Garden Journal Catch Up

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Our garden plot produced lots of vegetables in June.  I gave up trying to weigh all our produce. We harvested lots of beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, kale, lettuce (gourmet blend and buttercrunch), parsnips, and turnips.  At the end of June, just before we went on vacation, we had our biggest harvest day so our mature crops would not spoil.   A friend and her two young kids joined us for the big harvest.  My son was thrilled to have a “play date” at our garden plot. It was a joy to watch children have a blast pulling out root vegetables. They tugged then giggled as their buried treasure appeared out of the dirt.

carrots
Baby carrot (my son planted the carrot seeds)

Our best early season crop this year was the cabbage. We grew green, savoy and red cabbage. I estimated that our 15 cabbage plants produced over 50 pounds of crisp, sweet cabbage.

our cabbage patch
our cabbage patch

My mother-in-law and I had a “play date” in the kitchen. We got creative with the cabbage! We made sauteed cabbage greens (with garlic, onion and chopped apple), stuffed cabbage leaves (with ground beef, onions and tomato sauce), shredded cabbage salad. I even tried substituting pasta with sauteed strips of cabbage. The cabbage leaves were al dente and tasted delicious covered with sauce and cheese. Cabbage is a great low carb alternative to pasta!

Stuffed savoy and green cabbage leaves
Stuffed savoy and green cabbage leaves

Lots of Lettuce

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lettuce2

We harvested almost 6 pounds of lettuce over the past 3 weeks.     The wet and cool spring keep the greens growing.  We have a gourmet blend of  salad greens, kale and butter crunch lettuce.   We planted kale and butter crunch lettuce seedlings and sprinkled gourmet salad blend seeds.  My son and I could not see the tiny seeds on the ground after we shook them out of the seed packet.  I hoped for the best as we lightly tossed dirt over the invisible seeds.  The next few days it rained.  I did not expect the gourmet mix to produce.   But it sprouted a lovely variety of mixed greens similar to the type I buy at the grocery.   The butter crunch lettuce grew into heads of  tender light green outer leaves and crispy pale yellow inner leaves.   More light green leaves grew even after the head was picked.

We eat lots of lettuce in our home.  Typically, my son will eat all the salad before eating the meat or other food on his plate.   Recently, my son announced, “I am a vegetarian, you know.”   Salad has to be one of my son’s favorite vegetable to grow in the garden since planting it is so quick..shake out the seed packet and toss down some dirt.

Another Gardening Season Begins

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firstdayplanting2

The first week in April, we started our fourth season in our community garden plot.  My son helped me break up the soil with a rake and hammer.  He likes to pound things, so he was content to whack and crush clods of dirt with a hammer.  Despite his destructive fun, this was the first year he carefully planted seedlings almost completely on his own.  He planted seedlings of kale, lettuce and brussel sprouts.openingday2

The worms and microbes were busy working in our garden plot already because the soil looks very healthy.  It is a deep rich brown and feels light and loose.  Almost every shovel full of dirt we turned had at least one fat worm.  We were careful not to over work the soil and disturb the worms.  We planted seeds of carrots, parsnip, turnips, beets and lettuce and seedlings of kale, lettuce, broccoli, cabbage (at least 12 plants of differing varieties), brussel sprouts, cauliflower and sugar snap peas.

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Gardening is a labor of love to produce fresh organic food for our family, friends and community and to spend time together as a family working on a common goal with others in a community.  May all our gardens thrive this season not only with food, but with joy and hope!

My son took this photo of the clouds above our garden plot on opening day of the 2013 growing season.  Use your imagination. Can you see the word “LOVE” ?

Time Flies

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IMG_8982Not a lot growing in our garden plot right now, except our eight year old son. He speeds by on the new bike he recently received for his eighth birthday. Can’t believe he is now riding a bike with 24 inch tires and 7 gears! Today, our family biked eleven miles on a trail around BWI airport. My son could pedal easily up the step hills now by shifting the gears. He even raced past me several times. “There is fire coming out of my bike, for real!” he told me.

Christmas Blooms

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Our Amaryllis
Our Amaryllis

Our Amaryllis was in bloom all through December. One bulb purchased for 5 dollars at Walmart, produced six large red flowers that looked like trumpets announcing the good news of Christmas, “God is with us.” The Amaryllis is an excellent Christmas flower because it is glorious and does not have a strong odor like the Paperwhites. The Christmas cactus also produces beautiful odorless flowers during the holidays. Our Christmas cactus has faithfully produced delicate slender red flowers every year for almost 10 years!

We did not have a Poinsetta plant in our home this year, but I learned more about the history of this Christmas time flower from my son’s library book, Legend of the Poinsetta. It is a delightful Mexican legend of a little girl who offers weeds to the Christ Child as her gift for Christmas.  She presents her humble gift with a sincere heart and the weeds turn into hundreds of Poinsetta flowers all around the figure of baby Jesus in the Christmas procession.  My son’s brief review of the book, “You should read it if you like flowers.  My favorite part is when Lucida put down the weeds and flowers started appearing.”

What is your favorite Holiday flower?

My Lemon Tree has Flowers

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Lemon Flower Cluster

Our kitchen smells like a fragrant garden from my blooming lemon tree. It has at least 35 flower clusters. Last winter, I brought the tree indoors, but it dropped all of its leaves. Through Spring and Summer, it stayed on our deck and grew healthy green foliage but no fruit. Before Storm Sandy hit our region, my husband brought the tree indoors. He set it in a sunny spot next to a warm air vent. There was one small lemon already growing on it, but within a few weeks, it was covered with many white buds.  Since there are no pollinators or windy conditions in our kitchen, I must be the pollinator.  This is how to pollinate….

1. Brush anthers (yellow finger-like part) with brush or Q-tip to collect the pollen.
2. Rub pollen on stigma (tall center part) to cover it with pollen.
3. Repeat often.

I am hoping for many Meyer lemons from my indoor tree.

A Portrait of Our Dog

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My son’s portrait of our dog, CJ

The piles of fallen leaves and cool crisp air make autumn our dog’s favorite time in the garden.  CJ is a Shiba Inu with a thick under coat of fur and a fluffy curly tail.  Summer growing season is too hot for him, but the fall is perfect.  These days he is full of extra energy when we are outside.  He will stand alert with head down and eyes at my feet, waiting for me to kick the leaves up into the air so he can catch one in his mouth.

We got him in an animal shelter almost 8 years ago.  He is now 10 years old and still smiling.

Fall Gardening – Broccoli, Kale and Woolly Bear

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We have Kale, Broccoli, Fennel, weeds and wooly bear caterpillars growing in our community garden plot now.  Last weekend, we pulled the weeds, picked a pound of kale and found a couple of baseball sized broccoli bunches sprouting. The row covers are keeping the bugs off the plants, but I did see a brown and black fuzzy caterpillar wiggle toward the green plants when I took off the row cover for a moment.

My son informed me, ” its a Woolly Bear caterpillar.” He learned about it at the Howard County Conservancy Nature camp he attended last Friday.  I thought he invented the cute name, until I researched it online. Check out this blog for lots of facts about the Woolly Bear.  I learned it is not a pest in the garden and it hibernates over the winter by producing a sort of anti-freeze. My son discovered it tickles, too.  He scooped a rolled up woolly bear into his hands, then quickly dropped it when it uncoiled and started to move. Eeeeeeeeekkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!

Kale

I almost stepped on the Woolly as I picked two kale plants down to stem skeletons. I left the stems in the ground, curious to see if they will get new growth.  Later that day, a friend told me that homemade kale chips are delicious.   I found an easy recipe on the gluten-free cooking website, Elana’s Pantry.    Hoping my son would like the nutrient rich kale chips as much as Elana’s sons, I tried the recipe. The chips were thin and crisp, similar to roasted seaweed.  There was a good chance my son would like them since he likes roasted seaweed. “Mom! this is not seaweed, yuck!” He did not like the kale chips, but my husband and I did. We ate them all. They were light and tasty!

Roasted Peppers

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What do you do with 15 pounds of assorted peppers? Roast them! My Italian in-laws wasted no time when we arrived home from picking peppers at our garden plot last week. They quickly cleaned and cut up three bags of peppers, piled them onto cookie sheets, drizzled them with canola oil and Italian spices, then roasted them in a 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes (making sure to check and stir them about every 5 minutes). The peppers were done when soft, yet a bit firm. We enjoyed them between two slices of crusty bread. Pepper sandwiches are delicious hot or cold!

Lego Garden

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Legos

We all have a dream garden. For my son, it is a room full of Legos! Several weeks ago we visited the Lego exhibit: Towering Ambition at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. It was amazing to see Lego models of some of the most famous buildings in the world, including the Empire State Building, St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, the White House and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.  My son stayed busy for a couple of hours creating in the free play area. He built a house and added pieces to existing structures until one grew into the tallest building in the free play area. Yes, this could be my son’s garden. It certainly fits one definition of a garden…. a fertile and delightful spot.