes! Yay!

The No Dig okra experiment is also a success. Following Charles Dowding's method (look up his videos on Youtube) I spread compost, stuck seeds in holes and have mulched heavily. No digging at all. Scott resisted. I persisted. It has taken the plants longer to set up in the new bed. The ground there is quit hard and filled with roots from the dead tree, so there's that, but after a few weeks (I'm theorizing here) the roots push through and the plants take off. 
                                                    
Stink bugs. Daughter Katie sent a link for me to read about stink
bugs. Yikes. Talk about an eye opener. Bottom line. Do not squash them! The scent draws in their mates. Instead I have ready, at all times, a bowl of water with dish soap. Stink bugs drop when threatened so I hold the bowl under them, flick them and they drop down to their death. Soapy water is a great pesticide. I am also bringing in tomatoes as soon as they change color.

Kale. It was planted last fall and is still growing strong. The flavor is still good and we eat from it
about once a week. Who knew?

Ground Cherries (above), another experiment, are like candy in a wrapper. I love them!

All gone! 

Experiment

Following three hot, dry weeks we have had a whole week of gentle soaking rain with cooler temps. What a relief.

This year's garden experiment is huge! I am growing tomatoes in straw bales. So far, so good. All are healthy and some are setting fruit.  I'm following Craig LeHoullier's method. They are all grown from seed by me and gardening friends. All who attended the class overdid it. To our credit we  shared. Some are dwarf, some are heirloom, some hybrid. I am hoping for a more successful experience this year.
Tomato varieties include:
Bella Rosa (heirloom)
Yellow Pear (heirloom)
Cherokee Purple (heirloom)
Lemon Ice (dwarf)
Pink Passion (dwarf)
Mountain Fresh F1 (hybrid)
Mountain Magic F1 (hybrid)
Juliet F1 (hybrid)
Celebrity (hybrid)
Green Vernissage (heirloom)
Other garden successes include kale, lettuce, carrots, garlic, potatoes, cabbage. Green beans are forming tags.
Soon we'll be eating green beans and potatoes.
Spinach was an epic failure. I think I'm done.

Salads for supper! And kale powder!

Power to The Kale! Long live The Kale! A nod to the Brits here on the eve of a royal wedding.
No kidding. I dried a backseat (laid it out on a sheet and let the heat in the car do it's magic) of lacinto kale, blitzed it in the food processor, and have one scant cup of magic potion. It was a lot of kale, people. It is interesting dried. Not potent, a mild crunchy treat actually. It is, apparently, the latest health food craze. Whoda thunk?

And I thought it shrank down when cooked. Regret not taking a before photo. 

Salads are a big deal right now. We eat them seasonally, never buying grocery store we are, like, chuffed. The current belle of the ball is a lone spinach plant that overwintered. Scott harvests a bag of it weekly. (The lettuce harvest is more frequent.) The close runner up are the radishes. Maybe we planted too many. We eat them daily, the radishes. Truth be told, they are a lot of crunchy fun!  A great substitute for chips. Not chocolate chips y'all, potato chips.

Established herbs deserve a shout out here. All is well! The best is the parsley which is about to flower and make seeds for another year. New ones are ready to go in!

For all other harvests we wait. And plant. And plant some more. And water, because it has not rained in almost two weeks. That friends is a sad sentence carrying more meaning than non-gardeners can imagine. Sad. Very sad. On the bright side it is not humid. 😎

Winter to Spring, Maybe

Our native honeysuckle, planted against a brick wall, has bloomed all winter. It was ready and waiting for the hummers. 

Winter is hanging on here with white knuckles. We just cannot shake it! Last night I covered tomatoes because temps fell into the 30's. Have mercy! 80 degrees one day, 50 the next.

We've started our new bed. The Serviceberry we planted last Fall survived. Yay! It is in the No Dig, Foodscape experiment bed. Watch Charles Dowding on Youtube  for details on No Dig. He's also written several books. Brie Arthur from NC introduced me to the foodscape concept. We'll see how it goes...plants already there are doing well for now.

What's planted and growing?
Spinach
Lettuce (Black Seeded Simpson, Romaine, Oakleaf, Red Sails)
Swiss Chard
Carrots (Scarlett Nantes, Red Core Chantenay)
Leeks, onions, garlic
Kale (Lacinto, Curly Dwarf)
Broccoli (DiCicco)
Potatoes (White, Yukon Gold, Red Norland, Russian Banana)
Radishes (Cherry Belle)
Beans (Contender)
Herbs (Rosemary, Parsley, Fennel, Sage, Chives, Borage, Dill, Basil
)
Tomatoes (That's another post)

The humming birds have been here since the last week of March. They feed at our native honeysuckle daily! Yay, again!

Greens

Green Soup a la  mustard and rutabaga greens.

Two greens have figured heavily in our meals this year. Here are the recipes I used.
https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/basic-green-soup
http://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/kale-mushroom-frittata
In the case Green Soup, use any green you have but do not leave out the lemon or the olive oil.
The frittata can be adjusted to more people easily. That's their charm. Goat cheese dolloped around as for if a pizza is special.

Whacky Doo Winter

Tomatoes. I have about sixty plants. 😐

Spring is on the calendar and I, in anxious anticipation, started all manner of seedlings in all places. Fortunately small lettuces do not mind frost/freeze if covered so we re-covered, again. A gardening version of spin the bottle.
I put out broccoli seedlings and Swiss chard thinking a warming trend would begin a-a-and had to cover. Beets, you're on your own. Maybe I will cover them before the cold settles tonight. Maybe. Bright sunny days yield frost at night this year.
RobCo Master Gardeners' Spring Symposium featured Greg LeHoullier, self proclaimed Tomato Man. First, he declared tomato seeds are viable for up to twelve years. Good thing I hoard seeds. Testing his theory I found my six year olds were. I also used a modified version of his germination method and now have entirely too many of every type of tomato I planted.
Here's the list:
Celebrity
Mountain Magic
Mountain Fresh
Yellow pear
Juliet
Lemon Ice (dwarf)
Pink Passion (dwarf)
All have been separated, replanted and are thriving.
Now we wait for warmer weather. And, I will buy some more heirloom tomato seeds.
There are other seedlings up. Beets, leeks, ground cherries, borage.
Failed twice are the basil seeds.
Hm.

New Bed

The New Bed has been mapped out, filled with composted manure and a few plants put in. Not the best timing for planting. Lured to it by the warm weather we have re-covered established beds and will cover the new planting. Maybe double cover and put some of those candle heaters under tonight. And tomorrow night. A long overdue reminder: Small towns list toward boring, therefore I garden.
Recent reading and videos are leading me down the path of No Dig (Charles Dowding, UK) and Craig LeHoullier (Cary, NC). The New Bed is no dig. Tomatoes many types and varieties are up and growing under lights upstairs. Elliot Coleman's, Winter Harvest started year round growing. Future posts will refer back to these methods.

A long overdue reminder: Small towns list toward boring, therefore I garden. Apparently those whose winters are longer learn crafts, quilt and build stuff. I would lose me mind and be perpetually medicated or learn to build stuff because sitting is not for me.

oops.

I know not to brag about the weather. So help me. My garden is back under wraps with night time temps in the low 30's. The trials of gardening...

Spring!

Add caption

Winter has been over for weeks here in Southeastern NC. Despite a doozie of a head cold I stumbled outside in bursts to plant according to the Mother Earth News, "What to Plant Now" monthly guide. Call it global warming or luck, I did not have to cover beds because temps were in the 70's and 80's. I did have to water.

We now have a transition garden with direct seeding of lettuce, carrots, onions, potatoes, beets and radishes up and at 'em. Rutabagas and kale are the winter hold overs. The potatoes are a shock. They are already pushing up. The ground is warm enough for them to do that.

I stumbled into a fabulous throw back to the 1970's while in Charlottesville, VA. recently. Like falling down Alice's rabbit hole it was a hippy throwback owned by two hippy women about my age. The only thing missing were the macrame hanging plant holders. I came away with hundreds of dollars worth of organic, heritage seeds, potting mix and garden ephemera. The very best find was seedling mix that is not hydrophobic. Hallelujah! I also caved and bought a heating pad for seedlings and grow light. Uh, duh. Why did I wait so long?

Following what I hope will be a soaking rain today, we will put an herb/flower bed in where the tree-that-died-after-Matthew was. It is currently a big, ugly, scar in our backyard. Losing a tree abruptly is hard for many reasons but this was a very serviceable shade tree. I miss it. All this to say that my annual new, exciting plants will be herbs I've never grown-borage, chamomile, horseradish and others with the anchor being a Serviceberry. Soon the whole world will be green and blooming!

We Are Off!

Final count: 24

Spring has come early. Very early. Reading the tea leaves, because second guessing Mother Nature is like that, I planted onion, potato, lettuce, carrot, radish, peas seeds last week. More will go in today. Upstairs under grow lights broccoli and herbs are germinated and growing. Rough estimates show about thirty, that's right 30, broccoli plants, most are DiCicco. Yikes.

All the tiny seeds and seedlings must be watered daily or kaput. All that work for nothing.

Rutabagas are almost ready to eat. Kale is harvested weekly. Romaine lettuce, that overwintered, has put on growth from warm days and is wonderfully tender. Cabbages are coming out one by one. Because I planted the parsley where it could be covered it survived "The Epic Cold of January 2018" and we are eating it in something every day.

Referencing the heat and cold here:  Chives are up, thyme died. Oregano and mint were seriously knocked back. Rosemary took the cold well. Parsley, I covered and even then some died. Bay, growing in a pot, has minor leaf damage.

Radishes and Lettuce

Today I will plant both in one of the raised beds. Gosh. I hope it works. I will take photos if they germinate. Stay tuned folks.

Seed germination test

I bought Wando (green) peas sometime back at a garden supply store, brought them home and did not put the year on the bag. I planted some, then stored them without dating. Bad news. Good news.  I could remember buying them. So they weren't ancient. Not wanting to risk failure, I chitted them (as the British say) or did a germination test.

Here's how it's done: Damp paper towel, 10 seeds to make the math easier, a plastic bag. Wet the paper towel, lay the seeds on them folding half the towel over the seeds and tuck them into the bag. Check back a few days later to see if they are swelling or sending out a shoot. 

In the case of the Wando beans I had 100% germination. Back to the British. They plant their chits. Me too because in just two weeks I'll be planting round one of our spring garden peas. 

So excited!

Isn't that just the sweetest sight?! I know there are only eight. Two rolled onto the floor when I opened the bag.

Epic Cold!

Never in my life has it been this cold in The South. Days in the teens and snow in early January are unheard of here in Southeastern NC in particular. How did my winter garden handle ground freezing cold? Surprisingly well thanks to Agribon + and wire supports.
A few years back, poking around on the Johnny's Seeds and Mother Earth News websites I found videos demonstrating way to protect plants from the worst of winter. Elliot Coleman, author of  Winter Harvest Handbook,  appeared on my radar about the same time. We bought some plastic sheeting at a local hardware store and proceeded to fry up some veggies while they grew in the garden. Epic loss. Lettuce seedlings vaporized. Kale sunburnt. Very sad. Regrouping, I realized that even a few hours of contained Southern sun under plastic was like an outdoor oven. So I caved and bought the more expensive Agribon + 19. I made my own low hoops using a video found at the Organic Gardening section of Mother Earth News.
This method has worked for years. But would it work with prolonged temps in the teens? Who knew?
I am happy to announce it does work, with some caveats. Lettuce seedling fared better than mature lettuce. Which is to say the mature lettuce turned to mush. Larger leaves on the cabbages were damaged but the heads survived. It's not pretty but they are alive and rebounded when it warmed. I left the rutabagas and carrots hoping they will spring into action when it warms on a more regular basis. Their greens are beautiful still.
Is a garden under wraps pretty? To the person who eats from it, yes it is.

2017

Every one is doing it. Evaluating their year. Altogether our gardening year was as good as any we have had. We certainly have eaten well, interesting food, every day.

I studied, attended classes, and became a Master Gardener. A long term goal accomplished.Our extension service advisor encouraged Robeson County Master Gardener Volunteers to educate, inform and encourage citizen participation in growing flowering plants for all pollinators. From this I have become more aware of my seed sources and have begun seed collecting more seriously.

I attempted to help revive a failing faith based community garden in our town. My vision for small gardens in neighborhoods that are accessible to all continues to be just that. Having tried more than once here it is perhaps not meant to be. Lucy Bradley's book, Collard Greens and Common Ground, warns that a community garden must be a community effort and most fail, despite the best of intentions, within three years. Using her criteria, L'ton's has failed. Sadly, that failed garden is used as a reason not to have a different one using a different model. Bradley's book is available online for free at: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/collard-greens-and-common-ground-a-north-carolina-community-food-gardening-handbook. Google the title and it appears first on the list. It's an easy read, less than 100 pages. She's good.

We participate in another community garden in St Pauls, NC and it too may be about to fail. A different model entirely, one of the key players moved away. I actually think the model is a good one. Based on community and school cooperation, built on school property with city funding, it was a learning lab for students and a garden for the community. It worked for a time and I'm hoping the new teacher will land on his/her feet and initiate this spring. Time will tell. Of course, I will reach out.

I learned this year, I grew this year, I succeeded this year, I failed this year, I continue to plan for the future just like every other year of my adult life and gardening is part of it. Altogether? 2017 was a good year.

Bloom where you are planted.