Jurassic Park?

Good grief, the heat of summer is really upon us. And it's doing a number on all of those spring, cool weather-loving crops. The lettuce and spinach gave in to the sultry weather a couple of weeks ago. Now the fava beans and peas are gasping their last collective breath. Time (and Mother Nature) marches on. But there are some newcomers in the garden that are really soaking up the sun and looking mighty pleased with themselves . . .

Are these strange plants something from the prehistoric history books? Can't you just see the dinosaurs wandering through? Okay, maybe that's just me and my odd imagination. These plants are indeed very contemporary, and I'm sure the dinosaurs never saw them. They're artichokes! This is the very first time I've tried growing them, and even if I don't get something to harvest later, just watching these wonderful monsters grow over the summer will be enough of a treat for me.

But, since I really do like to reap what I've sown, I tried to follow the instructions on the seed packet for these. (Hint: most of the best gardening information you will find anywhere will most likely be on the seed packet and/or the seed catalogue!) Here are the instructions Johnny's gave:

Growing Information:

Artichoke, Globe

CULTURE: Sow indoors about 8 weeks before last spring frost date. Sow 1/4" apart and 1/4" deep in lightly moistened soilless mix in a flat or pot. Germinate at 70-80°F (21-27°C). As soon as seedlings can be handled, transplant to 2-4" pots or cell-type containers and grow at 60-70°F (15-21°C) day and 50-60°F (10-15°C) night. Transplant 6-8 week old plants to the garden 2-3' apart. IMPORTANT COLD TREATMENT: Time transplanting so plants get 8-10 days of temperatures around 50°F (10°C) to induce earlier budding. Protect from frost. HARVEST: Clip mature buds midsummer to midfall, depending on location. MILD AREAS: Where winter low is above 14°F (-10°C), sow seeds in fall, harvest in spring. MATURITY: From transplant; add about 20 days if direct seeding. SEED SPECS: SEEDS/LB.: 9,000-12,000 (avg. 10,000). PACKET: 25 seeds.

Hope you read the "IMPORTANT COLD TREATMENT" part. The reason this is crucial is that artichokes are biennials, meaning that under normal circumstances they spend their first year getting large and storing energy. Then they go through a winter, flower the next year, and that's the end of them. And that thing that we call an"artichoke" is actually the immature flower bud of this plant. Artichokes are tender biennials however, meaning that they can't survive a winter that gets below freezing, and as all

of us here in Pittsburgh who survived last winter well know, it certainly does freeze here! So, we need to trick our artichoke plants into thinking they've already gone through a winter: hence the "important cold treatment" statement. I started my artichokes from seed in February under lights in my basement. As soon as the snow thawed I'd put them outside in a cold frame to get their daily chill. There they could be exposed to chilly weather, but also be protected from the cold if the temperatures fell below freezing. (I'd highly recommend getting or building a cold frame for anyone who's as avid a seed-starter as I am!) Once the threat of frost was over I transplanted them to this bed that I'd prepped in my usual way, and mulched with some grass clippings and compost.

So far so good! And no dinosaurs in sight, which is good, because I really wouldn't want this little guy to get hurt.

Summer Snuck Up on Me This Year

Where has the time gone?? It seems like just yesterday I was harvesting tasty lettuce and spinach. Well, the heat took care of that--my beautiful greens turned all ugly and bitter on me. My revenge?? Pull them out and plant some pumpkins!! Winter squash, to be specific. Fairy Squash again, plus a couple of heirlooms just for fun. Galeux D'Exsines is a wonderfully ugly French heirloom that also just happens to be incredibly delicious. Bought one of these hideous beauties at the Farmers' Market last year and saved the seeds to plant this year. (Since it's an heirloom you can do that!! Take THAT, Monsanto!!) The other heirloom is a Boer Squash, the seeds for which were sent to me by my sister who lives in England. Since it seems like I've been running like crazy just to fall behind this year I simply plunked the seeds in the garden instead of starting them under lights.

Much to my delight there are some brave new shoots coming up already. Will I be harvesting tons of squash come the fall? Only time will tell!!

Salad Days

Spring is a wonderful time on many levels. New hope after a long gray winter. New flowers to warm the heart. New green leaves that seem to appear on the trees overnight. And these cool days really are the salad days of gardening because the bugs and beasties have yet to really wake up and start munching. And it's in this cool weather that salad greens are at their best: baby spinach, heirloom lettuces, mache, arugula grow nearly care-free. If you're a salad-lover like I am don't miss your spring opportunity to grow some of these for yourself. I sowed these seeds in this bed about a month ago, but you should still have time to grow a few salads before the summer heat really moves in. Then you just cut as much as you want for your salad--these plants just keep growing! And you won't believe how much better your own home-grown salad is compared to what you get in those expensive bags in the supermarket. Just make sure your soil is nicely prepared, then just follow the instructions on your seed packets. For my lettuce patch I sowed Wildfire Lettuce Mix which is as pretty as it is tasty. If you like a bit of peppery bite in your salad add in some arugula.

In the cool spring weather the baby arugula leaves are really quite mild. I also tried out two types of spinach this spring, Emu and Red Cardinal. Both have provided me with lots of baby spinach leaves to mix into my salad bowl. Be creative--there are endless varieties of leaves you can grow for your own salad bowl!

Garden Planning Part 2 (or Plan B as the Case May Be!)

I (almost) had my crayons poised over my graph paper, ready to plan away. I had my organic gardening books out open to their sections on crop-rotation and planting timetables. Visions of well-organized garden bed layouts flitted across my brain. My intentions were good, they really were! So, then, you might ask, where ARE all these wonderful, colorful garden plans for the upcoming season, huh?? Where's that brilliant, fool-proof crop rotation scheme that'll yieldbushels of blight-free tomatoes, huh? We're waiting . . .

Well, life kind of got in the way in the form of a job search, sick kitty, and, well, just life! So I guess it's time for Plan B. What's Plan B? Just try to get SOME early plants started under my lights in the basement, and IMPROVISE! It's amazing that last year by this time I already had cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and leeks going strong. I guess it didn't help that up until just a couple of days ago the ground was still hidden under layers of snow. I know, excuses, excuses! But it was hard to believe that spring would ever really get here. Now I'm scrambling to catch up and already thinking of planting peas. Sigh.

Just goes to show you, there are the "best laid plans", and then there's gardening! When it comes to growing your own sometimes the best plan is to just do it!

Farm City

There's not much going on in the garden these days, thanks to Mr. Groundhog. Once he polished off all the brassicas he moved on the to the nice baby lettuces I thought were hidden under the asparagus fronds, chewed the chard plants right down to the roots, and he's even eaten the parsley! So far, at least, he hasn't discovered a taste for leeks, so we've still been able to harvest those for fall meals. For now, the only real garden-related activity I've been doing is planning for next year (more about that later.)

This leaves me time for reading, and I've just finished a great little book: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter. This is the inspiring and hilarious true story of how Novella turned an empty lot in a blighted neighborhood in Oakland, California, into a real urban farm, complete with chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, rabbits, and two pigs! The fact that she was able to feed all of these critters (that would ultimately feed her) with excellent food she foraged right out of the dumpsters of her city says a lot about the waste in our society. (Makes an urban farm seem like not such a crazy idea after all!) And as a result of her dumpster-diving she got to meet a chef, learn his charcuterie secrets and together they transformed one of her pigs into these magical foods. Novella Carpenter tells her story with such humble, self-deprecating humor that it's easy to overlook the breadth of her accomplishments. Not only did she raise food for herself and her friends, but she brought people in her dicey neighborhood together as a result of her project. Great food for thought! Now I'm REALLY inspired to get my chickens next year!

Growing Up

I'm pretty greedy when it comes to garden space.  I want to grow as much as I can in a pretty small garden.  One way to expand that space is to garden in three dimensions: don't forget the vertical space!  Space-hungry plants like squashes and cucumbers can be trained to grow up a trellis, which keeps the squash clean and dry off the ground, and also keeps the plants from sprawling all over.  Unless you're growing huge pumpkins, the stem grows to support the squash, so there's really no need to worry about them falling off.  I grew butternut squash this way, and they really did stay on the plant, even the largest ones.  Just be sure your trellis is sturdy enough to hold them!

My trellis is a permanent structure made out of steel tubing sunk into the ground, with heavy-duty plastic fencing material on it.  This works well, but isn't the most attractive option.  The other down side of the permanent trellis is that I pretty much have to grow the squash there every year. I like to at least try to rotate crops and I try to make up for the every-year squash dilemma by planting peas on the trellis first every spring to give me a little rotation.  But a moveable trellis would better in hindsight.  These vegetable ladders that I found from the Territorial Seed Company would be one moveable option. They're a bit pricey for what they are, but I'll bet they'd be really easy to make for yourself.  (Or find an old wooden step ladder and put it to a new use!)  So, when you're looking for more space in your garden, don't forget to look up!

Garlic Harvest

The leaves on the garlic started to turn yellow this past week, telling me that the bulbs were ready to harvest.  So, digging out the garlic was last Sunday's project.  (And the reward was red Russian kale sauteed in olive oil with fresh, juicy garlic!)

I grow pretty much a year's supply of garlic in one 6' by 4' bed (somewhere around 100 heads--we eat a lot of garlic!), so preparing the garlic for long-term storage is important to me.  Ideally garlic should be harvested after a dry spell so that the heads are already a bit dry.  Dig the heads up carefully so that you don't bruise them, leave the stalks attached, and brush off most of the soil. (Don't wash the soil off--you don't want to get your garlic wet.)  Now the garlic needs to cure in a cool, dark, dry place for about a week.  Typically we don't have many cool, dry places in July here in Pittsburgh, but I cure my garlic in my garage.  Not exactly cool (although this year Mother Nature is cooperating so far with a cool spell!), but it is dry.  

After about a week the stalks can be cut off, and then I hang the heads in a cupboard in our basement. I save the biggest, fattest cloves to plant in October for next year's crop.  Growing your own garlic is easy, and fresh, just-harvested garlic is a treat you really can't buy in a store!   

Pea Update: And the Winner Is . . .

All three, actually!  

Well, the peas have come down to make room for some squash and climbing beans, and the vote (mine!) is in.  Here's the tally:

Amish Snap Pea:  Winner for earliest and for taste.

Johnny's Snap Pea:  Winner for yield.

Cascadia:  Winner for disease-resistance.

I really think all three were winners and I'd definitely plant the same combination next year. (Although I have to admit this is partly because I'm cheap and I have lots of seed peas left over!)  But overall I was really pleased with how these varieties worked out.  The fact that the Amish snap peas produced first staggered the pea harvest without having to stagger the planting:  I put all the peas in the ground at the same time.  As the Amish peas were finishing the Johnny's snap peas were taking off, with the Cascadia not far behind.  As far as yield goes, the Johnny's really won out.  Of course I didn't count the number of pea plants I wound up with of each kind so this isn't really a very "scientific" study, but the Johnny's were so far ahead of the other two I think it's pretty obvious:

Amish:  1 lb

Cascadia:  1 3/4 lb

Johnny's:  3 lbs !! (That's a lot of peas!) 

    Amish (left), Johnny's (middle), Cascadia (right)

Now, in terms of taste, I think the Amish won hands down.  They were very delicate, but sweet even if under or over-ripe.  Both the Johnny's and Cascadia peas were larger than the Amish, and although they were both delicious, (sweet, crisp, and juicy) I really loved the Amish snap peas the best.

Although I really didn't have any problems with disease of any kind (that I could see), a few of the Amish and Johnny's snap pea pods had either a few spots or were a bit deformed.  I really didn't notice this at all with the Cascadia, which were bred for disease resistance in the Pacific Northwest.  

It's been a terrific pea season and I'm a bit sorry to see it go.  But with the baby carrots, parsnips and beets starting to make an appearance I'm sure I'll get over it!

Time for Garlic Scapes!

I'd never heard of a garlic scape until a few years ago when I belonged to a CSA and these strange "vegetables" appeared in my weekly box.  They were garlic scapes, which are the flower stalks made this time of year by hardneck garlic.  You really don't want your garlic to put energy into flowering, so the scapes should be cut off just as they start to curl, which for my garlic, is now! Don't throw them away though!  Scapes are a wonderful preview of garlic yet-to-come.  You can puree them with olive oil and pine nuts to make a great pesto.  Or puree them with white cannellini beans to make a terrific bean dip.  Or cut them into pieces and stir fry them with the veggies of your choice.  Or just use them as you would regular garlic.  The scapes have a milder, less pungent garlic flavor.  

Don't have your own garlic scapes but want to try them? Visit your local farmers' market.  If you have garlic-growers at your market they'll most likely be selling their scapes about now!  Look for ones that aren't too tightly curled:  they're more tender than older, more mature scapes.  I liked scapes so much that all the garlic bulbs I plant are hardneck garlic so that I can harvest a crop of scapes every year!  

May the Best Pea Win!

It's nearly time for one of my favorite harvests of the year:  sugar snap peas!  They're easy to grow, prolific, and absolutely delicious!  Sweet, crisp, juicy, straight from the vine, it doesn't get much better than that!  And as far as healthy snacks go, sugar snap peas are an excellent choice. This year I'm trying out 3 varieties of sugar snaps to see which one I like the best.  They are: Amish Snap, an heirloom variety grown in the Amish community long before modern snap pea varieties (Seed Savers Exchange), Cascadia, an open-pollenated variety bred in the Pacific Northwest, and Johnny's Selected Seeds basic variety of Sugar Snap Peas.  

So far, the earliest and most vigorous-looking is the Amish snap.  The plants are already covered with pods that should be ready to eat in a few days.  Johnny's snap peas are coming in second, with nice tall vines, but no real pods yet.  Cascadia is in third place, with shorter plants, but lots of blooms.  I'll post updates later on overall yields and flavor.  

   Amish Snap Pea (left) Tall Telephone Shell Pea (right)

   Cascadia Snap Pea (left), Johnny's  Snap Pea (right)

Although it's much too late to plant peas now (they're a cool weather crop and should be planted in early spring) many people have asked me what the secret is to healthy prolific pea plants.  Aside from the usual (nice fertile soil), I like to soak peas overnight prior to planting, and I also use pea inoculant.  Peas are legumes, a family of plants that also includes beans, lentils, alfalfa, and clover, that have the ability to convert nitrogen from its gaseous form from the air to a form that is usable to all plants as food to support plant growth.  This process is known as nitrogen fixation, and legumes do this with the help of a family of soil bacteria known as rhizobacteria that live on their roots.  The rhizobacteria get carbohydrates from the legumes in exchange for converting nitrogen into plant food.  Pea inoculant is a powdered form of these rhizobacteria that work best with peas, and coating the pea seeds with this inoculant ensures that each pea plant will have plenty of these beneficial bacteria to help it grow.  I dig a 1" furrow, put in my soaked peas, then sprinkle on the inoculant before covering the peas with soil.  Water them in well, and by early summer you should have lots of wonderful peas to eat! 

Meet a Few of My Best Friends

OK, they're not the most attractive or glamorous bunch.   And they hang out in some pretty icky places. But honestly, these are some of the best friends a gardener can have!  Entertaining for these guys is a breeze! No fancy gourmet dinners necessary.  Just toss them a few vegetable peelings, the mushy leftovers from making vegetable stock, those forgotten, semi-identifiable remnants from your vegetable crisper, some crushed up egg shells, coffee grounds, used tea bags, corrugated cardboard, shredded newspaper, and a few toilet paper rolls and they're TOTALLY happy!  And what they leave behind is pure gold, from a gardener's point of view!  

We're talking worms here.  But not just any worms . . . these are compost worms (also known as redworms, red wrigglers, tiger worms, manure worms).  These worms are related to the good old-fashioned earthworm, but compost worms don't really want to live in the earth.  They need a diet much richer in organic matter than that, and will seek out any good compost pile in which to make their home.   And they'll be more than willing to eat much of your kitchen garbage in exchange for making the most wonderful organic fertilizers!   (For free!)  And if you have kids, starting a worm bin would be a great fun project for them!

So, how do you get started?  Basically you need a fairly large container (depending upon how much kitchen scraps you generate) that's dark (worms don't like light) and has a lid.  I use a large Rubbermaid container.  The worms also need air, so drill some holes all around the top bit of the container.  I found a really neat little video that shows this perfectly in pictures here. The only difference with the tub they set up and mine is that they didn't put drainage holes in the bottom. I did because I also want to be able to collect the liquid that gets produced as the worms break down your kitchen scraps.  This is called "worm tea" and diluted about 10-to-1 is an excellent liquid fertilizer.  I set my Rubbermaid container with the drainage holes in another similar container with no holes, and the worm tea drains into that.  I keep my worm bins (I have two) in my garage.  People say you can keep them in your house, but unless you're really vigilant about not too many fruit scraps you'll wind up with lots of fruit flies.  Since my worm bin's in the garage (detached!) I don't care about the fruit flies since they also help break down the garbage, and make nice treats for the hummingbirds that visit my flower garden each summer.  Make sure it's not in the sun if you put it outdoors as the worms can't tolerate too much heat, but also keep in mind that the worms can't survive being frozen, so for winter time it's best to find a more sheltered place for them.  My garage is unheated, but the worms seem to survive ok as long as I leave the worm bin full over winter for insulation.

Once you've got your holes drilled and figured out where you're going to put your bin you need to create some bedding for your worms.  This can be shredded newspaper or corrugated cardboard (no glossy stuff please!), moistened to feel like a damp sponge.  Throw in a couple of handfuls of garden soil (worms need a bit of grit to digest their food), and some non-acidic food scraps--avoid citrus like lemon, grapefruit, and orange peels, at least at first.  Once your worm bin is really going they can tolerate a bit of these.  Lastly, (and most importantly) you'll need some compost worms. You can get these from a well-established compost pile--you'll really need at least a few hundred of them to get started. Or you can mail-order worms for about $15 for a half-pound of worms here, plenty to start your bin off.  And if your worms are well cared for and happy they'll reproduce, A LOT!  (Look for little oval, yellow worm cocoons, about 1/8" long in your finished compost.  Each one contains from 1-5 worms!)  And each one of these guys can eat its own weight in kitchen scraps every day!  

Keep adding kitchen scraps (a little at a time at first, more after you start getting more worms). Always keep fresh, moist bedding on the top.  This will prevent most flies from discovering your bin, and keep the worms happy on the top food layer since they like to be covered with a moist mat.  And this is a great way to get rid of those cardboard boxes, newspapers, brown papers bags, toilet paper rolls, paper napkins, used kleenex, etc that would otherwise end up in the land fill.  And worms also like stuff like pet hair, human hair, and the contents of your vacuum cleaner bag!  Just make sure that the worm bin is kept moist.  

Harvesting the finished worm compost can be a bit labor-intensive with this type of worm bin unfortunately.  Obviously the finished compost is going to wind up at the bottom.  This is the reason why I ended up with two bins.  When the first one is full I stop adding to it for a while, and put my kitchen scraps into the second one.  After a few weeks I'll check on the first one again.  Most of the identifiable food will usually be gone, and it will be mostly dark, finished worm compost.  If there's still un-composted food, scrape it off and set it to one side.  Since I consider my compost worms to be as valuable as the compost, I don't want to just chuck them into the garden since they won't survive there.  So I really try to separate them from the compost.  One way to do this is to move all the finished compost to one side of the bin, and start adding fresh stuff to the other.  Eventually the worms will migrate out of the finished compost and into the new side.  To make sure you don't lose them you can scoop the finished worm compost into a cheap plastic colander (I got mine for $1!) and set it over where you want your worms to go, and put the whole set-up in the sun.  As the worms go down to get away from the light you can scoop off the top layer of the compost.  Eventually the worms will go through the colander.  Of course, if you have kids this could be a great afternoon project for them!  

If this sounds like too much work, and you don't mind spending a little bit of money on your wormery, you can purchase a really nifty thing called a "Can of Worms".  This is a system of stacked sections that the worms can travel in-between.  As you fill one section you put another on the top.  Eventually you can move the bottom, finished section to the top, let the worms migrate down, and use the compost.  You can buy one here.  There's a British company called Wiggly Wigglers who also sell them (although I think the shipping would be pretty prohibitive!) who have made a series of videos about how to set up and use a Can of Worms you can watch here-1, here-2, here-3, and here-4.  (They also have a weekly podcast that's VERY entertaining and informative.  They have me hooked!)

Anyway, I hope I've convinced you to make some new wormy friends who'll make you your very own organic fertilizer and keep your kitchen scraps out of landfills.  Once you start composting with worms you'll see your "garbage" in a whole new light!

Pretty with a Purpose

I love having flowers in amongst the vegetables.  They're like little surprises, splashes of beauty in the beds, and make me smile every time I visit the garden. But the flowers aren't there just for my enjoyment.  They have an important job to do, namely, to attract beneficial insects to the garden.  Anyone who's grown anything worth eating knows that there are hoards of other critters who'd be plenty willing to eat it!  It's amazing how the aphids find the fava beans every year, or how the bean beetles appear on the poor bean plants so fast that it seems like they just come with them! It's enough to make you want to reach for the industrial pesticides!  Well, . . . almost.  After all, isn't it those same nasty pesticides you're trying to avoid by growing your own veg? Before you start spraying, remember this: for each one of those insect pests munching on your vegetables there's another creature that wants to eat IT!  I remember last year I nearly reached for the pyrethrin spray to deal with the hundreds of aphids munching away on the fava beans. I'm glad I didn't because within a few days the lady bugs had moved in and made short work of the aphids.  And we had an amazing (and delicious) harvest of fava beans, no chemicals necessary! 

Nature is all about balance, and if your plants are healthy (from growing in good fertile soil) they can tolerate a few munches from the pests until the predators arrive.  The insect predators need more than just their prey insects as food however.  They also need pollen and nectar, which they get from flowers, and a water source. That's not a bird bath I have in the garden, it's a bug bath!  The stones are there so that the little guys can drink without falling in and drowning.  There are a couple of wonderful articles here and here that list many types of beneficial insects and the flowers that attract them. The flowers that I routinely add to my garden are lobelia (this is one of my absolute favorites flowers anyway), calendula (which are not only pretty, but edible!), marigolds (natural source of pyrethrin and great companion plant for tomatoes), poached egg plant, fennel, agastache, nasturtiums (also edible), gilia, and cosmos.  And the next time you reach down to pull out that dandelion, don't! Dandelions are really great early nectar sources for all kinds of insect friends, including honey bees!  There really is quite a selection of beautiful flowers you can grow in your garden to attract beneficial insects, so find a little bit of extra space in your vegetable plot for them.  You and your vegetables will be glad you did!  

Raised Beds Rock!

Before

After

Last Sunday the weather was beautiful, (well, beautiful for March in Pittsburgh, anyway!), and I finished prepping the garden for early spring planting.  Did I spend hours behind a fume and noise-spewing rototiller? Nope!!  I spent about 10 minutes pulling out a few tiny weed sprouts, then spreading some nice organic fertilizer, lime, and compost onto the bed for my early cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.  No digging necessary!  (OK, I did use a hand trowel to dig in the lime and the fertilizer before I put the compost on top.)  So why is it that I'm not battling weeds and working up a sweat with power tools (or at the very least getting my back into it with a spade)???  Did we luck out and inherit some magical plot that was totally weed-free or discover some great new herbicide??  Nope!!  It's because we put in raised beds when we got this plot about 5 years ago. Just check out the "before and after" pictures of our garden. Although the "before" picture was taken in March before the weeds got a real upper hand (root?), believe me, it was full of the thistles, mug wort, and other nasties that run rampant throughout this community garden. (Not to mention the fact that there were still tons of good old Pennsylvania clay in this plot.  Not the best medium for growing much of anything!) There are other benefits to doing raised beds than just getting the upper hand on weeds too.  Since you basically divide your garden into separate, designated planting spaces and walking spaces you avoid compacting the soil in your growing space (as long as you don't go strolling around in your raised beds!)  That means that once you have the soil prepped initially, you shouldn't have to till the soil again, EVER! (Yep, no heavy digging, with or without power tools!)  And with raised beds you can really enrich you soil and plant things closer together than you might do in a "regular" garden.  There's a great book called Square Foot Gardening that talks about this in depth, and gives great ideas on how big your raised beds should be, when to plant what, and how much space to give various vegetables--it's really a great book!  

So, how do you get started?  First, decide where your raised beds will be, and where you want your paths to be.  We made our paths about 3-4 feet wide, which seems like a lot of "wasted" space, but believe me, it's really nice to have this space to maneuver around the beds.  Next, prep the soil in each of the raised bed areas by double-digging.  While you dig your bed remove any roots from perennial weeds, rocks, and lumps of clay.  Once you have the beds dug you can install the frame of the raised beds.  We made ours 6' X 4'.  This is relatively convenient because the lumber is generally sold as 10' X 6" X 2" sizes.  (You'd get 2 sides out of one of these pieces.)  The 6" depth means that you can bury the sides of the raised beds about an inch or two down, and still have a decent amount above ground as the raised part.  Burying the sides of the beds gives more of a weed barrier than just putting them on top of the ground, and also prevents the soil inside the bed from migrating out through any space in the bottom.  And it gives more stability to your bed.  At this point you'll probably need to add more soil to your beds.  We scraped the path areas (shaving off and removing the tops of weeds there, and then sifting any nice soil into our raised beds.)  If necessary you can purchase top soil to add to your beds, and of course add lots of nice aged compost.  

To make your path areas weed-free, lay down either landscape fabric, or corrugated cardboard as a barrier, and then cover it all with a generous layer of wood mulch.   This should keep your paths weed-free for at least a couple of years.  When the mulch breaks down and the weeds start creeping in, just put down more cardboard and mulch.    

This sounds like a lot of work, (and initially it is), but believe me, it's well worth the effort!  The time you take putting in your raised beds in the beginning will be made up for by the easy spring plantings you'll have in your future!

Springtime Under Lights

Spring is here!  Well, at least under the lights in my basement it is! The first seedlings of the season are up and thriving! Here's what's growing:

4 types of Leeks (Giant Musselburg, Lancelot, Blue Solaize, and Prizetaker)

Romanesco Cauliflower, Veronica 

Heirloom Italian Sprouting Broccoli DiCiccio

Gonzalas, Early Spring Cabbage 

Tuscan Black Kale

Red Russian Kale

I'm hoping these guys will be ready to go in the ground around Saint Patrick's Day--that's the best time to plant peas too!  It's hard to believe it'll be planting time soon.  As I write this it's snowing sideways! Starting plants under lights lets you get a spring fix even in the winter!

It's really easy to start plants from seeds, and you don't need to spend a fortune on a fancy set-up.  Mine is just a set of wire shelves from Ikea with each shelf about 14" apart, and shop-lights that hang from the shelf above on chains.  You want to be able to keep the light source about 2-3" above your plants.  As the seedlings grow you shorten the chains to raise the lights up.  I find that, as far as the bulbs go, the real grow lights give the best results, although I've used regular fluorescent shop light bulbs in the past.  The grow lights cost a bit more, but the seedlings really do seem to do better with them, so I think they're worth the extra buck or two.  I have the lights on a timer so I don't have to remember to turn them on and off.  I give my seedlings about 14 hours of light each day.  On gray, wintery days like today I find lots of excuses to go and check on the seedlings so I can get a bit of that springtime light therapy too!  

I Must Be Crazy

Meet Burt.  He's a cabbage white butterfly.  In the summertime you see these little guys happily flitting around the garden.  Unfortunately many of them flit on over to my cabbage patch and their voracious, green prodigy munch their little caterpillar hearts out.  So what's with Burt? Well, he must have hitched a ride on some of my veggies last fall as a chubby green caterpillar. I don't have the heart to squish the caterpillars I find on the leaves, I just put them in the bag with the compost destined to go out, and figure they can fend for themselves there.  Well, this one must have escaped, and found a place in my kitchen to do what caterpillars do over the winter. How else can I explain the fact that I came home from work one day recently to find this little guy flying around the kitchen?   He certainly didn't come from the great outdoors since our January temperatures, especially this year, aren't really ideal for butterflies! Bummer Burt!  Not the best time for you to venture out of your cocoon!  (Or I guess, technically, your chrysalis, since you're a butterfly, not a moth.)  Anyway, despite Burt's poor sense of timing I suppose he picked a pretty good house in which to reside.   Currently he is hanging out in my basement with a catnip plant I have under lights (along with some of our potted herbs we over-winter and my lettuces).  Amazingly, the catnip's actually blooming!  And being the overly kind-hearted (aka eccentric??) soul I've also been putting out some butterfly food (1 tsp sugar dissolved in 1/2 cup of water) for old Burt.  Luckily (for me, not for Burt) there's no Bertha around, so I won't be seeing green caterpillars on my soon-to-be started cabbage and broccoli seedlings!  But I'm hoping that my Burt care-taking might win me some cabbage-white brownie points, and maybe they'll leave my cabbages alone this year! 

They're Here!

Thank goodness for the seed catalogs!  They arrive right at the darkest, coldest time of year to warm the hearts of gardeners everywhere and inspire hopes of the best harvests yet-to-come.  Yes, the virtual garden of January is always missing the weeds, insects, and any other plant-munching pests that the true garden season inevitably brings to vex our spirits.  But that's ok, because I for one need all the optimism I can get in January!  

There's something truly magical about starting plants from seeds.  Putting a cabbage seed the size of a pencil tip into soil, watching it sprout, and finally grow into a head of cabbage the size of a basketball never ceases to amaze me.  And harvesting that cabbage is all the more satisfying having been a part of its life from the very start.  Although I have to admit, I often have a hard time harvesting my "babies"!  (Honestly though, you do get over it!)  

Starting your own garden  plants from seed has more advantages than just the satisfaction of start-to-finish gardening however.  First, the selection of seeds available in the seed catalogs is vastly greater than what you can buy in plant starts from most garden centers.  And, by-the-way, the variety of seeds available in catalogs dwarfs what you can get in those seed displays at the "big" stores that are usually put out way too late to really get a decent start on the season anyway.  Second, you have far more control over when you can get your plants into the garden if you start them yourself from seed.  Most garden centers assume that the garden season starts around Mother's Day, and ends on Labor Day.  Well, if you're like me, the garden gate opens WAY before that, and if you want your early spring cabbage, peas, and fava beans, you'd best be gardening in March (and starting seeds in February!) So now is really the time to order your seeds and start planning that spring garden!  Believe it or not right now I've got some salad greens growing in my basement under lights, and sprouting jars on the window sill in the kitchen for fresh sprouts for my salads.  Year-round gardening in Pittsburgh?  Why not!

The third reason to start plants from seed is to protect the diversity of our food supply.  This is probably the most important reason of all.  There was a very interesting article in Countryside magazine that I read online recently that was more than a bit troubling.  In short what this article is about is the fact that huge agribusinesses like Monsanto are busy buying up the smaller seed suppliers and eliminating many of the open-pollinated, heirloom varieties being sold in favor of hybrid and other varieties these companies can patent.  Since 1981 there has been a reduction in the number of seed varieties available by catalog from 5000 down to 500!  And if the only varieties that are available are patented, that means that pretty soon saving your own seeds will be an illegal activity.  I don't want to get too political here, but I for one don't think companies should be allowed to patent living things.  And the only way to fight this is to purchase heirloom seeds from the small companies, grow them, save some seeds, and share them with your friends.  Seed Savers Exchange is an organization that has been doing just that.  They have a great web site, a beautiful catalog, and a truly wonderful collection of seeds for sale.  I can't wait to taste Good Mother Stallard beans and Aunt Molly's ground cherries (among the other wonderful-sounding vegetables I purchased seeds for).  In fact, I think I went a bit crazy on the seed orders considering the size of my garden plot!  Well, that's January optimism for you!  So, curl up in front of the fire with your seed catalogs and start planning YOUR garden!

Putting the Asparagus to Bed

The middle of winter typically isn't the time to think about asparagus.  At least we shouldn't think about eating it right now, since spring is the time to get delicious, fresh, local asparagus.   And since you really can't get any more local than your own garden, why not start your own bed of asparagus this spring?   The reason I'm thinking about it now is because there's one last thing I need to do in the garden this season, and that's to put the asparagus to bed.

Asparagus is different from most of the vegetable crops that we grow:  it's a perennial, meaning that it comes back every year, unlike tomatoes or zucchini that are annual crops and have to be planted each year.  In the late fall the above-ground plant dies off, but the root crowns under-ground stay alive through the winter cold. Once the soil warms up sufficiently in the spring the asparagus sends up the familiar shoots that we eat.  Once you have an established asparagus bed (three years from planting) you can harvest those shoots for about 6 weeks.  Why stop at 6 weeks?  Well, the shoots will eventually become the leafy part of the asparagus that uses photosynthesis to make the food that ultimately winds up in the root crown underground so that the asparagus can live through the winter and send up more spears in the spring.  So, sadly, there's a point where you have to stop picking the asparagus shoots, and let them grow into the tall, ferny plants that they become.  This is actually a pretty nice cycle, since just at the point where you're tired of having asparagus every day, it's time to stop picking it!  (This is just another example of the joy and magic of seasonal eating!)

So, how do you get started on your very own asparagus bed?  The first (and most essential step) is to prepare the ground where you plan to grow your asparagus.  The key thing is NO WEEDS!! (No kidding!!)  Well, if you want to make your asparagus happy and your gardening life easier, no weeds would be best, or at least no perennial weeds (which include grasses, or the ever-present mugwort!)  Believe it or not, it IS possible to have a pretty weed-free bed if you listen to these two words: RAISED BED!  When we prepared our raised beds we spent A LOT of time digging out roots of perennial weeds like mugwort.  I'm not talking rototilling here, which simply cuts the weed roots into smaller pieces that will all come back with a vengeance as vigorous new plants.  I mean, dig out the roots completely and get rid of them.  Once you do that, and you have the barrier a raised be can provide, your life will be much easier from here on in.  (I'll post again later with more about how to establish raised beds.)  The next key thing is to make sure your soil is in prime shape:  get rid of any heavy clay which is ever-present in this part of the country, dig in some nice compost, add a bit of organic fertilizer for good measure, and some lime since our soils tend to be a bit acid.  This is pretty much how you should prepare garden beds for anything you plant, but since your asparagus will be occupying that bed for hopefully several years to come, you want to start with the best soil you can possibly provide, and this will be your one and only chance to dig in soil amendments without disturbing those valuable root crowns.

So, now that you've prepared a wonderful bed of nice fluffy soil with lots of organic matter (compost), and fertilizer, and gotten rid of those pesky weed roots--what's next?  I'd suggest you order yourself some nice, disease-free asparagus crowns.  I got mine from Johnny's Selected Seeds, and I followed their directions for planting them.  In the early spring plant the crowns in a trench 6-8" deep, 8-14" apart.  Set aside the soil you dig out for your trench:  you'll need it over the next few weeks.  Lay the roots flat and cover with 1-2" of soil.  As the plants grow keep adding more soil, a couple inches at a time, until you have a slight mound.  Make sure you keep the patch weed-free and well-watered.  The first year avoid the temptation to pick ANY of the asparagus shoots.  Your new plants need to get established, so let them grow into nice tall ferns.  In the fall, when the ferns have turned brown, cut them down to the ground.  This will make it much easier to see and harvest the new shoots come spring.  Add some more compost and/or fertilizer in the fall and again in the spring.  The first year after you've planted your asparagus you can harvest a few spears, for perhaps two weeks.  The third year you can harvest for the full six weeks.  When you harvest you should cut all the spears (once they are 6-8" tall.)  If you let some of them fern out before your harvest is finished this will attract asparagus beetles, and they'll start munching on the new spears too. Asparagus grows pretty quickly, so this means pretty much a daily harvest of a few nice spears for your dinner. Asparagus loses much of its wonderful flavor within hours after picking, so having your own bed is really the only way to truly taste what asparagus is meant to taste like.  Those spears in the grocery store are likely to be a few days to a few weeks old by the time you buy them!  So, enjoy your fresh harvest each spring!  And don't leave it to mid-winter to cut back your asparagus plants, or you'll have cold hands like me!

Preserving Your Harvest #2: What the heck do I do with all this Fairy Squash??

Perhaps the subtitle for this post should be "What the heck is a fairy squash, anyway?"  Well, I discovered Fairy Squash a couple of years ago, perusing one of my favorite seed catalogs from the Territorial Seed Company.  Here's their description:  "Fairy's got it all.  It's early, prolific, disease resistant, storable, and delicious.  The rambling plants set fruit early and continue to bloom over the long season, providing ample blossoms for stuffing.  Manageably proportioned, oval fruit weighing 2-2 1/2 pounds have thick, honeyed flesh and smooth, green and goldenstreaked skin.  Use for soups, pies, baked goods, or whole, baked and stuffed as a show-stopping dinner presentation."  I was hooked!  (Not to mention the fact that the name conjured up images of little winged beings cavorting through the garden patch--what fun!)  And I must say, prolific is an understatement!  Last year I planted two butternut squash plants and one fairy squash plant on my squash trellis, and got 3 times more fairy squash from the one plant than I got butternuts from the other two!  And whereas the butternut squash plants were attacked by the ever-present squash bugs, the fairy squash didn't seem to be bothered.  So this year I planted just the fairy squash, and wound up with quite the harvest!

Cucurbita moschata is the Latin name for several varieties of winter sqsuashes that include the Fairy Squash, which is a hybrid variety.  The hybrid designation means that if you plant the seeds from your Fairy Squash, what you'll get the next year is anyone's guess--it's not an heirloom for that reason.  So, roast and eat the seeds--they're tasty nonetheless!  Winter squashes include the more familiar pumpkins, butternut, acorn and other varieties that store well throughout the winter, and hence the name "winter squash".  (Summer squashes are those tender varieties like zucchini and yellow squash that have to be eaten right away.)  You can put your fairy squash in a cool, dark place, and they'll keep for several months.  Just make sure they are clean and not bruised in any way.  (Bruised squash won't keep well, but you can certainly eat them right away.)

So, what do we do with all these lovely Fairy Squash we've grown?  Roast them!  Roasting makes the wonderful, sweet, silky flavor of winter squash really shine.  Wash the outside of the squash well to make sure they're clean.  Put the squash on a sturdy cutting board, and with a 

heavy-duty knife cut off the stem end, and then cut the squash down through the middle.  Scoop out the seeds just like you do with your Halloween pumpkin, and then place the squash halves cut-side down on a baking tray and roast in a 400 °F oven for about 30 minutes or so, until they are soft.  At this point you can turn them right side up, add butter, and a drizzle of maple syrup or honey, or a sprinkle of brown sugar, and roast for a few more minutes, and eat.  Or, you can puree the roasted squash to use in any recipe that you'd use canned pumpkin.  Let the squash halves cool and scoop the flesh into a food processor (discard the skin), and puree.  You can use the puree to make pumpkin butter:  there's a really nice recipe for making pumpkin butter here. Or, use the puree to make pumpkin pie, pumpkin breads, or muffins, according to your favorite recipes.  I think you'll find that your homemade puree tastes better by leaps and bounds than the canned stuff.  And you can freeze the puree in zip lock bags:  just measure out however much you'd use in your favorite recipe and you have your very own home-grown, homemade convenience food!  And you can share all of these wonderful treats with your diminutive winged friends--they really don't eat much!

Gardening in November??

Why start a gardening blog in November when the leaves and the temperature are dropping? Looking around our community garden today it seems like most people think garden season ends with the last tomato.  Well, I suppose if all you're interested in growing are those warm-weather treats, there is no November gardening, at least not here in Pittsburgh, PA.  I love a delicious home-grown tomato as much as the next gardener, but there are many more home-grown treats that can still be coming from your garden, even in November!  Here are a few pictures of my "Brassica Bed" that I took today:

Romanesco Cauliflower

Savoy Cabbage

The Whole Crew:  Cabbage, Tuscan Kale, Sprouting Broccoli, Romanesco Cauliflower

These plants are all fairly cold hardy, and in fact get a bit sweeter after a few frosts.  I'll be picking the rest of the broccoli sprouts and the cauliflower over the next week or so, but hopefully the kale will keep producing leaves into the colder weather.  

I'm still picking beets, which should be safe in the ground after the first few frosts.  My salsify crop (all 10 plants or so!) will also be fine in the ground for some time to come until I figure out what the heck to do with them!  And hopefully I'll be harvesting leeks on December 25th for Christmas dinner as I have in past years.  

So why not start talking about gardening in November!